NASA PR — WASHINGTON — NASA has selected The Cleantech Open of Redwood, Calif., to manage the agency’s Night Rover Challenge that will culminate in a competition in fall 2012. The event is a new Centennial Challenges prize competition seeking revolutionary energy storage technologies for future space robotic rover missions. NASA is offering a prize purse of $1.5 million to challenge winners.

The Night Rover Challenge is to demonstrate solar energy collection and storage systems suitable for rovers to operate through several cycles of daylight and darkness. During daylight, systems can collect photons or thermal energy from the sun. During darkness, the stored energy would be used to move the rover toward a destination and to continue its exploration work.

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UKSA PR — ESA’s UK astronaut Tim Peake, together with fellow astronauts Thomas Pesquet from France, Randolph Bresnik from NASA, Norishige Kanai from Japan and Sergey Ryzhikov from Russia, has just completed (21 September 2011) a week of living and working in a dark and humid cave – a unique training experience, organised by ESA, to prepare astronauts for space.

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A look inside the Spaceship Company’s new production facility in Mojave.

SpaceX's test site in McGregor, Texas. (Credit: SpaceX)

Via my friend Clark Lindsey over at HobbySpace comes some rather startling news:

SpaceX is developing an 106-foot tall reusable vertical takeoff and vertical landing (VTVL) rocket called Grasshopper based upon the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket.  It has applied for an experimental permit to conduct a series of flights up to 11,500 feet at its engine testing facility in McGregor, Texas.

Here’s the description of the vehicle and its flight profile from a draft environmental impact assessment released by the FAA earlier this week:

The Grasshopper RLV consists of a Falcon 9 Stage 1 tank, a Merlin-1D engine, four steel landing legs, and a steel support structure. Carbon overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs), which are filled with either nitrogen or helium, are attached to the support structure. The Merlin-1D engine has a maximum thrust of 122,000 pounds. The overall height of the Grasshopper RLV is 106 feet, and the tank height is 85 feet.

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NASA PR — WASHINGTON — NASA and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Mass., are seeking teams to compete in a robot technology demonstration competition with a potential $1.5 million prize.

During the Sample Return Robot Challenge, teams will compete to demonstrate a robot that can locate and retrieve geologic samples from a wide and varied terrain without human control. The objective of the competition is to encourage innovations in automatic navigation and robotic manipulator technologies. Innovations stemming from this challenge may improve NASA’s capability to explore a variety of destinations in space, as well as enhance the nation’s robotic technology for use in industries and applications on Earth.

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COMSTAC Working Group Meeting Schedule October 13, 2011 COMSTAC Working Group meetings will take place at the National Housing Center, 1201 15th Street NW, Washington, DC 20005. The COMSTAC meetings will be in Rooms A, B, and C.  Time  Session 8:00 am – 10:00 am Export Controls Working Group Michael Gold, Chair Director, D.C.Operations & Business Growth Bigelow Aerospace 10:00 am-12:00 pm Space Transportation Operations Working Group Debra Facktor Lepore, […]

There is a citizen created petition on the White House website that people can sign that urges the Obama Administration to reallocate defense funds to NASA. It reads: We petition the Obama Administration to: Reallocate Defense funds to NASA. Billions and Billions of dollars are thrown at the Military while NASA’s budget continues to shrink causing them to cut programs which may actually benefit society unlike the wars we are […]

Some highlights from Thursday’s House Science Committee hearing on NASA by the first and last men to walk on the moon. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) defends NASA’s commercial space effort and puts a SEDS letter in support of it into the public record.

CSE PR — During this historic time of change within the space industry, the Coalition for Space Exploration (Coalition) wants to hear from the American public about what they envision for the future of space exploration. The Coalition is launching a contest based on a simple question, “What’s Next?” Participants are encouraged to share their ideas for the future direction of America’s space program in a video. The creator of […]

A time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night. This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, […]