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Showing posts with label private. Show all posts
Showing posts with label private. Show all posts

Sunday 5 July 2015

Biggest commercial mission! ISRO to launch 5 British satellites on July 10


Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on Sunday announced that it will be launching five British satellites on July 10, which will be the thirtieth flight of the PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) and the biggest ever commercial mission by the Indian space reasearch centre.

In the heaviest ever commercial mission undertaken by ISRO and its commercial arm Antrix, the country’s workhorse the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) will put in orbit five foreign satellites from the spaceport of Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on July 10.

With the overall lift-off mass of the five satellites amounting to about 1,440 kg, this mission becomes the heaviest commercial mission ever undertaken by Antrix/ISRO, the Indian space agency said.
In its 13th flight, PSLV-C28 will launch three identical DMC3 optical earth observation satellites built by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), United Kingdom (UK).

The three DMC3 satellites, each weighing 447 kg, will be launched into a 647 km Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO) using the high-end version of PSLV (PSLV-XL), ISRO said on its website.  PSLV-C28 will be the ninth flight of PSLV in ‘XL’ configuration.

In addition, the rocket will also carry two auxiliary satellites from UK - CBNT-1, a technology demonstrator earth observation micro satellite built by SSTL, and De-OrbitSail, a technology demonstrator nano satellite built by Surrey Space Centre, it said.

Accommodating the three DMC3 satellites each with a height of about 3 metre within the existing payload fairing of PSLV, was a challenge, ISRO said.

To mount these satellites onto the launcher, a circular Launcher adaptor called L-adaptor and a triangular deck called Multiple Satellite Adapter-Version 2 (MSA-V2), were newly designed and realised by ISRO for this specific purpose.

Source: Newsnation

Friday 13 February 2015

This woman wants to live and die on Mars—and 200,000 others would gladly take her place

Volker Maiwald, executive officer and habitat engineer of Crew 125 EuroMoonMars B mission, walks among the rock formations in the Utah desert

Ok, it's Utah - but we can dream. (Reuters/Jim Urquhart)

Dina was born in Iraq, lives in the US, and may end her life on Mars.

She’s one of 663 people who are still in the running for a place on the first four-person team that Mars One, a Dutch organization launched in 2011, wants to send to the red planet. Candidates have been whittled down from some 200,000 who applied.

In a video made for the Guardian by Stateless Media, Dina (whose last name isn’t given) and two other hopefuls—one from the UK, one from Mozambique—discuss love, sex, and death on Mars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8na3oQzcwCk

Dina is 29 now, but she’ll be nearing 40 by the time of the Mars mission’s planned launch in 2024. She could be almost a year older than that when they arrive on Mars, which is up to 300 days’ travel away .
Her days may then be numbered. A group of strategic engineering graduates estimated that the first of the travelers would die in 68 days—though the plan is to live there much longer .

Intimacy is not encouraged, because of the potential risks of childbirth—though in the long term the future of colony would rely on it .

No one will return from the mission. This led, last year, to a prohibition on Muslims joining the mission , issued by the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment in the United Arab Emirates. It judged the mission to be so inevitably fatal that it is essentially suicide.

In the future, the mission plans to meet its costs, to a large extent, via broadcast rights . The first mission will cost $6 billion, according to estimates, though a subsequent mission—a plan is already in the pipeline—would be somewhat cheaper.

Source : qz.com

Tuesday 27 January 2015

SpaceX, Boeing on Track to Take Astronauts to Space Station by 2017

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The agency will use the partnership to end dependency on Russia

SpaceX has completed the first certification milestone in its CCP commitment, and will spend much of 2015 testing abort solutions for its formerly cargo-only Dragon capsule. (Abort procedures are more critical in crewed missions.) A launchpad abort will be tested in the next two months at Cape Canaveral, and an in-flight abort test will follow "later this year," according to SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell. Uncrewed missions to the ISS with the new capsule will start in 2016, and the company is still working out the makeup of its first test flight crew.

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"I DON'T EVER WANT TO HAVE TO WRITE ANOTHER CHECK TO ROSCOSMOS."

The company is also working on outfitting its Dragon capsule with propulsive landing, Shotwell said, which could improve reusability by dispensing with the need to splash down in water. Instead, the capsule would land right at Johnson Space Center, using rockets on the bottom to help control the descent. That's not the only new technology the company is working on. It hopes to outfit its Falcon 9 rockets with wings and retrorockets so they can land on autonomous barges in the ocean.

Boeing has completed the first two certification milestones for its CST-100 spacecraft. NASA has signed off on parts of its commercial crew operation, including designs for the control center, training systems, flight simulators, and software. Boeing has also started building its crew access tower on the Atlas V launchpad, and that construction will continue in between uncrewed Atlas V launches.

The CST-100 will undergo a critical design review in March, and if approved, will let the company launch "full-bore" into manufacturing, according to VP and General Manager of Boeing Space Exploration John Elbon. Boeing's spacecraft can fit up to seven crew members, and is also being designed with reusability in mind. According to Elbon, the plan is for the capsule to be recovered, refurbished, and reused up to 10 times.

When asked how this all fits in with the 2016 budget, Bolden said he's "very optimistic." "Congress has, I think, kind of started to understand the critical importance of commercial crew and cargo. They've seen, as a result of the performance of our providers, that this is not a hoax. It's not a myth. It's not a dream," he said. "It's something that really is happening."

Source : theverge

Tuesday 11 November 2014

SpaceX will launch micro-satellites for low cost internet

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Elon Musk has confirmed that SpaceX is working on micro-satellites. Following a story in The Wall Street Journal, he tweeted this morning that SpaceX is developing “advanced micro-satellites operating in large formations” with an official announcement due in two to three months.

It said SpaceX is planning a launch of 700 satellites, each weighing less than 250 pounds. A fleet that size would be 10x bigger than the largest current deployment managed by  Iridium Communications.

Sorce : next web

Saturday 1 November 2014

Tragedy won't crush space tourism, supporters say

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The second crash this week of a space craft is a setback for the fledgling field of space tourism, aerospace experts say. But it's unlikely to stop an industry that has attracted a trio of ambitious, daring billionaires like Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk from trying to open a pathway for ordinary citizens to travel into space.

VirginGalactic's SpaceShipTwo, which was designed to ultimately carry paying passengers into suborbital space, crashed Friday in the Mojave Desert during a test flight. The accident occurred three days after an Orbital Sciences rocket headed to the International Space Station exploded within seconds of liftoff in Virginia.

Pedro Llanos, who teaches about the commercialization of space at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Daytona Beach campus, said that space travel has suffered similar, sometimes deadly setbacks, in other stages of its evolution.

"It happened ... in the space era with the Apollo. It happened with the shuttle,'' he said. "The reason it happened in the past is because we were testing new technologies. It's happening now because we are pushing technology's boundaries, to move space exploration forward.''

Such exploration is critical, Llanos said, whether it's to create the possibility of mining asteroids for resources that are scarce on earth, or perfecting technology that will one day allow a person in California to travel to Australia within a couple of hours. "It will help us,'' he says. "It will help society.''

Now XCOR Aerospace, which has been developing its own suborbital vehicle, may get its paying passengers into space first, says John Spencer, founder and president of the West Los Angeles-based Space Tourism Society.

"It may be now that XCOR is first to go into a commercial setting because it will take a while for Virgin Galactic to catch up,'' he says.

"Virgin Galactic will eventually recover ... because of the extensive experience Branson and the Virgin brand has with one of the world's most successful airlines. Being first is cool but that doesn't really matter when you're creating a long-term vision for an expanding industry,'' Spencer said.

Among the hundreds who have paid tens of thousands of dollars for a ticket on one of Virgin Galactic's flights are actors Ashton Kutcher, Tom Hanks and Angelina Jolie. Spencer said those who want to go to space aren't easily dissuaded.

"One of the inherently unique aspects of space is it is dangerous but people are willing to risk their lives for that experience,'' Spencer said. "Just like climbing Mount Everest or sky diving.''

Source : USA TODAY

Virgin Galactic space rocket crash: Richard Branson’s dream of space tourism suffers setback after Mojave crash kills test pilot

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Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo went down Friday afternoon, killing at least one while highlighting safety concerns that Richard Branson said could kill the space tourism industry.

Investors see private space travel as the market of the future. According to the Space Angels Network, an organization created to connect investors with entrepreneurs in the private space travel business, in 2012 the global space economy was valued at over $300 billion. The network says it is expected to grow to $600 billion by 2030.

On Tuesday, an unmanned rocket manufactured by Orbital Sciences, a Virginia company NASA has contracted to resupply the space station, exploded during its launch from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. This engine used in the flight, the Antares 130, is powered by old Soviet engines.

For years, Richard Branson, who owns a part of Virgin Galactic, has touted the bright future of space tourism. In February, he said that he and his children would be on the first space tourism flight.

Everybody who signs up knows this is the birth of a new space program and understands the risks that go with that," Branson said in an interview for Weekend magazine. "But every person wants to go on the first flight."

He even alluded to the fact that accidents could kill the industry. Right now, tickets to space cost a minimum $250,000 each.

“Space is hard, and today was a tough day,” said George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic, at a press conference. “We believe we owe to the folks who were flying these vehicles to understand this and to move forward, which is what we’ll do.”

Source : The Independent