exploration: January 2009 Archives

credit ESA / caption: will we ever see the Advanced Reentry vehicle?

Sources close to the European Space Agency's (ESA) Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)/Advanced Reentry Vehicle (ARV) team are telling Hyperbola that the November 2008 ESA ministerial meeting outcome was seen as catastrophic for the agency's hopes for ARV operating before the International Space Station (ISS) is de-orbited, even with a 2020 end of life target, and a follow-on manned version of ARV

credit ESA / caption: could Moon mission astronauts use robots to be super people?

The European Space Agency's Aurora core programme €500,000 ($640,000) EXploration Robotics Requirements and Concepts (X-ROB) study is investigating robots for assembly, inspection and the maintenance of space ships in low Earth, Moon or Martian orbit and for landers on the lunar surface

Its that time of year again and there's some interesting items on the Russian Federal Space Agency, aka Roscosmos, website

See pictures here of equipment arriving for the French Guiana Samara Space Center Soyuz rocket launch complex. And here see another picture but this time it is of the public affairs staff of Roscosmos and European launch provider Arianespace. The fella in the middle is Arianespace's Mario de Lepine. The blurb tells us that the Soyuz will launch from South America in "late 2009". Best of luck

Of longer term interest is this development in the saga of the reformation of the Soviet space industry. And I mean Soviet. When I was at Star City in 2005 senior officials referred to the Soviet space programme in the present tense. The report suggests the new name for an amalgamation of the multitude of companies that exist could be United Rocket Space Corporation

Perhaps taking its cue from the Russian aviation industry where its unified industrial company is United Aircraft. But be careful there guys, United Spacecraft was the name former NAZI SS major and Apollo programme overseer Wernher von Braun gave to his fictonal spaceflight corporation in his book Project Mars: A technical tale. Not the sort of person Russians want to copy

If you wondered where the Chinese may have got the idea of two Shenzhou docking before they decided to jump to the 2011 Tiangong-1, Shenzhou mission read this

Talking of non-Russians India's cosmonaut gets a slap on the back from Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and there is a reference to joint manned missions being planned. I hope to get a lot more on this in the coming months 

And for something very riveting there is the announcement that a top priority for Russia is satellite remote sensing technology, just kidding

But of the various postings to the agency's website this meeting that took place today is the most intriguing for me, when it says, "Technologies to appear in these programs will provide the opportunity to deliver cargo to LEO, to orbit spacecraft for commercial purposes. Initially, suborbital missions will be conducted." [my emphasis in italics]

That meeting was of the International Association of Space Activities Participants (IASP) and the text refers to its public private partnership session. There launch system technology programmes were discussed. The Roscosmos blurb reads and the IASP's website looks as though it is primarily Russian industry so why it is international is anyone's guess

Maybe its the just the translator's punctuation but as a native English speaker I would read that as launch systems for delivering cargo to LEO and then in addition the commercial orbital flights that follow suborbital. Well, that sounds like an approach for space tourism to me

But until then its all cosmonauts and Soyuz spacecraft and if you have ever wondered what cosmonaut training was like, check out these pics. Inspirational...

Today, Wednesday 14 January, European Space Agency director general Jean-Jacques Dordain meets the media in his annual press conference. Read Hyperbola's live coverage via Twitter below as soon as it starts at 0800GMT (0900CET)

http://twitter.com/flighthyperbola

credit: ESA / caption: ESA director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain at his 2008 press conference

Wednesday 14 January is the day European Space Agency director general Jean-Jacques Dordain meets the media in his annual press conference and as long as I can get a cell phone signal from inside the press conference I'll be twittering as soon as it starts at 0800GMT

credit NASA / caption: This hovering, lander test

The latest "low cost" Moon mission, the $80 million Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft, is to place an award for its propulsion system in May, which will be the second phase of a two phase process. The first phase is for a $50,000 propulsion preliminary design, the deadline for offers for which is 15 January

credit Flight / caption: Griffin speaking to Flight during his London visit in 2007

Did Michael Griffin make his last public speech as NASA administrator on 8 January at the Space Transportation Association's breakfast meeting? Many think so and all will be revealed soon enough. Hyperbola has managed to obtain an audio recording of Griffin's speech  

Go through to the extended portion of this blog post to find that audio file

credit JAXA

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)'s rocket and spacecraft development establishment, the Tsukuba Space Center, has produced a concept for a four-crew capsule that is part of a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIB rocket launched spacecraft consisting of four modules, the Launch Escape System (LES), Manned Re-entry Module (MRM), Orbital Habitation Module (OHM) and Propulsion Module (PM)

Designed for LEO missions the JAXA's 2025 vision includes a Japanese human spaceflight capability and the concept work has been drawn up in preparation for possible formal design cycles

credit NASA/Flight

The UK goverment's coordinating body for government civil space activities, the British National Space Centre, has a space exploration review underway (another one?) and it is to report by the end of this first quarter

You can find out all about the review and its terms of reference here and you can email in your comments (let's keep them civil) to the review team through this email address

credit: Energia

This would seem to make perfect sense with the potential cargo return crunch that could occur if Shuttle is retired in 2010 and NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services demonstration and Commercial Resupply Services programmes do not deliver in time. With ESA's member states hobbling that agency's efforts to turn its Automated Transfer Vehicle into a re-entry capable craft for cargo return the Russians once again are readying themselves to coin it in

credit: Spacehab

Russia's S P Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia built Mini Research Module (MRM1) will be taken to ISS on mission STS-132, the Space Shuttle Discovery's last known mission scheduled for April 2010. The MRM1 will carry in it spare parts, research hardware, and consumables. Once installed it will act as a docking port extension for the Russian Soyuz and Progress vehicles and providing additional storage capacity

credit CCTV9 / caption: China's LOX/LH2 fuelled Long March 5 rocket animation 

Members of China's Manned Space Engineering office (which seems to be an organisation operated jointly by the China National Space Administration and the People's Liberation Army (PLA)) visited the UK recently

Hyperbola has gleaned a few details from their discussions here and can confirm that other reports of a spacelab module called Tiangong-1 being launched around 2011 with subsequent dockings by Shenzhou craft are broadly correct

credit Flight / caption: Will he stay or will he go?

While the blogosphere has been twirling to the rumour mill of Obama inspired military NASA reports (alternate universe stuff as far as Hyperbola is concened) and alleged campaigns in favour of the US space agency administrator Mike Griffin I have written a 2009 spaceflight forecast for Hyperbola's print publication sister title Flight International but you can read it here first

Will 2009 build towards a greater new decade of space activity?

The challenge in 2009 is to realise the potential of government and private sector spaceflight programmes that made good progress in 2008 to bring about greater activity in space in the future, activity that is as much commercial in nature as it is exploration

credit NASA

The New York Times website has an article about the challenge to NASA's Constellation programme from the change in administrations and a related series of kewl animations detailing the return to the Moon rockets and spacercaft. Well worth a look whatever you think of Constellation

credit NASA

NASA's Kennedy Space Center has decided it wants a damper arm for its Ares rockets' mobile launch platform

The Ares I crew launch vehicle, being so long and thin, has been expected to need such a device because of a potential susceptibility to wind. But will NASA want it for Ares I-X?

credit Momentum Pictures / caption: This is not from Doug Liman's new movie   

According to sources at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) this week saw Bourne trilogy producer Doug Liman tour KSC for his new big budget Moon mission movie

Has Hollywood discovered the Constellation programme too late? Can it drum up a greater public awareness and political momentum for NASA's plans before the new admininstration cans the whole thing?