U.S. Navy

U.S. NAVY

Merging commercial human spaceflight missions into the air traffic control (ATC) system is a growing concern within the nascent industry and the government bureaucracies that ultimately will be responsible for regulating it, particularly as the industry approaches sending its first passengers to space.

KEPLER LAUDED: NASA’s exo-planet hunting Kepler space telescope mission has won the Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy for 2014, the Washington-based non profit National Space Club announced Feb. 6. The mission will be honored in ceremonies March 7 at the Hilton Washington Hotel for its advances in astrophysics and the search for worlds beyond the Solar System. Since its launch on March 6, 2009, the spacecraft is credited with identifying more than 3,600 exo-planet candidates, 246 of them confirmed so far.

Canada’s Conservative government plans to continue promoting the nation’s space industry, focusing on the technology niches where it excels and looking for new ones, but with a shift toward more commercial partnerships in step with the U.S. shift in that direction.

PROGRESS DOCKED: Russia’s Progress 54 re-supply capsule carried out a successful docking with the six-person International Space Station late Feb. 5, following a liftoff earlier in the day atop a Soyuz carrier rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The automated rendezvous with the ISS Russian segment Pirs module unfolded as planned, leading to a link up at 5:22 p.m. EST, as anticipated. The space freighter lifted off at 11:23 a.m. EST, or in darkness at 10:23 p.m. local time, in subfreezing temperatures. After reaching a preliminary orbit 9 min.

Operating the International Space Station until 2024 will broaden the “planning horizon” for commercial companies to use the facility, adding 45% to the research and crew time available for industrial research and technology development for deep-space exploration, according to the NASA official responsible for human spaceflight. William Gerstenmaier told the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington Feb. 5 that the service life extension for the ISS “changes the way commercial providers think about this.”

LOS ANGELES — SpaceIL, the Israel-based team competing for the Google Lunar X-Prize, is optimistic about winning the pole position in the race to land a privately developed unmanned vehicle on the Moon following the award of a contract with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for the propulsion system.