NASA PROGRAM UPDATE

NASA conducted a test fire Friday of the liquid-fuel AJ26 engine that will power the first stage of Orbital Sciences Corp.’s Taurus II space launch vehicle. The test at the agency’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi supports NASA’s Commercial Transportation Services partnerships to enable commercial cargo flights to the International Space Station.

Orbital’s Taurus II uses a pair AJ26 rocket engines built by Aerojet to provide first stage propulsion. Friday’s test on the Stennis’ E-1 test stand involved a team of Orbital, Aerojet, and Stennis engineers, with Stennis employees serving as test conductors.

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PHOTOS TO SPACE PRESS RELEASE
Dec. 15, 2010

A new launch services company, Photos to Space is providing the public the opportunity to participate in space flight. Currently, space travel is unavailable for the general public; however, through a new website (www.photostospace.com), consumers are able to send themselves to space in the form of a photo.

For a small fee, anyone can upload a photo to sent to space and back. Upon return, a digital certificate containing the original photo, a launch image and stats about the rocket will be created for each participant. “These custom certificates are unique to this industry,” says Joe Latrell, CEO. “The photo is actually embedded within the digital certificate. It takes only minutes to upload an image and participate in this unique opportunity.”

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Northwest Helicopter's Steve Watson holds the cable for launch of Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser scale model on it's first captive-carry flight on Dec. 7, 2010, as pilot Doug Uttecht maneuvers Northwest's Bell 206 Jet Ranger to take it up. NASA photo / Tony Landis.

NASA PROGRAM UPDATE

NASA Dryden supported helicopter air-drop flight tests of a 5-foot-long, 15-percent scale model of the Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC) Dream Chaser spacecraft design under a Space Act Agreement between the two organizations.

The company’s planned full-size Dream Chaser vehicle, based on the NASA HL-20 lifting body, is designed to carry up to seven people to the International Space Station and back. The vehicle is slated to launch vertically on an Atlas V rocket and land horizontally on conventional runways.

Dryden provided ground and range safety support, including a T-34 chase aircraft for photo and video imagery. The Center also provided scheduling and flight test operations engineering support, along with hangar facilities and workspace.

“Working with the SNC/CU team was a privilege. Their teamwork and dedication were phenomenal, especially through a very dynamic, tiring week of testing,” said Jonathan Pickrel, NASA Dryden’s flight operations engineer overseeing the testing.

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Senate Democrats have abandoned an effort to pass an authorization bill to fund the government through Sept. 30th of next year after opposition from Republicans who cited pork provisions in the legislation.  This means that the government will be funded by a stop-gap spending measure that will keep funding at existing levels until a new Congress can convene in January and work out a budget targeted for approval by  Feb. […]

ARIANESPACE PAO Basic build-up of the milestone 200th Ariane for launch is now complete at the Spaceport, marking a new milestone in preparations for an Ariane 5 mission that will loft a European Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) next February to service the International Space Station. During activity in the Spaceport’s Launcher Integration Building, the Ariane 5 ES version of Arianespace’s heavy-lift workhorse was fitted with its equipment bay, followed by […]

AEROJET PRESS RELEASE
Dec. 16, 2010

Aerojet, a GenCorp (NYSE:GY – News) company, announced today that over the next few months it will expand its presence in the Huntsville community by hiring 25 local engineers. This growth will allow Aerojet to provide collaborative engineering expertise, program management support and business development outreach to our government and prime customers located in the Huntsville area and across the Southeastern United States.

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SolidWorks Press Release
Dec. 16, 2010

Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. (DS SolidWorks), a world leader in 3D solutions, today announced that the Rocket City Space Pioneers (RCSP) will use SolidWorks® software to “boost” its entry in the Google Lunar X PRIZE. The X PRIZE competition challenges and inspires engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods for robotic space exploration.

A Huntsville, Ala. team featuring leaders in the spaceflight and educational fields is currently developing a low-cost lunar lander/rover system to send to the moon by 2014, which will be able to travel 500 meters and transmit video images and data back to the Earth. Led by Dynetics, the team comprising Teledyne Brown Engineering, Andrews Space, Spaceflight Services, Draper Laboratory, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the Von Braun Center for Science & Innovation (VCSI) plans to be the first privately funded team to get to the moon.

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RE: Recent announcement of VG collaboration with OSC, and with SNC, on NASA CCDev-2 Program In response to media inquiries concerning my perception of the radical new course of America’s involvement with space, I want to establish that I am personally delighted to see the expansion of private sector involvement in NASA’s Commercial Crew Development-2 Program, through the recent announcement that Virgin Galactic will be partnering with Sierra Nevada Corporation, […]

NASA MISSION UPDATE
Dec. 15, 2010

NASA’s Mars Odyssey, which launched in 2001, will break the record Wednesday for longest-serving spacecraft at the Red Planet. The probe begins its 3,340th day in Martian orbit at 8:55 p.m. EST on Wednesday to break the record set by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, which orbited Mars from 1997 to 2006.

Odyssey’s longevity enables continued science, including the monitoring of seasonal changes on Mars from year to year and the most detailed maps ever made of most of the planet. In 2002, the spacecraft detected hydrogen just below the surface throughout Mars’ high-latitude regions. The deduction that the hydrogen is in frozen water prompted NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander mission, which confirmed the theory in 2008. Odyssey also carried the first experiment sent to Mars specifically to prepare for human missions, and found radiation levels around the planet from solar flares and cosmic rays are two to three times higher than around Earth.

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NASA recently announced that it would be conducting contract negotiations for 350 projects under its SBIR and STTR programs, which are aimed at promoting space technology development and transfer by small businesses. Parabolic Arc will be looking at a number of the proposals involving NewSpace companies that it regularly covers or which encompass interesting technologies.

This post takes a look at a hypersonic entry system for spacecraft aerocapture that is being developed by Andrews Space. The system could be used for spacecraft sent to other worlds as well as cargo return by space freighters such as Cygnus, ATV and HTV.

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A video report from Houston on the changes roiling the American human spaceflight program.

Senator files bill in advance of commercial space travel WOAI.com Senator Carlos Uresti has filed Senate Bill 115, also known as the “Space Flight Liability” bill.  It would protect private space flight companies from being sued if passengers on board are injured or killed.  Uresti says if he would have waited to file the bill until the next legislative session in two years, that could be too late. The start […]