Recently in Spaceport Category

The United Kingdom's Institude of Directors (IoD) has commissioned a report into Britain's Space Industry.  The report called Space: Britain's New Space Infrastructure  notes how well the space business is doing in the United Kingdom.  While it reports that this is mainly on the back of "downstream" activities like satellite television and space insurance, it also states that Britain has found itself a successful niche role in spacecraft manufacturing via  Astrium and Surrey Satelltie Technology Limited (both firms are owned by EADS).   

As it notes the growth of commercial orbital and suborbital space launch providers in the world, and reports the UK firm Reaction Engines' progress with its Skylon spaceplane technology studies (this writer is a small shareholder in the firm) the report has called for the construction of a spaceport with an extra long runway in the UK to allow it and other reusable launch operators to use.

Comment by David Todd:  This spaceport idea is probably a good one but it should be built on UK territory rather than on the UK mainland.  While Scotland could be used as a launch site for polar and sun-synchronous missions (northbound flights would not overfly any built up areas)  for most other orbits it is important to be as close to the equator as possible (this increases the velocity boost from the Earth's spin - for Eastbound flights - and reduces the amout of orbital inclination needed for removal for those boosted satellite missions heading for geostationary Earth orbit - GEO).  As such the UK's territory of Ascension Island in the Atlantic would be ideal for a space port/launch site.  And it could also be used for polar/sun-synchronous flights as well.

credit: Orbtial / caption:

Orbital Sciences released the latest concept image of its Taurus II rocket launch site (being built at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility aka the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport) during its presentation at the Space Foundation's 26th National Space Symposium. Previously Orbital had published the image below in its Taurus II user's guide


credit: Orbital Sciences / caption: the Taurus II launch site as shown in the rocket's user's guide

Never let it be said that spaceflight is not high profile in Russian society, whether it is the birthday of the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, or the recent visit by the country's prime minister Vladimir Putin to Star City aka Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre

And preparations continue for the new cosmodrome at Vostochny with another meeting between Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) head Anatoly Perminov and the governor of the region that hosts the spaceport

NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery delivered the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Leonardo today. Leonardo will be attached permanently to the International Space Station for Shuttle's final mission STS-133. Watch this video of the MRM 1 which is to be delivered by Shuttle in May. Its sister module MRM 2 was launched to the International Space Station by a Samara Space Center Soyuz rocket in November last year

Go here for a Russian, English language, news report on the NASA, Roscosmos crew transport deal. Thanks to the US government Russia will profit from NASA's transport needs for years to come, Shuttle extension or no Shuttle extension

Find here a video alleging to be the recent Soyuz TMA 18 docking at the International Space Station 

Is it just this blog or is there just not much going on out there at the moment? Maybe it is the Christian festival of Easter that is slowing things down with all that related time off work?

But for those of you that are looking forward to the imminent 2 April Soyuz TMA-18 launch there are pre-flight interviews with the crew at the news webpage of Russia's Federal Space Agency aka Roscosmos

Russian news website RIA Novosti is reporting that the UK and Russia could become high tech partners - is this because of the creation of the UK Space Agency? One doubts any help will be forthcoming on the scale that Russia provided China with for its manned spaceflight programme - click on the hypertext for a 38-slide presentation about the middle kingdom's ambitions, happy Easter!

Congrats to the "Gupmyster" on his video of the WhiteKnight Two-SpaceShipTwo first captive carry flight take-off and landing. You could have earned yourself some cash if you'd sold it to us Gupmyster!

Watch this 22s video of Virgin Galactic's first SpaceShipTwo (SS2) captive carry flight on 22 March 2010 as the WhiteKnight Twi, SS2 vehicles pass over Mojave

credit: Flightglobal.com / caption: Virgin Galactic's first SpaceShipTwo, captive carry flight on 22 March 2010

Hyperbola will add more as details become available but it seems that at about 07:15h Pacific Daylight Time (14:15h GMT) today Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnight Two VMS Eve carrier aircraft took off from runway 26 at Mojave air and spaceport with SpaceShipTwo attached

credit: Flightglobal.com / caption: click on the images to see larger versions in the same browser window

Click through to the extended portion of this blog to see another photo, with more to be added over the next 24h and possibly video. Use of these images for anything other than personal viewing, not blogs or media outlets is prohibited

Blogs

• The Virgin Galactic programme in full

Galleries

• Virgin Galactic
• Richard Branson
• WhiteKinght Two arrives at Oshkosh 2009

Lockheed Martin has trademarked the name Revolver for a space vehicle, rocket according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)

Hyperbola first reported in 2008 that the company's scale-model flyback booster being flight tested at the site of Spaceport America was called Revolver

The trademark office webpage shows that Lockheed filed the trademark in August of last year and that it was "published for opposition" by the office on 29 December 2009. Published for opposition means that anyone who opposed its use by Lockheed could respond and they have 30-days in which to contact USPTO

So as far as this blog can tell Lockheed now has the name Revolver trademarked for a rocket. To find the webpage about the trademark go to this USPTO search engine and type in the serial number 77798846. The USPTO website has a time limit on searches so I can't embed an URL linking you directly to the page via the search engine

Hyperbola is awaiting further details from Lockheed

In credit: ESA / caption: Former Space Troops general and now Federal Space Agency head Anatoly Perminov

In an interview with Russian spaceflight magazine Novosti Kosmonavtiki Anatoly Perminov (see picture) head of the Federal Space Agency (aka Roscosmos) talks about the agency's plans for its new launch vehicles and spacecraft, which now include "orbital tugs" and "transfer stages" for manned lunar missions