Aviation Week editors Graham Warwick and Guy Norris discuss with Joe Anselmo what the future looks like from the annual American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference.
The U.S. Air Force and SpaceX are now targeting midyear for full certification of the launch upstart’s Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket to loft the most precious Pentagon payloads into orbit.
Asteroid expert Donald K. Yeomans, retiring as supervisor of the Solar System Dynamics Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, discusses the threat to Earth of asteroids and comets.
India plans to carry out a test flight of its reusable rocket launcher in March in what could be a first step toward affordable access to space technology. The Winged Reusable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD), fitted with solid strap-on thrusters, will fly at five times the speed of sound (Mach 3) to reach an altitude of more than 100 km (61 mi.) within barely 5 min.
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has slipped the launch of its fifth commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station to Jan. 9 at the earliest, following an issue with a thrust vector control actuator that stopped the countdown seconds before liftoff on Jan. 6 from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral AFS.
Expanded Tables Online Download expanded specifications on in-production and under-development unmanned aircraft and search more than 3,100 other systems at AviationWeek.com/specs
Increasing commercialization, the growing popularity of small satellites, and human spaceflight are factors that will drive the launch industry and result in production of a projected 759 launch vehicles worth $67 billion over the next 10 years.
Orbital Sciences Corp. will buy a new rocket engine to replace the surplus Russian engines tentatively implicated in the Oct. 28 failure of an Antares launch vehicle with a load of cargo for the International Space Station.
On July 1, Johann-Dietrich Woerner will begin a four-year term as the next director general of the European Space Agency. He is currently chairman of the executive board of the German Aerospace Center.
The request for information lists several generic possibilities, including beaming power between orbiting spacecraft, from an orbiting spacecraft to a “planetary asset,” and between fixed and mobile assets on a planetary surface.
Orbital Sciences Corp. will buy directly from Russia’s NPO Energomash a new rocket engine with a long heritage to replace the surplus Russian engines tentatively implicated in the Oct. 28 failure of an Antares launch vehicle with a load of cargo for the International Space Station.
Delays in current launcher development are not deterring Chinese space industry managers from planning a Moon rocket. They aim to put a rover on Mars around 2020, too.
Data from the Orion flight test—recorded at much higher rates than the normal 1-Hz used operationally so engineers can pinpoint the changes in loads and other factors during the flight—will be used to validate models and improve designs.
Dubbed Project Loon, the fleet of balloons would be carried by winds some 18 to 20 km above the Earth – higher than commercial airlines and weather – and powered by solar panels.
NASA’s new Orion crew capsule flew its first test in space with clocklike precision Friday, using two unmanned orbits that took it deeper into space than any human spacecraft has gone since Apollo 17, and then achieved a bull’s-eye splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
