All Space news – Page 211
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Launch odyssey
The Galaxy 11, DUE to enter orbit in June 1998, will not only be the first HS-702 spacecraft bus to be built by Hughes Space and Communications , but it will also be the first geostationary-orbit (GEO) communications satellite to be launched from an offshore platform. This space ...
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US Army plans for critical ASAT test
THE US ARMY and prime contractor Boeing North American plan to test in April a critical component of a weapon which has been designed to knock out low-altitude surveillance and communications satellites. The kinetic-kill vehicle (KKV), the key subsystem of the anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon, will use electro-optical (EO) ...
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Rocketplane aims for 'smallsat' boom
PIONEER ROCKETPLANE is planning to fly its Pathfinder transatmospheric launch vehicle in three years time, to be available for initial deployment of the proposed Teledesic constellation of some 840 small communications satellites. Denver, Colorado-based Pioneer is seeking $6 million in funding for detail design of the Pathfinder and will need ...
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US Army prepares for ASAT testing
THE US ARMY has awarded Boeing North American additional funding to build subsystems for a weapon able to knock out enemy reconnaissance and communications satellites. The $35 million, added to a $44 million deal won by Boeing's newly acquired Rocketdyne division, covers development of an operational weapons-control subsystem ...
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First satellite leaves Svobodny launch pad
The Zeya spacecraft was placed into orbit on 4 March by a Start 1 Rocket after the first lift-off from Russia's new Svobodny commercial-launch centre in the eastern Amur region. The 87kg military-research satellite was placed into a Sun-synchronous, 98¹-inclination, 426km-466km orbit by the five-stage modified SS-25 Topol ...
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Remote control - Deep Space 1's computer is the nearest thing yet to HAL, the computer star of the famous movie 2001.
NASA is preparing, it says, the "most advanced spacecraft advanced-intelligence software yet developed", for launch aboard its Deep Space 1 (DS1) spacecraft. The computer is the nearest thing yet to HAL 9000, the computer featured in the landmark science-fiction story, 2001: A Space Odyssey, written in 1968 by Arthur C ...
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Nine projects entered in chase for X-Prize funds
The Pathfinder Rocketplane is among nine projects which are in competition for a $10 million prize from the St Louis, Missouri-based X-Prize Foundation, which proposes to award the money to the team which kick-starts development of a privately operated, low-cost, passenger-carrying space vehicle. The prize will be awarded ...
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ISS is placed under new pressure
The decision to delay the first launches to assemble the International Space Station (ISS), because of Russian problems over funding, is putting NASA under renewed pressure from the US Congress to remove Moscow from the programme. Following the eight-month launch delay, to June 1998, NASA is being told ...
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Fractured moon
This is a composite of three images of the Minos Linea region of Europa. The colour variations reveal different contaminants in the ice. The icy plains - where no features rise above 30m in height - are fractured by many types of curved and straight faults. The surface of Europa ...
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Space Station will be delayed eight months
NASA administrator Daniel Goldin has admitted that the first launches to assemble the International Space Station (ISS) will be delayed by eight months, to June 1998. The admission confirmed a unilateral Russian Space Agency (RSA) announcement of the delay. RSA director Yuri Koptev says that it "-is entirely ...
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Galilean gallery
NASA celebrated THE Galileo spacecraft's first year in orbit around the giant planet Jupiter on 7 December, 1996. The highlights among its hundreds of images have not been of the planet itself, however, but of its four giant moons, Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa. These are called the Galilean moons, ...
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Next Hubble service mission will also repair insulation blankets
The next planned Space Shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit, in December 1999, will involve repairs to damaged insulation blankets over the telescope's central equipment bays. The damage was probably caused by ultraviolet radiation and atomic oxygen. The damage to the area of the ...
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US Air Force launches its first Titan 4B from Cape Canaveral
The first uprated Titan 4 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on 22 February, carrying a US Air Force Defense Space programme missile early-warning satellite into geostationary orbit (GEO). The $200 million, TRW-built DSP was boosted into its final orbit by the Boeing IUS upper stage. The ...
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Space freezer
Matra Marconi Space has been awarded a $2.5 million contract from the European Space Agency to develop the Minus Eighty-degree Laboratory Freezer (MELFI) for the International Space Station (ISS). Three flight models will be built for NASA and one for Japan. The MELFI, which will become the first European payload ...
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Loral books Delta 3 launches
Space Systems/Loral has booked five launches of the McDonnell Douglas (MDC) Delta 3 booster from 1999 to 2001, to ensure that it can meet the demands of its communications-satellite customers. Loral has also reserved 16 launches on Arianespace, US/Russian ILS International Launch Services Proton and Japanese H2A boosters in addition ...
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NASA pays Russia $20 million
Amid concerns about Russian delays in the production of hardware for the International Space Station (ISS), NASA has paid Moscow an additional $20 million to support further joint missions aboard the Mir 1 space station in 1998. NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin has called the funding "seed money" to ...
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Danger: space ahead
More research needs to be done to protect space travellers and their spacecraft from cosmic-ray radiation and debris, says the US National Research Council (NRC). Two recent NRC reports indicate that NASA does not yet fully understand the effects of long-term exposure to space radiation, and that agencies worldwide need ...
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TTS moves Heathrow into its Orbit
THOMSON TRAINING & Simulation (TTS) is to relocate its Orbit Flight Training subsidiary from East Midlands Airport to a site near London Heathrow. As part of the move, planned for early 1998, the independent pilot-training centre has sold its two Boeing 737 simulators to Continental and Southwest Airlines. ...
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Japan launches M5
Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Sciences launched the first M5 solid-propellant three-stage satellite booster from Kagoshima on 12 February. The 30m-high three-stage vehicle placed the 1,800kg Muses B radio-telescope satellite into orbit. The world's largest radio telescope will be created, combining radio waves detected by the Muses ...
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Kurs docking system fails again
The Russian Soyuz TM25 manned ferry vehicle - launched on 10 February - was docked manually to the Mir space station on 12 February, after the latest failure of the Kurs automatic docking system. The erratic system, which has failed several times previously, is being phased out, and ...