A Twitter-based account of the Heinlein Prize Trust’s award ceremony in Washington, D.C. today from my colleague Jeff Foust.
The Xaero vehicle during assembly November 2010. (Credit: Masten Space Systems)
A couple of weeks back, I took an excursion down to Mojave to see what’s happening in that hotbed of rocket innovation. I had the pleasure of meeting with Masten Space Systems’ Nathan O’Konek, who filled me in on the latest developments with the company and gave me a tour of one of its test sites.
NASA PR — WASHINGTON — NASA’s industry partners have met all their initial milestones in developing commercial crew transportation capabilities to reduce the gap in U.S. human spaceflight capability.
NASA posted its first status report on the agency’s Commercial Crew Development 2 (CCDev2) program to its website. The report highlights the progress and accomplishments for the agency’s commercial spaceflight development efforts. Designed to be a bi-monthly report, it is targeted toward the interested layperson and other non-technical stakeholders in order to keep them informed of our achievements. (more…)
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Singularity University’s founders, Ray Kurzweil and Dr. Peter H. Diamandis are pleased to announce Naveen Jain, Founder/CEO of Intelius and Founder/Chairman of Moon Express, to their Board of Trustees. He was selected for his firm belief that there are no global problems that cannot be solved through creative thinking and disruptive technology.
“Naveen’s entrepreneurial abilities combined with his innovative thinking made him the perfect choice for this unique University,” Peter Diamandis stated. “I am particularly proud to have Naveen Jain join our Board of Trustees. He is an extraordinary entrepreneur who is passionate about using exponential technologies to solve the world’s grand challenges.”
The System F6 space architecture replaces the traditional monolithic spacecraft with a wireless "virtual spacecraft" operating as a cluster of modules.
AURORA PR – Cambridge, MA, June 28, 2011 – Aurora Flight Sciences announced its selection by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the System F6 fractionated spacecraft program. Over the next thirty months, Aurora will develop and verify algorithms, software, protocols, interfaces and reference implementations that can be deployed in future spacecraft. Aurora’s team includes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center, and the University of Maryland.
NanoRacks has signed a deal with a Romanian company, Nano Space Labs, to fly scientific and educational experiments from that nation aboard the International Space Station, according to press reports. “This is a unique, incredible opportunity for students, teachers and private research entities in Romania to test and develop projects in an exclusive environment, available until now only very little research,” said Dumitru Prunariu, who helped to set up Nano […]
ASTRIUM/NANORACKS PR — Friedrichshafen, Germany, 27.6.2011 – Astrium and Nanoracks plan to outfit a platform for microgravity investigations with a centrifuge for gravitational research. The proposed centrifuge system, based on a standard experiment container system, was developed by Astrium for ESA more than 25 years ago and has been used for more than 120 experiments for various topics.
The joint facility shall allow a continuation of this research and for the first time allow commercial users access to an in orbit centrifuge for 1-g reference and threshold studies. Experiments from various research topics, mainly in biology and life science can hereby make use of a large inventory of pre-flown designs from previous space missions to shorten the time from a new idea to the execution in orbit to less than 1 year.
DULLES, Va., June 27, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — U.S. Space LLC, a U.S.-owned provider of dedicated, commercial space solutions to serve the nation’s interests, today announced that it has named Randy Brinkley as a member of its Board of Directors.
Mr. Brinkley was President of Boeing Satellite Systems Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial communication satellites, from 2001 to 2003, and before that was Senior Vice President of Programs for Hughes Space and Communications Company. Mr. Brinkley was also Chief Executive Officer of Rocketplane Kistler Inc., a commercial space transportation company from 2004 to 2007.
BusinessDay.co.nz has a Q&A with Richard Branson in which the British billionaire promotes the “greener” nature of the WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo combo:
We should no longer rely on old, expensive, “dirty” technology to transport satellites into space. The industry must be modernised and made more sustainable, both for financial reasons and for the health of the planet. In response to this challenge, we have been developing a greener solution in Mojave, California — one that will have less impact on the environment and will be more cost effective. Our two-step launch process, which does not employ rockets until the aircraft reaches the stratosphere, uses less energy than other launch systems that rely on rockets to lift off from the ground.
Team FREDNET founder Fred Bourgeios talks about how his group is open sourcing its way to the moon.
The European Commission expect to publish the forthcoming Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) Space Call on, or before, 20 July 2011 with an indicative budget of 84M€, and an anticipated deadline for proposals of 23 November 2011.
Indications are that the overall FP7 Space 2012 Work programme will have a budget in the region of 260M€, the main elements of which are expected to be:
- 4M€ for the development of GMES applications
- 28M€ for strengthening Space Foundations
- 12M€ for cross-cutting activities
- 180M€ for other activities not part of the Call for proposals, which include funds to be transferred to the European Space Agency (ESA) for the development and implementation of the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Safety) space component and purchase of space data.