'SPACE' in News (Sept., 19-20, 2012)

China launches navigation satellites
A Chinese rocket launched two navigation satellites into orbit on Sept., 19, 2012. The Long March 3B lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern China (at 3:10 am Beijing time Wednesday) and placed two Beidou satellites into orbit. The two satellites, designated Compass-M5 and M6, were put into medium Earth orbits by the rocket, with altitudes of about 21,500 kilometers. The satellites are the latest to join China'a Beidou satellite navigation system, which provides services to China and surrounding territory today and with plans to provide global coverage, similar to the American GPS and Russian GLONASS systems, by the end of the decade. Related Links: Spaceflight Now article,   NASASpaceFlight.com article
 
October return-to-flight set for Russian Proton rocket
Russia expects to resume launching Proton rockets in October after an Aug. 6 upper stage failure stranded two communications satellites in useless orbits, according to International Launch Services, the Proton's commercial operator.    FULL STORY

NASA Dawn Spacecraft Sees Hydrated Minerals on Giant Asteroid

Sept. 20, 2012 -- NASA's Dawn spacecraft has revealed the giant asteroid Vesta has its own version of ring around the collar. Two new papers, based on observations from the low-altitude mapping orbit of the Dawn mission, show volatile, or easily evaporated, materials have colored Vesta's surface in a broad swath around its equator. 
The volatiles were released from minerals likely containing water. Pothole-like features mark some of the asteroid's surface where the volatiles boiled off. Dawn did not find actual water ice at Vesta. However, it found evidence of hydrated minerals delivered by meteorites and dust in the giant asteroid's chemistry and geology. The findings appear Thursday in the journal Science. 
One paper, led by Thomas Prettyman, the lead scientist for Dawn's gamma ray and neutron detector (GRaND) at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., describes how the instrument found signatures of hydrogen, likely in the form of hydroxyl or water bound to minerals in Vesta's surface. 
"The source of the hydrogen within Vesta's surface appears to be hydrated minerals delivered by carbon-rich space rocks that collided with Vesta at speeds slow enough to preserve their volatile content," said Prettyman. Read More

Fuelling underway with Galileo satellites for Arianespace's next Soyuz launch
Sept. 20, 2012 -- Both passengers for Arianespace's third Soyuz flight from French Guiana are entering their final processing phase. As part of the activity, Galileo Flight Model #3 (FM3) was fuelled this week in the Spaceport's S5 payload preparation facility.
Galileo FM3 and its "sister" FM4 co-passenger subsequently will be integrated side-by-side on a dispenser for their shared ride aboard the Soyuz ST launcher, joining another pair of similar European navigation satellites lofted by Arianespace on the Soyuz launcher's maiden Spaceport flight in October 2011. Lift-off is currently scheduled for October 2012.
These initial four Galileo platforms were built by a consortium led by the Astrium division of EADS, which produced the platforms and has responsibility for the payloads, while Thales Alenia Space handled the assembly and testing tasks.
Arianespace has responsibility for deploying the entire Galileo constellation, utilising a mix of its medium-lift Soyuz and heavy-lift Ariane 5.Read More

Indian Think Tank: Space Conduct Code Seen by Some as Western Ploy

Sept. 19,  2012- The proposed International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities is viewed by many nations as cover for a Western attempt to corral developing countries’ space ambitions, an Indian think tank has concluded.
That perception, plus the squabbling between the United States and Europe over the code’s content, could scuttle attempts to promote common standards for space operations, according to Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Dehli.
Originally drafted by the European Union (EU), the code, currently undergoing revision, is designed to include all spacefaring nations. But the lack of formal consultations on its contents has undermined its credibility, Rajagopalan said Sept. 13 during a space policy conference in Brussels, organized by the Secure World Foundation of the United States and France’s IFRI Space Policy Program.
“A sizable number of nations believe the EU code is a Western ploy to limit the activities of other spacefaring countries, including India,” Rajagopalan said, adding that established space powers’ judgment about space conduct violations “has not been credible.” Read More

India Looks For Greater Industry Participation In Space

Sept. 19, 2012 - The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) plans to support its indigenous space technology industry to make launch vehicles and communication satellites.
“If industry takes up launch vehicles and satellites through a consortium and [working] with ISRO, it will benefit all of us in several ways. ISRO could focus on more challenging tasks,” according to ISRO chief K. Radhakrishnan.
Since space missions have become a lucrative business for private industry, and in order to meet the huge demand for satellite services, “in the next two years, we need to work the with industry on this in a mission mode and show the new face of Indian space industry,” he says.
“ISRO would like to sit on one side and look at Indian Space Industry Consortia [to] take leadership in niche areas of operational and launch vehicle systems. If we fail to move into such a production regime now, we will feel the pinch in the next decade,” Radhakrishnan said recently.
ISRO has sketched out future scenarios and concluded that India’s operational launch vehicles — currently the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle and in the future the Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle or GSLV-Mk III — could be produced by Indian industry.
“In the future, operational launch vehicles such as the PSLVs, GSLVs and GSLV Mark III could be produced by the industry, starting from basic raw materials to actual launch,” he says.
Radhakrishnan suggests studying the relationships between European and U.S. space agencies and their respective supporting industries. Read More

 
NASA laser communications mission passes major review milestone

Do you ever wish your webpages would load faster? 
Do you remember the days of dial-up and how long it would take a webpage to load?
The internet is no longer limited by the slow speed of dial-up connections, so why should our satellites be?

NASA's Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) mission has successfully completed a Mission Concept Review, a major evaluation milestone of the engineering plan to execute the build and launch of a space communications laser system. The LCRD payload is scheduled for launch onboard a Loral commercial satellite in 2017.
The two-day review was convened at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Goddard's Systems Review Team consisted of members from various technical disciplines to evaluate the Goddard work needed for a successful LCRD mission.
The LCRD project is NASA's first long duration optical communications mission. The Goddard team leads the project with significant support from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Space Systems/Loral.
Space laser communications technology has the potential to provide 10 to 100 times higher data rates than traditional radio frequency systems for the same mass and power. Alternatively, numerous NASA studies have shown that a laser communications system will use less mass and power than a radio frequency system for the same data rate. Read More