 Here’s the latest NASA press release detailing ongoing work on the space exploration vision:
NASA engineers around the country recently completed tests associated with rocket engines, heat protection systems and spacesuits destined for use in the Constellation Program of moon and Mars missions.
Engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., completed an early step in developing the upper-stage rocket engine that will be used in both the Ares I crew launch vehicle and the Ares V cargo launch vehicle.
The Marshall team completed the first series of tests on a scaled-down version of main injector hardware, which will inject and mix liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants in the engine combustion chamber, where they are ignited and burned to produce thrust.
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 Orbital Sciences Corporation has joined forces with the Rocketplane Kistler team, to support them in their COTS bid. Read about it on the Rocketplane website.
The Rocketplane Kistler guys are so busy with the COTS work, it’s starting to impact their timeframe for the development of the suborbital Rocketplane XP. Alan Boyle at Cosmic Log mentions the delay in this post.
 There are several hi-res pictures of the interior of Genesis 1 available now over at the Bigelow Aerospace website.
It’s good stuff. The fuzzed out parts are logos that they haven’t yet received permission to display. On that theme, Alan Boyle over at Cosmic Log has a good piece entitled One Giant Leap for Space Ads.
According to this report from Leonard David at Space.com, the Space Frontier Foundation has just released a fairly comprehensive white paper about NASA’s efforts to implement the vision for space exploration (now named - still unofficially at this point - Project Orion). They’re not too happy with it.
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On July 21st, Space Adventures Ltd., announced a feature to its line of services. These are the folks who have arranged for three tourists to visit the international space station, and now you can add a space walk to your tourist package.
The current duration of a Space Adventures’ orbital spaceflight mission is 10 days. Past orbital clients have paid $20 million (USD) for their spaceflight which includes six months of cosmonaut training. The addition of a spacewalk would lengthen the mission approximately six to eight days and the price for this option is $15 million (USD).
So for a total of $35 million in U.S. dollars, you can not only stay a week longer in orbit but you get to become one of the very few who have EVA’ed in space.
I have to admit, that would almost be worth the price.
 Did they get the dust or didn’t they? The September issue of Sky & Telescope magazine explores that question in a cover article called Meet Asteroid Itokawa. A discussion of how the asteroid might have been formed, along with Japan’s spacecraft Hayabusa, (falcon) and its attempts to gather soil from the asteroid last year are included in this extensive look at Itokawa. If you don’t have a subscription you will certainly want to pick up a copy of the magazine at your newsstand.
Speaking of Sky & Telescope magazine, I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to interview a regular columnist with the publication, Charles A. Wood. Along with the monthly column, Chuck provides us with a website that features a Lunar Photo of the Day. With a PhD in Planetary Geology, stay tuned to find out what else Chuck is doing these days and our discussions of how he spent his wayward youth at Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, mapping the lunar surface and cataloging craters.
 According to this AP story, the review board into the Falcon 1 failure has announced its findings. Despite earlier speculation that the problem was a procedural error, this report identifies the cause as a corroded nut.
The review determined that “the only plausible cause” of the fire was a corroded aluminum nut that allowed fuel to leak onto the main engine. The fire then caused a loss of pressure that shut down the engine.
A new launch attempt - with stainless steel rather than aluminum nuts this time - will take place in November.
 Congratulations to the STS-121 crew for a very successful mission
and a safe return.
In NASA’s launch schedule August 28th is the date set for the next shuttle launch.
Flying Space Shuttle Atlantis, STS-115 crew will deliver a truss and other key components during the Space Shuttle Program’s 19th mission to the International Space Station.
The graphic above is an artist’s concept of the Genesis 1 module after deployment.
Image Credit: Bigelow Aerospace.  This image (Available on Bigelow Aerospace’s website) shows the module, inflated and drifting along in low Earth orbit. I took the liberty of rotating the image 90 degrees clock-wise, for better comparison to the drawing.
Photo Credit: Bigelow Aerospace.
It’s one thing to have your prototype space module lofted to low earth orbit, it’s quite another to have it function in the space environment, under control from the ground, and with all systems performing as predicted. So far so good for Genesis I, as this update from Bigelow Aerospace explains:
Genesis I Mission Update
4:30 PDT
All Systems are operating within expected parameters. Temperature, avionics, solar arrays and battery power all remain positive. All of our initial orbits have had direct sunlight, which has helped in charging the main battery to maximum capacity.
Pressure onboard the spacecraft has remained constant at 7.5 pounds per square inch (PSI).
We have had multiple contacts with the ship, and received several data streams. While most of these current communication streams are dedicated to command and control of the spacecraft, we have downloaded several small images from the onboard cameras and hope to get more as more bandwidth in the data stream becomes available.
- Robert T. Bigelow
I can’t wait to see some of those pictures. The Bigelow team will be accumulating a wealth of performance data and operational experience right now. This is the sort of pioneering R&D work that NASA needs, but can’t seem to do itself any more.
Mission controllers at Bigelow Aerospace have received confirmation from the orbiting spacecraft that its inflation process has occurred as planned, and that all the prototype space station’s solar arrays are deployed.
Congratulations to the team at Bigelow Aerospace, who have successfully orbited their first prototype space habitat today. As far as I am aware, this makes them the first New Space company with a satellite in orbit. May it be the first of a great many.
From the BA website:
BREAKING NEWS
Genesis I Mission Update
Bigelow Aerospace mission control has begun to acquire information from the Genesis I spacecraft. The ISC Kosmotras Dnepr rocket has flawlessly delivered the Genesis I into the target orbit of 550km altitude at 64 degrees inclination. The internal battery is reporting a full charge of 26 volts, which leads us to believe that the solar arrays have deployed.
The internal temperature of the spacecraft is reported to be 26 degrees Celsius and we have acquired the spacecraft’s Global Positioning System (GPS) signal that will enable us to track the ship in flight.
We have initiated communication with the ship’s onboard computers and expect to download more information over the next few hours.
- Robert T. Bigelow
Elon posted a brief update on his company’s website not only promising some interesting data but covering news worthy developments on several fronts.
July 6, 2006 Update
My apologies for the long delay in providing an update. Between the Falcon 1 return to flight, Falcon 9 development and the NASA COTS program, this has been an inordinately busy period for SpaceX. I will post the findings of the DARPA/SpaceX Return to Flight Board on the SpaceX website in about two weeks. The final meeting of the board was last week and the results will be posted after the DARPA senior leadership is briefed. No major surprises were uncovered in the course of the investigation, so perhaps more interesting is the broader set of design & process improvements that constitute “Falcon 1.1″.
I will post whatever I can, excluding only proprietary or ITAR restricted information. At the end of July, I will post a detailed update on Falcon 9. We’ve made a tremendous amount of progress on that front. Except for the fairing (nosecone), we are 90% done with all the manufacturing tooling and should have serial number 1 of the first stage built within three to four months. We are targeting a stage hold down, multi-engine firing in about six months. On the business front, SpaceX now has ten launches on manifest and is on track to be cash flow positive in 2006, our fourth full year of operation. –Elon
I for one am certainly looking forward to these new tid-bits.
Taylor Dinerman has a piece in this week’s Space Review that is well worth a read. He compares the science-vs-human-exploration situation brewing now with what was going on in the early seventies.
History’s warning is simple: if we choose to underfund the Vision for Space Exploration the way we underfunded the Shuttle, we wont much like the results.
There is no ‘buy now, pay later’ option for space exploration.
The Fourth of July in the United States, is always a time for picnics, parades and fireworks. Now we can add shuttle launches to that mix. Sunday’s scheduled launch of STS-121 was scrubbed for the second time in as many days.
The next launch attempt for Discovery’s STS-121 mission to the International Space Station is scheduled for Tuesday at 2:38 p.m. EDT.
Even the layman that I am, I understand the need for these delays, but is there anyone that still thinks they can get 17 launches off in the next four years? Added to that, we have the news media gleefully announcing each “scrub” costs over a million dollars extra.
With “happy”, “good news” coverage like this, NASA probably looks back longingly to the days when shuttle launches received less news air time than the local “Petunia Festival.”
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UPDATE:
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Space.com, posts a troublesome article detailing the news of insulation problems with Discovery. During a post-scrub inspection, “NASA inspectors have found a small crack in the foam insulation of the space shuttle Discovery’s external fuel tank, prompting mission managers to discuss whether to press ahead with Tuesday’s third launch attempt or stand down for repairs.”
Godwin, Robert
“Project Apollo Vol. 2: Exploring the Moon”
Apogee Books
07/2006
ISBN: 1-894-95937-X
Publisher’s Web Site
Pages (999999): [1] 2 3 » ... Last » |  Running the popular website, Lunar Photo Of the Day, (LPOD) and writing a regular column on the moon that appears monthly in Sky & Telescope magazine, are the things Charles A. Wood is probably known for most. But, the interest of a 9 year-old in the sky went from backyard observations on a small telescope, to the University of Arizona, a stint in the Peace Corp and included working at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory cataloging Lunar craters.
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