The FAA’s 2011 U.S. Commercial Space Transportation Developments & Concepts report has a brief update on NASA’s Orion program that provides some insights on schedule and costs: In November 2010, Lockheed Martin began negotiations with ULA to purchase a Delta IV Heavy vehicle to launch a test version of Lockheed Martin’s Orion capsule in 2013. This mission will not launch with a crew. For the Delta IV Heavy to carry […]
The table above is adapted from data in the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation: 2010 Year In Review report. Shown are data on commercial rockets for which there is information on launch costs. I also added in mission types (LEO, GEO and SSO) for those launches with price information. Note that for the Rockot, Soyuz 2 and Proton M, there were some flights for which there is no price information. These […]
YN — Yuri’s Night is pleased to announce that our two recently-announced contests, the “Call to Humanity†Space Exploration Advertisement Competition and Yuri’s Night International Space Sweepstakes, are now officially open and accepting entries. $18,000 in space-themed prizes are being offered through these two contests, both of which are completely free to enter.
Roscosmos has rescheduled the launch of the Gagarin Jubilee launch to April 5 after completing the replacement of a faulty Kvant-V device aboard the Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft. The launch, had been scheduled for March 30, is set for 2:18 a.m. MSK. According to Roscosmos: The working group established by Roscosmos following the decision by the previous Board meeting found out about the cause of the glitch in Kvant-V device of […]
ILS PR — International Launch Services (ILS) and SES today announced the launch of SES-6 in 2013 on ILS Proton. SES-6 is the sixth mission under the SES Multi Launch Agreement (MLA) signed in June 2007 between ILS and SES Satellite Leasing Limited, SES’s satellite procurement and leasing company in the Isle of Man.Â
SES-6, weighing about 6 metric tons at launch, is being built on Astrium’s Eurostar 3000 platform and is expected to carry 43 C-band and 48 Ku-band transponders to serve SES’s existing cable-television customers and provide capacity for growth. SES-6 will replace NSS-806 at the orbital location of 319.5? East, and will provide enhanced coverage in North, Central and South America and will further support applications like HD, DTH, enterprise networks and digital inclusion projects in the Latin America region serving over 18 million households.
In addition to SES-6 in 2013, there are three other SES missions on ILS Proton scheduled in 2011 and 2012 under the MLA. ILS Proton will also launch SES’s QuetzSat-1 this summer.
OK, they’re not really ants (although they look a lot like them from a distance.) These are employees at the Kennedy Space Center, who assembled to honor the space shuttle program’s 30th anniversary.
JHU-APL PR — At 9:10 p.m. EDT, engineers in the MESSENGER Mission Operations Center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., received the anticipated radiometric signals confirming nominal burn shutdown and successful insertion of the MESSENGER probe into orbit around the planet Mercury.
The spacecraft rotated back to the Earth by 9:45 p.m. EDT, and started transmitting data. Upon review of these data, the engineering and operations teams confirmed that the burn executed nominally with all subsystems reporting a clean burn and no logged errors.
(more…)
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Federal Aviation Administration
Commercial Space Transportation Grants Program
ACTION: Notice of request for grant proposals for the Commercial Space Transportation Grant Program.
SUMMARY: This notice solicits Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 grant proposals to continue the development of a Commercial Space Transportation infrastructure system, which supports the National Space Policy and Congressional intent. Begun in 2010, the program supports the Commercial Space Transportation industry by identification, prioritization, and funding for Commercial Space Transportation infrastructure projects.
- X-51 Waverider
By Derek Kaufman
USAF 88th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
3/16/2011 - WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFNS) – Air Force engineers currently plan to fly the second X-51A Waverider hypersonic flight test demonstrator as early as March 22, program officials said March 15.
“We are proud of the first flight results, and at the same time we understand the inherent risk in a high-technology demonstrator like the X-51A,” said Curtis Berger, the director of the hypersonics programs at Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, the company that built the X-51A’s fuel-cooled supersonic combustion ramjet, or scramjet engine. “We can’t wait to get this second vehicle in the air and show what we can do.”
DLR PR — On 17 March 2011, Thomas Reiter, Executive Board Member responsible for Space Research and Technology at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), was appointed as the Director of Human Spaceflight at the European Space Agency (ESA) for the next four years.
“Thomas Reiter has done an excellent job both as an astronaut and as a member of the DLR Executive Board, and has gained extensive experience for his new role,” said Johann-Dietrich Wörner, Chairman of the Executive Board. “As Director of Human Spaceflight, he will be responsible for a subject area in which Germany is a leader in Europe: the human exploration of space.” Wörner added, “Although the presence of German expertise at ESA is important, we are losing a good friend and colleague on the DLR Executive Board”.
Omega Envoy PR — Omega Envoy, the “Florida Team†competing in the Google Lunar X PRIZE, and the only student formed and led team is proud to announce a sponsorship by The Imaging Source. The Imaging Source will provide Omega Envoy with cameras and lenses for its dodecahedral camera navigation system. Earthrise Space Inc (Omega Envoy’s parent organization) will space qualify these systems and test them during this summer’s Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) located in Devon Island in Canada.