AUSTIN, TX, APR 4, 2012 (TXA PR) – The Texas Space Alliance announced Air Force Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Robert Lancaster is assuming the role of President of the organization today. The group worked last year with commercial spaceflight operators, such as Blue Origin, to pass the first space liability protection law in Texas history, and is preparing for a new set of initiatives it will be introducing in the next legislative session.
AUTHOR
Doug Messier
HOUSTON, April 3, 2012 (Boeing PR) — Boeing successfully completed a parachute drop test of the company’s Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 spacecraft today at the Delamar Dry Lake Bed near Alamo, Nev. CST-100 is part of the Boeing Commercial Crew Transportation System (CCTS), which will provide the United States with the capability to transport people and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS), the Bigelow Aerospace Complex and other destinations in low Earth orbit.
An Erickson Sky Crane helicopter lifted the CST-100 test article to about 11,000 feet and released it. Three main parachutes deployed to slow the capsule’s descent before six airbags inflated, providing a smooth ground landing. The event was the first drop test of the fully combined vehicle landing system, including all elements.
Astrobotic's Polaris lunar rover. (Credit: Astrobotic Technology)
PITTSBURGH, PA – Astrobotic PR – April 3, 2012 – Astrobotic Technology unveiled its new Polaris lunar rover design, which will prospect for potentially rich deposits of water ice, methane and other resources at the moon’s north pole in three years.
A powerful Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX will launch Polaris from Cape Canaveral in late October 2015. Four days later Polaris will land during north pole summer, when patches of ground that are in cold shadow most of the year get brief illumination. This is where ice will be found closest to the surface, and when a solar-powered robot will get the sunlight needed to sustain exploration. Polaris will search for ice for the next 12 days until sundown in early November.
This is a video of JPL’s Robert Staehle presentation on interplanetary CubeSats during the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium last week. Check out my story on it here.
Another day, another state wanting a spaceport: Alabama lawmakers say they hope their state can be one of the first in the Southeast to complete a commercial spaceport to ferry travelers, tourists and cargo into space. Legislators from Alabama’s state Senate and House of Representatives met in the joint committee room nicknamed “Star Wars” on Monday to announce that they would introduce joint resolutions to set up a panel to […]
ARCA PR — The Technical Creation Center for Youth ( inventeaza.ro) – robotics and software center is the new partner of ARCA for the lunar probe project entered in the astronautics competition Google Lunar X Prize. The partnership means working together to develop the European Lunar Explorer probe (ELE), the European Lunar Lander lunar module and the carrier rocket.
The Google Lunar X Prize competition opens a new era of lunar exploration by offering a prize of $ 30 million to the private teams that will manage to land safely on the lunar surface and to place there a robot able to travel 500 m and to transmit video HD images and data to Earth.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden
By Charles Bolden
NASA Administrator
On Sunday, 60 Minutes aired a story that captured some of what the space shuttle era meant to Florida’s Space Coast. Unfortunately, the piece also missed an awful lot of important context about the end of that era and where we’re headed from here.
As a former shuttle astronaut and the Administrator of NASA, nobody has higher regard for the incredible men and women who worked on the Space Shuttle Program. And I certainly understand that for some of those men and women, this transitional period will not be easy.
WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) will invite 50 of their social media followers to a two-day NASA Social April 29-30 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The event is expected to culminate in the launch of SpaceX’s second Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration flight. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is targeted to lift off at 12:22 p.m. EDT on April 30, in an attempt to become the first commercial company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station.
NASA PR — America’s next heavy-lift launch vehicle — the Space Launch System — is one step closer to its first launch in 2017, following the successful completion of the first phase of a combined set of milestone reviews.
The SLS Program has completed step one in a combined System Requirements Review and System Definition Review — both extensive NASA-led reviews that set requirements to further narrow the scope of the system design and evaluate the vehicle concept based on top-level program requirements.
Video Caption: Skywalker Sound, the George Lucas audio department responsible for so much science fiction, turns its golden-eared genius to mixing and enhancing the real sound of a Solid Rocket Booster from lift-off to splashdown. Credit: NASA Glenn Research Center / Skywalker Sound Editor’s Note: This video was shown by Rex Ridenoure of Ecliptic Enterprises during a talk he gave at the LA Space Salon last week. Ecliptic supplied the […]