Ed Weiler, NASA’s Science leader in charge of the robotic missions that continually produce scientific breakthroughs that amaze all humanity and longtime Chief Scientist on the Hubble Space Telescope that has completely revolutionized our understanding of humanities place in the Universe, retired today (Sept. 30) from NASA after a distinguished career spanning almost 33 years.
Weiler is departing NASA during what has been dubbed the “Year of Space Science”- the best year ever for NASA Space Science research. The two most recent successes are the launch of JUNO to Jupiter and the twin GRAIL probes to the Moon. Blastoff of the Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory rover is slated for late November 2011.
Weiler’s official title is associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) at agency Headquarters in Washington, DC. In that capacity he was responsible for overseeing NASA’s science and research programs in Earth science, heliophysics, planetary science and astrophysics.
Weiler was appointed to lead SMD in 2008. He holds this position now for the second time after serving in between as Director of NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland from 2004 to 2008. His earlier stint as associate administrator lasted from 1998 to 2004 for what was then called the Space Science Enterprise.
Probably the job he loved best was as Chief Scientist of the Hubble Space Telescope from 1979 to 1998, until he was promoted to the top rung of NASA management.
I was very lucky to meet and chat with Ed Weiler while I was covering the final space shuttle flight – STS-125 – to repair and upgrade Hubble. STS 125 blasted off in May 2009 and accomplished every single objective to catapult Hubble to the apex of its capabilities.
At the recent launch of the twin GRAIL lunar mapping probes, I spoke with Weiler about a wide range of NASA missions. Watch for my upcoming interview with Ed.
Weiler is very hopeful that Hubble will continue to operate for several more years at least.
NASA issued this statement from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, “Ed leaves an enduring legacy of pride and success that forever will remain a part of NASA’s science history. His leadership helped inspire the public with each new scientific discovery, and enabled NASA to move forward with new capabilities to continue to explore our solar system and beyond.”
The successes under Weiler’s leadership include NASA’s great observatory missions, unprecedented advances in Earth science and extensive exploration of Mars and other planets in our solar system. These advances have rewritten science textbooks and earned enormous support for NASA’s science programs from the general public.
The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity are just one example of the science missions approved and funded during Weiler’s tenure.
Weiler’s leadership has been instrumental in securing continued support and funding for NASA Space Science from Congress and the White House. He has received numerous prestigious awards including the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and several Presidential Rank Awards for Meritorious Executive and Distinguished Executive.
China launched their first space station module into orbit today (Sept. 29), marking a major milestone in the rapidly expanding Chinese space program. The historic liftoff of the man ratedTiangong 1 (Heavenly Palace 1) space lab on a Long March 2F rocket took place at 9:16 p.m. local time (9:16 a.m. EDT) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center located in Gansu province in northwest China and is an impressive advance for China.
The beautiful nighttime liftoff occurred exactly on time and was carried live on China’s state run television – CCTV – and on the internet for all to see. Chinese President Hu Jintao and many of China’s other top government leaders witnessed the launch from the Beijing Aerospace Control Center as a gesture of confidence and support. Their presence was a clear sign of just how important China’s top leadership considers investments in research as a major driver of technological innovation that is bolstering China’s vigorously growing economy and employing tens of thousands of people.
The US – in sharp contrast – is cutting space spending and handing out pink slips to many thousands of shuttle workers, CCTV noted.
As a CCTV commentator said after the successful Tiangong 1 launch, “30 Years ago it was ‘science fiction’ to imagine a Chinese astronaut in space. Today it’s a reality!”
Long range cameras tracked rocket for several minutes and clearly showed the jettisoning of the first stage boosters and the payload fairing.
“The launch of Tiangong 1 has been successfully completed,” announced Gen. Chang Wanquan, chief commander of China’s manned space engineering project on CCTV
Tiangiong 1 will serve a crucial role as a docking target to carry out China’s first rendezvous and docking in space- initially with an unmanned vehicle and thereafter with astronauts crews. The US and the Soviet Union mastered these technologies back in the 1960’s, and China is rapidly catching up now.
Rendezvous and docking are key accomplishments that China must achieve in order to move forward and accomplish even more ambitious space goals – construction of a 60 ton space station by the year 2020.
The two stage Long March 2F rocket was upgraded with more than 170 improvements including a larger payload fairing to house bigger Tiangong 1 module, four longer liquid fueled strap on boosters with more powerful thrust capability and more precise guidance systems.
The 8.5 ton Tiangong 1 was designed to stay in space for at least 2 years and support crews of up to three astronauts for short duration stays. It will be the target of at least three upcoming space missions – Shenzhou 8, 9 and 10.
Shenzhou is China’s human spaceflight capsule, derived from the Russian Soyuz and also significantly upgraded with China’s own nationally developed technology.
The unmanned Shenzhou 8 will launch in about 1 month according to officials from the China Manned Space Engineering Office and reach the vicinity of Tiangong 1 after 2 days. Shenzhou 8 will conduct at least two practice test dockings to extensively check out all systems and experience.
Shenzhou 9 and 10 will dock during 2012 and are likely to include the first female Chinese astronaut.
Tiangong 1 is a prototype miniture space station module, not fully outfitted for long duration stays of astronauts. The space lab consists of two segments – a forward habitable, pressurized section for the astronauts (measuring some 530 cubic feet in volume) and an unpressurized resource compartment in the rear with two solar arrays consisting of four segments to provide ample power.
Student Alert ! – Here’s your once in a lifetime chance to name Two NASA robots speeding at this moment to the Moon on a super science mission to map the lunar gravity field. They were successfully launched from the Earth to the Moon on September 10, 2011. Right now the robots are called GRAIL A and GRAIL B. But, they need real names that inspire. And they need those names real soon. The goal is to “capture the spirit and excitement of lunar exploration”, says NASA – the US Space Agency.
NASA needs your help and has just announced an essay writing contest open to students in Grades K – 12 at schools in the United States. The deadline to submit your essay is November 11, 2011. GRAIL stands for “Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory.”
The rules state you need to pick two names and explain your choices in 500 words or less in English. Your essay can be any length up to 500 words – even as short as a paragraph. But, DO NOT write more than 500 words or your entry will be automatically disqualified.
Learn more about the GRAIL Essay Naming Contest here:
The GRAIL A and B lunar spaceships are twins – just like those other awe inspiring robots “Spirit” and “Opportunity” , which were named by a 10 year old girl student and quickly became famous worldwide and forever because of their exciting science missions of Exploration and Discovery.They arrive in Lunar Orbit on New Year’s Day 2012.
And there is another way that students can get involved in NASA’s GRAIL mission.
GRAIL A & B are both equipped with four student-run MoonKAM cameras. Students can suggest targets for the cameras. Then the cameras will take close-up views of the lunar surface, taking tens of thousands of images and sending them back to Earth.
“Over 1100 middle schools have signed up to participate in the MoonKAM education and public outreach program to take images and engage in exploration,” said Prof. Maria Zuber of MIT.
Prof. Zuber is the top scientist on the mission and she was very excited to announce the GRAIL Essay Naming contest right after the twin spaceships blasted off to the Moon on Sep 10, 2011 from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
What is the purpose of GRAIL ?
“GRAIL simply put, is a ‘Journey to the Center of the Moon’,” says Dr. Ed Weiler, NASA Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington, DC.
“It will probe the interior of the moon and map its gravity field by 100 to 1000 times better than ever before. We will learn more about the interior of the moon with GRAIL than all previous lunar missions combined. Precisely knowing what the gravity fields are will be critical in helping to land future human and robotic spacecraft. The moon is not very uniform. So it’s a dicey thing to fly orbits around the moon.”
“There have been many missions that have gone to the moon, orbited the moon, landed on the moon, brought back samples of the moon,” said Zuber. “But the missing piece of the puzzle in trying to understand the moon is what the deep interior is like.”
So, what are you waiting for.
Start thinking and writing. Students – You can be space explorers too !
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China’s human spaceflight program is gearing up to take a highly significant “Leap forward in Space” after their “Tiangong 1” prototype space station was rolled out to the remote Gobi desert launch pad at the countries Jiuquan Satellite Launching Center in Gansu Province in anticipation of blastoff sometime this week.
Space officials from the Chinese Manned Space Engineering Office have now confirmed that liftoff of the 8.5 ton Tiangong 1 human rated module atop a Long March CZ-IIF booster rocket is slated to take place during a launch window that extends from Sept. 27 to Sept. 30. The launch was delayed a few days after the recent launch failure of a similar Chinese rocket, the Long March IIC.
China’s burgeoning space efforts come directly on the heels of the voluntary USshutdown of the Space Shuttle program, thereby dismantling all US capability to launch humans into space from American soil for several years until about 2014 at a minimum.
The US manned spaceflight capability gap will be stretched out even further if NASA’s budget for commercial space taxis and the newly proposed SLS launch system is cut by political leaders in Washington, DC.
On Sept. 20, the integrated Long March rocket and Tiangong module were wheeled out of China’s VAB while sitting on top of the Mobile Launch Platform and transferred to the launch gantry at Jiuguan.
The goal of the Tiangong 1 mission is to carry out China’s first human spaceflight related rendezvous and docking mission and to demonstrate that Chinese space engineers have mastered the complicated technology required for a successful outcome.
These skills are akin in complexity to NASA’s Gemini manned program of the 1960’s which paved the way for NASA’s Apollo missions and led directly to the first manned landing on the moon in 1969 by Apollo 11.
Chinas stated goal is to construct a 60 ton Skylab sized space station in earth orbit by 2020.
Check out this CCTV video for further details and imagery of the Chinese space hardware which shows the how China will expand the reach and influence of their space program.
View this Chinese video from NDTV for a glimpse at Chinas long range Space Station plans.
The 40 foot long Tiangong 1 space platform is unmanned and will serve as the docking target for China’s manned Shenzhou capsules in a series of stepping stone learning flights. It is solar powered and equipped to operate in a man-tended mode for short duration missions and in an unmanned mode over the long term.
The initial rendezvous and docking mission will be conducted by the Shenzhou 8 spacecraft, which will fly in an unmanned configuration for the first docking test. Shenzhou 8 is scheduled to soar to space before the end of 2011.
If successful, China plans to quickly follow up with the launch of two manned Shenzhou flights to dock at Tiangong 1 during 2012 – namely Shenzhou 9 & Shenzhou 10.
The multi astronaut chinese crews would float into Tiangong 1 and remain on board for a short duration period of a few days or weeks. The crew would conduct medical, space science and technology tests and experiments.
China’s first female astronaut may be selected to fly as a crew member on one of the two Shenzhou flights in 2012.
Meanwhile, all American astronauts will be completely dependent on the Russian Soyuz capsule for trips to the International Space Station. Russia is still working to correct the third stage malfunction which doomed the recent Progress cargo resupply launch and put a halt to Soyuz launches.
Engineers and technicians are in the process of checking out all Tiangong 1 systems and preliminary weather reports from Chinese media appear favorable for launch.
Shenzhou 8 has also been delivered to the Jinquan launch complex for check out of all systems
Get set for China’s attempt at a ‘Space Spectacular’
Opportunity has just been imaged in high resolution at Endeavour crater by a powerful NASA camera orbiting overhead in Mars orbit. The new image (see above) was snapped while NASA’s long lived robot was climbing a hilltop offering spectacular panoramic vistas peering into the vast crater which is some 14 miles (22 km) wide.
The HiRiSE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed Opportunity and her wheel tracks on September 10, 2011, or Martian Sol 2712 for a mission warrentied to last only 90 Sols ! The rover is sitting to the right of another small crater known as Odyssey. Click to enlarge the image.
Look very closely and you’ll even be able to easily discern the rovers pair of tire tracks showing the path traversed by the robot as she explores the crater and the ejecta rocks and boulders excavated and strewn about by an ancient impact.
Opportunity is ascending up the rim of Endeavour crater at the southern tip of a low ridge dubbed Cape York – a location that has already yielded a bonanza of new science data since her recent arrival in August 2011 after a more than 20 mile (33 km) epic trek.
The intrepid rover discovered a rock unlike any other since she safely landed at the Meridiani Planum region of Mars nearly eight years ago on Jan. 24, 2004.
Opportunity is now searching Endeavour crater and Cape York for signatures of phyllosilicates – clay minerals that formed in the presence of pH neutral water flowing on Mars surface billions of years ago.
Try not to plummet off a steep crater cliff or be buried under a landslide while gazing at the irresistibly alluring curves of beautiful Rheasilvia – the mythical mother of Romulus and Remus – whose found a new home at the South Pole of the giant Asteroid Vesta.
3 D is undoubtedly the best way to maximize your pleasure. So whip out your cool red-cyan anaglyph glasses to enhance your viewing experience of Rheasilvia, the Snowman and more – and maximize your enjoyment of this new 3 D collection showcasing the heavily cratered, pockmarked, mountainous and groovy terrain replete at Vesta.
Scientists and mortals have been fascinated by the enormous impact crater Rheasilvia and central mountain unveiled in detail by NASA’s Dawn Asteroid Orbiter recently arrived at Vesta, the 2nd most massive object in the main asteroid belt. Ceres is the largest object and will be Dawn’s next orbital target in 2015 after departing Vesta in 2012.
“Vesta is the smallest terrestrial planet in our Solar System”, said Chris Russell in an interview with Universe Today. “We do not have a good analog to Vesta anywhere else in the Solar System.”
And the best is yet to come. In a few days, Dawn begins snapping images from a much lower altitude at the HAMO mapping orbit of ca. 685 km vs the initial survey orbit of ca, 2700 km. where most of these images were taken.
Can you find the location of the 3 D South Pole images above in the 2 D South Pole image below?
Read Ken’s continuing features about Dawn and Vesta
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla – Astronauts preparing to launch into space for the better part of the last four decades have had a welcome refuge – the astronaut beach house. This small two-level structure it is often missed by those that are ferried past it to the nearby launch pads. The astronaut beach house is — for those set to thunder into orbit – a vital place to collect their thoughts before they make history. Let’s take a look inside, as three astronauts provide Universe Today with a guided tour of this historic and storied house.
Robert C. Springer flew into space on space shuttle Discovery on STS-29 and on Atlantis for a Department of Defense mission on STS-38. For him, the beach house provided astronauts with a refuge from the hectic atmosphere that comes with preparing to launch to orbit. Springer retired from NASA and the United States Marine Corps in 1990. Afterward he worked for the Boeing Company as director of quality systems, Integrated Defense Systems. Springer views the beach house as a place for one to catch their breath – before the big day.
Sam T. Durrance is similar to both Springer in that he flew to orbit twice. His first mission was STS-35 aboard the space shuttle Columbia and his second was STS-67 on Endeavour. Durrance was a payload specialist on both of his two flights; this role required him to focus on each mission’s specific payload. Durrance is currently employed by the Florida Institute of Technology located in Melbourne, Florida, where he serves as a professor in the Department of Physics and Space Sciences.
Nicole P. Stott started out as a operations engineer at KSC in one of NASA’s Orbiter Processing Facilities. Stott supported human space flight endeavors in numerous roles at KSC before she moved to Johnson Space Center in 1998. She was selected for astronaut training two years later. Stott flew to the International Space Station on STS-128 where she stayed for 91 days before returning to Earth with the crew of STS-129. She would return to the ISS as a member of the STS-133 crew.
Stott came to agency later than Springer and Durrance and therefore her view is somewhat different. For her, the house served to both remind and include her in the area’s rich history.
“It’s a special place, you feel like your part of something here,” said Stott as she looked out from the beach house’s deck toward the ocean. “There is so much history here that while you know that when you’re here, it’s for an event that you’re participating in, but you’re aware that there is a lot that has gone on before you as well.”
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla – NASA’s recent unveiling of what its Space Launch System or SLS would look like created a buzz in the aerospace industry. Some experts in this field have weighed in on what they thought of the design, the politics and the time involved in producing the space agency’s next heavy-left launch vehicle.
Wayne Hale was NASA’s shuttle program manager before he left the space agency in 2010. In his view, the rocket is a needed tool to provide the country with the tools needed to power the U.S. to points beyond low-Earth-orbit (LEO).
“All of us who are interested in the future advancement of space exploration applaud any efforts to expand launch capabilities. If the nation can afford a large rocket like the SLS, it would be very useful in the long run,” Hale said.
Kent Rominger, a former astronaut who is now Alliant Techsystems Vice-President for Test and Research Operations agrees. He says that the United States does not need either access to LEO or a heavy lift rocket – it needs both.
“For some reason we’ve been told that it’s either Heavy-Lift or access to LEO,” said Rominger. “If we ever want to go beyond LEO again – we need heavy lift.”
Robert Springer has decades of experience in the aerospace industry. First as a fighter pilot, and then as an astronaut before he entered the private sector with Boeing.
“It’s a relief to finally get a decision out of NASA, hopefully one that is fully supported by the administration and congress in terms of budget. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like much, if anything new, in the way of technology. So why is it going to take so long to get it into testing and flight—NASA did the Apollo evolution faster, and it was pretty much new technology. Even the proposed look at liquid boosters is hardly new; MSFC (Marshall Space Flight Center) had several contracts with industry to look into this technology back in the 1990’s. There are likely other areas of technology enhancement that will be included, but again, I am relatively sure that a lot of the technology (new power storage devices, something other than hydrazine for control jets, improved monitoring systems, etc) has or is being looked at. In fact, shuttle was working on that sort of technology before the administration decided to pull the plug and cancel shuttle,” Springer said. “So, good to see NASA moving forward, but it would seem that they’re really being very conservative about going forward—not sure why. Other item of note, the latest announcement that the commercial development is going to take a step back and go forward with more traditional procurement, as opposed to some of the advances made in terms of the Space Act, seems like a giant leap backward.”
Charles Bolden, a former astronaut himself and NASA’s current administrator had this to say after NASA unveiled the rocket to the world.
“This launch system will create good-paying American jobs, ensure continued U.S. leadership in space, and inspire millions around the world,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “President Obama challenged us to be bold and dream big, and that’s exactly what we are doing at NASA. While I was proud to fly on the space shuttle, tomorrow’s explorers will now dream of one day walking on Mars.”
If other initiatives that NASA is currently investing in as well as SLS prove viable in the long term the space agency stands to not only regain the capacity to send astronauts to the International Space Station – it would also be able to once again travel beyond LEO.
Video caption: Rheasilvia Impact Basin and Vesta shape model. This false-color shape model video of the giant asteroid Vesta was created from images taken by the framing camera aboard NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. Rheasilvia – South Pole Impact Basin – shown at bottom (left) and head on (at right). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
‘Rheasilvia’ – that’s the brand new name given to the humongous and ever more mysterious South Pole basin feature being scrutinized in detail by Dawn, according to the missions top scientists in a Universe Today exclusive. Dawn is NASA’s newly arrived science orbiter unveiling the giant asteroid Vesta – a marvelously intriguing body unlike any other in our Solar System.
What is Rheasilvia? An impact basin? A crater remnant? Tectonic action? A leftover from internal processes? Or something completely different? That’s the hotly debated central question consuming loads of attention and sparking significant speculation amongst Dawn’s happily puzzled international science team. There is nothing closely analogous to Vesta and Rhea Silvia – and thats a planetary scientists dream come true.
“Rheasilvia – One thing that we all agree on is that the large crater should be named ‘Rheasilvia’ after the mother of Romulus and Remus, the mythical mother of the Vestals,” said Prof. Chris Russell, Dawns lead scientist, in an exclusive interview with Universe Today. Russell, from UCLA, is the scientific Principal Investigator for Dawn.
“Since we have never seen any crater just like this one it is difficult for us to decide exactly what did happen,” Russell told me. “The name ‘Rheasilvia’ has been approved by the IAU and the science team is using it.”
Craters on Vesta are being named after the Vestal Virgins—the priestesses of the Roman goddess Vesta. Other features will be named for festivals and towns of that era. Romulus and Remus were the mythical founders of Rome.
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‘Rheasilvia’ has the science team in a quandary, rather puzzled and reevaluating and debating long held theories as they collect reams of new data from Dawn’s three science instruments – provided by the US, Germany and Italy. That’s the scientific method in progress and it will take time to reach a consensus.
Prior to Dawn’s orbital insertion in July 2011, the best views of Vesta were captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and clearly showed it wasn’t round. Scientists interpreted the data as showing that Vesta’s southern hemisphere lacked a South Pole! And, that it had been blasted away eons ago by a gargantuan cosmic collision that excavated huge amounts of material that nearly utterly destroyed the asteroid.
The ancient collision left behind a colossal 300 mile (500 km) diameter and circular gaping hole in the southern hemisphere – nearly as wide as the entire asteroid (530 km) and leaving behind an as yet unexplained and enormous central mountain peak, measuring some 9 miles (15 km) high and over 125 miles (200 km) in diameter. The mountain has one of the highest elevations in the entire solar system.
“We are trying to understand the high scarps that we see and the scarps that should be there and aren’t,” Russell explained. “We are trying to understand the landslides we think we see and why the land slid. We see grooves in the floor of the basin and want to interpret them.
“And the hill in the center of the crater remains as mysterious today as when we first arrived.”
Another top Dawn scientist described Rheasilvia in this way:
“I would say that the floor of the impact feature contains chaotic terrain with multiple sets of intersecting grooves, sometimes fairly straight and often curvy, said Carol Raymond to Universe Today. Raymond is Dawn’s Deputy Principal Investigator from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
“The crater rim is not well-expressed”, Raymond told me. “We see strong color variations across Vesta, and the south pole impact basin appears to have a distinct spectral signature.
“The analysis is still ongoing,” Russell said.
“The south is distinctly different than the north. The north has a varied spectrum and the south has a distinct spectral feature but it has little variation.” Time will tell as additional high resolution measurements are collected from the forthcoming science campaign at lower orbits.
Russell further informed that the team is rushing to pull all the currently available data together in time for a science conference and public briefing in mid-October.
“We have set ourselves a target to gather everything we know about the south pole impact feature and expect to have a press release from what ever we conclude at the GSA (Geological Society of America) meeting on October 12. “We will tell the public what the options are.”
“We do not have a good analog to Vesta anywhere else in the Solar System and we’ll be studying it very intently.”
Right now Dawn is using its ion propulsion system to spiral down four times closer to Vesta, as it descends from the initlal survey orbit(about 2700 km, 1700 mi) to the new science orbit, elegantly named HAMO – or High Altitude Mapping Orbit (about 685 km.)
“Our current plan is to begin HAMO on Sept. 29, but we will not finalize that plan until next week,” Dr. Marc Rayman told Universe Today. Rayman, of NASA’s JPL, is Dawn’s Chief Engineer.
“Dawn’s mean altitude today (Sept. 20) is around 680 km (420 miles),” said Rayman .
“Dawn successfully completed the majority of the planned ion thrusting needed to reach its new science orbit and navigators are now measuring its orbital parameters precisely so they can design a final maneuver to ensure the spacecraft is in just the orbit needed to begin its intensive mapping observations next week.”
Watch for lots more stories upcoming on Vesta and the Dawn mission
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By all reports – commercial space is thriving. A number of recent announcements show that the burgeoning “private” space industry is thriving. NASA released its plans to obtain transportation services for its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) as well as optional milestones for the Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2).
“This is a significant step forward in America’s amazing story of space exploration,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “It’s further evidence we are committed to fully implementing our plan — as laid out in the Authorization Act — to outsource our space station transportation so NASA can focus its energy and resources on deep space exploration.”
To help speed up the process Bolden has stated that NASA will fund some of the original milestones that have already been negotiated as part of some of the Space Act Agreements (SAA) under CCDev2.
NASA’s proposal outlines contracts that would benefit multiple firms that are set to provide the space agency with designs of spacecraft, rockets and other launch services. This contract is worth an estimated $1.61 billion and is currently slated to run from July 2012 through April 2014. NASA has updated Sierra Nevada Corporation’s SAA with four more milestones – that total up to $25.6 million meaning that the contract that this NewSpace firm now has with NASA is worth $105.6 million – if the agency can successfully accomplish all of its milestones.
“All four CCDev2 partners are performing very well and meeting their milestones,” said Phil McAlister, director of NASA’s Commercial Spaceflight Development. “These additional milestones were selected because they sufficiently accelerated the development of commercial crew transportation systems to justify additional NASA investment.”
Meanwhile, out in California, The Spaceship Company (TSC), the joint venture of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, announced a milestone of their own with the opening of its Final Assembly, Integration and Test Hangar (FAITH), at the Mojave Air and Space Port. The hangar, which cost an estimated $8 million, supports the final stages of Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo. It is hoped that this new facility will both support further commercial space ventures and create jobs.
The facility is located on taxiway-B and encompasses approximately 68,000-square-feet. It will be used to assemble, prepare and test the vehicles. One of the building’s other roles is that of maintenance hangar.
“We take great pride in the opening of FAITH as an accomplishment for our company, our current and future customers and our industry,” said The Spaceship Company Vice President, Operations Enrico Palermo. “Within this new facility, we will produce the highest quality commercial spaceflight systems.”
With FAITH in place, the required infrastructure is now in place to manufacture a fleet of SpaceShipTwo (SS2) sub-orbital spaceships as well as the WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) carrier aircraft. The facility has been sized to support construction of SS2 and WK2 with room to build two of each of these craft – at the same time.
The other structure that is needed to support SS2 and WK2 operations is a 48,000-square-foot building that is located at the Mojave Air and Space Port that TSC has recently had upgraded. If the sub-orbital space tourism market takes off TSC has optioned rights to expand the facility.
“Despite the current state of the U.S. economy and rising unemployment, this is a strong time of growth for The Spaceship Company,” Palermo said. “We are creating excellent, high-skilled job opportunities for individuals with aerospace, engineering and hands-on space program experience. We want employees who are passionate about developing new and innovative ways of accessing space.”
Staying on the topic of sub-orbital space planes, Space Expedition Curaçao (SXC) and XCOR Aerospace, Inc. have announced the completion of a deal that will secure the wet lease of production Lynx tail number two for operation on the Caribbean island of Curaçao.
“Since we signed the initial Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in October of 2010, XCOR and SXC have worked diligently towards completing the Definitive Agreement,” explained XCOR CEO Jeff Greason. “Now that the ink is dry and the check has cleared we can proceed at full pace to begin operations in Curaçao in 2014.”
Since the first flights of SpaceShipOne high above the Mojave Desert, the commercial space industry has found its legs and has expanded its reach both nationally and internationally. With Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) plans to launch its next Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station in November the commercial space field appears to be cementing its beachhead on not only sub-orbital flights – but orbital ones as well.