Vivek Kundra, White House federal chief information officer, will outline his vision for a new federal government cloud computing initiative at NASA Ames next week.
Armadillo Aerospace made two flights of its lunar lander prototype today, putting it in the lead position to capture the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. (View a team photo taken after the successful flights.)
The Mesquite, Texas-based company completed two test flights in one day from a test facility in Caddo Mills, TX, to satisfy requirements for Level 2 of the prize. The second level requires the rocket to fly for 180 seconds before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface constructed with craters and boulders.
Armadillo Aerospace’s first of two flights to win the second phase of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge has succeeded, although there may have been a problem: Tweets from Jeff Foust and Peter Diamandis from the launch site: RT: @jeff_foust “good nominal flight” says Carmack on the radio. One down, one to go. #ngllc 1 minute ago from Twitterrific RT: @jeff_foust Sounds like there may have been an issue with […]
Orbital Plans to Develop Cygnus-Based Crew Capsule
Space News
Dulles, Va.-based Orbital Sciences Corp. is throwing its hat into NASA’s commercial-crew transport ring with plans to develop a crew capsule based on the company’s Cygnus cargo module, according to industry sources.
Space shuttle Discovery and its seven-member crew landed at 8:53 p.m. EDT Friday at Edwards Air Force Base in California, capping off a 14-day mission to deliver supplies and research facilities to the International Space Station and its six-person crew.
NASA PRESS RELEASE
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain signed a memorandum of understanding Friday for cooperation in the field of space transportation. The agreement was signed at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“From shuttle Spacelab missions to the International Space Station, ESA has a long history of participating with NASA in human spaceflight,” Bolden said. “With this agreement, it is our intent to continue to build this relationship, sharing valuable engineering analyses and technology concepts that will help transport humans to low Earth orbit and beyond.”
ISRO's Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter
ISRO to replace computers on future satellites
Express Buzz
Stung by the finding that the failure of the Chandrayaan was mainly due to the malfunction of onboard computers, the Indian Space Research Organisation has decided to replace the processing units on all future satellites, including two scheduled for immediate launch.
NASA MISSION UPDATE
NASA has selected a final destination for its Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, after a journey of nearly 5.6 million miles that included several orbits around Earth and the moon. The mission team announced Wednesday that Cabeus A will be the target crater for the LCROSS dual impacts scheduled for 7:30 a.m. EDT on Oct. 9, 2009. The crater was selected after an extensive review as the optimal location for LCROSS’ evaluation of whether water ice exists at the lunar south pole.
Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin
As one might expect, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin isn’t digging what the Augustine Commission had to say, the Orlando Sentinel reports:
Former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin apparently has sent a scathing memo to friends and supporters in Washington, lashing out at the work of the presidential committee reviewing NASA’s human space flight plans and calling some of its recommendations “irresponsible.â€
In the 11-point email sent out Wednesday and made available to the Orlando Sentinel today, Griffin — the intellectual architect and champion of NASA’s Constellation Program of Ares rockets and Orion capsules — accused the committee of doing shoddy work and failing to make clear why Constellation isn’t viable and why the Ares I is a failed rocket.