Aerospace & Defense News - Space

AirGuide Business, May 5, 2008

May 5, 2008

Discovery Communications chairman John Hendricks will return a new and improved library -- more than 100 hours -- of archival NASA footage to NASA May 6 at a Capitol Hill ceremony and screening. Discovery digitized the footage for a new HD special, When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions, which chronicles the birth of the space program and the people who had the right collective stuff to get us there. Discovery also cataloged and restored what it described as "fragile" early audio recordings "nearly lost to degradation." The six-hour series premieres on Discovery Channel Sunday, June 8, from 9 p.m.-11 p.m. and continues for the next two Sundays at the same time. Also on hand will be Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), whose state played such an integral part in the space race. There was no word on whether they were also asking any legislators from Texas to be in attendance. May 2, 2008

Fuel tank work prompts NASA to delay Hubble mission. NASA needs extra time to build the shuttle fuel tanks needed for a mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. As a result, NASA has delayed the mission, originally scheduled for August, until the fall. May 2, 2008

NASA's in-house watchdog said the board that will oversee construction of a spacecraft to replace the space shuttle includes employees of contractors that will work on the new spacecraft. The inspector general recommended suspending six of the board members for what it calls a conflict of interest. May 1, 2008

The European Union launched the second and final test satellite for its $5.3-billion (2.7 billion pound) rival to the U.S. Global Positioning System on Sunday, brushing off industry doubts over its viability. The Galileo project, Europe's biggest single space program, has been plagued by delays and squabbling over funding that ended only when the 27-nation EU agreed to funnel public funds into it. The experimental satellite, Giove-B, was put into orbit by a Soyuz rocket in Kazakhstan and is due to test technologies for Galileo such as a high-precision atomic clock and the triple-channel transmission of navigation signals, the executive European Commission said in a statement. "(The project) will be operational in 2013 and already we think this will be profitable," EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot told Reuters after monitoring the launch from the Fucino control centre in the hills of central Italy. "We're already working on putting its products and services on the market in 2013, so we really believe that starting at the operational phase of Galileo, this is a system that can be profitable." Apr 28, 2008

NASA

NASA is adding two new rockets from a start-up aerospace company to an inventory of qualified launch vehicles the agency can select for future space science missions. The Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets are being developed by Space Exploration Technologies of Hawthorne, Calif. The company, known as SpaceX for short, aims to begin launching from Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station next year. "It's another horse to ride in our stable of potential launch services providers," said Kennedy Space Center spokesman George Diller. "This makes them eligible to compete with other qualified launch services providers to bid on, and possibly win, launch services with us." NASA buys commercial launch services for space science payloads such as a gamma ray observatory to be launched this summer aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket. The ULA Delta 4 and Atlas 5 rockets as well as the Orbital Sciences Corp. Pegasus and Taurus rockets also are qualified for missions. "It means we have more options to get a competitive price on launching a particular mission because we'll have more vehicles to pick from," Diller said. Diller said a newly inked contract with SpaceX will enable the company to bid on missions the agency intends to launch prior to the end of 2012. Contracts for four flights still are to be awarded by NASA before June 30, 2010. Elon Musk, chief executive officer of SpaceX, said in a statement that the nod from NASA "is a significant endorsement" that "opens the doors for the wide variety of NASA spacecraft to fly aboard our launch vehicles." Apr 30, 2008

NASA

Texas delegation pushes for larger NASA budget Twelve House members from Texas, along with 18 others from other states, are leading an effort to boost NASA's budget, a move they say will close the gap between the retirement of the space shuttle and the launch of the next generation of spacecraft. The budget is now set at $17.3 billion, and the lawmakers are urging their colleagues to boost it by $2 billion. Apr 30, 2008

NASA

The 17-nation European Space Agency is scheduled to begin a year-long astronaut selection process May 19 and already is being asked to confront a nightmare scenario: that a British citizen emerges among the best candidates. Now Britain's Royal Aeronautical Society has written the equivalent of a screenplay for turning ESA's bad dream into a full-length horror film. In a paper to be published May 1 in its Aerospace Magazine, the RAS Space Group Committee says a British astronaut trained by ESA could get an early trip to the moon as part of NASA's Constellation program following a bilateral cooperation accord on a robotic lunar mission between NASA and Britain. According to the RAS, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin floated this idea in 2007 as a carrot to encourage Britain to invest in lunar robotic technologies alongside NASA, after which the U.S. agency could offer a British national a place on a manned NASA lunar mission. Apr 30, 2008