Pad OA at Wallops Island. (Credit: Orbital Sciences Corporation)

NASA PAO — NASA will unveil its new rocket integration facility at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 10 a.m. EDT on March 22.

The Horizontal Integration Facility will support medium-class mission capabilities. The first customer to use the facility will be Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., with its Taurus II launch vehicle.
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SPACE FLORIDA PR – KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA – Site work has begun on Exploration Park, the high-tech research and office park being developed by The Pizzuti Companies in partnership with Space Florida.

Tom Harmer, senior vice president for The Pizzuti Companies, said the initial work includes clearing the site, transporting fill dirt and initial site grading. Work on this phase of the project is expected to take approximately eight weeks to complete, Harmer said.

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Richard Branson

Forbes has put out its list of the world’s 1,210 billionaires, a half dozen of whom have ties to the New Space community.

All six billionaires are males from North America and Britain with a combined net worth of $77.4 billion. The most prominent of them — Richard Branson — has the second lowest net worth of the group. His company, Virgin Galactic, is undertaking the most expensive New Space project to date at a cost of more than $400 million.

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A Boeing CST-100 crew module docks at a Bigelow Aerospace space station. (Credit: Boeing)

Upon arriving in Florida for the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference, I was pleased to see the front page of the Orlando Sentinel’s Sunday edition was dominated by a large front-page story about Robert Bigelow and his plans for private commercial space stations. There is not much new in the article, but it does contain this astute observation from Bigelow Aerospace’s Mike Gold:

He said the current crop of new space entrepreneurs — such as Bigelow and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — bring to the table not only personal wealth but also a business sense developed in other industries, including what Gold called “good subcontractor management.” (SpaceX, for example, designed, built and launched its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule for less than $1 billion, almost a rounding error in the typical NASA contract.)

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Asteroid Ida

Republicans Vote To Repeal Obama-Backed Bill That Would Destroy Asteroid Headed For Earth
The Onion

In a strong rebuke of President Obama and his domestic agenda, all 242 House Republicans voted Wednesday to repeal the Asteroid Destruction and American Preservation Act, which was signed into law last year to destroy the immense asteroid currently hurtling toward Earth.

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Tax credits urged for defense, aerospace
The Arizona Republic

Tax cuts recently enacted by the state Legislature are a good start, but they do little to immediately help aerospace and defense firms that want to move or expand in Arizona, a local economic-development official says.

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UTC unit sees crisis in U.S. space industrial base
Reuters

The U.S. space industrial base is facing a crisis unless NASA soon unveils a plan for developing new spacecraft after its final space shuttle mission in June, a top industry executive said on Monday.

Jim Maser, president of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, said his company already had plans to close half its office and factory space over the next three years, and might have to lay off hundreds of employees unless NASA mapped out a shuttle successor plan within the next four to eight months.

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President of Russia PAO — Dmitry Medvedev signed the Federal Law On Ratification of the Agreement between the Government of the Russian Federation and Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on the Protection of Technology in Connection with Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses and Research of Outer Space and in Building and Operating Rockets and Rocket and Space Technology. The purpose of the agreement is to ensure the conditions required for […]

Odyssey Moon PR – Douglas, Isle of Man – Odyssey Moon Limited announced today that seasoned aerospace and telecommunications executive, Rick Sanford, has joined the company as Chief Executive Officer.

Mr. Sanford is the founder of SpaceGroupAmalgam LLC, a leader in strategic and technical consulting services. Odyssey Moon Team is one of 29 teams competing in the Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP) – a $30 million competition that challenges space professionals and engineers from across the globe to build and launch to the Moon a privately funded spacecraft.

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Geroge Whitesides addresses the crowd during the dedication of Spaceport America's runway.

The Las Cruces Sun-News reports on a meeting that Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides had with the New Mexico Spaceport Authority:

George Whitesides addressed the new board of directors of Spaceport America for the first time since an abrupt change in spaceport leadership that was carried out by Gov. Susana Martinez. It was also the first session attended by Spaceport Authority Executive Director Christine Anderson, hired last week by the board.

“The primary message we wanted to share, and the reason I’m here is to express a desire to continue to be a strong partner with the spaceport for the taxpayers of New Mexico,” Whitesides said. “We are all making a very big investment together.”

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NASA IPP Solicitation — Through this Opportunity Notice (NOTICE),  to support prize competitions conducted under Centennial Challenges program (https://www.nasa.gov/challenges ) of NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. The Challenges are: Strong Tether Challenge Power Beaming Challenge Green Flight Challenge Sample Return Robot Challenge Night Rover Challenge Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge. Read the full solicitation.