NanoRacks and the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) of Saudi Arabia have announced a multi-year program that provides Saudi students with an attractive pathway to implement projects using NanoRacks’ facilities on the U.S. National Lab on the International Space Station.
AUTHOR
Doug Messier
PLAYA VISTA, CA / NEW YORK CITY (October 06, 2011) — The X PRIZE Foundation, the leading nonprofit organization solving the world’s Grand Challenges by creating and managing large-scale, global incentivized competitions, today announced Shell as the exclusive presenting sponsor of the X PRIZE Exploration Prize Group, which aims to foster innovation through exploration to improve life on Earth. During the three-year, nine million dollar sponsorship, the X PRIZE Foundation will address these objectives through its incentive prize model to stimulate innovation, competition and collaboration at the frontiers of space, our earth and its oceans.
“Shell has long been on the cutting edge of innovation, and we are proud to bring them into the X PRIZE family, supporting a prize group that advances innovation, exploration and tomorrow’s discoveries,” said Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation. “We are closely aligned in our goals to motivate and inspire brilliant innovators from all disciplines to leverage their intellectual capital to explore new frontiers that could result in significant global achievements.”
SEATTLE, WA–(LaserMotive PR – Oct 6, 2011) – LaserMotive, an independent R&D company specializing in laser power beaming and winner of the 2009 NASA sponsored Power Beaming Competition, today announced it is one of the companies named to work on the new NASA “Ride the Light” project, one of the space organization’s new space technology projects in the Game Changing Technology division to pursue revolutionary technology required for future missions.
“The technologies pursued in this effort have the potential to revolutionize both space launch and on orbit operations, we are happy to be working with LaserMotive and all of our partners to make power beaming a reality,” said Charles Taylor of NASA.
A Google Lunar X prize highlights reel showing progress by 26 teams from around the world that are building robots, rockets, and lunar landing vehicles.
The latest from Virgin Galactic: Win a trip to join Richard Branson at a special Virgin Galactic event in New Mexico! This is your chance to join Richard Branson at the Virgin Galactic Keys to a New Dawn event and visit Spaceport America. To enter the competition, simply tweet @richardbranson your answer to this question: Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo is how many times faster than the fastest animal on earth, the […]
NanoRacks PR — NanoRacks, an industry leader in low-earth orbit space services, announces today the opening of its “Customer Operations Center” for their commercial customers’ payloads utilizing NASA’s U.S. National Lab on the International Space Station.
“This move consolidates services for our customers that previously have been taking place with external partners,” explains Center manager Rob Alexander. “Our customers will benefit from having NanoRacks control every aspect of their payload process, from integration, testing, manifesting, safety and mission control operations during our space station missions.”
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL (USA PR) – NASA has awarded United Space Alliance (USA) a one-year extension to the Space Program Operations Contract (SPOC) to continue providing ground operations support at Kennedy Space Center through Sept. 30, 2012. The total value of the contract is $49.4 million.
“Maintaining and enhancing the launch capabilities at the Kennedy Space Center are critical to helping NASA prepare for the next phase of human spaceflight,” said Mark Nappi, USA’s Vice President of Aerospace Services. “This contract takes advantage of a workforce that has decades of experience in space operations – experience that USA is working to apply to multiple government and commercial customers.”
NASA PR — CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA announced the modification of its NASA Launch Services (NLS) II contract with United Launch Services of Littleton, Colo., to add the Delta II rocket launch service in accordance with the contract’s on-ramp provision. The modification will enable United Launch Services to offer as many as five Delta II rockets.
A note from Cindy Conrad over at the Southwest Research Institute: Greetings friends of the suborbital frontier! Both registration and abstract submission for the 2012 Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC-2012) are now OPEN! Hosted by the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, NASA and the Southwest Research Institute, NSRC is a meeting for researchers and educators wanting to participate in, learn about, and contribute to the new era of commercial, reusable suborbital spaceflight; […]
ESA PR — The first elements of Europe’s new Vega small launcher left Italy last Thursday to begin their long journey to Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, marking the final step towards its inaugural flight in January. After several intense weeks of checking the hardware and equipment – and the shipping paperwork – Vega’s Zefiro-23 and Zefiro-9 motors and the AVUM fourth stage were carefully packed and left Avio’s facility […]