Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Antares rocket lifted off from Wallops Island, Virg., at 12:07 pm EST and placed a Cygnus cargo ship in orbit. Reports indicate that Cygnus has deployed its solar arrays as planned and is healthy. The freighter has begun a three-day journey to the International Space Station, where berthing is scheduled for Sunday. This is the first of eight commercial cargo runs that Orbital is making to ISS […]
AUTHOR
Doug Messier
The International Space Station, backdropped by the blackness of space and the thin line of Earth’s atmosphere. (Credit: NASA)
By Charles Bolden and John P. Holdren
As more than 30 heads of space agencies from around the world prepare to gather in Washington January 9-10 for an unprecedented summit on the future of space exploration, we are pleased to announce that the Obama Administration has approved an extension of the International Space Station (ISS) until at least 2024. We are hopeful and optimistic that our ISS partners will join this extension effort and thus enable continuation of the groundbreaking research being conducted in this unique orbiting laboratory for at least another decade.
Flight Updates Antares/Cygnus Antares is set to liftoff at 1:07 p.m. EST with a Cygnus freighter bound for the International Space Station. NASA TV’s coverage will begin at 12:45 a.m. EST at https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo Reports indicate that Scaled Composites scrubbed a planned powered flight of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo scheduled for this morning due to a forecast of bad weather. The forecast is accurate; it is overcast and windy in the […]
Sir Richard Branson and daughter, Holly, look through the window of a SpaceShipTwo shell. (Photo credit: Mark Greenberg/Virgin Galactic)
Sir Richard Branson’s claims over the years about the environmentally friendly nature of his SpaceShipTwo suborbital space tourism vehicle have always been difficult to properly evaluate. The Virgin Galactic and Carbon War Room founder has never submitted the methodology, assumptions and calculations used to arrive at those conclusions to anything remotely resembling peer review — either by experts or the public at large.
The result was a series of claims designed to burnish Branson’s eco-warrior reputation that were based on minimal evidence and generated considerable skepticism. The doubts were crystallized once SpaceShipTwo finally started flying under power in the skies over the Mojave Desert last April.
SpaceShipTwo in powered flight. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)
One wag I know is not alone in dubbing the ship’s hybrid nitrous oxide-rubber engine a “flying tire fire.” (The ship doesn’t literally burn tire rubber, but the effects are similar.)
Virgin Galactic Vice President of Propulsion Thomas Markusic has left Richard Branson’s space tourism company for Firefly Space Systems, a start-up company developing a ground-based, small satellite launch vehicle.
Markusic had been at Virgin Galactic since May 2011. He headed up the company’s liquid propulsion program and oversaw the development of LauncherOne, a small satellite rocket that will be air launched from WhiteKnightTwo.
ANTARES LAUNCH UPDATE Wallops Island, VA 08 January 2014 – Following a comprehensive review of data related to the radiation environment in space, further reviews and modeling of the rocket’s avionics systems, and the forecast for favorable terrestrial weather conditions at the Wallops Island launch facility, the Antares launch team has decided to proceed forward with a launch attempt of the Orbital-1 CRS mission to the International Space Station tomorrow, […]
Washington D.C., Jan. 8, 2014 (CSF PR) – The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is pleased to announce the addition of seven new member organizations. The Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority joins as the 18th Executive Member. New Associate Members include Ares Corporation, Colorado Space Coalition, Penn State Applied Research Laboratory, QinetiQ North America, Satwest, and Space Coast Spaceflight Alliance.
“The unprecedented expansion in our membership mirrors the growth of the commercial spaceflight industry, and an increasing interest in private spaceflight,” said CSF President Michael Lopez-Alegria. “The industry celebrated many successes last year, and we see 2014 as a vital year in which our members will continue to demonstrate the tremendous promise of commercial spaceflight to engage and educate people around the world.”
Dream Chaser (Credit: Sierra Nevada Corporation)
SPARKS, Nev., January 8, 2014 (SNC PR) – In a press conference today, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) announced the global expansion of the Dream Chaser® Space System through recently finalized cooperative understandings with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). SNC will work with each agency on the potential application of European technologies to both the current Dream Chaser design, and advanced derivative versions of the vehicle. This international collaboration will also help define missions outside the Dream Chaser’s primary mission of ferrying U.S. and partner nation astronauts to low-Earth orbit, thereby helping to maintain the global space partnerships established between these agencies and the United States space program.
Reliable reports this morning indicate the Obama Administration has approved a four-year extension for the International Space Station from 2020 to 2024. That effort, of course, will depend on whether the international partners — Canada, Europe, Japan and Russia — agree to extend the program. The decision has been announced as the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) prepares to host the two-day Space Exploration Conference and Heads of Agencies Summit […]
Antares Launch Update January 8, 2014 Early this morning the Antares launch team decided to scrub today’s launch attempt due to an unusually high level of space radiation that exceeded by a considerable margin the constraints imposed on the mission to ensure the rocket’s electronic systems are not impacted by a harsh radiation environment. The solar flux activity that occurred late yesterday afternoon has had the result of increasing the […]