All Space articles – Page 175
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Young will head Mars inquiry
Former Lockheed Martin executive Thomas Young has been appointed by NASA to lead the Mars Program Independent Assessment team. It will review the failures of the Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO), Mars Polar Lander (MPL) and the space agency's approach to robotic exploration. The MCO was lost on 23 September and ...
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Indonesia and South Korea in quest for fresh launch sites
Indonesia is considering developing a $1 billion satellite launch centre on the 52km² (20 miles²) Lembe Island, in the province of North Sulawesi, close to the port of Bitung, according to the province's governor. Two more of Indonesia's 17,000 islands - Biak Island in the Bay of Cendrawasih and ...
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Orbital wins NASA science contract
NASA has awarded Orbital Sciences a $35 million contract to launch two science satellites in 2002, using its Pegasus air-launched booster. The US/Canadian SCISAT-1 mission to study ozone production in the upper atmosphere will lift off from Vandenberg AFB, California, in the second quarter of 2002. The Orbital-built ...
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Ariane mission rate speeds up
Last month Arianespace launched its third commercial mission in fewer than 20 days. Flight V125's Ariane 44L lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana, on 21 December. It carried the world's largest commercial communications satellite - the Hughes Space and Communications Galaxy XI (right), the first of its HS-702 buses, ...
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Alenia wins Canadian observation contract
Alenia Aerospazio has won a C$74 million ($50 million) contract to design and build the satellite bus of Canada's new Radarsat 2 Earth observation satellite. Prime contractor McDonald Dettwiler awarded the deal to Alenia after a contest involving six US and European firms. Alenia will build the craft in 16 ...
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Uncertainties hit NASA's Space Shuttle schedule for 2000
Tim Furniss/LONDON This year's first Space Shuttle mission - the 11-day STS99 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission by the orbiter Endeavour (left) - will not be launched before 31 January, according to NASA's preliminary Space Shuttle schedule. This will be followed by STS101 Atlantis on an International Space Station ...
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Slow road to reusability
The shift to reusable launch vehicles will be far slower and more incremental than was once considered possible and desirable Over 30 years ago, in his film 2001: a space odyssey, director Stanley Kubrick gave us his vision of a future in which man could travel from the Earth to ...
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Satcoms progress
Back in the 20th century, they said people would not want telephones on airliners; that they did not wish to be contactable while they dozed in comfort or ate a fine meal. How times have changed. In the 21st century, passengers slip on virtual reality glasses and join the crew ...
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Intelligent hope
Intelligent spacecraft are still a few years away, but robots and automated systems can meanwhile play a large part in extending space exploration The spaceflight industry has just one year year left to emulate Arthur C Clarke's HAL, the spacecraft computer that became too intelligent in 2001: A Space Odyssey. ...
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Flight into the future
For the past 91 years, this magazine has reflected the shape of the industry of which it is part. In the beginning it was simply Flight, and the fledgling field of aviation was its sole purview. Now it is Flight International and the entire breadth of aerospace is its domain. ...
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Opening the door to space
Propulsion concepts under study may lead to a radical change in the way in which space is accessed In the 1951 science fiction classic When World's Collide, a rocket-powered spaceship hurtles down a ramp loaded with hapless escapees from Earth, gathering speed before making a boosted take-off to escape ...
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Time travel
No-one spirited direct from 1899 to the present would find advances in surface transportation unbelievable, but aerospace would amaze them. While ships, cars and trains have seen massive gains in efficiency, they are still fundamentally the same machines. Within the past 100 years, however, powered flight has not only ...
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USAF launches uprated weather satellite
The US Air Force launched a Titan II booster from Vandenberg AFB, California, on 12 December, carrying a Defense Meteorological Satellite Programme (DMSP) Block 5D3 satellite into orbit. The satellite is the first of a new generation of Lockheed Martin-built craft with larger sensors, more power, longer battery life ...
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'Real estate in space' for ISS
Spacehab and Russia's Energia plan to build the first privatised commercial module for the International Space Station (ISS). Called Enterprise, the module will be used for commercial microgravity experiments and to host a studio for television and Internet broadcasts. The latter is expected to be in conjunction with an established ...
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Second Brazilian launch fails
The Brazilian Space Agency failed in its attempt to place its first national satellite into orbit aboard an indigenous booster on 11 December when the second stage of the 19.4m (64ft)-high, $7.5 million Veiculo Lancador de Satelites VLS 1 went out of control. The booster had to be destroyed at ...
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First Hughes 702 will be largest in orbit
Hughes Space and Communications' first HS-702 satellite was due to be launched on 21 December aboard an Ariane 4. The HS-702, which will be PanAmSat's Galaxy XI satellite, will be the largest commercial communications satellite deployed in orbit - equipped with 64 transponders (40 Ku-band and 24 C-band) and ...
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Commercial launch success for Ariane 5
Tim Furniss/LONDON Arianespace's first Ariane 5 commercial flight placed the European Space Agency's (ESA) X-Ray Multi Mirror (XMM) space telescope into elliptical orbit after launch from Kourou, Guiana, on 10 December. The success of the fourth Ariane 5 flight buoyed commercial hopes for the booster after a chequered ...
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Forecasts for 2000 - Space
Launch failures put pressure on space station project Tim Furniss/LONDON Already four years behind schedule, the fledgling International Space Station (ISS) faces a crisis in 2000. The critical launch of the Russian Zvezda service module is on hold until the Proton booster can be cleared for flight again following ...
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Rocket science
NASA must be eagerly awaiting the New Year following its string of disasters in 1999. The US space administration, which has done so much for space exploration this century, is hardly ending it on a high note. The latest setback - the further delay of the crucial Hubble Space ...