'SPACE' in News

Chinese Super-Heavy Launcher Designs Exceed Saturn V

Source: Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology

September 30, 2013 - Chinese engineers are proposing a Moon rocket more powerful than the Saturn V of the Apollo missions and matching the payload of NASA's planned Space Launch System (SLS) Block 2, the unfunded launcher that would put the U.S. back into super-heavy space lift.

Drawing up preliminary designs for the giant Long March 9 launcher, Chinese launch vehicle builder CALT has studied configurations remarkably similar to those that NASA considered in looking for the same capability: to lift 130 metric tons (287,000 lb.) to low Earth orbit (LEO). One of the two preferred Chinese proposals has a similar configuration to the design finally adopted for SLS Block 2, though the takeoff mass for both CALT concepts, 4,100-4,150 tons, is greater. On that measure, at least, China wants to build the largest space launcher in history.

Preliminary work is underway for the intended engines. At the Xian Space Propulsion Institute, engineers are certainly planning and probably doing risk-reduction work for a kerosene-fueled engine, apparently called YF-660, that would be comparable to the 690 tons thrust of the Saturn V's F-1. The Beijing Aerospace Propulsion Institute, meanwhile, is working on critical technologies for a 200-ton-thrust liquid-hydrogen engine that would be used for the first stage of one launcher design and for the second stage of both. That engine is apparently called the YF-220.

Comparison with current launchers and engines highlights the scale of China's ambitions: Whereas U.S. SLS engineers are aiming at a 10% increase on the throw weight of the Saturn V and would use mainly familiar propulsion technology, CALT's super-heavy launcher would have 10 times the throw weight of anything that China now has in service, and would be four times bigger than even the largest rocket it is developing—the Long March 5. The YF-660 engine would be five times as powerful as the biggest engine China has so far built, one that has not yet flown.

The Chinese industry is seeking permission to begin developing a Moon rocket. Studies encompass payloads as low as 70 tons to LEO, says an industry official, suggesting that China may follow the SLS concept by first building a smaller launcher adaptable to enlargement.

Possible Long March 9 configurations were shown two years ago. At the International Astronautical Congress held here Sept. 23-27, CALT published main specifications (see table). One of the two concepts, Scheme A, would have four YF-660s mounted in the core first stage and one in each of four side-mounted boosters. In Scheme B, most of the takeoff thrust would come from four solid-propellant boosters, each generating 1,000 tons of thrust, while four YF-220s would be mounted in the first stage. That adds up to 4,800 tons, but the specified total is 5,000 tons, suggesting that the solid-propellant booster engine, the YF-220 or both will generate a little more than the thrust attributed to each individually. The designation of the YF-220 may hint at its real thrust target. More

Vostochny Key To Moscow Missions To Moon, Mars

New Russian launch site aimed at curbing reliance on Baikonur.

The delayed September launch of a commercial Proton rocket is Russia's latest justification for ending reliance on the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the world's oldest and largest spaceport situated in the desert steppes of neighboring Kazakhstan.

Although Russia lofts many scientific and military spacecraft from Plesetsk Cosmodrome north of Moscow, commercial and government launches to geostationary orbit—the destination of most telecommunications satellites—can be conducted only from Baikonur, where more than half of Russia's campaigns and all manned missions to the International Space Station (ISS) are launched.
Since 2005, when Moscow ratified a long-term extension of its rental agreement with Kazakhstan, it has disputed the amount Russia pays for launches from the spaceport and has sought to limit such missions. Last year, the two governments tangled over safety concerns with Soyuz rockets, which dump spent stages on Kazakh territory during missions that take a northerly trajectory.
In July, tensions increased following the spectacular failure of a Russian Proton M/Block DM3 that crashed seconds after liftoff from its Baikonur launch pad, releasing tons of highly toxic fuel into the air. The Proton's return to flight, carrying the Astra 2E satellite for Luxembourg fleet operator SES, was slated for Sept. 17. But Kazakhstan's environmental worries contributed to a half-month delay to the commercial mission, which at press time was scheduled for Sept. 30.
To reduce its reliance on Baikonur, Moscow is investing in a new launch site in Russia's far-eastern Amur region. Under construction since 2011, the new Vostochny Cosmodrome is running a few months behind schedule, Russian government officials say, but initial missions are still scheduled to begin in 2015 with the launch of Soyuz-2, the newest iteration of Russia's venerable three-stage rocket.
By 2020, Vostochny is planned to loft nearly half of all Russian missions, including the new Angara family of rockets that will replace most Soviet-era launchers, such as Proton, and all manned space flights. The goal, according to Russian officials, is to reduce launches at Baikonur to 11% by the end of the decade, from 65% today.
“By 2020, the new heavy-launcher Angara is planned for launch at Vostochny, and after that, 2030, we plan to finalize and put into operation a reusable rocket and space system,” said Sergey Saveliev, deputy head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, during the 64th annual International Astronautical Congress here last week.
Russia's new Angara rocket family, in development at the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center since the mid-1990s, is based on the liquid oxygen/kerosene-powered URM-1 Common Core Booster (CCB). More environmentally friendly than Soviet-era launchers, the Angara line will rely on a single CCB to power the light-weight Angara 1.2; the heavy-lift Angara A7, designed to launch manned missions to the Moon and beyond, will require up to seven boosters.

In addition to launch facilities and an automated ground control and instrumentation complex at Vostochny, Moscow is developing a tourism center, scientific research and education facilities and a test and integration site in a nearby town. Some hardware production facilities may also be moved to the Amur region to reduce transit costs and create jobs.

By 2030, the cosmodrome is expected to support advanced space missions, including manned exploration, using electric and nuclear-powered interplanetary tugs for lunar and deep-space campaigns.
“The plan is to use the Vostochny space port primarily for our human spaceflight program,” says Alexey Krasnov, Roscosmos director of human spaceflight, notably in support of a new transportation system that he says will be capable of carrying four crew. “However, initially we will use it for launching conventional vehicles that we are using today. We'll start with cargo vehicles, like Progress, then transfer to the Soyuz vehicles, which are being modified.”
The new cosmodrome will also support Russia's communications, relay, navigation, remote-sensing and disaster-monitoring satellite programs, as well as “initial use of manned and unmanned spacecraft for in-orbit servicing, including their refueling,” says Aleksey Romashkin of Russia's Central Research Institute for Machine Building.
Over the next two decades, Vostochny will enable an ambitious slate of space endeavors, including plans to deploy new modules to Russia's ISS segment that could serve as the basis for a national space station program after the ISS is decommissioned, or function as free-flying assets for missions in high Earth orbit. A lunar surface descent/ascent complex for operating in a low-gravity environment is also in the works, as are robotic spacecraft for Moon exploration and, ultimately, a permanent lunar base.
“We wish to combine our resources in low Earth orbit and exploration,” Krasnov says. “That's how we structure it, with robotics and human spaceflight programs, which could be a very good combination.” More.

Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology   Sep 30, 2013 , p. 26

NASA Plans Electric-Propulsion Test Stands

NASA Dryden is building testbeds to advance understanding of electric propulsion for aircraft

Electric propulsion is already here, albeit on a small scale, and now NASA is looking ahead to the technology that would be required to power a regional aircraft in 10-20 years or a narrowbody airliner in 30-40 years.

But the agency intends to start small, with tests to first understand, then model the behavior and efficiency of electric propulsion system components. These will feed into ground, and potentially flight, tests of a distributed propulsion system that would be closely integrated with the airframe.
NASA has laid out a technology road map that would enable 1-2-megawatt electric propulsion for a 50-seat regional in 10 years, 2-5 megawatts for a 100-seat aircraft in 20 years, and 5-10 megawatts for Boeing 737-class airliners in 30 years. Funding is scarce, however, so development is starting at the kilowatt level, but this could spin off to the general-aviation industry, enabling new concepts in light aircraft.

NASA's AirVolt test stand will measure the efficiency of individual electric propulsion system components.

The critical design review has just been completed for an electric propulsion test stand, says Starr Ginn, Aeronautics Mission Research Directorate chief engineer at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. The stand, dubbed AirVolt, is set to be completed by March 2014, and will be used to measure accurately the efficiency of individual system components, from batteries and motors to speed controllers and propellers.
Dryden's AirVolt is a first step toward NASA's long-term goal of turbo-electric distributed propulsion, where a turbine-driven alternator or generator powers multiple propulsors integrated with the airframe. This has the effect of increasing the effective bypass ratio, and propulsive efficiency, while enabling configurations that use the propulsion system to improve aerodynamics or provide flight control.
Testing is planned to begin by the end of next summer, says Sean Clarke, NASA flight systems engineer. The single-string stand will be capable of producing up to 500 lb. of thrust from a 6-ft.-dia. propeller. Initial tests will involve a 40-kw power train. “We will be able to isolate a given component and to validate its efficiency before we put it into a stack of propulsors,” he says.
As a next step, NASA Dryden has awarded a contract to Empirical Systems Aerospace to build the Hybrid Electric Integrated System Testbed (Heist). This will be an 80-kw ground test bench for turbo-electric distributed propulsion, with a flight-like architecture sized for eventual flight testing—by modifying Dryden's TG-14 motor glider or designing and building a dedicated testbed aircraft. “The nice thing about electric propulsion is you are not stuck with traditional aircraft designs,” notes Ginn.
Heist, which recently began, is an 18-month program and hardware should be entering test in a year, says Clarke. The test bench is planned to have a turbo-generator, AC/DC converter, battery system, electronic controller and a DC bus distributing power to 8 or 12 4-6-in. ducted fans, each with its own electric motor and speed controller. “Whether it is just a stand to test power management and distribution or is integrated into an airframe-like structure” is under discussion, says Ginn.

In addition to the real-time management of generator loading, battery capacity and power demand, Heist will allow study of distributed-propulsion algorithms that synthesize individual propulsor commands based on total system thrust targets set by the pilot. “We will study how to schedule loads on the generator, and charging and discharging of the batteries in different flight modes,” says Clarke.

DC bus stability is an issue as power levels are scaled up, because the magnetic inertia of large motors induces electromotive force (called back-EMF) on the bus. This can lead to motor runaways. Heist will allow the issue to be assessed on a power scale compatible with a flight vehicle, he says.
NASA plans to increase its research into distributed electric propulsion over the next couple of years, demonstrating a kilowatt-class architecture as a step toward the megawatt power levels needed for commercial aircraft. So far, for Dryden, “it's not an increase in resources, but a shift, because it's strategic for us to get into hybrid electric,” says Ginn.
The ultimate goal on NASA's road map is 10-megawatt-plus hybrid-electric propulsion for a 300-seat airliner, which could be 40 or more years away. “We recognize a great deal of technology development is needed [to get there]. But there is an opportunity to begin gathering data today,” she adds. “What we are starting to work on can be scaled up to larger aircraft. A low-cost kilowatt-class prototype can exercise in a flight environment technology that is scalable to 2-5 megawatts.” More  Source:Aviation Week & Space Technology   Sep 30, 2013 , p. 50

NASA comes to a halt after U.S. government shutdown

U.S. Congress has failed to agree on a federal budget for 2014, setting off a government shutdown that also affects NASA.

"Around 97% of NASA's 18,000 employees are off the job. Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and other social media accounts are going dark. NASA's website is being pulled offline. NASA Television has also ceased broadcasting," Universe Today reported.

Non-government facilities, which still have some funding left, continue to work for NASA at least for a brief period of time. According to the Planetary Society blog, "All of NASA's missions that are operated out of JPL and APL are continuing to operate normally today and for at least a week. At JPL, that includes: Curiosity; Opportunity; Odyssey; Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter; Cassini; Dawn; Juno; Spitzer; the Voyagers; and WISE, among many others. At APL, that includes MESSENGER and New Horizons. It also includes the Deep Space Network, which JPL manages but which is subcontracted out to other entities for actual operation."

Spaceflight Now wrote that "NASA is planning to launch the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft to Mars in November to examine the Red Planet's atmosphere. ... Media reports indicate that if the shutdown is lengthy, MAVEN could miss the launch window and have to try again in 2016."

Source: Universe Today, Planetary Society, Spaceflight Now

Artist's concept of the Mars Orbiter Mission

Hectic activity at Sriharikota on Mars-bound spacecraft

October 7, 2013 - India's first Mars probe is preparing for launch in late October on a trial run to the red planet to lay the technological foundation for future Indian deep space missions. 

Set for liftoff as soon as Oct. 28, the Mars Orbiter Mission will demonstrate deep space navigation and communications, interplanetary travel, spacecraft autonomy, and the complex make-or-break rocket burn to place the spacecraft in orbit around Mars. 

Only the United States, Russia and the European Space Agency have successfully dispatched robots to Mars before. The Indian Space Research Organization hopes to be the fourth space agency to accomplish the feat. 

The Indian orbiter also carries a small camera to return medium-resolution color imagery of the Martian terrain, a thermal infrared spectrometer to measure the chemical composition of the surface, and instruments to assess the Mars atmosphere, including a methane detector. 

But Indian officials rank the orbiter's technological objectives higher than its science goals, according to J.N. Goswami, director of ISRO's Physical Research Laboratory and a top scientist on the Mars Orbiter Mission. 

Goswami gave a briefing on the mission in March at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. 

Engineers put together the Mars Orbiter Mission in quick time. Goswami said ISRO approved the mission in August 2011, with all the hardware assembled on the orbiter in less than two years. 

Designers based the spacecraft on the Chandrayaan 1 lunar orbiter, which India successfully placed in orbit around the moon in November 2008 and successfully operated until August 2009. 

India's Mars-bound spacecraft undergoes electromagnetic interference testing. Credit: ISRO

The $73 million Mars Orbiter Mission has a launch window opening Oct. 28 and extending through Nov. 19. 

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is providing communications and navigation support for the mission, which requires the use of NASA's Deep Space Network, a set of three tracking stations in California, Spain and Australia. 

Indian scientists last week feared the partial shutdown of the U.S. government - caused by political wrangling in Washington - could threaten India's access to NASA's tracking and navigation expertise. 

"NASA/JPL authorities have reaffirmed support for the Mars Orbiter Mission as planned and stated that the current U.S. government partial shutdown will not affect the schedule of Mars Orbiter Mission," ISRO said in a statement released Saturday. 

The spacecraft arrived at the Satish Dhawan Space Center on India's east coast Thursday after an overland trip from its factory and test facility in Bangalore. 

Over the next three weeks, technicians will add rocket fuel to the spacecraft, which is about the size of a compact car. Then engineers will hoist the 2,976-pound probe atop an amped-up version of India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle called the PSLV XL. 

Boosted by enlarged strap-on rocket motors, the PSLV will hurl the Mars-bound spacecraft into an elliptical loop with a peak altitude about 14,300 miles above Earth. 

The Mars Orbiter Mission will propel itself out of the grasp of Earth's gravity with six engine burns, concluding the escape maneuvers around Nov. 30 and embarking on a 10-month interplanetary cruise to the red planet. 

Arrival at Mars is scheduled for Sept. 21, 2014, one day before the arrival NASA's MAVEN Mars orbiter, which is on track for launch directly to Mars from Florida on Nov. 18. 

The Indian spacecraft will enter an orbit ranging in altitude from 234 miles to nearly 50,000 miles above Mars, completing a lap around the planet every 3.2 days. Source: SPACEFLIGHT NOW  Payloads of Mars Orbiter     Mission Profile

'SPACE' in News

China unveils its first and unnamed moon rover

Beijing (XNA) Sep 30, 2013 - Chinese scientists described the country's first

moon rover on Wednesday and invited the global public to come up with a name for it. Zhao Xiaojin, director of the aerospace department of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, depicted the lunar rover an orbiter adaptable to harsh environments; a highly efficient and integrated robot; and a high altitude "patrolman" carrying the dreams of Asia.

The Chang'e-3 mission to moon, named after a Chinese lunar goddess, will take place in December, when a Chinese spacecraft will soft-land on a celestial body for the first time.The rover has two wings, stands on six wheels, weighs 140 kg and will be powered by solar energy.
"When it arrives in lunar orbit on board a lander, the rover will choose the best landing site and gently touch down the moon's surface, using optical and microwave sensors to avoid rocks and craters," Zhao said.
The rover will "select the best route, use minimal fuel and make the smallest possible error" during landing and is capable of hovering to steer clear of obstacles, he said. ... more

NASA Wants Investigations for a Mars 2020 Rover
Washington DC (SPX) Sep 30, 2013: Planning for NASA's 2020 Mars rover envisions a 

basic structure that capitalizes on the design and engineering work done for the NASA rover Curiosity, which landed on Mars in 2012, but with new science instruments selected through competition for accomplishing different science objectives.
NASA has released its announcement of an open competition for the planetary community to submit proposals for the science and exploration technology instruments that would be carried aboard the agency's next Mars rover, scheduled for launch in July/August of 2020.
The Mars 2020 rover will explore and assess Mars as a potential habitat for life, search for signs of past life, collect carefully selected samples for possible future return to Earth, and demonstrate technology for future human exploration of the Red Planet.
Officially called the Mars 2020 Mission Investigations Announcement of Opportunity (AO), this competition solicits flight investigations for which each principal investigator or scientist is responsible for a complete space flight investigation, including instrument hardware, mission operations and data analysis. The total allocated cost for development of all the investigations selected and funded by NASA is approximately $130 million.

The competitively selected instruments will be placed on a rover similar to Curiosity, which landed on Mars in August 2012. Using Curiosity's design will help minimize mission costs and risks and deliver a rover that can accomplish the mission objectives. The Mars 2020 mission also would build upon the scientific accomplishments of Curiosity and other previous Mars missions. ... more

'SPACE' in News

A Look at History’s Launch Pad Failures - The Nedelin Disaster

By far the worst launch pad failure, the Nedelin Disaster took place in 1960, before the space age had even begun. It is well known that in the USSR launch decisions were at least as much political as technological, and that it sometimes cost lives: the death of Vladimir Komarov when he flew on a rushed Soyuz 1 is a case in point. But no misguided launch decision cost as many lives as the Nedelin Disaster, the deadliest incident in rocketry history. Russian rocket designer Boris Chertok described its impact: “..the first R-16 missile, named ‘article 8K64,’ killed, on average, more people without leaving the launch pad than did any 10 V-2 missiles that struck London during World War II.” This devastation was wrought from an inert missile – no explosives were involved at all. As Chertok described it, the incident was so far outside the norms of spacecraft development that “one cannot explain it using the terminology or classification system of reliability engineering developed for rocket technology.” More

Related: Featured Lessons Learned

‘Driving’ Satellites: A Complex Undertaking

Michael Mackowski in an article in Space Safety Magazine, March 13, 2013 issue writes ...

"I have the privilege of working in the space industry as a power subsystem engineer for Orbital Sciences in Gilbert, Arizona. On February 11, 2013 the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (aka Landsat 8) spacecraft was launched and I was at the NASA Goddard mission operations center monitoring performance of this satellite that Orbital built for NASA and the US Geological Survey.
There is a lot more to getting a satellite launched and working than just bolting it to a rocket and flinging it loose. Once the satellite is in orbit, it’s not ready to use on the first day. Engineers and operators need to slowly and carefully activate and test out all of the equipment and operating modes. Spacecraft are generally launched in mode with only a few components operating, the minimum needed to maintain proper pointing and communication with the ground. This is done in case of any problems with the rocket or deploying of solar arrays and antennas.
Over the first few days more components are turned on, and software settings and parameters are adjusted as these changes affect the operating modes. The spacecraft is checked out between each step, and since the ground is not in constant contact with the spacecraft, this can take many days. After the spacecraft bus is checked out, only then can the payload (science instruments) be turned on. This is also a slow and deliberate process, as you don’t just flip one switch for data to start flowing.
The entire process of controlling (“flying”) the satellite is rather complicated. There are pass plans, software loads, guidance parameters, communication channels, and many more details that I haven’t even figured out. That’s how the space hardware business generally works – everyone is a specialist. Most of the engineers know a whole lot about one particularly specialty. Mine is the power subsystem – the solar array, battery, and charging and load switching electronics. I know a tiny bit about the software and data system, but not many details. Likewise, the folks who manage the thermal control generally don’t know all the details of how the solar array is designed. This makes it a team effort, which is very cool, but requires a lot of coordination, management, and planning.
Even sending a single command is not trivial. You have to test it on a ground simulator to make sure it works, then load it in a communications queue, then format it to send by radio to the satellite, then confirm it is received, then confirm it did what you asked. This goes on and on and on for every little setting, such as heater set points, communications channels, etc.

Driving satellites is a team effort that takes a lot of planning and smarts. Once a new satellite is checked out and it starts its main mission, the staffing level goes down from several dozen to a handful, and often after a year or so, maybe one engineer checks on it once a day and leaves it on a sort of auto-pilot, with the scientists (who are collecting the data) commanding data collecting sequences. More

Test-Fire Delayed Due to Defects Found in QM 1 Aft Segment

Sept. 07, 201- ATK’s test-firing of the Qualification Motor 1 has been delayed due to defects found in the aft segment of the motor. 

ATK and NASA have had to postpone the upcoming ground test of the Qualification Motor (QM)-1 due to one of the segments not meeting testing criteria. As such, it will not be used for the next hot-fire test, which takes place in the Utah desert. AmericaSpace spoke with ATK representatives to learn what was at the heart of this issue.
“One segment of the Space Launch System (SLS) Qualification Motor (QM)-1 ground test booster did not meet test criteria and will not be used for the next hot-fire test, “ said ATK’s Trina Helquist. “During routine X-ray inspection that followed the casting of the propellant, un-bonds and voids were found. Un-bonds are areas where the propellant did not adhere to the insulation/lining of the case. A void in this situation is an air pocket in the propellant.”
These issues were only discovered in the booster’s aft segment, which is one of five segments that comprise the rocket motor that tracks its history through the space shuttle’s twin Solid Rocket Boosters, or “SRBs.” Similar problems were not seen in the three prior Development Motor tests that ATK conducted.
Engineers conducting extensive inspections of the components discovered these problems via X-ray and ultrasonic techniques. The inspections let engineers peer into the motor to discover problems well in advance of the test-fire. Tests such as these are standard operating procedure for the NASA/ATK team.
According to ATK, all of the components of QM-1 have been surveyed and no other issues have been located. The four other segments are currently in the test stand waiting testing. ATK stressed that their highest concern was to ensure that the boosters would operate as advertised.
“The QM-1 tests are important as they qualify the design for flight. As such, it is critical for these boosters to be uniform in composition so that they will burn as designed. This segment did not meet test criteria and will not be used. The finding of this anomaly is an example of why we inspect the boosters and how we establish a high reliability of these systems,” Helquist added.

 The boosters being tested by ATK and NASA will one day be used to power the space agency’s heavy-lift booster, the Space Launch System, to orbit. Image Credit: NASA

The inspection process includes full inspection of the bond line between the propellant and the lined insulation. The investigating team, comprised of representatives from both ATK and NASA, is currently working to discover the root cause of the problems discovered in the aft segment. Given that the aft segment’s geometry is different than the others, the team is paying close attention to see if that could be the cause of these voids.
For its part, ATK does not feel that this issue will impact other testing objectives for SLS’ boosters.
“QM-1 is not on the critical path for the first flight of SLS in 2017, and there is margin in the schedule to resolve this anomaly,” Helquist said.
Currently, a new test-fire date for QM-1 has not been scheduled.
To date, ATK has designed, manufactured, and successfully tested three Development Motors (DM-1, -2, -3). The step-by-step process is part of an incremental approach that allows for a thorough review of the performance of these boosters. Each test in the DM series was slightly different (temperature being a key aspect that was varied between tests). Also, each of these motors was slightly different in design. This provided NASA/ATK with design options. The overall design is very similar to what is planned to fly on SLS, thus certifying the booster system for flight.

“Developing a rocket is a complex process and anomalies can occur. We inspect for these anomalies to ensure we provide a top-quality product as showcased in our success record of more than 270 launches and tests,” said Helquist when pressed about how serious her company takes the booster’s design. “NASA and ATK have a top investigation team working the issue. We are confident a root cause will be found.” Source

Related: 

• ATK/NASA investigating void issue in SLS test motor segment (Sept., 5, 2013)
• NASA looks to Kourou for SLS ground ops streamlining ideas (June 3, 2012)
• Full steam ahead for ATK’s SLS booster drive  (May 4 , 2013)
• Two mid-span supports required to avoid booster sag for QM-1 (March 30, 2013)

Kuaizhou – China secretly launches new quick response rocket

September 25, 2013 - China launched a brand new rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 04:37 UTC on Wednesday. The Kuaizhou “quick-vessel” is an all solid launch rocket that had been the subject of rumors for the past few months. However, an obscure NOTAM (Notice To Airman) was followed by a launch confirmation via a short announcement by the Chinese media.

New Chinese Rocket:

Very little is known about the Kuaizhou rocket, other than it was developed by CASIC.  No photos or graphics exist in the public domain.

It is also known the rocket – likely on its test flight – was carrying a satellite, called Kuaizhou-1.

Built by the Harbin Institute of Technology, the new satellite will be used for emergency data monitoring and imaging, under the control of the national remote sensing center at the national Academy of Sciences.

The new satellite is probably part of a “quick response satellite system” model that was already announced as in the works by the Chinese.

Notably, the Chinese appear to be making a statement to the international community, as the launch took place in the backdrop of the 64th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), which is being held in Beijing.

The Chinese Society of Astronautics is hosting this year’s IAC – with the Congress taking place between the 23 and 27 of September. The theme is “Promoting Space Development for the Benefit of Mankind.”

More than 3000 attendees – along with most of China’s top space flight players, IAC 2013 promises a rare insight into China’s space ambitions – all while managing to launch a new rocket without any advanced notice to the media.

The Launch Site:

The Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, in Ejin-Banner – a county in Alashan League of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region – was the first Chinese satellite launch center and is also known as the Shuang Cheng Tze launch center.

The site includes a Technical Centre, two Launch Complexes, Mission Command and Control Centre, Launch Control Centre, propellant fuelling systems, tracking and communication systems, gas supply systems, weather forecast systems, and logistic support systems.

Jiuquan was originally used to launch and recover scientific satellites into medium or low earth orbits at high inclinations. It is also the place from where all the Chinese manned missions are launched.

Presently, only the LC-43 launch complex, also known by South Launch Site (SLS) is in use.

This launch complex is equipped with two launch pads: 921 and 603. Launch pad 921 is used for the manned program for the launch of the Chang Zheng-2F launch vehicle (Shenzhou and Tiangong). The 603 launch pad is used for unmanned orbital launches by the Chang Zheng-2C, Chang Zheng-2D and Chang Zheng-2C launch vehicles. Source

J-2X Hot-Fire -Tests First Additive-Manufactured 

NASA and its SLS partners pull out the stops to reduce costs as hardware testing surges ahead

Facing even greater budgetary uncertainty than before, Aerojet Rocketdyne is entering a key period of testing in its drive to cut cost from the propulsion element of NASA's heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) vehicle.

The third J-2X will begin nominal and off-
nominal performance tests later this year. 

Working closely with the space agency, the newly merged rocket engine company has a raft of cost-saving initiatives underway ranging from production streamlining to advanced, but cheaper, manufacturing methods. According to NASA's SLS liquid engines program manager Mike Kynard, the goal is straightforward. “We want SLS to be more affordable. We don't want to spend all our money on the truck that takes us to space—we want to be able to spend more on exploration when we get there.”

The vision statement stems as much from the fiscal realities of the pressurized NASA budget as it does from the bitter experience of the canceled Constellation program that preceded the SLS. “The Augustine Report said Constellation was not affordable, and we heard that message loud and clear,” Kynard told reporters at NASA Stennis Space Center, Miss., where tests are underway of the liquid-oxygen/hydrogen (LOx/LH) J-2X upper-stage engine in development for the SLS.

Testing of the second J-2X ended in Sept.,
with a full-duration 330-sec. run. 

The latest hot-fire test of the J-2X on Sept. 5 included the first part made from selective laser melting (SLM), a subset of additive manufacturing. The part tested was an access port cover, not typical of the more complex, hard-to-make parts for which SLM will be generally used. But Aerojet Rocketdyne and NASA officials say its inclusion in the J-2X program helps pave the way for broader applications later. Initial targets include using SLM to help produce a more affordable, expendable version of the SLS's RS-25, which was originally developed as the space shuttle main engine (SSME).

Jim Paulsen, Aerojet Rocketdyne Advanced Space and Launch deputy program manager, says the company needs “to start focusing on affordability, and that's going to be by using lessons learned from the RS68 and J-2X and applying it to the new RS-25.” Paulsen adds, “we hope to get started on that fairly soon because there is a supply-base concern. We hope that when the new fiscal year starts in October we will be working on restarting RS-25 production.”

Kynard says potential applications of SLM include parts that are difficult to manufacture such as the “pogo” LOx splash-baffle, which is designed to prevent potentially damaging frequency harmonics in the fuel system. Company officials say the application of the SLM process is expected to bring significant cost and time savings. Gas-generator components that typically took nine months to produce at a cost of $300,000 are now expected to be made in 3-5 weeks for just $35,000. NASA SLS program manager Todd May says, “we are laser-focused on getting costs down,” and notes that the sintering process is a valuable tool in this initiative.

As well as affordability, the design focus for the new-build RS-25 units will counter obsolescence issues that have emerged over time. An example is the 1980s-vintage engine controller on the SSME. The new-build engine, which will retain the baseline RS-25 designation, is a modern digital-engine controller that will be derived from units tested on the new upper-stage engine.

“J-2X was made for Ares [under Constellation] and that's been adapted for SLS, so now it has different requirements,” says Kynard. “So we are evolving the J-2X controller to control the RS-25. We think it is  helpful to have a common engine controller anyway, so as we evolve the J-2X unit for the RS-25, we'll keep an eye on it and see if we can put it in the RS68, and if we resurrect it, the F-1B as well.” The adapted J-2X controller will be run on a pair of RS-25 development engines at Stennis starting next year.

Aerojet Rocketdyne is moving to restart RS-25 production soon because, even though NASA has 15 complete RS-25 former shuttle engines in storage at Stennis and a 16th due to be assembled from existing parts, this will only cover sufficient engines for four launches of the SLS. The first stage of the SLS will use four RS-25s. “The first 16 flight engines are covered, but we like to have four spares ready to go. So you could argue we are good for three launches,” says Paulsen. The first four SLS flights are slated for 2017, 2021, 2023 and 2025. “So we will be looking at delivering the first new engines to Stennis in the 2021-22 time frame,” he adds.

Up to 50% of the cost-savings for the expendable RS-25 is also expected to be realized through the process of “value-stream mapping,” the way the engine is put together. “Part of the close-out of the shuttle involved looking at what it takes to restart RS-25,” says Tom Martin, development lead for the F-1B advanced booster risk-reduction program at Aerojet Rocketdyne. “We did value-stream mapping to see what drove the major costs and, in future, if we restart production, we will hit the ground running.” 

“We saw opportunities before where we could do things differently, but change was too expensive in the middle of the shuttle program for re-certification reasons,” adds Chris Sanders, Aerojet Rocketdyne's deputy director for strategic planning and business development.

“After 30 years of work with space shuttle,” Martin says, “there was a lot of baggage that you didn't want to mess with because it was a flight program. So you can look at it now and say, 'What do you want to keep and what don't you need?'”

“We changed the approach because the SSME was made in limited quantities and nobody had ever done value-stream mapping on it before,” says Kynard. “We looked at every step to see if there was a better way to make the engine. Flow time has seen a huge benefit. We're seeing three to four months go to about one-month assembly periods. This engine is ripe for that, and we can make the flow common between engines. That way, the line doesn't care if it's a J-2X or an RS68.”

Under the revised process, the overall time for production of the new RS-25 from long-lead items to installation is expected to be reduced to around four years from the 6.5-year period it saw on the shuttle. “It's ambitious, but that's how you drive affordability,” Kynard adds.

Martin says the focus has been on three major areas: raw materials, touch labor and support labor from engineering staff. “So we've been going through and looking at all of that,” he says. “We've been  consolidating the supply chain.”

Sanders says that suppliers that represent a potential single-point failure have been eliminated, while the number that are common between multiple programs is growing. “For example, they are 65% common between the J-2X and RS-25 and it's likely that will go higher.”

As one of the major tenets of SLS is the heavy use of heritage hardware, Sanders believes this also plays a role in forcing the government-industry team to seek even more cost-saving initiatives. “NASA decided to go with mature and relatively low-risk technology, so we've inserted in J-2X more modern manufacturing, and the facilities have been laid out to optimize the production and assembly flow,” he  says.

“So at the program level, we've got those kinds of things going on. At the company level, we've been reducing our footprint at the various campuses, which is down by 50% since we started the process in 2007,” Sanders notes. “Head-count is also down by around 30% and part of that is the new reality of the business base—as well as a drive to be leaner and more affordable.”

Sanders says this is not just about “reducing square footage.” The company has also been “making efforts to consolidate large turbomachinery production into one location [at West Palm Beach, Fla.], and at Stennis, where we conduct all large-engine assembly and test. In one site, there is now RS68, RS-25 and J-2X,” he says.

Major manufacturing consolidation is also close to completion at Aerojet Rocketdyne's site in De Soto, Calif., near Los Angeles, where the company has centralized activity away from the heritage facility at nearby Canoga Park. “That's the third big part. We've laid out assembly and flow to minimize production time and unnecessary flow,” Sanders says.

“We are trying to use same manufacturing technology so that in a common shop the same people can work on different parts. For example, the move to hip-bonded chambers, which was implemented on the J-2X, is a good example of where it sets the stage for everything we're doing on RS-25,” he says. “We use it on RS68 and intend to use it on the F-1B. In many ways, the J-2X is a testbed for everything we need to do for the RS-25. Also, the RS-25 is a restart of an existing production line, just like J-2X.”

Sanders stresses that the “SLS will only be successful if it is affordable.” He asserts that “this program, more than any previous shuttle replacement effort, has the greatest chance because of the initiatives that are being taken now.”  Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology   Sep 23, 2013 , p. 56

How China's Space Program Has Developed, Despite ITAR

September 17, 2013 - It is a plausible approach on its face. The U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) is a detailed list of munitions no one wants to fall into the wrong hands. It includes deadly hardware up to and including nuclear weapons. In the late 1990s, it also came to include satellite components, regardless of their end use. But because the State Department export-licensing bureaucracy proved more difficult to manage than the Commerce Department counterpart, the U.S. satellite industry found itself hobbled at the very time it faced growing competition abroad.

The reasons are complex, but the upshot is the U.S. share of worldwide satellite sales fell to 30% in 2008 from 63% in 1999. Ever since the export control of satellites and components shifted to ITAR as the tumble began, industry has lobbied long and hard for some relief.

It is coming, but ever so slowly. President Barack Obama ordered changes in all munitions-export procedures in 2009, and signed legislation in January that gave him explicit authority to remove satellite components from the munitions list. But modified regulations will not be ready until next year, and after that, it will be another 180 days before the new regulations take effect.

An objective of the satellite-export crackdown was to hobble China’s efforts to become a space-faring nation. U.S. satellite technology is so ubiquitous that, the theory went, blocking its export to China effectively denied that country the technology and financial incentives it needed to build advanced launchers and spacecraft.

It has not worked out that way. Even without open access to U.S. technology and customers, China continues to advance steadily in civilian and, yes, military space. It has sent 10 military pilots into orbit for increasingly complex maneuvers aimed at building a small space station in 2020. It is sending a robotic lander to the Moon soon. It has also added dramatically to the cloud of potentially deadly space debris surrounding Earth with its ill-advised anti-satellite weapon test in January 2007.

You need look no farther than the International Space Station to see that there is another way. Basically, the ISS would not exist had the Soviet Union and U.S. not engaged in joint civil-space projects that predated even the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975, at the height of the Cold War. Time and again, the so-called soft power of space cooperation has outweighed the disadvantages that accompany the suspicion and mistrust of China that has damaged the U.S. satellite industry. Source

Smallsats Finding New Applications

More-capable cubesats are attracting commercial and government interest

Small, low-cost satellites are coming into their own as a niche industry serving commercial and government markets, building on the free development work provided by a generation of engineering students at places like California Polytechnic State University and Morehead State University in Kentucky.

It is now clear that smallsat technology is leapfrogging beyond the classroom. No longer just a hands-on teaching tool, miniature spacecraft are in serious development as weather monitors, Earth- and space-observation telescopes and a host of scientific probes.

“The genesis for a lot of the work has been in the universities, but we're now coming to a kind of a cusp, or a knee in the curve,” says Charles S. (Scott) MacGillivray, president of Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, a two-year-old startup that is gaining serious traction in the market for cubesat components, engineering services and launch integration. “We can start saying 'hey, we can do real missions with these.'”

Presentations at the 27th annual Small Satellite Conference at Utah State University here last week underscore MacGillivray's point.

During last year's conference Tyvak signed a $13.5 million NASA technology-development contract for the Cubesat Proximity Operations Demonstration (CPOD) mission, which will fly two 3U cubesats (each one comprising three 10-cm “cubes” that are each counted as one “U”) to orbit. Once there, the two tiny spacecraft will use a multi-thruster cold-gas propulsion system to fly a choreographed pattern around each other before docking, accomplishing the task with imagery, a cross-linked GPS signal and sophisticated software running on high-performance onboard processors.

Although most of the small-satellite and miniature instruments covered at this year's conference are still in development, the range of topics suggests the next few years will see a dramatic increase in “real missions” conducted with small spacecraft. Among them are “High-performance Spectroscopic Observation from a Smallsat;” “Star Tracker on a Chip;” “Simultaneous Multi-Point Space Weather Measurements using the Low-Cost EDSN CubeSat Constellation;” “Cicero—A Distributed Small Satellite Radio Occultation Pathfinder Mission,” and “TacSat-4: Military Utility in a Small Communication Satellite.”

Until recently, smallsats were considered too limited for meaningful work in space. Designers have been spending a lot of time working on ways to enhance the capabilities, and the payoff is starting to appear. Presenters from the Space Dynamics Laboratory here and NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., displayed dramatically different ways to fold a useful Earth-observation or astronomical telescope into cubesats for deployment on orbit. Miniature atmospheric sounders and other weather instruments were hot, as were propulsion systems.

The cold-gas thrusters on Tyvak's CPOD cubesats may not be the propulsion of choice for future smallsat maneuvering. While last year's conference included a hybrid rocket test banished to an abandoned runway outside of town due to safety concerns (AW&ST Aug. 20, 2012, p. 31), tiny electric and “green” propulsion systems using inert and non-toxic propellants such as Teflon were on display this year.

Those kinder, gentler characteristics, highlighted by specialty houses like Busek Space Propulsion and Systems of Natick, Mass., and Digital Solid State Propulsion (DSSP) of Reno, Nev., should allay the fears of satellite operators hoping to defray their launch costs a little by allowing smallsats to fly with them as secondary payloads.

A case in point is Spinsat, which is set for “soft stowage” launch in the pressurized portion of the SpaceX Dragon headed to the International Space Station (ISS) next April. A station crewmember will carry the 22-in. sphere, essentially packed in a fabric bag, from the Dragon into the station and leave it there until its scheduled deployment through the Japanese module's airlock. NASA safety experts approved the mission because the satellite's 12 thruster-clusters burn an inert solid fuel called Hipep, and only when an electric charge is passed across it. 

In space, the Naval Research Laboratory satellite will demonstrate the DSSP thruster technology in a series of maneuvers, and also serve as a reflector for ground-based laser ranging to study atmospheric drag. It is one of two very different spacecraft that will be passed through the Japanese airlock and released from the end of one of the station's robotic arms to test a new NASA deployer known as Cyclops.

Engineers at Johnson Space Center designed Cyclops to handle as many different spacecraft shapes as possible, grappling them with a special fixture, squeezing through the airlock tunnel and attaching to the end of the Canadian or Japanese-built arms to release them down and away from the back of the station to avoid recontact. In addition to the U.S. Navy's Spinsat, the Cyclops test in April will deploy a rectangular satellite—Lonestar-2—built by Texas college students.

Neither of the first two spacecraft to be deployed with Cyclops is a cubesat, but Japan and the U.S. company Nanoracks have launched cubesats from the ISS with special spring-loaded dispensers that essentially work like a jack-in-the-box, squiring the tiny spacecraft out in stacks (see photo).

Dispensers have gone a long way beyond the standard cubesat deployer developed at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) called the P-Pod. Planetary Systems of Silver Spring, Md., drew attention in the exhibit hall with noisy demonstrations of its 6U cubesat deployer, and paper presentations covered a variety of dispensing methods for smallsat packages ranging from multiple cubesats to as many as six satellites in the 180-kg (400-lb.) range riding on Moog CSA Engineering's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA) rings.

In the middle is an “Express” adapter for secondary payloads in the 20-50-kg class—under development at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Columbia, Md.—to fill an unmet need.

“In talks with the community over the past few years we've noticed that a need exists for an intermediary-sized mission between cubesats and ESPA-sized vehicles,” says Clint Apland, who presented a paper on the “Express” work. “We've designed, fabricated and will begin to test this hardware next month.”

While the number of ways to get secondary payloads off their launch vehicles is growing, Tyvak's MacGillivray notes a trend to dedicated launch vehicles for small satellites. One of them is a follow-on to the reusable suborbital human spaceflight business Virgin Galactic hopes to kick off next year with its eight-seat SpaceShipTwo. The company has started developing a two-stage, kerosene-fueled “LauncherOne” rocket that it will drop from the same WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft that will air-launch its human payloads.

“Secondary opportunities are great for technology demonstrators, they're great for educational missions, but as we've been speaking to you and throughout the community [for a little more than a year], you've told us it is hard to build a business case around secondary launch opportunities,” says William Pomerantz, Virgin Galactic's special projects director. “When you can't specify where you are launching from, where you are launching to, when you are launching . . . that is a constraint.”

Virgin hopes to begin flying 200-kg payloads to low Earth orbit in 2016, dropping the LauncherOne vehicle at an altitude of 50,000 ft. from anywhere that has a 9,000-10,000-ft. runway for WhiteKnightTwo. Pomerantz says the company is developing the rocket  in-house, including engines and its “simple, low-cost composites structure.” The price of a mission, he says, will be “less than $10 million.”

That could play well with NASA's open-ended spaceflight-technology development program. With $600 million to invest this year, the space technology mission director is a significant potential customer for the smallsat community, and the associate administrator in charge of the program was invited to deliver the keynote address at this year's smallsat conference.

“We're trying to accelerate and invest where we can to push the whole area forward,” said Mike Gazarik. “. . . [T]here are power limitations, but what we're seeing, just like our flight-opportunities program, is a number of technology payloads that can be flown very inexpensively on a suborbital vehicle, which can be flown on a small spacecraft. We're looking at whatever we can find to be able to get to space.”

Most experts at the conference believe that, ultimately, cubesats and other small satellites will find their greatest utility in constellations that combine the capabilities of “swarms” of the relatively inexpensive spacecraft to do more, in some cases, than a single expensive satellite can accomplish. Weather constellations, to cite one example presented this year, can place sensors over a developing hurricane more frequently than today's polar-orbiting weathersats, and can provide higher-resolution data on rapidly changing conditions than the geostationary environmental platforms.

Jordi Puig-Suari, the Cal Poly professor who, with Bob Twigg of Morehead State, pioneered the cubesat standard, continues to push the envelope as an educator even as he works with Tyvak—founded and staffed by Cal Poly graduates like MacGillivray—on commercial projects. This year he presented an analysis of what it would take to launch a constellation of eight 3U cubesats from an Atlas V. It turns out that even a cold-gas propulsion system would be up to the task of stabilizing the constellation around the planet in a single plane after 40 days, with fairly straightforward deployment from the launch vehicle.

“Forty days is not that long,” Puig-Suari says. “It is kind of a commissioning time. So our conclusion is we are ready to deploy constellations today. We don't have to do anything different—or very little different—than what we have right now. The technology, the infrastructure, the systems are in place where we could have a cubesat constellation, at least a single plane, on the next Atlas V.” Source:Aviation Week & Space Technology   Aug 19, 2013 , p. 37

Curiosity Rover Makes Big Water Discovery in Mars Dirt, a 'Wow Moment'

Future Mars explorers may be able to get all the water they need out of the red dirt beneath their boots, a new study suggests.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has found that surface soil on the Red Planet contains about 2 percent water by weight. That means astronaut pioneers could extract roughly 2 pints (1 liter) of water out of every cubic foot (0.03 cubic meters) of Martian dirt they dig up, said study lead author Laurie Leshin, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.
"For me, that was a big 'wow' moment," Leshin told SPACE.com. "I was really happy when we saw that there's easily accessible water here in the dirt beneath your feet. And it's probably true anywhere you go on Mars." [The Search for Water on Mars (Photos)]


The new study is one of five papers published in the journal Science today (Sept. 26) that report what researchers have learned about Martian surface materials from the work Curiosity did during its first 100 days on the Red Planet.



Soaking up atmospheric water
Curiosity touched down inside Mars' huge Gale Crater in August 2012, kicking off a planned two-year surface mission to determine if the Red Planet could ever have supported microbial life. It achieved that goal in March, when it found that a spot near its landing site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago.
But Curiosity did quite a bit of science work before getting to Yellowknife Bay. Leshin and her colleagues looked at the results of Curiosity's first extensive Mars soil analyses, which the 1-ton rover performed on dirt that it scooped up at a sandy site called Rocknest in November 2012.
Using its Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM, Curiosity heated this dirt to a temperature of 1,535 degrees Fahrenheit (835 degrees Celsius), and then identified the gases that boiled off. SAM saw significant amounts of carbon dioxide, oxygen and sulfur compounds — and lots of water on Mars.
SAM also determined that the soil water is rich in deuterium, a "heavy" isotope of hydrogen that contains one neutron and one proton (as opposed to "normal" hydrogen atoms, which have no neutrons). The water in Mars' thin air sports a similar deuterium ratio, Leshin said.
"That tells us that the dirt is acting like a bit of a sponge and absorbing water from the atmosphere," she said.

Some bad news for manned exploration
SAM detected some organic compounds in the Rocknest sample as well — carbon-containing chemicals that are the building blocks of life here on Earth. But as mission scientists reported late last year, these are simple, chlorinated organics that likely have nothing to do with Martian life. [The Hunt for Martian Life: A Photo Timeline]
Instead, Leshin said, they were probably produced when organics that hitched a ride from Earth reacted with chlorine atoms released by a toxic chemical in the sample called perchlorate.
Perchlorate is known to exist in Martian dirt; NASA's Phoenix lander spotted it near the planet's north pole in 2008. Curiosity has now found evidence of it near the equator, suggesting that the chemical is common across the planet. (Indeed, observations by a variety of robotic Mars explorers indicate that Red Planet dirt is likely similar from place to place, distributed in a global layer across the surface, Leshin said.)
The presence of perchlorate is a challenge that architects of future manned Mars missions will have to overcome, Leshin said.
"Perchlorate is not good for people. We have to figure out, if humans are going to come into contact with the soil, how to deal with that," she said.
"That's the reason we send robotic explorers before we send humans — to try to really understand both the opportunities and the good stuff, and the challenges we need to work through," Leshin added.

A wealth of discoveries
The four other papers published in Science today report exciting results as well.
For example, Curiosity's laser-firing ChemCam instrument found a strong hydrogen signal in fine-grained Martian soils along the rover's route, reinforcing the SAM data and further suggesting that water is common in dirt across the planet (since such fine soils are globally distributed).
Another study reveals more intriguing details about a rock Curiosity studied in October 2012. This stone — which scientists dubbed "Jake Matijevic" in honor of a mission team member who died two weeks after the rover touched down — is a type of volcanic rock never before seen on Mars.
However, rocks similar to Jake Matijevic are commonly observed here on Earth, especially on oceanic islands and in rifts where the planet's crust is thinning out.
"Of all the Martian rocks, this one is the most Earth-like. It's kind of amazing," said Curiosity lead scientist John Grotzinger, a geologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "What it indicates is that the planet is more evolved than we thought it was, more differentiated."
The five new studies showcase the diversity and scientific value of Gale Crater, Grotzinger said. They also highlight how well Curiosity's 10 science instruments have worked together, returning huge amounts of data that will keep the mission team busy for years to come.
"The amount of information that comes out of this rover just blows me away, all the time," Grotzinger told SPACE.com. "We're getting better at using Curiosity, and she just keeps telling us more and more. One year into the mission, we still feel like we're drinking from a fire hose."

The road to Mount Sharp
The pace of discovery could pick up even more. This past July, Curiosity left the Yellowknife Bay area and headed for Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the Martian sky from Gale Crater's center.
Mount Sharp has been Curiosity's main destination since before the rover's November 2011 launch. Mission scientists want the rover to climb up through the mountain's foothills, reading the terrain's many layers along the way.
"As we go through the rock layers, we're basically looking at the history of ancient environments and how they may be changing," Grotzinger said. "So what we'll really be able to do for the first time is get a relative chronology of some substantial part of Martian history, which should be pretty cool."
Curiosity has covered about 20 percent of the planned 5.3-mile (8.5 km) trek to Mount Sharp. The rover, which is doing science work as it goes, may reach the base of the mountain around the middle of next year, Grotzinger said. Source

SPACE in NEWS

Japan halts rocket launch at last minute

Japan stopped its satellite rocket launch just seconds before lift-off after discovering a glitch.

Aug., 28, 2013 -The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) cancelled the launch of the first Epsilon Launch Vehicle (Epsilon-1) with the Spectroscopic Planet Observatory for Recognition of Interaction of Atmosphere (SPRINT-A) onboard from the Uchinoura Space Center, yesterday.
An automatic stop alarm was issued as an attitude abnormality was detected approximately 19 seconds prior to the lift-off time during the automatic countdown sequence. The launch had been originally scheduled for 0445 UTC. JAXA said it is currently investigating the cause. The agency did not announce a new launch date.
JAXA had planned to launch the Epsilon rocket from Uchinoura Space Centre in Kagoshima, southwestern Japan, on Aug., 27, 2013 using just two laptop computers in a pared-down command centre.

But the countdown was automatically stopped just 19 seconds before the planned blast-off "as an emergency measure due to some abnormal positioning" of the rocket, a JAXA spokeswoman said.

"We cancelled today's launch and can't say anything about the timing of our next launch, as the cause of the trouble is still unknown," the spokeswoman said.

The three-stage Epsilon - 24 metres long and weighing 91 tonnes - was scheduled to release the telescope SPRINT-A at an altitude of 1000 kilometres.

SPRINT-A is the world's first space telescope for remote observation of planets including Venus, Mars and Jupiter from its orbit around Earth, the agency said.

The Epsilon is about half the size of the nation's liquid-fuelled H2-A rocket and a successor to the solid fuel M-5 rocket that was retired in 2006 because of its high cost.

The small-sized rocket is equipped with artificial intelligence "for the first time in the world" that allows autonomous checks by the rocket itself, JAXA said.

"It also allows us to carry out launching procedures, including ignition, through only two laptop computers," another JAXA spokeswoman said.

At the control centre only eight workers were engaged in the launch operation, compared with about 150 people usually needed when JAXA launches its mainstream H2-A rocket.  Source

China’s Mystery Satellite Could Be a Dangerous New Weapon — War is Boring — Medium

The SY-7 is one of three Chinese satellites doing some very strange things in orbit

On July 29, a Chinese Long March-4C rocket blasted into space from the northern Taiyuan Space Center carrying three secretive, experimental satellites. Not really all that unusual by itself — a robotic arm reportedly on one of the satellites could be involved in testing for Beijing’s far-off space station program.

But once they were in orbit, the satellites began acting very, very strangely.

More precisely, one of the satellites, known as SY-7, was moving all over the place and was appearing to make close-in rendezvous’s with other satellites. It was so strange, space analysts wondered whether China was testing a new kind of space weapon — one that could intercept other satellites and more or less claw them to death.

It’s not as crazy as it sounds. The U.S. has experimented with anti-satellite weapons, and is even researching how to cannibalize satellites in orbit. China has even blown up one of its own satellites with a missile. That caused an international outcry considering the giant cloud of debris which has come close to imperiling space travel for a century. But a claw might be more discreet.

Most satellites are pretty dumb, in the sense that they don’t really move around a whole lot except in a fixed orbit. Doing much more than that requires sophisticated guidance, navigation and control systems to the point where the satellite becomes something more like an unmanned spaceship.

Have those things, and you have the rudimentary steps to maneuver in the path of other satellites. Once you’re there, you then might want to use the maneuverable satellite to conduct inspections or repairs — or even potentially attack other (more helpless) satellites. More ...

NASA tests limits of 3-D printing with powerful rocket engine
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NASA has tested its largest 3-D printed rocket engine component so far on 22 August during an engine firing that generated a record 89 kN of thrust.

The component tested during the engine firing, an injector, delivers propellants to power an engine and provides the thrust necessary to send rockets to space. During the injector test, liquid oxygen and gaseous hydrogen passed through the component into a combustion chamber and produced 10 times more thrust than any injector previously fabricated using 3-D printing.

The component was manufactured using selective laser melting. This method built up layers of nickel-chromium alloy powder to make the complex, subscale injector with its 28 elements for channeling and mixing propellants. The part was similar in size to injectors that power small rocket engines. It was similar in design to injectors for large engines, such as the RS-25 engine that will power NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for deep space human missions to an asteroid and Mars.

One of the keys to reducing the cost of rocket parts is minimising the number of components. This injector had only two parts, whereas a similar injector tested earlier had 115 parts. Fewer parts require less assembly effort, which means complex parts made with 3-D printing have the potential for significant cost savings.

Early data from the test, conducted at pressures up to 6,900 Pa in a vacuum and at almost 3,600 K, indicate the injector worked flawlessly. In the days to come, engineers will perform computer scans and other inspections to scrutinise the component more closely.   Source: NASA PR

Three Khrunichev officials sacked after Proton crash

A government commission has determined the degree of guilt of Khrunichev space centre executives responsible for the 2 July Proton rocket launch failure, Russia's Vice-Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin was quoted as saying.

For failing to properly perform their duties in preparing the rocket carrying three GLONASS-M satellites for launch, the centre's deputy director general for quality control, Alexander Kobzar, head of the assembly shop Valery Grekov and head of the technical control department Mikhail Lebedev are dismissed, Mr. Rogozin said, reporting first conclusions of the government commission he heads.

Several other officials had been brought to account for not ensuring proper use of appropriate technologies and control over assembly work, Mr. Rogozin said. Asked who would determine the responsibility of Roskosmos officials, the official said this would be for the government to decide, based on the report he would present to Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev.

Mr. Rogozin said blame among engineers and technical workers at the space centre would be determined by the enterprise management. The government commission did not deal with the activities of assembly workers, he said, adding that this was an issue of organisation of work at the centre itself.    Source: Itar-Tass