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NASA moves ahead with Mars rover and orbiter

Image: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Artwork shows NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter relaying data. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech)

NASA says it’s selected five aerospace companies, including Boeing, to conduct concept studies for a Mars telecommunications orbiter that’s likely to launch in 2022. It’s also given the formal go-ahead for the final design of its long-planned 2020 Mars rover.

In addition to Boeing, the companies contracted for the four-month concept studies include Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Northrop Grumman, Orbital ATK and Space Systems/Loral. The concept studies will be managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“We’re excited to continue planning for the next decade of Mars exploration,” Geoffrey Yoder, NASA’s acting associate administrator for science, said in today’s announcement of the contracts.

The orbiter mission would provide advanced telecommunication capabilities as well as global high-resolution imaging of Mars. NASA’s move follows up on recommendations made by the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group.

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SpaceX rocket lifts off, comes back with a boom

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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket rises from its Florida launch pad. (Credit: NASA)

SpaceX launched a Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station tonight with a couple of precedent-setting payloads on opposite ends of the size spectrum: a 5-foot-wide docking adapter, which was built by Boeing to accommodate future commercial space taxis; and the first DNA sequencer destined for use in space, which is about the size of a candy bar.

The Falcon 9 rocket rose into the night at 12:45 a.m. ET Monday (9:45 p.m. PT Sunday) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Minutes later, the Falcon 9’s second stage and the uncrewed Dragon separated from the first stage and continued on to orbit. Meanwhile, the first stage flew itself back to Florida’s Space Coast and touched down at SpaceX’s Landing Zone 1, near the launch pad.

“LZ-1, Falcon 9 has landed,” SpaceX’s mission control announced. The news was greeted with whoops and hollers from hundreds of SpaceX employees who gathered at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif.

Floridians heard a thunderous sonic boom as the booster descended.

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Pokemon Go is no-go for the space station

Image: Pikachu in Pokemon
Pikachu may fly on a rainbow in space, but don’t expect to catch one on the International Space Station. (Credit: Pikachu via YouTube)

Astronauts have zapped virtual aliens on the International Space Station, using Microsoft’s HoloLens mixed-reality headset. So how about Pokémon Go, the latest craze in mixed-reality smartphone gaming? No-go, says NASA.

“It is not possible for astronauts to play,” NASA spokesman Dan Huot told GeekWire, in just one of many emails he’s been sending out today in response to press queries. “There is a small number of smartphones available on ISS which the crew use for science activities (like SPHERES), but not for personal use.”

The smartphones and tablets that are in use on the station don’t have internet connectivity, Huot explained. The astronauts have access only to the apps designed for the payloads they’re intended for, and can’t add apps as is typically done by smartphone users on Earth. If they need to use the internet – for example, to post snapshots on Twitter – they connect via laptops that are locked down in terms of cybersecurity.

“And as far as location services, the astronauts use ISS internal GPS data and custom applications to determine their location and position,” Huot said. “Location-based services we use here on Earth are not utilized.”

That means the space station’s navigation network couldn’t work with the Pokémon critters’ coordinates, even if the astronauts were connected to the game.

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Trio gets to space station after two-day trip

Image: Soyuz docking
An upgraded Soyuz spacecraft nears the International Space Station for docking. (Credit: NASA)

The first craft in Russia’s upgraded fleet of Soyuz spaceships reached the International Space Station tonight, delivering a trio of U.S., Russian and Japanese spacefliers for their four-month tour of duty.

NASA’s Kate Rubins, Russia’s Anatoly Ivanishin and Japan’s Takuya Onishi lifted off two days earlier from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Soyuz trips to the station typically take only six hours, but Russian mission planners passed up the express route this time to give the crew more time to check out the systems on the upgraded Soyuz MS model.

Compared with past models of the Soyuz, going back almost 50 years, the MS boasts more efficient solar panels; a lighter, faster computer system; more shielding against space debris; and improvements in the docking and navigational systems.

The systems checked out just fine during orbital tests, and tonight’s docking proceeded smoothly over the South Pacific at 9:06 p.m. PT today. “A textbook arrival for the brand-new Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft,” NASA commentator Rob Navias said.

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Space station crew begins shakedown cruise

Image: Soyuz launch
Photographers line up to take pictures of Russia’s Soyuz rocket as it rises from its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. (Credit: Bill Ingalls / NASA)

Three spacefliers from three countries – the United States, Russia and Japan – began a longer-than-usual flight to the International Space Station tonight in the first of a new breed of Russian Soyuz spaceships.

The Soyuz MS-01 mission lifted off at 6:36 p.m. PT from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, Russia’s Anatoly Ivanishin and Japan’s Takuya Onishi. NASA TV aired live launch coverage.

“We are feeling fine and everything is good onboard,” Ivanishin reported minutes after launch. The crew members exchanged fist bumps after reaching orbit.

This version of the Soyuz capsule is expected to be the last major upgrade of Russia’s space workhorse, a buglike craft that Russia plans to replace with its next-generation Federatsiya (Federation) spaceship sometime in the next decade.

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New Horizons mission extended to Kuiper Belt

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Artwork shows New Horizons flying by a Kuiper Belt object known as 2014 MU69. (Credit: NASA)

Almost a year after New Horizons’ unprecedented flyby of Pluto, NASA has given the official go-ahead for the probe to fly past another icy object in the Kuiper Belt in 2019.

At the same time, the space agency decided to keep the Dawn spacecraft in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, rather than sending it out to another asteroid known as Adeona.

The decisions are part of NASA’s process for extending its planetary missions into the 2017-2018 time frame.

New Horizons’ extension means that mission operations will be supported as the piano-sized probe makes its way toward a Kuiper Belt object called 2014 MU69. The object was detected in 2014 during a Hubble Space Telescope search for post-Pluto targets that could be reached by New Horizons. The mission team already has been maneuvering the spacecraft in preparation for a flyby on Jan. 1, 2019.

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NASA’s heavy-lift booster blasts through test

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Orbital ATK’s solid-rocket booster is in the midst of a test firing in Utah. (Credit: NASA)

The solid-rocket booster that’s destined to help send future NASA missions into deep space has blasted through its last full-scale test firing in advance of 2018’s maiden launch of the heavy-lift SLS rocket.

Today’s two-minute, six-second firing at Orbital ATK’s test range near Promontory, Utah, wowed hundreds of workers and onlookers who gathered (at a safe distance) to watch the booster light up like a “Game of Thrones” dragon.

“It’s always a blast,” Alex Priskos, manager of NASA’s Space Launch System Boosters Office, said with a straight face afterward.

Charlie Precourt, a former NASA astronaut who is now Orbital ATK’s vice president and general manager for propulsion systems, said it was a “beautiful test.”

“That rumble that you get is awesome,” he said.

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NASA veteran plans commercial space station

Image: Space station
Artwork shows a potential commercial space station. (Credit: Axiom Space via YouTube)

Former space station manager Mike Suffredini says he’s working on a plan to send up a commercial space module that could be attached to the International Space Station – and then disattached to become the foundation for a private-sector outpost in orbit.

“We intend to work on a low-Earth-orbit platform to follow the International Space Station,” Suffredini said today at the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace 2016 conference in Seattle.

Representatives of the new venture, called Axiom Space, are in contact with NASA about the idea, but Suffredini stressed that he’s staying at arm’s length to comply with the space agency’s conflict-of-interest requirements.

Suffredini left NASA last September and is now Axiom’s president as well as the president ofStinger Ghaffarian Technologies‘ commercial space division. Axiom is currently structured as an SGT subsidiary, with SGT co-founder Kam Ghaffarian serving as Axiom’s CEO, Suffredini said.

Axiom already has seed funding, Suffredini said. If NASA gives the go-ahead, the venture would raise additional money from investors to finance the construction of the module and get it launched to the station in the 2020-2021 time frame.

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Picture-perfect homecoming for space crew

Image: Soyuz descent
A Russian Soyuz craft descends through the clouds toward its landing in Kazakhstan, bringing a U.S.-Russian-British crew back down to Earth. (Credit: Bill Ingalls / NASA)

Three spacefliers from the International Space Station made a photogenic return to Earth today, touching down in the steppes of Kazakhstan.

The landing marked the end of a 186-day tour of duty for NASA astronaut Tim Kopra, Britain’s Tim Peake and Russia’s Yuri Malenchenko. The homeward journey began when the trio’s Russian Soyuz capsule undocked from the station at 10:52 p.m. PT Friday, leading up to the parachute-assisted descent through partly cloudy skies a little more than three hours later.

NASA photographer Bill Ingalls and the European Space Agency’s Stephane Corvaja captured some classic scenes of the homecoming from a Russian recovery helicopter, and later from the ground.

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Say hello to Maxwell, NASA’s latest X-plane

Image: X-57 Maxwell
This artist’s concept of NASA’s X-57 Maxwell aircraft shows the plane’s specially designed wing and 14 electric motors. (Credit: NASA Langley / Advanced Concepts Lab / AMA Inc.)

NASA says it has received its first X-plane designation in a decade, for a research aircraft that has 14 electric motors built into a slimmed-down wing. The X-57 hybrid electric airplane picked up a new nickname as well: Maxwell.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced the name and the number today at Aviation 2016, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ annual Aviation and Aeronautics Forum and Exposition. The development highlights the first “A” in the acronym for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“With the return of piloted X-planes to NASA’s research capabilities – which is a key part of our 10-year-long New Aviation Horizons initiative – the general aviation-sized X-57 will take the first step in opening a new era of aviation,” Bolden said in a news release.

The X-plane designation, which applies to experimental airplane built for the government, was assigned by the U.S. Air Force in response to a NASA request. The first X-plane was the X-1 rocket plane, which became the first plane to go supersonic in 1947. The most recent NASA X-plane was the X-48 blended-wing aircraft, which was tested between 2007 and 2012.

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