While NASA is currently cutting back on outreach and public appearances of all varieties under the barrage of sequestration budget cuts, one group of space enthusiasts is wrapping up an Indiegogo campaign designed to convince Americans just how awesome their space agency is. “We Are the Explorers” is a NASA short that organizers Aerospace Industries Association and Challenger Center for [...]
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Black Sky Training Obtains FAA Approval
Commercial spaceflight took another step forward on March 28 when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) awarded commercial suborbital flight training company Black Sky Training the first ever safety approval for space training. “By establishing a standard protocol for training of the flying public and flight crews, they [the FAA/AST] have signaled the burgeoning space flight industry that nothing but the highest safety [...]
D-Orbit Add-on Deorbits Satellites without Sacrificing Fuel
Luca Rossettini, CEO and co-founder of D-Orbit, a start-up targeting the space debris mitigation market, has always dreamt of going to space. His dream led him from Italy to the US and back, with a revolutionary idea and a reliable business plan on how to deal with satellite disposal. Before starting D-Orbit, Rossettini joined the Italian army as a parachute [...]
Sequestration and Espionage: Public Loses Access to NASA
What happens when the world’s largest space agency gets hit by simultaneous arbitrary budget cuts and accusations of security lapses? It starts pulling up the drawbridges, that’s what. On March 13, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden issued a new policy on NASA personnel travelling to conferences: they can’t. In response to sequestration cuts that went into effect March 1, NASA decided that [...]
Meteor Startles Northeast United States
On Friday, March 22, much of the northeastern US witnessed a fireball shooting low across the sky a little before 8 p.m. EDT. NASA later confirmed the fireball to belong to a meteor, just under one meter in diameter. Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, told reporters that the incident was [...]
US Space Budgets: Three Weeks into Sequestration
After months spent attempting to unravel the US budget knot, Congressional hopes to reach a balanced budget balance were, once more, disappointed last month with the legislature’s failure to pass a budget and prevent sequestration. Funding of federal agencies will stop as of March 27, according to the spending bill approved on October 1, 2012. Governmental agencies like NASA will [...]
ISS to Host Earth Observation Equipment
Observing Earth has always been intrinsic to International Space Station operations, but like crew photography, it did not begin as a formal or scientific exercise. Now ISS crews are requested to take images of certain locations at certain times out of ISS’ window and since 2007 have particularly monitored the polar regions. Other protocols for Earth observation exercises followed. Soon, the atmosphere may be [...]
Columbia and the Day of Remembrance
NASA commemorates its fallen each year in the week that saw the loss of three of its spacecraft. The Day of Remembrance this year will be observed on February 1, 2013, the tenth anniversary of the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia and the seven members of the STS-107 crew: Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael P. Anderson, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel [...]
Spacecraft Duo to Deflect Asteroid
The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to send a pair of spacecraft to a nearby asteroid to investigate potential asteroid deflection methods. The Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA), a part of ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) program will send Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) and Asteroid Impact Monitor (AIM) to the asteroid 65803 Didymos, which is actually a binary [...]
Is China Preparing an Anti-Satellite Test?
U.S. experts think China is preparing to perform another anti-satellite (ASAT) test in January. “The first media report on these rumours appeared in October,” wrote Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists on a blog post dated January 4th. “China’s Ministry of Defence challenged the information in that report, but in November contacts in China told us an announcement about an [...]
