Lost-link complications may have contributed to the suspected crash of an unmanned aircraft taking part in a NASA environmental survey in international airspace in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska on July 26.
Space Systems/Loral (SSL) says it has been selected to build a commercial communications satellite for Latin American satellite operator Star One, a subsidiary of Brazilian telecom company Embratel. SSL announced the contract July 18, though the customer was not disclosed.
The U.S. Navy's Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (Uclass) effort has garnered lots of headlines for the innovations it represents, but the service is trying to use the program to prod the acquisition world into new thinking. And while seemingly bureaucratic, the new approach might just help the Navy land its desired Uclass fleet even as the military and intelligence sectors enter a long-term austere budget environment.
Speaking of austerity, the full effect of the 2011 Budget Control Act and its annual sequestration limits is likely to force the Pentagon to take a major near-term hit in its research, development and procurement accounts for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.
Finally, NASA is rolling out a new “strategic vision” for aeronautics that focuses civil aviation research on six themes. But with no new money, work that does not align with the main thrusts will be reduced. The strategy is based on understanding emerging global trends, including new competitors for U.S.
Meanwhile, the Transportation Department is working to designate permanent areas of the Arctic where small UAVs can operate 24/7 for research and commercial purposes, with the first approved operations coming this summer. The Arctic airspace comes on top of six congressionally mandated domestic test centers the FAA is racing to identify in a closely watched announcement expected by the end of this year. So far, 25 potential centers in 24 states have submitted proposals for the sites, Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari told the AUVSI conference.
Spacecraft manufacturers in Europe and the U.S. are finding new business in Brazil's emerging satellite market, with Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy, and Palo Alto, Calif.-based Space Systems/Loral (SSL) tapped in recent weeks to build new commercial spacecraft. Brazil, the world's seventh-largest economy, is expected to spend roughly $2 billion between 2012-15 on new civil and military space initiatives.
Science managers have conceded failure in attempting to restore the Kepler Space Telescope to full functionality, and will focus on what the telescope can do with only two of its four reaction wheels working. Designed to find extra-solar planets by detecting the faint flicker in light from distant stars when planets pass in front of them, Kepler lost the pointing accuracy it needs for the task when a second wheel failed in May.
COMMERCIAL CREW: NASA says it will spend $55 million in fiscal 2014 to fund new milestone payments to the three companies developing commercial crew transport vehicles under the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) effort. Boeing is due to receive a $20 million payment for a spacecraft safety review in July 2014, while SpaceX will receive the same amount for a Dragon parachute test in November of this year.
NASA’s budget-constrained approach to the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) faces an array of obstacles that could jeopardize key flight test plans and leave the U.S. unable to place astronauts on the surface of planetary bodies well into the next decade at best, according to a new assessment from the agency’s inspector general.
Virgin Galactic has signed up 625 individuals for its planned suborbital spaceflights, lining up revenue of at least $125 million, in what CEO George Whitesides asserts is a strong sign of the excitement and potential of commercial space ventures.
Virgin Galactic has signed up 625 individuals for its planned suborbital spaceflights, lining up revenue of at least $125 million, in what CEO George Whitesides asserts is a strong sign of the excitement and potential of commercial space ventures.
LOGAN, Utah — Small satellites, including tiny cubesats, are gaining wider acceptance across NASA as growing spacecraft capabilities interact with declining budgets. At the annual small satellite conference at Utah State University here, Space Technology Associate Administrator Michael Gazarik outlined the agency’s efforts to stretch its $600 million in funds by using and supporting the smallsat community.
MIDWAY POINT: NASA’s $1.1 billion Juno mission reached the midpoint in its circuitous, 1.76 billion-mi. journey to Jupiter on Aug. 12. With an anticipated arrival at Jupiter of July 4, 2016, the spacecraft will maneuver into a polar orbit to probe the structure and atmosphere below the cloud cover and search for evidence of a solid core. Juno was launched on Aug. 5, 2011, and will fly past the Earth in October of this year for a gravity boost.
A NASA-assembled Science Definition Team (SDT) is backing a Europa lander as the centerpiece for a U.S. mission to assess the habitability of the ice-covered Jovian moon. Top lander mission priorities should include an investigation of the composition and chemistry of the ocean beneath Europa’s vast ice shell; characterization of the thickness, uniformity and dynamics of the ice layer; and studies of Europa’s human-scale geology.
A budget crunch brought on by sequestration has pressured the U.S. Air Force to discontinue operations of its Space Fence, which has been surveilling objects in space since 1961. The Air Force Space Surveillance System (AFSSS), dubbed the Space Fence (and formerly operated by the Navy), consists of three transmitters and six receivers designed to form a radar line, or fence, across the 33rd parallel along the southern U.S.
Visiona Tecnologia Espacial S.A. has selected satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy and launch services provider Arianespace of Evry, France, to build and launch a geostationary broadband satellite system for the government of Brazil. Sao Jose dos Campos-based Visiona, a joint venture between Embraer and Telebras, was established to integrate Brazil’s Geostationary Satellite Defense and Strategic Communications (SGDC) system in support of the government’s National Broad Band Program (PNBL) and strategic defense communications.
LOGAN, Utah — The global groundswell of cubesat projects promises to generate more data than the ad hoc communications systems originally devised for the tiny spacecraft can handle, and the community is working on how to accommodate the flow. The issue is expected to become more critical as the short-lived cubesats launched by universities, government labs and private companies worldwide give way to swarms of tiny spacecraft carrying cameras, telescopes and other high-data sensors.
LOGAN, Utah - ATK will develop and build the largest composite case solid-fuel rocket motors ever flown for the planned Stratolaunch Systems Air-Launch Vehicle (ALV), which will drop from the largest aircraft ever built to orbit payloads as heavy as 15,000 lb. (Image: Stratolaunch)
HOUSTON — Michael Foale, long NASA’s most senior active astronaut, has retired from the space agency after three decades and a half-dozen spaceflights. One of them—a 145-day flight to Russia’s former Mir space station in 1997—was interrupted by a harrowing collision with an out-of-control Progress cargo capsule. During his 2003-04 command of the eighth expedition to the International Space Station, Foale became the first American to accumulate a year in space on his way to logging a pre-retirement total of 375 days.
