Monthly Archives: April 2013

NASA's obscure Wallops facility in Virginia prepares for spotlight

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WALLOPS ISLAND, va.On one of Virginia's small barrier islands, a NASA facility that operates in relative obscurity outside scientific circles is preparing to be thrust into the spotlight.

On Wednesday, Orbital Sciences Corp. plans to conduct the first test launch of its Antares rocket under a NASA program in which private companies deliver supplies to the international space station. If all goes as planned, the unmanned rocket's practice payload will be vaulted into orbit from Wallops Island before burning up in the atmosphere on its return to Earth several months later.

The goal of the launch isn't to connect with the space station but to make sure the rocket works and that a simulated version of a cargo ship that will dock with the space station on future launches separates into orbit. Orbital officials say that should occur about 10minutes after liftoff.

In that time, Wallops Island will transition from a little-known launch pad for small research rockets to a major player in the U.S. space program.

The Wallops Flight Facility, on Virginia's rural Eastern Shore, is small in comparison with major NASA centers such as those in Florida, California and Texas. Wallops Island's isolated nature, with marshland to its west and the Atlantic Ocean to its east, has also made it home to a Navy surface warfare combat center.

More than 16,000 rockets have been launched from Wallops Island since 1945, but none has drawn the attention of Antares. Most of the launches are suborbital and focus on educational and research programs.

"The real transformation here at Wallops is we've always been kind of a research facility," said William Wrobel, the facility's director. "So this transition is really kind of into an operational phase, where we're going to be doing kind of regular flights out of here to the space station."

A successful launch would pave the way for Dulles-based Orbital to demonstrate it can connect its unmanned Cygnus cargo ship with the space station this summer. If that's successful, Orbital would launch the first of eight resupply missions from the island in the fall under a $1.9 billion NASA contract.

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NASA's obscure Wallops facility in Virginia prepares for spotlight

NASA plan to capture asteroid rooted in Caltech study

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This asteroid mission brings together the best of NASA's science, technology and human exploration efforts to achieve the President's goals faster and at a lower cost to taxpayers than continuing with business as usual. (NASA/Advanced Concepts Laboratory)

NASA's new plan to lasso an asteroid and bring it into orbit around the moon sounds like it came straight out of science fiction, but it actually emerged from an idea by an Italian student and a Caltech study by the Keck Institute, which looks into outside-the-box concepts.

The proposed $78 million asteroid initiative is included in NASA's 2014 budget plan, unveiled by President Barack Obama on Wednesday, and would meet the president's previous goal to send humans to an asteroid by 2025.

The ambitious plan involves sending a robotic spacecraft to intercept a nearby asteroid, halting its spin, towing it back into lunar orbit, then sending a manned mission to rendezvous with the asteroid and mine it for scientific purposes.

The technology needed to do it is just now emerging, the Keck study's authors determined. Initially, the researchers thought about capturing a very small asteroid and bringing it to the International Space Station. That was part of a 2011 study, but the scientists went back to the drawing board the next year to consider capturing an asteroid with a mass of about 500,000 kilograms.

Louis Friedman, a co-founder of the Pasadena-based Planetary Society who participated in the study, credited Marco Tantardi for coming up with the idea and pursuing it doggedly.

"I was introduced to the idea by a young intern," Friedman said last week in an Orlando Sentinel article. "First of

Similar plans have also emerged in recent years, including a 2011 conceptual plan by Chinese astronomers at Tsinghua University to bring an asteroid into Earth's orbit.

The idea has taken some criticism, however, particularly because it's not part of the "Decadal Survey," the outline of future space exploration that represents a consensus view of the scientific community.

Its inclusion in NASA's budget also reflects the agency's shrinking budget and inability to fund the missions that have priority in the scientific community, such as sending humans to Mars.

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NASA plan to capture asteroid rooted in Caltech study