European built International Space Station module Node 2 called Harmony sits in the payload bay of NASA Space Shuttle Discovery in-orbit on flight day two of mission STS-120.
Rocketplane Kistler has come out fighting after NASA axed it from its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services programme and there are reports on that here, here and here
I would imagine the RpK situation will be much discussed at this year's International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight (ISPS), which Jeff Foust ponders on here
Staying with the commercial spaceflight vein here is a link to an interview with Bigelow Aerospace founder Robert Bigelow
Spot the truly whacky in this long list of Hobbyspace.com entries that has links to stories about NASA's COTS programme, space diving and proposals for a positron engine, whatever that is.
If that isn't looney enough for you our sister title New Scientist has something about planetary landers moving around like cockroaches.
On a more serious note Hobbyspace.com has a link to details about another space investment summit and even more serious, changing safety procedures at Mojave air and space port following the fatal accident involving Scaled Composites employees
Hobbyspace.com has this link to a USA Today article about the US laws for personal spaceflight
Holloman AFB has created its website about the X Prize Cup event it is hosting
Meanwhile NASA has given the go-ahead for the 23 October launch of Space Shuttle Discovery for its STS-120 mission to the International Space Station
Space.com has a report about the Personal Spaceflight symposium taking place in New Mexico on 24-25 October. I was there last year for the symposium, and my blog on that is here
Hobbyspace has a link to an update on the Lunar Lander Challenge taking place at the 26-28 October X Prize Cup and a link to this April 2008 space colonisation conference in Princeton
Watch this video of Lunar Lander Challenge competitor Armadillo Aerospace's hover test flight
Sir Richard Branson talks about Virgin Galactic via this link and some comment on the likely in-service date for the suborbital service plus a report that Branson has renamed the first White Knight II (WK2), "The spirit of Steve Fossett", can be found here
Branson was going to name the first WK2 after his mother, Eve.
A report about the viability of space based solar power can be found here
More stuff as always from hobbyspace.com
The head of India's space agency worries about the fact that Google Earth has the capability to get images that show things governments would rather people could not see. Well personally I would be very happy to have an independent civilian organisation monitor what is going on, who trusts governments, elected or otherwise, anyway?
Hobbyspace in this blog entry links to this article about how three years after SpaceShipOne there is no obvous sign of major progress. And we can expect more articles like this, not just because the wider media's journalists know nothing about aerospace development but also because the personal spaceflight industry itself has got to do better or investment interest will evaporate.
NASASpaceflight.com apparently has some detail about NASA's Lunar Lander progress. Flight reported on the Lander's project office's plans back in July with an expected first design analysis cycle to be completed by August.
Russia is to provide instruments for Moon and Mars missions according to this report
The US Senate has passed an amendment to the appropriations bill that includes NASA's budget to give the US space agency an extra $1 billion. But its not obviously good news, the US House of Representatives has passed its version of the relevant appropriations bill but I am not aware of any extra billion from them. And under US law the Senate and House have to come together to agree a final appropriations bill, and so this amendment could be a very temporary. At the moment NASA is being funded for its 2008 fiscal year that started on 1 October under what is called a continuing resolution, which is what NASA was funded by for its last fiscal year. That resolution is essentially the appropriated 2006 budget.
Cosmiclog podners the next 50 years of spaceflight
Leonard David has a look at what people can expect to see at the forthcoming X Prize Cup
Hobbyspace.com's spacetransportnews.com has plenty of links for everything from the LA Times debate about space with transterrestrial musing's Rand Simberg to the North Dakota student rocket initiative.
MSNBC reports on Russian celebrations of Sputnik. And if you're still hungry for Sputnik stuff then there is this clutch of links from spacetransportnewws.com or you can see ex-NASA engineer and author Jim Oberg's writings on the subject here and here or you could even checkout Flight's Sputnik stuff here.
Just as SpaceX is presently the clear leader in the development of new orbital transportation systems, Virgin Galactic is now the only obvious candidate for the nascent suborbital market in the next few years. Unless Jeff Bezos’ ultra secret Blue Origin team spring a surprise on everyone. Click here for part one
Low Earth orbit tourism and NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration programme are not obviously linked but the intentions of one of COTS participants, California based-Space Exploration Technologies, could see commercial human spaceflight actually emerge from a government programme sometime in the next decade.
Meanwhile the privately funded efforts of Virgin Galactic appear to make head way with offers of suborbital flights earlier than anything conceived by SpaceX, yet can it become another route to realising low cost mass access to LEO and beyond? In this marathon race who is the hare and who is the tortoise?
While you're mulling over the first 50 years of spaceflight since Sputnik, chew on these morsels
Japan's Kaguya probe has taken a high definition quality pictrue of the Earth, check it out here
Aviation Week and Space Technology looks at the growing coordination between space faring nations
Another section of US society beyond Congress starts to worry about the rise of Asia's space programmes
MSNBC tries to claim that Sputnik wasn't a shock, something a video interview Flight has in the works, with a journalist who worked for the BBC back in 1957 would strongly disagree with
Hobbyspace.com has some video links to New Space craziness; some other links to other whacky issues; news about Operationally Responsive Space; an interview with Franklin Chang Diaz; more Sputnik related bobbins and super-dooper propulsion here.
Space Politics takes issue with a speech by NASA chief Mike Griffin
Space.com hears private space station developer Bigelow Aerospace's concerns about the ability of the transportation industry to get its potential clients to its LEO outposts
NASA is also catching Sputnik fever
CNN.com has news of a TPS tile test to be carried out on the next Shuttle mission
European Space Agency has a couple of things to report, it has successfuly tested the software for its International Space Station supplying Automated Transfer Vehicle and has got the got ahead by its member states to go to stage two of the GMES project's segement one, whatever that means?
Recent Comments