The International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS) has just published the book “Safety Design for Space Operations” (Elsevier, 2013). The book comes four years after “Safety Design for Space Systems,” a university level textbook recently translated into Chinese. With contributions from more than 40 authors, chosen from among the best in their respective fields, the project was coordinated by IAASS President Tommaso Sgobba, and edited by Dr. Firooz Allahdadi, Isabelle [...]
Post Tagged with: “unmanned”
Russia to Launch 5 Lunar Probes Between 2015 and 2022
According to the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti, Russia’s space research program in the coming decades will be driven by landing planetary missions. “We’ve found our direction, our niche,” said the director of the Institute of Space Research at the Russian Academy of Sciences Lev Zelyony. Russia’s plan consists of sending a succession of five unmanned probes to the [...]
Flying into Volcanoes for Flight Safety
Source: NASA NASA Earth science researchers last month traveled to Turrialba Volcano, near San Jose, Costa Rica, to fly a Dragon Eye unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) — a small electric aircraft equipped with cameras and sensors — into the volcano’s sulfur dioxide plume and over its summit crater, to study Turrialba’s chemical environment. The project is designed to improve the [...]
Swiss Space System May Build Rocket Plane, Spaceport in Europe
Swiss Space System (S3) has announced a plan to build an unmanned rocket plane by 2017 to launch satellites into orbit. “S3 aims to develop, build, certify and operate suborbital space shuttles dedicated to launching small satellites, enabling space access to be made more democratic thanks to an original system with launching costs up to four times less than at present,” [...]
‘Driving’ Satellites: A Complex Undertaking, Not a Cheap Date
By Michael Mackowski I have the privilege of working in the space industry as a power subsystem engineer for Orbital Sciences in Gilbert, Arizona. On February 11, 2013 the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (aka Landsat 8) spacecraft was launched and I was at the NASA Goddard mission operations center monitoring performance of this satellite that Orbital built for NASA and the [...]
Orbital Delivery: Complete Guide to Unmanned Cargo Spacecraft
The International Space Station gets it supplies from an ever-growing array of unmanned cargo ships, including the Japanese HTV, the European ATV, the Russian Progress, and the commercial Dragon that just rendezvoused with ISS after a brief thruster scare. There are yet more on the way, with the next ship to launch being Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus demonstration mission, now that [...]
Exploring Bigelow’s Station Module
After years of concept development and a couple unmanned test runs, Bigelow Aerospace is on the verge of actually puts its inflatable space habitats to work. First up will be the 4 meter long, 3.2 meter diameter, 1,360 kg Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) slated to be launched aboard a Falcon 9 and robotically attached to Node 3 of the [...]
ESA Signs Agreement with NASA to Build Orion Service Module
On January 16, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) signed an agreement whereby ESA will provide the service module for the Orion spacecraft, while NASA and Lockheed Martin will continue building the crew capsule. “NASA’s decision to cooperate with ESA on their exploration program with ESA delivering a critical element for the mission is a strong sign of trust [...]
Russian Energia Won $11 Million Contract for Unmanned Space Lab
RSC Energia (РКК «Энергия»), the largest Russian space corporation has won a 350 million ruble (about $11 million) contract to design the orbital laboratory Oka-T-MKS. The tender was announced by the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) in October and it only received one bid from Energia Corporation. RSC Energia manufactures manned and unmanned spacecraft and it is the principal contractor [...]
Shenzhou-10 to Fly in June 2013
On November 10, the deputy commander-in-chief of China’s manned space program indicated the timing for the country’s next crewed launch. Niu Hongguang told China National Radio that the flight of Shenzhou-10 would take place in June 2013. Hongguang sees the upcoming mission as a precursor to construction of a space lab and a space station. Shenzou-10 will supply the prototype space lab Tiangong-1 and [...]
