How to flight-test a crew space capsule

Aerospike revival, advances in composite structures are shaping design of low-cost smallsat launch vehicle

Northrop Grumman has unveiled a vertical-launch, horizontal-landing reusable booster design for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s XS-1 experimental spaceplane.

Cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev deployed a Peruvian cubesat and worked with materials-space-exposure experiments during a 5-hr. extra-vehicular excursion at the International Space Station Aug. 18. Unlike cubesat deployments from the Japanese Kibo module’s robotic arm, which use a mechanical dispenser, Artemyev deployed the small satellite with a toss of the hand in the direction opposite the station’s travel to avoid a future collision.

The third Orbital Sciences Corp. Cygnus commercial cargo carrier to reach the International Space Station reentered the atmosphere Aug. 17 for a splashdown in the Pacific east of New Zealand, wrapping up the second of eight resupply missions for the company under its $1.9 billion commercial resupply services contract with NASA. Carried to orbit July 13 on an Orbital Sciences Antares launch vehicle from Wallops Island, Virginia, the pressurized capsule carried 3,550 lb. of garbage for its destructive return to Earth. It took 3,669 lb.

Aerojet Rocketdyne plans to demonstrate fabrication of large-scale metal rocket-engine parts using laser-melting additive manufacturing (AM) under a cost-shared Technology Investment Agreement with Wright-Patterson AFB under Title III of the Defense Production Act, worth $11,750,886.

The European Union is preparing to launch its first fully operational Galileo navigation, positioning and timing satellites Aug. 22, putting the 28-nation body in line to compete with the U.S. GPS, Russian Glonass and Chinese Beidou systems, even as it finalizes details of Galileo’s use.

Astronaut Steve Nagel has died after a battle with cancer. We'll never forget his 1991 space shuttle landing. It was bad but could have been worse.