What’s the News: With NASA’s last shuttle launch slated for July 8, the news is filled with retrospectives on the shuttle program. And a few of them make this shrewd point: even though the US has no replacement program, even though the vehicles allowed the construction of the International Space Station…good riddance.
What’s the News: In long space flights, such as a mission to Mars, astronauts will have more time during which they could get injured or sick. And the same apparently goes for the medicine aboard spaceships: According to a NASA-funded study, medicines degrade faster in space than they do on Earth. As the researchers conclude in their paper, “this information can facilitate research for the development of space-hardy pharmaceuticals and packaging technologies.”
The Ares I rocket, scrapped during President Obama‘s overhaul of NASA, may be making a comeback. Two rocket-makers say that they have reached a plan to salvage the design of Ares I and use it to compete in the private competition to provide post-shuttle space taxi service to NASA.
The partners are Alliant Techsystems of Minneapolis (ATK) and the European company Astrium, which builds Ariane 5 rockets to carry satellites into space. Today they are announcing their collaboration on the new 300-foot rocket.
The new rocket, named Liberty, would be much cheaper than the Ares I, because the unfinished NASA-designed upper stage of the Ares I would be replaced with the first stage of the Ariane 5, which has been launched successfully 41 consecutive times. The lower stage of the Liberty, a longer version of the shuttle booster built by ATK, would be almost unchanged from the Ares I. [The New York Times]
To truly go ahead with the project, the two companies will need to snag at least some of the $200 million in funding NASA is set to give next month to private companies developing space taxi technology. Giants like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, as well as newer private space companies like SpaceX, are all competing for these dollars and contracts.
Good news, solar sail enthusiasts: the NASA experimental spacecraft that was feared to be a dud sprang into life last week.
NanoSail-D was launched aboard a small satellite in December; once the satellite was in orbit the engineers back on Earth ordered the cargo door opened, and waited for NanoSail-D to pop out as planned. But the solar sail craft remained stubbornly inside the cargo bay. As weeks passed with no action, NASA’s hopes for the craft sunk.
But last Wednesday, NASA announced that NanoSail-D had spontaneously emerged.
“We knew that the door opened and it was possible that NanoSail-D could eject on its own,” Mark Boudreaux, FASTSAT project manager at the Marshall Center, said in a press release. “What a pleasant surprise this morning when our flight operations team confirmed that NanoSail-D is now a free flyer.” [CNN]
UPDATE: SpaceX just announced via Twitter that the Dragon successfully splashed down in the Pacific: “SpaceX is the first commercial company to reenter a spacecraft from space!”
Liftoff! As I write this, the Dragon capsule by private space company SpaceX is orbiting the Earth, having been blasted successfully in space by the company’s Falcon 9 rocket.
The rise to orbit served as a test run for future resupply flights to the International Space Station. Before today’s launch, SpaceX’s millionaire founder, Elon Musk, observed that a successful ascent would demonstrate that the Dragon could reach the space station, even if it didn’t later re-enter the atmosphere and make its scheduled splashdown in the Pacific. [MSNBC]
Shortly—a little after 2 p.m. Eastern—the capsule is scheduled to conclude its orbits of the planet and attempt reentry. If SpaceX is successful it will become the first private company to accomplish what only government space agencies have achieved to this point. This test is unmanned. But if it and others succeed, SpaceX hopes it will someday soon be blasting humans into space in preparation for trips to the ISS.
The rocket is a pipsqueak compared with the space shuttle it will partially replace – measuring 157 feet with the capsule and weighing 735,000 pounds. The much larger shuttle was needed to fly parts up to the $100 billon international space station, but the fleet is being retired because of its age and because its job is largely done. [Washington Post]
SpaceX’s Twitter feed has links to images from Dragon’s on-board camera. We’ll update you when the capsule attempts its reentry.
Related Content:
80beats: SpaceX Gets First Commercial Permit to Make Orbital Round-Trips
80beats: Gallery: Boeing Joins Start-up Companies in the Private Space Race
80beats: SpaceX Success! Falcon 9 Rocket Launches Into Orbit
DISCOVER: Launching Into the Age of Private Spaceflight
DISCOVER: NASA Braces for Course Correction
MIT may have found the answer to astronauts’ bone loss in space: really, really tight suits.
The new suit — the Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit — aims to mimic the effect of gravity on the body. The tight catsuit wouldn’t look out of place in a superhero comic. It features stirrups that hook over the feet and it is purposefully cut too short so that it stretches over the body when worn, pulling the wearer’s shoulders down. The aim is to make sure the legs experience greater force than the torso, just as they do on Earth. [Wired UK]
The Man Vehicle Lab at MIT developed the skin-tight apparel. The researchers are testing it out aboard parabolic flights—those airplane rides that simulate weightlessness—to see if it succeeds in mitigating the harmful health effects of life in zero-G.
Finally, after spending much of 2010 sparring over the future direction of NASA, Congress approved the space agency’s reauthorization bill (pdf) last night. It was not a moment too soon, as the new fiscal year begins tomorrow.
Over at Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait documents the reactions of Congressional representatives, and that unsavory feeling of watching the sausage get made in Congress. Here are the basics of the bill, which President Obama is expected to sign.
Money
The measure covers the next three years, appropriating $19 billion to NASA for 2011 and slightly more over the next two years, adding up to about $58 billion through 2013.
Along with the reauthorization bill, the House also passed a continuing resolution to grant NASA the money to get moving. But Congress doesn’t reconvene from its current break until after the November elections, and that’s when they’ll have to pass appropriations to actually get NASA this money.
Space Shuttle
The program is still going away, and sooner rather than later. The Congressional compromise tacked on one additional shuttle flight to the last two that currently remain. But after that, it’s curtains.
With the end of that program, scores of jobs at NASA and its contractors will be lost. In fact, on Oct. 1 nearly 1,400 shuttle workers will be laid off at NASA contractor United Space Alliance – a joint venture by Boeing and Lockheed Martin. [Space.com]
NASA this week made what may be one of the last decisions it will ever make about the space shuttle program, selecting a backup crew in case it needs to make a rescue mission for the last scheduled shuttle flight in February. While the space shuttle’s close draws nearer, the race to replace it gets stronger.
Now Boeing has entered the fray, unveiling the design of a spacecraft it will build for the task of taking astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The ship could be ready by 2015. Boeing joins both the companies trying to build crafts to meet NASA’s needs and those of space tourists who dream of leaving the planet.
Here’s a (non-comprehensive) refresher:
1. Boeing
Boeing’s ship would be called the Crew Space Transportation-100, and would carry seven passengers. Like all the private space competing to carry NASA astronauts, Boeing is competing for NASA money. It won $18 million this February for the project, making it one of five companies to get seed money at that time.
Its venture is also a collaboration with Space Adventures, a space tourism firm. If NASA chooses to send up only four astronauts at a time, that leaves three empty seats.
If NASA chooses Boeing’s spaceship for the job, Vienna, Va.-based Space Adventures will sell the open seats when they are available. Space Adventures has organized eight trips to the space station for seven space enthusiasts on a three-person Soyuz rocket owned by the Russian government. [Los Angeles Times]
2. Sierra Nevada
DISCOVER’s September cover story followed the dreamers at Sierra Nevada who are behind the Dream Chaser space vehicle. Their design is actually taken from an experimental one called the HL-20, which NASA investigated as a possible space shuttle replacement or space station rescue vehicle before tabling the idea. The Dream Chaser relies on another piece of NASA tech to get it into orbit: the proven Atlas V rocket.
Sierra Nevada received $20 million from NASA this year to develop the reusable craft.
Breaking free of the the Earth’s gravity and floating in zero-G: It’s certainly a thrill for those who get to experience it, either through traveling to space or simulating the journey. All good things, though, must come in moderation. Too much time free from the grip of gravity and we turn into weak-muscled wimps, which is a huge hurdle for hopes to travel to Mars or deep into space.
Robert Fitts wanted to know just how quickly the lack of resistance on one’s muscles makes them out-of-shape and atrophied. So his team tested nine astronauts before and then just after their six-months stays aboard the International Space Station. The study appears this week in the Journal of Physiology.
Saturday night just before 8 p.m. Eastern time, some 200 miles above the Earth’s surface, a circuit breaker tripped: No one on board the International Space Station is in danger, but the outpost is now one cooling loop down. NASA said in a statement that they are planning an emergency spacewalk to fix this part of the station’s cooling system later this week.
The cooling loop moderates the station’s temperature and regulates other station avionics controls, by keeping cooling ammonia circulating through it. Without any cooling system, the three Americans and three Russians currently on board might find conducting research difficult:
According to NASA figures, without thermal controls the ISS’s sun-facing side would roast at 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 Celsius), while the outpost’s dark side would plunge to some minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit (-157 Celsius). A statement posted some years ago on NASA’s website suggested: “There might be a comfortable spot somewhere in the middle of the Station, but searching for it wouldn’t be much fun!” [AFP]
Virgin Galactic’s newest spacecraft has taken to the skies in its first successful test flight. Billionaire founder Richard Branson unveiled and christened the VSS Enterprise (previously called SpaceShipTwo) in December, and yesterday it soared 45,000 feet for about three hours above the Mojave Desert in California.
That altitude pales in comparison to Branson’s goal. When Virgin Galactic is ready for a true flight, the Enterprise and its carrier vehicle will fly to even higher heights, where the Enterprise will separate and blast off on its own. The craft will climb to about 60 miles above the Earth’s surface. At that suborbital altitude, passengers will experience weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth. The price for the experience: $200,000 [Los Angeles Times]. Despite the steep price tag, more than 300 people have already signed up for their chance to reach space. CNN reports that 80,000 are on the waiting list, so even if you consider 200 grand a pittance, you might have to wait.
Enterprise was designed and built by Burt Rutan, founder of Mojave-based Scaled Composites, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Northrop Grumman [Reuters]. Test flights continue through next year, and Branson wants to begin commercial operations in 2012.
Related Content:
80beats: Virgin Galactic Unveils New Rocket for (Super-Rich) Space Tourists
80beats: Virgin Galactic Unveils Its New Space Tourism Rocket (Enterprise’s carrier vehicle)
DISCOVER: SpaceShipOne Opens Private Rocket Era
DISCOVER: Space Travel For Every Budget
DISCOVER: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Living in Space
Bad Astronomy: How Safe Is Space Tourism?
Image: Virgin Galactic/Mark Greenberg
Elon Musk’s Falcon 9 rocket didn’t get off the ground this weekend, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t cause for excitement. Musk’s company SpaceX completed a successful test-fire of the rocket’s engines, paving the way for a possible real launch in less than a month.
Saturday’s 3.5-second ‘static’ firing of the Falcon’s nine kerosene and liquid oxygen-burning motors took place on a refurbished oceanside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida [ABC News]. Success came on the second try for SpaceX. The company’s first attempt came last Tuesday, but launch technicians aborted with two seconds to go. Now the company has passed the hot fire test, and it says the real Falcon 9 launch could happen as early as April 12. However, the accomplishment won’t come easy: SpaceX’s previous rocket, the Falcon 1, took four attempts before it achieved complete success.
The Obama administration’s new budget may come in at a hulking $3.8 trillion, but one thing it doesn’t include is continued funding for the Constellation program. The program, which was intended to continue the work of the aging space shuttles, will get the ax if Congress approves the President’s plan. This also means that NASA would abandon its goal of returning to the moon by 2020.
Obama’s budget ends work on the shuttle follow-on vehicle, known as Orion, as well as a pair of rockets developed to fly astronauts to the space station, the moon and other destinations in the solar system. “We are proposing canceling the program, not delaying it,” Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters [Reuters]. The announcement had been some time in coming: The Augustine panel that Obama convened last year to review human spaceflight concluded that Constellation couldn’t succeed without $3 billion in additional annual funding, and rumors broke out last week that the President’s budget would kill the program for good.
In place of the Constellation program’s Ares rockets and Orion crew capsule, Obama’s plan calls for funneling money to private companies that are jockeying for NASA contracts. The Washington Post reports that the plan would funnel $6 billion to support private space companies developing a vehicle to ferry astronauts back and forth from the International Space Station. Companies expected to seek the new space taxi business include United Launch Alliance, a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin that launches rockets for theUnited States Air Force, and Space Exploration Technologies, a start-up company led by Elon Musk, who founded PayPal [ The New York Times]. The plan would also extend the life of the space station until 2020.
Commercial Spaceflight Federation president Bretton Alexander was understandably giddy at the prospect of private companies taking center stage. “At a time when job creation is the top priority for our nation, a commercial crew programme will create more jobs per dollar because it leverages millions in private investment and taps the potential of systems that serve both government and private customers,” he said [BBC News].
Yesterday, lunar enthusiasts and space buffs gathered to mark the 39th anniversary of the first human steps on the moon. At NASA’s new Lunar Science Institute, the assembled crowd was also preparing for a three-day conference devoted to planning the next phase of lunar exploration. NASA hopes to return humans to the moon by 2020, but they may have some competition in this space race do-over; both entrepreneurs and other space agencies are also stepping up their activities.
At the gathering at Ames, NASA researchers made clear that the goals for the next lunar expedition are ambitious. The United States, they said, needs to focus on creating a permanent presence on the moon, using it as a training platform for missions to Mars and beyond. “We’re going back, and this time we’re going to stay,” S. Pete Worden, director of NASA/Ames, said in remarks opening the lunar science conference. “This is the first step in settling the solar system” [San Jose Mercury News].
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