Recently in space station Category

credit Flight / caption: Are we looking at the future shape of China's unmanned cargo resupply spacecraft?

This 1:10 scale model of China's manned space engineering programme's Tiangong spacelab docked to a Shenzhou spacecraft was exhibited at the 60th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Daejeon, Korea in October

While talking to Chinese space programme officials in Daejeon Hyperbola was told about the cargo spacecraft that will be developed from the Tiangong spacelab, of which three could fly over the next ten years. China will use them to test technologies for rendezvous and docking, life support and experiment equipment destined for the space station  

See the cargo spacecraft design and in-orbit space station assembly pictures and video in the extended portion of this blog post 

Go here to see the video of Chen Shanguang, the chief commander and chief designer of China's Manned Space Engineering astronaut system speaking to China's state run English language news and current affairs channel CCTV-9. Go here for more China manned space programme CCTV videos and here for videos related to Shenzhou missions care of Google

Here is Flightglobal's recent Chinese Moon programme story with pictures of the country's latest concept for its space station planned for 2020. Find other Flightglobal stories about China's space programme here and go here for past Hyperbola blog postings about the new super power's orbital endeavours

Watch this video from the International Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, Korea where the future of the International Space Station was discussed by the ISS partners 

Go here for more IAC2009 videos

credit Reaction Engines / caption: Skylon rendezvous with ISS

Reaction Engines' Skylon single stage to orbit vehicle is shown here in close proximity to the International Space Station. The UK SSTO is undergoing changes with greater payload bay detail, Hyperbola will make public more info soon

click on all the images in this blog post to see larger versions in the same browser window

Senior China space programme officials spoke at the 60th International Astronautical Congress' "Late breaking news" session on the morning of 15 October, giving an insight into the country's planning for long term space missions and manned flights beyond low Earth orbit

In the above video an overview of the history of the Chinese manned programme is given as well as details about future missions including a 60,000kg space station in 2020. There are also brief references made to concept studies for a manned lander, presumably lunar, exploration mission

Read this story for more details about the three-crew space station and manned Moon mission planning

Go here for more IAC 2009 videos

Hyperbola is launching to the Oort cloud for a week's R&R from today and will be returning via Daejeon, Korea from the 12 October. In Daejeon Hyperbola will be blogging from the International Astronautical Congress, where the world's space community meets. And yes there may even be Virgin Galactic news there...

First Briton in space Helen Sharman spoke to Hyperbola after being awarded the first silver astronaut pin by the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) on 3 July 2009. Sharman flew to the Mir space station in May 1991. Called Project Juno the mission had been initiated by London based Moscow Narodny Bank, a subsidiary of the Soviet Union's Vnesheconombanka bank, that thought it could organise private funding to send a foreign citizen to the Mir space station

Deciding to conduct this commercial venture in the UK adverts were placed in 1989 for applicants and over 13,000 were received. Managed by Brunel University's Institute for Bio-Engineering Sharman, a chemist working in the food industry at the time, was selected and with a British Army air corps Major as her backup crew man went through 18 months of cosmonaut training. Launched on Soyuz TM-12 on 18 May her mission lasted eight-days

The BIS also awarded a silver pin to British born US citizen Richard Garriott, the sixth spaceflight participant to go to the International Space Station. Garriott, the son of NASA Skylab and Space Shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott, made his money in the computer game industry. The BIS plans to award British born NASA astronauts Michael Foale, Piers Sellers and Nick Patrick silver pins in the near future 

Despite reports in 1991 and since that Project Juno was a private mission, and even Sharman herself refers to it as a commercial mission, the Soviet bank failed to raise any private financing and the entire mission was paid for by the Soviet government. It went ahead with the approval of then Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Hyperbola investigated the background to Juno a while back and spoke to the UK organisers about the realities of Project Juno

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation, whichly recently re-branded from Personal Spaceflight Federation, has released the statement you'll find in the extended portion of this blog post and placed this white paper on its website

In an email to journalists CSF executive director John Gedmark says, "Please see attached for an announcement from members of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation concerning our submission to the White House Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee (also known as the Augustine Committee).

The central recommendation of the White Paper, entitled "Commercial Spaceflight in Low Earth Orbit is the Key to Affordable and Sustainable Exploration Beyond", is that NASA should invest in commercial human spaceflight capabilities to the International Space Station.  Without leveraging the resources of the private sector, NASA will simply not be able to afford to meet the twin goals of (a) fully utilizing the Space Station, potentially through 2020, and (b) conducting sustainable exploration beyond Low
Earth Orbit.

We believe this program should be modeled on the success of NASA's existing Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, which is enabling the development of commercial capabilities to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, based on the principles of fixed-price, milestone-based, competitive awards."

Go through to the extended portion of this blog pot to rea the CSF's press release

Hyperbola is attending the Royal Aeronautical Society's space tourism "a new industry in the making" conference tomorrow, Tuesday 30 June. The all day event will feature Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn, Space Adventures vice president marketing and sales Tom Shelley, Xcor Aerospace chief executive (and US human spaceflght review committeee member) Jeff Greason operating officer Andrew Nelson, EADS Astrium's deputy chief technical officer Hugues Laporte-Weywada, the FAA's office of commercial space transportation head George Nield, and more

Hyperbola hopes to deliver pictures, audio and video interviews and tweets from the conference and maybe even the odd traditional print journalism story or two

UPDATED: The RAeS has told Hyperbola that no audio or video recording is allowed beyond individuals interviews. But expect a fair few tweets during sessions and I can probably squeeze in the odd photo

From 15-17 June Hyperbola will be coming from Le Bourget where the 100th Paris air show will be launching into full swing - and there may even be reportage on breaking news over the weekend (yes I've got to work Saturday and Sunday...). Expect multimedia coverage (when I have the time to upload it) of the space industry that camps out in the Parisian suburb for the first half of next week along with tweets from the European Space Agency and Russian Federal Space Agency press conferences, at least. C'est magnifique!

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