Only hours after NASA announced the latest winners in its Flight Opportunities Program housed in the Office of the Chief Technologist, researchers announced a major scientific discovery made possible by a similarly brief suborbital launch conducted on a Black Brant sounding rocket on July 11 as part of NASA’s separate Low Cost Access to Space program. The High Resolution Coronal […]
A report in Florida Today indicates that the State of Florida’s plan to secure a long-term commercial spaceport independent from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and the U.S. Air Force Eastern Test Range have been dealt a potentially serious blow. In a letter addressed to Florida Lieutenant Governor Jennifer Carrol, NASA rebuffed Florida’s request to transfer former state land, purchased by NASA in the […]
NASA Glenn recently announced that it has passed the 43,000 hour mark of continuous operation of its NEXT (NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster) ion thruster. Although coverage focused on the long running duration, the more relevent statistic is that NEXT represents a significant advancement over the first generation NSTAR ion thruster which powered Deep Space 1, and is currently accelerating the DAWN mission towards an […]
As spaceship Earth embarks on another trip around the Sun, it’s an appropriate occasion to take a look ahead at the New Year and consider what developments might take place which could change the fundamental cost basis of reaching orbit. Suborbital Space: After seemingly endless delays, 2013 is poised to be the breakout year for the reusable suborbital launch industry. (but […]
Following up on yesterday’s surprise announcement in Space News that the Air Force was setting aside 14 EELV class launch opportunities for competitive bidding starting in 2015, Aviation Week is reporting that a separate but related Air Force launch procurement effort, the Orbital/Suborbital (OSP-3) is making its first two awards to SpaceX. The OSP program is functioning both […]
Switzerland based Sea Launch AG successfully conducted its third mission of the year on Monday, lofting the Eutalsat-70B communications satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit from its floating Ocean Odyssey platform in the Pacific. The launch of the Zenit-3SL rocket, the 34th in the history of the program took place from 154 degrees West longitude along the equator, and followed previous launches in June and August of […]
The continually disappointing state of very small launch vehicle development was dealt another blow November 18th, when NASA notified Space Florida that it would be terminating its role in funding the Nan0-Sat Launch Challenge. The challenge, which was never officially approved, and only progressed as far as choosing a logo and developing a set of draft rules, would have paid […]
A previous version of this article contained erroneous information on several accounts. The corrections, which are significant, are illustrative of the unique approach SpaceX is taking in its Falcon / Dragon system. Innerspace.net originally reported that during a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee, ISS Station Manager Mike Suffredini discussed […]
Korea has announced that the upcoming launch of its Nar0-3 rocket will be further delayed while it awaits the arrival of a new fuel coupler from Russia. The Korean Space Agency (KARI) had hoped to reschedule the launch of the two stage rocket to sometime around November 17, but has yet to receive a firm delivery date on the replacement component, leading to a […]
Scientists from the The University of Alabama-Birmingham, Cal-Tech and iXpressGenes Inc. have all been granted awards for research focusing on protein crystallization aboard the International Space Station by CASIS, the Center for Advancement of Science in Space. The American portion of ISS was designated a U.S. National Laboratory in 2005, and in 2011, CASIS was chosen as the […]
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