International/Military/ Commercial Space news

SpaceX has completed the third milestone of its commercial crew integrated capability (CCiCap) contract, finishing the integrated system requirements review (SRR) for a crewed launch system.

The SRR, which was completed at a meeting at SpaceX's Hawthorne, California headquarters on 29 October, signify that NASA is satisfied that the Dragon capsule, Falcon 9 launch vehicle and other components of SpaceX's proposal can meet the CCiCap requirements, and that questions raised at the project kickoff meeting in August have been answered or mooted.

"These initial milestones are just the beginning of a very exciting endeavour with SpaceX." says Ed Mango, NASA's commercial crew programme manager. "We expect to see significant progress from our three CCiCap partners in a fairly short amount of time."

Successfully completing the milestone earns $50 million for SpaceX, the largest in the CCiCap programme to date.

An uncrewed version of the Dragon capsule landed in the Pacific Ocean on 28 October, successfully completing the first commercial cargo resupply flight to the International Space Station.

SpaceX has 14 milestones under the CCiCap programme, worth a total of $440 million upon completion, excluding additional optional milestones.

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk: Europe's rocket 'has no chance'

By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
The Californian SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk has warned Europe it must replace its Ariane 5 rocket if it wants to keep up with his company.
The low prices the US entrepreneur is quoting for his new Falcon 9 vehicle mean it is winning contracts that in the past would have gone to Ariane.
Mr Musk said that the cost of producing the current European rocket would kill it as a commercial entity.
"Ariane 5 has no chance," he told BBC News.
"I don't say that with a sense of bravado but there's really no way for that vehicle to compete with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. If I were in the position of Ariane, I would really push for an Ariane 6."
Ariane's future will be a key topic this week for European Space Agency (Esa) member states.
They are meeting in Naples to determine the scope and funding of the organisation's projects in the next few years, and the status of their big rocket will be central to those discussions.
Although its great reliability has helped Ariane achieve a level of dominance in the global market for the launch of large telecommunications satellites, the rocket still requires subsidy from Esa nations. Support payments totalling 217m euros have been agreed for the years 2011 and 2012.
SpaceX's Falcon is a new entrant to the launcher market. It has so far made only four flights, but it has a backlog already of more than 40 contracted launches. Its quoted price under $60m per flight is proving highly attractive to satellite operators who have to pay substantially more to get on an Ariane.
"Not only can we sustain the prices, but the next version of Falcon 9 is actually able to go to a lower price," warned Mr Musk.
"So if Ariane can't compete with the current Falcon 9, it sure as hell can't compete with the next one."
The SpaceX CEO and chief designer was speaking at the Royal Aeronautical Society where he was being awarded a gold medal for his work to advance the commercialisation of space.
Esa member states recognise that aggressive competition from the likes of SpaceX demands Europe reduce the cost of the Ariane product, but there is deadlock over how that should be achieved.
France, which has traditionally led the launcher effort in Europe, wants development on a next-generation Ariane - often dubbed Ariane 6 - to start immediately. This would incorporate cheaper components and fabrication methods.
But Germany, the other major player within Esa, wants the current vehicle upgraded first before moving to a completely fresh design.
The upgrade - known as Ariane 5ME (Mid-Life Evolution) - would introduce a more powerful upper-stage engine. This would also be re-ignitable.
The changes would enable Ariane 5 to better optimise its payload capacity for heavier, more lucrative customers; and also to offer a broader range of orbits to those clients.
Germany argues too that moving first to Ariane 5ME would reduce the cost of implementing the eventual Ariane 6.
"If we are smart enough we can use commonalities between Ariane 5ME and Ariane 6 to reduce the amount of money we need [to develop] Ariane 6," explained Prof Jan Woerner, the chairman of the German space agency (DLR).
"For instance, the best one would be to have a common upper-stage on both vehicles. It's a synergistic approach and that makes it cheaper. It's also cheaper because you are reducing the exploitation costs earlier," he told BBC News.
Commentators expect there to be a consolidation in the launcher market soon.
Orders may have been buoyant recently - a consequence of the fact that many satellite owners are in the process of upgrading their fleets - but most observers forecast leaner times ahead.
There are likely to be too many rockets chasing the available launch contracts later this decade.
Sceptics of the SpaceX model have questioned whether the Californian company can maintain its prices long term, or indeed the quality and reliability of its rockets when the launch rate has to ramp up to meet the demands of its backlog. Eyebrows were raised when the most recent Falcon 9 flight experienced a failure in one of the nine Merlin engines that powers the rocket's first stage, and SpaceX will soon have to produce large numbers of these engines to fulfil its launch cadence.
But Mr Musk believes increased production can only be a plus.
"As you increase the volume of production and you have more test firings and more flights, you're able to increase the statistical reliability of the engines because you see all the issues; you see all the corner cases and odd things here and there where you have so many engines being produced and flown," he said.
"[It will get to be] like the great Merlin that powered the Spitfire, which was an awesome engine, and made in high quantities and did an amazing job. They had enormous amounts of flight time on that engine and that's actually how you increase reliability."

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Launch of U.S. Air Force's Secretive Space Plane Delayed Until Dec. 11
By Jason Rhian

Photo Credit: Alan Walters / awaltersphoto.com
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla – United Launch Alliance (ULA) has stated that it is working with the Eastern Range to launch one of the U.S. Air Force’s Orbital Test Vehicles (OTV) no-earlier-than Dec. 11. This marks the fourth delay of the unmanned space plane after an issue arose with the upper stage of a Delta IV launch vehicle.

During the Oct. 4, 2012 launch of a Delta IV Medium rocket with its Global Positioning System (GPS) IIF-3 satellite payload, the upper stage’s RL-10 engine experienced a lower-than-normal engine chamber pressure. This anomaly apparently was deemed to be fairly serious and given that the Atlas V and Delta IV both use a similar version of the RL-10, ULA has opted to review flight data.

“We are working toward a planning date for the launch of OTV of Dec. 11, pending approval from the range,” said ULA’s Jessica Rye.

The Eastern Range is managed by the U.S. Air Force’s 45th Space Wing. This will mark the third flight of one of the U.S. Air Force’s unmanned space shuttles and the first time that one of the space planes has been reused (the orbiter used on the OTV-1 flight will be reused on this upcoming mission).

The RL-10 is a liquid-fueled rocket engine that is manufactured by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. The engine burns cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The engine’s development started in the 1950s. The latest version of this engine is what is employed in both the Atlas V and Delta IV families of rockets.

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European Space Agency defines Ariane and space station plans

By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News, Naples

The Ariane 5 will get a more powerful upper-stage engine to increase its satellite carrying capacity
Continue reading the main story
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Meeting to define Europe in space
European Space Agency (Esa) member states have resolved key issues at their ministerial council and agreed a 10.1bn-euro programme of activities.

The big decisions included a go-ahead for an upgrade on Europe's Ariane 5 rocket in parallel with design work on a replacement for the early 2020s.

Esa nations also approved the project to provide the propulsion unit for Nasa's new manned capsule, Orion.

In the surprise of the meeting, even the UK put money into this project.

It has long stayed out of the agency's human spaceflight activities, but agreed to a one-off, 20m-euro contribution because of the technology development it could enable in a number of British companies.

"We're confident our interests will be reflected," UK science minister David Willetts said.

Most of the meeting's agenda had been worked out in advance. Great uncertainty however had remained over how much the 20 nations could commit to space in the midst of the Eurocrisis.

With that context in mind, Esa director-general Jean Jacques Dordain expressed great satisfaction at the outcome.

"Member states recognise that space is not an expense; it's an investment," he said.

The future of Ariane 5 and how to maintain its competitiveness in the face of growing international competition was the most problematic topic going into the Ministerial Council.

Germany had wanted to upgrade the rocket with a more powerful upper-stage engine to make it more versatile and therefore more attractive to potential customers; the French had wanted to go straight to a next generation launcher that benefits from substantially reduced production costs.

In that argument, Germany won. Ariane 5ME (Mid-Life Evolution) will be developed and will aim to fly in 2017. However, the upper-stage Vinci engine will also be used on the successor (now officially called Ariane 6), and the meeting appeased French concerns by agreeing to a definition study now and another gathering in 2014 to decide how to implement the future vehicle.

The hope is it can be put on the launch pad by about 2021.

Settling the launcher issue enabled a cascade of other agreements.

On the International Space Station (ISS), ministers not only had to find money to cover general European operating costs, they also had to approve their non-cash contribution to the orbiting platform.

There is a gap in this obligation in the period 2017-2020 and the US space agency (Nasa) had asked Esa to fulfil it by making a propulsion unit that could drive the American's new manned capsule, Orion, through space.

European member states indicated they would do this - but there was a surprise: The UK said it would help with the cost, which is expected to be 450m euros.

Even though it was an original signatory on the treaty that brought the ISS into being, Britain has steadfastly refused down the years to pick up any of the costs of constructing the platform or even pay for the UK national, Tim Peake, who was recently selected as an astronaut.

But Mr Willetts indicated his nation would make a "one-off, 20m-euro" contribution to the propulsion module project. He said there were telecommunications and propulsion companies in Britain that would benefit from the involvement.

Mr Dordain's reaction: "The UK is on the space station. It's a historic moment." It is notable also because the propulsion module will represent the first time Europe has been involved in the development of a crew transport vehicle.

After the two-day event, Germany went away as the largest Esa contributor (2.6bn euros) followed by France (2.3bn). The pair are the traditional power houses in European space. But the meeting saw the UK climb (1.2bn) above Italy (1.1bn). The monies agreed in Naples will be spent over different periods but, broadly speaking, the next three to five years.

Esa's science budget - the part that makes space telescopes to study the cosmos, and the like - received a "flat cash" settlement of 2.5bn euros. In other words, the 2013 budget will be repeated in the following four years with no adjustment for inflation.

Science is the agency's mandatory programme. Everyone must contribute a sum that reflects the relative size of their economy.

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Germany Wins Battle over Ariane, ESA Space Station Role
Nov. 21, 2012

French Research Minister Genevieve Fioraso said France had accepted Germany's desire to build the Ariane 5 Midlife Evolution rocket at ESA's 2012 quadrennial ministerial-level in Naples, Italy. Credit: French Socialist Party photo
NAPLES, Italy — The French government appears to have buckled to German demands on key European space programs on Nov. 21, accepting that an enhanced Ariane 5 rocket will be developed to completion for a first flight in 2017 and that Europe contribute to NASA’s Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle as part of its space station program.

In an informal briefing with reporters here as a two-day meeting of European Space Agency (ESA) governments ended, French Research Minister Genevieve Fioraso said France had accepted that the Ariane 5 Midlife Evolution rocket, which Germany had supported and France had questioned, be developed and flown.

Fioraso said France had agreed to contribute 20 percent to Europe’s development of a propulsion module for NASA’s Orion vehicle — a development that France had criticized as having little political or technological use for Europe.

France also agreed to maintain its 27 percent share of Europe’s overall contributions to the international space station. The agreement on the space station budget, and the contribution to NASA’s Orion, will permit ESA to maintain its role in the station until 2020.

Fioraso said the ministerial conference, and notably Germany, accepted the need to develop a less-expensive successor to Ariane 5, and that the Ariane 6 vehicle’s design work should start immediately.

This vehicle, whose costs have been estimated at around 4 billion euros ($5.2 billion), is intended as a design-to-cost, less-powerful rocket when compared to the current Ariane 5 ECA, and one that would replace both the Ariane 5 and Europe’s use of the Russian medium-class Soyuz rocket around 2021.

Fiorosa said she was proud that Europe and NASA will be working together on the future Orion crew exploration vehicle.

The French decision to drop from its overall 27 percent share of Europe’s space station program to just 20 percent for the Orion work is one reason why ESA was seeking other governments’ support for the program.

ESA struck pay dirt from a surprising source, when British Science Minister David Willetts on Nov. 21 announced that Britain, which has steered clear of investment in the space station up to now, agreed to spend 20 million euros on the Orion work.

Briefing reporters here, Willetts said the British contribution would be used to develop Orion propulsion module telecommunications elements, a British specialty. He mentioned the British subsidiaries of Moog of the United States and Com Dev of Canada as likely beneficiaries of the British investment.

Europe has been building Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) cargo carriers to acquit itself of what otherwise would be a debt to NASA, as the space station’s general contractor, for station utilities charges.

But ESA decided to stop ATV construction after the fifth vehicle, leaving about three years of station-utilities charges unpaid starting in 2018. NASA and ESA had agreed that these charges, totaling about 450 million euros, could be paid through European contributions to Orion’s propulsion module.

France had said Orion leaves Europe as a junior partner to NASA and does not offer a showcase program that European citizens could appreciate. But France was at pains to come up with an alternative that was affordable in Europe and acceptable to NASA.

France held out until early Nov. 21, government officials said, hoping to bend Germany to France’s will with respect to Ariane 5 ME and Ariane 6.

After what French and German government officials said was a near-sleepless night, the end result is that Ariane 6 will be studied until 2014 and then, perhaps, proceed to development – depending on the financial resources of France and other governments.

But work on the Ariane 5 ME rocket, with a restartable upper-stage engine that French officials say will also serve Ariane 6, will continue in view to a demonstration flight in 2017. Fioraso said a maximum amount of synergy will be found between Ariane 5 ME and Ariane 6.

Ariane 5 ME will give the current Ariane 5 ECA a 20 percent increase in payload-carrying power, a fact that France had argued does not solve Ariane 5’s current operating-cost problem, nor its competitiveness handicap relative in the changing global commercial launch market.

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The Unannounced Commercial “Game-Changer”:

The official NASA plan does not include a return to the surface of the Moon, distancing itself from the cancelled Constellation Program (CxP) approach of Moon, Mars and Beyond, first cited in the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE).

NASA managers have since created an option for a return, listed as a Lunar Surface Sortie (LSS) mission via the Exploration Systems Development Division (ESD) Concept Of Operations (Con Ops) document (L2), allowing it to become a Design Reference Mission (DRM) alternative, potentially at the expense of a NEA mission in the early to mid 2020s.

While this option remains on the cards, source information acquired by L2 this week revealed plans for a “game-changing” announcement as early as December that a new commercial space company intends to send commercial astronauts to the moon by 2020.

According to the information, the effort is led by a group of high profile individuals from the aerospace industry and backed by some big money and foreign investors. The company intends to use “existing or soon to be existing launch vehicles, spacecraft, upper stages, and technologies” to start their commercial manned lunar campaign.

The details point to the specific use of US vehicles, with a basic architecture to utilize multiple launches to assemble spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The details make direct reference to the potential use of propellant depots and fuel transfer technology.

Additional notes include a plan to park elements in lunar orbit, staging a small lunar lander that would transport two commercial astronauts to the surface for short stays.

The architecture would then grow into the company’s long-term ambitions to establish a man-tended outpost using inflatable modules. It is also understood that the company has already begun the design process for the Lunar Lander.

More details ahead of the announcement are expected in the coming days and weeks. L2 Members: Refer to the *rolling updates on this effort, here*

(Images: L2, NASA and ULA)

(NSF and L2 are providing full exploration roadmap level coverage, available no where else on the internet, from Orion and SLS to ISS and COTS/CRS/CCDEV, to European and Russian vehicles.)

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Russian officials raise doubts about Brightman’s flight, and space tourism

Last month, with considerable fanfare, Space Adventures and the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced at a press conference in Moscow that singer Sarah Brightman would be the next commercial spaceflight participant (aka space tourist) to visit the International Space Station (ISS). The announcement contained few details about her trip, including when she would go, although speculation centered around 2015, when NASA and Roscosmos will have ISS crewmembers on a first-of-its-kind year-long stay on the ISS, freeing up seats on Soyuz flights to and from the ISS. Brightman and Space Adventures have said little about the future flight since the press conference.

This week, Russian space industry officials have raised questions about how serious Brightman is about flying in space. Interfax reported earlier this week that unnamed officials have speculated Brightman’s announcement last month was designed to generate publicity for her upcoming album and world tour, which did come up during the press conference. “It is very probable that the singer said she may fly to the ISS to fuel interest in her year-long world tour, which she will begin next year,” the unnamed source told Interfax.

Sergei Krikalev, the former cosmonaut who now heads Russia’s cosmonaut training center, said those claims were news to him, but added he wasn’t surprised. “Many years ago there was an option to send one singer into space. He had undergone a medical selection and there were plans to sign a contract with him,” he said, referring to Lance Bass, who ten years ago had plans to fly as a space tourist but failed to line up sponsorship deals to pay for the flight.

The head of Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, spoke up on Friday in response to those reports, saying that Brightman was still planning to fly, but that Roscosmos hasn’t made a formal decision yet. “I have met her, she is all set to fly, but Roscosmos has not yet decided on it,” he told RIA Novosti, adding that Roscosmos would make a decision in the first half of 2013. (Interfax said the decision wouldn’t come until the second half of 2013.)

The claims by Russian officials that Brightman wouldn’t fly may be evidence of more general disdain about flying space tourists on Soyuz flights. “Space tourism is, unfortunately, a major problem for professionals like us,” said Pavel Vinogradov, another former cosmonaut who is now deputy head of the Energia Flight Space Center. “Tourism undermines the very foundation of manned space flights, because we have to replace young cosmonauts with tourists.”

Popovkin made a similar comment to Interfax when asked why Roscosmos hasn’t made a decision yet about Brightman: “We need to provide young cosmonauts with flight practice.” The decision may hinge on whether the additional revenue such a flight would provide Roscosmos—on the order of $50 million—overcomes their reticence of flying tourists versus professional cosmonauts.

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ESA Rejects Lunar Lander For Lack Of Support
By Amy Svitak
Source: Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

November 21, 2012
Naples – Germany is expected to scrap plans to build a robotic Moon lander that would incorporate technologies and hardware developed for Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV).

Led by prime contractor Astrium Space Transportation, the $650 million mission was to be among 85 proposals the European Space Agency (ESA) is reviewing as its 20 member states meet at the ministerial level this week to decide a $13 billion multiyear spending plan.

Astrium recently completed a preliminary system requirements review of the six-month mission under a $16 million ESA study contracted in 2010, 71% of which was funded by Germany with participation from Spain, Canada, Belgium, Portugal and the Czech Republic. The project’s next phase called for ESA member states to contribute an additional $130 million over two years for continued design and development, but Germany was unable to scrape together commitments amounting to 30% of that total, a threshold necessary for consideration at the ministerial meeting.

“Our DG [ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain] felt it was not worth admitting to ministers a program which is not ready to be developed,” said ESA spokesman Franco Bonacina during a press conference here.

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Fearing it’s falling behind, Boeing may ramp up commercial crew investment
In the latest round of awards in NASA’s commercial crew program, Boeing won the largest amount of money, $460 million, versus SpaceX’s $440 million and Sierra Nevada’s $212 million. NASA officials noted at the time that the dollar values in the awards were not intended to be a ranking of the companies, but it was clear that Boeing and SpaceX were the frontrunners. However, it’s Boeing that may be worried it’s falling behind.

In Sunday’s Florida Today, former NASA astronaut Chris Ferguson, who is now the head of crew and mission operations for Boeing’s commercial crew effort, said the company is thinking about increasing its own investment to keep up with SpaceX. Boeing’s CST-100 is currently scheduled to make its first crewed test flight in late 2016, while SpaceX is planning a mid-2015 crewed test flight of its Dragon spacecraft. “We’re looking heavily into getting some additional Boeing investment to move that (late 2016) date to the left significantly, which we think we need to do to keep pace with SpaceX,” Ferguson told Florida Today.

Any additional investment would address one key weakness in Boeing’s proposal for the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) award it won. The selection statement from NASA noted that Boeing’s “proposed corporate investment during the CCiCap period does not provide significant industry financial investment and there is increased risk of having insufficient funding in the base period.” The amount of Boeing’s proposed investment was redacted in the Space Act Agreement document released by NASA.

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Virgin and XCOR progress towards powered test flights
The two companies in the lead to fly crewed suborbital spacecraft announced milestones earlier this week towards the beginning of powered flight tests of their vehicles. On Friday, Virgin Galactic released images of an oxidizer tank being installed in SpaceShipTwo. The tank is a major element of the spacecraft’s hybrid propulsion system, which uses nitrous oxide as a liquid oxidizer along with a solid fuel.

The tank installation also inspired a blog post on the corporate Virgin website by Sir Richard Branson. In it, he drops a hint that the current hybrid propulsion system, which Virgin has billed as being environmentally friendly, might be replaced by something even more benign. “We’re now looking at some exciting future plans which could radically lower each flight’s remaining environmental footprint. More on that in due course!”

As for when that first powered test flight might take place, Virgin Galactic has, as it has done so for years, emphasized they’re focused on safety rather than making schedule. Even Branson didn’t offer much in his post. “[W]e’re leaving no stone unturned as we approach the first supersonic, rocket-powered flights of SpaceShipTwo,” he writes. “Our amazing engineers and pilots are preparing right now for the first powered spaceship flight, which should be followed with a fairly quick build up to Virgin’s first proper step across the final frontier!”

In a talk last month at the AIAA Space 2012 conference in Pasadena, California, Steve Isakowitz, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Virgin Galactic, said the company had set an “aggressive” goal of an initial powered flight by the end of the year. That, however, he added that schedule would be paced on how things were coming together.

As Virgin gets SpaceShipTwo ready at one area of Mojave Air and Space Port in California, in another area XCOR Aerospace is getting making progress on its Lynx Mark 1 prototype spaceplane. At the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) in Las Cruces, New Mexico, on Thursday, XCOR COO Andrew Nelson announced that the company had completed another major test just Wednesday: firing the liquid oxygen and kerosene engines while mounted in a “flight-weight fuselage” with “real” pumps. The engines were “spewing out fire at our test site in Mojave,” he said. “It was an exciting day for XCOR.” Video of the engine test, he said, should be released in the next week.

XCOR had previously indicated they planned to start low-level (“air under the gear”) flight tests, part of a larger series of incremental tests of the Lynx, by late this year. Those flights appear to have slipped into early next year, based on Nelson’s comments at ISPCS. “We are progressing quickly on building and fielding the Lynx and flying it in the new year,” he said.

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By: ZACH ROSENBERG WASHINGTON DC 06:38 27 Nov 2012 Source:

Space launch company Stratolaunch has parted ways with manufacturer SpaceX, dissolving a partnership dating from the project's inception.

"Stratolaunch and SpaceX have amicably agreed to end our contractual relationship because the current launch vehicle design has departed significantly from the Falcon derivative vehicle envisioned by SpaceX and does not fit well with their long-term strategic business model," says Gary Wentz, Stratolaunch CEO, in a 27 November email.

"Moving forward, Stratolaunch has engaged Orbital Sciences Corporation to evaluate and develop alternative solutions with the objective of arriving at a design decision in the early spring timeframe. The other segment contractors will continue to proceed forward in accordance with existing plans since their interfaces have been defined," he adds.

Despite the close relations, Stratolaunch's updated designs required "significant structural mods to incorporate a fin/chine configuration," according to Wentz. Initial concepts did not include a chine, which is a structural extension of the wing root along the sides of the vehicle, useful for providing lift at high speeds.


Stratolaunch

According to a source familiar with the matter, the design changes necessary would have forced SpaceX to make substantial modifications of their manufacturing process, which would effectively negate crucial commonalities with the company's signature Falcon 9 launch vehicle.

Orbital Sciences is tasked with "evaluating multiple concepts that utilize both new and existing components," says Wentz. Orbital confirmed the study contract but deferred further questions to Stratolaunch. Orbital Sciences is among the most experienced air-launch companies in the world, having built and launched the much smaller Pegasus launch vehicle from a modified Lockheed L-1011.

Stratolaunch is planning to build the largest aircraft ever built, a twin-fuselage aircraft capable of launching a large rocket. The SpaceX-designed rocket, a winged, five-engine modification of the Falcon 9, was designed to lift 6,200kg (13,500) into low Earth orbit. Should the project reach fruition, it will be by far the largest air-launched spacecraft ever built.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to questions.

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Russia’s Space Industry to Merge into Holdings

MOSCOW, November 26 (RIA Novosti) – A structural reform of Russia’s space industry will see its numerous enterprises united into five or six large holdings, Federal Space Agency chief Vladimir Popovkin said on Monday.
The reform should make the troubled industry more manageable, Popovkin said after a governmental meeting in Moscow.
The draft list of industries to get separate holdings includes orbital spacecraft development, in-orbit operation, guidance systems, scientific research, testing and strategic rocketry, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said, also on Monday.
The centralization may be taken a step further, with the Federal Space Agency, Russia’s analogue of NASA, transformed into a state corporation that would replace the prospective holdings, Popovkin said.
The government considered creating a single “space corporation” for three years before deeming the idea ineffective, said Rogozin, who oversees defense and space industries.
But Popovkin said the idea may be revitalized depending on the performance of the upcoming holdings. Rogozin is to report to the government on the results of the reform after the first quarter of 2013, Popovkin said.
The government also ordered a 50-percent salary increase for all employees in the space industry, Popovkin said. Salaries currently average 37,500 rubles ($1,200) a month, he said.
Russia’s space industry has seen a steady rate of botched launches in recent years, the most recent being the loss of two telecom satellites in August, blamed on a malfunction of the launch vehicle, the Proton M rocket.
Another Proton M, set to bring into orbit the Mexican telecom satellite Satmex-8 on Dec. 27, was damaged during transportation to Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan last week, though a replacement rocket will make it possible to send the Satmex-8 into space on schedule, the rocket’s manufacturer, state-owned Khrunichev company, said on its website on Monday.
“The reform of Russia’s space industry is long overdue because the industry is barely manageable now,” Igor Marinin, editor-in-chief of the respected industry publication Novosti Kosmonavtiki, told RIA Novosti.
During the 1990s, when the industry all but lost funding, it grew fractured, with its 130-plus enterprises developing vastly different ownership structures and with many becoming de-facto independent of the Federal Space Agency, Marinin said.
However, grouping the enterprises into holdings will be a trying task because many of the companies service several sub-industries at the same time, he said.
Marinin was skeptical about a prospective state-owned space corporation, noting that “then there would be no competition in the industry at all.”

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Loyal ILS Customer Inks Multi-launch Deal with Arianespace
Nov. 26, 2012
PARIS — U.S. satellite video and data broadcaster EchoStar Corp. on Nov. 26 announced it has signed a multiyear agreement with Europe’s Arianespace consortium for the launch of an undetermined number of satellites aboard heavy-lift Ariane 5 rockets.

Englewood, Colo.-based EchoStar in recent years has been a regular customer of International Launch Services (ILS) of Reston, Va., which markets Russia’s Proton vehicle. EchoStar has been one of the few large satellite fleet operators that have been absent from Arianespace’s manifest.

EchoStar’s most recent launch, of its EchoStar 16 satellite on Nov. 21, was aboard an ILS Proton from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The launch was a success.

EchoStar operates its own satellites and operates spacecraft for its sister company, direct-broadcast television provider Dish Network, also of Englewood. EchoStar also leases capacity aboard satellites operated by SES of Luxembourg and Telesat of Canada.

Most EchoStar satellites are large, high-power spacecraft. The company’s purchase in 2011 of Hughes Communications of Germantown, Md., made it the largest satellite-broadband provider in the United States.

With that purchase came a pre-existing contract between Hughes and Evry, France-based Arianespace for the launch of the large EchoStar 17 Ka-band broadband satellite. EchoStar 17 was launched aboard an Ariane 5 in July.

Arianespace’s Ariane 5 generally lifts two telecommunications satellites at a time into geostationary transfer orbit. Its competitors, ILS and Sea Launch AG of Bern, Switzerland, launch satellites singly into the same orbit.

EchoStar has not said it expects to expand its satellite fleet, but Anders Johnson, president of EchoStar Satellite Services, said in a Nov. 26 statement announcing the Arianespace multilaunch contract that EchoStar will look to Ariane 5 “to deliver on-time success in the execution of our near-term expansion programs.”

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Cracks Discovered in First Space-bound Orion Capsule
Nov. 21, 2012

The orbital flight-model Orion capsule pictured here will have to be repaired before its flight on a Delta 4 rocket in 2014. A crack formed in its aft bulkhead during recent pressure testing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Lockheed Martin photo
WASHINGTON — NASA’s first orbital flight-model Orion crew capsule will have to be repaired before its planned 2014 debut after its aft bulkhead cracked during recent pressure testing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a NASA spokeswoman said Nov. 19.

The cracks were discovered during a proof pressure test the week of Nov. 5. Proof testing, in which a pressure vessel is subject to stresses greater than those it is expected to encounter during routine use, is one of the many preflight tests NASA is performing on Orion to certify the craft is safe for astronauts, agency spokeswoman Rachel Kraft said.

“The cracks are in three adjacent, radial ribs of this integrally machined, aluminum bulkhead,” Kraft wrote in an email. “This hardware will be repaired and will not need to be remanufactured.”

It took Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver about a year to make the vehicle that was damaged. Kraft did not say how long it would take to repair the capsule, built as part of a program intended to take astronauts to destinations beyond low Earth orbit.

Cracking occurred when the pressure inside the Orion module reached about 149 kilopascals, or 21.6 pounds per square inch, Kraft said. To pass the proof test, the Orion pressure module has to withstand about 164 kilopascals, which is roughly 1.5 times the maximum stress the capsule is expected to encounter during missions, she said. Increasing the pressure inside the craft in an ambient environment of 1 atmosphere — air pressure at sea level — effectively simulates the conditions Orion would encounter in a vacuum.

William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, speculated that a beam affixed to the bulkhead’s cracked ribs by a pair of bolts “may have been a little stiffer than some of the models portrayed.”

To figure out what went wrong, “we’ll actually cut out these cracks [from the bulkhead] and then we’ll do a scan with an electron microscope,” Gerstenmaier told members of the NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee. The group, which makes policy recommendations for NASA managers, met here Nov. 15.

A team of Lockheed Martin engineers will perform the post-test investigation. NASA is evaluating what effect, if any, the incident will have on Orion’s scheduled late-2014 debut, designed to test essential systems on the vehicle including its heat shield and avionics, Kraft said.

During that flight, which is known as Exploration Flight Test-1, an uncrewed Orion will be launched to orbit and re-enter the atmosphere at about 32,000 kilometers per hour, or roughly 80 percent of the velocity the capsule would reach during a return from lunar orbit. Lockheed is running the flight test for NASA; the agency will pay the company for the flight data.

Lockheed Martin’s Orion prime contract, awarded in 2006, is worth $6.23 billion. NASA added $375 million to that award in December so that Lockheed Martin could buy a Delta 4 Heavy rocket for the Exploration Flight Test 1 launch.

Gerstenmaier said in a July hearing that the pacing item for this test flight is the Delta 4, built by United Launch Alliance, Lockheed Martin’s 50-50 joint venture with Boeing Defense, Space and Security of St. Louis. The rocket would not be available until September 2014, Gerstenmaier said at the time.

Delta 4 is not Orion’s primary carrier rocket. NASA is building the massive Space Launch System rocket at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., to loft Orion on missions beyond low Earth orbit.

The space shuttle-derived Space Launch System is slated to launch the Orion capsule on missions that will take it around the far side of the Moon in 2017 and 2021. Only the second of these flights will be crewed.

While NASA is internally studying other Orion missions, the agency has identified funding only through the 2021 flight.

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Texas Astronomers Measure Most Massive, Most Unusual Black Hole Using Hobby-Eberly Telescope
28 November 2012

Fort Davis, Texas — Astronomers have used the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory to measure the mass of what may be the most massive black hole yet — 17 billion Suns — in galaxy NGC 1277. The unusual black hole makes up 14 percent of its galaxy's mass, rather than the usual 0.1 percent. This galaxy and several more in the same study could change theories of how black holes and galaxies form and evolve. The work will appear in the journal Nature on Nov. 29.

NGC 1277 lies 220 million light-years away in the constellation Perseus. The galaxy is only ten percent the size and mass of our own Milky Way. Despite NGC 1277's diminutive size, the black hole at its heart is more than 11 times as wide as Neptune's orbit around the Sun.

"This is a really oddball galaxy," said team member Karl Gebhardt of The University of Texas at Austin. "It's almost all black hole. This could be the first object in a new class of galaxy-black hole systems." Furthermore, the most massive black holes have been seen in giant blobby galaxies called "ellipticals," but this one is seen in a relatively small lens-shaped galaxy (in astronomical jargon, a "lenticular galaxy").

The find comes out of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Massive Galaxy Survey (MGS). The study's endgame is to better understand how black holes and galaxies form and grow together, a process that isn't well understood.

"At the moment there are three completely different mechanisms that all claim to explain the link between black hole mass and host galaxies' properties. We do not understand yet which of these theories is best," said Nature lead author Remco van den Bosch, who began this work while holding the W.J. McDonald postdoctoral fellowship at The University of Texas at Austin. He is now at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.

The problem is lack of data. Astronomers know the mass of fewer than 100 black holes in galaxies. But measuring black hole masses is difficult and time-consuming. So the team developed the HET Massive Galaxy Survey to winnow down the number of galaxies that would be interesting to follow up on.

"When trying to understand anything, you always look at the extremes: the most massive and the least massive," Gebhardt said. "We chose a very large sample of the most massive galaxies in the nearby universe," to learn more about the relationship between black holes and their host galaxies.

Though still ongoing, the team has studied 700 of their 800 galaxies with HET. "This study is only possible with HET," Gebhardt said. "The telescope works best when the galaxies are spread all across the sky. This is exactly what HET was designed for."

In the current paper, the team zeroes in on the top six most massive galaxies. They found that one of those, NGC 1277, had already been photographed by Hubble Space Telescope. This provided measurements of the galaxy’s brightness at different distances from its center. When combined with HET data and various models run via supercomputer, the result was a mass for the black hole of 17 billion Suns (give or take 3 billion).

"The mass of this black hole is much higher than expected," Gebhardt said, "it leads us to think that very massive galaxies have a different physical process in how their black holes grow."

Founded in 1932, The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory hosts a multiple telescopes undertaking a variety of astronomical research under the darkest night skies of any professional observatory in the continental United States. McDonald is home to one of the world's largest telescopes, the 9.2-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope, a joint project of The University of Texas at Austin, Pennsylvania State University, Ludwig Maximilians Universität München, and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. An international leader in astronomy education and outreach, McDonald Observatory is also pioneering the next generation of astronomical research as a partner in the Giant Magellan Telescope.

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'Pac-Man' Moons: Cassini Finds a Video Gamers' Paradise at Saturn
ScienceDaily (Nov. 26, 2012) — You could call this "Pac-Man, the Sequel." Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have spotted a second feature shaped like the 1980s video game icon in the Saturn system, this time on the moon Tethys. (The first was found on Mimas in 2010). The pattern appears in thermal data obtained by Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer, with warmer areas making up the Pac-Man shape.

"Finding a second Pac-Man in the Saturn system tells us that the processes creating these Pac-Men are more widespread than previously thought," said Carly Howett, the lead author of a paper recently released online in the journal Icarus. "The Saturn system -- and even the Jupiter system -- could turn out to be a veritable arcade of these characters."
Scientists theorize that the Pac-Man thermal shape on the Saturnian moons occurs because of the way high-energy electrons bombard low latitudes on the side of the moon that faces forward as it orbits around Saturn. The bombardment turns that part of the fluffy surface into hard-packed ice. As a result, the altered surface does not heat as rapidly in the sunshine or cool down as quickly at night as the rest of the surface, similar to how a boardwalk at the beach feels cooler during the day but warmer at night than the nearby sand. Finding another Pac-Man on Tethys confirms that high-energy electrons can dramatically alter the surface of an icy moon. Also, because the altered region on Tethys, unlike on Mimas, is also bombarded by icy particles from Enceladus' plumes, it implies the surface alteration is occurring more quickly than its recoating by plume particles.
"Studies at infrared wavelengths give us a tremendous amount of information about the processes that shape planets and moons," said Mike Flasar, the spectrometer's principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "A result like this underscores just how powerful these observations are."
Scientists saw the new Pac-Man on Tethys in data obtained on Sept. 14, 2011, where daytime temperatures inside the mouth of Pac-Man were seen to be cooler than their surroundings by 29 degrees Fahrenheit (15 kelvins). The warmest temperature recorded was a chilly minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit (90 kelvins), which is actually slightly cooler than the warmest temperature at Mimas (about minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit, or 95 kelvins). At Tethys, unlike Mimas, the Pac-Man pattern can also be seen subtly in visible-light images of the surface, as a dark lens-shaped region. This brightness variation was first noticed by NASA's Voyager spacecraft in 1980.
"Finding a new Pac-Man demonstrates the diversity of processes at work in the Saturn system," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Future Cassini observations may reveal other new phenomena that will surprise us and help us better understand the evolution of moons in the Saturn system and beyond."

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Russia's Proton Rocket Suffers another Upper Stage Failure
Dec. 9, 2012
PARIS—The Breeze-M upper stage of Russia’s Proton heavy-lift rocket on Dec. 9 failed for the third time in 16 months, placing Gazprom Space Systems’ Yamal 402 telecommunications satellite into a too-low orbit, launch-service provider International Launch Services (ILS) and Russia’s Roscosmos space agency said.

The launch is all but certain to raise fresh issues over whether Proton Breeze-M manufacturing team has workmanship quality issues that were not addressed by the inquiries into the failures of August 2011 and August 2012.

The Dec. 9 failure poses serious problems for Mexican satellite operator Satmex, whose Satmex 8 satellite arrived at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where Proton is launched, on Nov. 29 to prepare for a Dec. 28 launch.

The December launch date now looks out of reach. Satmex badly needs Satmex 8, which is intended to replace the Satmex 5 satellite. Satmex 5 is expected to run out of fuel in May. If Satmex is unable to provide immediate replacement capacity for its Satmex 5 customers, they are likely to go elsewhere and compromise Satmex’s already fragile financial condition.

The 4,600-kilogram Yamal 402, like many satellites launched solo on the Proton rocket, was fueled to capacity and is likely to provide several years of commercial service despite now having to climb further than planned to reach its operating orbit. How many years of life will be available to it remained unknown in the hours after the launch failure.

Roscosmos said Yamal 402, a Spacebus 4000 satellite built by Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy and carrying 46 Ku-band transponders, or 66 when measured in 36-megahertz equivalents, appeared to be in good health in orbit.



Moscow-based Gazprom intended to place Yamal 402 into an orbital slot at 55 degrees east.

Reston, Va.-based ILS said a Russian government inquiry board would be established, along with an independent ILS board, to investigate what happened.

ILS and Roscosmos said initial indications are that the Breeze-M upper stage shut down four minutes early during the last of a planned four burns to carry Yamal 402 into geostationary transfer orbit. The fourth burn was scheduled to last nearly nine minutes.

The rocket was intended to place Yamal 402 into an orbit with an apogee of 35,696 kilometers and a perigee of 7,470 kilometers, with the orbit at a nine-degree inclination relative to the equator.

The Breeze-M failure released the satellite into a perigee of around 3,100 kilometers, with an inclination of 26 degrees, according to early indications.

The failure is the third for Breeze-M since August 2011. All of them have resulted in the destruction or in reduced operating lives for Russian government and Russian commercial telecommunications satellites despite the fact that ILS has launched several non-Russian commercial telecommunications spacecraft during the same period.

Industry officials remarked after the August 2012 failure – when two Russian satellites, one for commercial fleet operator Russia Satellite Communications Co. (RSCC), one a commercial telecommunications satellite for Indonesia’s Telkom – that Proton’s recent launch history is disastrous for Russian operators, but not so bad for non-Russian ILS commercial customers.

The August 2011 failure caused the loss of a large RSCC-owned satellite.

Since its August 2012 failure, ILS and the Proton Breeze-M rocket have launched two Western commercial satellites, for Intelsat of Luxembourg and Washington, and for EchoStar of Englewood, Colo. Both were successful.

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Leak cited in Delta 4 Anomaly; X-37B Is Cleared To Launch
Dec. 7, 2012

A fuel leak was behind a performance anomaly with a Delta 4 rocket (above) during its launch of an X-37B. Credit: ULA photo
WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance (ULA) said a fuel leak was behind a performance issue with a Delta 4 rocket's upper-stage during an Oct. 4 launch but that the hiccup should not affect similar hardware aboard the Atlas 5 rocket now being prepped to launch a U.S. Air Force space plane Dec. 11.

The launch of the X-37B space plane from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., had been scheduled for Oct. 25 but was delayed to allow ULA and the Air Force to investigate the earlier anomaly. The space plane’s mission is classified.

The fuel leak, in the interior of the thrust chamber of the Delta 4's Pratt & Whitney-built RL-10 engine, occurred during the successful launch of a GPS satellite from Florida. It started during the first engine start sequence of the launch, ULA said in a Dec. 7 press |release.

The Atlas 5 slated to launch the X-37B space plane, or Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), uses a different variant of the RL-10 engine.

ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye said company inspectors at the Cape performed extra work ahead of a Dec. 7 launch readiness review to make sure the Atlas 5 was not at risk of having the same issue.

“What we’re doing is looking at [the Atlas 5’s] upper engine, doing borescope inspections and making sure at this point about that engine, that one in particular,” Rye said. “Typically, we would not do that type of inspection, but it's something that we can do if we want to get a better look at the engine.”

ULA said its investigation into the Oct. 4 anomaly continues. However, “all credible crossover implications from the Delta anomaly for the OTV-3 Atlas vehicle and engine system have been thoroughly addressed and mitigated, culminating in the flight clearance decision for the OTV-3 launch,” the company said.

The Boeing-built X-37B scheduled to launch Dec. 11 has flown in space once before, logging 225 days in orbit following its April 22, 2010, launch. Another X-37B returned to Earth in June after 469 days in space.

The upcoming X-37B launch would be the Air Force's third OTV mission. OTV-3 was supposed to launch Oct. 25 but got caught up in delays as ULA and the Air Force probed the Oct. 4 Delta 4 launch anomaly.

The next spacecraft slated to fly on a Delta 4 is the Wideband Global Satcom 5, a military communications satellite that will launch from Cape Canaveral. Due to the ongoing ULA and Air Force investigations, there is no launch date for that mission, which had

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U.S. Government-leased Satellite Capacity Going Unused
Nov. 29, 2012

Cindy Moran, director of network services at the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency, mentioned the Defense Department’s Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) program as an example of a lack of synchronicity between satellite and ground network deployment. A MUOS satellite is shown. Credit: U.S. Air Force artist's concept
LONDON — Much of the more than $1 billion in commercial satellite capacity purchased by the U.S. government each year is unused because the agency charged with allocating the bandwidth has no idea when it is sitting idle, an official with that agency said Nov. 28.

While this is partly due to the necessarily lumpy nature of military usage of satellite telecom services, a lot of it is nothing more than poor management of an expensive resource, the official said.

“Our day-to-day average is 3 to 5 percent,” said Cindy Moran, director of network services at the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). “It’s like buying a smartphone, with a contract, and then never turning it on.”

Addressing the Global Milsatcom conference here organized by SMi Group, Moran said the situation should improve as DISA moves toward the use of Internet Protocol and other means of divvying up capacity based on actual use.

She speculated that the total amount of commercial satellite capacity purchased by the U.S. government — estimated at $1.2 billion per year — would not go down, but could be used to accommodate the military’s ever-increasing demand.

Moran agreed with estimates that on a megahertz basis, 80 percent of the satellite bandwidth used by the U.S. government is purchased from commercial satellite operators.

The U.S. government, and especially the U.S. Department of Defense, is the world’s largest customer for short-term leases of commercial satellite capacity. Moran said the different customers for the bandwidth operate in separate stovepipes — more like titanium tubes, she said — and are not necessarily coordinating with neighboring government users, making it difficult to determine who is using the purchased capacity and who is not.

In the current system, whether for Internet or satellite bandwidth, “I don’t get to reallocate across the spectrum if the customer that is ostensibly using it is not using it,” she said. “I am buying at the commercial tariff rate.”

One way DISA is modernizing its procedures for satellite capacity purchases is through a new procurement vehicle called the Future Commercial Satellite Communications Services Acquisition (FCSA).

Moran applauded FCSA for opening up the procurement system to new players, and said that while the possibility of contract award protests has increased, DISA is convinced that FCSA is allowing the agency quicker access to new technology and a more competitive supplier base.

Under the previous commercial satellite bandwidth procurement regime, DISA had three companies licensed to deal with it for the purchase of fixed satellite services. Under FCSA there are 21 companies.

For satellite-delivered subscription services, there are 23 providers under FCSA, compared with five previously.

The downside to this diversity of choice is that it now takes DISA much longer to negotiate the contracts and make satellite capacity available. Under the previous contracting regime, the average time between seeking the service and providing it was 27 days. Under FCSA, it is 76 days.

“We absolutely have to do better in this area,” Moran said.

Moran also sought to convince an audience composed of military officials and commercial contractors that the current budget crunch at the Department of Defense is not a one-year issue.

“My personal view is that we are not even close to hitting bottom,” she said. “It will likely get worse and worse over the next five to six years.”

Moran said DISA will be attempting to renegotiate “every single contract” to get a better rate. She said spending that is not part of a “program of record” at the Defense Department, even for efficiency-driven initiatives such as moving to new ways of managing bandwidth, will receive tough scrutiny.

DISA’s task of securing funds for the necessary bandwidth for U.S. forces is not made easier when the Defense Department’s larger programs encounter embarrassing development slips.

Having satellites in orbit and ready to operate well before the associated ground infrastructure is ready, or vice versa, “does not give us a whole lot of credibility when we go back” to Congress and ask for additional funding for satellite capacity, she said.

She mentioned the Defense Department’s Mobile User Objective System program as an example of a lack of synchronicity between satellite and ground network deployment.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The military's small, top-secret version of the space shuttle rocketed into orbit Tuesday for a repeat mystery mission, two years after making the first flight of its kind.

The Air Force launched the unmanned spacecraft Tuesday hidden on top of an Atlas V rocket.

It's the second flight for this original X-37B spaceplane. It circled the planet for seven months in 2010. A second X-37B spacecraft spent more than a year in orbit.

These high-tech mystery machines — 29 feet long — are about one-quarter the size of NASA's old space shuttles and can land automatically on a runway. The two previous touchdowns occurred in Southern California; this one might end on NASA's three-mile-long runway once reserved for the space agency's shuttles.

The military isn't saying much if anything about this new secret mission. In fact, launch commentary ended 17 minutes into the flight.

But one scientific observer, Harvard University's Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, speculates the spaceplane is carrying sensors designed for spying and likely is serving as a testbed for future satellites.

While acknowledging he does not know what the spaceplane is carrying, McDowell said on-board sensors could be capable of imaging or intercepting transmissions of electronic emissions from terrorist training sites in Afghanistan or other hot spots.

The beauty of a reusable spaceplane is that it can be launched on short notice based on need, McDowell said.

What's important about this flight is that it is the first reflight.

"That is pretty cool," McDowell said, "reusing your spacecraft after a runway landing. That's something that has only really been done with the shuttle."

The two previous secret flights were in 200-plus-mile-high orbits, circling at roughly 40-degree angles to the equator. That means the craft flew over the swatch between 40 degrees or so north latitude and 40 degrees or so south latitude.

That puts Russia's far north out of the spaceplane's observing realm, McDowell noted. "It might be studying Middle Eastern latitudes or it might just be being used for sensor tests over the United States," he said.

McDowell speculates that this newest flight will follow suit.

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KAMIKAZE PROBES TO SMASH INTO LUNAR MOUNTAIN
A pair of robotic space probes circling the moon to reveal what is inside will make suicidal plunges to the lunar surface next week, a planned -- albeit dramatic -- finale to a mission that is giving scientists new insights into how the solar system evolved.

The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, mission will come to an end at 5:28 p.m. EST Monday (Dec. 17) when the twin spacecraft crash into a mountain near the moon's north pole after nearly a year in lunar orbit.

The duo have been formation-flying to map the moon’s gravity, an innovative technique that has revealed a lunar crust that is thinner and far more deeply fractured than scientists expected and an extensive underground system of lava-filled cracks, the first direct evidence that the moon expanded after it was formed.

The information applies not just to the moon, but to the other solid bodies in the inner solar system, including Earth and Mars.

Seeing the extent of the damage from impacting comets and asteroids, for example, makes it easier to visualize how water on the surface of ancient Mars might have made it way inside the planet, where it might still exist today.

“There’s a lot of questions about where did the water that we think was on the surface of Mars go. Well, if a planetary crust is that fractured these fractures provide a pathway deep inside the planet. It’s very easy to envision now how a possible ocean on the surface could have found its way deep into the crust of the planet,” GRAIL lead scientist Maria Zuber, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told reporters on a conference call Thursday.


ANALYSIS: Probes May Find Remnants of Moon's Lost Sibling

The GRAIL spacecraft, nicknamed Ebb and Flow, completed their primary mapping mission in May, flying about 34 miles above the lunar surface. By precisely and continuously measuring the distance between the two probes, scientists were able to map the moon’s gravity, revealing its interior structure. The distance changed slightly as the leading spacecraft and then the following one sped up or slowed down as they flew over denser or less-dense regions of the moon in response to the gravitational tugging.

This summer, the pair’s orbit was lowered to about 14 miles above the surface for more detailed mapping. Now, about out of maneuvering fuel, the spacecraft are down to about 7 miles while scientists make a last map of the youngest crater on the moon.

“We have achieved everything that we could have possibly hoped for,” Zuber said. “In my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined that this mission would have gone any better than it has.”


The crash site was selected to avoid the possibility that the probes would crash into any artifacts left behind by the Apollo and other lunar missions.

The spacecraft will hit the surface at about 3,760 mph. No pictures are expected because the region will be in darkness at the time of impact.

"We are not expecting a big crash or a big explosion. These are two small spacecraft. They are apartment-sized washer- and dryer-sized spacecraft with empty fuel tanks. So we're not expecting a flash that is visible from Earth," Zuber said.

However, a sister spacecraft circling the moon, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, will attempt to make observations, Zuber added.

The GRAIL science instruments are scheduled to be turned off on Friday.

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SpaceX Wins Its First USAF Contracts
By Amy Butler
Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology

December 10, 2012
Amy Butler Washington

After six years of the United Launch Alliance holding a monopoly for large U.S. government satellite launches, its primary customer, the U.S. Air Force, has begun issuing contracts that will foster competition in this market.

Launch market upstart Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) won the first two competitions out for bid under the Air Force's new Orbital/Suborbital Program-3 (OSP-3) contract last week. These are the first Air Force-funded opportunities for would-be competitors to ULA to earn government money to prove out their young designs and march forward on the path to certification for launches in the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) class, which is used for the most valuable Pentagon and intelligence satellites.

SpaceX will use its Falcon 9 v1.1 to boost NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (Dscovr) satellite and the Falcon Heavy for the Space Test Program (STP-2) satellite. The Dscovr launch is slated for November 2014 with STP-2 to follow in September 2015, says Lt. Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, Air Force program executive officer for space programs. This is the first government order for the yet-to-be proven Falcon Heavy.

SpaceX bested Orbital Sciences Corp., which pitched its new Antares rocket for these missions. The two are the only companies approved to compete to launch larger satellites under the Air Force's new OSP-3 contract vehicle. OSP-3 will include 10-12 launches through 2017 at a cost ceiling of $900 million. Also under OSP-3, the Air Force selected Orbital, with its Minotaur family, and Lockheed Martin, offering the new Athena, as eligible competitors for launches of smaller satellites, Pawlikowski says.

The Air Force has already set aside about $100 million for the Dscovr launch and another $162 million is expected for the STP-2 mission, Pawlikowski says, adding that SpaceX's proposals were “considered best value to the government.” Though this will be the first government-sponsored Falcon Heavy mission, SpaceX is funding a demonstration flight of the booster from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., in the second half of next year. Intelsat is the first customer, with a launch slated in 2015.

No funding has been set aside yet for smaller launch missions under OSP-3, which follows the OSP-1 and -2 contracts served by Orbital's Minotaur family; OSP-2 expired this year. That prompted officials to issue a call for bids for this recent program and provided an opportunity to invite proposals for improved lift and performance offered by companies hoping to compete for EELV-class missions.

SpaceX's wins place the company on a good competitive footing, but it will have to perform. Last year, the Air Force laid out criteria for launch market “new entrants” to be certified to fly Air Force payloads, such as GPS satellites. Both SpaceX and Orbital submitted letters of intent to certify their rockets for eligibility to compete against ULA for future launches.Each has negotiated a unique path to certification with the Air Force, based on how much commercial, NASA or Pentagon business they earn—to prove experience—and how much access they will give USAF to pricing and technical data to support cost validation and mission assurance requirements.

SpaceX's OSP-3 contract win clearly puts it ahead of Orbital in the race to take on ULA, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says the company's wins are a “vote of confidence” in its work developing the Falcon family. But certification will take time. Orbital plans its first Antares launch in the first quarter of next year for NASA 's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, says Barron Beneski, a company spokesman. “We'll have to earn our stripes for the Antares program,” he says. A second mission for COTS is also planned, with eight slated for the follow-on Commercial Resupply Service project.

Meanwhile, the SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 and Falcon Heavy must make three flights before certification will be granted, according to the company's Katherine Nelson. “We expect Falcon 9 to accomplish that next year,” she says, and “we expect the Falcon Heavy process to follow Falcon 9 by about a year.”

The Dscovr and STP-2 flights will provide one flight each for the Falcon 9 v1.1 and Heavy variants.

Though SpaceX successfully docked its Dragon capsule with the International Space Station this year, much work remains to demonstrate its launch vehicle capabilities. The new Merlin 1D engine, to be used for the v1.1 and Falcon Heavy, is still being developed and is not expected to fly until spring at the earliest.

However, the missions offer SpaceX opportunities to demonstrate new capabilities. Though the company has delivered supplies twice to the International Space Station in low Earth orbit, the Air Force has varied mission needs. For example, the Dscovr mission will require an upper-stage coast, and the satellite was designed to operate with a continuous sun-lit view of the Earth, which will require it to be positioned at the Earth's Lagrangian point about 932,000 mi. away. And, Air Force launches often require delivering a satellite into geosynchronous orbit 23,000 mi. above Earth, a different challenge from conducting operations in low Earth orbit.

Though competition is at least a few years out for ULA, its pricing for EELV launches continues to be scrutinized by the government. As a result, the Air Force's proposal to buy five years worth of rockets from ULA to receive lower pricing with larger orders has met with skepticism from Congress.

Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall approved the buy of 36 rockets from ULA, while reserving up to 14 for competition once a contender is ready. A contract has not yet been signed, but the decision clears the way for the Air Force to negotiate pricing and terms with ULA for the missions ordered in fiscal 2013-17. These launches would take place into 2019.

Skeptics of the strategy argue that funding ULA work so far into the future bolster's the company's monopoly position and leaves too few opportunities for potential new entrants. The Air Force is in a quandary. It must provide funding and stability to its only rocket provider, and will get the best price only by buying in bulk. But it must also foster a competitive landscape and maintain as level a playing field as possible for manufacturers.

ULA is also under pressure to improve more than pricing. Until October, the company boasted a flawless track record of Atlas V and Delta IV flights.But a serious low-thrust problem was detected on the RL10 upper stage, made by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, for a Delta IV boosting the Boeing GPS IIF-3 satellite Oct. 8. The Air Force convened an investigation board to explore the root cause.However, as of last month, Air Force Space Command chief Gen. William Shelton was skeptical any cause could be found soon. “I don't think we are close on this investigation,” he said, adding that the satellite's flight to the right orbit was the result of a “bit of a diving save” owing to a large fuel reserve on the upper stage. Though the satellite reached orbit, this incident is more than just a blot on ULA's track record. “We have to find out what happened and why, because there is no Plan B,” Shelton says. “The cost of launch failure would be staggering.”

The RL10 is the sole upper stage for EELV boosters While the variants used for the Atlas V and Delta IV are slightly different, the upper stage is a potential single-point-of-failure for the entire military space program.

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Big Asteroid Flying By, No Threat To Earth
By Reuters

December 13, 2012
A large asteroid that flies in nearly the same orbit as Earth will make a close pass by the planet, but there’s no chance of an impact - at least for hundreds of years, astronomers said on Wednesday.

The asteroid, named Toutatis, flies by Earth every four years. During its closest approach on Wednesday, the celestial rock will pass about 4.3 million miles (7 million km) from Earth, which is about 18 times farther away than the moon.

“There is no danger of a collision with Earth,” NASA astronomer Lance Benner said in a statement.

The 0.6-mile (4.3-km) long asteroid circles the sun in an orbit that is very closely aligned with Earth’s, making it a potentially hazardous object for the future.

The asteroid was first spotted in 1934 and its orbit was confirmed in 1989. In 2004, Toutatis passed by Earth just four times farther away than the moon, much closer than this week’s encounter.

Astronomers are using radar and optical telescopes to get a better fix on the asteroid’s location, its unusual spin and the flight path in hopes of refining estimates on where it will travel in the future.

“We already know that Toutatis will not hit Earth for hundreds of years,” Benner said. “These new observations will allow us to predict the asteroid’s trajectory even farther into the future.”

(Reporting by Irene Klotz in Phoenix; Editing by Jane Sutton and Eric Beech)

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Hubble Spies Seven Galaxies From Early Years Of Universe
By Irene Klotz/Reuters

December 13, 2012
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have found seven galaxies that formed relatively shortly after the universe’s birth some 13.7 billion years ago, scientists said on Wednesday, describing them “as baby pictures of the universe.”

One of the objects may be the oldest galaxy yet found, dating back to a time when the universe was just 380 million years old, a fraction of its current age.

“These early galaxies represent the building blocks of present-day galaxies,” John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science, told reporters in a conference call.

The discovery of galaxies dating back to the universe’s early years should help scientists figure out what happened after the “dark ages,” a period of time about 200 million years after the Big Bang explosion when cooling clouds of hydrogen, clumped together by gravity, began to ignite, triggering the first generation of stars.

“It was a very important moment in cosmic history,” said astronomer Richard Ellis, with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Scientists do not know exactly when this “cosmic dawn” occurred and whether it was a single, dramatic event that caused all the galaxies to form their first stars, or whether it happened more gradually over millions of years.

The discovery of seven galaxies spanning a period between 350 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang supports theories that the cosmic dawn was a drawn-out affair, with galaxies slowly building up their stars and chemical elements over time, said Brant Robertson of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Astronomers plan follow-up studies after Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, launches in 2018.

The research appears in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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GAO Concerned By Webb Telescope Schedule
By Mark Carreau
Source: Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

December 05, 2012
NASA’s beleaguered $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is at risk of further cost increases and schedule slips without more rigorous oversight, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

GAO is concerned that key hardware testing and integration reviews are scheduled too close to the program’s revised October 2018 launch date.

“Without higher-fidelity, regularly updated information related to costs, as well as an oversight regime during later phases of test and integration that is commensurate with the complexity of that effort, NASA risks late identification of technical and cost issues that could delay the launch of JWST and increase project costs beyond established baselines,” GAO cautioned in its Dec. 3 report to House and Senate appropriators.

The congressional auditors also commended the agency for actions taken as part of a JWST re-plan in response to the findings of a 2010 Independent Comprehensive Review Panel that produced the current price tag, a near 80% increase to the original $4.96 billion development price tag from April 2009.

The price hike accompanied a 52-month launch slip. But NASA’s efforts may not be enough to steady plans for the near-infrared successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that is designed to study the earliest star systems and track cosmic evolution.

Even anticipated reductions in travel expenses associated with the project, first proposed in 1999, could prove harmful to recent gains in oversight and communications among project participants located on the East and West coasts and in between, GAO says.

The major concerns, however, were focused on the adequacy of cost and schedule reserves as the project approaches a critical Optical Telescope Element and Integrated Science Instrument Module (OTIS) thermal vacuum test scheduled for February 2017. GAO is urging NASA to convene an independent review prior to the integrated OTIS test to appraise the project’s readiness to move forward.

Geoffrey Yoder, NASA’s JWST program director, provided GAO with a four-page response offering full or partial concurrence with each of the recommendations, including a pledge to add participation of the JWST’s standing review board members to the Goddard Space Flight Center’s scheduled Independent Review Team assessment prior to the OTIS thermal vacuum test.

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