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After firing from Spaceport America in New Mexico, Armadillo's Stig-A successfully flew to 137,000 ft. Stig-A is now nearly halfway to the Karman Line, the arbitrary line that marks the official transition from atmosphere to space. Of course, there is a video

Armadillo, a tiny but driven company, has for years been building small rockets with the goal of suborbital flight. If they haven't quite made it, they're certainly well on their way.

Vega, the European Space Agency's new light launcher, has now got its maiden flight date set, for 26 January 2012. ESA had been hoping to launch during 2011, but the critical parameter was to get Vega launched between the 20 October launch of Soyuz and the beginning of preparations at Kourou, French Guiana for the next Automated Transfer Vehicle launch, via Ariane 5, to the International Space Station.

European made components have arrived by sea at Kourou from Avio's factory in Colleferro, near Rome. The inaugural campaign will begin on November 7 with rollout of Vega's P80 first stage to the launch pad, followed during the subsequent weeks by stacking of the Zefiro 23 second stage and Zefiro 9 third stage - all of which are loaded with solid-propellant. A progress review will be held on December 7 to authorize a continuation of the final integration process - allowing the bi-propellant Attitude and Vernier Upper Module (AVUM) to be mated atop the launcher, and final operations to begin with the mission's multi-spacecraft payload.

carrying LARES (LAser RElativity Satellite) and nine cubesat educational payloads of varying sizes.

Vega will lift off from the Spaceport's ZLV launch site, which originally was used for the Ariane 1 and Ariane 3 vehicles.

The medium-lift Soyuz and light category Vega will complement ESA's heavylift Ariane 5s to provide a fully flexible range of launch options at Kourou. Vega, whose first stage is one of the world's biggest carbon fibre single-piece structures, is designed to launch satellites up to 1.5 tonnes into 700km polar orbits. As French Guiana is much closer to the equator than Soyuz's normal launch site at Baikonur, added boost from the Earth's spin will nearly double its maximum payload to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) to 3 tonnes. Ariane 5 can lift 10 tonnes to GTO, though ESA member governments are thought to be moving towards approval of a mid-life upgrade to increase payload capacity.

A longer-term project is also underway, to develop a a high-thrust cryogenic engine that could form the basis of ESA's next-generation launcher. It will not fly until about 2025, but is intended to provide a medium-lift capability in a modular design, with a re-ignitable upper stage and options for strap-on solid propellant boosters offering extra thrust.

The European Space Agency just released this video to show how its Galileo satellite navigation system works. I love the part about how a nanosecond error in the onboard clocks would translate to a 30m error on the ground - but if that error were a second, the position error would amount to 300,000km, enough to leave driver wondering whether they were approaching the house or cruising on the Moon.


The first two spacecraft are due for launch on 20 October, and then ESA will be making a fast-track push to provide near-global coverage in 2014 and, in 2019, a full constellation of 27 spacecraft and three orbiting spares.

Unlike the USA's GPS system, Galileo will be fully under civilian control. The idea is to ensure that Europe is self-sufficient in a technology that is becomming increasingly indispensible. Galileo will also do a better job than GPS at high latitudes, so Nordic Europeans should really notice the difference. Everybody else can be sure sure of continuous service - no worries about the US military degrading the signal in an emergency - and, combined with the ground-based signal enhancement system called EGNOS that went live earlier this year, can get position information accurate to less than 1m. EGNOS signals are free, too, and Brussels is encouraging companies to develop receivers and services to exploit them.

Budget wrangles will have delayed Galileo by seven years by the time coverage goes global in 2014, but it should be well worth the wait. Satnav services are already coming down in price, so the combination of an added layer of reliability and better geographic coverage should make them cheap and easy to use for any conceivable application.

On 29 September, Elon Musk, the enigmatic founder of SpaceX, took the stage at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to announce that SpaceX would develop a fully reusable rocket. SpaceX, and Musk in particular, have always been straightforward about their intention to build such a vehicle, but this marks the first official announcement.

It is no coincidence that Grasshopper, a reusable suborbital vehicle, was publically revealed only days before in a much less spectacular manner - SpaceX had to reveal certain details to the FAA for a mandatory site environmental review, and the FAA is legally obligated to publicise the results.

Though Grasshopper is suborbital, it was immediately evident that it was not a dedicated suborbital launch capability - it is evidently not much more than a Merlin 1-D engine and fuel tank with struts to keep it off the ground.

At a recent AIAA talk, Musk characterised building reusable rockets as, "super-damn hard." And he meant it.

The Space Shuttle is the closest thing to a reusable launcher ever built, but even that system barely meets the definition. The Shuttle itself, the reusable part, is for practical purposes actually a combination second stage/steerable capsule. The first stage consisted of massive solid rocket boosters, which were separated when no longer necessary. They tumbled back into the Atlantic Ocean, to be hauled in by ships and never used for flight again.

After a flight, the Space Shuttle required extensive processing to make it ready for another flight.

Musk said the first stage of a reusable Falcon will separate, then fall back down, reignite the engines, and land vertically on the launch pad. The second stage will carry the payload to orbit, fire thrusters to re-enter the atmosphere, steer through the atmosphere using its tiny lift quotient, then reignite its own engines and land vertically on the pad.

The main obstacles of a reusable spacecraft are heat and weight.

Heat is generated by the friction of moving through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, and dissipating heat is one of the major challenges of any spacecraft. The first stage will have to survive the flame from the second stage once it separates, and the second stage will need extensive shielding to re-enter safely, much less steer and execute a precision landing. Of course, that extensive shielding adds a whole lot of weight. SpaceX declined to comment on just how they would solve that problem, but they wouldn't spend the money if they didn't think it could be done.

Even 'disposable' launchers can only launch payloads of roughly 2-4% of their total weight. It requires an incredible amount of thrust, which requires more powerful engines, which require additional fuel, which adds more weight, which requires more thrust...

Not to say it's impossible of course, but it is, as Musk put it, "super-damn hard."

Sometimes, it's best to let things speak for themselves. Read on, friends (our highlights):

The First Vibrator in Space   
     
Los Angeles, CA - September 27, 2011 -- On October 8, 2011, online sex toy sales leader SexToy.com, will lead a team to launch the first adult sex toy vibrator into space. The space craft will be equipped with a still and video camera that will send images of its best selling vibrator back to Earth.
 
Through rigorous experimentation, the group has developed a way to send the vibrator into space. The toy will have to withstand temperatures of -75 degrees Fahrenheit and conditions 10 times over normal cosmic radiation. The vibrator will be fully exposed to the elements, reach an altitude of 100,000 feet (~20miles) above the Earth's atmosphere, which is three times the cruising altitude of a typical jet plane. The team hopes to retrieve the vibrator in fully functioning order.
 
SexToy Dave, CEO of CNV.com Inc., says of his inspiration behind the project, "I have always been into firsts and that is how I made my money. I was one of the first on the web selling sex toys, first to have an adult affiliate program, the first to make three appearances on Bravo's hit show Millionaire Matchmaker and now the first online adult business with a space program."
 
The sex toy will be carried into space by a partially solar-powered, partially helium-filled balloon 8 feet wide, armed with a 1080p HD video camera, a 10MP still camera, two consumer cell phones running tracking software, and an experimental GPS unit. The balloon and vibrating bullet will travel through Jet stream winds of up to 100 miles per hour for 1-3 hours and achieve a total distance of up to 100 miles. Sextoy.com will publish the photos on its new blog, "Chew On This" at www.sextoy.com/blog http://www.sextoy.com/blog

credit: Virgin Galactic / caption: could SpaceShipTwo use a liquid propulsion system?

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo could be a single stage to suborbit vehicle using liquid chemical propulsion according to independent research carried out by a company that has been contracted by the European Space Agency for suborbital and hypersonic transport studies

UK company Gas Dynamics has concluded, after its own internal study, using all the publicly available material it could obtain about SS2, that the spacecraft does not need its carrier aircraft WhiteKnight Two if it is fitted with a liquid chemical propulsion system

credit: Dassault Aviation / caption: this is the VSH, Dassault's space tourism spin off from VEHRA 

French aerospace company Dassault Aviation's In the Air newsletter issue 14 has provided an update on its spaceflight related activities and teased us with the prospect of an imminent report outlining a possible future for the European suborbital vehicle VSH, or is that K:1000?

In its report "Suborbital Aviation: on the very edge of space" it says:

The study of suborbital vessels, both manned and unmanned, constitutes the natural extension of the activities of Dassault Aviation with regard to the aircraft of the future.
The suborbital activity began with the VEHRA (air-launched reusable hypersonic vehicle) project. This constituted an "evolution" of the X-38 experimental lifting body from NASA, for which Dassault Aviation had defined the shape. It comprises a family of vehicles that comes in three versions:
− 10 t demonstrator;
− 30 t vehicle for launching small (300 kg) satellites;
− heavy vehicle (200 t) for placing a 7 t payload in low orbit.

The newsletter goes on to say:

Air-launching from a commercial transport aircraft does away with the take-off constraints of classic launchers. In terms of flexibility, this type of launch requires a much more slim line ground infrastructure, and offers the possibility of aborting the mission and recovering the vehicles and their payloads in the majority of cases. The VEHRA project has generated repeat works (configuration, systems, propulsion, etc.) for the engineering division (DGT). Interns from the major engineering colleges have also been associated over the years with these futuristic vehicle projects.

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Mexico has begun preparations to construct its own 30-hectare space center on the Yucatan peninsula for the country's space agency that was created in 2008

Russia has said it is ready to help Mexico with its space ambitions. In 1996 Russia and Mexico signed an agreement on cooperation in the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes. In March 2009 a Russian Federal Space Agency (aka Roscosmos) delegation visited Mexico's Senate committee on science and technology. That committee dealt with the formation of the Mexican space agency. Roscosmos' statement about the new agency's coastal Yucatan site refers to the centre as a launch facility

Meanwhile according to this report a Greek-Russian cosmonaut is preparing to blast off to the ISS later this year. Think of a word, any word...

Amateur rocketeers have fun at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center  last week according to this website