Exhaust billows out from a rocket test tower at NASA’s Stennis Space Center during a test firing of an RS-25 rocket engine. (NASA via YouTube)
Like a “Spinal Tap” guitarist, NASA turned the dial up to 11 today on a souped-up rocket engine from the bygone space shuttle program.
The 260-second engine firing at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi represented the toughest test yet for hardware that’s destined to go on the Space Launch System, NASA’s heavy-lift rocket.
NASA plans to use sets of Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 rocket engines left over from the shuttle program in the main propulsion systems on the first four SLS rockets, four at a time. Fourteen of the 16 hydrogen-fueled engines were previously installed on the shuttle orbiters, which were retired in 2011 and are now on display in museums.
With NASA’s Orion deep-space capsule serving as a backdrop, Vice President Mike Pence speaks at a meeting of the National Space Council at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (NASA via YouTube)
Space industry deregulation, and the potential perils posed by China’s space program, shared the spotlight at today’s meeting of the National Space Council, presided over by Vice President Mike Pence.
Commercial space ventures and NASA’s vision for deep-space exploration also got shout-outs when members of the council, newly named advisers and other VIPs gathered inside the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
“As we continue to push further into our solar system, new businesses and entire enterprises will be built to seize the infinite possibilities before us,” Pence declared. “And there will be no limit to the jobs and prosperity that will be created across this country.”
Vice President Mike Pence delivers opening remarks at the National Space Council’s inaugural meeting last October at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. The shuttle Discovery looms in the background. (NASA Photo / Joel Kowsky)
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg and Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith are among 29 candidates for the National Space Council’s Users Advisory Group, which is meant to promote coordination, cooperation and information exchange for the U.S. space effort. Vice President Mike Pence listed the candidates on the eve of a National Space Council meeting at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
An artist’s conception shows three Bigelow Aerospace B330 modules linked together to create a space station being serviced by SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. Such a configuration would provide as much pressurized volume as the International Space Station. (Bigelow Aerospace Illustration)
Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace has had space modules in orbit for more than a decade, but now billionaire founder Robert Bigelow is starting a new push to operate commercial space stations.
To that end, he has set up a separate company called Bigelow Space Operations, or BSO, with the aim of having Bigelow’s expandable B330 modules sent into orbit. Two of the 330-cubic-meter (12,000-cubic-foot) habitats are due to be ready for launch by as early as 2021.
The timing for deployment will depend on the outcome of Bigelow’s negotiations with potential launch providers, and the findings of a market study to be conducted by BSO this year.
“We intend to spend millions of dollars this year in drilling down, hopefully, to a conclusion one way or the other as to what the global market is going to look like, and we expect to finish this investigation by the end of this year,” Bigelow told reporters today during a teleconference.
Planetary Resources, a Redmond, Wash.-based venture that aims to make a fortune mining asteroids, is facing a more down-to-earth challenge: a fundraising shortfall.
Just last month, the company had its Arkyd-6 prototype space telescope launched into orbit by an Indian PSLV rocket, and that spacecraft has been undergoing testing.
Arkyd-6 is designed to provide midwave infrared imagery of Earth, as a technological tryout for future asteroid-observing probes.
A spokeswoman for Planetary Resources, Stacey Tearne, told GeekWire that financial challenges have forced the company to focus on leveraging the Arkyd-6 mission for near-term revenue — apparently by selling imagery and data.
“Planetary Resources missed a fundraising milestone,” Tearne explained in an email. “The company remains committed to utilizing the resources from space to further explore space, but is focusingon near-term revenue streams by maximizing the opportunity of having a spacecraft in orbit.”
Tearne said no further information was available, and did not address questions about employment cutbacks. However, reports from other sources in the space community suggest there have been notable job reductions. For what it’s worth, Planetary Resources had more than 70 employees at last report.
An artist’s conception shows a long-range view of mining robots working on an asteroid. (Planetary Resources Illustration)
AUSTIN, Texas — Mining asteroids for water and other resources could someday become a trillion-dollar business, but not without astronomers to point the way.
At least that’s the view of Martin Elvis, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who’s been taking a close look at the science behind asteroid mining.
An artist’s conception shows the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, monitoring a distant star and its planets. (NASA Illustration)
AUSTIN, Texas — If extraterrestrial life exists, there’s a chance we’ll detect it sometime in the next 20 years. And then what? A recently published study suggests that most folks will take the news calmly, if they care at all.
“How would we react if we find that we’re not alone in the universe? This question has been the cause of great speculation over the years — but, until now, virtually no systematic empirical research,” Michael Varnum, a psychologist at Arizona State University, said today in Austin at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In a study published by Frontiers of Psychology, Varnum and his colleagues suggest that revelations about life beyond our planet will be viewed more positively than negatively.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is on board with SpaceX’s satellite plan. (Flickr Photo / FCCDotGov)
SpaceX’s plan to beam broadband services to America and the world via its Starlink satellite constellation got a big thumbs-up today from Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
Pai’s endorsement isn’t exactly a surprise: The FCC already has given its approval to rival companies with similar plans, including OneWeb, Space Norway and Telesat.
Virgin Galactic’s website offers a multimedia-enhanced VR view of VSS Unity, the company’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, and its WhiteKnightTwo mothership. (Microsoft Edge / Virgin Galactic)
Virgin Galactic hasn’t yet started taking tourists into space on its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, but the company now offers a virtual SpaceShipTwo tour on its website, with a big assist from Microsoft Edge Web Showcase.
The upgraded website is a lot clickier — and continues to provide basic information about Virgin Galactic as well as videos, stills and online updates. But the centerpiece is a 3-D, VR-enhanced digital model of VSS Unity, the SpaceShipTwo plane that’s undergoing tests at California’s Mojave Air and Space Port.
“This moment here, with the shift to the moon, is what we’ve waited 10 years for,” John Thornton, CEO of Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic, told Geekwire. Astrobotic has been working on a series of private-sector lunar landing missions and is now looking forward to heightened interest from NASA.
Over the next few years, hundreds of millions of dollars would be set aside for private-sector moon missions and for commercial ventures in low Earth orbit — either by putting private ventures in charge of the U.S. segment of the International Space Station, or by establishing new orbital platforms.
Not everyone is thrilled by the budget proposal, in part because it calls for phasing out federal funding for the space station by 2025. The critics include leading members of Congress who will have to fine-tune and approve the budget proposed today.
