Fwd: Readiness confirmed for Thursday’s Atlas 5 cargo launch to space station

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: December 2, 2015 at 8:40:17 AM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Readiness confirmed for Thursday's Atlas 5 cargo launch to space station

 

 

 

Readiness confirmed for Thursday's Atlas 5 cargo launch to space station

December 1, 2015 by Justin Ray

File photo of Atlas 5 on the pad. Credit: ULA

CAPE CANAVERAL — Mission managers today granted approval to proceed with Wednesday's rollout of the Atlas 5 rocket and Thursday's launch to deliver the commercial Cygnus cargo ship into orbit to resupply the International Space Station.

The Launch Readiness Review was conducted with senior officials to assess the status of the rocket, payload, ground systems and weather in preparation for the flight. The meeting culminated with the consensus to proceed on.

Rollout from the Vertical Integration Facility to the pad at Cape Canaveral's Complex 41 is planned for Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT).

Thursday's liftoff of the United Launch Alliance rocket is targeted for 5:55 p.m. EST (2255 GMT) at the opening of a 30-minute launch window.

"These guys have so much performance they can go 15 minutes out of plane, which is unbelievable to me," said Dan Tani, a former astronaut and now senior director of mission and cargo operations at Orbital ATK.

"It's a lot of power and a lot of sterring capability. It's really impressive how they are able to target so far off the nominal point."

Weather forecasters, keeping a close watch on a passing cool front, predict a 60 percent chance of favorable conditions for launch. Cloud cover will be the main worry.

The launch is timed to put Cygnus into a 143-mile orbit and on a course to rendezvous with the International Space Station on Sunday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R--dv7g-yeU

Built by Orbital ATK, the freighter is loaded with 7,745 pounds of materials for the station and its resident crew.

NASA astronauts Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren on Monday continued training for the rendezvous and capture of Cygnus using the station's Canadian-made robotic arm. They will be at the controls on Sunday morning.

"We haven't flown the Cygnus for a year, so we are really excited to get back to orbital operations and the real business of delivering cargo to the space station. It really means a lot to us," Tani said.

Although there is no fruit or other perishables on board the Cygnus, it is carrying special items for the crew members.

"I did see some of the bags are crew care packages, so I anticipate there are probably some Christmas presents on there from their families and other kind of special treats for them. But the majority of it is provisions that they need, science equipment, spare parts, that kind of thing," Tani said.

Among the cargo items:

Crew supplies: 2,604 pounds
* Clothing for Scott Kelly, Tim Kopra, Tim Peake and Jeff Williams
* 144 Bulk Overwrap Bags of food

Vehicle hardware: 2,220 pounds
* Cycle ergometer, control panel and seat cushion
* Air, water, surface sampling kits
* Acoustic dosimeter
* Carbon dioxide monitor
* C2V2 communications gear

Science utilization: 1,867 pounds
* Canadian Space Agency: Vascular echo exercise band
* European Space Agency: Biolab
* Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency: Cassette, valve, disk drive and cables
* NASA: Gases and liquids behavior experiment, a flame suppression test, a new space life science facility and the first NanoRacks microsatellite to be deployed from the station

EVA gear: 500 pounds
* New SAFER spacewalk jetpack
* Legs and gloves for spacesuit
* Tethers, filters, batteries, velcro and tool bags
* Airlock Cooling Loop Recovery Kit

Computer resources: 192 pounds
* New T61P laptop, hard drives and USB cables
* Canon XH G1 and XF305, Nikon D4 cameras

"We are excited and thrilled to get back into space. Working with ULA has been fantastic, they have been the model of a commercial launch (operation)," Tani said.

"They've flown a hundred times with an incredible success record and we're really honored to fly with them and we feel very good about our chances of getting to the station."

See earlier Cygnus OA-4 coverage.

 

© 2015 Spaceflight Now Inc.

 

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Fwd: Jeff Bezos's Space Launch Breakthrough

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: November 26, 2015 at 9:54:10 AM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Jeff Bezos's Space Launch Breakthrough

Jeff Bezos's Space Launch Breakthrough

Nov 25, 2015 Guy Norris and Mark Carreau | Aviation Week & Space Technology

 

Video: Blue Origin's First Successful Reusable Rocket Landing

The successful suborbital test flight of the New Shepard space tourism vehicle over West Texas not only secured Blue Origin's place in the history books by culminating with the first vertical touchdown on land of a rocket after a supersonic reentry, it was also a striking bellwether of the company's wider commercial spaceflight ambitions.

Though the Nov. 23 test was aimed at deploying the six-seat crew capsule into suborbit for a planned 4-min. weightless period, attention was chiefly focused on whether the rocket stage could be successfully recovered using the tricky vertical-powered-landing technique. Blue Origin, the space company created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is staking its entire venture on mastering routine vertical landings to make launch vehicles reusable and reduce costs.

While the New Shepard is aimed at the suborbital tourism market contested by companies such as Virgin Galactic and XCOR, Blue Origin plans to scale up the same system architecture for a larger orbital launch vehicle powered by the more powerful BE-4 engine currently in development. The New Shepard's vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) technique has drawn inevitable comparisons with SpaceX, which also wants to make the first stage of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle reusable using the same powered-landing concept. 

While the different dynamics and scale of the two vehicles make such a comparison a little unfair (the Falcon 9 first-stage apogee and speed is over 124 mi. and up to Mach 7.5, versus 62 mi. and Mach 3.7 for New Shepard), the Blue Origin flight nonetheless succeeded where SpaceX so far has not.

Indeed the achievement quickly captured the attention of SpaceX founder Elon Musk. This year SpaceX was unsuccessful in two attempts to vertically land the first stages of Falcon 9 launch vehicles carrying supplies to the International Space Station on a drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean east of Jacksonville, Florida.

"Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the [Blue Origin] team for achieving VTOL on their booster," Musk commented by Twitter. However, following remarks by Bezos about the New Shepard being "the rarest of beasts—a used rocket," the collegial atmosphere swiftly evaporated on social media. Musk retorted that the achievement was "not quite 'rarest.' [SpaceX's] Grasshopper rocket did 6 suborbital flights 3 years ago and is still around." He then added that "Jeff [Bezos] may be unaware SpaceX suborbital VTOL flight began 2013. Orbital water landing 2014. Orbital land landing next."

Musk also offered a distinction between the difficulty of achieving vertical landings with suborbital rockets and those designed with enough propulsion to reach geosynchronous orbit. He also singled out the achievements of the X-15 and SpaceShipOne rocket planes as the first government and commercial suborbital rockets, respectively, to land intact, albeit on a runway.

While Musk's reaction may have more to do with the longer-term competitive implications of Blue Origin's achievement, the successful test nonetheless represents a major milestone for commercial space in general and reusability in particular. The successful 8-min. test flight unfolded with a 12:21 p.m. EST liftoff of the single-stage, liquid-hydrogen- and oxygen-fueled suborbital launch vehicle. The capsule separated as the New Shepard climbed toward its apogee of 329,839 ft. (62.45 mi.) after reaching a velocity of Mach 3.72 and landed under three parachutes that began to deploy at 20,045 ft. The capsule touchdown occurred 11 min. after liftoff.

Hurtling back down toward the test range near Van Horn, Texas, after successfully deploying the crew capsule, the New Shepard rocket stage was stabilized for a base-first descent by the unusual aerodynamic ring fin surrounding the upper vehicle. The ring fin structure is shielded during ascent by the crew capsule for which it provides a vehicle interface. Guided by forward and aft steering fins, the vehicle's single BE-3 engine was relit as it dropped to 4,896 ft. The engine, which is capable of throttling from 110,000 lb. to 20,000 lb. thrust, slowed the descent and, at just over 50 ft. from the ground, four landing legs deployed. New Shepard settled to the ground at a velocity of 4.4 mph.

"As far as we can tell, this was a nominal flight. I'm sure we will learn things," says Bezos. "We will do the most thorough test program over the next couple of years that we can possibly do. Hopefully, in a couple of years from now we will be putting humans on New Shepard and taking them into space."

Commenting on the timing of the next flight, he adds, "we will have to wait and see. It will be some number of weeks before we can fly that hardware again. As we examine all the data closely and inspect all the hardware, we may find some subsystems we want to improve, make more robust, modify in some way. If we find that, we will do it. Our approach to this is to be very step-by-step, very patient and very methodical. If we find a subsystem that we want to modify, we will take the time to do that. As much as I would like to put humans on that vehicle and fly it as soon as possible, the reality is that we will enter commercial operations with that vehicle when we are ready and not before."

Future testing will include an abort of the uncrewed passenger capsule while New Shepard flies through a stressful regime, most likely at MaxQ, or maximum flight dynamic pressure, as New Shepard goes transonic, according to Bezos.

The flight was the first since the inaugural New Shepard developmental launch on April 29. After reaching 307,000 ft. and scoring a successful capsule separation, the suborbital rocket lost control because of a hydraulic system failure and crashed. The Nov. 23 test featured a new redundant hydraulic system that functioned without problems, says Bezos.

The New Shepard testing will contribute to a scalable recovery architecture that Blue Origin intends to integrate into the orbital vehicle it is developing to launch from Cape Canaveral in competition with other commercial launch services providers. Like SpaceX, Blue Origin's launch vehicle will return to a ship in the Atlantic.

"We are on two paths," says Bezos. "We will continue to develop New Shepard through its flight-test program over the next couple of years so we can fly tourists into space. We will take the same exact architecture we just demonstrated and use it on the booster stage of our orbital vehicle." 

Video Watch Blue Origin's video of the New Shepard vertical landing

 

Copyright © 2015, Penton.  All rights reserved.

 

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Regain shuttle capabilities!

Get a blog ( & get your friends to also) to inform people about Shuttle's unique capabilities

Start blogging—Regain Shuttle capabilities

Space exploration is critical to American preeminence.  Maintenance of our EO capabilities is critical to our security.  The shuttle had unique capabilities to take vehicles to EO, repair them or return them to earth, take large modules to EO for assembly to explore various destinations.
If we have to build new vehicle, we should get started.  Nasaproblems.com has plan to use orbiter airframes now in museum.  However, we must regain the shuttle capabilities with new vehicle if necessary!!
In any case we need everybody we can get to start blogging to stimulate public support to cause congress to take the required action.   Plenty of info on Real Space Act of 2013 a fb page, & keeptheshuttleflying.com, plus various Internet sites–just google topic.

Also, emphasize tremendous waste in foreign aid to Muslim nations--- in billions per year!!

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Keep the shuttle flying: What has been done to our space capabilities--- Very bad for USA !

http://keeptheshuttleflyingc.blogspot.com/2015/12/what-has-been-done-to-our-space.html


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Fwd: This Week in The Space Review - 2015 November 30

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Begin forwarded message:

From: jeff@thespacereview.com (Jeff Foust)
Date: November 30, 2015 at 5:45:37 PM CST
Subject: This Week in The Space Review - 2015 November 30
Reply-To: jeff@thespacereview.com

[ If you no longer wish to receive announcements from The Space Review,
please follow the instructions at the end of this message. ]


Welcome to this week's issue of The Space Review:


How the new SLS engine contract is a step in the wrong direction
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NASA announced last week a contract with Aerojet Rocketdyne to make an expendable version of the RS-25 engine for future Space Launch System missions. Gerald Black argues that, with the recent developments in reusability by others in the industry, developing expendable engines and rockets is unwise.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2875/1

Expanding the space industry
---
While the space industry generates several hundred billion dollars in revenue a year, it's still small compared to many other industries. Jeff Foust describes how a recent conference attempted to make connections between space and some other industries to help the space industry grow.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2874/1

Financing space companies in an age of complexity
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Companies in the commercial space industry, among others, can find it difficult to raise the money they need to build their businesses. Eric Hedman offers a potential solution that takes advantage of provisions in existing law, with some changes, to provide companies with a new source of investment.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2873/1

Blue Origin sticks the landing
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Last week, Blue Origin made another successful test flight of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle, this time flying to an altitude of 100 kilometers and successfully landing the vehicle's propulsion module under rocket power. Jeff Foust reports on the implications of the successful test, and the reaction it got from the head of another company in the field.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2872/1


If you missed it, here's what we published in our previous issue:


Suborbital research makes a comeback
---
Several years ago suborbital research using a new generation of commercial suborbital vehicles appeared to be upon us, but delays in those vehicles' development caused interest to wane. Now, both companies and advocates argue, it's time for another look, as at least one company's vehicle soon plans to start flying experiments.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2871/1

Mars and the transport revolution
---
While the solar system is filled with resources that could solve humanity's problems, effectively accessin them remains a major hurdle. Frank Stratford examines the transportation obstacles that need to be overcome, and the role Mars plays in enabling advances in spaceflight.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2870/1

Pluto and the gap beyond
---
Earlier this month, New Horizons scientists discussed the latest results from July's Pluto flyby at a planetary science conference. Jeff Foust reports on the surprising results presented at the meeting, which also featured concerns about the long-term future of exploration of the outer solar system.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2869/1

Review: The Hunt for Vulcan
---
One hundred years ago this month, Albert Einstein destroyed a planet -- a hypothetical one, conjured up to explain a puzzle of Newtonian mechanics. Jeff Foust reviews a book that described how astronomers thought another planet existed close to the Sun, only to have it wiped away by a new paradigm of physics.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2868/1


We appreciate any feedback you may have about these articles as well as
any other questions, comments, or suggestions about The Space Review.
We're also actively soliciting articles to publish in future issues, so
if you have an article or article idea that you think would be of
interest, please email me.

Until next week,

Jeff Foust
Editor, The Space Review
jeff@thespacereview.com
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Fwd: 'Heart' of NASA's Orion Spacecraft to Undergo Stress Tests

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: December 1, 2015 at 12:10:57 PM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: 'Heart' of NASA's Orion Spacecraft to Undergo Stress Tests

 

 

'Heart' of NASA's Orion Spacecraft to Undergo Stress Tests

by Calla Cofield, Space.com Staff Writer   |   December 01, 2015 07:25am ET

 

The structural test article of the European service module for Orion is being assembled at Airbus Defence and Space. Airbus is building the module, which will supply the spacecraft's power, in-space propulsion and air and water for the crew, on behalf of ESA (European Space Agency) for Orion. The STA is being transported to Glenn Research Center's Plum Brook station for testing. Credit: NASA View full size image

A critical piece of NASA's Orion spacecraft — which may carry astronauts to deep-space locations like Mars — is about to begin a series of crucial tests to determine whether or not it can withstand the rigors of spaceflight. 

The Orion service module, built by the European Space Agency, provides propulsion for the Orion vehicle and critical life support to the crew, among other things. On Nov. 7, a test version of the module was delivered to NASA Glenn Research Center's Space Power Facility (SPF) at the Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio. The facility will test how the system will withstand the intense shaking and thrust associated with a launch, as well as the heat and pressure extremes it will encounter in space, among other things.

"It's the only place you can test a vehicle of this size, fully deployed, in its launch and space configuration[s], which is so important in ensuring mission success," Jim Free, director of NASA's Glenn Research Center, said in a press briefing yesterday (Nov. 30). "It's really that 'one stop shop' for environmental tests on this scale." [Orion Explained: NASA's Multipurpose Crew Vehicle]

NASA's Orion space vehicle will launch atop the agency's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and has the capability to take human astronauts on journeys to the moon or possibly Mars. Orion underwent its first test flight on Dec. 5, 2014, but during that test, the craft was not fully equipped for a trip into deep space. Sometime in 2018, NASA plans to launch Orion on a fully integrated test flight known as Exploration Mission-1. That flight will take the uncrewed vehicle around the moon. 

Among the tests that the service module will undergo at Glenn Space Center will be an acoustic stress test and a mechanical vibration test to simulate the launch environment, as well as shocks tests to mimic the vehicle's separation from the rocket. The facility hosts a vacuum chamber that is 100 feet in diameter and 120 feet tall that will mimic the vacuum environment in space. The facility will also fire pyrotechnics to test the temperature resilience of the vehicle's solar arrays. 

"That testing is going to identify any risks that we haven't gone through, any design problems, any potential failures, right here in a controlled environment on the ground," Free said. "And that's the best place to find those issues — before we're in flight." 

The service module serves many purposes for Orion, according to Mark Kirasich, manager for the Orion Program. It acts as the propulsion system, provides steering and avionics for the spacecraft, and during the ascent from Earth, it "gives the spacecraft an abort capability, should we have a contingency," Kirasich said. In addition, it has solar arrays that are used to collect energy and power all the equipment onboard Orion, including radiators that keep the temperature ideal for both the equipment and the passengers; it also carries oxygen, nitrogen and water for crew life support. 

"As you can easily understand, the ESA service module is a critical element of Orion," Kirasich said. "We aren't going anywhere without it." 

Kirasich said that after the series of tests is completed at Glenn Space Center, the service module will be disassembled. Some of the remaining parts will be refurbished and undergo further testing, with some sent to Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, while other parts will return to Europe, where additional iterations of the service module are being constructed. 

Two representatives from the European Space Agency spoke at the press briefing yesterday: Nico Dettmann, development department head at ESA, and Oliver Juckenhoefel, vice president and head of the European Service Module program at Airbus Defence and Space (ESA's corporate contractor for the module). Juckenhoefel spoke extensively about the need for collaboration in order to make an optimum vehicle, adding, "NASA cannot fly without us, and we cannot fly without them." 

When it was announced that ESA would build Orion's service module, the agency said the module would likely cost several hundred million dollars, but would be delivered as an in-kind contribution. No agency has stated definitively if ESA's contribution of the Orion service module will guarantee that ESA astronauts will fly on Orion missions. 

"It's obviously the ultimate objective to have an ESA astronaut flying beyond low-earth orbit, and we hope that this cooperation will actually lead to having a European astronaut on such a mission," Dettmann said.  

Greg Williams, deputy associate administrator for NASA's Human Exploration and Operations added, "This is going to be an international endeavor on this long journey to Mars, and we would love to see astronauts from several nations be involved when we first set foot on the Red Planet."

Copyright © 2015 TechMediaNetwork.com All rights reserved. 

 

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AMERICA needs this capability!