Lee Archambault
HOUSTON (NASA PR) – NASA astronaut Lee Archambault is leaving the agency, ending a 15-year career that included more than 27 days in space, including a flight as commander of space shuttle Discovery.
Archambault will join Sierra Nevada Corp. as a systems engineer and test pilot. He will work on the company’s Dream Chaser Space System, being developed in conjunction with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
RocketMotorTwo Hot-Fire Test Summaries Via Scaled Composites Fire: 25 Date: 28 Feb 13 Objectives: Twenty-fifth full scale flight design RM2 hot-fire. Continued evaluation of all systems and components: – Pressurization – Valve/Injector – Fuel formulation and geometry – Nozzle – Structure – Performance Results: All objectives completed.
Payerne, 13 March 2013 (S3 PR). Swiss Space Systems – S3, a new Swiss aerospace company, was officially inaugurated in Payerne today in the presence of representatives of the national authorities and of prestigious Swiss and international partners such as the ESA, Dassault Aviation, the Von Karman Institute, Sonaca, Meggitt and Stanford University.
S3 aims to develop, build, certify and operate suborbital space shuttles dedicated to launching small satellites, enabling space access to be made more democratic thanks to an original system with launching costs up to four times less than at present. The first test launches will be carried out by the end of 2017.
SpaceShipTwo in flight on Dec. 19, 2012. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)
Editor’s Note: This is a press release from last year announcing a partnership providing private jet services for Virgin Galactic’s customers. I missed it at the time.
San Francisco and Los Angeles – May 17, 2012 (XOJET PR) – XOJET, Inc., a leader in private aviation, today announced that it had partnered with Virgin Galactic, the world’s first commercial spaceline to provide private aviation services to Virgin Galactic’s future astronauts.
XOJET has established an exclusive private air Concierge Access™ service to enable Virgin Galactic future astronauts to travel easily for business and pleasure and to and from Virgin Galactic Events. The XOJET Concierge Access™ service will deliver global private aviation services and give future astronauts exclusive access to XOJET programs and advantageous pricing.
NEW ORLEANS, March 12, 2013 (NASA PR) –– NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, the agency’s only large-scale advanced manufacturing facility, soon will be building liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanks with commercial applications on Earth.
In a ceremony Tuesday that included Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, Md., announced it is drawing on the unique experience and equipment at Michoud to manufacture the LNG tanks. Michoud also is crafting components for a new generation of NASA spacecraft that will take explorers deeper into space than they have traveled before.
An update on the upcoming Next Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference: This year’s NSRC-2013 will be held at the beautiful Interlocken Resort in Broomfield, Colorado June 3-5. This meeting will educate researchers and professionals about the capabilities of the new generation of commercially-available reusable suborbital vehicles, funding and flight opportunities for flying experiments on these vehicles, and the kinds of experiments various research communities – including microgravity physics, astrophysics and planetary […]
George Whitesides
Virgin Galactic is looking at powered flights into space by the end of this year with commercial ones with paying passengers in 2014, according to Virgin Galactic CEO and President George Whitesides.
The Virgin Galactic chief made the comments in a Q&A interview that was put out at the end of last month by XOJET, a private jet company that has established an exclusive private air Concierge Access service to serve Virgin Galactic’s exclusive group of nearly 600 future astronauts.
Via Lloyd’s
Reprinted by Permission
Space is the final frontier for hundreds of high net worth individuals seeking the ultimate tourist thrill. However, as industry delegates to a symposium held at Lloyd’s heard, some risk issues remain unresolved.
Suborbital flight – flying higher than 100km above sea level – will soon be a reality for anyone willing and able to pay thousands of pounds for a ticket. There are plenty of people already queuing for the privilege of being among the first 1,000 humans to experience space travel.
A Biological Research in Canisters experiment package with five Petri dish fixation units (PDFU) installed. The PDFUs each contain a Petri dish with the biological sample to be flown in space. (Credit: NASA)
By Jessica Eagan
International Space Station Program Science Office
A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft has delivered a “goody bag” to the crew aboard the International Space Station. But it’s not filled with treats. This goody bag — called the Wet Lab Kit — is loaded with supplies to make it easier for crews to collect and process various types of samples in orbit, increasing scientific research and analysis more than ever before.
Launched on the second Commercial Resupply Mission March 1, this kit is part of the Wetlab 1 project. Wetlab 1 consists of the Wet Lab Kit, developed by NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and a Plate Reader, developed by NanoRacks of Houston. Both items are funded by the International Space Station National Laboratory Office.
Rep. Dan Rohrabacher
By Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
Vice Chairman,
House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
Although I strongly agree with much of the Committee’s Views and Estimates, there is one specific area on which I wish to state a different view, as I have done for the past few years.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
We have not yet received a budget request from the President for Fiscal Year 2014, and the previous request did not contain any real budget planning for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
