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STORY WRITTEN FOR & USED WITH PERMISSIONPosted: May 28, 2014 A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a veteran Russian cosmonaut, a U.S. test pilot-astronaut and a German volcanologist rocketed into orbit Wednesday and chased down the International Space Station, gliding to a picture-perfect docking to boost the lab’s crew back to six. The Soyuz rocket lifts off at 1957 GMT (3:57 p.m. EDT; 1:57 a.m. local time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Photo credit: NASA/Joel KowskyWith commander Maxim Suraev at the controls, the Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft’s forward docking mechanism engaged its counterpart on the station’s Earth-facing Rassvet module at 9:44 p.m. EDT (GMT-4), five hours and 47 minutes after liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.”Contact and capture confirmed,” reported Dan Huot, NASA’s mission control commentator in Houston, as the two spacecraft came together 260 miles above the Pacific Ocean approaching the northwest coast of South America.”Congratulations,” a Russian flight controller radioed a few moments after docking. “We’re wishing you good work and wishing you safe operations.””OK, thank you very much,” Suraev replied. “We’re going to do our best, we’ll do everything we can.”Following extensive leak checks, Suraev and his crewmates — flight engineer Reid Wiseman and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst — planned to open the capsule’s forward hatch to enter the space station where Expedition 40 commander Steven Swanson, Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev were standing by to welcome them aboard.After a traditional video conference with dignitaries and family members gathered at the cosmodrome, Swanson planned to conduct a safety briefing to bring the new crew members up to speed on station systems and emergency procedures before taking a break to close out a long day.The mission began with a sky-lighting burst of fire as the Soyuz rocket’s first-stage engines roared to life at 3:57 p.m., quickly pushing the spacecraft away from the firing stand, the same launch pad used by Yuri Gagarin at the dawn of the space age.Suraev monitored the automated ascent from the command module’s center seat, flanked on his left by Wiseman, a veteran Navy carrier pilot making his first spaceflight, and on the right by fellow rookie Gerst, a European Space Agency astronaut with a doctorate in geophysics.The climb out through a starry sky went smoothly and all three crew members appeared relaxed and in good spirits as they monitored cockpit displays, flashing smiles and thumbs up gestures on downlinked television.Four minutes after liftoff, the 150-foot-tall rocket’s four liquid-fueled strap-on first-stage boosters shut down and fell away, followed three minutes later by separation of the central second stage core booster. The rocket’s third stage then ignited to continue the drive to space.The third stage shut down as planned eight minutes and 45 seconds after launch. Moments later, the Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft was released to fly on its own and the capsule’s solar arrays and antennas deployed as planned to complete the initial launch phase of the mission. The Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft approaches the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA TVAsked what he looked forward to the most in his first spaceflight, Wiseman said “floating, the view, and the chance to do some science that maybe not now, but maybe 10 of 15 years down the road helps save somebody’s life.””If we can something like that, then my time is well spent,” he said in a pre-flight interview. “But the first thing I want to do when I get there, I’ve got to give Swanny a big hug, and then it’s time to go look out the window.”The launching came amid increasing tension between the United States and Russia in the wake of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, retaliatory U.S. sanctions and subsequent threats by a senior Russian leader to restrict the use of Russian rocket engines in American Atlas 5 boosters used to launch U.S. military satellites.Dmitri Rogozin, Russian deputy prime minister for space and defense, has also threatened to pull out of the station project in 2020, well before NASA’s goal of operating the outpost at least through 2024.For their part, Suraev, Wiseman and Gerst said preparations for the Soyuz TMA-13M flight were routine and that the Cold War-era rhetoric in the wake of the Ukraine crisis had no impact on day-to-day space station operations.”Our team, our crew is not just a team of three different guys from three different nationalities or continents,” Gerst said at a pre-launch news conference. “We’re actually a group of friends.”Along with two years of intense training “we’ve spent weekends together, we’ve spent weekends on Max’s dacha, we’ve spent weekends together in Cologne, our families know each other really well,” he said. “Space is without borders. We fly to an International Space Station where we do experiments that come back to Earth, that benefit all of us, all humankind.”The crew answered another question about international relations by standing and embracing, prompting cheers and applause. Suraev then posed with his crewmates for a “selfie” to another round of cheers.”When it gets right down to it, we’re still supporting each other,” NASA space station Program Manager Michael Suffredini told CBS News in a recent interview. “We talk at my level, we’re talking at (headquarters) level, we regularly have telecons to reaffirm our commitment. Every time we do something together the teams work and support each other the way we always have.”We’re trying really hard to do what both of our government’s have essentially told us to do (and) that is to continue working in spaceflight the way we have.” The space station is back to a six-person crew. Photo credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight NowThe combined Expedition 40 crew faces a busy summer with two Russian spacewalks on tap, up to three U.S. EVAs, the arrival of a Russian Progress supply ship, a final European ATV cargo carrier and two U.S. spacecraft: an Orbital Sciences Cygnus supply craft and a SpaceX Dragon capsule.”Our key challenges for this increment will be managing the slew of vehicle traffic that we have in addition to the EVAs that are planned and of course, we also have a very ambitious utilization schedule as well on top of that,” said lead Flight Director Greg Whitney. “So it’s going to be a challenging time for both the ground and the on-board crew, but we’re looking forward to it. It’ll be a great mission.”Wiseman said he was particularly interested in medical research using the crew as test subjects.”We have a ton of human research planned,” he said. “They’re going to look at my blood, my skin, my bones, my muscle, my eyes especially. And I’m really looking forward to getting into all that science. All that stuff fascinates me. As a Navy pilot, I always had an aversion to medicine. Now I’m being forced into it and I absolutely love it!”John Glenn Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The historic first orbital flight by an American is marked by this commemorative patch for John Glenn and Friendship 7.Final Shuttle Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The crew emblem for the final space shuttle mission is available in our store. Get this piece of history!Celebrate the shuttle programFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This special commemorative patch marks the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. Available in our store!Anniversary Shuttle PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This embroidered patch commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Program. The design features the space shuttle Columbia’s historic maiden flight of April 12, 1981.Mercury anniversaryFree shipping to U.S. addresses!Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Alan Shephard’s historic Mercury mission with this collectors’ item, the official commemorative embroidered patch.Fallen Heroes Patch CollectionThe official patches from Apollo 1, the shuttle Challenger and Columbia crews are available in the store. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.ULA awaits NASA decision before outfitting pad for crew SPACEFLIGHT NOWPosted: July 9, 2014 United Launch Alliance has completed the design of a modified Atlas 5 launch pad to accommodate astronaut flights at Cape Canaveral, and construction workers will start installing the upgrades this fall if one of ULA’s partners wins NASA funding in the commercial crew program. Artist’s concept of an Atlas 5 rocket and CST-100 crew capsule on the launch pad. Credit: United Launch AllianceThe Colorado-based rocket contractor announced Monday the completion of the critical design review for crew accommodations at the Atlas 5 rocket’s Complex 41 launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.The launch pad modifications are designed to allow Boeing’s CST-100 crew capsule to lift off from the launch pad with astronauts.”This was a critical milestone to ensure all elements are in place to begin the construction as early as this fall to support the Boeing team and crewed launches of CST-100 from SLC-41,” said Ellen Plese, director of ULA human launch services, in a ULA statement. “As ULA was creating the innovative new design elements for the pad, human safety factors were the primary consideration.”Boeing Co. is one of three companies bidding to win NASA funding to finish development of human-rated spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, ending U.S. reliance on Russia for crew transportation.NASA says it will select one or more companies to continue working on space taxis in August or September, leading to operational flights to the space station by the end of 2017.Boeing’s CST-100 crew capsule is competing against SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and the Dream Chaser lifting body space plane proposed by Sierra Nevada Corp. The CST-100 and Dream Chaser vehicles are designed to initially launch on ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket, while SpaceX plans to launch the Dragon spacecraft on its own Falcon 9 booster.If Boeing or Sierra Nevada receive funding to complete development of their crew-carrying vehicles, ULA says construction at the Atlas 5 launch pad will kick off before the end of the year.Orlando, Fla.-based Hensel Phelps Construction Co. is leading the contractor team working on the Atlas 5 launch pad modifications.The changes planned for Complex 41 include a crew access tower and crew access arm with a white room for astronauts to climb through the hatch into a spacecraft mounted on top of the Atlas 5 launcher. Engineers also designed a crew escape system designed to whisk astronauts safely away from the rocket in case of a dangerous countdown mishap.The fixed crew access tower, standing more than 20 stories tall, will be built on the west side of the Atlas 5 launch pad, just a car width away from the mounting point for the rocket’s mobile umbilical tower and launch platform.Technicians assemble the Atlas 5 rocket’s booster stage, Centaur upper stage and payload inside the Vertical Integration Facility about 1,800 feet south of the launch pad. The rocket rolls to the launch pad on the eve of liftoff on top of a mobile launch table, which locks into place over the flame trench to connect the rocket with propellant plumbing and electrical power.Officials said the design of the launch pad upgrades so far has been specifically geared to support flights of the Boeing CST-100 spacecraft because the aerospace giant received more NASA funding than its competitors. NASA awarded agreements to Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada in August 2012 worth up to $460 million, $440 million and $212.5 million, respectively. The space agency added a cumulative $55 million to the awards in amendments posted last year.NASA pays the companies in installments upon completion of milestones such as hardware testing, financing and design reviews.SpaceX hopes to launch astronaut crews from Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A, the former Apollo and space shuttle launch facility. SpaceX signed a 20-year lease of the launch pad in April.Howard Biegler, human launch services lead for ULA, said last month the construction at Complex 41 will take about 18 months to complete.One of the first steps in construction — if it gets the go-ahead — will be to excavate about 30 feet of concrete, then drive 30-inch diameter pillars 105 feet into Florida bedrock.Workers will prepare seven segments comprising the main structure of the crew access tower, which will measure 20 feet by 20 feet, at a nearby staging point before transporting the steel sections to the launch pad between Atlas 5 launches for hoisting by a crane.Once construction teams add the crew access arm and steel cladding, ULA plans to hook up hydraulics and instrumentation while testing the system with a CST-100 mockup at the launch pad.The Atlas 5’s busy manifest, filled with missions for the U.S. military, NASA and commercial customers, will continue unabated during the launch pad rework, according to Dan Collins, ULA’s chief operating officer.Collins said 14 Atlas 5 launches are planned from the launch pad during the 18-month construction phase.Officials expect the launch pad crew accommodations under development for Boeing’s CST-100 spacecraft could be adjusted to support Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser if it flies.”Boeing has been the customer that has moved forward, and that’s why the design is focused right now on CST-100,” Collins said.”September of 2016 is when I will have everything built and ready to support commercial crew,” Biegler told reporters on a tour of the launch pad.ULA is also working on an emergency detection system to be bolted to Atlas 5 rockets on crewed missions. The avionics box will monitor the health of the launch vehicle and trigger an in-flight abort if it detects a major anomaly.Boeing’s CST-100 crew capsule will launch on an Atlas 5 rocket with two solid rocket boosters and a dual-engine Centaur upper stage.Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: .John Glenn Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The historic first orbital flight by an American is marked by this commemorative patch for John Glenn and Friendship 7.Final Shuttle Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The crew emblem for the final space shuttle mission is available in our store. Get this piece of history!Celebrate the shuttle programFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This special commemorative patch marks the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. Available in our store!Anniversary Shuttle PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This embroidered patch commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Program. The design features the space shuttle Columbia’s historic maiden flight of April 12, 1981.Mercury anniversaryFree shipping to U.S. addresses!Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Alan Shephard’s historic Mercury mission with this collectors’ item, the official commemorative embroidered patch.Fallen Heroes Patch CollectionThe official patches from Apollo 1, the shuttle Challenger and Columbia crews are available in the store. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.ULA begins search for new American rocket engine SPACEFLIGHT NOWPosted: June 16, 2014 United Launch Alliance announced Monday it has signed contracts with multiple U.S. companies to mature next-generation rocket engine concepts that officials say could replace the Atlas 5 booster’s Russian-built RD-180 engine by 2019. File photo of an Atlas 5 launch from Cape Canaveral on May 22. Credit: ULAThe commercial contracts between ULA and prospective U.S. engine builders cover technical feasibility analyses, high-fidelity planning, schedule, cost and technical risk assessments, and cost estimates, ULA said in a statement released Monday.The announcement comes after a chorus of lawmakers and experts urged the U.S. launch industry to wean itself off of foreign propulsion systems in the wake of provocations from Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin.ULA did not identify which companies will undertake the engine studies. Jessica Rye, a ULA spokesperson, also declined to say how many companies signed the contracts with the launch provider.The contracts are for early-stage studies of a hydrocarbon-fueled engine optimized for first stage propulsion with “aggressive recurring cost targets,” according to ULA.All the engine concepts will support a first launch by 2019, and ULA expects to select a future concept and engine supplier by the fourth quarter of this year, the company said. ULA will evaluate the feasibility of the new engine concepts for both private investment and the potential for government-industry investment.ULA’s Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets launch the U.S. government’s most critical and costly national security satellites, plus many of NASA’s robotic science missions and interplanetary probes.The kerosene-fueled RD-180 engine used on the first stage of ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket is built by NPO Energomash in the Moscow region. U.S.-based RD AMROSS, a joint venture of Energomash and United Technologies Corp., imports the engines to the United States and supplies them to ULA for attachment to Atlas 5 booster stages at a rocket manufacturing plant in Decatur, Ala.”While the RD-180 has been a remarkable success, we believe now is the right time for American investment in a domestic engine,” Michael Gass, ULA’s president and CEO. “At the same time, given that ULA is the only certified launch provider of our nation’s most important satellites, it is critical that America preserve current capabilities and options while simultaneously pursuing this new engine.”ULA said it will continue to work with RD AMROSS to “evaluate the long-term feasibility of the RD-180 in competition with the anticipated new engine.” The companies are discussing product improvements, U.S. production of the RD-180 and “other enhancements” to ensure its future viability, the press release said.”ULA has a number of very promising alternatives and we are working with the very best propulsion companies in America,” said George Sowers, ULA’s vice president of advanced programs and leader for the propulsion study. “There are many exciting advanced technologies that are mature and can be used to enhance our capabilities and our competitiveness.”The RD-180 engine has logged a perfect record of 52 successful flights since 2000, including 46 missions on the Atlas 5.Monday’s announcement by ULA makes it the second company reconsidering its reliance on Russian rocket propulsion. Orbital Sciences Corp., operator of the Antares launcher, is weighing a switch to a solid-fueled first stage for its commercial resupply missions to the International Space Station.Concerns over the use of Russian of rocket engines to launch U.S. military and intelligence-gathering payloads, an arrangement that attracted little criticism for nearly two decades, rose after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.ULA rival SpaceX filed suit against the U.S. Air Force in late April asking a judge to overturn a sole-source $11 billion contract between ULA and the Pentagon for 28 satellite launches.SpaceX says it can launch the government’s military communications, navigation and surveillance payloads at a fraction of the cost of ULA’s rockets. But the Falcon 9 rocket operated by California-based SpaceX is not yet certified to launch the Pentagon’s most expensive and unique payloads, and Air Force officials have said they will not give a launch contract to SpaceX until it is certified.A federal judge initially issued an injunction barring ULA and the Air Force from purchasing new rocket engines from Russia after SpaceX raised questions whether payments for the engines benefited Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin, who was sanctioned by President Barack Obama along with other top Russian politicians after Russia’s incursion into Ukraine.The injunction against RD-180 imports was lifted a week later after U.S. government officials assured the judge the engine trade did not violate sanctions levied against Rogozin. An RD-180 engine fires on a test stand at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in 1998. Credit: NASARogozin, whose purview includes Russia’s space and defense industries, then held a May 13 press conference declaring that Russia would no longer sell RD-180 engines for use on U.S. military satellite launches.Air Force and ULA officials have said they have received no formal notification that Russia will cease RD-180 engine exports to the United States.Executives from ULA, RD AMROSS and NPO Energomash met May 30 in Frankfurt, Germany, to discuss the status of RD-180 engine production in Russia, according to Dan Collins, ULA’s chief operating officer, who described the meeting as a “good day-long conversation.”Collins said the meeting adjourned with no notice of any disruption to the RD-180 engine supply from Russia.”We’re working very well together, and they’re continuing to supply engines,” Collins said. “We’re looking forward to getting more them in here in the not-too-distant future.”Gass told reporters in May that five RD-180 engines were due to arrive in the United States by the end of 2014. Fifteen RD-180s are currently in the country awaiting launch on Atlas 5 rockets.A commission of aerospace experts, chaired by retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Mitch Mitchell, impaneled by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel this spring to study the Russian engine predicament recommended the Pentagon back the development of a new liquid-fueled engine with similar performance to the RD-180, which generates about 860,000 pounds of thrust at sea level.House and Senate lawmakers have proposed funding for a new liquid-fueled U.S.-built rocket engine to replace the RD-180, directing the Pentagon oversee the development in partnership with NASA.Known as the “Mitchell report,” the Defense Department study concluded the new U.S.-made engine should burn hydrocarbon propellants, but it does not specify which type of hydrocarbon — highly refined rocket-grade RP-1 kerosene or liquid methane. The engine would burn liquid oxygen along with kerosene or methane fuel for combustion.ULA’s statement issued Monday also does not distinguish between kerosene or methane for the next-generation engine concept studies contracted with American propulsion providers.Gen. William Shelton, the outgoing head of U.S. Air Force Space Command, said last month he also backed the development of a large U.S. rocket engine. Shelton and Mitchell panel agreed that a new U.S.-built engine was preferable to producing the Russian-designed RD-180 engine in the United States.Although estimates from the Air Force, industry and independent experts differ, most predict it could take five-to-eight years and cost more than $1 billion to develop a U.S.-built replacement for the RD-180 engine.The panel chaired by Gen. Mitchell forecast a new engine could be available by 2022.But industry officials have said a new engine could be ready by 2019 with sufficient funding.One contender for the new U.S.-produced propulsion system is the AR-1 engine by Aerojet Rocketdyne, which manufactures the RS-68 hydrogen-fueled main engine for ULA’s Delta 4 rocket.Aerojet Rocketdyne officials have said they aim to sell two of the 500,000-pound-thrust kerosene-fueled engines for $25 million per pair.SpaceX, a ULA competitor, is the only U.S. liquid-fueled rocket engine builder besides Aerojet Rocketdyne with a large first stage propulsion system flying on a space launcher today.The performance of SpaceX’s Merlin 1D engine flying on the Falcon 9 rocket does not match the capability of the RD-180.But SpaceX is working on its own million-pound-class Raptor engine. Fueled by methane, the engine is set to begin ground testing at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.Speaking at the Atlantic Council on June 4, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said she was not sure building a replacement for the RD-180 was the right choice.”Investing in liquid propulsion technologies is a great choice for sure, certainly on components that can be used to build whatever engine the propulsion community finds a market for,” Shotwell said. “I think investing in the community is a great idea. I’d like to see it more on the component development — technology development — side.”Northrop Grumman Corp., which designed a 1.1-million-pound thrust engine for NASA more than a decade ago, provided input to the Pentagon’s propulsion panel led by Gen. Mitchell, according to Bob Bishop, a company spokesperson.Bishop declined comment on the status of the specific engine concept designed for NASA, known as the TR-107, but said Northrop Grumman agrees with the Mitchell report’s recommendations.”We’re watching the situation closely, hoping the RD-180 supply isn’t disrupted,” Bishop said. “Northrop Grumman agrees that a modern U.S. hydrocarbon engine is needed and that focused risk reduction investments should be made.”If the Pentagon proceeds with a government-supported engine development program, bills in Congress require the military to oversee a competitive procurement in which all companies capable of building an engine would be welcome to submit bids.Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: .John Glenn Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The historic first orbital flight by an American is marked by this commemorative patch for John Glenn and Friendship 7.Final Shuttle Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The crew emblem for the final space shuttle mission is available in our store. Get this piece of history!Celebrate the shuttle programFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This special commemorative patch marks the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. Available in our store!Anniversary Shuttle PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This embroidered patch commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Program. The design features the space shuttle Columbia’s historic maiden flight of April 12, 1981.Mercury anniversaryFree shipping to U.S. addresses!Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Alan Shephard’s historic Mercury mission with this collectors’ item, the official commemorative embroidered patch.Fallen Heroes Patch CollectionThe official patches from Apollo 1, the shuttle Challenger and Columbia crews are available in the store. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.ULA, SpaceX reschedule launches after radar outage SPACEFLIGHT NOWPosted: April 4, 2014 After a two-week delay to wait for the U.S. Air Force to restore a critical radar tracker, United Launch Alliance and SpaceX have rescheduled their next rocket missions from Cape Canaveral for April 10 and April 14. The Atlas 5 rocket rolled to the launch pad March 24 before a delay due to a radar outage on the Air Force Eastern Range. Workers returned the launcher to its integration building to wait for another launch opportunity. Photo credit: Stephen Clark/Spaceflight NowOfficials put the launches on hold after a component on a rocket tracking radar short-circuited March 24, causing it to overheat and knock the radar offline.Without the radar, the Air Force’s Eastern Range was unable to support launch attempts for the ULA Atlas 5 and SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets then set for March 25 and March 30.The Eastern Range is a network of communications stations, tracking radars and safety assets along Florida’s East Coast and stretching into the Atlantic Ocean under the ground tracks of rockets as they fly into orbit.The range’s job is to keep the public and property safe from launching rockets in case the vehicles fly off course.The radar responsible for the delays is owned by the Air Force but lies on the property of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.First up on April 10 is the Atlas 5 launch of a top secret payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. government agency which owns and operates imaging and eavesdropping spy satellites.Liftoff from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 launch pad is set for a launch period opening at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) and extending until 2:35 p.m. EDT (1835 GMT).Officials have not disclosed the actual launch window within that period, citing security concerns.The April 10 launch will come one week after an Atlas 5 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with the military’s DMSP F19 weather satellite. Photo of the Falcon 9 rocket undergoing a prelaunch static fire test on the launch pad in March. Photo credit: SpaceXA Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled for liftoff April 14 from the nearby Complex 40 pad with a Dragon cargo spacecraft heading to the International Space Station.The automated spaceship will deliver 2.4 tons of equipment to the space station under contract to NASA.Launch on April 14 is set for 4:58 p.m. EDT (2058 GMT), and the Dragon spacecraft will arrive at the space station April 16.A spokesperson with the Air Force’s 45th Space Wing on Friday said the Eastern Range is expected to be ready to support both launches. He did not say whether the Air Force had repaired the damaged radar or activated a backup system to restore the lost tracking capability.Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: .John Glenn Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The historic first orbital flight by an American is marked by this commemorative patch for John Glenn and Friendship 7.Final Shuttle Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The crew emblem for the final space shuttle mission is available in our store. Get this piece of history!Celebrate the shuttle programFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This special commemorative patch marks the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. Available in our store!Anniversary Shuttle PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This embroidered patch commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Program. The design features the space shuttle Columbia’s historic maiden flight of April 12, 1981.Mercury anniversaryFree shipping to U.S. addresses!Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Alan Shephard’s historic Mercury mission with this collectors’ item, the official commemorative embroidered patch.Fallen Heroes Patch CollectionThe official patches from Apollo 1, the shuttle Challenger and Columbia crews are available in the store. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.ULA’s common upper stage engine to fly this year SPACEFLIGHT NOWPosted: June 4, 2014 United Launch Alliance plans to debut a new version of the venerable RL10 upper stage engine on an Atlas 5 rocket flight in December in a step toward the development of a common upper stage across the company’s Atlas and Delta launcher fleets, a move officials say will reduce costs and increase performance. A view of an RL10 engine being prepared for launch on a Delta 4 rocket. Credit: NASA/KSCBut further upgrades to ULA’s rocket upper stages, including concepts to build long-duration deep space tugs and propellant depots, may take a back seat as focus grows on developing a powerful U.S.-built booster engine to end reliance on Russian propulsion.The first flight of the RL10C upper stage engine is scheduled for an Atlas 5 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., in December. The flight will place a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office into orbit in a mission designated NROL-35 by the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency.Developed with U.S. Air Force funding and private investment, the Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10C engine will accelerate satellites into orbit after boosts from first stage engines on the Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rocket.Designed to burn a mix of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants, the engine passed final flight qualification in June 2013, and the RL10C’s first flight is set for December, said Bernard Kutter, a manager in ULA’s advanced programs division.”The RL10C engine is fully qualified and can be used on either Atlas or Delta,” said George Sowers, ULA’s vice president of strategic architecture.Sowers said the RL10C will become the standard upper stage engine for all of the company’s Atlas 5 and Delta 4 launches. An exception will be for the two-engine version of the Atlas 5’s Centaur upper stage, which will continue flying with the RL10A-4-2 version of the engine.The shape of the RL10C’s bell-shaped nozzle prevents two of the engines from being placed side-by-side in a dual-engine configuration, Sowers said.The Delta 4 rocket’s upper stage is powered by an RL10B-2 engine, which features a carbon-carbon nozzle extension and other upgrades to raise thrust and specific impulse, the measure of a rocket engine’s efficiency.ULA is developing the dual-engine Centaur stage to launch crews and cargo on commercial missions to the International Space Station. Sowers said the dual-engine Centaur will also fly with U.S. military, NASA and commercial payloads on launches into low Earth orbit.Sowers said ULA is developing the dual-engine Centaur with internal research and development money.The RL10 engine has flown hundreds of times since the 1960s, helping launch U.S. military payloads, NASA science missions and interplanetary probes, and commercial communications satellites. File photo of an RL10 engine on a Centaur upper stage being stacked to assemble an Atlas 5 rocket. Credit: NASA/KSCAccording to Sowers, the switch to the RL10C engine will not raise the risk of groundings of both of ULA’s rocket families in the event of a problem with the upper stage engine.”We have that problem today because an RL10A and an RL10B have an awful lot of commonality,” Sowers said. “Having more commonality could, in some ways, actually enhance how we can rapidly resolve anomalies because you don’t have to figure out the differences. Are the differences relevant? So we don’t really see any drawbacks.”When a fuel leak in an RL10B engine on a Delta 4 rocket threatened to prevent the launcher from placing its GPS navigation payload in the correct orbit, ULA delayed several downstream Delta 4 missions during an investigation into the anomaly. Atlas 5 rockets fitted with the RL10A engine were cleared to continue flying.The Delta 4 rocket stricken with the fuel leak ended up deploying the GPS satellite in the targeted orbit despite the problem.The benefits of the switch to RL10C engines include cost reductions and better management of ULA’s engine inventory.”There are cetainly cost benefits to having commonality,” Sowers said. “Another real benefit is being able to use the inventory of RL10B engines inherited from Boeing on both vehicles.”Boeing developed the Delta 4 rocket before merging with Lockheed Martin’s Atlas program to form United Launch Alliance in 2006. Boeing had a stockpile of RL10B engines left over from canceled launches during the contraction of the commercial satellite industry in the early 2000s, plus lost contracts and delays in the readiness of military payloads.Sowers said Aerojet Rocketdyne is converting their inventory of RL10B engines to the RL10C version to allow them to fly on either the Atlas 5 or Delta 4 rocket. The conversion permits the companies to reduce the build rate of the RL10A engine for only designated missions, such as dual-engine Centaur flights with space station crews or cargo.The modifications include installing avionics for active propellant mixture control, a capability currently on the Atlas 5’s RL10A engines but not on the Delta 4’s RL10B version. The change will allow the Delta 4 to carry up to 200 pounds of additional payload on certain missions, according to a user’s guide posted on ULA’s website.The RL10C also introduces a redundant dual direct spark ignition system — a standard on the Atlas 5’s RL10A engine — to the Delta 4 rocket family. File photo of an RL10 engine on a Delta 4 rocket’s second stage. Credit: NASA/KSCDelta 4 missions will fly with an RL10C engine with the full-length extendible nozzle similar to the RL10B engines flying today. The Atlas 5’s RL10C engine will fly with a truncated nozzle.”The original plan was to go to all RL10Cs, but when the commercial crew program came along, it had some unique requirements that drove the need to retain the RL10A capability,” Sowers said.ULA also has plans to develop a larger 5-meter (16.4-foot) diameter upper stage with two RL10C engines. Called the Advanced Common Evolved Stage, or ACES, the upper stage would have a longer lifetime in space, capable of serving as an Earth departure stage for deep space missions or as a propellant depot.But Sowers said the ACES development could be put on hold as Congress and the Air Force focus on building a new U.S. rocket engine to replace the Russian RD-180 engine used on the first stage of ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket.”The common upper stage is something we’ve been studying for years and years,” Sowers said. “It’s still definitely in our planning. If you asked me six months ago, I would have said the next thing we want to do in terms of upgrading our vehicles is the upper stage. Now I might say the booster engine is the next thing we need to work on.”One design feature of the upgraded ACES system is a variable-thrust hydrogen-fueled aluminum thruster. It is set for a demonstration launch in 2016. The thruster will be fed by waste gases from the upper stage’s propellant tanks, which would otherwise be discarded.Sowers said the thruster will allow the upper stage to de-orbit without devoting precious propellant reserves to do the job, removing a performance penalty.”All the boil-off we normally have, we can run through that for a safe disposal,” Sowers said. “Disposing of upper stages is becoming more and more important because of the debris and junk up there. This is a capability we’re really looking forward to having on-board.”Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: .John Glenn Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The historic first orbital flight by an American is marked by this commemorative patch for John Glenn and Friendship 7.Final Shuttle Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The crew emblem for the final space shuttle mission is available in our store. Get this piece of history!Celebrate the shuttle programFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This special commemorative patch marks the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. Available in our store!Anniversary Shuttle PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This embroidered patch commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Program. The design features the space shuttle Columbia’s historic maiden flight of April 12, 1981.Mercury anniversaryFree shipping to U.S. addresses!Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Alan Shephard’s historic Mercury mission with this collectors’ item, the official commemorative embroidered patch.Fallen Heroes Patch CollectionThe official patches from Apollo 1, the shuttle Challenger and Columbia crews are available in the store. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.Ultrasound on Discovery arm; Endeavour tiles hit BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR & USED WITH PERMISSIONPosted: July 3, 2004New pictures of Saturn’s enigmatic moon Titan, taken by cameras aboard the Cassini probe that are capable of penetrating the thick smog-like haze that blankets the frigid world, show strange looking surface features and a deck of methane clouds the size of Arizona. But so far, the instruments have not detected reflections from the surfaces of lakes or small seas of liquid hydrocarbons many scientists believe must form in the ultra-cold environment. Piercing the ubiquitous layer of smog enshrouding Titan, this combination of images from the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer reveals an exotic surface covered with a variety of materials in the southern hemisphere. Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.But like the sun glint off rivers and lakes visible from airplanes on Earth, the reflections in question can only be seen in a small region of Titan, about 1 percent of the visible surface, based on the relative positions of the sun and Cassini.”If we go by 30 times and we haven’t seen it, we’re going to start getting worried,” said Kevin Baines, a member of Cassini’s Visual Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team. “But I’d say so far, just going by once, it may have been that the specular reflection point was a continent, a dry area.”So the planet could have plenty of liquids and we just got faked out. We don’t know,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s just 1 percent of the planet, we shouldn’t reach any conclusions from that.”Cassini’s first flyby of Titan, the day after the craft braked into orbit around the ringed planet, was at a distance of more than 200,000 miles. In October, the nuclear-powered probe will pass within just 745 miles of Titan and “we really expect to get a great view then,” said Elizabeth Turtle, a member of the Cassini imaging team. A mosaic of Titan’s south polar region acquired as Cassini passed by at a range of 339,000 kilometers (210,600 miles) on July 2. These images were acquired through special filters designed to see through the thick haze and atmosphere. The surface features become more blurry toward the limb, where the light reflected off the surface must pass through more atmosphere before reaching the camera. The bright spots near the bottom represent a field of clouds near the south pole. Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.In the meantime, “I can’t tell you how excited I am to be able to show you the images we’ve got of Titan,” she said at a news conference today. “These are just spectacular. It’s our first good look at Titan and Titan hasn’t disappointed us. It’s different from anything we’ve ever seen before.”Using filters to look through specific spectral “windows” in the hazy atmosphere, “we’re seeing surface features as small as 10 to 20 kilometers (six to 12 miles) across,” Turtle said. “This is 10 times better than what we saw during approach. It’s a huge improvement.”A mosaic made up of the best pictures from Cassini’s long-distance flyby show a broad region of Titan’s surface stretching from just above its equator to the moon’s south pole. A large dark feature vaguely resembling the letter H on its side was visible at the top of the mosaic. The equatorial zones below were dominated by brighter areas while a large deck of clouds was prominent near the south pole.Drifting some nine miles up in Titan’s thick nitrogen atmosphere, the clouds clearly moved and changed shape in pictures shot over a five-hour period.”These are dynamical clouds and a meteorologically interesting part of the planet where storms might be happening,” said Baines. “There’s speculation that it may even be associated with a feature on the ground, so we may have some wind motion lifting up air, methane moisture-laden air, to the point where it can condense out and form clouds.”Titan’s atmosphere is made up primarily of nitrogen with small levels of methane and molecular hydrogen. Nitrogen and methane combine in the atmosphere but the action of sunlight, even at Saturn’s distance, causes the compounds to disassociate and hydrocarbons fall to the surface.Based on a variety of lines of evidence, including a surface temperatures as low as -292 degrees Fahrenheit, scientists believe those hydrocarbons must exist in liquid form, as lakes or large pools. It’s also possible Titan is more like a giant sponge, with liquids filling cavities in the materials making up its surface. Shown here is a blowup of a region of Titan imaged on July 2, 2004. This image was taken at a distance of 339,000 kilometers (210,600 miles) and shows brightness variations on the surface of Titan and a bright field of clouds near the south pole. The field of clouds is 450 kilometers (280 miles) across and is the about the size of Arizona. Features as small as 10 kilometers (6 miles) can be discern. Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science InstituteBased on Cassini’s initial, long-distance flyby, the questions remain open. But scientists were nonetheless disappointed not to catch that tell-tale glint on the mission’s first try.”The simulations I’ve done indicate that if the surface liquid is calm and not roughed up a lot by waves, it would be enormously bright, it would be the brightest thing we would see on Titan,” said Bob West, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “The calculations also show you can have quite a bit of overlying haze and even with a rough surface, I would have expected to see it by now. And we haven’t.”Even so, Turtle was elated at what the pictures did show.”It’s dangerous to start interpreting a brand new surface that we’ve never seen before, especially on so little sleep,” she said. “But we can’t really resist. We’re seeing surface brightness variations, we’re not seeing topographic shading, the same way you would on a cloudy day on Earth, you don’t see shadows or anything like that.”What we’re seeing is just variations in the brightness of the surface. We see some surface features that are circular, others are linear. There are some features that look like they’re rather concentric to near the south pole. … And the sense that we’re not just seeing circular blobs all over the place suggests it’s not just a heavily cratered body, that there has been geologic activity on Titan.”Now, it’s anyone’s guess as to what that has been, there are quite a lot of candidates, But from these images, we can’t say what the geologic activity has been.”She said the apparent fuzziness of the surface could be the result of overlying haze, but “we are seeing some fairly fine detail as well.”Perhaps not surprisingly, the Cassini data already has forced scientists to change their thinking about the processes going on at the surface.”It had been hypothesized that the dark materials on Titan are hydrocarbons that have fallen out of the atmosphere,” Turtle said. “There’s a lot of methane in the atmosphere and that gets processed and it falls out onto the surface in simple and complex hydrocarbons. It’s been hypothesized that the dark areas were regions where that material had accumulated and that the bright areas might actually be cleaner water-ice regions that were perhaps even swept clean by methane rain coming out of the atmosphere.”That was the theory until Friday night. Data from the infrared mapping spectrometer, Baines said, indicates “the brighter areas are mixtures of water ice but there’s a mixture of other things in it which contributes to the brightness. So we think there are organics that contribute to that brightness. The brighter areas have been contaminated in a sense with organics, the dark areas are more pure water ice.”Stay tuned.In other news, Don Gurnett, principal investigator with Cassini’s Radio and Plasma Wave Science experiment, played a recording of particles slamming into the spacecraft as it passed through the plane of Saturn’s rings.Moving at some 53,000 mph, Cassini crossed the plane between the F and G rings, a region thought to be devoid of large particles that could cause any serious damage. Playing it safe, the spacecraft was oriented with its big dish antenna facing forward to act as a shield.As it turned out, that was probably a good idea. Gurnett said his instrument recorded 680 impacts per second, some 100,000 in all, during the ascending ring plane crossing and a similar number on the other side of Saturn as Cassini flew back down through the plane.The average size of the particles was on the order of a thousandth of a millimeter, about the size of smoke particles. But some were possibly as large as a tenth of a millimeter.”When one of these particles comes in and hits the spacecraft, it essentially makes a little explosion,” Gurnett said. “Hopefully the particle’s not too big so it would go through the spacecraft. … When that explosion occurs, there’s a little puff of gas that’s produced, part of it is spacecraft material and part of it the particle. And it’s heated to like a hundred thousand degrees. And this puff of gas, which is ionized, when it expands over our (instrument) antenna, some of the charge is collected on the antenna and it makes a voltage pulse.”He then played a recording of the impact data, converted into an audio file, which sounded like heavy rain hitting Cassini as it plowed through the ring plane.”I would say it was a good thing to have (Cassini’s dish) antenna pointed into the direction the particles were arriving,” he said. “That was a good move.”Additional coverage for subscribers:VIDEO:WATCH SATURDAY’S NEWS CONFERENCE ON TITAN PICTURES VIDEO:WATCH FRIDAY’S SCIENCE NEWS CONFERENCE VIDEO:THURSDAY’S NEWS BRIEFING ON CASSINI’S FIRST PICTURES VIDEO:RING PICTURES ARE PRESENTED WITH EXPERT NARRATION VIDEO:CASSINI RE-DISCOVERS TINY MOONS ATLAS AND PAN VIDEO:CASSINI BOOMING SOUNDS FROM BOW-SHOCK CROSSING VIDEO:CASSINI BEGINS ENGINE FIRING TO ENTER ORBIT VIDEO:BURN ENDS SUCCESSFULLY TO PUT CASSINI IN ORBIT VIDEO:POST-ARRIVAL NEWS CONFERENCE VIDEO:WEDNESDAY’S 12 P.M. EDT CASSINI STATUS BRIEFING VIDEO:A LOOK AT INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION VIDEO:’RING-SIDE CHAT’ ABOUT SPACE EXPLORATION VIDEO:AN OVERVIEW OF CASSINI’S RADIO SCIENCE VIDEO:TUESDAY’S CASSINI MISSION OVERVIEW BRIEFING VIDEO:CASSINI’S ARRIVAL AT SATURN EXPLAINED VIDEO:SCIENCE OBJECTIVES FOR CASSINI ORBITER VIDEO:HUYGENS LANDER SCIENCE OBJECTIVES Mars rover collectible patchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This commemorative patch celebrates NASA’s Curiosity rover mission of the Mars Science Laboratory in search of clues whether the Red Planet was once hospitable to life.Gemini 7Gemini 7: The NASA Mission Reports covers this 14-day mission by Borman and Lovell as they demonstrated some of the more essential facts of space flight. Includes CD-ROM.Choose your store: – – – Apollo patchesThe Apollo Patch Collection: Includes all 12 Apollo mission patches plus the Apollo Program Patch. Save over 20% off the Individual price.Choose your store: – – – Mars Rover mission patchA mission patch featuring NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover is available from our online.Choose your store: – – – Apollo 9 DVDOn the road to the moon, the mission of Apollo 9 stands as an important gateway in experience and procedures. This 2-DVD collection presents the crucial mission on the voyage to the moon. Choose your store: – – – Gemini 7Gemini 7: The NASA Mission Reports covers this 14-day mission by Borman and Lovell as they demonstrated some of the more essential facts of space flight. Includes CD-ROM.Choose your store: – – – Apollo patchesThe Apollo Patch Collection: Includes all 12 Apollo mission patches plus the Apollo Program Patch. Save over 20% off the Individual price.Choose your store: – – – Mars Rover mission patchA mission patch featuring NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover is available from our online.Choose your store: – – – Apollo 9 DVDOn the road to the moon, the mission of Apollo 9 stands as an important gateway in experience and procedures. This 2-DVD collection presents the crucial mission on the voyage to the moon. Choose your store: – – – Ares 1-X PatchThe official embroidered patch for the Ares 1-X rocket test flight, is available for purchase.Apollo CollageThis beautiful one piece set features the Apollo program emblem surrounded by the individual mission logos.Expedition 21The official embroidered patch for the International Space Station Expedition 21 crew is now available from our stores.Hubble PatchThe official embroidered patch for mission STS-125, the space shuttle’s last planned service call to the Hubble Space Telescope, is available for purchase. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.Cassini radar sees flow-like feature across Titan UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA NEWS RELEASEPosted: November 8, 2004A strikingly bright, lobate feature has turned up in one of Cassini’s first radar images of Saturn’s moon Titan.”It may be something that flowed,” Cassini radar team member Ralph Lorenz of the University of Arizona said. “Or it could be something carved by erosion. It’s too early to say.”But it looks very much like it’s something that oozed across the surface.It may be some sort of ‘cryovolcanic’ flow, an analog to volcanism on Earththat is not molten rock but, at Titan’s very cold temperatures, molten ice.” This is a synthetic aperture radar image of Titan. Dark regions may represent areas that are smooth, made of radar-absorbing materials, or are sloped away from the direction of illumination. A striking lobate bright feature stretches from upper left to lower right across this image, with connected ‘arms’ to the east. The fact that the lower (southern) edges of the features are brighter is consistent with the lobate structure being raised above the relatively featureless darker background. Credit: NASA/JPLCassini radar mapped about one percent of Titan’s surface during theCassini spacecraft’s first close Titan flyby Oct. 26. The radar surveycovered a strip 75 miles wide (120 kilometers) and 1,200 miles (1,960kilometers) long in Titan’s northern hemisphere.Cassini was flying about 1,550 miles (2,494 kilometers) above Titan’ssurface, with its radar centered at about 45 degrees north, 30 degreeswest, when it mapped the 90-square-mile (230-square-kilometer) area shownin the new radar image.The Cassini radar team presented the image today at the 86th annual meetingof the American Astronomical Society Division of Planetary Sciences inLouisville, Ky.The radar instrument works by bouncing radio signals off Titan’s surfaceand timing their return. The more signal reflected back to thespacecraft, the brighter the imaged area. Turning radio signals intoradar images is time consuming because so many numerical calculations mustbe made. “There’s no such thing as a ‘raw’ radar image,” Lorenz said.But two days after the Oct. 26 flyby, Cassini scientists knew that Titan isno impact-crater-pocked dead world, but a much more interesting place.Titan’s surface is young — it’s been shaped by dynamic geologicprocessing, Lorenz, Cassini interdisciplinary scientist Jonathan Lunine ofthe University of Arizona, and other Cassini scientists agree.Given this newest image, Lunine said, “Radar has provided the firstevidence for possible young cryovolcanism on Titan’s surface. Now ourchallenge is to find out what is flowing, how it works, and theimplications for Titan’s evolution.”The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the EuropeanSpace Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, adivision of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages theCassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington,D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed,developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL,working with team members from the United States and several Europeancountries.Cassini posterJust in time for the Cassini spacecraft’s arrival at Saturn, this new poster celebrates the mission to explore the ringed planet and its moons. 2005 CalendarThe 2005 edition of the Universe of the Hubble Space Telescope calendar is available from our U.S. store and will soon be available worldwide. This 12×12-inch calendar features spectacular images from the orbiting observatory.Moon panoramaTaken by Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard, this panoramic poster shows lunar module pilot Edgar Mitchell as a brilliant Sun glare reflects off the lunar module Antares.Mars Rover mission patchA mission patch featuring NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover is now available from the Astronomy Now Store.Columbia ReportThe official accident investigation report into the loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven. Includes CD-ROM. Choose your store: | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.Cassini radar shows diversity on Saturn’s moon Titan CASSINI PHOTO RELEASEPosted: October 28, 2004 Credit: NASA/JPLDownload larger image version This radar image of the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan was acquired on October 26, 2004, when the Cassini spacecraft flew approximately 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) above the surface and acquired radar data for the first time. It reveals a complex geologic surface thought to be composed of icy materials and hydrocarbons. A wide variety of geologic terrain types can be seen on the image; brighter areas may correspond to rougher terrains and darker areas are thought to be smoother. A large dark circular feature is seen at the western (left) end of the image, but very few features resembling fresh impact craters are seen. This suggests that the surface is relatively young. Enigmatic sinuous bright linear features are visible, mainly cutting across dark areas. The image is about 150 kilometers (93 miles) wide and 250 kilometers (155 miles) long, and is centered at 50 N, 82 W in the northern hemisphere of Titan, over a region that has not yet been imaged optically. The smallest details seen on the image are about 300 meters (186 miles) across. The data were acquired in the synthetic aperture radar mode of Cassini’s radar instrument. In this mode, radio signals are bounced off the surface of Titan. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The instrument team is based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Cassini posterJust in time for the Cassini spacecraft’s arrival at Saturn, this new poster celebrates the mission to explore the ringed planet and its moons. 2005 CalendarThe 2005 edition of the Universe of the Hubble Space Telescope calendar is available from our U.S. store and will soon be available worldwide. This 12×12-inch calendar features spectacular images from the orbiting observatory.Moon panoramaTaken by Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard, this panoramic poster shows lunar module pilot Edgar Mitchell as a brilliant Sun glare reflects off the lunar module Antares.Mars Rover mission patchA mission patch featuring NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover is now available from the Astronomy Now Store.Columbia ReportThe official accident investigation report into the loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven. Includes CD-ROM. Choose your store: | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.Cassini sails to Saturn ‘Flagship mission of our time’ BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
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Additional coverage for subscribers:AUDIO:TODAY’S STATUS NEWS CONFERENCE VIDEO:WORKERS INSPECT THE SCIENCE CANISTER VIDEO:TRACKING CAMERAS FIRST SPOT CAPSULE DURING DESCENT VIDEO:GENESIS CAPSULE TUMBLES TO A HIGH-SPEED IMPACT VIDEO:SLOW-MOTION VIEW OF CAPSULE SLAMMING INTO GROUND VIDEO:AERIAL VIEWS OF CAPSULE HALF BURIED IN IMPACT CRATER VIDEO:NARRATED ANIMATION SHOWS ORIGINAL RETURN PLAN VIDEO:POST-IMPACT NEWS CONFERENCE “We’re really quite confident we can still achieve a high degree of success from a science point of view,” said Roger Wiens, a researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Space and Atmospheric Sciences Group.The $264 million Genesis mission was launched in 2001 to capture samples of the solar wind, made up of electrons, protons and trace amounts of various atomic nuclei blown away from the sun’s outer atmosphere.By determining the actual concentrations of various atomic particles in the tenuous wind, scientists hope to refine current theories about the composition of the original cloud of gas and dust that coalesced to form the solar system and to gain insights into how the sun and its retinue of planets evolved.Genesis was equipped with five solar wind sample collector panels made up of materials selected because of their suitability to capture specific types of atomic particles. A primary objective of the mission was to collect different isotopes of oxygen in a so-called “concentrator.”To protect the fragile collectors from breaking, the Genesis sample return canister was designed to descend under a large parafoil before being plucked out of the sky by a helicopter.Genesis spent 27 months collecting solar wind samples in deep space before heading back to Earth last April. The sample canister re-entered Earth’s atmosphere Wednesday, but its braking parachutes never deployed and the canister hit the ground at some 193 mph, burying itself halfway in the desert soil. The return vehicle’s inner sample canister ruptured on impact.Fearing the worst, engineers peeking inside the canister, using flashlights and mirrors, were amazed at what they found.”We were rather demoralized by the events of last Wednesday,” said Don Sevilla, the lead payload recovery engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “But we have our patient in our processing facility and we are being meticulous in our investigation of it before we start peeling back the layers of the onion.”I can tell you that yesterday morning, we had great cause for optimism in that exploring into the canister with flashlight and a small mirror on a stick, we were able to find one of our primary science materials, which is the concentrator target, and it appears intact.”There is also another target material, called gold foil, that we have determined to be in very good condition and so we have great cause for some sense of recovery here, that things are looking much better today than they felt on Wednesday.Said Wiens: “The science team is really excited about having these materials intact, or mostly intact. With these samples brought back from space, we should be able to meet many, if not all of our primary science goals.”The concentrator was designed to help us achieve our number one science objective, and that is measuring the oxygen isotope composition of the sun, which will help us understand some of the details about how our solar system was formed. These samples appear to be intact. Our second, third and fourth goals should also be met as we have samples to address these issues as well.A major concern, however, is contamination from particles in Earth’s atmosphere. No attempts will be made to study fragments of solar wind collector material until extensive tests have been conducted to determine the most effective techniques for removing contamination.”It’s actually quite amazing for the amount of breach of our canister, how visibly clean it is inside,” Sevilla said. “The SRC, the sample return canister, has been broken up pretty badly and there’s a fair amount of dirt. But the very contamination-sensitive materials inside the canister, we’re not talking about great clods of dirt. There is still polished metal, looking very pretty inside our rather ugly patient.”In the near term, the smashed-up sample return canister will remain at the Utah Test and Training Range until engineers determine how best to transfer it to an ultra-clean facility at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.”We’re working by the scientific method and preserving this precious material,” Sevilla said. “You can be sure the collector materials we have are not going to be touched until we know how to keep them safe. … This is something that’s going to take months.”Two independent investigations teams are being formed to look into the Genesis re-entry failure. It’s not yet known what went wrong Wednesday, but preliminary examination of the remains of the sample canister show the parachute system never received commands to fire.Officials would not speculate on what components could have contributed to the accident and they did not mention a critical battery in the canister that ran too hot early in the mission because of a radiator problem.”All we know today is that the message (to deploy the initial parachute) apparently did not arrive at the devices that were supposed to deploy the chute,” said Gentry Lee, a senior engineer at JPL’s planetary systems division. “Any identification of any root cause beyond that at this stage would be speculation and there are people who will be investigating this in great detail in the near future.”Also studying the Genesis failure will be engineers with NASA’s Stardust mission, which will return to Earth in January 2006 carrying samples of a comet. The Stardust sample canister is scheduled to make a parachute descent to the same Utah test facility, hitting the ground at about 10 mph. No helicopters are required, but its parachutes are.”The Stardust mission is already starting an examination of the lessons learned from Genesis,” Lee said. “This will be a long process and there will be some things that can be done and some things that can’t. It is, after all, flying and there’s nothing that can be done about the overall design. It will be a question of how to maximize the probability of success given what has been learned from Genesis.”Ares 1-X PatchThe official embroidered patch for the Ares 1-X rocket test flight, is available for purchase.Apollo CollageThis beautiful one piece set features the Apollo program emblem surrounded by the individual mission logos.Expedition 21The official embroidered patch for the International Space Station Expedition 21 crew is now available from our stores.Hubble PatchThe official embroidered patch for mission STS-125, the space shuttle’s last planned service call to the Hubble Space Telescope, is available for purchase. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.Ernesto forces shuttle Atlantis off the launch pad BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
Hari demi hari, mentari pagi telah menonjolkan dirinya menunjukkan bahawa hari sudah berganti hari. Namun hari ini merupakan hari terkhir bagi bulan Ramadan. Segala persiapan telah dilaksanakan. Harapanku hari raya tahun ini dapat disambut meriah dan dapat meraikannya mengikut perancangan yang sudahpun disusun rapi awal tahun lalu.
Wealthy Texans who are bullish on Dewhurstâs chances of surviving the March 4 primary and a likely May runoff included, in the latest period, former telecommunications executive and horse breeder Kenny Troutt of Dallas, who gave $150,000; Houston road builder James âDougâ Pitcock, $100,000; former George W. Bush bundler Nancy Kinder, of Houstonâs Kinder Morgan Oil and Gas firm, $50,000; and Midland oilman Javaid Anwar, $50,000. Staplesâ campaign said Dewhurstâs average donation in the period was nearly $9,250, more than seven times the size of Staplesâ average contribution.
HAMPSHIRE Overseas player 2013: George Bailey (Australia); Sohail Tanvir (Pakistan) Overseas player 2014: Kyle Abbott (South Africa) Ins: Matt Coles (Kent).ng ? the consumer takes an image of themselves and uploads it to the site.a?au conflit que celle de l’option militaireneuse : Tihana Nemcic, ?m 2009.n t?” said Berdych.
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STORY WRITTEN FOR & USED WITH PERMISSIONPosted: May 28, 2014 A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a veteran Russian cosmonaut, a U.S. test pilot-astronaut and a German volcanologist rocketed into orbit Wednesday and chased down the International Space Station, gliding to a picture-perfect docking to boost the lab’s crew back to six. The Soyuz rocket lifts off at 1957 GMT (3:57 p.m. EDT; 1:57 a.m. local time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Photo credit: NASA/Joel KowskyWith commander Maxim Suraev at the controls, the Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft’s forward docking mechanism engaged its counterpart on the station’s Earth-facing Rassvet module at 9:44 p.m. EDT (GMT-4), five hours and 47 minutes after liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.”Contact and capture confirmed,” reported Dan Huot, NASA’s mission control commentator in Houston, as the two spacecraft came together 260 miles above the Pacific Ocean approaching the northwest coast of South America.”Congratulations,” a Russian flight controller radioed a few moments after docking. “We’re wishing you good work and wishing you safe operations.””OK, thank you very much,” Suraev replied. “We’re going to do our best, we’ll do everything we can.”Following extensive leak checks, Suraev and his crewmates — flight engineer Reid Wiseman and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst — planned to open the capsule’s forward hatch to enter the space station where Expedition 40 commander Steven Swanson, Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev were standing by to welcome them aboard.After a traditional video conference with dignitaries and family members gathered at the cosmodrome, Swanson planned to conduct a safety briefing to bring the new crew members up to speed on station systems and emergency procedures before taking a break to close out a long day.The mission began with a sky-lighting burst of fire as the Soyuz rocket’s first-stage engines roared to life at 3:57 p.m., quickly pushing the spacecraft away from the firing stand, the same launch pad used by Yuri Gagarin at the dawn of the space age.Suraev monitored the automated ascent from the command module’s center seat, flanked on his left by Wiseman, a veteran Navy carrier pilot making his first spaceflight, and on the right by fellow rookie Gerst, a European Space Agency astronaut with a doctorate in geophysics.The climb out through a starry sky went smoothly and all three crew members appeared relaxed and in good spirits as they monitored cockpit displays, flashing smiles and thumbs up gestures on downlinked television.Four minutes after liftoff, the 150-foot-tall rocket’s four liquid-fueled strap-on first-stage boosters shut down and fell away, followed three minutes later by separation of the central second stage core booster. The rocket’s third stage then ignited to continue the drive to space.The third stage shut down as planned eight minutes and 45 seconds after launch. Moments later, the Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft was released to fly on its own and the capsule’s solar arrays and antennas deployed as planned to complete the initial launch phase of the mission. The Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft approaches the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA TVAsked what he looked forward to the most in his first spaceflight, Wiseman said “floating, the view, and the chance to do some science that maybe not now, but maybe 10 of 15 years down the road helps save somebody’s life.””If we can something like that, then my time is well spent,” he said in a pre-flight interview. “But the first thing I want to do when I get there, I’ve got to give Swanny a big hug, and then it’s time to go look out the window.”The launching came amid increasing tension between the United States and Russia in the wake of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, retaliatory U.S. sanctions and subsequent threats by a senior Russian leader to restrict the use of Russian rocket engines in American Atlas 5 boosters used to launch U.S. military satellites.Dmitri Rogozin, Russian deputy prime minister for space and defense, has also threatened to pull out of the station project in 2020, well before NASA’s goal of operating the outpost at least through 2024.For their part, Suraev, Wiseman and Gerst said preparations for the Soyuz TMA-13M flight were routine and that the Cold War-era rhetoric in the wake of the Ukraine crisis had no impact on day-to-day space station operations.”Our team, our crew is not just a team of three different guys from three different nationalities or continents,” Gerst said at a pre-launch news conference. “We’re actually a group of friends.”Along with two years of intense training “we’ve spent weekends together, we’ve spent weekends on Max’s dacha, we’ve spent weekends together in Cologne, our families know each other really well,” he said. “Space is without borders. We fly to an International Space Station where we do experiments that come back to Earth, that benefit all of us, all humankind.”The crew answered another question about international relations by standing and embracing, prompting cheers and applause. Suraev then posed with his crewmates for a “selfie” to another round of cheers.”When it gets right down to it, we’re still supporting each other,” NASA space station Program Manager Michael Suffredini told CBS News in a recent interview. “We talk at my level, we’re talking at (headquarters) level, we regularly have telecons to reaffirm our commitment. Every time we do something together the teams work and support each other the way we always have.”We’re trying really hard to do what both of our government’s have essentially told us to do (and) that is to continue working in spaceflight the way we have.” The space station is back to a six-person crew. Photo credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight NowThe combined Expedition 40 crew faces a busy summer with two Russian spacewalks on tap, up to three U.S. EVAs, the arrival of a Russian Progress supply ship, a final European ATV cargo carrier and two U.S. spacecraft: an Orbital Sciences Cygnus supply craft and a SpaceX Dragon capsule.”Our key challenges for this increment will be managing the slew of vehicle traffic that we have in addition to the EVAs that are planned and of course, we also have a very ambitious utilization schedule as well on top of that,” said lead Flight Director Greg Whitney. “So it’s going to be a challenging time for both the ground and the on-board crew, but we’re looking forward to it. It’ll be a great mission.”Wiseman said he was particularly interested in medical research using the crew as test subjects.”We have a ton of human research planned,” he said. “They’re going to look at my blood, my skin, my bones, my muscle, my eyes especially. And I’m really looking forward to getting into all that science. All that stuff fascinates me. As a Navy pilot, I always had an aversion to medicine. Now I’m being forced into it and I absolutely love it!”John Glenn Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The historic first orbital flight by an American is marked by this commemorative patch for John Glenn and Friendship 7.Final Shuttle Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The crew emblem for the final space shuttle mission is available in our store. Get this piece of history!Celebrate the shuttle programFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This special commemorative patch marks the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. Available in our store!Anniversary Shuttle PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This embroidered patch commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Program. The design features the space shuttle Columbia’s historic maiden flight of April 12, 1981.Mercury anniversaryFree shipping to U.S. addresses!Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Alan Shephard’s historic Mercury mission with this collectors’ item, the official commemorative embroidered patch.Fallen Heroes Patch CollectionThe official patches from Apollo 1, the shuttle Challenger and Columbia crews are available in the store. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.ULA awaits NASA decision before outfitting pad for crew SPACEFLIGHT NOWPosted: July 9, 2014 United Launch Alliance has completed the design of a modified Atlas 5 launch pad to accommodate astronaut flights at Cape Canaveral, and construction workers will start installing the upgrades this fall if one of ULA’s partners wins NASA funding in the commercial crew program. Artist’s concept of an Atlas 5 rocket and CST-100 crew capsule on the launch pad. Credit: United Launch AllianceThe Colorado-based rocket contractor announced Monday the completion of the critical design review for crew accommodations at the Atlas 5 rocket’s Complex 41 launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.The launch pad modifications are designed to allow Boeing’s CST-100 crew capsule to lift off from the launch pad with astronauts.”This was a critical milestone to ensure all elements are in place to begin the construction as early as this fall to support the Boeing team and crewed launches of CST-100 from SLC-41,” said Ellen Plese, director of ULA human launch services, in a ULA statement. “As ULA was creating the innovative new design elements for the pad, human safety factors were the primary consideration.”Boeing Co. is one of three companies bidding to win NASA funding to finish development of human-rated spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, ending U.S. reliance on Russia for crew transportation.NASA says it will select one or more companies to continue working on space taxis in August or September, leading to operational flights to the space station by the end of 2017.Boeing’s CST-100 crew capsule is competing against SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and the Dream Chaser lifting body space plane proposed by Sierra Nevada Corp. The CST-100 and Dream Chaser vehicles are designed to initially launch on ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket, while SpaceX plans to launch the Dragon spacecraft on its own Falcon 9 booster.If Boeing or Sierra Nevada receive funding to complete development of their crew-carrying vehicles, ULA says construction at the Atlas 5 launch pad will kick off before the end of the year.Orlando, Fla.-based Hensel Phelps Construction Co. is leading the contractor team working on the Atlas 5 launch pad modifications.The changes planned for Complex 41 include a crew access tower and crew access arm with a white room for astronauts to climb through the hatch into a spacecraft mounted on top of the Atlas 5 launcher. Engineers also designed a crew escape system designed to whisk astronauts safely away from the rocket in case of a dangerous countdown mishap.The fixed crew access tower, standing more than 20 stories tall, will be built on the west side of the Atlas 5 launch pad, just a car width away from the mounting point for the rocket’s mobile umbilical tower and launch platform.Technicians assemble the Atlas 5 rocket’s booster stage, Centaur upper stage and payload inside the Vertical Integration Facility about 1,800 feet south of the launch pad. The rocket rolls to the launch pad on the eve of liftoff on top of a mobile launch table, which locks into place over the flame trench to connect the rocket with propellant plumbing and electrical power.Officials said the design of the launch pad upgrades so far has been specifically geared to support flights of the Boeing CST-100 spacecraft because the aerospace giant received more NASA funding than its competitors. NASA awarded agreements to Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada in August 2012 worth up to $460 million, $440 million and $212.5 million, respectively. The space agency added a cumulative $55 million to the awards in amendments posted last year.NASA pays the companies in installments upon completion of milestones such as hardware testing, financing and design reviews.SpaceX hopes to launch astronaut crews from Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A, the former Apollo and space shuttle launch facility. SpaceX signed a 20-year lease of the launch pad in April.Howard Biegler, human launch services lead for ULA, said last month the construction at Complex 41 will take about 18 months to complete.One of the first steps in construction — if it gets the go-ahead — will be to excavate about 30 feet of concrete, then drive 30-inch diameter pillars 105 feet into Florida bedrock.Workers will prepare seven segments comprising the main structure of the crew access tower, which will measure 20 feet by 20 feet, at a nearby staging point before transporting the steel sections to the launch pad between Atlas 5 launches for hoisting by a crane.Once construction teams add the crew access arm and steel cladding, ULA plans to hook up hydraulics and instrumentation while testing the system with a CST-100 mockup at the launch pad.The Atlas 5’s busy manifest, filled with missions for the U.S. military, NASA and commercial customers, will continue unabated during the launch pad rework, according to Dan Collins, ULA’s chief operating officer.Collins said 14 Atlas 5 launches are planned from the launch pad during the 18-month construction phase.Officials expect the launch pad crew accommodations under development for Boeing’s CST-100 spacecraft could be adjusted to support Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser if it flies.”Boeing has been the customer that has moved forward, and that’s why the design is focused right now on CST-100,” Collins said.”September of 2016 is when I will have everything built and ready to support commercial crew,” Biegler told reporters on a tour of the launch pad.ULA is also working on an emergency detection system to be bolted to Atlas 5 rockets on crewed missions. The avionics box will monitor the health of the launch vehicle and trigger an in-flight abort if it detects a major anomaly.Boeing’s CST-100 crew capsule will launch on an Atlas 5 rocket with two solid rocket boosters and a dual-engine Centaur upper stage.Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: .John Glenn Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The historic first orbital flight by an American is marked by this commemorative patch for John Glenn and Friendship 7.Final Shuttle Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The crew emblem for the final space shuttle mission is available in our store. Get this piece of history!Celebrate the shuttle programFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This special commemorative patch marks the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. Available in our store!Anniversary Shuttle PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This embroidered patch commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Program. The design features the space shuttle Columbia’s historic maiden flight of April 12, 1981.Mercury anniversaryFree shipping to U.S. addresses!Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Alan Shephard’s historic Mercury mission with this collectors’ item, the official commemorative embroidered patch.Fallen Heroes Patch CollectionThe official patches from Apollo 1, the shuttle Challenger and Columbia crews are available in the store. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.ULA begins search for new American rocket engine SPACEFLIGHT NOWPosted: June 16, 2014 United Launch Alliance announced Monday it has signed contracts with multiple U.S. companies to mature next-generation rocket engine concepts that officials say could replace the Atlas 5 booster’s Russian-built RD-180 engine by 2019. File photo of an Atlas 5 launch from Cape Canaveral on May 22. Credit: ULAThe commercial contracts between ULA and prospective U.S. engine builders cover technical feasibility analyses, high-fidelity planning, schedule, cost and technical risk assessments, and cost estimates, ULA said in a statement released Monday.The announcement comes after a chorus of lawmakers and experts urged the U.S. launch industry to wean itself off of foreign propulsion systems in the wake of provocations from Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin.ULA did not identify which companies will undertake the engine studies. Jessica Rye, a ULA spokesperson, also declined to say how many companies signed the contracts with the launch provider.The contracts are for early-stage studies of a hydrocarbon-fueled engine optimized for first stage propulsion with “aggressive recurring cost targets,” according to ULA.All the engine concepts will support a first launch by 2019, and ULA expects to select a future concept and engine supplier by the fourth quarter of this year, the company said. ULA will evaluate the feasibility of the new engine concepts for both private investment and the potential for government-industry investment.ULA’s Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets launch the U.S. government’s most critical and costly national security satellites, plus many of NASA’s robotic science missions and interplanetary probes.The kerosene-fueled RD-180 engine used on the first stage of ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket is built by NPO Energomash in the Moscow region. U.S.-based RD AMROSS, a joint venture of Energomash and United Technologies Corp., imports the engines to the United States and supplies them to ULA for attachment to Atlas 5 booster stages at a rocket manufacturing plant in Decatur, Ala.”While the RD-180 has been a remarkable success, we believe now is the right time for American investment in a domestic engine,” Michael Gass, ULA’s president and CEO. “At the same time, given that ULA is the only certified launch provider of our nation’s most important satellites, it is critical that America preserve current capabilities and options while simultaneously pursuing this new engine.”ULA said it will continue to work with RD AMROSS to “evaluate the long-term feasibility of the RD-180 in competition with the anticipated new engine.” The companies are discussing product improvements, U.S. production of the RD-180 and “other enhancements” to ensure its future viability, the press release said.”ULA has a number of very promising alternatives and we are working with the very best propulsion companies in America,” said George Sowers, ULA’s vice president of advanced programs and leader for the propulsion study. “There are many exciting advanced technologies that are mature and can be used to enhance our capabilities and our competitiveness.”The RD-180 engine has logged a perfect record of 52 successful flights since 2000, including 46 missions on the Atlas 5.Monday’s announcement by ULA makes it the second company reconsidering its reliance on Russian rocket propulsion. Orbital Sciences Corp., operator of the Antares launcher, is weighing a switch to a solid-fueled first stage for its commercial resupply missions to the International Space Station.Concerns over the use of Russian of rocket engines to launch U.S. military and intelligence-gathering payloads, an arrangement that attracted little criticism for nearly two decades, rose after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.ULA rival SpaceX filed suit against the U.S. Air Force in late April asking a judge to overturn a sole-source $11 billion contract between ULA and the Pentagon for 28 satellite launches.SpaceX says it can launch the government’s military communications, navigation and surveillance payloads at a fraction of the cost of ULA’s rockets. But the Falcon 9 rocket operated by California-based SpaceX is not yet certified to launch the Pentagon’s most expensive and unique payloads, and Air Force officials have said they will not give a launch contract to SpaceX until it is certified.A federal judge initially issued an injunction barring ULA and the Air Force from purchasing new rocket engines from Russia after SpaceX raised questions whether payments for the engines benefited Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin, who was sanctioned by President Barack Obama along with other top Russian politicians after Russia’s incursion into Ukraine.The injunction against RD-180 imports was lifted a week later after U.S. government officials assured the judge the engine trade did not violate sanctions levied against Rogozin. An RD-180 engine fires on a test stand at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in 1998. Credit: NASARogozin, whose purview includes Russia’s space and defense industries, then held a May 13 press conference declaring that Russia would no longer sell RD-180 engines for use on U.S. military satellite launches.Air Force and ULA officials have said they have received no formal notification that Russia will cease RD-180 engine exports to the United States.Executives from ULA, RD AMROSS and NPO Energomash met May 30 in Frankfurt, Germany, to discuss the status of RD-180 engine production in Russia, according to Dan Collins, ULA’s chief operating officer, who described the meeting as a “good day-long conversation.”Collins said the meeting adjourned with no notice of any disruption to the RD-180 engine supply from Russia.”We’re working very well together, and they’re continuing to supply engines,” Collins said. “We’re looking forward to getting more them in here in the not-too-distant future.”Gass told reporters in May that five RD-180 engines were due to arrive in the United States by the end of 2014. Fifteen RD-180s are currently in the country awaiting launch on Atlas 5 rockets.A commission of aerospace experts, chaired by retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Mitch Mitchell, impaneled by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel this spring to study the Russian engine predicament recommended the Pentagon back the development of a new liquid-fueled engine with similar performance to the RD-180, which generates about 860,000 pounds of thrust at sea level.House and Senate lawmakers have proposed funding for a new liquid-fueled U.S.-built rocket engine to replace the RD-180, directing the Pentagon oversee the development in partnership with NASA.Known as the “Mitchell report,” the Defense Department study concluded the new U.S.-made engine should burn hydrocarbon propellants, but it does not specify which type of hydrocarbon — highly refined rocket-grade RP-1 kerosene or liquid methane. The engine would burn liquid oxygen along with kerosene or methane fuel for combustion.ULA’s statement issued Monday also does not distinguish between kerosene or methane for the next-generation engine concept studies contracted with American propulsion providers.Gen. William Shelton, the outgoing head of U.S. Air Force Space Command, said last month he also backed the development of a large U.S. rocket engine. Shelton and Mitchell panel agreed that a new U.S.-built engine was preferable to producing the Russian-designed RD-180 engine in the United States.Although estimates from the Air Force, industry and independent experts differ, most predict it could take five-to-eight years and cost more than $1 billion to develop a U.S.-built replacement for the RD-180 engine.The panel chaired by Gen. Mitchell forecast a new engine could be available by 2022.But industry officials have said a new engine could be ready by 2019 with sufficient funding.One contender for the new U.S.-produced propulsion system is the AR-1 engine by Aerojet Rocketdyne, which manufactures the RS-68 hydrogen-fueled main engine for ULA’s Delta 4 rocket.Aerojet Rocketdyne officials have said they aim to sell two of the 500,000-pound-thrust kerosene-fueled engines for $25 million per pair.SpaceX, a ULA competitor, is the only U.S. liquid-fueled rocket engine builder besides Aerojet Rocketdyne with a large first stage propulsion system flying on a space launcher today.The performance of SpaceX’s Merlin 1D engine flying on the Falcon 9 rocket does not match the capability of the RD-180.But SpaceX is working on its own million-pound-class Raptor engine. Fueled by methane, the engine is set to begin ground testing at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.Speaking at the Atlantic Council on June 4, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said she was not sure building a replacement for the RD-180 was the right choice.”Investing in liquid propulsion technologies is a great choice for sure, certainly on components that can be used to build whatever engine the propulsion community finds a market for,” Shotwell said. “I think investing in the community is a great idea. I’d like to see it more on the component development — technology development — side.”Northrop Grumman Corp., which designed a 1.1-million-pound thrust engine for NASA more than a decade ago, provided input to the Pentagon’s propulsion panel led by Gen. Mitchell, according to Bob Bishop, a company spokesperson.Bishop declined comment on the status of the specific engine concept designed for NASA, known as the TR-107, but said Northrop Grumman agrees with the Mitchell report’s recommendations.”We’re watching the situation closely, hoping the RD-180 supply isn’t disrupted,” Bishop said. “Northrop Grumman agrees that a modern U.S. hydrocarbon engine is needed and that focused risk reduction investments should be made.”If the Pentagon proceeds with a government-supported engine development program, bills in Congress require the military to oversee a competitive procurement in which all companies capable of building an engine would be welcome to submit bids.Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: .John Glenn Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The historic first orbital flight by an American is marked by this commemorative patch for John Glenn and Friendship 7.Final Shuttle Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The crew emblem for the final space shuttle mission is available in our store. Get this piece of history!Celebrate the shuttle programFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This special commemorative patch marks the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. Available in our store!Anniversary Shuttle PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This embroidered patch commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Program. The design features the space shuttle Columbia’s historic maiden flight of April 12, 1981.Mercury anniversaryFree shipping to U.S. addresses!Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Alan Shephard’s historic Mercury mission with this collectors’ item, the official commemorative embroidered patch.Fallen Heroes Patch CollectionThe official patches from Apollo 1, the shuttle Challenger and Columbia crews are available in the store. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.ULA, SpaceX reschedule launches after radar outage SPACEFLIGHT NOWPosted: April 4, 2014 After a two-week delay to wait for the U.S. Air Force to restore a critical radar tracker, United Launch Alliance and SpaceX have rescheduled their next rocket missions from Cape Canaveral for April 10 and April 14. The Atlas 5 rocket rolled to the launch pad March 24 before a delay due to a radar outage on the Air Force Eastern Range. Workers returned the launcher to its integration building to wait for another launch opportunity. Photo credit: Stephen Clark/Spaceflight NowOfficials put the launches on hold after a component on a rocket tracking radar short-circuited March 24, causing it to overheat and knock the radar offline.Without the radar, the Air Force’s Eastern Range was unable to support launch attempts for the ULA Atlas 5 and SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets then set for March 25 and March 30.The Eastern Range is a network of communications stations, tracking radars and safety assets along Florida’s East Coast and stretching into the Atlantic Ocean under the ground tracks of rockets as they fly into orbit.The range’s job is to keep the public and property safe from launching rockets in case the vehicles fly off course.The radar responsible for the delays is owned by the Air Force but lies on the property of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.First up on April 10 is the Atlas 5 launch of a top secret payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. government agency which owns and operates imaging and eavesdropping spy satellites.Liftoff from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 launch pad is set for a launch period opening at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) and extending until 2:35 p.m. EDT (1835 GMT).Officials have not disclosed the actual launch window within that period, citing security concerns.The April 10 launch will come one week after an Atlas 5 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with the military’s DMSP F19 weather satellite. Photo of the Falcon 9 rocket undergoing a prelaunch static fire test on the launch pad in March. Photo credit: SpaceXA Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled for liftoff April 14 from the nearby Complex 40 pad with a Dragon cargo spacecraft heading to the International Space Station.The automated spaceship will deliver 2.4 tons of equipment to the space station under contract to NASA.Launch on April 14 is set for 4:58 p.m. EDT (2058 GMT), and the Dragon spacecraft will arrive at the space station April 16.A spokesperson with the Air Force’s 45th Space Wing on Friday said the Eastern Range is expected to be ready to support both launches. He did not say whether the Air Force had repaired the damaged radar or activated a backup system to restore the lost tracking capability.Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: .John Glenn Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The historic first orbital flight by an American is marked by this commemorative patch for John Glenn and Friendship 7.Final Shuttle Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The crew emblem for the final space shuttle mission is available in our store. Get this piece of history!Celebrate the shuttle programFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This special commemorative patch marks the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. Available in our store!Anniversary Shuttle PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This embroidered patch commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Program. The design features the space shuttle Columbia’s historic maiden flight of April 12, 1981.Mercury anniversaryFree shipping to U.S. addresses!Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Alan Shephard’s historic Mercury mission with this collectors’ item, the official commemorative embroidered patch.Fallen Heroes Patch CollectionThe official patches from Apollo 1, the shuttle Challenger and Columbia crews are available in the store. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.ULA’s common upper stage engine to fly this year SPACEFLIGHT NOWPosted: June 4, 2014 United Launch Alliance plans to debut a new version of the venerable RL10 upper stage engine on an Atlas 5 rocket flight in December in a step toward the development of a common upper stage across the company’s Atlas and Delta launcher fleets, a move officials say will reduce costs and increase performance. A view of an RL10 engine being prepared for launch on a Delta 4 rocket. Credit: NASA/KSCBut further upgrades to ULA’s rocket upper stages, including concepts to build long-duration deep space tugs and propellant depots, may take a back seat as focus grows on developing a powerful U.S.-built booster engine to end reliance on Russian propulsion.The first flight of the RL10C upper stage engine is scheduled for an Atlas 5 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., in December. The flight will place a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office into orbit in a mission designated NROL-35 by the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency.Developed with U.S. Air Force funding and private investment, the Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10C engine will accelerate satellites into orbit after boosts from first stage engines on the Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rocket.Designed to burn a mix of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants, the engine passed final flight qualification in June 2013, and the RL10C’s first flight is set for December, said Bernard Kutter, a manager in ULA’s advanced programs division.”The RL10C engine is fully qualified and can be used on either Atlas or Delta,” said George Sowers, ULA’s vice president of strategic architecture.Sowers said the RL10C will become the standard upper stage engine for all of the company’s Atlas 5 and Delta 4 launches. An exception will be for the two-engine version of the Atlas 5’s Centaur upper stage, which will continue flying with the RL10A-4-2 version of the engine.The shape of the RL10C’s bell-shaped nozzle prevents two of the engines from being placed side-by-side in a dual-engine configuration, Sowers said.The Delta 4 rocket’s upper stage is powered by an RL10B-2 engine, which features a carbon-carbon nozzle extension and other upgrades to raise thrust and specific impulse, the measure of a rocket engine’s efficiency.ULA is developing the dual-engine Centaur stage to launch crews and cargo on commercial missions to the International Space Station. Sowers said the dual-engine Centaur will also fly with U.S. military, NASA and commercial payloads on launches into low Earth orbit.Sowers said ULA is developing the dual-engine Centaur with internal research and development money.The RL10 engine has flown hundreds of times since the 1960s, helping launch U.S. military payloads, NASA science missions and interplanetary probes, and commercial communications satellites. File photo of an RL10 engine on a Centaur upper stage being stacked to assemble an Atlas 5 rocket. Credit: NASA/KSCAccording to Sowers, the switch to the RL10C engine will not raise the risk of groundings of both of ULA’s rocket families in the event of a problem with the upper stage engine.”We have that problem today because an RL10A and an RL10B have an awful lot of commonality,” Sowers said. “Having more commonality could, in some ways, actually enhance how we can rapidly resolve anomalies because you don’t have to figure out the differences. Are the differences relevant? So we don’t really see any drawbacks.”When a fuel leak in an RL10B engine on a Delta 4 rocket threatened to prevent the launcher from placing its GPS navigation payload in the correct orbit, ULA delayed several downstream Delta 4 missions during an investigation into the anomaly. Atlas 5 rockets fitted with the RL10A engine were cleared to continue flying.The Delta 4 rocket stricken with the fuel leak ended up deploying the GPS satellite in the targeted orbit despite the problem.The benefits of the switch to RL10C engines include cost reductions and better management of ULA’s engine inventory.”There are cetainly cost benefits to having commonality,” Sowers said. “Another real benefit is being able to use the inventory of RL10B engines inherited from Boeing on both vehicles.”Boeing developed the Delta 4 rocket before merging with Lockheed Martin’s Atlas program to form United Launch Alliance in 2006. Boeing had a stockpile of RL10B engines left over from canceled launches during the contraction of the commercial satellite industry in the early 2000s, plus lost contracts and delays in the readiness of military payloads.Sowers said Aerojet Rocketdyne is converting their inventory of RL10B engines to the RL10C version to allow them to fly on either the Atlas 5 or Delta 4 rocket. The conversion permits the companies to reduce the build rate of the RL10A engine for only designated missions, such as dual-engine Centaur flights with space station crews or cargo.The modifications include installing avionics for active propellant mixture control, a capability currently on the Atlas 5’s RL10A engines but not on the Delta 4’s RL10B version. The change will allow the Delta 4 to carry up to 200 pounds of additional payload on certain missions, according to a user’s guide posted on ULA’s website.The RL10C also introduces a redundant dual direct spark ignition system — a standard on the Atlas 5’s RL10A engine — to the Delta 4 rocket family. File photo of an RL10 engine on a Delta 4 rocket’s second stage. Credit: NASA/KSCDelta 4 missions will fly with an RL10C engine with the full-length extendible nozzle similar to the RL10B engines flying today. The Atlas 5’s RL10C engine will fly with a truncated nozzle.”The original plan was to go to all RL10Cs, but when the commercial crew program came along, it had some unique requirements that drove the need to retain the RL10A capability,” Sowers said.ULA also has plans to develop a larger 5-meter (16.4-foot) diameter upper stage with two RL10C engines. Called the Advanced Common Evolved Stage, or ACES, the upper stage would have a longer lifetime in space, capable of serving as an Earth departure stage for deep space missions or as a propellant depot.But Sowers said the ACES development could be put on hold as Congress and the Air Force focus on building a new U.S. rocket engine to replace the Russian RD-180 engine used on the first stage of ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket.”The common upper stage is something we’ve been studying for years and years,” Sowers said. “It’s still definitely in our planning. If you asked me six months ago, I would have said the next thing we want to do in terms of upgrading our vehicles is the upper stage. Now I might say the booster engine is the next thing we need to work on.”One design feature of the upgraded ACES system is a variable-thrust hydrogen-fueled aluminum thruster. It is set for a demonstration launch in 2016. The thruster will be fed by waste gases from the upper stage’s propellant tanks, which would otherwise be discarded.Sowers said the thruster will allow the upper stage to de-orbit without devoting precious propellant reserves to do the job, removing a performance penalty.”All the boil-off we normally have, we can run through that for a safe disposal,” Sowers said. “Disposing of upper stages is becoming more and more important because of the debris and junk up there. This is a capability we’re really looking forward to having on-board.”Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: .John Glenn Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The historic first orbital flight by an American is marked by this commemorative patch for John Glenn and Friendship 7.Final Shuttle Mission PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!The crew emblem for the final space shuttle mission is available in our store. Get this piece of history!Celebrate the shuttle programFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This special commemorative patch marks the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. Available in our store!Anniversary Shuttle PatchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This embroidered patch commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Program. The design features the space shuttle Columbia’s historic maiden flight of April 12, 1981.Mercury anniversaryFree shipping to U.S. addresses!Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Alan Shephard’s historic Mercury mission with this collectors’ item, the official commemorative embroidered patch.Fallen Heroes Patch CollectionThe official patches from Apollo 1, the shuttle Challenger and Columbia crews are available in the store. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.Ultrasound on Discovery arm; Endeavour tiles hit BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR & USED WITH PERMISSIONPosted: July 3, 2004New pictures of Saturn’s enigmatic moon Titan, taken by cameras aboard the Cassini probe that are capable of penetrating the thick smog-like haze that blankets the frigid world, show strange looking surface features and a deck of methane clouds the size of Arizona. But so far, the instruments have not detected reflections from the surfaces of lakes or small seas of liquid hydrocarbons many scientists believe must form in the ultra-cold environment. Piercing the ubiquitous layer of smog enshrouding Titan, this combination of images from the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer reveals an exotic surface covered with a variety of materials in the southern hemisphere. Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.But like the sun glint off rivers and lakes visible from airplanes on Earth, the reflections in question can only be seen in a small region of Titan, about 1 percent of the visible surface, based on the relative positions of the sun and Cassini.”If we go by 30 times and we haven’t seen it, we’re going to start getting worried,” said Kevin Baines, a member of Cassini’s Visual Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team. “But I’d say so far, just going by once, it may have been that the specular reflection point was a continent, a dry area.”So the planet could have plenty of liquids and we just got faked out. We don’t know,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s just 1 percent of the planet, we shouldn’t reach any conclusions from that.”Cassini’s first flyby of Titan, the day after the craft braked into orbit around the ringed planet, was at a distance of more than 200,000 miles. In October, the nuclear-powered probe will pass within just 745 miles of Titan and “we really expect to get a great view then,” said Elizabeth Turtle, a member of the Cassini imaging team. A mosaic of Titan’s south polar region acquired as Cassini passed by at a range of 339,000 kilometers (210,600 miles) on July 2. These images were acquired through special filters designed to see through the thick haze and atmosphere. The surface features become more blurry toward the limb, where the light reflected off the surface must pass through more atmosphere before reaching the camera. The bright spots near the bottom represent a field of clouds near the south pole. Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.In the meantime, “I can’t tell you how excited I am to be able to show you the images we’ve got of Titan,” she said at a news conference today. “These are just spectacular. It’s our first good look at Titan and Titan hasn’t disappointed us. It’s different from anything we’ve ever seen before.”Using filters to look through specific spectral “windows” in the hazy atmosphere, “we’re seeing surface features as small as 10 to 20 kilometers (six to 12 miles) across,” Turtle said. “This is 10 times better than what we saw during approach. It’s a huge improvement.”A mosaic made up of the best pictures from Cassini’s long-distance flyby show a broad region of Titan’s surface stretching from just above its equator to the moon’s south pole. A large dark feature vaguely resembling the letter H on its side was visible at the top of the mosaic. The equatorial zones below were dominated by brighter areas while a large deck of clouds was prominent near the south pole.Drifting some nine miles up in Titan’s thick nitrogen atmosphere, the clouds clearly moved and changed shape in pictures shot over a five-hour period.”These are dynamical clouds and a meteorologically interesting part of the planet where storms might be happening,” said Baines. “There’s speculation that it may even be associated with a feature on the ground, so we may have some wind motion lifting up air, methane moisture-laden air, to the point where it can condense out and form clouds.”Titan’s atmosphere is made up primarily of nitrogen with small levels of methane and molecular hydrogen. Nitrogen and methane combine in the atmosphere but the action of sunlight, even at Saturn’s distance, causes the compounds to disassociate and hydrocarbons fall to the surface.Based on a variety of lines of evidence, including a surface temperatures as low as -292 degrees Fahrenheit, scientists believe those hydrocarbons must exist in liquid form, as lakes or large pools. It’s also possible Titan is more like a giant sponge, with liquids filling cavities in the materials making up its surface. Shown here is a blowup of a region of Titan imaged on July 2, 2004. This image was taken at a distance of 339,000 kilometers (210,600 miles) and shows brightness variations on the surface of Titan and a bright field of clouds near the south pole. The field of clouds is 450 kilometers (280 miles) across and is the about the size of Arizona. Features as small as 10 kilometers (6 miles) can be discern. Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science InstituteBased on Cassini’s initial, long-distance flyby, the questions remain open. But scientists were nonetheless disappointed not to catch that tell-tale glint on the mission’s first try.”The simulations I’ve done indicate that if the surface liquid is calm and not roughed up a lot by waves, it would be enormously bright, it would be the brightest thing we would see on Titan,” said Bob West, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “The calculations also show you can have quite a bit of overlying haze and even with a rough surface, I would have expected to see it by now. And we haven’t.”Even so, Turtle was elated at what the pictures did show.”It’s dangerous to start interpreting a brand new surface that we’ve never seen before, especially on so little sleep,” she said. “But we can’t really resist. We’re seeing surface brightness variations, we’re not seeing topographic shading, the same way you would on a cloudy day on Earth, you don’t see shadows or anything like that.”What we’re seeing is just variations in the brightness of the surface. We see some surface features that are circular, others are linear. There are some features that look like they’re rather concentric to near the south pole. … And the sense that we’re not just seeing circular blobs all over the place suggests it’s not just a heavily cratered body, that there has been geologic activity on Titan.”Now, it’s anyone’s guess as to what that has been, there are quite a lot of candidates, But from these images, we can’t say what the geologic activity has been.”She said the apparent fuzziness of the surface could be the result of overlying haze, but “we are seeing some fairly fine detail as well.”Perhaps not surprisingly, the Cassini data already has forced scientists to change their thinking about the processes going on at the surface.”It had been hypothesized that the dark materials on Titan are hydrocarbons that have fallen out of the atmosphere,” Turtle said. “There’s a lot of methane in the atmosphere and that gets processed and it falls out onto the surface in simple and complex hydrocarbons. It’s been hypothesized that the dark areas were regions where that material had accumulated and that the bright areas might actually be cleaner water-ice regions that were perhaps even swept clean by methane rain coming out of the atmosphere.”That was the theory until Friday night. Data from the infrared mapping spectrometer, Baines said, indicates “the brighter areas are mixtures of water ice but there’s a mixture of other things in it which contributes to the brightness. So we think there are organics that contribute to that brightness. The brighter areas have been contaminated in a sense with organics, the dark areas are more pure water ice.”Stay tuned.In other news, Don Gurnett, principal investigator with Cassini’s Radio and Plasma Wave Science experiment, played a recording of particles slamming into the spacecraft as it passed through the plane of Saturn’s rings.Moving at some 53,000 mph, Cassini crossed the plane between the F and G rings, a region thought to be devoid of large particles that could cause any serious damage. Playing it safe, the spacecraft was oriented with its big dish antenna facing forward to act as a shield.As it turned out, that was probably a good idea. Gurnett said his instrument recorded 680 impacts per second, some 100,000 in all, during the ascending ring plane crossing and a similar number on the other side of Saturn as Cassini flew back down through the plane.The average size of the particles was on the order of a thousandth of a millimeter, about the size of smoke particles. But some were possibly as large as a tenth of a millimeter.”When one of these particles comes in and hits the spacecraft, it essentially makes a little explosion,” Gurnett said. “Hopefully the particle’s not too big so it would go through the spacecraft. … When that explosion occurs, there’s a little puff of gas that’s produced, part of it is spacecraft material and part of it the particle. And it’s heated to like a hundred thousand degrees. And this puff of gas, which is ionized, when it expands over our (instrument) antenna, some of the charge is collected on the antenna and it makes a voltage pulse.”He then played a recording of the impact data, converted into an audio file, which sounded like heavy rain hitting Cassini as it plowed through the ring plane.”I would say it was a good thing to have (Cassini’s dish) antenna pointed into the direction the particles were arriving,” he said. “That was a good move.”Additional coverage for subscribers:VIDEO:WATCH SATURDAY’S NEWS CONFERENCE ON TITAN PICTURES VIDEO:WATCH FRIDAY’S SCIENCE NEWS CONFERENCE VIDEO:THURSDAY’S NEWS BRIEFING ON CASSINI’S FIRST PICTURES VIDEO:RING PICTURES ARE PRESENTED WITH EXPERT NARRATION VIDEO:CASSINI RE-DISCOVERS TINY MOONS ATLAS AND PAN VIDEO:CASSINI BOOMING SOUNDS FROM BOW-SHOCK CROSSING VIDEO:CASSINI BEGINS ENGINE FIRING TO ENTER ORBIT VIDEO:BURN ENDS SUCCESSFULLY TO PUT CASSINI IN ORBIT VIDEO:POST-ARRIVAL NEWS CONFERENCE VIDEO:WEDNESDAY’S 12 P.M. EDT CASSINI STATUS BRIEFING VIDEO:A LOOK AT INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION VIDEO:’RING-SIDE CHAT’ ABOUT SPACE EXPLORATION VIDEO:AN OVERVIEW OF CASSINI’S RADIO SCIENCE VIDEO:TUESDAY’S CASSINI MISSION OVERVIEW BRIEFING VIDEO:CASSINI’S ARRIVAL AT SATURN EXPLAINED VIDEO:SCIENCE OBJECTIVES FOR CASSINI ORBITER VIDEO:HUYGENS LANDER SCIENCE OBJECTIVES Mars rover collectible patchFree shipping to U.S. addresses!This commemorative patch celebrates NASA’s Curiosity rover mission of the Mars Science Laboratory in search of clues whether the Red Planet was once hospitable to life.Gemini 7Gemini 7: The NASA Mission Reports covers this 14-day mission by Borman and Lovell as they demonstrated some of the more essential facts of space flight. Includes CD-ROM.Choose your store: – – – Apollo patchesThe Apollo Patch Collection: Includes all 12 Apollo mission patches plus the Apollo Program Patch. Save over 20% off the Individual price.Choose your store: – – – Mars Rover mission patchA mission patch featuring NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover is available from our online.Choose your store: – – – Apollo 9 DVDOn the road to the moon, the mission of Apollo 9 stands as an important gateway in experience and procedures. This 2-DVD collection presents the crucial mission on the voyage to the moon. Choose your store: – – – Gemini 7Gemini 7: The NASA Mission Reports covers this 14-day mission by Borman and Lovell as they demonstrated some of the more essential facts of space flight. Includes CD-ROM.Choose your store: – – – Apollo patchesThe Apollo Patch Collection: Includes all 12 Apollo mission patches plus the Apollo Program Patch. Save over 20% off the Individual price.Choose your store: – – – Mars Rover mission patchA mission patch featuring NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover is available from our online.Choose your store: – – – Apollo 9 DVDOn the road to the moon, the mission of Apollo 9 stands as an important gateway in experience and procedures. This 2-DVD collection presents the crucial mission on the voyage to the moon. Choose your store: – – – Ares 1-X PatchThe official embroidered patch for the Ares 1-X rocket test flight, is available for purchase.Apollo CollageThis beautiful one piece set features the Apollo program emblem surrounded by the individual mission logos.Expedition 21The official embroidered patch for the International Space Station Expedition 21 crew is now available from our stores.Hubble PatchThe official embroidered patch for mission STS-125, the space shuttle’s last planned service call to the Hubble Space Telescope, is available for purchase. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.Cassini radar sees flow-like feature across Titan UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA NEWS RELEASEPosted: November 8, 2004A strikingly bright, lobate feature has turned up in one of Cassini’s first radar images of Saturn’s moon Titan.”It may be something that flowed,” Cassini radar team member Ralph Lorenz of the University of Arizona said. “Or it could be something carved by erosion. It’s too early to say.”But it looks very much like it’s something that oozed across the surface.It may be some sort of ‘cryovolcanic’ flow, an analog to volcanism on Earththat is not molten rock but, at Titan’s very cold temperatures, molten ice.” This is a synthetic aperture radar image of Titan. Dark regions may represent areas that are smooth, made of radar-absorbing materials, or are sloped away from the direction of illumination. A striking lobate bright feature stretches from upper left to lower right across this image, with connected ‘arms’ to the east. The fact that the lower (southern) edges of the features are brighter is consistent with the lobate structure being raised above the relatively featureless darker background. Credit: NASA/JPLCassini radar mapped about one percent of Titan’s surface during theCassini spacecraft’s first close Titan flyby Oct. 26. The radar surveycovered a strip 75 miles wide (120 kilometers) and 1,200 miles (1,960kilometers) long in Titan’s northern hemisphere.Cassini was flying about 1,550 miles (2,494 kilometers) above Titan’ssurface, with its radar centered at about 45 degrees north, 30 degreeswest, when it mapped the 90-square-mile (230-square-kilometer) area shownin the new radar image.The Cassini radar team presented the image today at the 86th annual meetingof the American Astronomical Society Division of Planetary Sciences inLouisville, Ky.The radar instrument works by bouncing radio signals off Titan’s surfaceand timing their return. The more signal reflected back to thespacecraft, the brighter the imaged area. Turning radio signals intoradar images is time consuming because so many numerical calculations mustbe made. “There’s no such thing as a ‘raw’ radar image,” Lorenz said.But two days after the Oct. 26 flyby, Cassini scientists knew that Titan isno impact-crater-pocked dead world, but a much more interesting place.Titan’s surface is young — it’s been shaped by dynamic geologicprocessing, Lorenz, Cassini interdisciplinary scientist Jonathan Lunine ofthe University of Arizona, and other Cassini scientists agree.Given this newest image, Lunine said, “Radar has provided the firstevidence for possible young cryovolcanism on Titan’s surface. Now ourchallenge is to find out what is flowing, how it works, and theimplications for Titan’s evolution.”The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the EuropeanSpace Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, adivision of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages theCassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington,D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed,developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument team is based at JPL,working with team members from the United States and several Europeancountries.Cassini posterJust in time for the Cassini spacecraft’s arrival at Saturn, this new poster celebrates the mission to explore the ringed planet and its moons. 2005 CalendarThe 2005 edition of the Universe of the Hubble Space Telescope calendar is available from our U.S. store and will soon be available worldwide. This 12×12-inch calendar features spectacular images from the orbiting observatory.Moon panoramaTaken by Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard, this panoramic poster shows lunar module pilot Edgar Mitchell as a brilliant Sun glare reflects off the lunar module Antares.Mars Rover mission patchA mission patch featuring NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover is now available from the Astronomy Now Store.Columbia ReportThe official accident investigation report into the loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven. Includes CD-ROM. Choose your store: | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.Cassini radar shows diversity on Saturn’s moon Titan CASSINI PHOTO RELEASEPosted: October 28, 2004 Credit: NASA/JPLDownload larger image version This radar image of the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan was acquired on October 26, 2004, when the Cassini spacecraft flew approximately 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) above the surface and acquired radar data for the first time. It reveals a complex geologic surface thought to be composed of icy materials and hydrocarbons. A wide variety of geologic terrain types can be seen on the image; brighter areas may correspond to rougher terrains and darker areas are thought to be smoother. A large dark circular feature is seen at the western (left) end of the image, but very few features resembling fresh impact craters are seen. This suggests that the surface is relatively young. Enigmatic sinuous bright linear features are visible, mainly cutting across dark areas. The image is about 150 kilometers (93 miles) wide and 250 kilometers (155 miles) long, and is centered at 50 N, 82 W in the northern hemisphere of Titan, over a region that has not yet been imaged optically. The smallest details seen on the image are about 300 meters (186 miles) across. The data were acquired in the synthetic aperture radar mode of Cassini’s radar instrument. In this mode, radio signals are bounced off the surface of Titan. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The instrument team is based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Cassini posterJust in time for the Cassini spacecraft’s arrival at Saturn, this new poster celebrates the mission to explore the ringed planet and its moons. 2005 CalendarThe 2005 edition of the Universe of the Hubble Space Telescope calendar is available from our U.S. store and will soon be available worldwide. This 12×12-inch calendar features spectacular images from the orbiting observatory.Moon panoramaTaken by Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard, this panoramic poster shows lunar module pilot Edgar Mitchell as a brilliant Sun glare reflects off the lunar module Antares.Mars Rover mission patchA mission patch featuring NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover is now available from the Astronomy Now Store.Columbia ReportThe official accident investigation report into the loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven. Includes CD-ROM. Choose your store: | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.Cassini sails to Saturn ‘Flagship mission of our time’ BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
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Additional coverage for subscribers:AUDIO:TODAY’S STATUS NEWS CONFERENCE VIDEO:WORKERS INSPECT THE SCIENCE CANISTER VIDEO:TRACKING CAMERAS FIRST SPOT CAPSULE DURING DESCENT VIDEO:GENESIS CAPSULE TUMBLES TO A HIGH-SPEED IMPACT VIDEO:SLOW-MOTION VIEW OF CAPSULE SLAMMING INTO GROUND VIDEO:AERIAL VIEWS OF CAPSULE HALF BURIED IN IMPACT CRATER VIDEO:NARRATED ANIMATION SHOWS ORIGINAL RETURN PLAN VIDEO:POST-IMPACT NEWS CONFERENCE “We’re really quite confident we can still achieve a high degree of success from a science point of view,” said Roger Wiens, a researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Space and Atmospheric Sciences Group.The $264 million Genesis mission was launched in 2001 to capture samples of the solar wind, made up of electrons, protons and trace amounts of various atomic nuclei blown away from the sun’s outer atmosphere.By determining the actual concentrations of various atomic particles in the tenuous wind, scientists hope to refine current theories about the composition of the original cloud of gas and dust that coalesced to form the solar system and to gain insights into how the sun and its retinue of planets evolved.Genesis was equipped with five solar wind sample collector panels made up of materials selected because of their suitability to capture specific types of atomic particles. A primary objective of the mission was to collect different isotopes of oxygen in a so-called “concentrator.”To protect the fragile collectors from breaking, the Genesis sample return canister was designed to descend under a large parafoil before being plucked out of the sky by a helicopter.Genesis spent 27 months collecting solar wind samples in deep space before heading back to Earth last April. The sample canister re-entered Earth’s atmosphere Wednesday, but its braking parachutes never deployed and the canister hit the ground at some 193 mph, burying itself halfway in the desert soil. The return vehicle’s inner sample canister ruptured on impact.Fearing the worst, engineers peeking inside the canister, using flashlights and mirrors, were amazed at what they found.”We were rather demoralized by the events of last Wednesday,” said Don Sevilla, the lead payload recovery engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “But we have our patient in our processing facility and we are being meticulous in our investigation of it before we start peeling back the layers of the onion.”I can tell you that yesterday morning, we had great cause for optimism in that exploring into the canister with flashlight and a small mirror on a stick, we were able to find one of our primary science materials, which is the concentrator target, and it appears intact.”There is also another target material, called gold foil, that we have determined to be in very good condition and so we have great cause for some sense of recovery here, that things are looking much better today than they felt on Wednesday.Said Wiens: “The science team is really excited about having these materials intact, or mostly intact. With these samples brought back from space, we should be able to meet many, if not all of our primary science goals.”The concentrator was designed to help us achieve our number one science objective, and that is measuring the oxygen isotope composition of the sun, which will help us understand some of the details about how our solar system was formed. These samples appear to be intact. Our second, third and fourth goals should also be met as we have samples to address these issues as well.A major concern, however, is contamination from particles in Earth’s atmosphere. No attempts will be made to study fragments of solar wind collector material until extensive tests have been conducted to determine the most effective techniques for removing contamination.”It’s actually quite amazing for the amount of breach of our canister, how visibly clean it is inside,” Sevilla said. “The SRC, the sample return canister, has been broken up pretty badly and there’s a fair amount of dirt. But the very contamination-sensitive materials inside the canister, we’re not talking about great clods of dirt. There is still polished metal, looking very pretty inside our rather ugly patient.”In the near term, the smashed-up sample return canister will remain at the Utah Test and Training Range until engineers determine how best to transfer it to an ultra-clean facility at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.”We’re working by the scientific method and preserving this precious material,” Sevilla said. “You can be sure the collector materials we have are not going to be touched until we know how to keep them safe. … This is something that’s going to take months.”Two independent investigations teams are being formed to look into the Genesis re-entry failure. It’s not yet known what went wrong Wednesday, but preliminary examination of the remains of the sample canister show the parachute system never received commands to fire.Officials would not speculate on what components could have contributed to the accident and they did not mention a critical battery in the canister that ran too hot early in the mission because of a radiator problem.”All we know today is that the message (to deploy the initial parachute) apparently did not arrive at the devices that were supposed to deploy the chute,” said Gentry Lee, a senior engineer at JPL’s planetary systems division. “Any identification of any root cause beyond that at this stage would be speculation and there are people who will be investigating this in great detail in the near future.”Also studying the Genesis failure will be engineers with NASA’s Stardust mission, which will return to Earth in January 2006 carrying samples of a comet. The Stardust sample canister is scheduled to make a parachute descent to the same Utah test facility, hitting the ground at about 10 mph. No helicopters are required, but its parachutes are.”The Stardust mission is already starting an examination of the lessons learned from Genesis,” Lee said. “This will be a long process and there will be some things that can be done and some things that can’t. It is, after all, flying and there’s nothing that can be done about the overall design. It will be a question of how to maximize the probability of success given what has been learned from Genesis.”Ares 1-X PatchThe official embroidered patch for the Ares 1-X rocket test flight, is available for purchase.Apollo CollageThis beautiful one piece set features the Apollo program emblem surrounded by the individual mission logos.Expedition 21The official embroidered patch for the International Space Station Expedition 21 crew is now available from our stores.Hubble PatchThe official embroidered patch for mission STS-125, the space shuttle’s last planned service call to the Hubble Space Telescope, is available for purchase. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.Ernesto forces shuttle Atlantis off the launch pad BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
ORGANIZATIONS: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association; Tau Beta Pi Engineering Society.
âAbang, saya tak sanggup nak tengok Zara macam tu. Asyik termenung sejak peristiwa hari tuâ. Ujar Mak Yah kepada Pak Hussin.
Ada juga niat di hati, nak ke library, nak buka terjemahan Hadis Sahih.
Hari demi hari, mentari pagi telah menonjolkan dirinya menunjukkan bahawa hari sudah berganti hari. Namun hari ini merupakan hari terkhir bagi bulan Ramadan. Segala persiapan telah dilaksanakan. Harapanku hari raya tahun ini dapat disambut meriah dan dapat meraikannya mengikut perancangan yang sudahpun disusun rapi awal tahun lalu.
Kuhampiri meja itu. Salam diberi. Pucat wajah si dia tatkala melihat akan diriku. Airmata mengalir laju.
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e3300eb16b6f8e5bae9c229bc9332b8bSuzanne Larsen is, in her own words, snobby about hats. She has every reason to be.
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Wealthy Texans who are bullish on Dewhurstâs chances of surviving the March 4 primary and a likely May runoff included, in the latest period, former telecommunications executive and horse breeder Kenny Troutt of Dallas, who gave $150,000; Houston road builder James âDougâ Pitcock, $100,000; former George W. Bush bundler Nancy Kinder, of Houstonâs Kinder Morgan Oil and Gas firm, $50,000; and Midland oilman Javaid Anwar, $50,000. Staplesâ campaign said Dewhurstâs average donation in the period was nearly $9,250, more than seven times the size of Staplesâ average contribution.
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