All Space news – Page 203
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Towards hypersonic flight
Ian Sheppard/LONDON Progress in the development of airbreathing powerplants for hypersonic vehicles has been hampered since the 1960s by unexpected complexities encountered with the scramjet (supersonic-combustion ramjet), until recently the only real candidate for powering such high-speed craft. In an effort to address the impasse, leading international figures in ...
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The Mars burn
Tim Furniss/LONDON British Aerospace Defence wants to sell its Royal Ordnance Rocket Motors division - which supplies about 50% of the world's spacecraft liquid apogee engines and thrusters. Among the potential buyers are Primex, Marquardt and AlliedSignal (Flight International, 5-11 November). The sale offer comes at a time ...
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Secure communications
Tim Furniss/RAF OAKHANGER Matra Marconi Space (MMS) of Stevenage, UK, is completing production of the first of three uprated Skynet 4 UK-dedicated military-communications satellites, which are to be launched on a Boeing Delta booster from Cape Canaveral in January 1998. The Skynet 4D will be followed by crafts ...
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Dasa wins satellite contract
Daimler-Benz Aerospace's (Dasa) Dornier division in Munich has won an $18 million contract from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to build two Dasa Flexbus spacecraft platforms for NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment mission. The 380kg satellites will be launched aboard a Russian Cosmos booster from Plesetsk in 2001 and placed ...
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ISS completion may slip back
Tim Furniss/LONDON Completion of the International Space Station (ISS) is likely to be delayed until 2004 - ten years later than planned when the project was first announced in 1984 and about one year later than the date announced by NASA in 1996. Earlier this month, NASA and ...
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JV venture will market SS-18 satellite launchers
Kosmotras, a joint venture between ten Ukrainian and Russian companies, has been set up to market the former Dnepr SS-18 ballistic missile for commercial launches into low Earth orbit. The firms, led by the Russian and Ukrainian space agencies, plan to convert 150 SS-18s into the Dnepr booster and ...
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Role reversal
Tim Furniss/LONDON Six minutes into the flight of the Space Shuttle STS87 on 19 November, the orbiter Columbia, arcing over the Atlantic Ocean heads-down, still attached to its external tank (ET) and with its main engines firing, will perform a 20s, 180íroll to a heads-up position, travelling at ...
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Global Surveyor mission delayed
Tim Furniss/LONDON NASA has revealed a year's delay - to March 1999 - of the mapping mission to be undertaken by the $250 million Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). The announcement came almost simultaneously with the news that the Agency's successful four-month Mars Pathfinder-Sojourner mission had ended. ...
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Spacewalks restore power to the Mir
Russia's Mir 1 space station is operating at 85% electrical power after two spacewalks carried out on 3 and 6 November were used to install a new solar panel. Cosmonauts Anatoli Solovyov and Pavel Vinogradev removed an old solar panel on the station's Kvant 1 module and replaced ...
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Going commercial
While the astronauts and flight directors work on improved flight operations, directors are preparing the Shuttle to re-enter old territory - commercial activities. Daniel Goldin, NASA administrator is giving his full support and encouragement to the United Space Alliance to take the Shuttle back into the commercial launch business, possibly ...
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Countdown begins for Columbia launch
NASA has begun the countdown for the launch of the US space shuttle Columbia on a 16-day research mission that will feature the first spacewalk by a Japanese. The Columbia's six astronauts arrived at the Kennedy Space Center yesterday, shortly after the countdown began for the planned blastoff ...
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NASA praises European contribution
With plans preceeding to begin building an international space station next year, the head of NASA has praised French and European involvement and says he hopes for co-operation in building a low-cost crew shuttle. Daniel Goldin was in France to meet with officials of the European Space Agency; ...
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MMS wins $1 billion work on the Celestri
Matra Marconi Space (MMS) has signed an agreement with Motorola which will result in an anticipated $1 billion contract to build 71 communications satellites for the US company's Celestri system. The Celestri satellites will be based on the MMS 3,000-4,000kg-class Eurostar 3000 spacecraft bus. A total of 70 ...
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Brazil fails with first attempt to launch satellite
Brazil's first attempt to launch a nationally built satellite on an indigenous launcher ended in failure on 2 November. The South American nation was seeking to become the ninth country in the world to have succeeded in the dual task. The $6.5 million, Veiculo Lancador de Satelites (VLS), ...
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Success of Ariane 5 buoys Europe despite low orbit
The long-awaited launch of the Ariane 502 test-flight, from the Guiana Space Centre, Kourou, French Guiana, on 30 October - 16 months after the failure of the first launch - has boosted the morale of the European space industry, despite the slightly premature shutdown of the first-stage engine, which resulted ...
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Ariane 5 is launched
The Ariane 5 was successfully launched from Kourou, French Guiana on 30 October, boosting the morale of the European space industry after the failure of the first attempt 16 months ago. The latest launch, however, was marred by a premature shutdown of the Vulcain first-stage engine, which resulted ...
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Hughes wins Russian groundstation deal
Hughes Space and Communications has received a contract from Russia to build, launch and provide the ground-station equipment for the Bonum 1 satellite. The Bonum 1 will be operated by Media Most, a major private Russian media group which is developing satellite-television services. The craft will be an ...
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Mir will come down to Earth in 1999
The Russian Space Agency (RSA) plans to begin bringing down its long-serving Mir 1 space station in 1999, provided that the new International Space Station is operating on schedule by then, with a resident crew. Yuri Koptev, RSA director-general, says that it would be possible to operate both ...
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Athena delays Prospector again
NASA has again been forced to delay the launch of its Discovery programme's Lunar Prospector, because of the need for additional checks to the Lockheed Martin Athena 2 booster. The flight, now to take place on 5 January, 1998, had already been rescheduled from September and was due ...
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Anti-satellite laser test is successful
The US Army successfully tested the TRW-built Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser (MIRACL) at the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, on 17 October. During two firings, lasting about 1s and 10s respectively, the 2m- wide laser beam was aimed at the infra-red camera aboard a US Air Force ...