A video from Sierra Nevada Corporation concerning progress on its Dream Chaser shuttle.
AUTHOR
Doug Messier
Mark Bitterman — the Orbital Sciences lobbyist who jumped ship to rival SpaceX only to leave that post less than three months later — has landed safely at United Launch Alliance.
The Denver-based rocket consortium recently named Bitterman as Vice President of Washington D.C. Operations, which is similar to the posts he held at his previous two employers.
WASHINGTON — NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, agency procurement officials, and Space Launch System Program managers will meet with contractors and small-business entrepreneurs Sept. 29 for the Space Launch System Industry Day at the Davidson Center for Space Exploration in Huntsville, Ala. NASA will brief industry representatives on the agency’s acquisition strategy for the Space Launch System program and provide an overview of the program, its organization and specific vehicle […]
The National Space Society calls for the United States to make civil space a high national priority in order to ensure American leadership in scientific discovery, technology development, and the creation of new industries and new applications that will benefit all humanity. Five actions are necessary to achieve this objective:
Formulate a Strategy to Achieve the Ultimate Goal. Congress and the Administration shall institute, by no later than February 28, 2013, a comprehensive civil space strategy to achieve the long-range goal of the human settlement of space, including the use of space to better life on Earth.
Entrepreneur Elon Musk talks about SpaceX, reusable propulsion technologies, and his plans for making humanity a multi-planet species.
This week on The Space Show with David Livingston… Monday, Sept. 26, 2011, 2-3:30 PM PDT: There will be no program today as I am at the AIAA Space 2011 Conf. in Long Beach. Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2011, 7-8:30 PM PDT: There will be no program today as I am at the AIAA Space 2011 Conf. in Long Beach. Friday, Sept. 30, 2011, 9:30-11 AM PDT: We welcome Dr. John […]
NASA PR — WASHINGTON — NASA is accepting applications from teams of U.S. and international undergraduate and graduate students for the third annual Lunabotics Mining Competition. The event will be at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida May 21-26, 2012. Participants in the competition will design and build a remote controlled or autonomous robot, which could be used for future exploration on the moon. During the competition, the teams’ designs, […]
The Bruno rover in the Mars yard. (Credit: Astrium)
UKSA PR — Earlier this month the latest Mars rover prototype developed by UK engineers demonstrated its autonomous navigation capability in a specially constructed mock-up of a Martian landscape – a ‘Mars yard’ – at Astrium’s Stevenage site.
With work on the robot’s Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) system now finalised, this was the first public test of a technology that truly puts this rover – nicknamed Bruno – in a class of its own. This new class of rover will be able to decide on its own course across the Red Planet’s uneven, boulder-strewn and gully-pitted surface, identifying hazards such as rocks, slopes and drops, and plotting out the most appropriate route to a given destination. The human controllers simply provide the coordinates of a target location; the rover works out how best to get there, and trundles off.
Pad OA at Wallops Island. (Credit: Orbital Sciences Corporation)
Virginians are pushing back against efforts by Florida to maintain its monopoly on human spaceflight missions. Jack Kennedy, a prominent backer of commercial space in Virginia, sent the following email to supporters on Saturday:
“Space Florida is getting really aggressive and negative to the possibility of human commercial space launch from Wallops Island, Virginia.
“I strongly urge you to communicate with Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Congressman Frank Wolf and Senator Mark Warner, in particular. ASK that they call upon Boeing to openly pledge to launch the Atlas-V from Virginia under the NASA Commercial Crew program by 2015.
“Your e-Mail, letter, and/or phone call to these three Congressional offices may go a long way to make human space flight from Virginia a reality (especially in the wake of the Florida push back against Virginia’s spaceport).
“Please act this week.”
Sea Launch is back after a two-year hiatus after a Zeni-3SL rocket launched the ATLANTIC BIRD™ 7 broadcast satellite into orbit from the ocean-based Odyssey Launch Platform. One hour and seven minutes after launch from the equatorial location, a Block DM-SL upper stage fired to send the Eutelsat satellite into an equatorial transfer orbit. Officials report the launch went as planned and that the satellite is performing as expected.