The 15th NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) uderwater mission has been terminated early due to threat of damage from Hurricane Rina. The mission started on October 20, already three days delayed due to weather conditions from the intended Oct 17 start date. ISS veteran Shannon Walker commanded the mission, which included participating astronauts from NASA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration [...]
Archive for October, 2011
Future Private Market for Human Spaceflight
On October 26, the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing to provide aerospace companies and NASA an opportunity to testify about progress being made toward the goal of establishing a commercial capability to fly humans to and from low Earth orbit and the long-term non-Government commercial market for private launch services. John Elbon, Boeing CCDev spokesman, presenting [...]
Americans and Russians Drink Different Waters on the ISS
A new shipment of water fromTurin, Italy, is already on the way to quench the thirst of astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station (ISS). Since 2008 the SMAT (Metropolitan Water Company Turin) is supplying the space station with drinking water, truly two different kind of water for the US and Russian segment. Both segments require a very stable water, [...]
Excalibur Almaz Awarded Unfunded SAA
Excalibur Almaz, a company based in the Isle of Man, has been awarded an unfunded Space Act Agreement for a Commercial Crew Development (CCDev)-2 proposal on October 7, 2011. “We’re providing limited technical support consistent with the purpose of the CCDev-2 activity, which is to advance orbital commercial transportation concepts enabling significant progress on maturing the design and development of the system,” [...]
IAA Award to Ram Jakhu
On 2nd October 2011, during the Academy Day Honour Night and Dinner in Cape Town, South Africa, the International Academy of Astronautics awarded the 2011 Social Sciences Book Award to Prof. Ram S. Jakhu for his book on “National Regulation of Space Activities,” published by Springer, 2010. Prof. Jakhu is the Chairman of the IAASS Space Safety Legal and Regulatory [...]
SpaceX Launch Abort System Approved
SpaceX announced the completion of the preliminary design review of the Dragon spacecraft’s launch abort system. Since the end of space shuttle program in summer 2011, NASA depends on Russian Soyuz to ferry astronauts to the ISS, with a cost of about 62 million dollars a seat. This is another important step for USA to regain the possibility of launching [...]
ROSAT reentered atmosphere over Bay of Bengal
Accordint to German space agency DLR and its partners, including NASA, the Roentgen Satellite (ROSAT) reentered the atmosphere over the Bay of Bengal on 23 October 2011 at 03:50 CEST. It is not yet known whether any part of the satellite has reached the ground. Determination of the time and location of re-entry was based on the evaluation of data provided by international partners, [...]
Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle Phase 1 Drop Test
Source NASA: Engineers conducted the first test as part of Phase 1 of the Orion MPCV boilerplate test article at NASA’s Langley Research Center, on Oct. 18. The 18,000-pound (8,165 kg) test article — representative of the Orion Crew Module — was drop tested at a 43-degree relative pitch angle and a 30-degree roll angle and traveled at 27 mph (43 [...]
Living on Tiangong
Source Morris Jones for Space Daily: With China’s first space laboratory, Tiangong 1, settled into orbit, it’s now time to consider the missions that will follow. We’re expecting China to perform two docking tests with the unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft in November this year. If that mission goes well, astronauts will fly to Tiangong 1 in the first half of 2012 aboard [...]
SpaceX is Fixing Software Development Procedures
According to Space News, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is fixing its software development procedures, in order to address some concerns that were raised in the “Summary of Findings of the ISS AC-ASAP Review of SpaceX “Dragon” and Orbital “Cygnus” Logistic Vehicles“, a document released after the August 9 meeting of NASA’s ISS Advisory Committee held at Johnson Space Center, Houston. The [...]
