Artist's conception of Orbital Sciences Corporation's Cygnus freighter approaching the International Space Station.

NEPTEC PR – OTTAWA, ON – Neptec Design Group, a leader in space, defence and industrial systems and applications, today announced it will provide its TriDAR rendezvous and docking sensors to Orbital Space Science Corp.’s Cygnus Spacecraft capsule, which will be used on the Cargo Resupply Services Program to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). Fresh off three successful test missions with the Space Shuttle, including the historic final flight STS-135, this partnership will see Neptec supply Orbital with 13 TriDAR systems to support Orbital’s initial round of resupply flights for the ISS.

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An RT report on the Chinese space program.

This week in The Space Review… Wheels stop When the shuttle Atlantis landed Thursday morning, it was more than just the end of the Space Shuttle program. Jeff Foust discusses how it represents an end of a much longer era in human spaceflight, as the momentum built up from the original race to the Moon is finally exhausted. The best of spacecraft, the worst of spacecraft The Space Shuttle’s legacy […]

The Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace 2011 Conference will run from Thursday to Saturday at the NASA Ames Conference Center. I’ll be covering it from start to finish, so look for my updates here at PA and via Twitter at @spacecom. The hashtag for the event is #NewSpace2011. My friends Ben and Cariann will be live streaming all the events at www.Spacevidcast.com. The coverage details are: Dates: Thursday, July 28 to […]

SWRI — PR Boulder, Colo. — July 25, 2011 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) announced in February that it had contracted multiple suborbital flights for its own astronaut payload specialists as part of a larger effort to promote the development of commercial human spaceflight. Preparations for these flights are proceeding and will be flown on a combination SwRI manifest of XCOR Lynx I and Virgin Galactic SpaceShip2 vehicles. The Lynx I missions will reach altitudes of about 200,000 feet; the SpaceShip 2 missions will reach altitudes near 350,000 feet.

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NASTAR PR — SOUTHAMPTON, Pa., July 25,2011 — The NASTAR® Center, the premier commercial aerospace training and research center in the world, completed the first dedicated NASTAR Suborbital Scientist Training Program for the Atsa Suborbital Observatory project, with eight team members from the Planetary Science Institute (PSI), The Citadel, and other South Carolina colleges.

The Atsa project will use XCOR’s Lynx reusable suborbital spacecraft equipped with a specially designed telescope to provide low-cost space-based observations above the contaminating atmosphere of Earth, while avoiding some operational constraints of satellite telescope systems.

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JAXA PR — The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has been providing basic training to be certified as an astronaut for the International Space Station (ISS) to astronaut candidates Kimiya Yui, and Takuya Ohnishi since April 2009, and also to astronaut candidate Norishige Kanai since September 2009. The three candidates have completed all their basic training requirements, thus they were certified as ISS astronauts on July 25, 2011.

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During the NASA Lunar Science Forum last week, Jim Green was asked if there was any chance of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity being slipped another two years. NASA’s director of Planetary Science was emphatic that the probe, originally set to launch in 2009, would make its planned launch window set for Nov. 25 to Dec. 18. The car-sized rover was recently plugged into its power supply at its launch site in Florida and everything worked fine, he said.

Green and other NASA officials also announced last week that Curiosity would explore a layered mountain inside the planet’s Gale crater after it lands next August. The target crater spans 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter and holds a mountain rising higher from the crater floor than Mount Rainier rises above Seattle. Gale is about the combined area of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Layering in the mound suggests it is the surviving remnant of an extensive sequence of deposits. The crater is named for Australian astronomer Walter F. Gale.

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The FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee has two public teleconferences next month to discuss pending issues before the board.  The first on Aug. 4 is the most interesting, with topics including reviews of a report on re-entry debris, the European Code of Conduct for Space, and the Long-Term Sustainability of Space Effort being led by the United Nations.

Details about the teleconferences and how to participate follow after the break.

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Moonrush: Extended Trailer from deepspeed media on Vimeo. An extended cut of the trailer for Moonrush, an in-production documentary about the first privately funded mission to the moon by Astrobotic Technology. The company is aiming to win the $25 million Google Lunar X Prize.