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.
NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (Ladee) mission will spend an extra 28 days circling the Moon at low altitude to extend observations of the tenuous atmosphere for an additional light/dark lunar cycle. The extension will postpone Ladee’s anticipated impact with the surface until about April 21.
HOUSTON — Russia’s trash-laden Progress 52 capsule departed the International Space Station Feb. 3, opening a berthing port for the country’s first resupply mission of 2014. Progress 54 is scheduled to lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Feb. 5 at 11:23 a.m. EST, or 10:23 p.m. local time, initiating a four-orbit, 6-hr. automated rendezvous and docking at the ISS Pirs docking compartment. Progress 54 is scheduled to deliver 2.8 tons of fuel, research gear and other provisions to the six-person orbiting science laboratory.
NASA should have enough money in its fiscal 2014 appropriation to support development of at least two competing commercial crew vehicles, and the Senate panel that funds the U.S. space agency will try to keep that going in fiscal 2015, according to Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who chairs it.
HOUSTON — NASA’s 2013 Asteroid Initiative Idea Synthesis Workshop produced nearly 30 recommendations for refining strategies to identify, capture and maneuver a seven- to 10-meter near-Earth object into lunar orbit for a visit by astronauts. The proposed undertaking has emerged from its first U.S. budget cycle, but is still in search of significant U.S. Congressional and international backing.
PARIS — France and Britain have signed a framework agreement on space cooperation in the areas of Earth observation, telecommunications, space-based weather forecasting and technology. The agreement, signed during a Franco-British defense summit held at RAF Brize Norton in southern England Jan. 31, includes an initial U.K. investment of £15 million ($25 million) for key instruments being developed for the next generation of European weather satellites.
A small Canadian electro-optical satellite has started contributing data to the U.S. Space Surveillance Network, monitoring orbiting objects at 6,000-40,000 km (3,700-24,850 mi.) as part of the North American effort to improve space situational awareness and prevent collisions.
With U.S. funding promised until at least 2024, the scientists and engineering managers charged with getting maximum use out of the International Space Station are touting its unique advantages as a place to observe the Earth from above. Two of NASA's five Earth-science missions planned this year will operate on the ISS, and the non-profit organization set up to attract commercial users to the station has just released a request for Earth-observation proposals. Both reflect the growing presence of Earth-facing instruments on the massive orbital outpost.
Water, the stuff of life, can also be deadly if there is too much of it, or not enough, or if it is too cold or hot. A new $1.2 billion international spacecraft mission will give scientists, forecasters and first-responders a map of where the water is on Earth, with unprecedented detail, every 3 hr.
After two years of contentious debate, the European Commission has a freshly minted budget of €10 billion ($13.7 billion) over seven years with which to complete and launch two new flagship space programs: the Galileo satellite navigation constellation and the Copernicus Earth-observation system. With some half-dozen spacecraft dedicated to the two programs set to launch this year, the EC's next task is to figure out how to use them.
NASA will spend $12.7 million on seven research projects intended to inaugurate the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-developed Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL), a fundamental physics payload scheduled for a 2016 launch to the International Space Station (ISS), where it will support studies of ultra-cold quantum gas phenomena in the absence of gravity. The funding should support the seven projects, five of them headed for the ISS and two for further ground development, for up to five years, NASA announced Jan. 29.
CYBER CHIEF: U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Michael Rogers has been nominated to replace Gen. Keith Alexander as the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, director of the NSA and the chief of the Central Security Service. Rogers currently commands U.S. Fleet Cyber Command. This makes him the third person named Mike Rogers in a high-profile national security position. He joins lawmakers Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who leads the House Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), who leads a House Armed Services panel on strategic forces.
Pending anticipated second-quarter 2014 FCC certification of a new “Sat-Fi” device, Globalstar Inc. plans to offer worldwide voice and data satellite-transmission services through traditional Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones, tablets and laptops in the hands of users outside of cellular range.
Engineers from two NASA field centers and the University of Texas have started subscale testing designed to ensure the acoustic loads generated by the planned heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) don’t damage the big rocket or its ground infrastructure during liftoff.
The Pentagon’s chief test official is recommending that the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) consider a redesign of its Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV), the hit-to-kill mechanism used to down ballistic missiles mid-flight in the Ground-Based Missile Defense (GMD) System.
LOS ANGELES — Despite continuing cutbacks in U.S. military and space spending, Boeing’s position on flagship defense and space initiatives produced a strong 2013 for the company’s Defense, Space & Security sector and will continue to sustain it into 2014.
BRUSSELS — Arianespace Chairman and CEO Stephane Israel praised the European Commission for its loyalty in lofting EU satellites with the Evry, France-based launch consortium, but said the company must lower costs immediately to compete with new entrants to the market that are backed by government financing.
The human exploration of Mars by the 2030s is within reach if global space powers — supported by sustained budgets and political backing — cooperate to overcome the technical hurdles, according to Explore Mars, Inc. The four-year-old Massachusetts nonprofit advocates focused use of the International Space Station (ISS), the possible introduction of a modest, crewed cis-lunar outpost in the 2020s and carefully paced robotic missions to achieve the goal.
HOUSTON — Spacewalking cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy met with mixed results Jan. 27 during a second attempt to install a pair of Canadian commercial Earth imaging cameras outside the International Space Station (ISS). The task outside the Russian segment of the outpost proved so troublesome during a late-December attempt that the two men were forced to retrieve the just-installed imagers for internal troubleshooting during a frustrating excursion that grew to a Russian record 8 hr., 7 min.
APPLAUSE: The U.S. commercial satellite industry is cheering lawmakers and awaiting a congressionally mandated strategy this year that could help push the Pentagon toward multiyear leases and hosted payloads providing satcom services. The fiscal 2014 defense authorization act requires the Defense Department to provide Congress with an analysis of financial or other benefits of doing multiyear acquisitions.
