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For those readers who haven’t been following its progress, SpaceX’s Grasshopper is a prototype reusable launch vehicle that’s designed to perform a vertical landing back on Earth after delivering its payload into space. While it’s already managed a few low-altitude test hops, yesterday (Aug. 13) it reached a new milestone by performing a “lateral divert test.”
In its previous test flights, the Grasshopper has lifted off vertically from a launch pad, travelled straight up (to a maximum height of 250 m/820 ft), then used its Merlin-1D engine to ease itself back down to the pad. In an actual mission, however, it wouldn’t simply be traveling straight up and down – when it came time to land, a considerable amount of lateral steering would be necessary to line it back up with the launch site. That’s where yesterday’s flight comes in.
The Grasshopper once again reached its previously-achieved altitude of 250 meters, but also proceeded to move an additional 100 m (328 ft) to one side. It was subsequently still able to land safely back at the center of the launch pad, compensating for its lateral diversion. According to SpaceX, “The test demonstrated the vehicle's ability to perform more aggressive steering maneuvers than have been attempted in previous flights.”
https://www.newspacewatch.com/artic...tes-ground-tests-prepares-for-glide-test.htmlAn announcement from Sierra Nevada Space Systems.
Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser® Completes Ground
Tow Tests in Preparation for Upcoming Approach and Landing Test
Sparks, Nev., – August 13, 2013 – Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) announces the completion of the Dream Chaser® Space System tow testing at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif. The ground tow tests were conducted in preparation for the upcoming approach and landing test scheduled for the third quarter 2013.
The tow tests were performed in preparation for pre-negotiated, paid-for-performance milestones with NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP), which is facilitating U.S. companies' development of spacecraft and rockets that can launch from American soil.
WASHINGTON — Alliant Techsystems has won an order from Orbital Sciences Corp. to provide the solid rocket motors for a new air-launched space transport system that is part of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's latest venture.
Blake Larson, president of ATK Aerospace Group, gave no details on the size and scope of the contract, but told Reuters on Tuesday that the deal was "certainly substantial."
"It further enhances and expands other commercial elements of our propulsion business," Larson said. ATK is seeking to take on more commercial projects to diversity its portfolio at a time when the U.S. military budget is set to flatten or decline.
Allen's Stratolaunch Systems tapped Orbital Sciences in June to develop the new transport system, which will use a large aircraft to launch satellites, cargo and possibly humans into space.
Stratolaunch plans to launch test flights in 2016, and may fly its first space mission in 2017 or 2018.
Future NASA spacecraft could be powered by zombies, or rather, Xombies – vertical take-off, vertical landing rockets of the kind seen here flying against the backdrop of the Mojave Desert.
VTVL rockets, as the industry calls them, are a mainstay of sci-fi but have not been used much in real-life space exploration. The Apollo Lunar Module, which ferried astronauts from orbit to the surface of the moon and back, is the only VTVL craft that has been used on a NASA mission.
Other VTVL rockets have been developed and tested on Earth, but their guidance algorithms often date back to the Apollo era. NASA is using the Xombie rocket, developed by Masten Space Systems in Mojave, California, to test new algorithms, which should cut fuel usage and enable missions to a wider variety of destinations.
This latest flight, which took place on 30 July, simulated a course correction during a landing on Mars. The rocket's flight algorithms were able to divert it from an incorrect landing point and land it safely.
The Xombie isn't the only VTVL rocket on the up and up. SpaceX continues to test its Grasshopper rocket, which has achieved an altitude of 325 metres and yesterday demonstrated its own course-correction skills.
On August 13th, the Falcon 9 test rig (code name Grasshopper) completed a divert test, flying to a 250m altitude with a 100m lateral maneuver before returning to the center of the pad. The test demonstrated the vehicle's ability to perform more aggressive steering maneuvers than have been attempted in previous flights.
Grasshopper is taller than a ten story building, which makes the control problem particularly challenging. Diverts like this are an important part of the trajectory in order to land the rocket precisely back at the launch site after reentering from space at hypersonic velocity
Grasshopper Divert | Single Cam - YouTube
Completely reusable and cost .3% to refuel each time. Imagine using each one a dozen times.This is what advancement looks like.
(Phys.org) —Voyager 1 appears to have at long last left our solar system and entered interstellar space, says a University of Maryland-led team of researchers
Carrying Earthly greetings on a gold plated phonograph record and still-operational scientific instruments – including the Low Energy Charged Particle detector designed, built and overseen, in part, by UMD's Space Physics Group – NASA's Voyager 1 has traveled farther from Earth than any other human-made object. And now, these researchers say, it has begun the first exploration of our galaxy beyond the Sun's influence.
(Phys.org) —New technology being tested by the University of Maryland's Space Power and Propulsion Laboratory (SPPL) on the International Space Station could revolutionize the capabilities of satellites and future spacecraft by extending their lifecycle through the use of a renewable power source.
Voyager 1 has left the solar system, says new study
(Phys.org) Voyager 1 appears to have at long last left our solar system and entered interstellar space, says a University of Maryland-led team of researchers
Carrying Earthly greetings on a gold plated phonograph record and still-operational scientific instruments including the Low Energy Charged Particle detector designed, built and overseen, in part, by UMD's Space Physics Group NASA's Voyager 1 has traveled farther from Earth than any other human-made object. And now, these researchers say, it has begun the first exploration of our galaxy beyond the Sun's influence.
Read more at: Voyager 1 has left the solar system, says new study
New technology could revolutionize satellite use
(Phys.org) New technology being tested by the University of Maryland's Space Power and Propulsion Laboratory (SPPL) on the International Space Station could revolutionize the capabilities of satellites and future spacecraft by extending their lifecycle through the use of a renewable power source.
Read more at: New technology could revolutionize satellite use
Even as Elon Musk got everyone’s attention with the Hyperloop, his wild idea to remake mass transit, his engineers at SpaceX did something far cooler: They proved their reusable rocket can go sideways.
Almost immediately after Tuesday’s lift off, the 10-story-tall Grasshopper rocket made a “hard lateral deviation,” as Musk put it, of 100 meters during its ascent to 250 meters. It then returned to the center of the launch pad at touchdown.
That is rocket science. Literally. The really cool kind of rocket science.
Grasshopper already has made a few short hops and a few higher-altitude flights, and the flight, announced Wednesday, greatly expands the maneuvering envelope of the vertical take-off/vertical landing vehicle. It’s a major milestone in Musk’s plan to reboot the space sector. And it was but one milestone we’ve hit this week in the private space race. Sierra Nevada completed important — if pedestrian — testing of its new lifting body spacecraft, and Virgin Galactic signed up still more customers for flights it plans next year.
For all the debate among pseudo rocket scientists arguing whether carrying the fuel needed to return to Earth is a worthwhile proposition, those signing the checks still need to develop the technology to make it work. Musk is doing just that. He’s made it clear that reusing the first stage of a rocket will greatly improve the economics of delivering payloads to space, and his engineers continue making some impressive flights even as his critics continue piling on doubt.
The Grasshopper test is a big deal because there aren’t, at the moment, any rockets in use capable of the kind of lateral maneuvers SpaceX showed off Tuesday. Some smaller rockets have done it, but none of them even approaches Grasshopper’s size. The ability to make significant corrections to the trajectory is a key part of developing a reusable rocket, as the first stage will return to Earth at hypersonic speed. The only way to decrease its lateral speed, and guide it to a landing site, is through such moves.
Pasadena, California – NASA’s Juno spacecraft is halfway to Jupiter. The Jovian-system-bound spacecraft reached the milestone today (8/12/13) at 5:25 a.m. PDT (8:25 a.m. EDT/12:25 UTC).
“Juno’s odometer just clicked over to 9.464 astronomical units,” said Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “The team is looking forward, preparing for the day we enter orbit around the most massive planet in our solar system.”
Two cosmonauts set a new record for the longest Russian spacewalk on Friday (Aug. 16), spending more than seven hours working outside the International Space Station to prepare it for the addition of a new Russian-built orbital lab.
Veteran cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineer Alexander Misurkin spent a total of seven hours and 29 minutes — a new Russian record — on a spacewalk to install power and data cables for a new Russian laboratory module expected to launch to the space station in upcoming months. NASA cameras beamed images of the record-setting spacewalk to Earth during the orbital excursion
A hot alien planet that's as big as Jupiter and cobalt blue in color has been spotted crossing in front of its parent star in the X-ray spectrum — a first for scientists.
Nearly two decades ago, researchers started detecting exoplanets by observing the dips in starlight that result when these alien worlds pass in front of their stars. But scientists had never before observed an exoplanet eclipse, called a "transit," in X-ray light.
"Thousands of planet candidates have been seen to transit in only optical light," study researcher Katja Poppenhaeger, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass., said in a statement. "Finally being able to study one in X-rays is important because it reveals new information about the properties of an exoplanet."
If Spacex fully succeeds then launch costs to orbit could drop to $10 per pound from $4000-20000 per pound. This could open up space to colonization and industry and enable the economy of civilization to expand by trillions of dollars in decades and enable large scale expansion into the solar system much the way nationwide highway and rail allowed the US to fill out from coast to coast.
If Tesla Motor fully succeeds then the electric car could become displace gasoline cars on a global and set the stage for mainstream electric airplanes and other vehicles.
If Broad Groups factory produced skyscrapers fully succeed the cost of building construction could drop two to ten times. This will changes cities and world urbanization and the $4 trillion world construction market.
Eleven billion miles and 36 years after its launch, some researchers say the Voyager 1 spacecraft has finally left our solar system and entered interstellar space.
Researchers at the University of Maryland who made the claim realize it’s a controversial view, but they say their model indicates the spacecraft left the solar system over a year ago — on July 27, 2012, to be exact.
Voyager “is truly beginning its travels through the Milky Way," said University of Maryland research scientist Marc Swisdak, lead author of a new paper published online this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Read more at: Waking up to a new year: Team discovers an exoplanet that orbits its star in 8.5 hoursIn the time it takes you to complete a single workday, or get a full night's sleep, a small fireball of a planet 700 light-years away has already completed an entire year.
Researchers at MIT have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet named Kepler 78b that whips around its host star in a mere 8.5 hours—one of the shortest orbital periods ever detected. The planet is extremely close to its star—its orbital radius is only about three times the radius of the star—and the scientists have estimated that its surface temperatures may be as high as 3,000 degrees Kelvin, or more than 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. In such a scorching environment, the top layer of the planet is likely completely melted, creating a massive, roiling ocean of lava.
Paper: Voyager 1 Leaves Solar System
Paper: Voyager 1 Leaves Solar System
Eleven billion miles and 36 years after its launch, some researchers say the Voyager 1 spacecraft has finally left our solar system and entered interstellar space.
Researchers at the University of Maryland who made the claim realize its a controversial view, but they say their model indicates the spacecraft left the solar system over a year ago on July 27, 2012, to be exact.
Voyager is truly beginning its travels through the Milky Way," said University of Maryland research scientist Marc Swisdak, lead author of a new paper published online this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Bigelow Aerospace is a private company developing inflatable space stations.
Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable space stations and future plans
In 2007, Bigelow launched the Genesis II, which was their second experimental space habitat designed.
Genesis II was identical in size to Genesis I. It is a one-third scale of the full-size BA 330 model, with on-orbit measurements of 4.4 metres (14.4 ft) in length and 2.54 metres (8.3 ft) in diameter, with an interior habitable volume of 11.5 cubic metres (406.1 cu ft).
The BA 330 would be a full-scale production module weighing approximately 43,000 pounds (20,000 kg),with dimensions of approximately 45 feet (14 m) in length and 22 ft (6.7 m) in diameter when expanded.
In December 2012, Bigelow began development work on Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) under a $17.8 million NASA contract. In 2015, BEAM is projected to be transported to ISS inside the unpressurized cargo trunk of a SpaceX Dragon during the SpaceX CRS-8 cargo mission.
The BA 2100, or Olympus module is a concept module that would require a heavy-lift launcher and would place in orbit the complete infrastructure of a 2,100-cubic-metre (74,000 cu ft) habitat, over six times as large as the BA 330. As of October 2010, initial estimates put the vehicle mass between 70-90 tonnes, with a diameter of approximately 41 feet (12 meters).
Future plans awaiting low cost launch capability
Bigelow has plans for orbital stationSpace Complex Bravo which they hoped to launch in 2016 and go into commercial operation in 2017.
Late last year, it emerged that a small team of NASA researchers were working on warp drive technology in the lab. Led by Harold “Sonny” White, the team devised a variation of the Alcubierre warp drive that could almost be feasibly produced — if we can work out how to produce and store antimatter. Now, White is ready to discuss some other facets of his warp drive, such as the energy requirements, what a spacecraft with a warp drive would look like, and what it would be like to travel at warp speed
When it comes to interstellar travel, due to the massive distances involved, the only feasible solution for reaching other planets and stars is a method of transport that travels at close to or faster than the speed of light. The nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, is just over four light years away — at a speed of 62,136 kmh (the speed at which Voyager-1 is flying through space), it would take roughly 67,000 years for a spacecraft to reach it. There are a variety of proposed propulsion systems, such as ion drives, but none of them really get close to the speeds necessary to enable the exploration of other planets in under a few thousand years. Warp drives, while years away from even small-scale testing — if they’re even possible at all — are one of the few exceptions that would allow same-lifetime space travel.]
NASA Spacecraft Reactivated to Hunt for Asteroids, NASA
"A NASA spacecraft that discovered and characterized tens of thousands of asteroids throughout the solar system before being placed in hibernation will return to service for three more years starting in September, assisting the agency in its effort to identify the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects, as well as those suitable for asteroid exploration missions.
NASA to test laser communications link with new lunar mission | PCWorldAn upcoming NASA mission will test a new laser communications system that could one day deliver high-definition 3D video signals from Mars and beyond.
The lunar laser communications demonstration will be part of the agency's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission, which is scheduled to launch on Sept. 6. The LADEE spacecraft will orbit the moon and collect information on the lunar atmosphere -- technically an exosphere -- for around 100 days. A laser communications module is built into the satellite.
"NASA has a need for faster download speeds for data from space and that grows everyday, just like it does for the rest of us at home and also from work," said Don Cornwell, mission manager for the lunar laser communications demonstration. He was speaking at a televised NASA news conference on Thursday.
Nasa Scientist Dr Rob Adams speaks about Pulsed Fusion Propulsion, dense plasma focus fusion, z pinch fusion and the possibilities of high density compression of fusion fuels.
NAIC - Pulsed Fission-Fusion (PuFF) Propulsion System
Fission-ignited fusion systems have been operational – in weapon form – since the 1950’s.
Although Barnard's Star is in our cosmic back yard, six light-years is a long way to go, meaning relativistic speeds are required. And that means you will need a very, very big starship.
Adrian Mann
NASA scientists are performing experiments that could help make warp drive a possibility sometime in the future from a lab built for the Apollo program at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
