September 2008 Archives

Here at the 59th International Astronautical Congress, organised by the UK's British Interplanetary Society and taking place here in Glasgow, Scotland, Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn took a few minutes out of his schedule to talk to Flight about his company's latest developments and when the public might see WhiteKnightTwo up close

Click through to the extended blog post portion to watch the video

In July I reported about a chat (can't really call it a press conference or briefing) a small group of UK journalists including me had with Space Exploration Technologies' chief executive Elon Musk after he spoke at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London

My blog post talked about $80 million to go round the Moon but it seems that the reality is somewhat different and during my visit to SpaceX in California three weeks ago I found out what the $80 million is really for...

credit: Virgin Galactic

At the 59th International Astronautical Congress, held on Glasgow, Scotland, Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn and the US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that through a non-exchange of funds agreement (so Virgin Galactic isn't being paid) the two organisatons would collaborate on scientific research using the spaceline's vehicles WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) and SpaceShipTwo (SS2) 

Scientific instruments used to study the environment will be attached to both WK2 and SS2 during their flight tests and during commercial operations

Click through to the extended portion to watch a video of the presentation that includes a video message from Virgin group chairman Sir Richard Branson

credit: ESA

Here is the first image of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle named Jules Verne reentering the Earth's atmosphere

Its de-orbit timetable can be seen here in an earlier Hyperbola blog post

ESA director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain announced the successful de-orbit of Jules Verne into the Pacific ocean at the end of the International Astronautical Congress' heads of agency plenary session today in Glasgow, Scotland

credit: ESA / caption: the last image of ATV as it departed ISS on 5 September

The European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle named Jules Verne is to re-enter the upper atmosphere at an altitude of 120km (64.8miles) at 1330 GMT today

click through to the extended portion for further details and to see a ATV mission animation

This year's International Astronautical Congress begins today with an opening ceremony that the organisers claim, in the usual British understatement, will be shorter than the Beijing Oylmpic's ceremonies, and that will be followed by a heads of agency plenary session and technical sessions

The heads of agency are from NASA, European Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Chinese National Space Administration and the Canadian Space Agency except Russia and India who have sent deputies

Space Exploration Technologies' Falcon 1 rocket achieved nominal Earth orbit after its launch from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific just after midnight GMT on Monday 29 September

SpaceX will be posting the video of the launch on its website soon

Hobbyspace.com has located a Youtube video of the flight

Congrats China, Shenzhou-7 lands successfully

Click here to go to the event's homepage

From 29 September to 3 October Hyperbola will be reporting from the biggest space event of the year the International Astronautical Federation's congress, held this year in Glasgow, Scotland

As well as live blogging I hope to post images, podcasts and videos of interviews and plenary speeches of the world's space agencies' leaders, their programme managers and individuals presenting new ideas about human exploration of the cosmos - cue grandios music

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credit: Virgin Galactic

Scaled Composites founder, chief technology officer and designer-in-chief of the SpaceShipTwo/WhiteKnightTwo subortbial launch system, Burt Rutan, talked to The Washington Post about his dreams of a cislunar resort

To watch a video of highlights of China's first extra-vehicular activity click here

credit: NASA

These slides, from a presentation given at NASA's Lunar exploration concepts briefing held on 25 September, give an indication of quite how far away the mature technology is to achieve a lunar landing even by 2020


credit: NASA

The announcement in 2005 of a return to the Moon effort that was "Apollo on steroids" may have seemed feasible with a 13-year duration between the announcement and the original 2018 target date for a manned Moon landing - even with a NASA that has to cope with a flat budget half that of the Apollo programme era

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I will post a link or embed video showing today's launch of Shenzhou-7 as soon as I can find it on a news website. There are pictures on some Chinese state owned news sites but little else

In this story published at 13:19h GMT today on state owned news website chinadaily.com.cn it is stated that, "two taikonauts would enter the orbital module, where one would put on domestically-made spacesuit Feitian and leave the module to take back test samples loaded outside, said Zhou Jianping, chief designer of the country's manned space project. The other would wear a Russian Orlan suit and stay in the depressurized cabin for support"

Russia's Orlan suit manufacturer Zvezda declined to comment on questions about the Chinese purchasing space suits earlier this year

credit: Spaceport America

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Shenzhou-7's launch window is scheduled today from 1307h to 1427h GMT. Here are a few more Chinese state owned English language CCTV-9 news channel report videos giving details of what the astronauts will do during the planned spacewalk

This 24 September morning Chinese state owned CCTV-9 channel English language news report is about the Long March 2F's countdown rehearsal, Shenzhou-7 mission details including an animation, information about its escape tower performance and preparations including the testing of tracking ships that apparently can control Shenzhou spacecraft remotely

While the pre-Apollo Wernher von Braun manned Mars mission plan is well known through the Collier's magazine and von Braun's now published Project Mars: A Technical tale, the German born rocket engineer also developed long range plans for the Nixon administration that included a 1982 manned Mars mission



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The English language Chinese state news channel CCTV-9 video above is about 10min long and goes into detail about what is happening at the launch site



And this report is about the astronauts' preparations leading up to the launch

Click through to the extended section of this blog post to watch the Space Exploration Technologies' COTS movie

Click through to the extended section of this blog post to watch the Orbital Sciences COTS movie

Click through to the extended section of this blog post to watch the English language channel CCTV-9 news report

Hyperbola is going into a higher orbit for some much needed suspended animation for this week but expect more of this sort of graphic goodness of the vehicles that will take humanity to the Moon and beyond upon its return

With perhaps less than two weeks before China's three-crew Shenzhou-7 is launched this CCTV video shows an exercise that took place last Wednesday to simulate the rescue of a crew that had launch aborted into the sea

Click here to go to the webpage to see the Quicktime clip

NASA has produced two CGI movies of a Space Exploration Technologies and an Orbital Sciences commercial orbital transportation service demonstration programme mission

credit: NASA

The AIAA SPACE 2008 conference saw an update yesterday on the progress with NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services demonstration programme. I was a bit bemused with this slide above as it seems to me to be rather hard to undertake COTS crew capability D activities when the NASA FY2009 budget published in February had nothing in it for this option; admittedly unfunded in the funded space act agreements but some NASA cash is going to be expected  

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Thursday 11 September
1400h
Lunar comms architecture

Jim Schier
space comms and navigation office at NASA hq

Space comms and nav came out of LunarAechitectureTeam-2 study
Requirements include pervasive mobility, flexibility, global connectivity and long duration including outpost implemented to emulate Mars surface scenarios
Expect to require HD cameras and high bandwidth comms

Thursday 10 September
1130h

Perish Parikh
Orion LAS programme

developing three completely new rocket motors with new technology

attitude control motor
jettison motor
abort motor

Thursday 11 September
1000h

Steve Davis
Marshall Space Flight Center

Ares I-X is needed to study,
Bending moments/motions
Roll, no corkscrewing up to space
Separation effect on J-2X
Recovery process

Next week, expect more detail from me about NASA's Space Shuttle extension study

This is the first-stage of the Falcon I flight model five and in the distance is its upper stage

Tuesday 9 September
1630h

Valin Thorn
deputy manager NASA CCC

Setting out background to COTS. FedEx for space vision

Crew services could start from 2012. Crew development to start in 2009, but now not a funded option

Space Act Agreements use US Federal Aviation Administraton licensing approaches and cross-waiver liability provisons to try to make a more

SpaceX got $278 million and Rocketplane-Kistler got $207 million

Tuesday 9 September
1137h

Frank Peri
Exploration technology development programme manager

Rehashing overall Constellation goals
Meeting critical near-term Orion crew exporation vehicle technologies, Ares launch vehicles and EVA
Work is moving tech from TRL 3 to 6, demos in labs and putting them into subsystems and vacuum chambers

Tuesday 9 Septemer
1112h

Tony Lavoie, is Lunar Precursor Robotics programme manager at MSFC

Talking about Lunar Reconnassaince Orbiter and need for good lunar pole data
Talking about LCROSS and lunar mapping project, nothing new
We decided that we could get the human mission going, get most of the information we need with just LRO and LCROSS
In medium term have plans to shift focus to scientific focus

Tuesday 9 September
1030h

Brian Muirhead, JPL systems engineer and Constellation prg team member

He's giving the basic Constellation presentation. Jeff Hanley Constellation programme manager was supposed to give this presentation
System baseline review this week for Orion to decide on when to have its PDR
Altair and Ares V gone through concept review in June and now going towards requirements review
He just said that Ares I-X could fly "April to May maybe a little later in June"

I arrived at Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) on 8 September to tour the facility and interview its Falcon 9 programme integrator and senior mission manager

Watch the CCTV-9 English language Chinese government run channel's report about the imminent Shenzhou VII mission here


credit: CCTV

The report (unfortunately there is no date but I guess it was the same day as the print reports 6 September) talks about the rocket's systems being in the final stages of testing and that the Shenzhou spacecraft would be attached Sunday (7 September?) - indicating that the images in the report are stock footage from previous missions

credit: NASA / caption: Shuttle SRB aft skirt's thrust vector control hydrazine powered hydraulic system

On 5 August NASA released a pre-solicitation synopsis for a Request for Proposal (RFP) for its Ares [I crew launch vehicle solid rocket booster (SRB) first-stage] electric thrust vector control (TVC) prototype risk reduction system requirement - more easily written than read 

Its another example of how the CLV's first-stage will bear little resemblance to the original Shuttle SRB. From memory, I think, a change to an electric TVC would literally mean the only original bit of the Shuttle SRB design to remain will be the steel segment casings 

For years TVC electromechanical actuators (EMA) have been investigated because NASA believes they are lighter, cleaner, possibly even safer in their operation, and are easier to maintain than the hydrazine powered hydraulics used by Shuttle today

Credit: NASA

Lockheed Martin's Orion project team recently assembled a full-scale low fidelity Orion crew exploration vehicle module aft bay, subsystems mock-up in Johnson Space Center's space vehicle mockup facility, also known as building nine

Credit: ESA

The above image shows the current concept for a European low lunar orbit space station that would act as a refeuling depot, as a staging point and as a safe haven if disaster struck. At the node's nadir port a cylindrical lander with suit ports is ready to descend to the lunar surface while at the forward longitudinal port there is what appears to be a Crew Space Transportation System capsule with its Automated Transfer Vehicle-derived service module


credit: ESA

This European Space Agency image shows an interior concept for CSTS with six crew and the pilot stations on the lower level. The seat arrangement is different to the design recently released by Rocket and space Corporation Energia  

While internet reports are qouting Chinese newspapers saying that China's three-man Shenzhou VII spacecraft could be launched in the next two weeks the Chinese government's Xinhua news agency actually reported as long ago as March that the spacewalk mission could take place in "late September"



As well as being only one of three nations with an independent human spaceflight capability, China, if the mission is successful, will become the third nation capable of undertaking its own extra-vehicular activities

Credit: JAXA

The images in this blog are from a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) presentation given at the European Space Agency's Integrated Architecture Review held from 7-8 July at ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands

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This European Space Agency video shows a concept lunar space station in low orbit that docks with a visiting spacecraft

credit: Astrium


credit: Astrium

CTSE? A German acronym meaning Crew Transport System Europäische perhaps? Surely it should also be Européenne équipage système de transport spatial (ESTS)? I am waiting to talk to ESA and Astrium about what CTSE is exactly

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I couldn't find this video on the NASA website or on Youtube but after my last proclamation of exclusivity I dare not do that again because someone is bound to have put this on the websome where. So, enjoy this 2min 6s NASA Langley Research Center video that shows a European Space Agency cargo lander delivering modules for a lunar outpost

Click through to the extended portion of this blog post for another lunar outpost video that has found its way on to Youtube

credit: Astrium

The image above appears to be the latest Astrium design for the European Space Agency, Russian joint Crew Space Transportation System

Gaetano Marano at his Ghostnasa website has leaked, from a European Space Agency website, an EADS Astruim presentation that was part of a 8 July lunar architecture, industry day


credit: EADS Astrium

So it would appear that a European Moon mission would require four launches. Two for the lander and its Earth departure stage (EDS) to be sent into orbit around the Moon, probably to dock with an existing lunar station and another two to launch the crew space transportation system and its EDS, which would dock in Earth orbit before going to the Moon. 

ESA's interest in a cislunar space station was already known and the use of such a station as a fuel depot seems to have heavily influenced the European Moonship design with its 16,000kg mass that is substantially less than the NASA Orion crew exploration vehicle's

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