Over at Aviation Week, Frank Morring, Jr. takes a look at the situation down in Huntsville, where officials are grappling with uncertainties over exactly what type of heavy-lift vehicle they will develop should the Senate compromise on NASA’s budget be approved.
Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center
Commerce secretary meets with laid off shuttle workers
CFNews13.com
With a plan due out to help displaced shuttle workers in the works, the U.S. Commerce Secretary paid a visit to the Kennedy Space Center.
The Los Angeles Times takes a look at the Aerospace Corporation, a California-based non-profit that is a major behind-the-scenes player in America’s space program. The government-funded brain trust performs substantial independent engineering and program analysis for the military and NASA; it may end up playing a key role in the space agency’s commercial space initiatives.
It looks as if there will be a further delay in the inaugural launch of Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Taurus II rocket, which is currently scheduled for sometime next spring. Ukraine’s state owned company ” Yuzhmash” based in eastern city Dnipropetrovsk postponed the delivery of the basic part of the Taurus-II launch vehicle’s first stage to a U.S. company, the Ukranian company said in a statement on Tuesday. “For some technical […]
Participants experience microgravity aboard a Zero-G Corporation parabolic flight. (PRNewsFoto/Zero Gravity Corporation, Al Powers)
In an effort to attract families, ZERO-G is offering a special half-price promotion for children ages 8-13. The offer is good for every full-priced retail ticket sold.
Boeing Should Lose $271 Million of Rocket Billings, Audit Says
Bloomberg News
Boeing Co. should lose as much as $271 million in government payments for satellite launch services because the No. 2 U.S. defense contractor violated federal accounting rules, the Pentagon’s audit agency said.
The Defense Contract Audit Agency, in a July 23 report, said the Pentagon should require Boeing to reimburse $72 million that was previously paid, agency director Patrick Fitzgerald said in an e-mail statement.
NASA PROGRAM UPDATE
NASA’s Robonaut 2 has no voice but is ready to tell you its story — in 140 characters or less. The prototype robot will travel to space this fall to give NASA a deeper understanding of human-robotic interaction.
Called R2, the robot has started sending updates about its upcoming mission from its new Twitter account, @AstroRobonaut. With the help of its supporting team, R2 will document its preparations for launch and, eventually, its work aboard the International Space Station.
NASA MISSION UPDATE
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have embarked on a joint program to explore Mars in the coming decades and selected the five science instruments for the first mission.
The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, scheduled to launch in 2016, is the first of three joint robotic missions to the Red Planet. It will study the chemical makeup of the Martian atmosphere with a 1000-fold increase in sensitivity over previous Mars orbiters. The mission will focus on trace gases, including methane, which could be potentially geochemical or biological in origin and be indicators for the existence of life on Mars. The mission also will serve as an additional communications relay for Mars surface missions beginning in 2018.
Millionaut Richard Garriott (lower left) aboard the International Space Station.
There’s always been an intriguing question about the perpetually two-years-in-the-future era of mass space tourism:
Will it create a new generation of the super wealthy who, having viewed the world from above and seen no borders, will dedicate their lives and fortunes to forging peace and saving the Earth from the environmental catastrophes it faces?
-OR-
Will they simply want to spend another small fortune to go back like….immediately?
The answer will be key in determining whether space tourism will be a transformational experience its boosters claim or something else entirely.
NASA PROGRAM UPDATE NASA is seeking Allied Organizations as partners to manage each of its new Centennial Challenges announced on July 13. The Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge: to place a small satellite into Earth orbit, twice in one week. The prize purse is $2 million. Night Rover Challenge: to demonstrate a solar-powered exploration vehicle that can operate in darkness using its own stored energy. The prize purse is $1.5 million. Sample […]
Asteroid Ida
NASA PRESS RELEASE
NASA will host an interactive workshop to identify objectives for exploration missions to near-Earth objects, or NEOs, on Aug. 10-11 at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in Washington.
In The Space Review this week… Space travel as exploration What exactly does “exploration†mean as a rationale for spaceflight? Stephen Pyne examines the history of exploration on Earth as a means of better understanding the significance of the exploration of space. Parsing the policy Since the release of the new national space policy just over a month ago, many people have analyzed the policy, scrutinizing the language in search […]
