Month: August 2018

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Systima wins contract for Orion space hardware

Orion egress test
Astronauts rehearse crew egress procedures using an Orion test model in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Texas in July 2017. (NASA Photo)

Systima Technologies says it’s been awarded a contract from Lockheed Martin Space Systems to provide pyrotechnically actuated hatch mechanisms for NASA’s Orion deep-space crew capsule.

The mechanisms will be part of a side hatch latch release system that would come into play in the event of an emergency landing condition after splashdown, the Kirkland, Wash.-based company said in a news release.

The Orion is currently in the midst of development, leading up to Exploration Mission-1, an uncrewed test flight beyond the moon and back that’s planned for the 2020 time frame. That would be followed by the first crewed flight, known as Exploration Mission-2, currently scheduled for as early as 2022. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for the multibillion-dollar Orion development program.

The mechanism that Systima is working on would be used on the EM-2 flight.

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Commercial branding on spacecraft? Why not?

"For Sale" sign in space
As a joke, NASA spacewalker Dale Gardner holds up a “For Sale” sign during a shuttle mission in 1984, in an era when the space shuttle fleet took on commercial satellite servicing tasks. (NASA Photo)

Why can’t commercials be filmed on the International Space Station? How about astronaut endorsements of energy drinks or tennis shoes? And instead of saying “The Eagle has landed,” why not get paid for saying “Here’s your orbital Pizza Hut delivery”?

The final frontier is edging farther into the commercial frontier: That’s one of the top takeaways from this week’s meetings of the NASA Advisory Council at Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and other officials and advisers provided a preview of the trends we’re likely to be seeing in the months and years to come. Here’s a quick rundown on five places NASA is going toward.

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Boeing wins $805M contract for refueling drones

MQ-25 drone
Boeing’s MQ-25 unmanned aerial refueler, known as T1, is currently being tested at Boeing’s St. Louis site. T1 has completed engine runs and deck handling demonstrations designed to prove the agility and ability of the aircraft to move around within the tight confines of a carrier deck. (Boeing Photo / Eric Shindelbower)

After a months-long competition with the likes of Lockheed Martin, Boeing has won a $805.3 million contract from the Pentagon to build the first four MQ-25A autonomous refueling planes for the Navy.

The MQ-25 Stingray is meant to refuel Navy fighter jets such as the Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet and the Lockheed Martin F-35C Lightning II in midair to extend their range. It will be tasked with delivering about 15,000 pounds of fuel, 500 nautical miles out from an aircraft carrier. That should give fighters an additional 300 to 400 miles of flight range over what they have now.

The drones will launch and land on aircraft carriers, so they’ll have to integrate with the Navy’s catapult launch and recovery systems.

Boeing was in competition for the contract with two teams that were led by Lockheed Martin and General Atomics. Northrop Grumman was invited to submit a bid, but dropped out of the competition last October.

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Blue Origin scores big in suborbital science

Blue Origin touchdown
Blue Origin’s New Shepard booster heads for a touchdown after a test flight in December. (Blue Origin Photo)

NASA’s Flight Opportunities program has selected 15 promising space technologies for testing on suborbital flights, and almost half of them are set to fly on Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship.

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space venture, headquartered in Kent, Wash., started flying science payloads to the edge of space and back more than two years ago. This week’s NASA announcement solidifies Blue Origin’s status as a leader in suborbital space science missions.

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Space station crew patches up tiny air leak

Soyuz craft
An air leak on the International Space Station has been localized to a Russian Soyuz spacecraft like this one. The orbital compartment is the upper chamber of the Soyuz shown here. (NASA Photo)

The International Space Station’s flight controllers detected a minute pressure leak overnight, but a temporary fix was made with epoxy and a gauze wipe. The six-person crew is in no danger, NASA said.

In a status update, NASA said the leak was isolated to a hole that’s about 2 millimeters (0.07 inches) in diameter in the orbital compartment of the Soyuz MS-09’s orbital module, which is attached to Russia’s Rassvet module. “This is a section of the Soyuz that does not return to Earth,” NASA explained.

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How Boeing re-engineered the 737’s landing gear

Gary Hamatani
Gary Hamatani, chief product engineer for Boeing’s 737 MAX project, uses a half-scale model to demonstrate how the MAX 10’s landing gear will work. (Boeing Video)

When Boeing’s customers said they wanted a stretched-out 737 MAX jet, there was one big problem: The 737’s landing gear was too short to handle it.

Fortunately, Boeing’s engineers came to the rescue, with a stretched-out landing gear to match the fuselage of what’s now known as the 737 MAX 10.

The way the engineers resolved the issue, well more than a year ago, is a testament to how Boeing uses technology to accommodate market demands, even if those demands seem unmeetable at first glance.

“We always like to look at how we can address market demand with the technology and engineering solutions that would be required,” Gary Hamatani, chief project engineer for Boeing’s 737 MAX program, told GeekWire this week.

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Microsoft and Kymeta show off connected cars

Microsoft connected car
A prototype vehicle designed for disaster response is outfitted with Kymeta’s KyWay flat-panel satellite antenna. (Microsoft / Kymeta Photo)

REDMOND, Wash. — The vehicles sitting in the parking lot here at the headquarters of Kymeta Corp., a flat-panel antenna startup backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, are a car fan’s dream. But Microsoft’s Scott Montgomery says you have to look under the hood. And under the roof.

“The vehicles themselves are literally just four wheels and an engine to get the platform where we need it to go,” Montgomery, who’s a senior industry solution manager at Redmond-based Microsoft, told GeekWire.

“What I always tell folks is, forget about the cars,” he said. “It’s really not about the cars. It’s about everything that sits within the cars, and also what sits within the cloud.”

The platform is a combination of hardware, software and cloud computing connections that can turn a sport-utility vehicle into a mobile communications hub for police officers, firefighters or disaster response teams, complete with industrial-strength data servers and satellite links.

Kymeta, Microsoft and other vendors organized today’s parking-lot demo to show journalists, officials and VIPs how their platforms can work together to address future worst-case scenarios, such as the West Coast earthquake threat known as the Really Big One.

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WiBotic unveils wireless power system for drones

WiBotic power system
WiBotic’s new wireless power system is optimized for use on the DJI Matrice 200 and 210 drones. (WiBotic Photo)

Seattle-based WiBotic is unveiling a wireless power system designed for DJI’s commercial-grade drones, a product that opens the way for seamless recharging as applications for long-lasting drones take off.

The power system works with the high-end DJI Matrice 200 and Matrice 210 drones, and is compatible with WiBotic’s PowerPad for companies seeking an end-to-end turnkey solution for drone recharging. Installation can take as little as 10 minutes, the company says.

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World View exec to chair commercial space group

Taber MacCallum
World View Enterprises’ Taber MacCallum is the new chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. (Paragon Space Development Corp. Photo)

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation says Taber MacCallum, co-founder and chief technology officer of Arizona-based World View Enterprises, will serve as its new chairman of the board. MacCallum takes the reins from Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and principal investigator for NASA’s New Horizons mission.

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New Horizons and OSIRIS-REx spot their targets

Ultima Thule
The picture on the left was created by adding 48 different exposures from the LORRI camera on NASA’s New Horizons probe. The picture on the right has been processed to subtract the light from background stars, leaving an icy object known as Ultima Thule shining dimly in the crosshairs. (NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI Photo)

The next few months are due to bring two amazing interplanetary encounters: a rendezvous with an asteroid and a flyby past a mysterious icy object beyond Pluto on the solar system’s edge. Over the past few days, we’ve gotten our first fleeting peeks at both targets, and the view will only get better from now on.

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