HOUSTON — The International Space Station crew began to unload cargo from the Russia’s unpiloted Progress 51 resupply capsule on April 26, within hours of an automated docking ultimately unimpeded by a navigation antenna that failed to deploy after liftoff. The freighter, filled with just over three tons of propellant, water, research gear, spare parts and other supplies, eased into the aft docking port of the Russian segment Zvezda service module at 8:25 a.m. EDT.
The first Orbital Sciences Corp. Cygnus commercial cargo carrier is fueled and ready for launch to the International Space Station (ISS), a mission NASA says it can accommodate in late June or early July.
HOUSTON — Russian flight control teams worked to free a rendezvous antenna aboard the Progress 51 supply ship that failed to deploy as commanded after the freighter lifted off early April 24 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station.
Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., will design, manufacture, integrate and test the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) selected by NASA earlier this month for a new all-sky search of habitable zone exoplanets under a $75 million, four-year space agency contract, the company announced April 24.
Launch of the Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares liquid-fueled rocket on April 21 gives NASA a second U.S.-owned vehicle to use in resupplying the International Space Station, vindicating a commercial approach that has been in play through two presidential administrations.
A relatively simple technology originally developed to smooth potentially dangerous vibrations in the defunct Ares I crew launch vehicle is finding its way into the wider world as a way to steady buildings, aircraft, ships and other structures reacting to winds, waves and even earthquakes.
The renowned planetary scientist who chairs the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) says he is happy with two-thirds of the agency’s proposal to capture a small asteroid and nudge it into a high lunar orbit for examination by spacewalking astronauts early in the coming decade.
NEW DELHI — A comet moving toward Mars will not derail India’s first orbiter mission to the red planet, the country’s top scientist says. Preparations are in full swing for the country’s first orbiter mission to Mars, “Maangalyaan,” which is scheduled to be launched Nov. 27. NASA earlier this year announced that a comet is due to pass by Mars in September 2014, roughly the same time India’s Mars orbiter reaches the planet about 400 km (249 mi.) away, raising fears the comet might disturb its mission plans.
SATELLITE CONTROL: Congressional auditors see the U.S. military’s almost $14 billion worth of satellite control networks as ripe for consolidation. In an April 18 report, the Government Accountability Office recommended the Office of the Secretary of Defense direct future defense satellite acquisition programs to create a business case for proceeding with either a dedicated or shared network for that program’s satellite control operations, as well as develop a department-wide, long-term plan for modernizing the Air Force Satellite Control Network.
Metamaterials technology is an emerging field based on the development of tiny, man-made structures that at certain frequencies exhibit acoustic, electromagnetic or optical properties not found in nature.
As he was recently discussing the pivot of U.S. strategic emphasis to the Asia-Pacific region, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter repeated an assertion that the U.S. spends more on defense “than the next 16 largest militaries combined.” While Carter's talking point is more or less technically correct, such a comparison does not indicate what an appropriate level of spending should be. A more useful way to think about U.S.
