All Space articles – Page 175
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Lockheed Martin delivers Image
Lockheed Martin has delivered the NASA Imager for Magnetopause-to-Auroral Global Exploration spacecraft (IMAGE) to Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, for its launch on 15 February. IMAGE, the first of NASA's Medium-class Explorer Mission spacecraft, was developed under a contract with Southwest Research Institute. IMAGE will be launched into a ...
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ISS service module delayed
Tim Furniss/LONDON Russia's Energia company has confirmed that the Zvezda service module to the International Space Station (ISS) will not be launched until August at the earliest, rather than March/April as planned. The slippage has been caused by delays in the Zvezda schedule and by concerns about the ...
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Spacehab contract
Spacehab has been awarded a $4.2 million NASA contract to supply an Integrated Cargo Carrier and two Spacehab Oceaneering Space Systems Boxes - unpressurised tool boxes - for the Space Shuttle International Space Station assembly flight 7A.1 to be launched in 2001. Source: Flight International
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Boeing lifts space business with Hughes satellite buy
Graham Warwick/WASHINGTON DC Boeing is buying Hughes Electronics' satellite manufacturing business for $3.75 billion in cash. The deal will boost Boeing's space revenue by 35%, to $10 billion a year - a figure the company expects to double by 2009. Renamed Boeing Satellite Systems, the El Segundo, California-based unit ...
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NASA aims for first X-34 tow tests and powered flights
NASA plans to begin ground tests of the X-34 reusable launch vehicle testbed on the dry lakebed at Edwards AFB, California, in mid-February, with flight tests planned for mid-year. The ground tests will involve towing the 17.7m (6ft)-long suborbital X-34 behind a truck for more than 3,000m across Rogers ...
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Ready for work
The European Space Agency's (ESA) X-ray Multi Mirror (XMM) space telescope has reached its operational 7,365 x 114,000km, 48h-period orbit after four thruster firings. The XMM is "behaving better in space than all our pre-launch simulations", says Dietmar Heger, ESA spacecraft operations manager. Source: Flight International
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Repairs put Terra on target
Tim Furniss/LONDON NASA has rectified major computer and antenna faults that occurred on its $1.3 billion Terra spacecraft shortly after its launch last month. The Terra, the flagship of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) programme, was launched into polar orbit on 18 December on an Atlas IIAS operated by ...
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NASA picks partners for race into space
NASA has selected six contractors for its Rapid Spacecraft Acquisition (Rapid II) programme, intended to reduce the time required to procure satellites for science and technology missions. "Indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity" contracts covering 14 different types of core spacecraft bus have been awarded to Ball Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, Orbital Sciences, ...
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Young will head Mars inquiry
Former Lockheed Martin executive Thomas Young has been appointed by NASA to lead the Mars Program Independent Assessment team. It will review the failures of the Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO), Mars Polar Lander (MPL) and the space agency's approach to robotic exploration. The MCO was lost on 23 September and ...
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Indonesia and South Korea in quest for fresh launch sites
Indonesia is considering developing a $1 billion satellite launch centre on the 52km² (20 miles²) Lembe Island, in the province of North Sulawesi, close to the port of Bitung, according to the province's governor. Two more of Indonesia's 17,000 islands - Biak Island in the Bay of Cendrawasih and ...
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Orbital wins NASA science contract
NASA has awarded Orbital Sciences a $35 million contract to launch two science satellites in 2002, using its Pegasus air-launched booster. The US/Canadian SCISAT-1 mission to study ozone production in the upper atmosphere will lift off from Vandenberg AFB, California, in the second quarter of 2002. The Orbital-built ...
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Ariane mission rate speeds up
Last month Arianespace launched its third commercial mission in fewer than 20 days. Flight V125's Ariane 44L lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana, on 21 December. It carried the world's largest commercial communications satellite - the Hughes Space and Communications Galaxy XI (right), the first of its HS-702 buses, ...
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Alenia wins Canadian observation contract
Alenia Aerospazio has won a C$74 million ($50 million) contract to design and build the satellite bus of Canada's new Radarsat 2 Earth observation satellite. Prime contractor McDonald Dettwiler awarded the deal to Alenia after a contest involving six US and European firms. Alenia will build the craft in 16 ...
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Uncertainties hit NASA's Space Shuttle schedule for 2000
Tim Furniss/LONDON This year's first Space Shuttle mission - the 11-day STS99 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission by the orbiter Endeavour (left) - will not be launched before 31 January, according to NASA's preliminary Space Shuttle schedule. This will be followed by STS101 Atlantis on an International Space Station ...
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Slow road to reusability
The shift to reusable launch vehicles will be far slower and more incremental than was once considered possible and desirable Over 30 years ago, in his film 2001: a space odyssey, director Stanley Kubrick gave us his vision of a future in which man could travel from the Earth to ...
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Satcoms progress
Back in the 20th century, they said people would not want telephones on airliners; that they did not wish to be contactable while they dozed in comfort or ate a fine meal. How times have changed. In the 21st century, passengers slip on virtual reality glasses and join the crew ...
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Intelligent hope
Intelligent spacecraft are still a few years away, but robots and automated systems can meanwhile play a large part in extending space exploration The spaceflight industry has just one year year left to emulate Arthur C Clarke's HAL, the spacecraft computer that became too intelligent in 2001: A Space Odyssey. ...
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Flight into the future
For the past 91 years, this magazine has reflected the shape of the industry of which it is part. In the beginning it was simply Flight, and the fledgling field of aviation was its sole purview. Now it is Flight International and the entire breadth of aerospace is its domain. ...
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Opening the door to space
Propulsion concepts under study may lead to a radical change in the way in which space is accessed In the 1951 science fiction classic When World's Collide, a rocket-powered spaceship hurtles down a ramp loaded with hapless escapees from Earth, gathering speed before making a boosted take-off to escape ...
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Time travel
No-one spirited direct from 1899 to the present would find advances in surface transportation unbelievable, but aerospace would amaze them. While ships, cars and trains have seen massive gains in efficiency, they are still fundamentally the same machines. Within the past 100 years, however, powered flight has not only ...