This week on The Space Show… Monday, January 24, 2011 , 2-3:30 PM PST: This is a recorded interview with Dr. Paul Hardersen of Space Studies at UND regarding the observatory program underway as part of the Space Studies graduate program. When you see this recorded program on the website and blog, it is ready for play and archives. Tuesday, January 25, 2011, 7-8:30 PM PST: Our guest is Declan […]
Great news, millionauts! You can now book your flights aboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo online. Just follow these six easy steps: Visit www.kayak.com. Enter “90n” into the “From” box. Enter “50m” into the “To” box. Set your departure and arrival dates as the same. Choose “First” class. Hit “Search”. Choose “Select” to be taken directly to the Virgin Galactic booking page. Unfortunately, there aren’t any saving attached to booking online — […]
Watch live streaming video from dldconference at livestream.com Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides and Space Adventures Chairman Eric Anderson talk NewSpace at the DLD Conference in Munich. Eric Anderson: We’ve sold a $150 million ticket for a circum-lunar mission that will start in 2015. Need to sell a second ticket; finalizing that sale now. The video cuts off early, but Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) Tweeted some additional notes: — Whitesides: Virgin […]
Move Over, Rover: Next Giant Leap Gets $1 Million Grant To Build Hopping Moon Landers
Tech Crunch
Next Giant Leap in Boulder, Colorado— a startup that’s making robots that will land and hop around on the surfaces of other planets in order to gather data, detect resources valuable to humans, and more — attained a $1 million grant from the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, to advance their technology and pursue the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize in 2012, the companies revealed today.
ESA Budget Rises to $4B as 14 Nations Boost Contributions
Space News
Fourteen of the European Space Agency’s (ESA)18 member nations have agreed to raise their contributions for 2011 despite public debt concerns that have reached near-crisis levels in some of them, ESA officials said.
The National Space Agency of Ukraine has posted an interesting Q&A with Chairman Yuri Alekseyev in which he discusses his organization’s key role in supplying rockets and space technologies worldwide. Ukraine inherited a great deal of Soviet space capability after that nation broke up, and it has maintained and expanded it despite periods of severe economic chaos. Ukraine’s rockets include the Zenit, Dnepr (Dnipro), and Cyclone-4.
Among the topics Alekseyev discussed include an increased role in Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Taurus II program and a joint venture to launch Cyclone-4 rockets from Brazil beginning in 2012.
Artist's conception of Orbital Sciences Corporation's Cygnus freighter approaching the International Space Station.
MDA PRESS RELEASE
MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (TSX: MDA), a provider of essential information solutions, announced today that it has signed a multi-million dollar contract amendment exercising an option on the contract announced January 19, 2010. MDA will provide Orbital Sciences Corporation (Orbital) with solutions to enable capture and mating of the Cygnus(TM) cargo delivery spacecraft to the International Space Station.
The Planetary Society's LightSail-1 solar sail. Credit: Rick Sternbach/The Planetary Society
The Planetary Society, which has a solar sail mission of its own in the works, is taking a keen interest in NASA’s NanoSail-D spacecraft that successfully deployed earlier this week:
NASA has now confirmed that their NanoSail-D satellite has deployed its 100-square-foot sail in low-Earth orbit. The Planetary Society’s own solar sail project, LightSail-1, will soon be finished and ready for launch. Bill Nye, Executive Director of the Planetary Society, congratulated the NanoSail-D team on their achievement:
“Congratulations! Although NanoSail-D kept us waiting, we’re very pleased that it has successfully deployed,†said Nye. “This could be the beginning of a fundamental improvement in how we de-orbit spacecraft.”
International Space Station
NASA Program Update
A quick succession of international space supply trucks will arrive on the International Space Station’s loading docks early in 2011, dropping off more than 11 tons (10,000 kilograms) of food, computers, medical equipment and supplies, spare parts and experiment gear – not to mention the necessities of everyday human life in orbit.
Demonstrating a multinational commitment to supporting life, work and research on the station at the start of its second decade, space trucks from Japan, Europe and Russia will launch to the station in January and February, followed quickly by the space shuttle Discovery.
Dragon floats down under three parachutes after its maiden flight to space. (Credit: SpaceX)
SpaceX has a busy schedule ahead for its Falcon 1e and Falcon 9 rockets, with at least 32 launches scheduled through 2015. The highlights:
- At least 23 Falcon 9 launches
- 14 Falcon 9/Dragon COTS flights for NASA (including 2 demo missions)
- At least 8 Falcon 9 satellite launches
- Multiple Falcon 9 launches for Iridium (2015-17)
- 1 Bigelow space station module launch (2014)
- Inaugural Falcon9/DragonLab mission (2012)
- First Falcon 9 flight from Vandenberg (2012)
- Debut of the uprated Falcon 1e rocket (2011)
- Approximately 9 Falcon 1e launches
- Approximately 6 Falcon 1e flights for ORBCOMM (2011-14).
NASA MISSION UPDATE
NASA’s Stardust-NExT spacecraft is nearing a celestial date with comet Tempel 1 at approximately 8:37 p.m. PST (11:37 p.m. EST), on Feb. 14. The mission will allow scientists for the first time to look for changes on a comet’s surface that occurred following an orbit around the sun.