Posts tagged space shuttle

A spacecraft orbiting Mars has detected carbon dioxide snow falling on the Red Planet, making Mars the only body in the solar system known to host this weird weather phenomenon.

(Source: futurenow321)

US private company SpaceX will launch its Dragon space freighter on a next resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in October. It will be the first of the company’s 12 commercial flights to the ISS under a 2008 contract with the NASA as the initial successful mission in May was considered a test run. NASA administrator Charles Bolden announced that SpaceX is now fully certified to deliver cargo to the orbital station.  The Dragon is a reusable spacecraft developed by SpaceX to fly cargo to the ISS after NASA retired its space shuttle fleet last year.
NASA also awarded SpaceX a commercial crew development contract in April 2011 to develop a reusable spacecraft to carry up to seven astronauts, or a combination of personnel and cargo, to and from the orbital station.  At present, NASA pays Russia $63 million for every astronaut who flies to the ISS aboard Soyuz spacecraft.

(Source: futurenow321)

Virgin Galactic is proud to announce LauncherOne, a revolutionary new launch vehicle dedicated to enabling dramatically more people and users to benefit from space.

The technology that goes into manufacturing satellites has come a long way since the days of Sputnik and Explorer I. With many satellite components following the Moore’s Law curve of exponential technological improvement, satellites today are able to do so much more with so much less. Innovators in government labs, private companies, and universities have shown the world that even the smallest of satellites can accomplish significant things, and can transform the way we use spacecraft to improve life here on Earth. Small, inexpensive satellites are incredibly appealing both to new entities looking to undertake their first space missions and to established satellite users feeling the reality of fixed or declining budgets. But small satellites cannot reach their full effectiveness without a launch vehicle optimized for their particular needs and capabilities.

Virgin Galactic is dedicated to dramatically reducing the price of getting to space. Already, we’ve built a new generation of reusable spacecraft designed to carry astronauts on suborbital flights; we’re very proud that more than 500 of them have already paid deposits on the experience of a lifetime. Thanks to the support of our customers and our private investors, we’ve built the world’s first commercial spaceline, and have assembled the team and the infrastructure necessary to do so.

Now, we are leveraging that background to build and operate a new vehicle designed to give satellite operators a radically better option for carrying their small satellites into orbit. By using much of the same infrastructure originally created to support SpaceShipTwo—in particular, our unique, high-performance mothership, the WhiteKnightTwo –we can keep prices low while accommodating customer needs for launch availability and flexibility. It’s a winning combination, and we are thrilled to bring it to market.

Credit: http://www.virgingalactic.com/launcherone

(Source: futurenow321)

Could some really great cupcakes be enough to send Americans back to the Moon?
More than a dozen US universities are hosting events on Saturday to urge support for the cash-strapped space agency, which faces major cuts to its planetary programs in fiscal year 2013.
Ranging from shoe shines to car washes and bake sales, the events are not actually designed to raise money to send to NASA, the organizers stressed.
“Our goal is not to raise money but to raise awareness and to have people tell Congress to put the funds back to last year’s funding level,” said Cindy Conrad, an assistant at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
NASA’s planetary programs are expected to be cut by more than $300 million dollars in President Barack Obama’s next budget, and the cost-cutting has already axed a major Mars project with Europe.
The US space agency has faced harsh criticism in recent years by slashing a program to return Americans to the Moon and retiring the space shuttle fleet in 2011 without a replacement vehicle to take astronauts to space.

(Source: futurenow321)

Sierra Nevada Corp.’s (SNC) Dream Chaser Space System (DCSS) has completed its preliminary design review (PDR).  This review was the third major system-level review for the DCSS as part of NASA’s commercial crew development round 2 (CCDev2) program.

SNC’s PDR included a review of all major elements of its orbital flight program including the Dream Chaser orbital crew vehicle, the Atlas V launch vehicle, and Dream Chaser mission and ground systems.  The entire design, architecture and performance of the Dream Chaser Space System was reviewed and evaluated by NASA and the DCSS partner companies. It was determined that the SNC preliminary design for DCSS is complete.

The Program’s PDR came during the same week when the Dream Chaser vehicle began its flight test program, illustrating SNC’s approach of concurrent design and development.  On May 29, the Dream Chaser Program completed the successful first flight of Dream Chaser full scale vehicle.  The flight met all the pre-established flight test goals and is a moving towards preparing the vehicle for an autonomous approach and landing test scheduled for later this summer.

 The Dream Chaser is a crewed suborbital and orbital vertical-takeoff, horizontal landing lifting-body space plane that was developed by SpaceDev, a subsidiary of SNC. The Dream Chaser is designed to carry seven people to and from low earth orbit. The vehicle is designed to be launched vertically on an Atlas V rocket and land horizontally on conventional runways.

The Dream Chaser was publicly announced in September of 2004 as a candidate for the NASA vision for space exploration, and then for the commercial orbital transportation services program. The DCSS is being developed as part of NASA’s venture into commercially provided crew transport.

Also  Sierra Nevada will utilize Virgin Galactic to market Dream Chaser commercial services and will also use “Virgin’s WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft as a platform for drop trials of the Dream Chaser atmospheric test vehicle” in 2012

(Source: futurenow321)

In this tightly cropped image, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from Florida. This image was made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had grappled the Hubble Space Telescope. The photographer made this image using a solar-filtered Takahashi 5-inch refracting telescope and a Canon 5D Mark II digital camera.

(Source: futurenow321)

Elon Musk is the founder, chief executive and chief designer of SpaceX. The company managed to overcome a series of technical and financial crises and made history Friday by attaching the first private spacecraft to the international space station.

Amazon.com Founder Jeff Bezos runs Blue Origin, a start-up targeting space station runs. An unnamed spaceship developed by Blue Origin suffered a major failure during a test flight in the summer of 2011.

In December, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen indicated he is prepared to commit $200 million or more of his wealth to build the world’s largest airplane as a mobile platform for launching satellites at low cost. The novel, high-risk project was conceived by renowned aerospace engineer.

British billionaire and playboy Sir Richard Branson years ago entered the fray, creating Virgin Galactic, an extension of his well-known brand that intends to take well-heeled customers to the edge of space, but also foresees launching satellites and carrying experiments.

Planetary Resources Inc., a start-up with backers including Google co-founders Larry Page, left, Eric Schmidt, right, and Ross Perot Jr., not shown, unveiled in April a plan to send robotic spacecraft to remotely mine asteroids.

Robert Bigelow is the billionaire founder of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain and the president of Bigelow Aerospace. In the spring of 2012, Boeing completed a parachute drop test of the Crew Space Transportation-1000 spacecraft. Mr. Bigelow plans to use the CST-100 spacecraft for transporting people to and from his expandable modules developed for space habitation.

(Source: futurenow321)