Oleg Ostapenko (Credit: www.kremlin.ru)

As earlier reported, Deputy Defense Minister Oleg Ostapenko has replaced Vladimir Popovkin as the head of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, as part of a major overhaul of the nation’s space industry. He will head up a beefed up space agency that will oversee an industry that will be consolidated under a single commercial company.

Wikipedia has a biography of Ostapenko that is excerpted below:

“Oleg Nikolayevich Ostapenko (born 3 May 1957) is a Colonel General in the Russian Military, Deputy Minister of Defence, and former commander of the Aerospace Defence Forces, a position he held from their foundation on 1 December 2011 until his promotion in November 2012. Prior to this he was commander of the Russian Space Forces from 2008, replacing Vladimir Popovkin….

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Mojave, CA (Scaled Composites PR) — Mark “Forger” Stucky, Michael Alsbury and Clint Nichols, Scaled Composites’ Test Pilots, were the recipients of the Society of Experimental Pilot’s Ray E. Tenhoff award on Saturday, September 28, 2013, for the most outstanding technical presentation given during the symposium. Their presentation, “The Road to Rocket Powered Flight,” was based on their experiences during SpaceShipTwo’s flight test program. The Ray E. Tenhoff Award recognizes […]

Astronaut Shannon Walker activates an NanoRacks experiment aboard the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA

Houston, TX,  October 9, 2013 (NanoRacks PR) – NanoRacks is proud to announce it has now fulfilled over one hundred customer payloads delivered to space. The berthing of the Orbital Sciences Cygnus Mission D-­‐1 brought 11 customer payloads to the International Space Station. Since its founding in 2009 NanoRacks has realized a total of 109 space station payloads, marking the company as the market leader in low earth orbit utilization.

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Sir Richard Branson speaks to a group of future millionauts at the FAITH Hangar of Virgin Galactic in Mojave, CA September 25, 2013 in Mojave, CA. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)

During his public appearances, Virgin Galactic Vice President for Special Projects Will Pomerantz likes to tell his audiences that the first thing he does every morning is to Google his boss, Richard Branson, to find out what the brash British billionaire had committed the employees of his space company to doing while they were asleep.

Pomerantz describes these pronouncements — which typically involve optimistic predictions about the start of SpaceShipTwo commercial service, or Virgin Galactic’s ambitious future space projects — as the billionaire’s affectionate way of inspiring his employers to work harder and faster. It’s all rather amusing, really…cute even…and visionary, Sir Richard’s got that vision thing. Now did I mention — I may have said this, once or twice — that I work at a spaceline. I mean, how cool is that, huh?

Behind the smile and the joking and the pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming promotion for the company, one detects a slight hint of some of the frustration that periodically bubbles up just below Virgin Galactic’s slick exterior . I mean, how cool is it to work at a spaceline whose founder keeps making promises they can’t keep,  wants everything done tomorrow, and has little idea how any of this stuff works? Probably not nearly as cool as you might think.

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Sir Richard Branson “high tens” with SpaceShip2 test pilot Mark Stucky following the successful first powered flight of SpaceShipTwo on April 29, 2013. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)

Mojave, CA (Scaled Compostes PR) — Mark “Forger” Stucky, Scaled Composites’ Test Pilot, was the recipient of the Society of Experimental Pilot’s prestigious Iven C. Kincheloe award on Saturday, September 28, 2013.

Stucky has been a significant asset to the SpaceShipTwo development program as an engineering test pilot in both SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo. He has served in numerous capacities on the program including technical adviser, design engineer, instructor pilot, project pilot and mentor in addition to his primary role as test pilot on the program.

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Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin outlined plans for a sweeping reform of the nation’s troubled space industry to President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. The plan involves re-nationalization the industry under a unified command structure and reducing redundant capabilities, acts that could lead to tens of thousands of layoffs.

Speaking to President Vladimir Putin about the plans, Rogozin said a new state corporation will be created to take over manufacturing facilities from the Federal Space Agency, whose prestige has been severely dented in recent years by a string of failed rocket launches.

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During the Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium is being held this week in Huntsville, discussion has  naturally turned to the Space Launch System (SLS), the heavy lift booster being designed in the same city where von Braun and his team created the massive Saturn V.

Two very different views of SLS have emerged during the symposium. Its detractors say it is a massive boondoggle that will be squeezed out of existence by its own massive costs, low flight rate and tight government budgets. Meanwhile, the companies build the SLS say the booster’s immense launch capacity is the key to deep space exploration and could create a demand for additional missions that would increase flights rates and lower unit costs.

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LEXINGTON, Ky.(Space Tango PR) — Space Tango today announced that it is now formally accepting proposals for funding and acceptance to its space business accelerator.

Space Tango is the nation’s first business accelerator specifically for space enterprises and entrepreneurs, with a goal of assisting enterprises in developing innovations, novel applications and diverse markets.

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The SES-8 communications satellite has arrived at Cape Canaveral in Florida from its manufacturer, Orbital Sciences Corporation, in Virginia.  The spacecraft is now scheduled for a launch to geosynchronous orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket sometime in November, SES announced in a press release.

The launch was originally scheduled for later this month, but SpaceX was unable to restart the upper stage of its Falcon 9 when it launched the CASSIOPE spacecraft from Vandenberg Air Force Base last month. An upper stage restart is required to place satellites into geosynchronous orbit.

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NEW YORK, Oct. 8, 2013 (I2BF PR) — I2BF Global Ventures, a leading global technology investment firm, today announced a $20 million Series B investment in Dauria Aerospace, a global satellite services company involved in the manufacturing of micro and nano satellites and the development of machine-to-machine wireless communication and earth observation technologies.

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