'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