FLAGSUIT PRESS RELEASE

February 2, 2011, Southwest Harbor, ME — Flagsuit LLC, developer of “articulated inflatables” which include space suit components and hyperbaric suits, was recently awarded a contract to develop improved space suit glove assemblies for NASA. Under the sole-source contract Flagsuit will develop and test a number of advanced concepts, selecting the best to be incorporated into two pairs of gloves. NASA plans to use the glove assemblies as part of a full suit in manned test activities at the Johnson Space Center.

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Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver

NASA MEDIA ADVISORY

NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver will travel to Las Vegas and Boulder, Colo., this week to meet with leaders of two commercial space companies, Bigelow Aerospace and Sierra Nevada Corp., and tour their facilities. NASA is partnering with the commercial sector to develop innovative technologies to ensure that the U.S. remains competitive in future space endeavors.

On Friday, Feb. 4, Garver will tour Bigelow Aerospace facilities at 1899 W. Brooks Ave. in North Las Vegas. NASA has been discussing potential partnership opportunities with Bigelow for its inflatable habitat technologies. Garver and the company’s President Robert Bigelow will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. PST. To attend, media representatives must contact Mike Gold at [email protected].

On Saturday, Feb. 5, Garver will meet with Mark Sirangello, chairman of Sierra Nevada Space Systems. Afterward, she will tour the company’s facility responsible for spacecraft mechanical subsystems, components and satellite manufacturing in Louisville, Colo.

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Bigelow Aerospace and Space Florida signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) today at Cape Canaveral. Robert Bigelow and Frank DiBello signed the MOU on behalf of their respective organizations. The event, attended by about 100 people, also featured Dr. George Sowers, Vice President of Business Development and Advanced Programs at United Launch Alliance. Bigelow is planning to orbit two space stations later in the decade, a project that would use […]

BOULDER, Colo. — eSpace: The Center for Space Entrepreneurship, a non-profit business incubator and workforce development organization for aerospace start-up companies, today announced its third round call for new incubator candidates for the eSpace Incubator program.

Current participants and alumni include creators of the flying hybrid, a Google Lunar X PRIZE contestant, an Inventor of the Year, and other entrepreneurs advancing the commercialization of space technologies and supporting the development of a workforce to fuel their growth. To apply, interested parties can find the eSpace Incubator Application at https://espacecenter.org/incubator_program.php.

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Kepler-11 is a sun-like star around which six planets orbit. At times, two or more planets pass in front of the star at once, as shown in this artist's conception of a simultaneous transit of three planets observed by NASA's Kepler spacecraft on Aug. 26, 2010. Image credit: NASA/Tim Pyle

NASA PROGRAM UPDATE

NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars than our sun.

Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system.

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Soyuz rocket

There’s a great scene in the 1988 movie, Married to the Mob, in which Connie Russo (Mercedes Ruehl) explains the facts of Mafia life to Angela de Marco (Michelle Pfeiffer).

“We’re your friends, Angela, whether you like it or not,” she declares.

Angela was family, and there was no escaping it. Not even after Connie’s covetous husband, Tony “the Tiger” Russo (Dean Stockwell), rubbed out Angela’s hit man husband, “Cucumber” Frank de Marco (Alec Baldwin).

The situation is not so different for Kazakhstan. Nearly 20 years after it became the last Soviet republic to declare independence, the nation remains joined at the hip with Russia through its Baikonur Cosmodrome. And don’t expect that to change — ever.

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Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center

Groups in Florida and California are planning their annual “space days” in March to let state and federal officials know about the importance of aerospace and discuss the key issues they are facing.

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The seven-state United Arab Emirates is quickly becoming the center of the Middle East’s space effort, with agreements with Virgin Galactic for a suborbital spaceport and Bigelow Aerospace to develop an orbital spaceflight program. In the process, it is riding the crest of a new commercial wave in how human spaceflight will be conducted.

UAE might have the first commercial suborbital spaceport outside of the United States should the American government allows Virgin Galactic to export its WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo system.

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Here’s an interesting report out of India: ‘This is the first stage of space tourism where 30 children would be sent to a space camp at the Singapore Space Centre (SSC) where they would be given a through understanding of space by experts from NASA. Then there would be the next stages that are being planned,’ K.C. Chandrahasan, managing director of Kerala Travels, told mediapersons here Friday. Talking about their […]

This week in The Space Review…. Memorials and malaise This time of year is traditionally a somber one at NASA, as the agency recognizes those who lost their lives on missions. Jeff Foust examines a deeper angst that is evident today as well, given the continued uncertainty about NASA’s future human spaceflight plans and budgets. All space politics is local In the new Congress, as in previous ones, the leadership […]

CSF PRESS RELEASE

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is pleased to announce that seven companies providing support services to the commercial spaceflight industry have joined the Federation as Associate Members: ARES Corporation, Cimarron Software Services, Ecliptic Enterprises Corporation, Innovative Health Applications, MDA Corporation, RS&H, and SEAKR Engineering. With the addition of these new Associate Members – in locations ranging from Kennedy Space Center, Florida and Denver, Colorado to Houston, Texas and Pasadena, California – the Commercial Spaceflight Federation now includes over 40 leading aerospace companies contributing to the growth of commercial human spaceflight.

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