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In a vote of confidence for the fledgling commercial space industry, NASA has awarded contracts that could total $3.5 billion to two companies that plan to build rockets and ferry supplies to the International Space Station. The companies, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation, could begin launches as soon as 2010 to help fill the gap between the space shuttle’s expected retirement and the introduction of NASA’s next-generation rocket, the Ares I. The companies beat out traditional NASA contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin to snag the contracts.

Experts say that giving a contract to the young company SpaceX is a particularly bold bet. SpaceX, the plan’s linchpin because it is intended to begin the service, carries a relatively short pedigree as a government contractor and can point to only one successful launch, after three failures, of a smaller version of its Falcon rocket intended to supply the space station. Orbital Sciences is an established, midsize aerospace contractor but lacks a proven track record for the revamped version of the Taurus rocket it will use to supply the station [The Wall Street Journal, subscription required].

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The scrappy space start-up Xcor Aerospace is ready to begin selling tickets to tourists who have a hankering to soar 37 miles up to the edge of space, the company announced today. It also presented its first paying customer, whom they hope to send up in 2011: Danish investment banker Per Wimmer, who will pay $95,000 for his suborbital flight. Wimmer seems enthusiastic about Xcor’s plans, but he’s certainly hedging his bet. He is so keen to leave earth’s atmosphere that he has bought another two tickets to space, one with Virgin Galactic and one with rival firm Space Adventures. “It will be a real race to see which of them goes up first - but if it is Xcor, I will become the first affordable space tourist,” he said [Daily Mail].

In the small world of private space companies, Xcor is considered a cheap, no-frills provider. The announced ticket price is about half the $200,000 cost of a suborbital flight aboard Virgin Galactic’s deluxe SpaceShip Two. That vehicle is expected to bring six passengers aloft at a time, and may let them float around the cabin during the five minutes of weightlessness they’ll experience at the apogee of their flight, 62 miles above the earth’s surface. In contrast, Xcor’s small suborbital vehicle, the Lynx, is a two-seater, and the one paying passenger will stay strapped into the copilot’s seat.

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One of the teams competing for the $20 million top prize in the Google Lunar X Prize has announced its plans for an ambitious series of moon missions, beginning with a proposed trip to the historic Apollo 11 landing site. The team, Astrobotic Technology Inc., wants to send a rover to Tranquility Base in May 2010 to see how the relics left behind by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have weathered over the 40 years.

The proposal has sparked a debate over whether new rovers can be trusted to not disturb the hallowed ground. Astrobotic Tech says its rover will land far from the Apollo 11 site and will be able to recognize and circumvent footprints and artifacts on the lunar surface, but not everyone shares this optimism. [Space policy expert] John Logsdon … believes the team should first perform trial runs on Earth. “I’d like to see them demonstrate their ability to do a precision landing someplace else before they try it next to the Apollo 11 site,” Logsdon says. “You wouldn’t have to be very far off to come down on top of the flag or something dramatic like that” [Seed].

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Space startup company Armadillo Aerospace won the $350,000 prize on Friday in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, proving that a private company has the know-how to build a craft capable of ferrying supplies or astronauts around the lunar surface. At the X Prize event in New Mexico, Armadillo’s craft won the Level One Challenge when it successfully lifted off and climbed vertically 160 feet, scooted sideways in the air for more than 90 seconds and touched down on a landing pad; finally, the craft had to refuel and make the return journey.

The challenge is meant to encourage private space companies to literally aim for the moon with their technology, and X Prize officials called Armadillo’s triumph a validation of that approach. Peter Diamandis, X Prize Foundation CEO, said: “The incredible legacy of Armadillo is their ability to fly over and over again in a low-cost fashion. They actually build the vehicle, fly it, see what happens, and make the repairs. They can iterate multiple times in a couple of days…. It’s really the garage rocket scientist approach to low-cost reliable vehicles. I think it’s something that the larger companies and the government should be learning from” [SPACE.com].

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This morning, the Russian spacecraft Soyuz successfully docked with the International Space Station, and space tourist Richard Garriott was welcomed as part of the 18th space station crew. Garriott, who reportedly paid $30 million for a 10-day stay at the outpost, is the son of a former NASA astronaut and longed to follow in his father’s footsteps, but was prevented from training as an astronaut because of his poor eyesight. After making his fortune as a video game designer he brokered passage to orbit through the company Space Adventures, which arranges trips with Russia’s space agency.

Garriott’s father, Owen, applauded as he watched the docking from Russian Mission Control outside Moscow. “I’m pleased everything is going smoothly. It’s looking great and they are starting off on a fascinating new adventure…. There was not a lot of nervousness today or during the launch. We were confident it would go well,” he said [AP]. At the space station Garriott met Russian cosmonaut Yuri Volkov, who was the first man to follow his father into space.

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The private space company Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, successfully launched a rocket into orbit on Sunday, marking a major milestone in the growth of privately funded space ventures. The achievement followed three failed launches of the Falcon 1 rocket over the past two years.

“That was frickin’ awesome,” Elon Musk, SpaceX’s millionaire founder and chief executive officer, told cheering employees…. “There were a lot of people who thought we couldn’t do it … but, you know, as the saying goes, ‘The fourth time’s the charm,’” he said after the rocket soared into orbit from its launch pad on Omelek Island, 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean [MSNBC].

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In a strange side effect of Russia’s invasion of Georgia this weekend, the U.S. may lose access to Russia’s Soyuz spacecrafts that were expected to ferry NASA astronauts to the International Space Station after the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2010. Florida Senator Bill Nelson says that because of Russia’s new aggression, the U.S. Congress may refuse to pass an exemption required to let NASA buy services from Russia.

Under a law known as the Iran Non-Proliferation Act, the United States is banned from buying space technology from Russia unless the president determines Russia is taking steps to prevent the proliferation of nuclear and missile technology to Iran. Congress waived the ban in 2005, allowing NASA to enter into a $719 million contract with the Russians for use of the Soyuz through 2011 [CNN]. But an extension of the waiver needs to be passed to guarantee access to the Space Station after 2011.

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In a major disappointment for the young industry of commercial space flight, one of the leading companies, SpaceX, failed to send its rocket into orbit in a test flight on Saturday. The company said the spacecraft, the Falcon 1, had a successful liftoff, but went astray about two minutes into its flight when the main cargo-carrying component failed to separate from the booster rocket. It was the third successive launch failure for the company: The first Falcon 1 launch, in March 2006, failed about a minute into its ascent because of a fuel line leak. A second rocket, launched in March 2007, made it to space but was lost about five minutes after launching [The New York Times].

The malfunction casts doubts on the ability of private space companies to provide transport services for NASA during the five years between the retirement of the space shuttle fleet and the completion of NASA’s next generation rocket system, which is not expected to be ready until 2015. NASA has invested hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars as part of a partnership with SpaceX to develop the first commercially-operated rocket designed to take cargo to the space station. If SpaceX can’t execute a successful launch soon, those plans could start to fall apart, prompting Congress and the government to re-evaluate SpaceX’s ability to play a major role in space [Orlando Sentinel].

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A rocket-powered plane trailing a bright blaze of flame streaked across the Wisconsin sky yesterday, as spectators at the EAA AirVenture air show got the first glimpse of a new sport called rocket racing. But in a setback, the Rocket Racing League wasn’t able to send two rockets soaring into the sky to race against each other as hoped, as the Federal Aviation Administration is still in the process of approving the second aircraft.

[T]he Rocket Racing League is aimed at melding human spaceflight with NASCAR-like competitions in the sky. The racers are designed to belch 15-foot (4.5-meter) flames from their engines that can be easily seen by spectators, and carry limited amounts of rocket fuel to fly through a three-dimensional aerial race course [SPACE.com]. League officials hope to eventually let onlookers follow the planes’ progress through the looping flight path by projecting videos from cockpit cameras onto huge screens, and are also hoping to build a computer game in which players could race against the real pilots.

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At an aircraft hangar deep in the Mojave Desert this morning, the space tourism company Virgin Galactic unveiled one of the crafts that will boost paying customers up to the edge of space. Called the “WhiteKnight Two” by British tycoon Richard Branson, the vehicle will act as a mothership by flying to 48,000 feet with a smaller spacecraft slung between its twin fuselages. Then the spacecraft, SpaceShip Two, will detach and fire its rocket engines to take the six passengers the rest of the way up.

A crowd of engineers, dignitaries and space enthusiasts gathered inside a Mojave Desert hangar for the unveiling countdown. As the hangar door flew open, White Knight Two appeared outside under the sunny desert sky with Branson and American aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan waving from the cabin. White Knight Two, billed as the world’s largest all-carbon-composite aircraft, is “one of the most beautiful and extraordinary aviation vehicles ever developed,” Branson said [AP].

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When the private space company SpaceX launches its Falcon 1 rocket at the end of July, it will bring an intriguing experiment into orbit: a small NASA satellite that could be maneuvered through space with an attached “solar sail.” The sail would be powered by photons from the sun hitting the reflective surface, a series of tiny impacts that can provide a boost in the frictionless void of space.

In a video, NASA scientists show off a satellite about the size and shape of a shoebox with four masts that spring out to support the sail, which measures 100 square feet when unfurled. If the sail is successfully deployed, NASA will experiment with using the sail to control the satellite’s altitude and orbital maneuvering.

To understand this technology’s potential, consider that it took the Voyager probes 30 years to get to the edge of the solar system where they are still hurtling outward further every day. Although slower to get started, a solar sail could catch up with a Voyager spacecraft in a single decade [Wired News].

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Against the classic backdrop of New York City’s Explorers Club, a brash entrepreneurial space company held a press conference today to announce its latest customers, who have pledged to pay exorbitant prices to take pleasure cruises to space. In a sign that the space tourism market is taking off, the company’s executives also declared that business is so strong that they’re leasing more seats from their partner, the Russian space agency.

The company, Space Adventures, is playing up the scientific and educational possibilities of each mission, seemingly trying to dispel the notion that astronomically wealthy folks are spending bushels of money just to take pretty pictures of Earth from the International Space Station.

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