While the 500 customers Virgin Galactic has signed up—at $200,000 each—for a few minutes of microgravity on SpaceShipTwo (SS2) attract the headlines, the company is also seeking a different kind of passenger for its suborbital flights: scientists who are just as eager to buy research space in a box, or even a test tube.
BALLOONING: Near Space Corp. (NSC) is to begin construction this spring on a $6.9 million, 31,000-sq.-ft. commercial high-altitude balloon launch facility at its home base of Tillamook, Ore. NSC is one of seven suborbital flight providers in NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program and the only one not using rockets. The company expects to launch 10 research missions this year to altitudes exceeding 130,000 ft. Depending on their size, NSC’s balloons can support payloads up to 1 ton. NSC’s Eric Byers says the balloons typically have a loiter time of 3 hr.
Planning for the European Space Agency’s 2019 Lunar Lander mission incorporates three-dimensional imaging lidar technology to steer the spacecraft’s descent through the hazards of the ridge and boulder-filled landscape at the Moon’s south pole. Jena-Optronik, of Germany, and NEPTEC, of Canada, are leading parallel development efforts in low-power, minimal-volume lidar hardware for the hazard detection and avoidance function.
Houston – NASA’s emerging plans to consolidate “arc jet” testing of spacecraft thermal protection systems at Ames Research Center at Moffet Field, Calif., by closing a 46-year-old facility at Johnson Space Center in Houston are drawing protests from Texas lawmakers, who believe a dual capability is essential to the nation’s efforts to develop future commercial as well as government piloted and robotic spacecraft.
EXTENSION: NASA has awarded a contract extension and a pair of options worth a potential $46.6 million to Computer Sciences Corp. of Fort Worth for flight line service, maintenance and modifications of agency aircraft based at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Effective March 1, the accord extends a $162.1 million base contract between NASA and Computer Sciences that became effective Sept. 1, 2009.
Palo Alto, Calif. – Virgin Galactic will be able to offer the potential of a “seamless” transition for scientists doing long-term microgravity experiments on the International Space Station and short-term suborbital flights aboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo under an agreement with NanoRacks.
Singapore – Anatoly Perminov, the former director general of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, has downplayed the prospect that Russia will have manned space missions to the Moon. In recent weeks, Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin disclosed that Russian astronauts may land on the Moon in 2020. Perminov, who stepped down last year as director general of Roscosmos and is now deputy director general of the agency’s joint-stock company, Russian Space Systems, was dismissive when asked about the reports.
The spacecraft-conjunction advisories put out by the U.S. Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) are inaccurate and less useful to prevent interference and collisions than the orbit data that satellite operators have started sharing among themselves, according to a top Intelsat executive who has helped set up the operator collaboration.
What will it take to get commercial human spaceflight off the ground? When will it be available and attractive to “the 99%” the Wall Street Occupiers say they represent as well as for the superrich “1%”? A group of academics and “New Space” entrepreneurs say the answers are complicated, but that it won't hurt to have a space traveler with the common touch and a way with words.
PARIS – Following a rough year in 2010, France remained the world’s fourth-largest arms exporter last year, behind the U.S., U.K. and Russia, reporting a 25% boost – from €5.1 billion to €6.5 billion – at the end of 2011. The French armaments agency DGA estimates the world’s top four arms exporters account for 90% of the global military export market, although anemic U.S. and European budgets are helping to stimulate the market entry of new players, including China and South Korea.
LOW AWARDS: NASA has picked Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc. and Sierra Lobo Inc. as the 2011 winners of the George M. Low Awards for contractor quality and performance. Teledyne Brown, of Huntsville, Ala., provides support services in science, operations and maintenance, space systems engineering and other areas to Marshall Space Flight Center, and payload and cargo integration to Johnson Space Center.
Chris Scolese will take over as director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center on March 5, replacing Robert Strain, recently named chief operating officer at Ball Aerospace. Scolese’s NASA-headquarters position as associate administrator will be filled on an acting basis by Robert Lightfoot, currently the director of Marshall Space Flight Center. Gene Goldman, Lightfoot’s deputy, will become acting director of the Alabama center.
LONDON – The U.K. defense establishment may not be adequately recognizing the threat from space weather or weapons-induced electronic magnetic pulse (EMP), a new parliamentary report suggests. “An appearance is given that the [defense ministry] is unwilling to take these threats seriously,” Parliament’s defense committee says in a report entitled “Developing Threats: Electro-Magnetic Pulses.”
Houston – Founders of the Scientific Preparatory Academy for Cosmic Explorers, or SPACE, will preview plans for a four-year undergraduate institution structured to prepare a global student body for careers in space development with real-world experience and classroom instruction during a pair of conferences set for May and July. The formative school, which is patterned after the 25-year-old graduate level International Space University, was chartered on the Isle of Man in January.
Launch of the replacement Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) will be delayed at least into mid-2014 while NASA finds a new launch vehicle and fixes a problem in the spacecraft reaction wheel assemblies. After two launch failures with Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Taurus XL solid-fuel rocket, NASA has decided to try to launch its replacement on another vehicle. Possibilities include the Pegasus XL, Falcon 9, Delta II and Atlas V, according to Jim Norman, director of launch services at NASA headquarters.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association of Atlanta has presented the Archie League Medal of Safety to controllers Kristina Kurtz, Anchorage Tracon; Todd Mariani, Kansas City Center; Matt Reed, Potomac Tracon; Guy Lieser and Steve McGreevy, Chicago Center; Chris Henchey and Ryan Workman, Boston Center; Charlie Rohrer, Denver Center; Ken Greenwood, Josh Haviland and Ryan Herrick, Seattle Tracon; Alvin Kent, Atlanta Center; Frank Fisher and Greg Fleetwood, Corpus Christi Tower/Tracon; and Kevin McLaughlin, Southern California Tracon.
Jeff Chalupa (see photo) has been named general manager-domestic operations for Tulsa, Okla.-based Nordam's transparency division. He was senior director-global engineering and quality for the repair division.
Richard DeFatta has joined Kratos Defense & Security Solutions in San Diego, as VP-engineering support services for the Madison Research Business Unit of the Weapon Systems Solution Div. He was VP of Teledyne Solutions.
Michelle A. Scarpella and Stephen D. Hogan (see photos) have been appointed Falls Church, Va.-based VPs for the F-35 and F/A-18 programs, respectively, for the Northrop Grumman Corp. Scarpella has worked on the B-2, Joint Stars and E-2C Hawkeye programs, and Hogan was EA-18G and EA-6B program director.
R. Scott Rettig has been named chairman and CEO of OTO Melara North America in Washington, succeeding U.S. Navy Adm. (ret.) James Amerault, who will retire. Rettig was chairman and CEO of AgustaWestland North America.
