Space News has some additional details on Russia’s program to create a successor to the Soyuz transport:
The Russian Federal Space Agency, Roskosmos, awarded a pair of contracts totaling nearly 1.2 billion rubles ($37 million) to begin designing a next-generation spaceship and rocket capable of carrying cosmonauts to the Moon.
Over at Aviation Week, Jeff Manber points out that this weekend marks several key space-related anniversaries:
There’s also a much more tragic anniversary, one that is now largely forgotten and almost universally ignored within the space community. That would be the liberation of the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp on April 11-12, 1945.
A bill that would limit the liability of space tourism operators has been introduced in Texas. The measure would help Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin suborbital rocket company.
I’ve been reading Dan Linehan’s book, “SpaceShipOne: An Illustrated History.” It has some interesting history about the development of SpaceShipOne’s engine that seems to shed some light on the delays that Scaled Composites is having in developing the follow-on SpaceShipTwo vehicle.
North Korean rocket flew further than earlier thought
Spaceflight Now
New details emerging from the analysis of data from North Korea’s April 5 Taepo-Dong-2 test indicate the vehicle flew successfully several hundred miles further than previously believed and used more advanced steering than has been demonstrated by the North Korean’s before.
Space Station Nears an Extension
The Wall Street Journal
The U.S. and major foreign partners on the International Space Station have agreed in principle to keep it operating through 2020, at least five years beyond the current deadline, according to government and industry officials.
Jack Kennedy reports that Virginia educators plan to purchase seats aboard Zero G’s parabolic aircraft for teachers and students in order to help promote STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education throughout the state.
NASA Safety Survey a Mystery
Associated Press
Years after thousands of pilots told NASA about their in-flight safety experiences and NASA shut down the survey without divulging any findings, the pilots’ views remain a mystery.
Earth’s Dwindling Resources Drive Space Exploration
by Marsha Freeman
Space.com
In the early 1970s, [Krafft Ehricke] developed the concept of the extraterrestrial imperative to make clear that for mankind to continue to grow, we have no choice but space exploration. The “closed world” of the Earth is finite and eventually, resources will run out, he concluded. But developing and exploiting extraterrestrial resources would remove any “limits to growth,” a pessimistic concept that became popular in the 1970s. There are no “natural” limits, Ehricke insisted, only those that mankind places on himself.
Well, it’s Virgin Galactic week over at Flight International. (Isn’t that every week? Well, not exactly….but Rob Coppinger does write a lot about Richard Branson’s tourism company.)
Love ends career of astronaut tourist
Russia Today
Charles Simoni is reported to have signed a contract promising his wife, 28-year-old model Lisa Persdotter, that he would never go into space again.
“I have not spent much time with my wife, unfortunately. We have many, many plans together and I’ll always be interested in space, as I have been, but not as actively as going on a flight,†confessed space tourist Simonyi during a media briefing at Star City in the Moscow region.
PRESS RELEASE
Astrotech Corporation, a leading provider of commercial space services, announced today that the annual meeting of shareholders originally held on February 10, 2009 and previously adjourned until April 9, 2009 has been further adjourned until May 7, 2009.
