Video Caption: This animation depicts the proposed test flight of the Orion spacecraft in 2014. During the test, which is called Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), Orion will launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., perform two orbits, reaching an altitude higher than any achieved by a spacecraft intended for human use since 1973, and then will re-enter and land in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of the United States.
AUTHOR
Doug Messier
The debt crisis roiling Europe has began to affect space spending across the continent. ESA has announced plans to cut internal operating costs by 25 percent. Meanwhile, the European Commission is trying to figure out how to pay for a high-profile environmental monitoring program.
SPACEX PR — Hawthorne, CA — Today Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) welcomed the release of the detailed criteria the U.S. Air Force will use to certify new companies to provide launches for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. “We very much appreciate the steps the Air Force is taking to ensure fair and open competition,” said Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX. “This is a complex process and the Air […]
NASA PR — NASA conducted a successful 500-second test firing of the J-2X rocket engine on Wednesday, Nov. 9, marking another important step in development of an upper stage for the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS).
SLS will carry the Orion spacecraft, its crew, cargo, equipment and science experiments to destinations in deep space. SLS will be safe, affordable and sustainable to continue America’s journey of discovery from the unique vantage point of space.
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This a conceptual vision of Shackleton Energy Company’s goal to mine the Moon for water and open the world’s first fuel depots in space selling water-derived propellants commercially at prices significantly below anything launched from Earth. Successful operations will open the NewSpace frontier to all mankind and create untold new business opportunities in science, security and commerce.
The reports are conflicting, but the overall tone is grim. With time running out to save the Phobos-Grunt mission, it appears controllers cannot even communicate with the Mars probe, which is stuck in Earth orbit after an engine failure. The latest from Anatoly Zak at RussianSpaceWeb.com: At 06:20 Moscow Time, Vesti TV channel reported that ground controllers successfully downlinked information from Phobos-Grunt and started its analysis to develop correction actions. […]
A Russian poster for Phobos-Grunt. (Credit: Roscosmos)
Russian controllers are scrambling to upload new instructions to the Phobos-Grunt probe, an ambitious mission to Mars that is stuck in Earth orbit due to the failure of the spacecraft’s propulsion system. The rocket was launched early Wednesday morning Moscow Time (Tuesday afternoon in the United States).
Humans to Return to the Moon by 2019
Shackleton Energy Company (SEC) Initiates Funding Process
for Lunar Ice Mining to Establish the World’s First Industrial Lunar Base
and Propellant Depots in Space
AUSTIN, Texas — November 9, 2011 — The process of establishing the world’s first operational lunar base and propellant depot business in space is underway as SEC launches its initial fundraising campaign. This comes in the footsteps of recent amazing new discoveries of huge deposits of propellant-feedstock ice on the Moon by NASA and other international space programs.
Joining forces with RocketHub, one of the largest crowd funding platforms, SEC [www.shackletonenergy.com ] seeks to raise the initial seed capital necessary to complete its top level planning in order to then secure the first major round of investment capital necessary to complete preliminary designs of all system elements.
“Now that the business case analysis is complete, we are ready to move out with follow-on implementation steps. This is a huge program very complementary to, but significantly different, than what NASA is evaluating for terrestrial-fueled depots in space,” said Dale Tietz, SEC’s CEO.
DARPA is looking to radically reduce the cost of small satellite delivery through the development of airborne launch systems. The agency issued the follow pre-solicitation last week.
Airborne Launch Assist Space Access (ALASA)
Solicitation Number: DARPA-BAA-12-07
Office: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Synopsis:
The goal of ALASA is to develop a significantly less expensive approach for launching small satellites routinely, with a goal of at least threefold reduction in costs compared to current military and US commercial launch costs. ALASA seeks to develop and employ radical advances in launch systems, to include the development of a complete launch vehicle requiring no recurring maintenance or support, and no specific integration to prepare for launch. The ALASA demonstration system will draw upon emerging technologies to provide increased specific impulse propellants, stable propellant formulations, hybrid propellant systems, potential “infrastructure-free” cryogen production, new motor case materials, new flight controls and mission planning techniques, new nozzle designs, improved thrust vectoring methods, and new throttling approaches.
Russians controllers are working on backup procedures after the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft failed to make two schedule engine burns required to get it out of Earth orbit and on a path to Mars. RIA Novosti quotes Roscosmos Head Vladimir Popovkin (translated from Russia via Google Translate): “We’ve had a bad night, we could not detect long spacecraft, now found his position. It was found that the propulsion system failed. There was […]