Korean manufacturing giant Samsung may be adding its name to the list of companies proposing massive satellite constellations to meet the seemingly insatiable need for internet broadband, particularly in parts of the world where wired solutions are problematic. In a technical paper, Samsung President for R&D America, Farooq Khan details a proposal for a LEO constellation […]
The twin failures of both the Orbital Sciences Antares and SpaceX Falcon launch vehicles have made for a challenging 10 months for NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program, a period further complicated by the loss of a Russian Progress cargo ship between the two U.S. accidents. At the same time, the program’s core philosophy of […]
It’s certainly not warp drive, but one of the more exciting concepts for deep space propulsion is a making a significant step towards development with the following press release from Ad Astra Rocket Company. (comments follow) PRESS RELEASE 081015, August 10, 2015 Ad Astra Rocket Company and NASA move to execution phase of NextSTEP VASIMR® […]
Yesterday, InnerSpace focused on air-launched solutions to the growing demand for small satellite launches. And while winged rockets may conjure up fond memories for those who grew up reading classic science fiction from the golden era, an announcement from New Zealand born but LA based NewsSpace company Rocket Lab suggests that conventional vertically launched two-stage […]
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station participated in a surprising space first today. The event, eating food grown in space, was surprising not because it happened, but rather because it took this far into to space age, and in particular into the lifespan of the ISS for it to happen in the first place. Carried […]
The prospects for air-launched, lower cost access to space appear to be soaring higher all the time. On July 27th, a defense contracts notification website reported that Boeing has received a contract modification for its Experimental Spaceplane, XS-1 award. Managed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the XS-1 program is seeking to […]
InnerSpace Opinion “He who pays the piper, calls the tune.” On Wednesday, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden sent a letter to Congress informing America’s elected representatives that due to consistent under-funding of the Commercial Crew program since its inception, his agency would be forking over an additional $490 million to Russia to pay for Soyuz crew […]
Among the long list of major miseries and minor annoyances which come with air travel in the current era is this one supremely irritating fact; once you finally get into the air, you are not travelling one bit faster than a passenger first boarding a Boeing 707 in October, 1958. In fact, in some cases […]
In talking with attendees at the NewSpace 2015 conference which was held in Mid-July in San Jose, California, two emerging themes became clear. The first is that the cubesat revolution is beginning in earnest, and it offers the potential for fundamentally changing how we go about the process of conducting space exploration. From miniaturized cryo-coolers […]
Yet another positive aspect of NASA’s highly successful New Horizons probe is the fact that it is focusing attention on one of the biggest gaps in fulfilling some of the space agency’s long term plans; the lack of a coherent policy regarding space nuclear power. New Horizons, like Cassini at Saturn and the Curiosity rover […]
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