Curt Godwin

June 28th, 2017

Ariane 5, Flight VA238, launch. Image Credit: Arianespace webcast

After a minor technical glitch interrupted the countdown for five minutes, Arianespaces Ariane 5 rocket left the pad at the Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 5:15 p.m. EDT (21:15 GMT) on June 28, 2017. Flight VA238, as the mission was named by Arianespace, deployed two satellites Hellas Sat 3 / Inmarsat S EAN and GSAT-17 into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) 39 minutes after lifting off, completing the fourth Ariane 5 launch of the year.

Ariane 5, Flight VA238, ascends from the Spaceport in French Guiana on Arianespaces seventh mission of 2017 with Hellas Sat 3-Inmarsat S EAN and GSAT-17 aboard. Photo Credit: S. Martin / ESA / CNES / Arianespace

While tropical thunderstorms threatened to delay the mission, conditions improved enough to allow for an (almost) on-time launchat five minutes after the opening of the 77-minute window.

At T-minus 0 seconds, the core stages Vulcain 2 engine roared to life. Approximately seven seconds after main engine ignition, and after passing health checks and allowing the main engine to reach flight thrust levels, the flight computer signaled the twin P241 solid rocket boosters (SRBs) to ignite.

The output from the triowas more than enough to lift 20,408pounds (9,257 kilograms) of satellites, plus the mass of the rocket and its propellant, off the pad.

With a combined 2.92 million pounds-force (13,000 kilonewtons) of liftoff thrust, the 180-foot (54.8-meter) tall Ariane 5 climbed fromthe pad and soared into a cloudy nighttime sky, with the roar and crackle from the three engines echoing across the jungle.

Shortlyafter clearing the launch tower, the Ariane 5turned eastward and climbed over the Atlantic Ocean.

As the rocket climbed and gained velocity, atmospheric pressure reached its maximum impact on the vehicles structure. This region of high stress is called max Q and is a function of the vehicles speed combined with the pressure exerted on the rocket by the surrounding air. At nearly the same time, the Ariane 5surpassedMach 1 the speed of sound as it continued its rapidlyacceleratingclimbto orbit.

After passing through this part of its flight profile the most stressful on the rocket throughout its ascent the dynamic forces began to rapidly dissipate.

Slightly more than two minutes after ignition, and at more than37miles (60 kilometers) in altitude, the Arianes pair of solid-fueled boostersexhausted their propellant and were jettisoned. Unlike the boosters from the now-retired U.S. Space Shuttle program, the spent motors were not recovered after splashing down into the Atlantic Ocean.

Though only operating for marginallymore than two minutes, the SRBs accounted for more than 90 percent of the Arianes thrust at liftoff. However, with the vehicle weighing significantly less than it did on the pad, the core stages Vulcain burning through approximately 700 pounds (317.5 kilograms) of fuel and oxidizer per second was able to supply the power necessary to continue accelerating the lightened rocket and its payload.

Approximatelythree-and-a-half minutes into the flight, and at68 miles (110 kilometers) in altitude, the Ariane jettisonedits 55.8-foot (17-meter) long protective payload fairing. Though the aerodynamic shell protectsthe vehicle and its payload from acoustic, aerodynamic, and thermal stresses in the lower, thicker parts of the atmosphere, it becomes unnecessary mass and a barrier to payload deployment once in the vacuum of space.

The Vulcain main engine powered the vehicle for nearly nine minutes, and, once the core stage was depletedof its liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid hydrogen (LH2) propellant, itseparated from the ESC-A (second) stage and fell into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea.

The ESC-As highly efficient HM-7B engine, burning a cryogenic mixture of LH2and LOX, startedits 16-minute long burn to place the two satellites in their intended GTO delivery spot.

Twenty-eightminutes after lifting off, the ESC-Awas in a position to deliver the first of its two passengers to the 155-mile (250-kilometer) by 22,236-mile (35,786-kilometer) transfer orbit.

Hellas Sat 3 / Inmarsat S EAN was the first of the satellites to separate from the vehicles SYLDA payload adapter. After the Thales Alenia Space-built satellite was clear and at a safe distance, SYLDA was jettisoned, exposing GSAT-17.

Following a short coast, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) GSAT-17 satellite was free to deploy.

Both satellites will raise their orbit with their onboard propulsion system while undergoing a set of checkout procedures by theground crew before being declared operational.

Flight VA238 marks the seventh overallmission for Arianespace in 2017, with fivemore left on the manifest for the year. Coming next for the French multinational launch provider is the launch of their lightweight Vega launch vehicleon Flight VV10, carrying Optsat 3000, scheduled for July 25, 2017.

Video courtesy of Arianespace

Tagged: Ariane 5 ArianeSpace GSAT Hellas Sat Inmarsat Kourou French Guiana Lead Stories Urgent VA238

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.

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Arianespace closes the first half of 2017 with launch of Flight VA238 - SpaceFlight Insider

Jim Sharkey

June 28th, 2017

The Pancam on NASAs Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity took the component images of this enhanced-color scene during the missions walkabout survey of an area just above the top of Perseverance Valley, in preparation for driving down the valley. (Click for full view) Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.

NASAs Opportunity Mars roverisinvestigating rocks near the rim of Endeavour Crater for signs that they were either transported by a flood or eroded in place by the Martian wind. These are two of several possible explanations for features observed the crater rims crest above Perseverance Valley, which is carved into the inner slope of the craters rim.

Once Opportunity completes its walkabout survey of the area, the rover team will drive it down Perseverance Valley. Opportunitys drives now use steering motors on only the rear wheels, due to a temporary jam of the left-front wheels steering actuator earlier this month. The rover has not used its right-front wheels steering actuator since 2005.

Artists rendition of Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity on Mars. Image Credit: NASA / JPL / Cornell Univ.

The walkabout is designed to look at whats just above Perseverance Valley, said Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis. We see a pattern of striations running east-west outside the crest of the rim.

There is a broad notch in part of the crest at the top of Perseverance Valley. Just west of the notch, elongated patches of rock line the sides of a slightly depressed, east-west strip of ground which may have had a drainage channel billions of years ago.

We want to determine whether these are in-place rocks or transported rocks, Arvidson said. One possibility is that this site was the end of a catchment where a lake was perched against the outside of the crater rim. A flood might have brought in the rocks, breached the rim and overflowed into the crater, carving the valley down the inner side of the rim. Another possibility is that the area was fractured by the impact that created Endeavour Crater, then rock dikes filled the fractures, and were seeing effects of wind erosion on those filled fractures.

Investigation of the piles of rock along the edges of the possible channel may help scientists evaluate these and other possible histories of the area. The Opportunity team is currently studying stereo images of Perseverance Valley to plot the rovers route. The valley extends about the length of two football fields, at a slope of about 15 to 17 degrees.

The steering actuator for Opportunitys left from wheel stalled with the wheel turned outward more than 30 degrees on June 4. On June 17, diagnostic testing succeeded in straightening out the left front wheel.

For at least the immediate future, we dont plan to use either front wheel for steering, said Opportunity Project Manager John Callas of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California. We can steer with two wheels, just like a car except its the rear wheels. Were doing exactly what we should be doing, which is to wear out the rover doing productive work to utilize every capability of the vehicle in the exploration of Mars.

This graphic shows the route that NASAs Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity drove in its final approach to Perseverance Valley on the western rim of Endeavour Crater during spring 2017. Image & Caption Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona/NMMNH

Tagged: Endeavour crater Mars NASA Opportunity 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.

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NASA's Opportunity Mars rover on walkabout near crater rim ... - SpaceFlight Insider

SpaceFlight Insider

June 27th, 2017

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. SpaceFlight Insider is proud to announce it has joined Patreon, a crowdfunding website that is a simple way for our loyal audience to contribute every month to our coverage of the space industry and get exclusive rewards in return!

For the last four years, we have been endeavoring,with a team of hard-working individuals, to produce daily content in the form of stories, exclusive interviews, a photographic library, videos, live webcasts, and more. In total, more than 100 pieces of content are produced each month along with coverage of launches from around the world.

In working to make our audience an insider regarding all things space, the SFI team has created one of the best launch calendars currently in existence, an ever-expanding gallery of photographs and video packages, a mission monitor page, that, unlike most, provides all the essentials to track missions in one central location and a database of launch vehicles, spacecraft and centers called the Hangar.

At present, SpaceFlight Insider is the only comparable media outlet to host live webcasts during launches at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. We hope to expand that to other locations in the near future.

However, providing these services is a labor of love for the SpaceFlight Insider team. Regular travel expenses, equipment procurement, and maintenance, as well as paying editors, writers, and photographers, consumes much of what funds SFI has managed to acquire so far. All of these efforts require a great deal of infrastructure, manpower, and coordination to achieve.

We at SFI want to create a place where people can turn to for all the information they want regarding space exploration and development. The team aims to deliver high-quality video, audio, still imagery, and much more to give you an insiders view of the whole industry and we take your questions directly to those officials within NASA and other space-related organizations who can answer them.

SFI offers all of its services for free, but we could use your help to keep it that way. We ask those of you who are able, to help us not only maintain what we have doneso far but also to take even larger, bolder steps. We believe that with Patreon, this will allow us to truly make you the insider our name implies.

You can pledge any amount you want for as long as you feel comfortable. However, at five dollars, were going to start giving back to you. Head over to our Patreon page to see what we offer and what works best for you. Contribute what you feel is fair. If only one-third of our daily viewers were to contribute one dollar a month, thats just 12 dollars a year SpaceFlight Insider would finally be able to bring you the level of access that weve envisioned and that you deserve.

Our team has decades of experience covering the space program and we are focused on providing you with the absolute latest on all things space. If we cant pay the bills, let alone our staff which currently consists of mostly volunteers and hard-working space enthusiasts then we cant do everything we can to share the thrill of space exploration with the world.

If you like space and want more space news, launch videos, images, and podcasts, then help us by becoming a Patron of SpaceFlight Insider.

Tagged: Lead Stories Patreon SpaceFlight Insider

SpaceFlight Insider is a space journal working to break the pattern of bias prevalent among other media outlets. Working off a budget acquired through sponsors and advertisers, SpaceFlight Insider has rapidly become one of the premier space news outlets currently in operation. SFI works almost exclusively with the assistance of volunteers.

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SpaceFlight Insider has joined Patreon! - SpaceFlight Insider

A new study that stemmed from a planetary protection project for NASA and the European Space Agency. It turns out our skin is crawling with single-celled microorganisms -- and they're not just bacteria. A study by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Medical University of Graz found that the skin microbiome also contains archaea, a type of extreme-loving microbe, and that the amount of it varies with age.

It was not until the 1970s that scientists realized how different archaea were from bacteria, and they became a separate branch on the tree of life -- the three branches being Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya (which includes all plants and animals). Archaea are commonly found in extreme environments, such as hot springs and Antarctic ice. Nowadays it is known that archaea exist in sediments and in the Earth's subsurface as well, but they have only recently been found in the human gut and linked with the human microbiome.

At first it was thought the Thaumarchaeota were from the outside, but after finding them in hospitals and other clean rooms, the researchers suspected they were from human skin. So they conducted a pilot study of 13 volunteers and found they all had these archaea on their skin.

The researchers conducted both genetic and chemical analyses of samples collected from human volunteers ranging in age from 1 to 75. They found that archaea (pronounced ar-KEY-uh) were most abundant in subjects younger than 12 and older than 60. Their study has been published in Scientific Reports (a Nature journal) in an article titled, "Human age and skin physiology shape diversity and abundance of Archaea on skin."

"The skin microbiome is usually dominated by bacteria," said Hoi-Ying Holman, director of the Berkeley Synchrotron Infrared Structural Biology (BSISB) Program and a senior author on the paper. "Most of the scientific attention has been on bacteria, because it's easier to detect. Based on the literature, six years ago we didn't even know that archaea existed on human skin. Now we've found they're part of the core microbiome and are an important player on human skin."

The study was a joint effort of Holman, Berkeley Lab postdoctoral fellow Giovanni Birarda (now a scientist at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste in Italy), UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Alexander Probst (now associate professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany), and Christine Moissl-Eichinger, the corresponding author of the study. Moissl-Eichinger and her team at the Medical University of Graz in Austria and at the University of Regensburg in Germany analyzed the genetic features of the skin microbiomes.

In addition to the influence of age, they found that gender was not a factor but that people with dry skin have more archaea. "Archaea might be important for the cleanup process under dry skin conditions," said Moissl-Eichinger. "The results of our genetic analysis (DNA-based quantitative PCR and next-generation sequencing), together with results obtained from infrared spectroscopy imaging, allowed us to link lower levels of sebum [the oily secretion of sebaceous glands] and thus reduced skin moisture with an increase of archaeal signatures."

Holman's focus is on developing synchrotron infrared spectroscopy techniques to look at biological or ecological systems. Using Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source (ALS), one of the world's brightest sources of infrared beams, the Holman Group developed a rapid and label-free method to screen cells and immediately tell if they're bacteria or archaea.

"The challenges in microbial profiling are speed, throughput, and sample integrity," she said. "We spent years developing this technique and could not have done it without the unique resources of the ALS."

But the dearth of studies on skin archaea is not just because of technical limitations. The researchers assert that the lack of age diversity in the sampling in previous studies was also a factor. "Sampling criteria and methods matter," Holman said. "We found middle-aged human subjects have less archaea; therefore, the archaeal signatures have been overlooked in other skin microbiome studies."

As a follow-up, which is the current study, they tested 51 volunteers and decided to get a large range in ages to test the age-dependency of the archaeal signatures. Samples were taken from the chest area. The variations in archaeal abundance among the age groups were statistically significant and unexpected. "It was surprising," Holman said. "There's a five- to eightfold difference between middle-aged people and the elderly -- that's a lot."

Their study focused on Thaumarchaeota, one of the many phyla of archaea, as little evidence of the others was found in the pilot study. "We know that Thaumarchaeota are supposed to be an ammonia-oxidizing microorganism, and ammonia is a major component of sweat, which means they might play a role in nitrogen turnover and skin health," Holman said.

In collaboration with Peter Wolf of the Medical University of Graz, the team also correlated archaeal abundance with skin dryness, as middle-aged persons have higher sebum levels and thus moister skin than the elderly.

So far, most archaea are known to be beneficial rather than harmful to human health. They may be important for reducing skin pH or keeping it at low levels, and lower pH is associated with lower susceptibility to infections.

"The detected archaea are probably involved in nitrogen turnover on skin, and are capable of lowering the skin pH, supporting the suppression of pathogens," said Moissl-Eichinger. "Bacteria with the same capacities are already used as skin probiotics, potentially improving skin moisture and reducing body odors. Nevertheless, the clinical relevance of Thaumarchaeota remains unclear and awaits further studies."

Holman listed several avenues of inquiry for future studies with Moissl-Eichinger. "We would like to investigate the physiological role of human skin archaea and how they differ from environmental archaea," she said. "We would like to find out which niches they prefer on or in the human body. We also want to know whether they might be involved in pathogenic processes, such as neurodermatitis or psoriasis. So far, there is little evidence of the pathogenicity of archaea."

The Daily Galaxy via DOE/Lawrence Berkeley Nat'l Laboratory

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NASA Space-Flight Discovery: Archaea Found in Extreme Earth ... - The Daily Galaxy (blog)

June 27, 2017 by Chris Gebhardt

As the mid-way point of 2017 arrives, both of NASAs Commercial Crew Program service providers are making significant progress toward the first uncrewed test flights of their Dragon and Starliner capsules. At their second quarter 2017 meeting, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel noted this progress while also discussing outstanding concerns regarding the program and vehicles as well as the positive steps being taken to address these matters.

Commercial Crew progress:

During last months NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) second quarter meeting in Huntsville, Alabama, the panel noted the significant progress both Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) providers are making toward their first uncrewed demo flights.

Currently, SpaceX is on track to be the first to perform their uncrewed flight, known as SpX Demo-1, with Dr. Donald McErlean reporting to the ASAP that the flight continues to target a launch later this year.

Currently, both NASA and SpaceX hold that SpX Demo-1 will fly by the end of the year though L2 level KSC scheduling claims the mission has potentially slipped to March 2018.

Regardless, SpX Demo-1 will be followed under the current plan by Boeings uncrewed OFT (Orbital Flight Test) in mid-2018.

Notwithstanding the ultimate commencement of the Commercial Crew Program (CCP) flight operations, the ASAP noted its concern and recommendations regarding CCP provider System Engineering & Integration (SE&I) process and controls.

In her opening statement to the meeting, Dr. Patricia Sanders, ASAP Chair, noted the two recent mishaps of commercial launch vehicles.

While one of those two recent mishaps is obviously the AMOS-6 conflagration of the Falcon 9 during Static Fire last year, what the second one is in reference to is somewhat nebulous as mishap is not a word usually applied to situations that do not result in the loss of a vehicle.

Nonetheless, Dr. Sanders statement referenced both CCP providers, potentially pointing toward last years close call with the Atlas V during the OA-6 Cygnus launch or perhaps this years hydraulic issues as the second of the two recent mishaps.

Specifically, Dr. Sanders noted that In the case of two recent mishaps on commercial launch vehicles, the Panel believes that the underlying root causes could be traced to escapes on systems engineering and integration (SE&I) processes and controls, states the minutes from the second quarter ASAP meeting.

To this end, the ASAPs previously put forward a recommendation at a meeting in first quarter 2017 that NASA require the commercial crew providers to produce verifiable evidence of the practice of rigorous, disciplined, and sustained SE&I principles in support of NASA certification and operation of commercial crew transportation services to the International Space Station (ISS).

Based on the wording of the CCtCap contracts, both providers are allowed to utilize their corporate policies rather than NASA-traditional SE&I processes; however, the contracts also stipulate that NASA will confirm through documentation, requirements verification, and deliverables that both companys have adhered to SE&I principals.

Nonetheless, the ASAP remains concerned.

According to the minutes of Dr. Sanders remarks, the ASAP remains concerned that no amount of insight or oversight by the CCP can ensure that the appropriate level of engineering discipline and control is employed unless the providers have internalized the need for it and made it an inherent part of their corporate culture.

While each provider was not mentioned by name, the minutes reflect that one provider has a history of employing rigorous SE&I practices. However, they need to continue to ensure that these controls are not employed blindly but with an awareness of the rationale for doing so.

The other provider has placed a value on agility and rapid problem solving with beneficial results. They are also showing signs of evolving to reconcile their approach with the benefits and need for discipline and control.

However, they need to ensure that the evolution reflects an inherent desire to adopt the tenets of systems engineering.

Dr. Sanders opening statement closed with a reminder of an already-established ASAP recommendation that Regardless of the methodology employed, both providers need to demonstrate that the proper controls are in place to ensure hardware is properly qualified, hazards are identified and appropriately mitigated, and the system is employed within the constraints of that qualification.

As the meeting progressed (which covered a wide-range of NASA-related programs), Dr. McErlean presented a dedicated Commercial Crew Program briefing.

A large portion of this section, unsurprisingly, focused on the LOC (Loss Of Crew) gap between what Dragon and Starliner are independently capable of providing v. what the CCtCap contracts require of them.

As previously reported by NASASpaceflight.com, the CCtCap contracts establish a minimum baseline requirement that Dragon and Starliner each meet a LOC criteria of 1 in 270 meaning for every 270 flights, only one would result in an LOC event.

Currently, there is a gap in what the data analysis shows both Starliner and Dragon are capable of providing and that 1 in 270 requirement.

While NASA has rightly not made the current LOC number for each vehicle public (as both providers are still working on this requirement), Kathy Lueders, NASAs CCP manager, stated earlier this year to the NASA Advisory Council that I will tell you that we are having a hard time getting to 1 in 270. But were not done yet.

While it might seem arbitrary, the 1 in 270 number is actually linked directly to the Space Shuttle.

At the end of the Shuttle Program in 2011, NASA determined the Shuttle to have an actual LOC number based on all 135 flights of 1 in 65.

This number was used as an initial benchmark by NASA, which decided that all U.S. crew vehicles commercial or government from 2011 onward should meet a safety factor 10 times that of Shuttle, or an LOC requirement of 1 in 650.

That was quickly determined to be completely unfeasible by all parties involved, and a new obtainable benchmark of 1 in 270 was set.

However, after NASA set this requirement and signed the CCtCap contracts with SpaceX and Boeing, more stringent MMOD (Micro Meteoroid Orbiting Debris) protection requirements were imposed on everyone (NASA included).

This new MMOD requirement has made it challenging to reach the 1 in 270 LOC benchmark.

At the NAC meeting in March, Ms. Lueders stated that SpaceX and Boeing were still updating MMOD protection and a few other critical areas including looking at operational controls, and when we get through all that well be in a better place to talk about our final LOC projection.

At the ASAP meeting, Dr. McErlean reminded the panel that the LOC contract requirements were a recommendation of the ASAP and that the panel remains happy it was included because the requirement appeared to drive systemic behavior by both providers in making their systems substantially safer than they might have been without such an incentive and [that both providers] have achieved considerable progress from their initial LOC estimates.

However, Dr. McErlean noted that the threshold values [are] acknowledged to be challenging, and both providers are still striving to meet that precise number.

From here, a discussion that NASA might have to accept the risk and/or that waivers might have to be processed if the LOC requirement cant be met took center stage.

According to the ASAP meeting minutes, Dr. McErlean said that While these LOC numbers were known to be challenging, and both providers have been working toward meeting the challenge, it is conceivable that in both cases the number may not be met.

However, Dr. McErlean cautioned the ASAP and NASA about rushing to judgement on the current and whatever the final LOC number for each vehicle is.

The ASAP is on record agreeing with the Program that one must be judicious in how one applies these statistical estimates. In the case of LOC, the numbers themselves depend very heavily on the orbital debris model used to develop the risk to the system [as] orbital debris is a driving factor in determining the potential for LOC.

The orbital debris models have been used and validated to some degree, but they are not perfect.

One must be wary of being too pernicious in the application of a specific number and must look at whether the providers have expended the necessary efforts and engineering activity to make the systems as safe as they can and still perform the mission.

To that last point, Dr. McErlean reported that both providers indeed expended the necessary efforts and engineering activity to make the systems as safe as they can.

Importantly, too, Dr. McErlean noted that there was no evidence that spending more money on closing the LOC gap for both providers could [make] their systems considerably safer.

The ASAP at large concurred with this finding and noted their pleasure at the progress made in closing the LOC gap for both Dragon and Starliner.

However, the panel did discuss the possible necessity for NASA to do a formal risk acceptance of the variance from the requirement.

To this point, the ASAP discussed a recommendation of how NASA would do this including the need for a formal and complete presentation of the alternatives and the consequences as well as the rationale for the path that [is] ultimately chosen for risk acceptance before any such rationale is signed off on by the appropriate authority.

In this case, Mr. John Frost noted that that authority is likely at the highest levels of NASA.

Importantly, though, the ASAP meeting wasnt just focused on the panels concerns. Considerable time was dedicated to a discussion and review of the progress both providers continue to make and where each provider is in terms of schedule milestones for their first uncrewed demo flights.

Presently, Boeing is moving through software release for Starliner, and the Starliner STA (Structural Test Article) is progressing through its test regime.

Meanwhile, the first Starliner spacecraft the one that will fly the OFT mission next year has undergone initial power activation, and the builds for Starliner spacecrafts two and three are progressing inside Boeings Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center.

For SpaceX, Dragon has completed its first pressurized space suit test and final assembly of the craft for SpX Demo-1 has begun all while SLC-39A at Kennedy is undergoing final acceptance testing ahead of the upcoming installation of the Crew Access Arm onto the pads Fix Service Structure tower.

Moreover, the new, full-thrust (Block 5) Merlin 1D engines are in developmental hot fire testing at McGregor, and NASA has received the detailed CDR (Critical Design Review) of the engine for crew mission certification.

Finally, the ASAP noted that Both providers have completed parachute testing for landings and are moving into production and qualification.

Moreover, SpaceX and Boeing have implemented solutions to several issues flagged by NASA toward the end of last year, and very few new issues have been identified to date.

(Images: NASA, L2 Shuttle and L2 artist Nathan Koga The full gallery of Nathans (SpaceX Dragon to MCT, SLS, Commercial Crew and more) L2 images can be *found here*)

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Commercial Crew providers making significant progress toward first flights - NASASpaceflight.com

File photo of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket inside a hangar at Cape Canaveral. Credit: SpaceX

After back-to-back launches last weekend, SpaceX could launch its next Falcon 9 mission as soon as Sunday from NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a high-power Intelsat communications satellite.

Liftoff Sunday will hinge on the ability of SpaceXs launch team to prepare KSCs launch pad 39A for another flight after the successful June 23 blastoff of a Falcon 9 booster with the first Bulgarian-owned communications satellite.

A customary hold-down hotfire test of the Falcon 9s nine Merlin 1D engines is scheduled as soon as Thursday.

An Intelsat spokesperson confirmed Tuesday that Sundays one-hour launch window will open at 7:36 p.m. EDT (2336 GMT). If the flight takes off Sunday, it will be the third SpaceX launch in a little more than nine days.

The Boeing-built Intelsat 35e satellite, designed for broadband data delivery, Ultra HD television broadcasts, and services for mobile and government customers, will be the payload on Sundays mission. Intelsat 35e is the fourth satellite in Intelsats Epic series featuring a fully digital communications payload that can be reconfigured by controllers on the ground for quick response to market demands.

Intelsat 35e will replace the Intelsat 903 communications satellite at the operators 34.5 degrees west position in geostationary orbit, where a spacecrafts velocity matches Earths rotation, allowing a telecom station to remain over a fixed location. Intelsat 903 launched in March 2002 aboard a Russian Proton rocket.

The satellite will provide trans-Atlantic communications links, reaching customers across Latin America, the eastern United States and Canada, Africa and Europe.

SpaceX is coming off a pair of Falcon 9 launches from Kennedy Space Center and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The back-to-back flights, which took off Friday and Sunday, respectively, both included landings of the Falcon 9s first stage booster on a drone ship at sea.

Fridays launch from Florida with the BulgariaSat 1 television broadcasting satellite used a previously-flown Falcon 9 first stage, while Sundays mission from Vandenberg was powered by an all-new rocket. Intelsats flight Sunday will also use a newly-manufactured booster.

The heavy weight of the Intelsat 35e satellite is expected to prevent recovery of the first stage Sunday.

SpaceX will take a longer break between launches after the Intelsat flight, with the next Falcon 9 mission scheduled for no earlier than Aug. 10 from Florida with the companys next Dragon resupply craft for the International Space Station.

That will be followed by at least two more Falcon 9s later in August, one more from Florida with the fifth flight of the U.S. Air Forces X-37B spaceplane, and a mission from Vandenberg with Taiwans Formosat 5 Earth observation satellite.

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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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SpaceX will try for third Falcon 9 launch in less than two weeks - Spaceflight Now

Tomasz Nowakowski

June 27th, 2017

This illustration taken from the Cassini Grand Finale movie shows Cassinis fly-through of the Enceladus plume in October 2015. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Saturns icy moon Enceladus is perhaps best known for its numerous geysers ejecting plumes of water and ice. These eruptive fountains have perplexedresearchers searching for signs of microbial life beyond Earth. A dedicated spacecraft designed to study the plume-like features sprouting from Enceladus could definitely tell us whether they contain alien microorganisms.

We need a spacecraft to travel to Enceladus, fly through a geyser plume, and analyze the water that is immediately accessible, Geoffrey Marcy, a retired professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, told Astrowatch.net.

Marcy is a renowned exoplanet researcher, who discovered many extrasolar worlds. He was one of the co-investigators of NASAs Kepler planet-hunting mission that detected more than 4,000 exoworlds. He was also involved in studies focusing on detecting signals from extraterrestrial civilizations and was the principal investigator of the Breakthrough Listen project. The program, funded by billionaire Yuri Milner, is looking for signs of extraterrestrial civilizations by searching stars and galaxies for radio signals and laser transmissions.

Marcy underlines that when it comes to searching for signs of microbial life in the Solar System, some assistance from billionaires investing in the space project would also be most helpful.

Enceladus has become one of the prominent places in the Solar System where scientists are actively seeking out alien life. Photo Credit: NASA / JPL

The NASA missions, as currently planned, will require at least 20 years before a detection of microbial life will happen, at the earliest. However, a brilliant team of billionaires could work with NASA to fund a spacecraft to Saturns moon, Enceladus.It could capture the water spurting out the geysers and use conventional microscopes to detect any microbial life there, Marcy said.

While a future mission to Enceladus would address complex questions about the origin of life, the spacecraft itself will be relatively easy to build and operate. According to Marcy, we just need a dedicated probe equipped with a set of well-suited science instruments, capable of flying through the plumes and able to perform required measurements.

The remarkable aspect of the search for microbes in the water spurting from geysers is that thespacecraft only needs to fly through the plume, well above the surface of Enceladus. No lander is needed just a succession of fly-bys through the plumes as it orbits Enceladus, Marcy said.

He noted that such spacecraft should be fitted with a mass spectrometer necessary to detect organic compounds that could be signs of microbial life. The spectrometer will look for amino acids and the structure of any organic molecules, especially fatty acids that compose cell membranes. It could also measure the relative amounts of isotopes of carbon (12 and 14) to detect non-natural anomalies due to biological processes.

Moreover, the mission to Enceladus would measure the properties of the water such as pH, oxidation, temperature; therefore, assessing its suitability for organic life.

Marcy added that, besides a spectrometer, the proposed spacecraft should also have an optical imaging system capable of capturing microscopic images in order to more effectively search for microorganisms on this icy world.

The mission should also include a microscope and camera to image directly any organisms in the water that are as small as a few microns in size, Marcy said.

Discovered in 1789 by William Herschel, Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn, with a diameter of about 310 miles (500 kilometers). First detailed pictures of this moon were acquired in the early 1980s by NASAs two Voyager probes. Since 2005, Enceladus is continuously studied by the NASA/ESA Cassini spacecraft, which detected the water plumes erupting from the moons south polar region.

Tagged: Enceladus Geoffrey Marcy NASA Saturn 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.

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Could a dedicated mission to Enceladus detect microbial life there? - SpaceFlight Insider

"My government will work to attract investment in infrastructure to support economic growth. Legislation will be introduced to ensure the United Kingdom remains a world leader in new industries, including electric cars and commercial satellites".

The space industry welcomed this announcement in the Queen's Speech on 21 June 2017. The aim is to place the UK in a market-leading position to compete in the rapidly growing global space market. It is even more important for the UK to distinguish itself in the run up to Brexit.

The Foreword to the UK Space Industry Bill (previously the Draft Spaceflight Bill) comments that:

"As we prepare to leave the European Union and so refine our place in the world, we must ensure that the decisions we take now put the UK in a position to build a strong, resilient, well balanced economy that works for everyone."

The UK Government are committed to getting the regulatory framework right to take advantage of the multi-billion pound opportunity presented by the growing space market and recognise the urgency with which legislation like the Space Industry Bill is required.

The UK seeks to be the first country in Europe to provide a hub for the low cost launch of small satellites, "We want to see UK spaceports enabling the launch of small satellites from the UK, as well as sub-orbital spaceflights and scientific experiments" the Foreword continues.

The UK is a world leader in the development and manufacture of small satellites. The Government seeks to encourage this by ensuring a UK sovereign launch capability; thus providing end to end capability for small satellites. This is aligned with the Government's ambitious efforts to grow the UK's share of the global space market to 10% by 2030.

Low cost access to space will be a game-changing technology which will open up the market and commercial opportunities for small sats. The UK Government intend that licences for launch and sub-orbital activities will be granted by 2020 and offer grant funding of around 10 million to kick-start activities.

Through the Bill the UK needs to balance long term risks and liabilities with encouraging innovation, commercialisation and sector growth, and keeping those involved as safe as possible.

To do so, it will use tools such as: risk assessments; third party liability and launch insurance requirements; unlimited indemnities to the Government; and liability caps for operators. Such requirements need to be transparent, proportionate and reasonable. It is vital that the UK Government works with industry to draft the implementing regulations under the Bill detailing how such tools will be used effectively.

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Satellite Bulletin June 2017: The Queen's Speech - Securing Spaceflight in the UK - Lexology (registration)

The Falcon 9 rocket accelerates downrange south from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California after Sundays liftoff with 10 Iridium Next satellites. Credit: SpaceX

Two days after launching a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida, SpaceX sent another mission into orbit Sunday from Californias Central Coast with 10 new satellites for Iridiums voice and data relay network.

Like Fridays flight from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Falcon 9s first stage plunged back through the atmosphere and made a propulsive vertical landing on a barge stationed several hundred miles downrange from the launch site.

The back-to-back launchings and landings set a record for the shortest turnaround between two SpaceX flights from different launch sites, a milestone the company could repeat as it reactivates a damaged launch pad at Cape Canaveral later this year and begins service from a Texas spaceport as soon as next year.

The last time two orbital-class U.S. rockets of similar type lifted off two days apart was in March 1995, when aLockheed Martin Atlas 2AS rocket and a similar Atlas-E launcher flew separate missions from Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Force Base, delivering an Intelsat broadcast satellite and an Air Force weather satellite to space.

Russian Soyuz rockets, on the other hand, have flown the same day from different launch pads, most recently inMarch 2015, when Soyuz boosters took off two hours apart from the Baikonur Cosmodome in Kazakhstan with a three-man space station crew and from the European-run space base in French Guiana with two Galileo navigation payloads.

A four-day delay in SpaceXs previous launch from Florida, which carried a Bulgarian-owned communications satellite to orbit on a previously-flown, reused Falcon 9 booster, set up the weekend doubleheader.

Sundays mission began at 1:25:14 p.m. PDT (4:25:14 p.m. EDT; 2025:14 GMT), the instant when the Falcon 9 rocket could dispatch its 10 satellite passengers directly into one of the six orbital pathways populated by more than 60 Iridium communications spacecraft.

The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon launcher lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg, the primary launch site on the U.S. West Coast. After climbing through a soupy fog bank enshrouding the hillside launch pad, the Falcon 9 steered through clear skies on a southerly trajectory with its nine Merlin 1D main engines producing 1.7 million pounds of thrust, chugging a super-chilled combination of RP-1 kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants.

After consuming most of its propellant, the first stage dropped away from the Falcon 9s upper stage to begin a descent toward a SpaceX barge in the Pacific Ocean.

Four upgraded titanium grid fins, flying of the first time Sunday, extended from the top of the 14-story first stage and helped steer the rocket on its glide back to Earth. The booster ignited a subset of its Merlin engines twice, first to slow down for re-entry through the atmosphere, then to brake for landing.

A four-legged landing gear opened at the base of the booster just before touchdown, and the rocket braved high winds and challenging seas as it dropped through a low cloud deck onto the football field-sized drone ship, dubbed Just Read the Instructions, around eight minutes after blastoff.

The rocket will return to port in Southern California in a few days for inspections and possible reuse.

Elon Musk, SpaceXs founder and chief executive, said the new, larger grid fin design is more robust than the Falcon 9s previous aluminum fins, which had to be shielded against the extreme heat during re-entry, then replaced before the first stage could fly again.

The new finsare cast in a single piece of titanium and cut to form their shape, Musk tweeted. Hesaid the titanium fins are slightly heavier than the shielded aluminum fins, but the upgrade offers more control authority for stabilization and steering as the pencil-like 14-story booster glides back to Earth.

The Falcon 9 rocket can land in heavier winds with the upgraded fins, Musk said.

New titanium grid fins worked even better than expected, Musk tweeted after Sundays landing. Should be capable of an indefinite number of flights with no service.

The billionaire entrepreneur also gave a brief update on SpaceXs efforts to recover pieces of the Falcon 9 rockets payload fairings, the nose cone that protects satellites during the first few minutes of each launch. SpaceX intends to guide the fairing parts, which jettison from the rocket like a clamshell, with tiny thrusters and gently land them in the ocean with a parafoil.

Getting closer to fairing recovery and reuse, he tweeted. Had some problems with the steerable parachute. Should have it sorted out by end of year.

While the first stage made its daring descent, the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket fired its single vacuum-rated Merlin engine into a preliminary parking orbit. After sailing over Antarctica, the upper stage reignited the Merlin engine for three seconds to reach a targeted 388-mile-high (625-kilometer) orbit to begin releasing the 10 Iridium satellites.

Fastened to a two-tier dispenser specially designed and built by SpaceX, the 1,896-pound (860-kilogram) satellites separated one-by-one at intervals of approximately 90 seconds. The deployments were complete by T+plus 1 hour, 12 minutes.

SpaceX and Iridium officials declared the launch a success, and ground controllers established radio contact with all 10 of the new satellites to verify they survived the trip into orbit.

Ten for ten, its a clean sweep, said Falcon 9 product manager John Insprucker, who provided commentary on SpaceXs live webcast of the mission. We can tie a broom to the Falcon 9.

Sundays launch targetedPlane 3 of the Iridium constellation, which is designed to have 66 satellites spread out evenly in six orbital planes around Earth. One of of the satellites will filla hole in Plane 3 where one of Iridiums aging communications platforms failed last year.

It was the second of at least eight Falcon 9 flights to deliver 75 next-generation satellites to replace Iridiums network with upgraded services and new spacecraft designed to operate for the next 15 years. Twenty of the satellites are now in space with the conclusion of Sundays mission.

Iridium ordered 81 of the new-generation Iridium Next satellites in 2010 from Thales Alenia Space, a French aerospace contractor. Thales partnered with Orbital ATK to build the spacecraft in an assembly line fashion in Orbitals factory near Phoenix.

Right now, its two down with six more launches to go, said Matt Desch, chief executive officer of Iridium, in a post-launch press release. Our operations team is eagerly awaiting this new batch of satellites and is ready to begin the testing and validation process. After several weeks of fine-tuning, the next set of slot swaps will begin, bringing more Iridium Next satellites into operational service, and bringing us closer to an exciting new era for our network, company, and partners.

Specifically for this launch, five satellites will go into mission in Plane 3, replacing existing satellites, or in one case, filling a hole in our network weve had for the last year or so, Desch said in a pre-launch conference call with reporters. Four satellites will be sent drifting down to Plane 2, where three of those satellites are expected to go into mission and one will be positioned as a spare.

One more satellite launched Sunday will drift to Plane 4 and go into operation there next year. It takes 10 or 11 months to reposition an Iridium satellite to another orbital plane.

The satellites will boost themselves to a higher altitude around485 miles (780 kilometers) above Earth in the coming weeks and months, rendezvousing with the older spacecraft each is intended to replace.

Desch said the satellites launched Sunday will replace aging members of the Iridium fleet that lifted off on a Russian Proton rocket from Kazakhstan in September 1997, and on two Boeing Delta 2 rockets from Vandenberg in March 1998 and February 2002.

The first-generation satellites were designed to last eight years, but most of them are still providing service, more than 20 years after the first batch of Iridium spacecraft reached orbit.

Iridium Next features the same unique interconnected satellite architecture as the original constellation, which is the key feature that distinguishes Iridium from all other commercial satellite operators, Desch said. Cross-links, as we refer to them, allow our satellites to bounce data and voice calls around the world nearly instantaneously, creating a true web of coverage around the entire planet, the key advantage of our network and one of the biggest reasons for our growth and success.

Improved service for Iridiums nearly 900,000 subscribers will also come with the new satellites.

Besides faster connections on voice calls and data relays, the modern satellites are the cornerstone of Iridium Certus, which the company says will link customers on-the-go via an L-band network that is not as susceptible to interference from poor weather and other factors.

Desch said the Certus initiative will provide Iridium customers with up to 1.4 megabits per second of L-band connectivity, up from 128 kilobits per second available with the existing satellites.

Certus is an L-band service built for reliability, coverage, mobility and able to be certified for safety services to ships and the cockpits of aircraft, he said, adding that Certus will go to market in early 2018.

Iridiums clientsinclude the U.S. military, oil and gas companies, aviation and maritime operators, and mining and construction contractors.

Piggyback payloads on the Iridium satellites orbited Sunday will help commercial companies track and stay in contact with airplanes and ships outside the reach of land-based radars.

All of the Iridium Next satellites host radio receivers for Aireon, an affiliate of Iridium established in partnership with air traffic control authorities in Canada, Ireland, Italy and Denmark.

Aireon technology is hosted by us on every Iridium Next satellite and is poised to change how the world views the skies, Desch said. The only way to really provide 100 percent global aircraft tracking and surveillance in realtime is through the Iridium network and our unique cross-link functionality thats provided by our satellites.

Don Thoma, Aireons CEO, told reporters his companys service will help usher air traffic control into the modern era, making for more efficient use of airspace over oceans, where ground-based radars cannot see aircraft on intercontinental flights.

When aircraft leave terrestrial airspace, they fly very rigid formations, typically conga lines or highways in the sky, along fixed routes to ensure that the aircraft maintain safe separation distances from one another, and make sure the air traffic system is as safe as it is, Thoma said.

Thats all in the process of being changed, he said. Theres a major upgrade by the worlds air traffic control organizations to move from a radar-based technology to a new GPS-based technology called Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B.

While ADS-B signals were originally meant to be received by ground stations and other aircraft, the Aireon payload on each Iridium Next satellite can detect them from space.

ADS-B will provide realtime, very accurate, frequent updates on aircraft location to air traffic control, Thoma said.What Aireon represents is the ability to provide that not just over land-based areas, but over the entire world.

Touting financial and environmental benefits in fuel costs and pollution reductions, Thoma said Aireons position data will help ensure airplanes are not lost over remote oceans, like the case of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 that went missing with 239 passengers and crew in March 2014.

Well be able to pick up those (position) signals and provide them in realtime to air traffic controllers, Thoma said.This will truly be a revolutionary aspect of air traffic control, not only supporting the surveillance across remote areas like the oceans, but also providing a backup capability and additional gap-filling surveillance over significant parts of land masses around the world.

The first eight Aireon payloads aboard Iridium Next satellites launched in January are already receiving ADS-B position signals, he said.

Nine of the 10 Iridium Next satellites launched Saturday also have antennas to monitor maritime traffic for exactEarth, a Canadian company, and Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Florida, according to Nicole Schill, an exactEarth spokesperson.

Like all eight of Iridiums launches booked with SpaceX, Sundays flight used a brand new Falcon 9 first stage.

SpaceX has racked up two successful launches with recycled Falcon 9 boosters, including Fridays mission from Florida, which coincidentally was powered by the first stage that sent the first 10 Iridium Next craft to space in January from California.

I believe previously-flown boosters are fantastic, Desch said. I think its revolutionizing the industry. I think its fantastic, in the future, for the availability and cost of launches.

Desch said he was inclined, for now, to continue launching Iridium satellites on newly-built Falcon 9s.

Our using them or not using them is not a statement around the quality or capability of those boosters, he said.

Instead, Desch would like to see a steeper discount for flying on a reused Falcon 9 booster than SpaceX currently offers. Perhaps most importantly, he said, is determining whether a switch to a previously-flown Falcon 9 rocket will get Iridiums satellites up sooner.

Iridiums first 10 satellites were supposed to launch last September, but the flight was grounded until January in the wake of a Falcon 9 rocket explosion in Florida. A manufacturing bottleneck at SpaceXs headquarters near Los Angeles delayed the second Iridium Next flight from April to June.

When would they be available, and would they improve the current launch plan we have with brand new rockets that I basically contracted for a number of years ago, and have budgeted for and have paid for? Desch said. Thats the first thing. Will they improve my schedule because schedule, to me, is very, very important.

Secondly is the cost, and really the cost and risk are kind of aligned, he said. I believe the risk is pretty low right now, but its not zero because its a new thing.

He said the reduced cost of a reused Falcon 9 is minor right now, at least in our perception of it.

If that changes as there are additional launches, Ill reconsider that, but right now I think weve made the right decision.

While we are currently flying first-flown launches, Im open to previously-flown launches, particularly for maybe the second half of our launch schedule maybe in 2018 but I really want to see the answers to all those questions before wed ever make that kind of decision, Desch said.

The next Falcon 9 flight is set for takeoff from Kennedy Space Centers launch pad 39A some time next month. It will send an Intelsat high-throughput communications satellite toward its perch in geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (35,000 kilometers) over the equator.

Vandenberg is set to host its next Falcon 9 launch in late August, when it will loft a long-delayed Taiwanese Earth observation satellite, according to Taiwanese news reports.

Then 10 more Iridium satellites are set to go up on another Falcon 9 from Vandenberg some time in early fall.

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SpaceX launches and lands second Falcon 9 rocket in two days - Spaceflight Now

Christopher Paul

June 25th, 2017

A Minotaur IV pathfinder sits on the mount at Space Launch Complex 46 in February 2017. Space Florida has worked to revitalize launch sites at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This summers ORS-5 launch will mark the first time that Space Launch Complex 46 has been used in nearly 20 years. Photo Credit: Vikash Mahadeo / SpaceFlight Insider

A Minotaur IV rocket scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) inmid-Julyhas been delayed to late August, according to the U.S. Air Force. The entirely solid-fueled Minotaur IV was scheduled to fly out of Launch Complex 46 at CCAFS in mid-July.

The press office at Patrick Air Force Base, which handles press affairs for CCAFS, told SpaceFlight Insiderthe launch will take place around the last week of August but declined to be more specific. No reason for the delay was given.

The rocket is slated to carry a small satellite called SensorSat for the Air Forces Operationally Responsive Space Office. The spacecraft is officially designated ORS-5, as it is the fifth launch of the ORS program.

SensorSat will be launched into a novel low-Earth orbit, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Lincoln Laboratory, which is cooperating with the ORS on this spacecraft. Once there, it will look toward geostationary orbit the band of satellites whose orbital period is the same as Earths rotational period, making them appear to hover over one spot on the Earth. SensorSat will observe the debris of defunct and damaged satellites.

This debris, also called space junk, is of increasing concern to all spacecraft operators. Since collisions between uncontrolled satellites or junk can often spawn many more pieces of debris, its possible for one such collision to create a chain reaction, spreading more debris across all of Earths orbital space and denying everyone the use of Earth orbit. This chain reaction is called the Kessler Syndrome after the NASA scientist who first described the possibility.

The rocket carrying SensorSat is made by Orbital ATK. Minotaur rockets are derived, in part, from Peacekeeper missiles. They are usually launched from Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia, but they have also lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California as well as from Kodiak Island Launch Complex in Alaska. This is to the be first Minotaur fly from Florida in the history of the program.

Launch Complex 46 is being refurbished, in part, by Space Florida to support the ORS-5 mission and other launches.

The Minotaur IV usually has four stages, the last being a single Orion 38 solid fueled stage, but this mission will carry an additional Orion 38 to help SensorSat achieve its desired orbit. The ORS office expects a follow-on launch of a similar spacecraft sometime in the future, but no schedule is set.

Tagged: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Minotaur IV Orbital ATK ORS-5 SensorSat Space Launch Complex 46 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.

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Minotaur IV launch postponed 6 weeks - SpaceFlight Insider

The BulgariaSat 1 communications satellite. Credit: Space Systems/Loral

On the eve of the launch of his countrys first communications satellite on a Falcon 9 rocket, the chief executive of BulgariaSat credited SpaceXs cost-cutting ways with making space accessible for small nations and money-conscious companies like his own.

Maxim Zayakov, CEO of BulgariaSat and its affiliate television provider Bulsatcom, told Spacefight Now that SpaceXs push to reduce the cost of space transportation has yielded tangible results for his country.

People dont realize that, for small countries and small companies like us, without SpaceX, there was no way we would ever be able to even think about space, Zayakov said. With them, it was possible. We got a project. I think, in the future, its going to be even more affordable because of reusability.

Bulgarias first telecommunications satellite, named BulgariaSat 1, is scheduled to lift off Friday at 2:10 p.m. EDT (1810 GMT) from pad 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Fridays launch window extends for two hours, and forecasters call for favorable weather, with partly cloudy skies and a 90 percent chance conditions will be acceptable for liftoff.

The launch from Florida is the first of two Falcon 9 flights on tap this weekend. Another SpaceX launcher is set for liftoff Sunday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with the second batch of 10 voice and data relay satellites for Iridiums upgraded communications constellation.

BulgariaSat 1 will ride SpaceXs second previously-flown Falcon 9 first stage booster. The vehicle made its first flight Jan. 14 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and SpaceX engineers inspected and refurbished the booster for a second mission.

The recycled rocket flight comes nearly three months after the March 30 launch of an SES communications satellite on SpaceXs first reused booster. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk heralded that achievement as a significant step toward the companys objective of making spaceflight more routine and less costly.

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceXs president and chief operating officer, said last year the launch company was offering about a 10 percent discount for customers willing to switch from a newly-built to a previously-flown booster. The discounts are expected to remain small as SpaceX tries to recoup its $1 billion investment in reusable rocket technology, but Musk said dramatic cuts from the Falcon 9s current list price of $61.2 million are eventually in the offing.

With BulgariaSats urging, satellite manufacturer Space Systems/Loral brokered a chance to fly BulgariaSat 1 on a reused Falcon 9. Negotiations began before the first SES 10 launch in March, Zayakov said, but insurance considerations kept BulgariaSat 1 from getting the first flight on a reused Falcon 9 first stage.

Space Systems/Loral built BulgariaSat 1 in Palo Alto, California. The terms of the satellite contract made SSL responsible for booking the launch with SpaceX, and the BulgariaSat will take control of the spacecraft once it is ready to begin service in orbit.

Zayakov said BulgariaSat saw no financial benefit from swapping a new rocket for a used one, and any discount in the deal went to SSL.

SSL engineers who work with all the launch providers were involved in this case, and they were convinced of the overall reliability of the booster to reuse it, Zayakov told Spaceflight Now.

BulgariaSat announced the switch to a reused rocket May 5, and BulgariaSat 1 arrived at Cape Canaveral from its California factory a few days later for final preflight testing and fueling.

The launch was scheduled for June 15, but a delay in the preceding Falcon 9 launch and a problem with a pneumatic valve on the rockets payload fairing moved back the mission to Friday.

Designed for a 15-year lifetime, BulgariaSat 1 weighs about 8,100 pounds (3,700 kilograms) with a full load of maneuvering propellant. The telecom craft is heading for a station in geosynchronous orbit nearly 22,300 miles (35,800 kilometers) over the equator at 1.9 degrees east longitude, where its velocity will match the rate of Earths rotation, keeping BulgariaSat 1 in range of users across Europe.

The $235 million satellite project took 12 years from to go from an idea to reality, Zayakov said.

The satellite is a huge thing, he said in a telephone interview. Its a big milestone and gives us a chance for regional development, more presence in the region, as well as throughout Europe, where we have our main coverage. For the country, definitely, its the first geostationary communications satellite. It also is going to utilize our national orbital slot, which is important.

Bulsatcoms satellite television channels will be broadcast through BulgariaSat 1 into homes and businesses across Bulgaria. A Bulsatcom subsidiary in neighboring Serbia will also relay TV channels through BulgariaSat 1.

TV is the focus, Zayakov said of BulgariaSat 1. Were trying to provide much higher quality and much better quantity of services to our customers, not only in our country, but also in the region, and trying to expand. Certainly, more HDTV and some 4K channels.

4K is beautiful, of course, for sports, he added. We dont have anything in 4K whatsoever right now. This is an opportunity right there.

Bulsatcom currently leases transponders on Hellas-Sat 2, a 14-year-old satellite launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas 5 rocket in 2003. BulgariaSat 1 will add significantly more capacity to the companys network in Bulgaria, Serbia and other regions in the Balkans.

Well have two satellites offering services now, Zayakov said. Our operations in Serbia are nearly dormant, just 35,000 subscribers there, because there was no capacity on this satellite were leasing now to grow. There are other countries in that region. We have potential to grow, but the problem is the capacity.

Zayakov expects BulgariaSat 1 will be operational by early August.

The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket will soar to the east from Floridas space coast, dropping its nine-engine first stage around T+plus 2 minutes, 40 seconds.

While the second stages single Merlin engine powers BulgariaSat 1 into orbit, a subset of the Merlin engines on the first stage will slow it down for a vertical landing on SpaceXs recovery barge, or drone ship, in the Atlantic Ocean downrange from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage will try to make its second landing on one of SpaceXs drone ships after an on-target recovery during its first flight Jan. 14.

Two burns of the upper stage engine are needed to send BulgariaSat 1 into an arcing supersynchronous transfer orbit with a low point a few hundred miles above Earth and a high point well above the satellites final operating post 22,300 miles in space.

Separation of BulgariaSat 1 from the Falcon 9s second stage is expected at T+plus 34 minutes, 55 seconds.

The satellites on-board engine will reshape its orbit with a series of burns over the next few weeks, then BulgariaSat 1 will settle into its slot in geostationary orbit for several more weeks of testing before entering service.

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Head of BulgariaSat says satellite project would be impossible without SpaceX - Spaceflight Now

Curt Godwin

June 23rd, 2017

Archive photo of the Soyuz TMA-17M docked to the ISS with Typhoon Soudelor in the background, August 5, 2015. Photo Credit: NASA

According to a report from the Russian news agency TASS, not only will U.S. astronauts launch to the International Space Station (ISS) in a Soyuz spacecraft through 2019, but also there is a strong possibility that Boeingwill engage their Russian counterpart to continue the service through 2020.

We have contracts signed for 2017, 2018 and 2019, stated Vladimir Solntsev, Director General of Energia,in an article with TASS.At present, we are negotiating contracts (that will be implemented) after 2020 and the chances that they will be signed are very high.

Until flights are available from NASAs Commercial Crew partners, U.S. astronauts will be launching aboard Russias Soyuz. Photo Credit: Joel Kowsky / NASA

Following theretirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011, NASA and its partners have relied on Russia to ferry astronauts to the orbiting outpost. Though there were several vehicles capable of delivering supplies to the ISS, Russias Soyuz was the only spacecraft capable of carrying crew to space and returning them safely to Earth.

Understanding this, NASA engaged the private industry in developing crew-capable spacecraft, ultimately selecting SpaceX and Boeing as part of the Commercial Crew Program. That program aimed to return crewed launches to U.S. soil in 2015.

However, delays have beset both commercial partners, and a reportfrom the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) indicates flight certification for both might not occur until the latter half of 2018, more than seven years after the Shuttle last flew and three years later than the original projected date.

This leaves Russia as the only option to deliver crew to the ISS and bring them back to Earth.

Though Russia may be the only ride to the ISS, NASA has options from which to choose to buy those seats. Should further delays to Commercial Crew threaten to impact operations of the station, NASA may very well have to procure more seats on the Russian spacecraft.

However, they might not necessarily have to contract those flights with Russia directly.

Infact, NASA may be gearing up to asktheir Boeing partner to call in the Soyuz seats they were awarded as part of a $320 million judgment the American company received in a legal dispute with Energia over Sea Launch.

Indeed, Boeing has already sold some of their seats to NASA for flights in 2017 and 2018, and the space agency has inked an option to procure three more seats in 2019.

With such a thin margin between currently contracted seats and the availability of commercial flights from U.S. soil, it would appear that NASA ismaking preparations to ensure they do not lose the capability to deliver astronauts to the ISS should the Commercial Crew program encounter further delays.

Tagged: Boeing Commercial Crew Program International Space Station NASA Soyuz 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.

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US astronauts may continue to launch aboard Soyuz into 2020 - SpaceFlight Insider

NASAs Kepler space telescope team has identified 219 new planet candidates, 10 of which are near-Earth size and in the habitable zone of their star. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Scientists have published a catalog of exoplanet discoveries made by NASAs Kepler space telescope, identifying 219 previously-unknown planet candidates circling stars elsewhere in the galaxy, including 10 would-be worlds that appear to be about the same size of Earth with temperatures potentially hospitable for life.

Culling data collected during the first four years of Keplers mission, researchers used computers to pick out and analyze signals from stars that could be have caused by nearby planets. Automated software identified the detections most likely to be real worlds, according to Susan Thompson, a Kepler research scientist at the SETI Institute and NASAs Ames Research Center who led the cataloging effort.

This is the last search that we performed, and we used our most improved techniques, and with that we found 4,034 candidates, which include 10 new terrestrial-sized candidates in the habitable zone of their star, Thompson said.

Follow-up observations have, so far, confirmed 2,335 of the more than 4,000 candidate worlds discovered by Kepler are real. The 10 new Earth-sized exoplanet candidates identified by Kepler scientists bring the missions total haul to 49 likely worlds about the same size as our home planet that could have the right temperature to harbor liquid water, Thompson said.

Thirty of the 49 Earth-sized planets have been verified.

This new result presented today has implications for understanding the frequency of different types of planets in our galaxy, and helps us to advance our knowledge of of how planets are formed, said Mario Perez, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters.

The four years of data covered in the exoplanet catalog come from Keplers observations of around 200,000 stars in the constellation Cygnus. Using a 37-inch (95-centimeter) telescope and a unique wide-angle 95-megapixel camera, Kepler looked for subtle dips in the brightness of stars in a predetermined patch of sky beginning soon after its 2009 launch on a Delta 2 rocket.

The brightness fluctuations if they occur in regular patterns could be caused by a planet transiting in front of the star, blotting out a tiny fraction of its light. Sophisticated software written specifically for the Kepler mission was tasked with rooting out false positives that could be caused by starquakes or other natural phenomena.

Thompson said scientists injected simulated transits and measured how often Kepler and its data-crunching computers missed a planet. The catalog also accounted for noise in Keplers data archive that software could have mistaken for a planet.

That is how scientists arrived at the 4,034 planet candidates from Keplers four-year observing campaign in the constellation Cygnus. Subsequent detections from other telescopes, in space or on the ground, have verified 2,335 of them to date.

These are planets where there is no question at all that that signal is coming from an exoplanet, Thompson said.

In the case of the exoplanet candidates, there is still some room for doubt whether that signal is coming from a planet, she said. It still could be coming from other astrophysical signals.

Several of the newly-discovered planet candidates orbit G dwarf stars like our sun.Thompson singled out one exoplanet candidate named KOI-7711, which is about 1.3 times the size of Earth and orbits its star every 302 days.

She said KOI-7711 gets approximately the same amount of heat that we get from our own star.

However, theres a lot we dont know about this planet, and as a result, its hard to say whether its really an Earth twin, Thompson said Monday. We need to know more about its atmosphere, whether theres water on the planet.

Alien astronomers looking into our solar system through a distant telescope could be tricked into assuming more than one planet was hospitable to life.

I always like to remind people that it looks like there are three planets in our habitable zone Venus, Earth and Mars and Id only really want to live on one of them, Thompson said.

Keplers updated exoplanet listing will help astronomers estimate how common rocky, potentially habitable planets are in our galaxy.

For M dwarfs, which are small stars that make up 75 percent of the stars, in the galaxy, we know that one out of every four of them has a planet that is small and is in the habitable zone, said Courtney Dressing, a NASA Sagan Fellow at the California Institute of Technology.

Dressing said scientists still trying to determine the ubiquity of Earth-sized planets around sun-like stars, one of the chief goals of the Kepler mission. But the catalog released this week will arm scientists with better data to answer that question.

One thing thats important for us is are we alone? Perez said Monday. And maybe Kepler today has told us indirectly although we dont have confirmation that we are probably not alone.

Statistics from the Kepler planet catalog also suggest small planets fall into two families, said Benjamin Fulton, a doctoral candidate at the University of Hawaii in Manoa.

One grouping of planets ranges from smaller than Earth to less than twice the size of Earth, and another set of planets found by Kepler measure up to four times Earths diameter. There are relatively few worlds in between, Fulton said.

Most of the planets in the first group may be akin to the Earth with rocky surfaces and little to no atmospheres, Fulton said. Planets in the second group are probably more like cousins of Neptunes with thick atmospheres and no surface to speak of.

Astronomers turned to the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to measure the sizes of approximately 1,300 stars known to have planets. The data yielded better estimates of the planets dimensions.

Scientists believe the delineation between super-Earths and mini-Neptunes stems from the way the planets form. Some worlds suck in more hydrogen and helium, growing thick, deep atmospheres, while others develop comparatively thin atmospheres that can be blown away by stellar winds and heat.

This result has significant implications for the search for life, Fulton said. Approximately half of the planets that we know are so common have no solid surface, or a surface deep beneath the crushing weight of a thick atmosphere, and these would not be nice places to live.

Our result sharpens up the dividing line between potentially habitable planets, and those that are inhospitable to life as we know it, he said.

Keplers mission has been plagued by the failure of two of the observatorys four reaction wheels, spinning gyro-like mechanisms that kept the telescope steadily pointed at the missions star field in the constellation Cygnus.

With the loss of Keplers second reaction wheel in 2013, the telescope could no longer meet the missions original pointing requirements.

Engineers found a way to harness the pressure of photons of sunlight by positioning the spacecraft to prevent solar radiation from slowly pointing the telescope away from its astronomical targets. Although solar pressure exerts very low forces on spacecraft, the constant bombardment of solar photons can alter the orientation of satellites.

Controllers can eliminate the effects of solar pressure by balancing Kepler against the stream of sunlight, similar to balancing a pencil on a finger. The telescope cannot detect the faint signatures of planets without stable pointing.

Kepler orbits the sun at roughly the same distance as Earth. NASA calls telescopes current observing program the K2 mission.

Keeping Kepler balanced means it must be pointed in the ecliptic plane, or the plane where all the solar systems planets orbit the sun. The mitigation against solar pressure means Kepler can only look at a narrow band of stars, shifting its 100-square-degree field-of-view every two or three months to avoid pointing its sensitive camera at bright sunlight.

The new observing method means Kepler is now best-suited to finding exoplanets located very close to their host stars.

Kepler continues searching for planets, but officials expect it to run out of fuel some time next year.

The spacecraft has about 10 percent of its hydrazine fuel supply remaining, according to Jessie Dotson, the K2 missions project scientist at Ames.

We think the limiting factor is probably going to be the fuel, Dotson said.

NASAs next planet-hunting mission, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral in March 2018 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. TESS will survey the entire sky to look for exoplanet signatures around nearby, bright stars.

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Updated Kepler catalog contains 219 new exoplanet candidates - Spaceflight Now

June 22, 2017 by Fraser Cain, Universe Today Credit: SpaceWork Enterprises, Inc

We've spent a few articles on Universe Today talking about just how difficult it's going to be to travel to other stars. Sending tiny unmanned probes across the vast gulfs between stars is still mostly science fiction. But to send humans on that journey? That's just a level of technology beyond comprehension.

For example, the nearest star is Proxima Centauri, located a mere 4.25 light years away. Just for comparison, the Voyager spacecraft, the most distant human objects ever built by humans, would need about 50,000 years to make that journey.

I don't know about you, but I don't anticipate living 50,000 years. No, we're going to want to make the journey more quickly. But the problem, of course, is that going more quickly requires more energy, new forms of propulsion we've only starting to dream up. And if you go too quickly, mere grains of dust floating through space become incredibly dangerous.

Based on our current technology, it's more likely that we're going to have to take our time getting to another star.

And if you're going to go the slower route, you've got a couple of options. Create a generational ship, so that successive generations of humans are born, live out their lives, and then die during the hundreds or even thousands of year long journey to another star.

Imagine you're one of the people destined to live and die, never reaching your destination. Especially when you look out your window and watch a warp ship zip past with all those happy tourists headed to Proxima Centauri, who were start enough to wait for warp drives to be invented.

No, you want to sleep for the journey to the nearest star, so that when you get there, it's like no time passed. And even if warp drive did get invented while you were asleep, you didn't have to see their smug tourist faces as they zipped past.

Is human hibernation possible? Can we do it long enough to survive a long-duration spaceflight journey and wake up again on the other side?

Before I get into this, we're just going to have to assume that we never merge with our robot overlords, upload ourselves into the singularity, and effortlessly travel through space with our cybernetic bodies.

For some reason, that whole singularity thing never worked out, or the robots went on strike and refused to do our space exploration for us any more. And so, the job of space travel fell to us, the fragile, 80-year lifespanned mammals. Exploring the worlds within the solar system and out to other stars, spreading humanity into the cosmos.

Come on, we know it'll totally be the robots. But that's not what the science fiction tells us, so let's dig into it.

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We see animals, and especially mammals hibernating all the time in nature. In order to be able survive over a harsh winter, animals are capable of slowing their heart rate down to just a few beats a minute. They don't need to eat or drink, surviving on their fat stores for months at a time until food returns.

It's not just bears and rodents that can do it, by the way, there are actually a couple of primates, including the fat-tailed dwarf lemur from Madagascar. That's not too far away on the old family tree, so there might be hope for human hibernation after all.

In fact, medicine is already playing around with human hibernation to improve people's chances to survive heart attacks and strokes. The current state of this technology is really promising.

They use a technique called therapeutic hypothermia, which lowers the temperature of a person by a few degrees. They can use ice packs or coolers, and doctors have even tried pumping a cooled saline solution through the circulatory system. With the lowered temperature, a human's metabolism decreases and they fall unconscious into a torpor.

But the trick is to not make them so unconscious that they die. It's a fine line.

The results have been pretty amazing. People have been kept in this torpor state for up to 14 days, going through multiple cycles.

The therapeutic use of this torpor is still under research, and doctors are learning if it's helpful for people with heart attacks, strokes or even the progression of diseases like cancer. They're also trying to figure out if there are any downsides, but so far, there don't seem to be any long-term problems with putting someone in this torpor state.

A few years ago, SpaceWorks Enterprises delivered a report to NASA on how they could use this therapeutic hypothermia for long duration spaceflight within the solar system.

Currently, a trip to Mars takes about 6-9 months. And during that time, the human passengers are going to be using up precious air, water and food. But in this torpor state, SpaceWorks estimates that the crew will a reduction in their metabolic rate of 50 to 70 percent. Less metabolism, less resources needed. Less cargo that needs to be sent to Mars.

The astronauts wouldn't need to move around, so you could keep them nice and snug in little pods for the journey. And they wouldn't get into fights with each other, after six to nine months of nothing but day after day of spaceflight.

We know that weightlessness has a negative effect on the body, like loss of bone mass and atrophy of muscles. Normally astronauts exercise for hours every day to counteract the negative effects of the reduced gravity. But SpaceWorks thinks it would be more effective to just put the astronauts into a rotating module and let artificial gravity do the work of maintaining their conditioning.

They envision a module that's 4 metres high and 8 metres wide. If you spin the habitat at 20 revolutions per minute, you give the crew the equivalent of Earth gravity. Go at only 11.8 RPM and it'll feel like Mars gravity. Down to 7.8, and it's lunar gravity.

Normally, spinning that fast in a habitat that small would be extremely uncomfortable as the crew would experience different forces at different parts of their body. But remember, they'll be in a state of torpor, so they really won't care.

Current plans for sending colonists to Mars would require 40 ton habitats to support 6 people on the trip. But according to SpaceWorks, you could reduce the weight down to 15 tons if you just let them sleep their way through the journey. And the savings get even better with more astronauts.

The crew probably wouldn't all sleep for the entire journey. Instead, they'd sleep in shifts for a few weeks. Taking turns to wake up, check on the status of the spacecraft and crew before returning to their cryosleep caskets.

What's the status of this now? NASA funded stage 1 of the SpaceWorks proposal, and in July, 2016 NASA moved forward with Phase 2 of the project, which will further investigate this technique for Mars missions, and how it could be used even farther out in the solar system.

Elon Musk should be interested in seeing their designs for a 100-person module for sending colonists to Mars.

In addition, the European Space Agency has also been investigating human hibernation, and a possible way to enable long-duration spaceflight. They have plans to test out the technology on various non-hibernating mammals, like pigs. If their results are positive, we might see the Europeans pushing this technology forward.

Can we go further, putting people to sleep for decades and maybe even the centuries it would take to travel between the stars?

Right now, the answer is no. We don't have any technology at our disposal that could do this. We know that microbial life can be frozen for hundreds of years. Right now there are parts of Siberia unfreezing after centuries of permafrost, awakening ancient microbes, viruses, plants and even animals. But nothing on the scale of human beings.

When humans freeze, ice crystals form in our cells, rupturing them permanently. There is one line of research that offers some hope: cryogenics. This process replaces the fluids of the human body with an antifreeze agent which doesn't form the same destructive crystals.

Scientists have successfully frozen and then unfrozen 50-milliliters (almost a quarter cup) of tissue without any damage.

In the next few years, we'll probably see this technology expanded to preserving organs for transplant, and eventually entire bodies, and maybe even humans. Then this science fiction idea might actually turn into reality. We'll finally be able to sleep our way between the stars.

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On cold, dark days it is tempting to imagine shutting yourself away until the warmer weather returns. Many animals do just that by entering a state known as torpor, which reduces their bodily functions to a minimum and uses ...

By studying hibernation, a Duke University team is providing a window into why humans sleep. Observations of a little-known primate called the fat-tailed dwarf lemur in captivity and the wild has revealed that it goes for ...

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A medically induced coma isn't hibernation, the bodies biochemical process still take place at the same rate. All you are doing is suppressing - incompletely- the brain's ability to create memories from external stimuli. You will age at the same rate at best and at worst undergo significant physical degradation.

Talking to ex-critical care patients, in a previous role, it became clear that many of them experienced vivid dreams - actually nightmares - whilst in induced comas. This was primarily ascribed to the use of opioids as analgesics. Almost all patients given respiratory support for more than five days had to be weaned off of ventilators gradually as they were no-longer able to breathe independently due to muscle wastage.

So you could be put into a coma - but when you arrive you don't know who you are and why you're there (or be just an all-round vegetable).

In any case: when you get there it won't be different from living/dying in a ship. Because there's nowhere to live. You'll still need to be confined to the ship (or a similarly confined structure on any planet you land on). Might as well go for the generation-ship. Makes no difference.

What would be the point?

They won't be coming back. and communication with them would likely be impossible due to the immense distance and power requirements, reducing the amount of data transfered to something like a single photograph per year and even that takes 80 years to turn up.

That's why people need to go. The robots run for a time and then break down, whereas people can form colonies and build giant transmitters from local materials without the need of science-magic-grey-goo-nanobot stuff that's even less plausible than singularity or robot overlords.

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Jason Rhian

June 21st, 2017

WhiteKnightOne and SpaceShipOne. Photo Credit: Lunar Clips

It was a heady time for the emerging NewSpace movement, California-based Scaled Compositeshad sent Mike Melvill in the privately produced SpaceShipOne on flight 15P up 62 miles (100 kilometers) into space.This set the stage for them to win the Ansari X-PRIZE and from there send the first touristson suborbital hops. Or, so they hoped. Thirteen years and four lives later, the follow-on vehicle, SpaceShipTwo, has yet to send a single tourist to sub-orbit.

Although initial indications suggested that SpaceShipOne and its successors would be ferrying tourists to the very edge of space, none have done so since the company won the Ansari X PRIZE on Oct. 4, 2004. Photo Credit: Scaled Composites

Flight 15Pwas followed by 16P, with Melvill once again at the helm, this time taking SpaceShipOne up to 64 miles (103 kilometers) on Sept. 29, 2004, and the 17P flight on Oct. 4, 2004. These last two flights were competitive and met the requirements under the Ansari X-PRIZE worth an estimated $10 million.

The Ansari X-PRIZE was instituted to jump-start commercial space efforts, and it appeared that Scaleds owner, aerospace maverick Burt Rutan, would show the world that private industry could do things more quickly, better, and less expensively than government operations.

With Scaled Composites closing in on the X-PRIZE, Sir Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin franchise, entered into an agreement with the company to produce the successor aircraft and spacecraft WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo.

However, since their initial successes, efforts to have well-heeled (a ticket on board the spacecraft costs an estimated $250,000) space tourists sent up into the black sky, to the very edge of space (sub-orbit), have stalled.

On July 26, 2007, three people were killed when a rocket engine explodedduring a test that was being developed for SpaceShipTwo. Knights Arrow, utilizing aCalifornia Public Information Act, obtained access to areport from the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration on the incident.

Inthe Knights Arrow report, several factors were suggested as contributing to the deaths ofTodd Ivens, Eric Blackwell, and Charles Glenn May. These included either a lack of due-diligence or,possibly, as the Knights Arrow article claims, a wilful disregard of the truth. Also, suggestions were made that the Nitrous Oxide (N2O) fuel was stable and benign. This may have led to the erroneous belief that viewers could watch the test from a relatively close distance, with nothing but a chain-link fence as protection.

Photo Credit: D. Ramey Logan

The ambient temperature that day was estimated to be about 105 F (40.5 C); however, the recorded ambient temperature at the nearbyMojave Airport peaked at 115 F (46 C). Also, there was a holding tank containing more than 10,000 pounds (4,536 kg) of N2O at 70 F (21 C) and pressurized to 360 psi (2,482 kPa).

After about three seconds into the test, therig exploded. According to the Knights Arrow report, many of the individuals present that day, as well as those responsible, were not interviewed.

Fast forward seven years to Oct. 31, 2014, and theVSS Enterprise (tail numberN339SS) SpaceShipTwo was conducting its fourth powered test flight when the co-pilot accidentally activated the spacecrafts feather system, which allows the spacecraft to return to Earth without the penalty of having a heavy heatshield.

The VSS Enterprise, the first of five planned spacecraft of this type, broke up killing the co-pilot Michael Alsburyand leaving the pilot Peter Siebold seriously injured.

The sign Melvill held aloft thirteen years ago read: SpaceShipOne, Government Zero. On this anniversary of those first exciting steps, one could say that the loss offour liveshas provided the producers of both SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo with some humble experiences that have tempered their initial swagger.

The loss of thisconfidence, coupled with the accidents, has slowedthe rapid pace that Scaled Composites / Virgin Galactic / The Spaceship Company started out with (in July 2009, Bransontold the BBCthat the first paid flights should take place within 18 months that was roughly six years ago). Since that time, the date of when paying customersmight fly to space on SpaceShipTwo has slippedto the right several times, so much so that even Branson has stopped providing a date as to when this might occur.

###

Certain statements within this article are based on the views of the author and do not, necessarily, reflect those of SpaceFlight Insider.

Tagged: Sir Richard Branson SpaceShipOne SpaceShipOne Government Zero SpaceShipTwo The Range The Spaceship Company Virgin Galactic

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.

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Our SpaceFlight Heritage: SpaceShipOne, Government Zero 13 years later - SpaceFlight Insider

Bart Leahy

June 22nd, 2017

Boeing logo. Photo Credit: Paul J. Richards / AFP

Boeing is looking to make its operations leaner and more competitive by breaking up its Defense, Space & Security (BDS) unit into smaller business units reporting directly to BDS CEOLeanne Caret. Effective July 1, 2017, the unit will reorganize into several smaller divisions covering Autonomous Systems; Space and Missile Systems; Strike, Surveillance, and Mobility; and Vertical Lift.

Boeings structural changes will eliminate a layer of executive oversight, laying off approximately 50 executives. The changes are expected togive each of the organizations more autonomy and direct access to Caret, but also give her more direct oversight over their operations.

The smaller business units responsibilities will be broken out as follows:

The Development, Global Operations, and Phantom Works segments, which also report to Caret, will largely be unchanged.

We need to be an agile organization that is more responsive to customers needs and committed to continually improving productivity, Caret said. We are fundamentally addressing how we compete, win, and grow in Boeings second century.

It is uncertain, as yet, what impact this reorganization will have on Boeings involvement in ULA. However, the company already has two major reusable space systems under development: the X-37B for the U.S. Air Force and the XS-1 reusable winged launcher for DARPA.

Tagged: Boeing Defense Space & Security The Range

Bart Leahy is a freelance technical writer living in Orlando, Florida. Leahy's diverse career has included work for The Walt Disney Company, NASA, the Department of Defense, Nissan, a number of commercial space companies, small businesses, nonprofits, as well as the Science Cheerleaders.

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Boeing reorganizing for more agile performance - SpaceFlight Insider

Christopher Paul

June 22nd, 2017

Rick Mastracchio hovers above the cupola window in the Tranquility module of the International Space Station during his STS-131 mission in 2010. He recently retired from NASA and joined Orbital ATKs Commercial Resupply Services program. Photo Credit: NASA

Orbital ATK has hired former NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio as its new senior director of operations for the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program. The company made theannouncement via aJune 19, 2017, press release welcoming the three-time Space Shuttle astronaut to its Space Systems Group team.

Orbital ATK is one of two companies working with NASA to regularly resupply the International Space Station with consumables and experiments. Using the Cygnus spacecraft, the Dulles, Virginia-based company has been sending cargo to the outpost since 2013.

Rick Mastracchio takes an EVA selfie during a spacewalk in April 2014. Photo Credit: NASA

Mastracchio, who retired from NASA on June 16, 2017, will be responsible for managing Orbital ATKs mission and cargo operations teams. Additionally, he will be support the companys other interests in human spaceflight, according to the release, including pursuits beyond low-Earth orbit.

We are thrilled to welcome Rick Mastracchio to Orbital ATK, said Frank DeMauro, vice president and general manager of Orbital ATKs Advanced Programs Division. With his experience as an astronaut and his time spent on the International Space Station, Rick brings a unique understanding of human space flight, making him an invaluable resource for our human space flight endeavors.

Mastracchio started out at NASA as a member of the Flight Crew Operations Directorate in 1990. Before working for NASA directly, he worked for Rockwell at Johnson Space Center beginning in 1987.

As a member of the Flight Crew Operations Directorate, Mastracchio worked on the Space Shuttles avionics software, as well as planning ascent and abort procedures.Joining the staff of NASAs Mission Control in 1993, he served as an ascent/entry Guidance Procedures Officer, supporting 17 missions as a flight controller.

Mastracchio was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1996 and began training in August of that year.His first flight was on STS-106 as a mission specialist aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis. He flew again on STS-118 aboard Endeavour, and finally on STS-131 aboard Discovery. All three missions served as assembly and resupply missions to the ISS.

In 2013, Mastracchio flew to the outpostaboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and served as a member of Expeditions 38 and 39. It was during this mission that the first Cygnus under the CRS contract, the Orb-1 mission, arrived at the outpost.

In total, Mastracchio has spent 228 days in space across his four spaceflights. During that time, he went on nine spacewalks totaling just over 53 hours.

After his last trip into space, he continued working for NASA as a designer for the cockpit on the Orion spacecraft, building on his experience helping the space agency upgrade the Shuttles cockpit in 2003.

Rick is a classmate and a friend and he has done great work for NASA, both in space and on the ground, said Chief Astronaut Pat Forrester, who was selected as an astronaut in the same class as Mastracchio. His breadth of experience over three decades in human spaceflight will serve him well as he moves on to his next endeavor.

Tagged: Commercial Resupply Services Cygnus NASA Orbital ATK Rick Mastracchio 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.

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Former astronaut Rick Mastracchio joins Orbital ATK - SpaceFlight Insider

Lloyd Campbell

June 21st, 2017

Double Feature: SpaceX will attempt to launch two Falcon 9 rockets in just two days. The first will be the BulgariaSat-1 mission on June 23, 2017, which will fly out of Kennedy Space Centers Launch Complex 39A. The second will be the Iridium-2 mission on June 25, 2017, which will liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Bases Space Launch Complex 4E. Pictured is the Iridium-1 mission, left, and the NROL-76 mission, which launched in January and May 2017 respectively. Photo Credits: SpaceX

Due to an adjustment in its mission manifest, SpaceX will attempt to fly two Falcon 9 rocketsa little more than 50 hours apart from opposite sides of the United States. Using two different launch teams, it would set a new record for successive launches by the NewSpace company.

The first mission is scheduled to take flight Friday, June 23, 2017, from Kennedy Space Centers Launch Complex 39A. Originally scheduled to launch June 19, this flight was delayed following the discovery of a problem with a pneumatic valve in the payload fairing, which SpaceX determined needed to be replaced to ensure a safe deployment of the satellite.

SpaceX performs a static fire test on flight-proven core 1029, paving the way for the BulgariaSat-1 mission to launch. Liftoff is targeted for June 23, 2017. Photo Credit: SpaceX

The valve is responsible for separating the two halves of the fairing during flight after the payload is above the thickest parts of the atmosphere. While there is redundancy in the system, SpaceX decided to err on the side of caution and replace the suspect valve.

Having already completed all of its pre-launch testing, including a static fire test over the weekend, the flight-proven Falcon 9 should be ready to fly once it is returns to the pad.

This will be the second flight of this particular first stage, core 1029, having previously launched the first 10 Iridium NEXT satellites in January 2017 during the Iridium-1 mission.

The payload for the EastCoast flight is a television broadcasting satellite called BulgariaSat-1, which will provide direct-to-home television to the Balkans, among other areas.The two-hour launch window opens at 2:10 p.m. EDT (1810 GMT). If the flight does not happen Friday, a backup opportunity exists Saturday with the same window.

Nearly three minutes into the flight, core 1029 will separate from the second stage and attempt to land on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship which will be stationed downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

Two days later, on the other side of the continent, a second Falcon 9 mission will take place. Scheduled for Sunday afternoon from Vandenberg Air Force Bases Launch Complex 4E (east) in California, this will be the fourth liftoff SpaceX has executed from that facility.

The company completed a successful static fire test on the rocket Tuesday, June 20. It involved filling both stages with liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene in a simulated countdownculminating in the nine first stage Merlin-1D engines igniting for just over 3 seconds to confirm everything was functioning properly.

With the test out of the way, SpaceX can now move ahead with integrating the payload,the second set of 10 Iridium NEXT satellites,with the rocket. These spacecraft will give Iridium Communications customers better voice and data service.Liftofffor the Iridium-2 mission is set for1:25 p.m. PDT (4:25 p.m. EDT / 20:25 GMT). This will be the first flight for this specific Falcon 9 first stage, core 1036.

The company will attempt to land core 1036 on its West Coast drone ship, Just Read the Instructions, following the separation of the second stage some 2.5 minutes into flight. Assuming a successful recovery, SpaceX plans to refurbish and reuse the booster for a future launch.

Tagged: bulgariasat-1 Falcon 9 Iridium-2 Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A Lead Stories Space Launch Complex 4E SpaceX Vandenberg Air Force Base

Lloyd Campbells first interest in space began when he was a very young boy in the 1960s with NASAs Gemini and Apollo programs. That passion continued in the early 1970s with our continued exploration of our Moon, and was renewed by the Shuttle Program. Having attended the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on its final two missions, STS-131, and STS-133, he began to do more social networking on space and that developed into writing more in-depth articles. Since then hes attended the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, the agencys new crew-rated Orion spacecraft on Exploration Flight Test 1, and multiple other uncrewed launches. In addition to writing, Lloyd has also been doing more photography of launches and aviation. He enjoys all aspects of space exploration, both human, and robotic, but his primary passions lie with human exploration and the vehicles, rockets, and other technologies that allow humanity to explore space.

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SpaceX to launch, land 2 Falcon 9 rockets just days apart - SpaceFlight Insider

On June 21, 2017, Spaceport America announced it's vision and direction ahead. They talked about how the facility is being used and about commercial space flights. Credit: KFOX14 / CBS4

New Mexico is getting closer to commercial space travel, according to officials at the Spaceport America facility in Truth or Consequences.

Flights to space on Virgin Galactic were supposed to begin in 2014, but were delayed.

On Wednesday, Spaceport America announced it's vision and direction ahead. They talked about how the facility is being used and about commercial space flights.

"We have access to space 24/7," said Dan Hicks, CEO at Spaceport America.

He said more companies are becoming interested in the site for space testing.

"One of the key attributes we have is restricted airspace," he said. "So from surface to unlimited, we have a partnership with White Sands Missile Range and the Department of Defense."

Virgin Galactic was the first anchor tenant at the facility.

Hicks said there are now five tenants.

Jonathan Firth is the executive vice president of Spaceport America and talked about Virgin Galactic's strategy for space travel.

"We have our flight test system, going through flight tests right now," Firth said. "We have a new spaceship that we've built, we've been testing it for 9 months now in flight tests and we're going to continue doing that for the rest of this year, and probably into the early part of next year."

KFOX14 asked when the first commercial space flight would happen. But Firth said they're not releasing a time frame.

"The approach now is that when we're ready, we'll fly, and we're not going to announce a date ahead of time," Firth said.

Both Firth and Hicks said they believe New Mexico is beginning to feel the economic impact the Spaceport America facility is bringing to the state.

"Just the rent payments, and you know the user fees that we've paid to the Spaceport already exceeds $7 million so far," Firth said. "If you look at our relationship with New Mexico, supplies in general, and other things that we need, we've looked locally wherever possible. We've spent more than $9 million dollars."

Mark Russell is the founder and CEO of the company Pipeline2Space. The company began using Spaceport America back in April to further a project of its own.

"Flying on demand here , and that's really the key here," he said. "Because of its proximity to White Sands Missile Range, you are able to fly when you want to, and we want to fly on a five minute metronome."

Russell said this New Mexico facility has given him opportunities to further his project that he wouldn't have had otherwise.

He also said he feels his company is contributing to the New Mexico economy as his project pushes ahead.

"We need to put holes in the ground, and we need to create infrastructure, and we need to create operations teams that live, work and go to school right here in New Mexico," Russell said.

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Spaceport America talks commercial space flights, introduces new tenants - KFOX El Paso

Laurel Kornfeld

June 21st, 2017

NASAs Kepler space telescope team has identified 219 new planet candidates, 10 of which are near-Earth-size and in the habitable zone of their star. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech

NASAs Keplermission has released the most extensive list of exoplanet findings: a total of 219 planet candidates, of which ten are probablyEarth-like and occupy their stars habitable zones where temperatures allow liquid water to exist on the surface.

The eighth and final data release of the original, four-year Kepler mission brings the total number of exoplanet candidates found by the telescope to 4,034. Of these, 2,335 have been confirmed to be planets, and 50 are located in habitable zones and are roughly Earth-sized.

Launched in March 2009, Kepler spent four years observing stars in the constellation Cygnus by using the transit method, which involves searching for regular dimming of stars light as orbiting planets transit or pass in front of the stars. However, the failure of the spacecrafts second of four reaction wheels in May 2013 put an end to that part of its mission, which had been expected to be extended until 2016.

Keplers latest findings announced at a news conference on Monday, June 19, held at the NASA Ames Research Center in California also revealed the existence of two divergent categories of small planets. The first are gaseous worlds with no known solid surfaces, dubbed mini-Neptunes, while the second are rocky planets sometimes described as super-Earths.

Researchers using data from the W. M. Keck Observatory and NASAs Kepler mission have discovered a gap in the distribution of planet sizes, indicating that most planets discovered by Kepler so far fall into two distinct size classes: the rocky Earths and super-Earths (similar to Kepler-452b), and the mini-Neptunes (similar to Kepler-22b). This histogram shows the number of planets per 100 stars as a function of planet size relative to Earth. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / Ames / Caltech / University of Hawaii (B. J. Fulton)

Using the Kepler data, one group of scientists observed 1,300 stars and 2,000 planets that the telescope found with the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, with the goal of obtaining precise measurements of the planets sizes. Their studies confirmed the presence of the two distinct small planet types.

Rocky planets appear to have a size limit at around 75 percent larger than the Earth. For reasons not well understood, some small planets accumulate hydrogen and helium, swelling out to become gaseous worlds with heavy atmospheres and no known solid surfaces. The latter are not good locations to search for life.

We like to think of this study as classifying planets in the same way that biologists identify new species of animals. Finding two distinct groups of exoplanets is like discovering mammals and lizards make up distinct branches of a family tree, explained Benjamin Fulton, lead author of the second study and a doctoral student at the University of Hawaii.

This diagram illustrates how planets are assembled and sorted into two distinct size classes. First, the rocky cores of planets are formed from smaller pieces. Then, the gravity of the planets attracts hydrogen and helium gas. Finally, the planets are baked by the starlight and lose some gas. At a certain mass threshold, planets retain the gas and become gaseous mini-Neptunes; below this threshold, the planets lose all their gas, becoming rocky super-Earths. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / Kepler / Caltech (R. Hurt)

Particular attention was given to one approximately Earth-sized world discovered orbiting in the habitable zone of its Sun-like star. Designated KOI-7711, this planet candidate resembles Earth in both its orbit and size, but the composition of its atmosphere and its ability to host liquid water on its surface is unknown.

In the Solar System, Venus, Earth, and Mars are all located in the habitable zone, yet only Earth is capable of supporting life, the scientists noted.

Theres a lot we dont know about this planet, Kepler scientist Susan Mullally said, noting it is premature to refer to it as an Earth twin.

In the past, planets discovered by Kepler were initially thought to be habitable only to later be found inhospitable due to phenomena such as bombardment by stellar flares.

Highlighted are new planet candidates from the eighth Kepler planet candidate catalog that are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in the stars habitable zone the range of distances from a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. The dark green area represents an optimistic estimate for the habitable zone, while the brighter green area represents a more conservative estimate for the habitable zone. The candidates are plotted as a function of their stars surface temperature on the vertical axis and by the amount of energy the planet candidate receives from its host star on the horizontal axis. Brighter yellow circles show new planet candidates in the eighth catalog, while pale yellow circles show planet candidates from previous catalogs. Blue circles represent candidates that have been confirmed as planets due to follow-up observations. The sizes of the colored disks indicate the sizes of these exoplanets relative to one another and to the image of Earth, Venus, and Mars, placed on this diagram for reference. Note that the new candidates tend to be around stars more similar to the sun around 5,800 Kelvin representing progress in finding planets that are similar to the Earth in size and temperature that orbit Sun-like stars. Image & Caption Credits: NASA / Ames Research Center / Wendy Stenzel

To address the possibilities of both false positives and failure to identify actual planets, the Kepler team analyzed the data by combining it with software simulations that added false signals and deliberate misses of known planets. Mixing real data with simulated information accurately predicted both overcounts and undercounts.

This carefully measured catalog is the foundation for directly answering one of astronomys most compelling questions how many planets like Earth are in the galaxy? said SETI research scientist and catalog study lead author Susan Thompson.

The Kepler data set is unique, as it is the only one containing a population of these near-Earth analogs planets with roughly the same size and orbit as Earth, said Mario Perez, a Kepler scientist in NASAs Science Mission Directorate Astrophysics Division. Understanding their frequency in the galaxy will help inform the design of future NASA missions to directly image another Earth.

There are 4,034 planet candidates now known with the release of the eighth Kepler planet candidate catalog. Of these, 2,335 have been confirmed as planets. The blue dots show planet candidates from previous catalogs, while the yellow dots show new candidates from the eighth catalog. New planet candidates continue to be found at all periods and sizes due to continued improvement in detection techniques. Notably, 10 of these new candidates are near-Earth-size and at long orbital periods, where they have a chance of being rocky with liquid water on their surface. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / Ames Research Center / Wendy Stenzel

None of the new data comes from the revamped K2 mission, for which the Kepler telescope is searching other parts of the sky beyond Cygnus. K2s most recent discovery over 100 exoplanets was announced in July 2016.

The search for other exoplanets, in general, and another Earth, in particular, will continue with NASAs Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and with the James Webb Space Telescope, both scheduled for launch in 2018.

Thompson, Fulton, Perez, and Courtney Dressing, a NASA Sagan fellow at Caltech, participated in the news conference.

All exoplanet candidates and confirmed planets are listed in NASAs Exoplanet Archive online.

The population of exoplanets detected by the Kepler mission (yellow dots) compared to those detected by other surveys using various methods: radial velocity (light blue dots), transit (pink dots), imaging (green dots), microlensing (dark blue dots), and pulsar timing (red dots). For reference, the horizontal lines mark the sizes of Jupiter, Neptune, and Earth, all of which are displayed on the right side of the diagram. The colored ovals denote different types of planets: hot Jupiters (pink), cold gas giants (purple), ocean worlds and ice giants (blue), rocky planets (yellow), and lava worlds (green). The shaded gray triangle at the lower right marks the exoplanet frontier that will be explored by future exoplanet surveys. Kepler has discovered a remarkable quantity of exoplanets and significantly advanced the edge of the frontier. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / Ames Research Center / Natalie Batalha / Wendy Stenzel

Tagged: Ames Research Center Exoplanet Kepler Space Telescope Lead Stories NASA

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.

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Kepler discovers 10 Earth-like exoplanets, 219 planet candidates - SpaceFlight Insider