Hi everyone. I have set up a Parabolic Arc Channel on YouTube. I’ve uploaded a group of videos take of WhiteKnightTwo’s flight at Oshkosh.
NASA will broadcast the crash of LCROSS onto the moon on Friday morning.
Astronaut Brian Binnie after the prize winning X2 flight.
X PRIZE PRESS RELEASE
On October 4, 2009, the X PRIZE Foundation will celebrate the fifth anniversary of the largest prize in history, the $10 Million Ansari X PRIZE – won by the Mojave Aerospace Ventures team for the historic flights of SpaceShipOne.
Led by famed aerospace designer Burt Rutan and backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Mojave Aerospace Ventures was the first private team to build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the earth’s surface twice within two weeks. The team made world history when it achieved this feat on the anniversary of the historic launch of Sputnik in 1957 – the first man made object that entered earth’s orbit and opened the space age.
Space News has a story about the fifth anniversary of SpaceShipOne winning the X Prize in which various folks explain what it all means. These include spacecraft designer Burt Rutan, Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn, and Space Frontier Foundation’s Rick Tumlinson:
NASA PRESS RELEASE
Construction of the A-3 Test Stand at NASA’s John C. Stennis Space Center is approaching another milestone with delivery and installation of 14 water, isopropyl alcohol (IPA) and liquid oxygen (LOX) tanks.
Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center
The Orlando Sentinel has a report on efforts by Florida officials to press President Barack Obama to stem job losses:
With the space-shuttle program about to end, and no clear sign when NASA’s next rocket will take its place, Space Coast political and aerospace officials agreed Monday that Florida must press President Barack Obama to keep his campaign promise to fund an “ambitious” space program and protect workers at Kennedy Space Center. (more…)
The Tehran Times says that Iran is planning to become the latest country to send humans into space:
Iran plans to send astronauts into space and is currently conducting the relevant studies, Communications and Information Technology Minister Reza Taqipour announced on Saturday.
Spaceport America
When the last Apollo spacecraft lifted off from Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center on July 21, 1975, the crew included two-time Apollo veteran and moon walker Tom Stafford and two rookies: Deke Slayton and Vance Brand. Slayton, a Mercury astronaut grounded due to a heart problem, had waited 16 years for his flight. Brand had been selected for the Apollo program nine years before blasting off for a rendezvous with a Soviet spacecraft.
For Slayton and Stafford, the nine-day Apollo-Soyuz Test Project would be their final missions into space. Brand stayed with NASA, determined to fly again on the space shuttle the agency originally hoped to fly by 1978. He would have a long wait. The space shuttle wouldn’t fly for another six years. It was not until Nov. 11, 1982 that Brand would return to space as commander of Columbia’s fifth mission.
Well, it’s deja vu all over again. NASA is facing another long gap in flights after the space shuttle retires next year. Meanwhile, the emerging private sector is in the midst of a long drought on suborbital flights.
PRESS RELEASE
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) will host a panel of experts to discuss the implications of the Augustine Commission report, “Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans.” Scheduled for Monday, October 5 at 2:00 p.m. EDT* as a live, streaming, Internet radio broadcast, the discussion will be moderated by Dr. David Livingston, host of “The Space Show with Dr. David Livingston,” and may be accessed at www.thespaceshow.com. (*Note: Scheduling is subject to the actual release of the final report.)
Florida Today has 14 questions for Space Florida new President, Frank DiBello. The head of the Sunshine State’s space promotional agency discusses efforts to attract commercial space business and to stem job losses resulting from NASA’s decision to end the space shuttle program.
1. The Brevard space industry faces the loss of 7,000 jobs as the shuttle program winds down. Is it time to panic? What’s the proper course of action?
We must move aggressively to leverage our key assets, infrastructure and workforce, research and development assets, and the support of our legislature and the Governor’s office to continue to make prudent investments to ensure a continued robust and significant role in the future of the nation’s space activity for Florida.
There is no silver bullet for the remediation of the workforce impact that we will face as we transition from the era of the shuttle….
On 1 October another test firing of the Universal Rocket Module (URM)-1 for Russia’s Angara family of launch vehicles – currently under development – took place at the Rocket & Space Industry Research & Testing Center near Moscow.
The URM-1 test article was fired at a specially built test stand, the largest in Europe, to verify the engine performance at its maximum power level. The test, which lasted 203.4 seconds, was the second in a series of firing tests planned for the URM-1.
Guy Laliberte (first row, far right) aboard the International Space Station.
CTV reports that not everyone is thrilled with Guy Laliberte’s joyride/social space mission to ISS:
UQAM research chair Yves Gingras studies the history of and sociology of science. He has long criticized the ISS for its lack of research.
“The only thing they say they’re doing is studying the behaviours of man in absence of weight, so of man in space, but man has not evolved to live in space so it’s not worthwhile,” said Gingras.