NASA PR — NASA’s Glory spacecraft is scheduled for launch on Friday, March 4. Technical issues with ground support equipment for the Taurus XL launch vehicle led to the scrub of the original Feb. 23 launch attempt. Those issues have been resolved.

The liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is targeted for 5:09:43 a.m. EST, in the middle of a 48-second launch window. Spacecraft separation occurs 13 minutes after launch. Coverage of the countdown on the Glory launch blog and on NASA TV will begin on launch day at 3:30 a.m. EST.

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CHALLENGER CENTER PR — Today the Challenger Center for Space Science Education (Challenger Center) joins the Coalition for Space Exploration (Coalition) as a Partner level member to educate and inspire a new generation of aerospace workers and space explorers. The announcement was made at the Next Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in Orlando.

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In an editorial, Florida Today is effusive about the potential of the suborbital spaceflight: Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates. Names ring a bell? They were the wizards of the late 1970s who turned primitive personal computers into a global industry that revolutionized communication and provided the framework for the Internet Age. Today, another band of visionaries is striving to bust open another market that holds promise for the post-shuttle […]

The space community is mourning the loss of former NASA astronaut John “Mike” Lounge, a three-time space shuttle veteran who died Tuesday from complications from liver cancer. He was 64.

An astrophysicist and decorated Naval aviator, Lounge made his first shuttle flight aboard Discovery in 1985. He also flew on Discovery’s “return to flight” mission in 1988, the first U.S. human expedition after the loss of Challenger. Lounge made his final flight in 1990 aboard Columbia.

He resigned from NASA in 1991 and went to work for Boeing. In recent years, he was a supporter of the commercial spaceflight industry, volunteering his time to support the effort.

“Mike was a tremendous supporter of the commercial spaceflight industry. The last year and a half he put in countless volunteer hours to support and advocate for all that we are trying to achieve. He was a good friend with a big heart, and he will be missed tremendously. Our thoughts are with his family during this difficult time,” said Brett Alexander of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.

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The letters are beginning to fly again, which must mean that Congress is once again taking up the budget it failed to pass last year. In an open letter released today, more than 50 space experts and leaders from across the country urged members of Congress to fully fund NASA’s commercial crew program.

By creating competition, and using fixed price contracts, NASA’s commercial crew program offers a much less expensive way of transporting NASA astronauts to the Station than any other domestic means. Funding NASA’s Commercial Crew program would lower the cost of access to low Earth orbit, thus enabling more of NASA’s budget to be applied to its focus on exploration beyond low Earth orbit, and better enabling the kind of program laid out in NASA’s authorization bill.

NASA’s competitive commercial crew program is the best way to restore US human launch capability after the Space Shuttle retires later this year, to ensure NASA’s long-term role in the International Space Station, and to open up budget resources to send crew beyond Earth orbit.

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In the past year, ISRO has managed to destroy two GSLV launchers, sent a pair of valuable satellites into the Bay of Bengal, set back its 17-year cryogenic upper stage program, and embroil the government in an uproar over an S-band deal with a private media company. So, what does one do with agency with performance like this? Well, give it a massive budget boost, apparently. The Department of Space, […]

The morning sessions have just concluded here at the Next-generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in Orlando. Sessions will pick up again starting at 1 pm EST with the highlight of the day, a keynote address by NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun. I’ll be covering it live on Twitter @spacecom.

Roscosmos is weathering severe criticism for losing four satellites over the last two months and delays in producing new spacecraft, AFP reports:

Russian space agency Roskosmos has committed “childish” errors and failed to build enough spacecraft, the government said Monday in an unprecedented rebuke to the Russian equivalent of NASA.

Russia’s powerful Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov issued the dressing down at a meeting with Roskosmos’s leadership after two satellite launches ended in partial or complete failure in the last three months….

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USAF PR — The 45th Space Wing is set to launch an Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle from Space Launch Complex 41 on Friday, March 4. The rocket will carry an Air Force X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV). The X-37B will provide a flexible space test platform to conduct various experiments and allow satellite sensors, subsystems, components and associated technology to be efficiently transported to and from the space […]

Florida Today reports that XCOR is considering flying out of Cape Canaveral and establishing a production facility nearby:

With the help of state incentives, Mojave, Calif.-based XCOR Aerospace, one of the leading developers of suborbital spacecraft, is considering launching and landing one of its two-seater Lynx rocket planes from KSC’s shuttle landing strip and establishing production in Brevard County.

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Dr. Alan Stern

Some notes from today’s Next-generation Suborbital Researchers Conference concerning upcoming flights and vehicle development. In this report: Southwest Research Institute, XCOR, Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems, Blue Origin and Teachers in Space.

Southwest Research Institute – Alan Stern

• Eight flights on XCOR and Virgin Galactic vehicles, with options for up to 17 missions
• SwRI scientists will fly after XCOR and Virgin Galactic have FAA licenses
• XCOR flights will be on Lynx Mark I (maximum altitude of 61 kilometers)
• Expect that flights will have occurred by the 2013 Next-generation Suborbital Researchers Conference
• Previously spent nearly a decade to fly seven microgravity experiments; will be able to do eight flights within a year
• Three experiments already prepared for suborbital flights
• Flights will involve a “significant number of experiments”
• Putting scientists back in the loop on experiments — less remote control
• Scientists on board reduce the cost of automation, they can react to data on a real-time basis and make changes

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SANTA FE – Governor Susana Martinez announced today that the Spaceport Authority Board of Directors has named Christine Anderson as Executive Director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority. Anderson previously served for 30 years in civilian positions with the United States Air Force, including several years at New Mexico’s Kirtland Air Force Base.

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