August 11, 2017 by Chris Bergin

Virgin Orbits LauncherOne has signed an agreement to launch a SITAEL satellite developed in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The all-electric propulsion microsat demonstrator called HETsat will be air-launched on a rocket carried under the wing of Virgin Orbits Cosmic Girl carrier plane. Virgin Orbit Launch:

The new air-launch system is yet to conduct its maiden flight, although progress towards that milestone is picking up the pace.

Just this month, Cosmic Girl, a Boeing 747-400 (747-41R) series aircraft (previous registration number G-VWOW), arrived at the companys Long Beach facility in California after initial retrofitting in San Antonio, Texas via a flow called Maintenance D.

Chosenvia an impressively clean operational history and excellent maintenance record, the aircraft undertook its first flight on 29 September 2001 and was delivered to Virgin Atlantic Airways on 31 October 2001.

She spent 14 years in service with Virgin Atlantic Airways primarily servicingthe companys London to San Francisco via New York City route until 29 October 2015.

The plane was officially delivered to Virgin Galactic on 12 November 2015 and re-registered as N744VG.

The main modification involves the ability to support the 24,947.58 kg (55,000 lb) LauncherOne rocket and its associated hardware.

LauncherOne will be capable of placing a 300 kg payload into a sun-synchronous orbit and a 450 kg payload into an equatorialorbit all for the same rough price of $10 million (USD). Notably, the company has begun to claim payloads of up to 500 kg, potentially relating to an increase in performance capabilities.

Carried by Cosmic Girl to around 35,000 feet, LauncherOne will enjoy the ability to launch polar and sun-synchronous missions from approximately 80.4 km (50 miles) off the west coast of Los Angeles, California, and a similar distance off the east coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, for equatorial missions.

The first stage of the LauncherOne is the NewtonThree (N3) engine, which is a 73,500 lbf engine running with RP-1 and LOX. The second stage utilizes the NewtonFour (N4) engine that sports 5,000 lbfof vacuum thrust.

The system will only become financially viable via a healthy order book, with Virgin Orbit noting on Friday one such order, as it was selected to launch a SITAEL satellite developed in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI).

Virgin Orbit and SITAEL signed the launch service agreement at the 31st AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellite.

SITAEL will launch its HETsat via LauncherOne, a technical demonstration of a new electric propulsion system (based on the Hall Effect Thruster (mini-HET) concept) for ESA and ASI.

As a small satellite customer, we are very excited for our innovative SITAEL technologies to get the flexibility and service of a primary payload on a dedicated small launch vehicle by Virgin Orbit, noted SITAEL Chief Executive Officer Nicola Zaccheo.

The satellite, developed in partnership with Italian Space Agency and European Space Agency, is the first all-electric micro satellite ever in space, validating both the SITAEL bus (S-75 platform) and SITAEL low power Hall Effect Thruster (HT100). SITAEL is pleased to take advantage of Virgin Orbits unique capabilities.

The HETsat satellites launch mass is expected to be less than 60 kg, with about 15 kg allocated to mini-HET P/L (including Power Processing Unit, fluidics, tank and xenon propellant).

Opening access to space is an incredible opportunity to bring together governments around the world with commercial enterprises. Virgin Orbit is proud to apply our commercial solutions and innovation with SITAEL to support the European Space Agency and Italian Space Agency, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said.

Collaborative efforts like ours will enable cost-effective access to Low Earth Orbit missions and beyond.

No launch date was provided in the announcement, but it is expected to be one of the opening launches during the initial phase of commercial operations that are set to begin in 2018.

(Images via Virgin Orbit and SpaceTechExpo, Derrick Stamos for NSF (L2) and Nate Moeller for NASASpaceFlight.com andastro95media.com).

See the article here:

Virgin Orbit sign SITAEL contract for LauncherOne satellite launch - NASASpaceflight.com

Jason Rhian

August 11th, 2017

Hellas-Sat-4/SaudiGeoSat-1 satellite after integration. Photo Credit: Lockheed Martin

Engineers with Colorado-based Lockheed Martin have finished integrating the first, modernized,A2100 satellite an upgraded version of a design that has been successfully deployed numerous times in the past. What will become theHellas-Sat-4/SaudiGeoSat-1 satellite will now undergo final assembling and testing and is slated to launch in the first half of next year (2018).

Weve modeled this activity in our virtual reality lab hundreds of times, but this is the first time weve performed the integration activity of our modernized A2100 satellite in a clean room, said Rick Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space Systems via a release issued by the company. Mating the scalable modules together in a precise method was a critical step for the program, and the team did an exceptional job.

Two A2100 satellites Hellas-Sat-4/SaudiGeoSat-1 and Arabsat 6A are being produced on behalf ofArabsat and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology located in Saudi Arabia. The satellites purpose is stated as providing advancedtelecommunications capabilities, including television, internet, telephone and secure mode communications, to customers in the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

The A2100bus utilizes a hybrid propulsion integrated with the payload module as well as transponder panels. The A2100 uses a combination of electrical Hall current thrusters as well as a liquid apogee engine. These will be used to place the Hellas-Sat-4/SaudiGeoSat-1 spacecraft into its final orbit (and will also keep the satellites in their intended orbit).

More than 40 spacecraft on orbit today are built on the A2100 bus, with Lockheed Martin in the process of producing five more of the modernized spacecraft for upcoming missions. The spacecraft also uses a reconfigurable processor which can be reprogrammed on orbit.

The contracts for theHellas-Sat-4/SaudiGeoSat-1and Arabsat 6A satellites were awarded on April 9, 2015, with separate launches for both spacecraft set for sometime in 2018 the former atop an Arianespace Ariane 5 ECA and the latter atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. If everything goes as it is currently planned, the two spacecraft will provide services for some 15 years.

Video courtesy of Lockheed Martin

Tagged: A2100 Hellas-Sat-4/SaudiGeoSat-1 Lockheed-Martin The Range

Jason Rhian spent several years honing his skills with internships at NASA, the National Space Society and other organizations. He has provided content for outlets such as: Aviation Week & Space Technology, Space.com, The Mars Society and Universe Today.

Excerpt from:

Lockheed Martin's A2100 bus modernized and poised for new missions - SpaceFlight Insider

This mosaic image of Crab Nebula, a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a stars supernova explosion, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Recent research shows that galactic cosmic rays flowing into our solar system originate in clusters like these. Credit: NASA/ESA/Arizona State University

Physicists are gearing up to send a re-engineered science instrument originally designed for lofty balloon flights high in Earths atmosphere to the International Space Station next week to broaden their knowledge of cosmic rays, subatomic particles traveling on intergalactic routes that could hold the key to unlocking mysteries about supernovas, black holes, pulsars and dark matter.

Fastened in the cargo bay of a SpaceX Dragon capsule, the cosmic ray observatory will be robotically connected to a port outside the space stations Japanese Kibo laboratory for a three-year science campaign sampling cosmic rays, particles accelerated to nearly the speed of light by violent and mysterious forces in the distant universe.

First discovered more than a century ago, most cosmic rays are blocked by the atmosphere from reaching Earths surface, requiring scientists to send up detectors on high-altitude balloon flights or space missions.

Their name is a misnomer. Cosmic rays are not a form of light like gamma-rays or X-rays, but bits of matter sent careening through space by powerful forces elsewhere in our galaxy and beyond.

Cosmic rays are direct samples of matter from outside our solar system, possibly from the most distant reaches of the universe, saidEun-Suk Seo, lead scientist on the Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass, or CREAM, instrument and a professor of physics at the University of Maryland.

Scientists have flown variants of the CREAM instrument seven times on balloon research missions, logging more than six months of flight time. Engineers modified the existing science payload for the rigors of spaceflight, finishing the instrument for as little as $10 million to $20 million, Seo said, a fraction of the cost of a standalone space mission or an instrument developed from scratch.

Changes to the balloon-borne instrument, managed at NASAs Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, included making the on-board electronics more robust against radiation, and ensuring the package could survive the shaking of a rocket launch.

Dozens of stacked layers of silicon pixels, carbon targets, tungsten planes and scintillating fibers will detect particles, ranging from subatomic units of relatively light hydrogen to heavy iron, coming from deep space and determine their mass, charge and trajectory.

Each cosmic ray comes with its own backstory, and the particles will reveal clues about their origins as they collide with the matter inside CREAMs detector. Scientists will trace the shower of secondary particles generated by each cosmic rays crash into the instruments cross section of pixels and targets.

The most energetic cosmic rays can penetrate all the way to Earths surface, but detectors on the ground only pick up the leftovers generated from collisions with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere, producing air showers of secondary particles the rain down on the planet.

The original cosmic rays, for you to detect them, you have to fly an instrument in space, Seo said. Thats what we are doing. We identify (cosmic rays) particle-by-particle, tell what they are, how much energy they have, and characterize them. We (sample) them directly before they are broken up in the atmosphere.

CREAM will be sensitive to cosmic rays with higher energies than previous cosmic ray detectors flown in space, including the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer delivered to the space station on the second-to-last space shuttle flight in 2011.

What CREAM is going to do is to extend the direct measurements to the highest energies possible, to energies that are capable of generating these gigantic air showers that can reach all the way to the ground, Seo said.

Huge explosions like stellar supernovas, along with extreme gravitational forces from other cosmic phenomena, send cosmic rays shooting through space at mind-boggling velocities approaching the speed of light. One of the CREAM instruments chief objectives is to study where the particles come from.

NASAs Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope proved some cosmic rays come from the expanding debris remnants of supernovas, but the case is still open for other types of cosmic rays.

Its generally believed that cosmic rays originate in supernovas, Seo said.There are other possible contributions or accelerators, pulsars, colliding galaxies, black holes, AGNs (active galactic nuclei).

But some cosmic rays are believed to be too energetic to be accelerated by supernovas.

A supernova is very powerful, but still its a finite engine, Seo said.

Subatomic particles like protons are the most common type of cosmic ray at lower energies, and cosmic rays become rarer as scientists look at higher energies. But balloon science campaigns found the drop-off in particle detections at higher energies is not as steep as predicted, a result known as spectral hardening.

At high energies that are in our energy range there are more cosmic rays than were expected from the simple supernova acceleration scenario, Seo said.

Comparisons of two types of particles protons and helium suggest low-energy and high-energy cosmic rays could come from different sources.

At lower energies, we already know protons are the most dominant component, but as you approach this acceleration limit you expect to see this composition change, Seo said. But this hasnt been observed yet because we are not able to do the direct measurements at that higher energy. With CREAM, we are to explore these higher energies to actually observe such composition changes to confirm such a supernova acceleration scenario.

Seo said CREAM will build up statistics on the flux, or variability, of high-energy cosmic rays with continuous observations not possible on a short-duration balloon flight.

By utilizing the space station, we can increase our exposure by an order of magnitude, Seo said. In order words, every day on the station, we will increase the statistics, and as the statistical uncertainties get reduced, and we can detect higher energies than before.

One way physicists say cosmic rays could be born is during collisions between particles of dark matter, a mysterious substance that makes up about 27 percent of all the mass and energy in the universe. Only 5 percent of the universe is regular matter stuff we can see and touch while the rest is dark energy, an enigmatic force that helps drive the expansion of the universe.

The question of whether these are from an exotic source like dark matter has generated lots of excitement, but for us to actually know whether there is some exotic source like dark matter, or an astrophysical source like a pulsar we will need a lot more understanding of cosmic rays, Seo said.

Scientists from the United States, South Korea, France and Mexico are part of the CREAM project. The instrument weighs about 2,773 pounds (1,258 kilograms) inside the Dragon spacecrafts payload trunk.

Liftoff from NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida is scheduled for Aug. 14.

Its a very exciting time for us in high-energy particle astrophysics, and the long development road of CREAM culminating in this space station mission has been a world-class success story, Seo said.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

Continued here:

Station-bound instrument to open new chapter in the story of cosmic rays - Spaceflight Now

Updated Aug. 10 with new launch window.

The Japanese space agency said Wednesday the launch of an H-2A rocket with the countrys third navigation satellite was preemptively delayed at least 24 hours to Saturday to avoid thunderstorms with lightning in the forecast later this week.

The 174-foot-tall (53-meter) rocket, currently standing inside the vertical assembly building at the Tanegashima Space Center, is now scheduled to launch some time during an unusually-long window Saturday that opens at 0440 GMT (12:40 a.m. EDT; 1:40 p.m. Japan Standard Time) and extends nearly nine hours.

The launch was originally scheduled for Friday.

Rollout of the H-2A rocket to the launch pad at Tanegashima is scheduled around a half-day before liftoff. Technicians will connect the two-stage rocket to the pads electrical, telemetry and cryogenic propellant infrastructure before the final countdown.

The payload aboard the H-2A rocket is Michibiki 3, the third member of a four-satellite network Japan is deploying to supplement GPS navigation coverage over its territory. The launch of the 4.4-ton (4-metric ton) Michibiki 3 satellite comes after the delivery of two similar navigation stations to orbit by H-2A rockets in September 2010 and in June.

Another Michibiki satellite is scheduled for launch on an H-2A rocket as soon as late this year.

The four-satellite fleet, entirely compatible with the GPS network, is being positioned in orbits loitering over Japan at altitudes more than 20,000 miles (33,000 kilometers) above Earth. The first two Michibiki spacecraft went into inclined geosynchronous-type orbits that oscillate between the northern and southern hemispheres, while Michibiki 3 will launch into a geostationary orbit that hovers over the equator.

GPS satellites, operated by the U.S. Air Force, circle Earth in lower orbits, meaning different spacecraft are visible in the sky at different times, acting as navigation beacons to triangulate the location of ground users.

Japans Quasi-Zenith Satellite System will add more beacons to the sky over the Asia-Pacific, resulting in more precise position estimates and improved service in urban areas and remote regions, where high-rise buildings and mountains can obstruct signals from GPS satellites low on the horizon.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

See the article here:

Poor weather forecast delays launch of Japanese navigation ... - Spaceflight Now

Tomasz Nowakowski

August 9th, 2017

The Chinese Yutu rover on the Moon. Photo Credit: CNSA

Recent and rather bold statements made by Chinese officials suggest that the country is moving forward toward its goal of sending Taikonauts to the surface of the Moon.

China is the third country (after the Soviet Union / Russia and the U.S.) that has independently sent humans into space. In October 2003, Yang Liwei flew on board the Shenzhou-5 spacecraft, becoming the first Chinese in orbit. He now serves as the deputy director general of China Manned Space Agency.

China is making preliminary preparations for a manned lunar landing mission, Liwei said in early June, Xinhua state news agency reports.

Liwei made a speech during the 2017 Global Space Exploration Conference in Beijing on June 6. Some of his remarks were in reference to the future of the Chinese lunar exploration program.

He noted that it would not take long for the manned lunar landing project to get official approval and funding. During the conference, he was also asked whether he has any plan to step onto the Moon.

The far side of the Moon with Earth in the background. Taken by Chinas Change 5-T1 at a distance of about 200,000 miles (322,000 km) from Earth. Photo Credit: CNSA

If I am given the opportunity, no problem! Liwei replied.

China intends to realize itsplan of a manned landing on the Moon by 2036, according to a state official who revealed this deadline last year.

Wu Yansheng, the president of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), has also confirmed that the country is working on fulfilling the envisioned manned lunar landing program. He revealed that the proposed mission would consist of a crewed spaceship, a propulsion vehicle and a lunar lander. According to him, the manned spacecraft and the lunar lander will be sent into circumlunar orbit separately.

Chinese officials disclosed no further details about the project. However, during the last months conference, China announced that it would carry out at least four manned spaceflight missions over a period of five years in order to build its space station.

According to Liwei, the launch of the first core module of the space station is scheduled for 2019, which will be followed by launches of two experiment modules. Two manned space missions are currently planned to be conducted in 2020, while the space station is expected to be fully completed in 2022.

So far, Beijing has sent into orbit two Tiangong space laboratories, designed to test key technologies for the future modular space station.

China has already made huge steps toward the realization of its ambitious lunar exploration program. On December 14, 2013, the countrys Change 3 successfully reached the Moon, becoming the first spacecraft to soft-land on the lunar surface since the Soviet Unions Luna 24 in 1976.

TheChange 3 landerdeployed a rover known as Yutu. Although the rover became immobile after 42 days, it continued to operate on the Moon and return intermittent but useful data until it had finally ceased functioning on July 31, 2016.

The next unmanned lunar mission, Change 4, is currently planned for December 2018, while the countrys first sample return mission, designated Change 5, is scheduled for 2019.

Tagged: China China National Space Administration Moon The Range

Tomasz Nowakowski is the owner of Astro Watch, one of the premier astronomy and science-related blogs on the internet. Nowakowski reached out to SpaceFlight Insider in an effort to have the two space-related websites collaborate. Nowakowski's generous offer was gratefully received with the two organizations now working to better relay important developments as they pertain to space exploration.

Read this article:

China eyes manned lunar landing by 2036 - SpaceFlight Insider

Jason Rhian

August 10th, 2017

Image Credit: Orbital ATK

The U.S. Geological SurveysLandsat 9 spacecraft is making steady progress toward its planned launch in December of 2020. If everything goes as currently planned, the satellite will be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The contract to produce the spacecraft was awarded in 2016 and will mark the continuation of a program that can trace its lineage back 45 years.

When it launches,Landsat 9 will map the terrain far below its position in Sun-synchronous orbit from which it will collect data and space-based imagery. Data will be used by officials for land-management, agricultural purposes, emergency response (to include disaster relief), and mapping.

As the fourth Landsat satellite built by Orbital ATK, Landsat 9 aptly demonstrates thecompanys expertise in delivering high-quality land imaging satellites that exceed theexpectations of our customers, said Steve Krein, Vice President of Science andEnvironmental Programs at Orbital ATK, via a release issued by the company. Based on NASAs positive assessment of ourprogress, we are well positioned to build on our legacy of Landsat success and executeon the next phase of development.

Orbital ATK was awarded the contract to produce the Landsat 9 spacecraft in October of 2016. The Dulles, Virginia-based company is both designing and constructing the satellite, which will incorporate instruments provided by NASA and the USGS.

Landsat 9 recently underwent, and successfully completed, itspreliminary design review, which was carried out between July 18 and July 20 at Orbital ATKs facilities in Gilbert,Arizona. The test checked out all of the spacecrafts system and schedule requirements.

With Landsat 9, the overall length of the Landsat Program will reach half a century. Orbital ATK also built Landsat 8, 5, and 4, which were launched in 2013, 1984, and 1982, respectively.

Landsat 9 is based on theLEOStar-3 satellite bus platform, which was also used for Landsat 8 and is what the ICESat-2 and JPSS-2 spacecraft being developed for NASA will use.

Tagged: Landsat 9 NASA Orbital ATK The Range United States Geological Survey

Jason Rhian spent several years honing his skills with internships at NASA, the National Space Society and other organizations. He has provided content for outlets such as: Aviation Week & Space Technology, Space.com, The Mars Society and Universe Today.

Continued here:

US Geological Survey's Landsat 9 satellite progressing toward 2020 launch - SpaceFlight Insider

Christopher Paul

August 7th, 2017

NASAs Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity has marked its fifth year on the surface of the Red Planet. Image Credit: NASA / JPL

NASAs Curiosity rover celebrated 5 (Earth) years on Mars on Saturday, August 6. After launching on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V 541 rocket on November 26, 2011, and then cruising through interplanetary space for nine months, the rover descended through the Red Planets atmosphere to the surface via its Skycrane system. Curiosity landedon Mars at exactly 05:17:57 SpaceCraft Event Time (SCET) UTC (1:17 a.m. EDT) on August 6, 2012.

At the time, Curiosity was the heaviest payload ever launched to the surface of Mars and required anentirely novel landing method. The rover still slowed itself from interplanetary speeds by aerobraking,protecting itself from the heat with a heat shield, then descended by parachute until the Skycrane activated.

The Sky Crane, NASAs name for their innovative landing system, was a separate landing vehicle thatused rocket thrust to hover over the surface of Mars, then lowered the Curiosity rover down to the surfacevia cables. After the rover touched the surface, the Sky Crane vehicle detached the cables and flew off toget away from Curiosity, crashing on the Martian surface some distance away a short time later.

The Curiosity rover itself carried a number of novel instruments and technologies to Mars. Curiosity wasthe first nuclear-powered rover on Mars, drawing its power from a Multi-Mission RadioisotopeThermoelectric Generator (MMRTG). Curiosity also carried the ChemCam, a geochemistry instrumentthat fires lasers at rocks to determine their chemical make-up. The CheMin instrument is the first X-raydiffraction analyzer on Mars and uses X-rays to determine the mineral content of samples. And the SAMinstrument, for Sample Analysis at Mars, is the first wet chemistry instrument sent to Mars since theViking probes.

While Curiosity is a technological marvel, and one of NASAs flagship missions, that doesnt meanthat the robot has had smooth driving all the way. One of the most serious challenges the rover has facedis just driving. Curiosityswheels are machined from aluminum and include thin sections reinforced bygrousers, thicker rib sections that support the thin sections and connect the surface of the wheel to the huband motor. In 2013, engineers began to notice the wheels were wearing more quickly than had been expected.

Problemswith the way the rover drove and with the unique terrain of Gale Crater and Mount Sharp were beginningto put holes in the thin sections of the wheels. Engineers eventually created new rules for driving therover, avoiding certain kinds of terrain in their commanded drives and programming the rover itself toavoid those terrains when driving autonomously.

But engineers believed that as long as no grousersbroke, the wheels would remain functional. In early 2017 engineers noticed some grousers beginning tobreak, but continued to believe the wheels would be fine for several years. They also adjusted the roversdriving algorithms to put less stress on the wheels when climbing over rocks.

Despite these challenges, Curiosity has made powerful discoveries, some of which lead scientists tobelieve that Gale Crater may have hosted habitable conditions for potentially millions of years.

Engineers have also programmed the rover to be more autonomous. The rover can now select targets forits ChemCam instrument on its own and relay the results back to Earth. The rover can also chart its ownpath to destinations chosen by its human controllers.

The rover has driven 10.57 miles (17.01 kilometers) in total since its landing and has endured the harsh conditions ofMars for over 1700 sols (Martian days). While August 6 was Curiositysfifth Earth-year on Mars, it has only been two and two-thirds in Martianyears.

The roughly one-ton rover is just now preparing to resume science operations after the solar conjunction the time when theSun is between Earth and Mars forced operations to pause afterJuly 14.

NASA plans to build on Curiosityssuccess with its Mars 2020 rover, which shares much of Curiositysdesign but with some improvements, such as stronger wheels, a drill for taking sample cores, and asystem for leaving sample caches behind for future explorers. NASA is currently working to select alanding site, with thelaunch date expected to be sometime in July/August 2020 and the landing sometime in February 2021.

So how does the rover mark its birthday every year? As was noted on the aptly named Curiosity.com website, it uses its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to sing Happy Birthday to itself.

Video courtesy of NASA Goddard

Tagged: Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory NASA The Range

Christopher Paul has had a lifelong interest in spaceflight. He began writing about his interest in the Florida Tech Crimson. His primary areas of interest are in historical space systems and present and past planetary exploration missions. He lives in Kissimmee, Florida, and also enjoys cooking and photography. Paul saw his first Space Shuttle launch in 2005 when he moved to central Florida to attend classes at the Florida Institute of Technology, studying space science, and has closely followed the space program since. Paul is especially interested in the renewed effort to land crewed missions on the Moon and to establish a permanent human presence there. He has covered several launches from NASA's Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral for space blogs before joining SpaceFlight Insider in mid-2017.

See the rest here:

Our SpaceFlight Heritage: Curiosity's fifth year on Mars marked by celebration and song - SpaceFlight Insider

Curt Godwin

August 10th, 2017

The Michibiki-3 satellite, part of Japans QZSS navigation system, sits on display ahead of launch. Photo Credit: Japans Cabinet Office, National Space Policy Secretariat

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is in final preparations to launch the third of the countrys Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) series atop anH-IIA rocket. The satellite, also called Michibiki-3, will augment Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation services in the island nation.

Archive photo of H-IIA. Photo Credit: Bill Ingalls / NASA

The mission is scheduled to launch at 1 a.m. EDT (2 p.m. Japan Standard Time / 05:00 GMT) on Aug. 12, 2017, from Pad 1 at theTanegashima Space Center. The Japanese space agency will have a 9-hour window to get the mission off the ground, should weather or technical difficulties spring up.

Although GPS provides reasonably accurate positioning to civilian receivers worldwide, its signal can be blocked or attenuated when penetrating dense urban canyons and mountainous terrain, something in no short supply in the Japanese archipelago.

To combat this shortcoming, Japan has developed its own line of satellites designed to provide a more effective service for its citizens and emergency response personnel.

Michibiki-3 will join its two on-orbit siblings, providing more accurate positioning information to surface-based receivers, though from a vastly different vantage point. While the first two spacecraft are operating in a highly inclined and slightly elliptical orbit that draws a figure-eight ground trace, Michibiki-3 will be positioned in a geostationary orbit high above the equator at 127 degrees East.

Once complete Japan plans to field a constellation consisting of at least four satellites this combination of spacecraft in Tundra and stationary orbits will provide a tailored navigation service that will augment the U.S.-developed GPS system.

Like the other satellites in the series, Michibiki-3 was constructed on the Mitsubishi Electric DS-2000 spacecraft platform. Tipping the scales at approximately 10,361 pounds (4,700 kilograms), Michibiki-3 will be outfitted with twin solar panels and a propulsion system utilizing theR-4D rocket engine.

Primary payload on the satellite is an array of navigation transponders, along with S-, Ku-, and L-band antennas, supporting messaging communications for the QZSS Safety Confirmation Service (Q-ANPI). Rounding out the vehicles capabilities is an SBAS-signal antenna that will provide error correcting positioning information to aircraft.

The satellite has an expected life span of approximately 15 years and will be delivered to orbit atop an H-IIA launch vehicle. The H-IIA, manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and outfitted in its 204 configuration (four solid rocket boosters attached to the core), can deliver up to 13,227 pounds (6,000 kilograms) to geostationary transfer orbit.

This will be the fourth H-IIA launch of 2017, and the second in the 204 configuration. The 204 has seen a 100 percent success rate, though it has a short flight history of only three launches. Michibiki-3 will mark only the fourth mission of variant.

This also will mark the final flight of 2017 for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Video of the launch of Michibiki-2

Tagged: H-IIA Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA Lead Stories Michibiki-3

Curt Godwin has been a fan of space exploration for as long as he can remember, keeping his eyes to the skies from an early age. Initially majoring in Nuclear Engineering, Curt later decided that computers would be a more interesting - and safer - career field. He's worked in education technology for more than 20 years, and has been published in industry and peer journals, and is a respected authority on wireless network engineering. Throughout this period of his life, he maintained his love for all things space and has written about his experiences at a variety of NASA events, both on his personal blog and as a freelance media representative.

See the original post:

Japan gearing up to launch Michibiki-3 navigation satellite - SpaceFlight Insider

Curt Godwin

August 8th, 2017

Earth can be seen rising above the Moons surface in this picture taken by NASAs Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Interest in Earths natural satellite is increasing, with both private and government missions eyeing the lunar surface. Photo Credit: NASA

While several private companies are vying to claim their share of the Google Lunar XPRIZE (GLXP) by landing a spacecraft on the Moon before 2017 ends, they arent the only ones with a focus on Earths natural satellite. Glavkosmos, a subsidiary of Russias Roscosmos, has announced their intention of launching small vehicles as co-manifested payloads on larger Moon-bound missions.

Artists rendition of Luna-Glob (Luna 25) on the surface of the Moon. Image Credit: NPO Lavochkin

Work is underway on [the] evaluation of [the] feasibility of implementing commercial missions in 20202022, a representative from the company told Russian news outlet,TASS.

Glavkosmos aims to hitch a ride with one of Russias upcoming Luna series of Moon missions. Though the missions have been planned since 1997, financial setbacks have forced more than 40 years of delays on the program.

Luna-25, also known as Luna-Glob, is scheduled to be the first Russian mission to the Moon since Luna-24 was launched on August 9, 1976, and may be a candidate for Glavkosmos to use as their ride to lunar vicinity. The uncrewed vehicle will land on the lunar surface near the south pole and collect regolith samples.

While Luna-25 is baselined for launch in 2018, other outlets have reported that all Russian Moon missions are suspended until at least 2025.

Should Glavkosmos not be able to tag along with Luna-25, it may have follow-up opportunities with Luna-26 and Luna-27.

With both commercial and state-backed missions on the docket, interest in the Moon is undergoing a renaissance. However, with dynamic private entities like Moon Express pushing ahead at a rapid pace, Russia may once again find itself playing catch-up.

Tagged: Google Lunar X-Prize Luna 25 Moon Roscosmos The Range

Curt Godwin has been a fan of space exploration for as long as he can remember, keeping his eyes to the skies from an early age. Initially majoring in Nuclear Engineering, Curt later decided that computers would be a more interesting - and safer - career field. He's worked in education technology for more than 20 years, and has been published in industry and peer journals, and is a respected authority on wireless network engineering. Throughout this period of his life, he maintained his love for all things space and has written about his experiences at a variety of NASA events, both on his personal blog and as a freelance media representative.

Excerpt from:

Russian launch services operator eyes lunar mission in early 2020s - SpaceFlight Insider

One artists concept of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, the next flyby target for NASAs New Horizons mission. This binary concept is based on telescope observations made at Patagonia, Argentina, on July 17, 2017, when MU69 passed in front of a star. New Horizons theorize that it could be a single body with a large chunk taken out of it, or two bodies that are close together or even touching. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Alex Parker

Ground observations of the New Horizons spacecrafts next target last month revealed the distant object, lurking in the outer solar system more than four billion miles from Earth, might have an unconventional elongated shape, or even consist of two icy bodies orbiting one another in an age-old cosmic dance.

The New Horizons team deployed 24 mobile telescopes toChubut and Santa Cruz provinces in Argentina to catch the tiny world, officially named 2014 MU69, briefly blotting out light from a star. Called an occultation, the event helped scientists learn more about the robotic missions next target, including its size, shape, orbit and the environment around it.

Two years after making the first close-up encounter with Pluto, NASAs plutonium-powered New Horizons probe is speeding toward a flyby of 2014 MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019.

A handful of detections from last months field campaign in Argentina improved scientists understanding of 2014 MU69s shape. Researchers said the object could be a extreme prolate spheroid akin to a skinny football or a binary pair in which two bodies might be gravitationally locked close together, or even touching, according to NASA.

This new finding is simply spectacular, said Alan Stern, principal investigator on the New Horizons mission from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. The shape of MU69 is truly provocative, and could mean another first for New Horizons going to a binary object in the Kuiper Belt. I could not be happier with the occultation results, which promise a scientific bonanza for the flyby.

Scientists have set an upper limit on the likely size of MU69 at 20 miles (30 kilometers) long. If there are two objects, each one is likely 9-12 miles (15-20 kilometers) in diameter, NASA said in a statement.

Orbiting in the faraway Kuiper Belt, MU69 will become the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft when New Horizons zips by on New Years Day 2019. NASA officials expect to give the target a new name before New Horizons makes its flyby at a relative velocity of more than 9 miles per second (14 kilometers per second).

Miniature worlds like 2014 MU69 are likely the leftover ice and rock fragments that formed larger objects like Pluto, the moons of some Uranus and Neptune, and other dwarf planets in the outer solar system.

The Kuiper Belt is a ring of ancient icy remnants from the earliest part of the solar systems 4.6 billion-year history circling the sun beyond the orbit of Neptune. Its population includes continent-sized words like Pluto and the even-farther dwarf planet Eris, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of objects the size of 2014 MU69 or larger.

A search by the Hubble Space Telescope discovered MU69 in 2014 after other surveys turned up no suitable targets for New Horizons following its encounter with Pluto on July 14, 2015. A series of thruster firings steered New Horizons on a new course for MU69 soon after the Pluto flyby.

Observations by Hubble and the European Space Agencys Gaia mission pinpointed MU69s orbit, telling scientists when the object would pass in front of stars, casting shadows on Earths surface. Watching MU69s passage between Earth and a distant star was a chance to learn more about the object than astronomers could ascertain from conventional observations. The tiny world appears as a fuzzy dot of light even through Hubble.

An occultation visible June 3 from Argentina and South Africa was the first chance to study MU69s shape and size. Scientists boarded NASAs flying infrared astronomy observatory, called SOFIA, for a similar July 10 opportunity to search for debris around MU69 that could pose a hazard to New Horizons.

MU69 blocked a brighter star July 17, giving scientists their best view of the objects shape.

While data are still being analyzed, scientists probably will not know MU69s true shape until New Horizons is on final approach in December 2018, Stern wrote in an email to Spaceflight Now.

These exciting and puzzling results have already been key for our mission planning, but also add to the mysteries surrounding this target leading into the New Horizons encounter with MU69, now less than 17 months away, said Marc Buie, the New Horizons co-investigator who led the observation campaign.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

Go here to read the rest:

New Horizons' next target might be a binary pair - Spaceflight Now

Tomasz Nowakowski

August 8th, 2017

An artists rendering of the NextSTEP habitat docked with Orion in cislunar orbit as part of a concept for the Deep Space Gateway. Orion will serve as the habitats command deck in early missions, providing critical communications, life support, and navigation to guide long-duration missions. Image Credit: PRNewsfoto / Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin was recently selected by NASA to build a full-scale prototype of a cislunar habitat. The development of the habitation module is part of the Phase II contract for the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) program.

Under the NextSTEP-2 contract, Lockheed Martin will build a full-scale habitat prototype in the Space Station Processing Facility at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The habitat will be a refurbished version of the Shuttle-eraDonatelloMulti-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM).

Donatello as seen in the Space Station Processing Facility in 2004. Photo Credit: NASA

NASA never flew Donatello on cargo runs to the International Space Station (ISS). Instead, the U.S. space agency used the nearly identical Leonardo, which was converted to the Permanent Multipurpose Module in 2011 and remains attached to the orbiting laboratory, and Raffaello on 12 Space Shuttle flights between 2001 and 2011. The never-flown module is about 22 feet (6.7 meters) long and 15 feet (4.6 meters) in diameter.

This prototype will pave the way for NASAs future Deep Space Gateway and other deep space habitats, Danielle Hauf with Lockheed Martins Communications told SpaceFlight Insider.

The Deep Space Gateway is a planned cislunar space station that could serve as a staging point for future crewed missions beyond the Earth-Moon system. It is expected to be completed in the 2020s. However, in order to successfully construct the habitat in space, prototype units need to be developed and tested.Lockheed Martin was one of several companies selected to participate in this effort.

Lockheed Martin has developed and is developing numerous spacecraft and satellites, including NASAs Orion capsule designed for deep space exploration missions in the future.

We are proud to be a part of Phase II of the NextSTEP contract, Hauf said. Using our rich heritage of operating spacecraft in deep space through planetary exploration missions and our intimate knowledge of the Orion spacecraft, we hope to make the most of NASAs investments to provide a unique offering.

Work under the Phase II contract will last over 18 months. During the development and testing of the refurbished module, the company will focus on mixed reality and rapid prototyping, as well as work on concept refinement and risk reduction. Lockheed Martin will also use virtual prototyping to validate the habitat modules form, fit, and function.

These results are expected to improve understanding of the systems, standards, and common interfaces needed to make living in deep space possible.

At Lockheed Martin, we have a long heritage of building spacecraft that are designed to survive in the harsh environment of deep space with minimal human interaction, and this habitat and the Deep Space Gateway would be similar, Hauf said. We are also using virtual and augmented reality technology to test our assumptions throughout the design and build of this prototype.

Tagged: Deep Space Gateway human spaceflight Lockheed-Martin NASA NextSTEP-2 The Range

Tomasz Nowakowski is the owner of Astro Watch, one of the premier astronomy and science-related blogs on the internet. Nowakowski reached out to SpaceFlight Insider in an effort to have the two space-related websites collaborate. Nowakowski's generous offer was gratefully received with the two organizations now working to better relay important developments as they pertain to space exploration.

Continued here:

Lockheed Martin provides details into use of Shuttle-era cargo pods for proposed cislunar habitat - SpaceFlight Insider

Retired astronaut Clayton Anderson, right, helps a student with a flight simulation exercise during this year's Spaceflight Operations Workshop. Larger photo. Photo by Clay Paciorek/Aerospace Engineering.

AMES, Iowa The students enrolled in Iowa State Universitys fourth Spaceflight Operations Workshop are facing a full week of physical and mental challenges.

The 12 workshop students nine from Iowa State, two from the University of Iowa and one from Tuskegee University in Alabama will be tested Aug. 7-13 through skydiving, scuba training, wilderness survival, leadership lessons, team building and talks about science in space, spacecraft design, human capabilities, operational procedures and more.

While that training mirrors a little of what astronaut candidates experience at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston, the workshop isnt really about preparing students for a career in space. Its more about teaching them a new way of thinking.

I hope that when they leave here theyre excited about the idea of operational learning and operational methodologies, said Clayton Anderson, an Iowa State distinguished faculty fellow in aerospace engineering and a retired astronaut who inspired and has helped organize the workshops.

To Anderson, who earned a 1983 masters degree from Iowa State, operational thinking means taking a new perspective. He wants the workshop students to start thinking like an operator.

Engineers working on spacesuit controls, for example, need to think about whats easy to use in zero gravity, with big gloves and limited visibility. That thought process also applies to engineers designing race cars and spaceships, or teachers building lesson plans.

As in past years, most of the workshop students are engineering majors. But theres also an education major in this years class. And this is the first time the workshop has included students from the University of Iowa.

Anderson is pleased with the workshops growing diversity in fields of study and home universities. He believes the workshop has the content and message that could benefit just about anybody. And so he thinks the workshop could one day grow into an academic minor or even a training session for corporate leaders.

We want our students to be excited to go back into whatever environment theyre from, he said. And we want them able to immediately apply some of the things theyve learned here to their work environment and their teammates.

More:

Fourth Spaceflight Ops Workshop launches students on path to operational thinking - Iowa State University News Service

August 7, 2017 by Chris Bergin and William Graham

The Vostochny Cosmodrome a key part of Russias future space launch ambitions has undergone a maintenance period ahead of what will be its second launch. The new launch site is currently dedicated to Soyuz rockets, but will eventually be the future site for the Angara and super heavy launch vehicles. Vostochny Work:

Vostochny, whose name means Eastern, is built on the site of the former Svobodny missile base. Svobodny, which was the farthest East of Russias cold war missile bases, was occupied by UR-100K missiles until its closure under the START-II treaty during the 1990s.

After its closure as a missile base, Svobodny was used between 1997 and 2006 for a series of five orbital launches via the Start-1 rocket,a derivative of the Topol missile. Svobodny was closed in 2007 by order of Vladimir Putin, as the Russian Space Agency, Roskosmos, considered the little-used site redundant and expensive to maintain.

As the most southerly of Russias launch sites, Russias primary launch site, Baikonur, has been the most suited for launches to lower-inclination orbits. With the other Russian site, Plesetsk, too far North to provide a practical alternative, all of Russias geostationary missions go through Baikonur, as well as launches tothe International Space Stationand beyond Earth orbit.

While Vostochnys latitude of 51.8 degrees North is still higher than Baikonurs 45.9 degrees, meaning that low-inclination launches will need to expend more fuel adjusting their inclination during flight, it is still usable for geosynchronous missions.

Most importantly, Vostochny will allow Russia to reduce its dependence upon Baikonur a site which, since the breakup of the Soviet Union, it has been forced to lease from Kazakhstan.

Such will be the reliance on the new site, Roscosmos plans to move 45 percent of Russias space launches to Vostochny by 2020, with Baikonurs share dropping from 65 percent to just 11 percent. This swing will continue to grow until a projected 90 percent of Russian launches start taking place outside of Baikonur.

Its build up towards that key role is being staggered, withonly Soyuz rockets launched from Vostochny for the opening years.

That maiden flight, attended byVladimir Putin, was conducted in 2016, with a Soyuz 2-1A and Volga upper stage lofting the Mokhailo Lomonosov research satellite and two small secondary payloads.

The gap to the next launch will be a lengthy oneo, with the current schedule showing a Soyuz 2-1B/Fregat is set to launch in November with a host of payloads.

The following month apair of Kanopus-V satellites will also be launched from the new site, atop a Soyuz-2-1A/Fregat.

Launches, again only involving Soyuz rockets, will ramp up in 2018.

The first Angara launch from Vostochny is not currently expected until 2021. TsSKB Progress proposed Rus-M vehicle was to have had two pads at the site, however its development was canceled in 2011.

The Soyuz pad at Vostochny, Site 1S, is the eighth Soyuz pad to be built across four different launch sites, following the two complexes at Baikonur, four at Plesetsk and one at Kourou.

Designated 371SK14, the launch equipment resembles that at Kourou, with a mobile service tower instead of retractable arms with gantries that enclose the rocket as used at Plesetsk and Baikonurs older pads.

Roscosmos recently noted that systems at the new base had undergone a maintenance period noted as an annual maintenance of technological equipment at the launch and technical complexes and on the equipment of the launching and technical complexes.

As part of the maintenance, specialists replaced the oil in the hydraulic system of the Mobile Service Tower, the compressed gas receivers were filled up to the operational volumes, joint inspections of all the systems of the launch complex were carried out.

Engineers also worked on the propellant loading facilities, including for the Fregat upper stage that will be in action with the next few launches.

All routine maintenance work at the launch and technical complexes and the filling and neutralizing station were completed in full, and the equipment is ready for the next launch.

Annual maintenance is the most critical stage in the life cycle of rocket and space technology. This is a traditional work for all cosmodromes, added the Russian Space Agency. The previous annual technical maintenance of the technological equipment of the space center Vostochny was carried out in the third quarter of 2016.

(Images via Roscosmos).

See the original post:

Vostochny Cosmodrome undergoes maintenance work - NASASpaceflight.com

Jim Sharkey

August 6th, 2017

This artists concept shows hot Jupiter WASP-121b, which presents the best evidence yet of a stratosphere on an exoplanet. Image & Caption Credit: Engine House VFX, At-Bristol Science Centre, University of Exeter

Researchers working with data from NASAs Hubble Space Telescope have found the strongest evidence to date for the existence of a stratosphere the layer of an atmosphere in which temperature increases with altitude on an exoplanet (a planet outside of the Solar System). The new study was published in the August 3, 2017, issue of the journal Nature.

This result is exciting because it shows that a common trait of most of the atmospheres in our solar system a warm stratosphere also can be found in exoplanet atmospheres, said Mark Marley, the studys co-author who is based at NASAs Ames Research Center. We can now compare processes in exoplanet atmospheres with the same processes that happen under different sets of conditions in our own solar system.

The researchers studied WASP-121b, an example of a type of exoplanet called a hot Jupiter. The planets mass is 1.2 times the that of Jupiter and its radius is 1.9 times Jupiters. Wasp-121b is much closer to its star than Jupiter is to the Sun. While it takes Jupiter 12 years to revolve once around the Sun, WASP-121 orbits its star once every three days. If the exoplanet were any closer to its star, the stars gravity would rip it apart. WASP-121s atmosphere is heated to 4,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,500 degrees Celsius), hot enough to boil some metals.

An earlier studyfound possible signs of a stratosphere on the exoplanet WASP-33b and other hot Jupiters. The new study provides the strongest evidence yet because scientist observed the signature of hot water molecules for the first time.

Theoretical models have suggested stratospheres may define a distinct class of ultra-hot planets, with important implications for their atmospheric physics and chemistry, said Tom Evans, lead author and research fellow at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. Our observations support this picture.

The scientists studied the atmosphere of WASP-121 by using Hubbles spectroscopy capabilities to analyze how different molecules react to specific wavelengths of light. For example, water vapor in the planets atmosphere behaves in predictable ways depending on the temperature of the water.

The top of the planets atmosphere is heated to a blazing 4,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,500 Celsius), hot enough to boil some metals. Image & Caption Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STSci)

A stars light can penetrate deep into a planets atmosphere, raising the temperature of the gas there. The gas then radiates its heat into space as infrared light. If there is cooler water vapor at the top of the atmosphere, the water molecules will block certain wavelengths of light from escaping into space. If, however, the water molecules at the top of the atmosphere have a higher temperature, they will glow at the same wavelengths.

The emission of light from water means the temperature is increasing with height, said Tiffany Kataria, the studys co-author based at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Were excited to explore at what longitudes this behavior persists with upcoming Hubble observations.

In Earths stratosphere, ozone gas traps ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, raising the temperature of this layer of the atmosphere. Other bodies within the Solar System also have a stratosphere. For example, methane is responsible for heating the stratospheres of Jupiter as well as Saturns moon Titan.

In planets of the Solar System, the change in temperature within a planets stratosphere is approximately 100 degrees Fahrenheit (about 56 degrees Celsius). On WASP-121b, the temperature in the stratosphere rises by 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (560 degrees Celsius). Researchers do not yet know which chemicals are responsible for the temperature in WASP-121bs atmosphere. Vanadium oxide and titanium oxide are possible candidates because they are commonly found in brown dwarfs failed stars that share some characteristics with exoplanets. Compounds such as these are expected to be found on only the hottest of hot Jupiters because high temperatures are required to keep them in a gaseous state.

This super-hot exoplanet is going to be a benchmark for our atmospheric models, and it will be a great observational target moving into the Webb era, said Hannah Wakeford, the studys co-author who worked on this research while at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

Video courtesy of NASA

Tagged: Ames Research Center exoplanet Hubble Space Telescope NASA The Range

Jim Sharkey is a lab assistant, writer and general science enthusiast who grew up in Enid, Oklahoma, the hometown of Skylab and Shuttle astronaut Owen K. Garriott. As a young Star Trek fan he participated in the letter-writing campaign which resulted in the space shuttle prototype being named Enterprise. While his academic studies have ranged from psychology and archaeology to biology, he has never lost his passion for space exploration. Jim began blogging about science, science fiction and futurism in 2004. Jim resides in the San Francisco Bay area and has attended NASA Socials for the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover landing and the NASA LADEE lunar orbiter launch.

View post:

Hubble spots exoplanet with glowing water atmosphere - SpaceFlight Insider

A ring-shaped warp-drive device could theoretically transport a football-shaped starship (center) to effective speeds faster than light. The concept was first proposed by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994.

Scientists, engineers and exploration advocates will gather in central California this week to help plan out humanity's journey to the stars.

The action is happening in Monterey Monday through Wednesday (Aug. 7 through Aug. 9), at a conference called Starship Congress 2017.

"Our question for Starship Congress 2017 is what role the moon can play to catalyze humankind's venturing forth to explore interstellarly," conference organizers wrote in a description of the event. "Furthermore, this year's theme builds on a key take-away from the Starship Congress 2015 summit at Drexel University: In order to make interstellar space exploration interesting to everyone, what must we do to make space accessible for everybody?"

The speakers include physicist Miguel Alcubierre, who in 1994 proposed a type of real-life warp drive that could theoretically enable faster-than-light travel without breaking the laws of physics; planetary scientist Franck Marchis; scientist and sci-fi author David Brin; and Richard Obousy, co-founder and director of Icarus Interstellar, a nonprofit dedicated to helping make interstellar flight a reality by 2100. (Icarus Interstellar is organizing the conference.)

To learn more about Starship Congress 2017, visit the conference page here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/starship-congress-2017-tickets-33352347770

Space.com's Mike Wall will be in attendance, keeping tabs on the most exciting developments.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter@michaeldwallandGoogle+.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookor Google+. Originally published onSpace.com.

Read more from the original source:

Interstellar Spaceflight Conference Launches Monday - Space.com

Tomasz Nowakowski

August 6th, 2017

Artists rendering of the SOCRATES satellite utilized for the quantum communication experiment. Image Credit: AES

A team of researchers from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Tokyo, Japan, has recently reported that they succeeded in demonstrating the first quantum communication between a microsatellite and a ground station. The signal was sent by a quantum communication transmitter on board the SOCRATES satellite.

The instrument, known as the Small Optical TrAnsponder, or SOTA, is the worlds smallest and lightest quantum communication transmitter. It has a mass of roughly 13.22 pounds (6 kilograms) and its dimensions are 7 by 4.5 by 10.6 inches (17.8 by 11.4 by 26.8 centimeters). This shoebox-sized tool is capable of transmitting a laser signal to the ground at a rate of 10 million bits per second from an altitude of about 370 miles (600 kilometers) while orbiting at a speed of approximately 15,660 mph (25,200 km/h).

SOTA was launched into space as part of the Space Optical Communications Research Advanced TEchnology Satellite (SOCRATES) microsatellite in May 2014. The missions main goal was to test a standard microsatellite bus technology applicable to missions of various purposes. SOTA has successfully completed its objectives by demonstrating its quantum communication capabilities.

We are proud to say that the SOTA mission fulfilled all the success levels as foreseen and more than doubled its originally designed working life of one year, Alberto Carrasco-Casado of NICTs Space Communications Laboratory told Astrowatch.net.

SOTA transmitter. Photo Credit: NICT

According to Carrasco-Casado, four different success levels were established for the SOTA instrument: minimum success, success, full success, and extra success. The minimum success level required a basic check-up of all the lasercom subsystems, while the success level consisted of acquiring the laser beams transmitted from SOTA to the ground station by using different wavelengths and performing basic communication tests.

In order to achieve the full success level, a real data transmission from SOTA to the ground station by using error correcting codes to deal with variable atmospheric conditions was needed. When it comes to the most desired extra success level, SOTA needed to successfully conduct lasercom experiments with different ground stations around the world and the quantum-limited communication experiment that was recently described in the Nature Photonics journal.

The main achievement of SOTA was to be the first lasercom terminal in a microsatellite. Being such a tiny lasercom terminal, we could test several technologies and perform different experiments, Carrasco-Casado noted.

The scientists used three wavelengths for communications: 800-nm, 980-nm, and 1,550-nm bands each of them through a different aperture (small lenses to transmit the 800-nm and 980-nm band lasers, and a 5-cm Cassegrain telescope to transmit the 1,550-nm laser). Also, they used two different pointing technologies: a coarse-pointing gimbal for the 800-nm and 980-nm band lasers, and an additional fine-pointing system for the 1,550-nm, the latter being able to deliver a higher power to the ground.

The researchers were able to gather a great deal of atmospheric-propagation data using these technologies, which is critical to characterize the atmospheric channel for future missions. They managed to replicate the experiments in different ground stations around the world (Canada, Germany, and France), thereby achieving promising results.

For instance, regarding the French ground station, the French Space Agency (CNES) group demonstrated an adaptive-optic system to compensate the atmospheric perturbations suffered by the SOTA signals. Finally, they were able to carry out the first quantum-limited communication experiment from space.

All these technologies are key for the future development of space optical communications and quantum communications, Carrasco-Casado said.

He underlined that space lasercom will play a more and more important role in satellite communications in the future, and all the technologies that SOTA demonstrated are key to these future developments. For example, the SpaceX constellation plans to use over 4,000 satellites, and those satellites will use laser communications to communicate with each other. Moreover, many other constellations and communication networks are being designed at the moment where free-space lasercom plays a key role, with private companies like Google or Facebook investing a great deal of effort in their deployment.

If Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and lasercom systems can be miniaturized following the heritage of SOTA, this technology could be spread massively, enabling a truly secure global communication network. Prior to the commercialization of this technology, research organizations like NICT have to demonstrate its feasibility, which was the goal of the SOTA mission. In line of this endeavor, NICT is also actively collaborating in the standardization of lasercom technologies through the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS), and the data obtained with SOTA is another important result of this mission, Carrasco-Casado concluded.

Currently, the Space Communications Laboratory and the Quantum ICT Advanced Development Center in NICT are working together toward future missions that will leverage the expertise and knowledge acquired with the SOCRATES/SOTA mission in technologies related to space laser communications, quantum communications, and physical-layer cryptography.

Tagged: quantum communication SOCRATES The Range

Tomasz Nowakowski is the owner of Astro Watch, one of the premier astronomy and science-related blogs on the internet. Nowakowski reached out to SpaceFlight Insider in an effort to have the two space-related websites collaborate. Nowakowski's generous offer was gratefully received with the two organizations now working to better relay important developments as they pertain to space exploration.

See the rest here:

Scientists demonstrate first quantum communication with microsatellite - SpaceFlight Insider

Jason Rhian

August 6th, 2017

NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski conducts an unplanned EVA to repair a damaged solar array on the International Space Station during STS-120. Photo Credit: NASA

Those suffering from an inferiority complex probably shouldnt read the new book, The Sky Below. An in-depth review of the many adventures of former NASA shuttle astronaut Scott Parazynski, it covers his many accomplishments and at the same time keeping a very conversational tone. For those interested in the background of some of Americas more recent space flyers it has much to offer.

Perhaps the first of these is what impels (perhaps propels is a better word considering one of his past occupations) the eternally-young looking Parazysnki to achieve all that he has.

Image Credit: Amazon

The Sky Below, covers how Parazynski has, starting at an early age, traveled the world, became a medical doctor,coached louge in the 1988 Calgary Winter Games, became the only astronaut to climb Mount Everest and rescued the International Space Station during one of the more risky extra-vehicular activities in recent memory. Those are just the high points.

Parazynski, along with Suzy Flory, detailed some of his many, many experiences in his new book, The Sky Below: A True Story of Summits, Space and Speed by Little A, an imprint of Amazon Publishing.

SpaceFlight Insider wanted to not just discover what caused him to produce the book, but to also find out a bit more about the man behind all of these achievements. We asked Parazynski to chat with us and he readily agreed.

SFI: Thanks for joining us today Scott!

Parazynski: My pleasure.

SFI: So,can you tell us about what got you started on drafting this book? Was this something youd wanted to do for a long time

Parazynski: I had a lot of encouragement from family and friends about the wonderful and crazy experiences that Ive had in my life. Throughout the years I had jotted down certain things that had happened in my life, but Id never written them all down as one, comprehensive story and really figured out what it might be.

SFI: Youve done some astonishing things, I mean, really, your book begs the question Is there anything he cant do? One thing that our readers would probably be most interested in, however, was the unplanned EVA on [STS] 120. Is that and other elements of your on orbit experiences covered at length in your book?

Parazynski: They will be immersed in the 120 solar array repair and the incredible team work that went into solving that problem. Much of the book, actually, is dedicated to my five space flights and, of course, the epic of all epics was the solar array repair. So, theres a lot of detail on that. If your viewers visit the Kindle store and get the enhanced eBook, they can actually see enhanced video from that day, video from launches and imagery throughout my space career as well.

This includes things that have rarely been seen, while theyre public domain, for various reasons, they didnt get the distribution that others did. There are some really neat pictures from my flight career that I think people will be interested in.

SFI: Should it present itself, are you interested in another journey beyond Earths atmosphere should it present itself via commercial means?

Parazynski: Im so bullish on the commercial space flight industry that Ive done some consultant work for the NewSpace companys that have emerged. So, I would love to get the chance to fly again if that opportunity were to present itself. I dont know if thats practical or likely or not, but Im real excited about the fact that were entering an age when so many more people will have the opportunity to fly in space.

I think one of the strong points of this book is that it focuses not just on the great successes, but also overcoming obstacles that we encountered along the way as well. Ive always said that the pathway to success is scattered with a few failures. I talk about all of that throughout the course of the book.

The Sky Below is available at Amazon.com and wherever books are sold and is highly recommended. The book is available as a hardcover, softcover, as an audio book as well as a Kindle in Motion EBook.

Video courtesy of NASA / ISS Mania 11

Tagged: Astronaut Mount Everest Scott Parazynski STS-120 The Range The Sky Below

Jason Rhian spent several years honing his skills with internships at NASA, the National Space Society and other organizations. He has provided content for outlets such as: Aviation Week & Space Technology, Space.com, The Mars Society and Universe Today.

Read more:

Review: The Sky Below: A True Story of Summits, Space and Speed - SpaceFlight Insider

Joe Latrell

August 5th, 2017

Artists rendition of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in space. Image Credit: Northrop Grumman

The much delayed and over budget next-generation James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has suffered another setback prior to itsjourney to the launch pad: the October 2018 launch may be in conflict with Europes BepiColombo mission to Mercury. Both spacecraft are to be flown on Ariane 5 boosters, but the spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, cannot support two flights in the same month. BepiColombo has priority due to the tight launch window to reach Mercury. This will result in the JWST having its launch date pushed back to 2019 at the earliest.

The JWST is a space-based infrared telescope. To operate properly, it needs to maintain a temperature of 37 kelvins (236 C / 393 F). In order to achieve this when in space, the telescope relies on a large tennis court sized sunshield to protect it from external heat and light sources, such as the Sun as well as the Earth and Moon.

Light gathered from the segmented 6.5-meter (21-foot) diameter mirror is directed to the four science instruments: Fine Guidance Sensor / Near InfraRed Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (FGS/NIRISS), Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), Near InfraRed Camera (NIRCam), and Near InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec). Due to the requirement of the MIRI to operate at an even lower temperature than the other science instruments, it will utilize a cryocoolerto decrease its temperature to less than 7 kelvins (266 C / 447 F).

While smaller than telescopes here on Earth, the JWST is the most powerful space telescope ever constructed and is the science successor to the Hubble telescope.

Originally projected to cost $1.6 billion, the telescopes price tag has ballooned to over $8.8 billion. Several factors, from delays in choosing a launch vehicle to management issues, contributed to the soaring costs. Additionally, the vehicle proved harder to construct than originally envisioned. For example, during vibration testing, the spacecraft experienced several anomalies that required NASA engineers to stop the test. After analysis and modifications, the tests resumed and the JWST was given a clean bill of health.

Despite the technical issues and threats of cancellation, the project continued and the cost estimates grew. A launch delay into 2019 will only add to that dollar figure.

Artists depiction of the BepiColombo mission, with the MPO (left) and MMO (right). Image Credit: NASA

BepiColombo is a mission to explore the planet Mercury that is being conducted by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The mission is actually two spacecraft: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). The objective is a comprehensive study of Mercury, including the planets surface, magnetic field, and interior structure.

The MPO is a solar-powered spacecraft carrying 11 scientific instruments. These instruments include laser altimeters, spectrometers, magnetometers, as well as several cameras. It has a mass of 1,150 kilograms (2,540 pounds) and is capable of producing 1,000 watts of power for onboard instruments.

The MMO has a mass of 285 kilograms (628 pounds) and carries five scientific payloads. Built mostly by Japan, this spacecraft will study plasma particles including high-energy ions and electrons emanating from the planet. A third spacecraft, the Mercury Surface Element (MSE), a small lander craft, was removed due to budgetary issues.

The two Mercury spacecraft are scheduled to arrive at the planet in 2025 after performing numerous flybys: one at Earth, two at Venus, and six at Mercury. The craft must launch sometime between October 5, 2018, and November 28, 2018, to reach the planet as scheduled.

Both missions as slated to fly on the Ariane 5 booster. The 52-meter (171-foot) vehicle is capable of lifting over 10,500 kilograms (23,100 pounds) to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO).

Currently, the JWST is undergoing low-temperature checks at NASA Johnson Space Centers Chamber A. The temperature of the chamber is steadily being reduced to approximately 20 kelvins (253 C / 424 F) the same temperature that the JWST will be when operating in space. These tests will validate that the JWST instruments can operate properly at the extremely low temperatures.

Unlike Hubble, the JWST will be positioned at the Earth-Sun Lagrange point (L2) which is 1,500,000 kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth. That location is currently beyond NASAs manned space capabilities; therefore, precluding the JWST from being serviced on orbit.

The new WebbCam overlay displays the temperatures in Houston and in Chamber A, in degrees Fahrenheit, degrees Celsius, and on the Kelvin scale. Image & Caption Credit: NASA

Tagged: BepiColumbo ESA James Webb Space Telescope Lead Stories NASA

Joe Latrell is a life-long avid space enthusiast having created his own rocket company in Roswell, NM in addition to other consumer space endeavors. He continues to design, build and launch his own rockets and has a passion to see the next generation excited about the opportunities of space exploration. Joe lends his experiences from the corporate and small business arenas to organizations such as Teachers In Space, Inc. He is also actively engaged in his church investing his many skills to assist this and other non-profit endeavors.

Original post:

James Webb Space Telescope may be delayed again - SpaceFlight Insider

A heavy-duty crane towering over launch pad 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in recent weeks has removed several large sections of a disused structure once needed to install satellites and space station modules into space shuttle cargo bays.

A demolition crew hired by SpaceX, the launch pads current tenant, has plucked pieces of the rotating service structure and lowered them to the ground since the facility hosted its most recent launch July 5. Officials took advantage of a quiet period in SpaceXs launch schedule to make progress on disassembling the structure, which is not required for Falcon rocket flights.

SpaceX said the rotating service structure is on track to be completely gone by the end of the year. NASA retains ownership of the historic launch complex, and will sell scrap metal from the demolition work, which started in minor form last year and has accelerated in recent weeks.

NASA added the moveable gantry at pad 39A in the late 1970s before the first space shuttle mission blasted off from the site in 1981. After a space shuttle rolled out to the pad from the space centers Vehicle Assembly Building, the rotating structure would wheel into position to cocoon the orbiter, giving workers the ability to load cargo into the shuttles bus-sized payload bay and pump maneuvering fuel into the ships propellant tanks.

The gantry would then rotate around 120 degrees on a vertical hinge into liftoff position in the final 24 hours before a shuttle launch.

The rotating service structure stood at a maximum height of 189 feet (57 meters) above the surface at pad 39A before the demolition started. The structure itself, which looms over the pad deck, extended 130 feet (39 meters) tall.

Originally built in the 1960s for the Apollo moon program, pad 39A hosted 12 Saturn 5 rocket flights including Apollo 11 and 82 shuttle missions departed from the seaside launch complex.

NASA decided it no longer needed pad 39A after the shuttles retirement. Nearby launch pad 39B, also built for Apollo and shuttle flights, will be home to NASAs Space Launch System, a government-owned heavy-lift rocket that will launch astronaut crews on deep space expeditions.

The shuttle-era structures at pad 39B were dismantled in 2010 and 2011.

SpaceX signed a 20-year lease agreement with NASA in 2014 to take over pad 39A, which re-entered service in February with a Falcon 9 launch to resupply the International Space Station. Eight SpaceX missions have lifted off from pad 39A so far this year.

The next Falcon 9 rocket launch is scheduled for Aug. 13, again from pad 39A, on another station cargo run.

SpaceX says Falcon 9 flights from Florida will move to nearby pad 40 later this year, once repairs of that facility are completed after a rocket explosion last year. That will free up pad 39A for more extensive renovations and upgrades for the inaugural flight of SpaceXs Falcon Heavy rocket, a triple-body booster designed to heave massive payloads into space.

Elon Musk, SpaceXs founder and CEO, said last month that the first Falcon Heavy test flight is scheduled for November.

The taller fixed service structure will remain in place at pad 39A. It is not needed for Falcon flights with satellites and robotic payloads, but SpaceX will connect an access arm and white room to the tower to allow astronauts to board human-rated Dragon capsules.

Along with Boeing, SpaceX has a crew transportation contract with NASA to ferry astronauts to and from the space station and end U.S. reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft for the job. The latest schedule calls for the first two astronauts to fly on a Crew Dragon spaceship no earlier than June 2018, and officials said the crew access arm should be added to the fixed tower at pad 39A in late fall.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

More here:

Shuttle-era structure dismantled piece-by-piece at pad 39A - Spaceflight Now

Laurel Kornfeld

August 4th, 2017

Artists impression of NASAs New Horizons spacecraft, en route to a January 2019 encounter with Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / JHU-APL / SwRI

New Horizons second target Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) 2014 MU69 may actually be a binary system composed of two objects that either touch one another or orbit very close together, according to observations conducted by mission scientists when the KBO passed in front of a star on July 17, 2017.

Members of the New Horizons team observed the occultation by deploying a network of telescopes along the path of MU69s shadow in a remote part of Argentina.

Their goal was to capture its shadow, thereby obtaining data about the KBOs size, shape, orbit, and environment as well as information that will enable accurate refining of the spacecrafts trajectory.

MU69 is thesecond targetof NASAs New Horizons spacecraft and part of its approved extended mission by the space agency. It will be the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft.

The probe famously flew by the Pluto system on July 14, 2015, obtaining a plethora of images and data about the binary Pluto-Charon and their four small moons.

The July 17, 2017, occultation was the third of three such events this year, all of which were carefully observed by mission scientists after they used both the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agencys (ESA) Gaia satellite to pinpoint exactly where MU69s shadow would fall on Earth each time.

Based on data collected during the first occultation in June, mission scientists raised the possibility that MU69, located a billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto and more than four billion miles (6.5 billion kilometers) from Earth, might actually be a swarm of many small objects rather than a single object.

However, observations conducted during the third occultation indicate the object is either two objects closely orbiting each other, a contact binary in which the two objects actually touch one another, or a single, strangely shaped object missing a large chunk of material.

Mission scientists think it or both objects may be shaped like a skinny football a shape formally described as an extreme prolate spheroid.

LEFT: An artists concept of Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69, the next flyby target for NASAs New Horizons mission. This binary concept is based on telescope observations made at Patagonia, Argentina, on July 17, 2017, when MU69 passed in front of a star. New Horizons scientists theorize that it could be a single body with a large chunk taken out of it, or two bodies that are close together or even touching. RIGHT: Another artists concept of Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69, which is the next flyby target for NASAs New Horizons mission. Scientists speculate that the Kuiper Belt object could be a single body with a large chunk taken out of it, or two bodies that are close together or even touching. Images & Captions Credit: NASA / JHU-APL / SwRI / Alex Parker

Two of Plutos small moons, Kerberos and Hydra, as well as Comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko, are single objects composed of two lobes.

This new finding is simply spectacular. The shape of MU69 is truly provocative, and could mean another first for New Horizons going to a binary object in the Kuiper Belt, said mission Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. I could not be happier with the occultation results, which promise a scientific bonanza for the flyby.

New Horizons will fly by MU69 on January 1, 2019.

From observations of the third occultation, scientists now have a better handle on MU69s size, which they estimate to be no longer than 20 miles (30 kilometers) if the KBO is a single object.

If MU69 is a binary composed of two objects, each one is estimated to have a diameter of nine to twelve miles (1520 kilometers).

Stern credited the successes of the occultation observations to the Hubble Space Telescope and Gaia Observatory, which provided crucial information about the path of MU69s shadow on Earth on all three occasions.

Occultation data and images are available on New Horizons KBO Chasers site.

Tagged: KBO 2014 MU69 Kuiper Belt Object NASA New Horizons The Range

Laurel Kornfeld is an amateur astronomer and freelance writer from Highland Park, NJ, who enjoys writing about astronomy and planetary science. She studied journalism at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and earned a Graduate Certificate of Science from Swinburne Universitys Astronomy Online program. Her writings have been published online in The Atlantic, Astronomy magazines guest blog section, the UK Space Conference, the 2009 IAU General Assembly newspaper, The Space Reporter, and newsletters of various astronomy clubs. She is a member of the Cranford, NJ-based Amateur Astronomers, Inc. Especially interested in the outer solar system, Laurel gave a brief presentation at the 2008 Great Planet Debate held at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, MD.

Follow this link:

New Horizons' KBO target may be a binary - SpaceFlight Insider - SpaceFlight Insider