Strike Suit Zero Episode 2 with Pike
Strike Suit Zero is a space flight combat game where you have an epic space ship and get to blow stuff up.

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Strike Suit Zero Episode 2 with Pike - Video

The huge advancements made by commercial space companies, which now fly cargo to the International Space Station and should soon send astronauts there, appear to be winning the trust of the country, according to a new poll.

Even though space flight has long been the sole province of governments, nearly 6in 10saythat private companies should be able to build and fly their own rockets, according to the poll, conducted by Monmouth University.

Meanwhile, 42 percent say they support the U.S. spending billions on programs destined for the moon, Mars and asteroids. But a large share of the public 50 percent oppose spending that much money on space, which was similar to American sentiment in 1967, two years before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.Still, most respondents in the poll said the U.S. space program has provided long-lasting benefits to society and 51 percent said increased spending would be a good investment.

Half a century after NASAs heyday, America is still fascinated by the prospects of space exploration but balk at the price tag. However, they opposed the space programs cost in the 1960s as well, said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute in West Long Branch, N.J.

The poll comes as there has been something of a renaissance in the American space program, much of it driven by daring companies, led by rich men with big dreams.

Along with Boeing, Elon Musks SpaceX won a contract to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, ending a years-long reliance on Russia. Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has been pushing the envelope of private space travel and tourism. And Jeffrey Bezoss Blue Origin recently announced it would be teaming up with the United Launch Alliance to build a rocket engine to launch national security satellites. (Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)

And John Elbon, the head of Boeing's space division, predicted that in 100 years sales of space ships would equal the $70 billion business of its commercial aircraft division today.

Late last year, NASA announced a new era of American spaceflight after its Orion space capsule flew farther than any ship designed for human space travel had gone in 40 years.

But there have been setbacks both in the government and the private sector.

In October, an unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket blew up on a mission to resupply the space station. Then a few days later a Virgin Galactic spacecraft intended to carry tourists crashed in the Mojave Desert, killing one of the pilots.

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Americans want rich guys like Elon Musk to pay for space travel not taxpayers

Falsion - The First Space Flight [Level 1] // NSFPlay Synthesia Visualizer
[Track 01-10] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Composer: Shinya Sakamoto, Shigehiro Takenouchi Atsushi Fujio Platform: Family Computer Disk System [FDS] Publish...

By: Synthesizer 8 Bits // Nes Videos

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Falsion - The First Space Flight [Level 1] // NSFPlay Synthesia Visualizer - Video

When Rebecca Espina was a kid in Summit County, she wanted nothing more than to leave the ski slopes far, far behind and become an astronaut.

Since the dawn of the space program, millions of students have shared that dream, and like those science-minded youngsters, Espina was endlessly fascinated by the mysteries of outer space. In the 1980s and early 90s, space stations were all the rage and Espina then Rebecca Hage saw an opportunity to delve into the nitty-gritty mechanics of space exploration.

I was very interested in becoming an astronaut, says Espina, whose family moved to Summit County when she was in the fifth grade. There were a lot of concepts out there about building space stations, and at that point, even with Hubble, the idea was that astronauts were going out and building things. I wanted to be a construction worker in space.

Espina never made a trip to low-Earth orbit, home of the International Space Station and the majority of satellites, but she found a way to be part of the select group perfecting NASAs next big thing: the James Webb Space Telescope, a massive, 14,300-pound instrument that will replace the 25-year-old Hubble Space Telescope.

On Tuesday, Espina will give a presentation to the Rotary Club of Summit County about JWST, the intricacies of space exploration and her life after leaving Summit County. In 1992, she won scholarships through the Rotary Club and several other local organizations that helped her go from Summit High School valedictorian to the University of Colorado-Boulders aerospace engineering program and, finally, to her current home at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

At Goddard, Espina is one of more than 1,000 scientists from 17 countries working on JWST, the newest and most complex satellite NASA has ever built. And it has to be: Once its launched in 2018, it will sit in whats called an L2 orbit, roughly 1.5 million kilometers above Earth. Thats past the moon, which will make JWST the remotest telescope ever launched.

The distance also makes it difficult to maintain. For most of its life, Hubble was regularly repaired and updated by teams of two to three astronauts on space shuttle missions Espinas dream as a child. But when the shuttle program was discontinued in 2011, NASA engineers no longer had a way to maintain the aging telescope.

The solution for JWST is to over-engineer every component. Since astronauts can no longer replace and repair parts on a regular basis, the telescope is built to survive at least 10 years in J2 orbit, operating in temperatures of less than 50 degrees above absolute zero, or roughly negative-370 Fahrenheit.

With Hubble, we could replace batteries, replace solar panels, change and fix parts, Espina says. But this telescope (JWST) will be so far out to do its work that we cant reach it for service. It will be much larger and much more complicated than Hubble.

BUILDING A BETTER TELESCOPE

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To infinity and beyond! Summit woman working on telescope to replace Hubble

Public Service Broadcasting's new album, The Race For Space, comes out Feb. 23. Courtesy of the artist hide caption

Public Service Broadcasting's new album, The Race For Space, comes out Feb. 23.

In 2015, it's easy to take for granted how important and far-reaching the space race was. But imagine yourself in 1957: News breaks that there's something in the sky in space and if you tune your shortwave radio to an especially high frequency, you can hear its signal chirping back to you as it circles the Earth. It's called Sputnik, the first man-made satellite launched into orbit. The Soviet Union's groundbreaking success ushered in a new era, and nothing has been the same since.

Five years later, John F. Kennedy's "We choose to go to the moon" speech persuaded the American public that space was a frontier beckoning to be pioneered. Ascending to the stars would be the next step in mankind's evolution. To many, that idea of space and the awe of discovery permeated practically every aspect of American culture with a sense of possibility and excitement but also deeply felt dread as we pondered life's meaning in the cosmos.

These themes lie at the core of Public Service Broadcasting's new album, The Race For Space, a song cycle that retells the American and Soviet tentpole events between 1957 and 1972 roughly from Sputnik to Apollo 17 and lets us hear that historical arc the way many experienced it at the time.

Part musical group, part performance-art outfit, Public Service Broadcasting is the innovative and geeky work of Londoners J. Willgoose, Esq. and Wrigglesworth. The two earned their reputation for marrying looped dance beats and electronics with spoken-word passages culled from old public-service messages, synced to meticulously edited film footage projected while they perform. With The Race For Space, Willgoose and Wrigglesworth incorporate original news broadcasts and communications between the astronauts and NASA's master control. From song to song, this tapestry of source material narrates each chapter chronologically, placing the listener inside the drama of the moment propelled by futuristic Kraftwerk-meets-Aphex Twin-meets-Daft Punk sounds suitable for a laser show at the local planetarium.

The Race For Space opens with a mood-altering choral overture and JFK's inspirational speech as a haunting invocation. "Space is there, and we're going to climb it. And the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there," Kennedy says, as a soaring choir gives every line extra resonance.

The duo crafts tiny instrumental flourishes that illuminate the story. "Sputnik" includes the distant yet unmistakable bleeping of a satellite. In "Valentina," chiming wordless voices from folk duo Smoke Fairies honor cosmonaut Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, the first woman to fly in space. And the somber celestial silence in "Fire In The Cockpit" recounts the deaths of Apollo 1's three crew members.

Yet The Race For Space's biggest showstoppers use sound to build cinematic excitement as in the exuberant "Gagarin," which bursts with slinky disco riffs and funked-up horn blasts while playing reports about cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. Meanwhile, "Go!" channels fiery, motorik beats, intricate guitar licks and TRON-era synths as the Apollo 11 team counts down before landing on the moon a moment punctuated by Neil Armstrong's famous line, "The Eagle has landed."

The most stirring moment of all comes in "The Other Side," about Apollo 8 slingshotting itself around the dark side of the moon. Public Service Broadcasting demonstrates its masterful touch for storytelling when the dusty drum machines momentarily drop out just as the astronauts lose contact with NASA ground control. The song builds anxiety and tension as we sit nervously for what feels like an eternity and then swells to a joyful release when the voices from space finally reconnect.

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First Listen: Public Service Broadcasting, 'The Race For Space'

World View Enterprises/AP Photo This artist rendering provided by World View Enterprises shows the World View Voyager pressurized space capsule that will be transported to the edge of space. The Arizona company says it has successfully completed the first scale test flight of a high-altitude balloon and capsule being developed to take tourists to the edge of space. World View Enterprises of Tucson said Tuesday June 24, 2014 that it launched the flight last week from Roswell, N.M. CEO Jane Poynter says the system broke the world record for highest parafoil flight, lifting a payload one-tenth of what is planned for passenger flight to 120,000 feet.

The private space industry believes there's a booming future in space tourismand students at MIT's Sloan School of Management want to make sure they, too, can get in on the action. A group of MBA students launched an aeronautics and space industry club in the fall, saying they hope it will help peers take advantage of growing career opportunities for business-minded space enthusiasts.

As Bloomberg Business reported last week, private spending on space travel has grown sixfold since 2010 and is projected to reach $10 billion by the end of this year. Space club students expect that jobs will follow. They swear it's not just an excuse to host Star Trek marathons.

"We're seeing technological capacities that are beyond anything I could ever have imagined," says Chris Holland, a second-year MBA student at Sloan who founded the space industry club. "I want to get in on the ground floor."

Sloan's aeronautics and space industry club, which currently counts about 97 student members, wants to bring industry recruiters to campus for networking events, plan social events (one proposed theme: "satellite reentry parties"), and hold interview boot camps to prepare MBAs for careers in space. It's also taking time to geek out a little, too. Last fall, the club held an event with astrophysicists who explained the science behind Interstellar, the 2014 science fiction film. It was a Friday night. The room reached capacity.

Being a space nerd, while a common avocation at MIT, didn't always translate to understanding the career potential of intergalactic travel. When Holland first started pitching the idea of the club with fellow Sloan student Rowland Graus, he said his peers weren't really aware people could get jobs in the space industry. "We got feedback like, 'I love Neil deGrasse Tyson,' or 'I've watched Cosmos,'" he says. Makes sense, given MIT's rich history of astronauts (the school has produced more astronauts than any other nonmilitary school, according to a university website).

Of course, as far as business school careers go, the private space industry is still a fairly unusual choice. Among Sloan's Class of 2014, the companies that hired the most students were McKinsey, Bain & Co., Amazon.com, Boston Consulting Group, and Apple, a Sloan report showsnone of which are exactly known for their extraterrestrial activities. Yet there are space companies out there that are hiring, online job postings show. They're not just looking for engineers; they also want MBAs with the business finesse to advise them on the best way to mine an asteroid, or source all the parts for a new rocket. "The new space industry has developed some pretty amazing rockets, and now they need people to help them manufacture and fly them," Holland says. "Companies need people with financial planning and analysis skills, people who can conduct a cost-benefit analysis for what parts to buy."

Holland's dream job is astronautan aspiration shared by 7- year-olds worldwide, but one Holland may have a much better shot at. He interned last summer at Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, and, when interviewed, told his recruiter about his ultimate career goal. She said the company could make it happen.

"It's the ultimate company perk," Holland says.

To contact the author on this story: Akane Otani at aotani1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor on this story: Francesca Levy at flevy6@bloomberg.net

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How to get a job in space

A new mission to monitor solar activity is now making its way to an orbit one million miles from Earth.

DSCOVR, a partnership among the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA and the U.S. Air Force, will provide NOAA space weather forecasters more reliable measurements of solar wind conditions, improving their ability to monitor potentially harmful solar activity.

NASA received funding from NOAA to refurbish the DSCOVR spacecraft and its solar wind instruments for this mission. The work was completed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, where a team developed the command and control portion of the spacecraft's ground segment, and manages the launch and activation of the satellite.

Following successful activation of the satellite and check-out approximately 150 days after launch, NASA will hand over operations of DSCOVR to NOAA.

"DSCOVR is the latest example of how NASA and NOAA work together to leverage the vantage point of space to both understand the science of space weather and provide direct practical benefits to us here on Earth," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

With DSCOVR in its distant orbit, it will become the nation's first operational satellite in deep space, orbiting between Earth and the sun at a location called the first Lagrange point, or L1. DSCOVR will join at this orbit NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) research satellite, and replace the 17-year-old satellite as America's primary warning system for solar magnetic storms. ACE will continue its important role in space weather research.

NOAA management of DSCOVR includes spacecraft operation and distribution of the mission's space weather data. These data, coupled with a new forecast model scheduled to come online later this year, will enable NOAA forecasters to predict geomagnetic storm magnitude on a regional basis.

Geomagnetic storms occur when plasma and magnetic fields streaming from the sun impact Earth's magnetic field. Large magnetic eruptions from the sun have the potential to bring major disruptions to power grids, aviation, telecommunications, and GPS systems.

In addition to the mission's primary space weather-monitoring instruments, DSCOVR carries two NASA Earth-observing instruments that will gather a range of measurements from the ozone and aerosols in the atmosphere, to changes in Earth's radiation budget. A NASA solar-science instrument, the Electron Spectrometer, will measure electrons in the solar wind.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Radiometer (NISTAR) measures the reflected and emitted energy from the entire sunlit face of Earth. This measurement is intended to improve understanding of the effects of changes in Earth's radiation budget caused by human activities and natural phenomena.

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NOAA's new deep space solar monitoring satellite launched

Kate Rubins will go where no Napan has gone before 268 miles above the Earth.

The biochemist-turned-astronaut, who joined the NASA ranks in 2009, has been chosen for a mission to the International Space Station set to begin in May 2016. On Monday, the U.S. space agency formally announced the mission, which had begun to emerge in news reports last year.

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft will boost Rubins, the Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin, and Takuya Onishi of Japan from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in the remote steppes of Kazakhstan, to the space station, where Rubins will oversee more than 100 scientific experiments during her six months in microgravity.

For the 36-year-old Napa native, the journey will be the fulfillment of a dream born in childhood, in a bedroom patterned with glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. More than a year before her first space flight, Rubins already was hoping simply to latch on to as many memories as possible amid the hectic rounds of training and preparation.

People have said even though its only six months, it goes by incredibly quickly, so pay attention to all the small things, she said Thursday by telephone from Friendswood, Texas, where she and her husband, Michael, Magnani live outside NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston. You can have so much work to do and you can get absorbed in it, so you have to stop every now and then and realize where you are.

Space and the stars held an early fascination for Rubins, through an upbringing that included stargazing events and a weeklong trip as a seventh-grader to the NASA Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. However, another scientific initiation would set her onto her early path: a visit at age 16 to a conference on recombinant DNA at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, which inspired her to study molecular biology at UC San Diego, after graduating from Vintage High School in 1996.

A career studying the genetics of viruses followed, starting with undergraduate work on finding HIV inhibitors for potential anti-AIDS treatments, and later studying the smallpox and Ebola viruses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She earned a doctorate at Stanford University in 2005, then spent the next four years with the Whitehead Medical Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, leading a 14-member infectious disease laboratory in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Still, when NASA began recruiting another group of space travelers in 2008 more than 3,500 candidates pursuing nine slots Rubins, almost on a lark, gave her original dream one more chance, though with no real expectations. Despite feeling I didnt think I had a shot at all, she made the cut in 2009 after a year of evaluation and interviews.

It was one of those childhood dreams I couldnt let go of, she told Nature magazine in March 2013. I thought that NASA didnt take biologists and so nothing would come of it, but I knew I would regret it if I did not apply.

I really thought that was her career trajectory and knew she loved her work as a research virologist, Rubins mother L. Ann Hallisey, an Episcopal minister in Davis, said in an email. It seems, however, that the space bug never left her ... I think the message here is, hold on to your dreams.

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Napa astronauts journey leads to International Space Station

Thanh Nam - A Space Flight

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Space Flight, Application of Orbital Mechanics - Space Documentary
Space Flight, Application of Orbital Mechanics Space Documentary.

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Space Flight, Application of Orbital Mechanics - Space Documentary - Video

Elite: Dangerous: Scouting Jaques
We found out the latest newsletter from Frontier, that Jaques has been seen moving around the galaxy. Today #39;s Galnet gave us a clue as to where he is so I decided to take a trip there and...

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Elite: Dangerous: Scouting Jaques - Video

5 Years Of Sun: Our Stars Best Close-Ups | Video
NASA #39;s Solar Dynamics Observatory acquired 200 million+ images in its past 1826 days looking at the Sun. Goddard Space Flight Center pulled together these highlights for pure visual enjoyment...

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5 Years Of Sun: Our Stars Best Close-Ups | Video - Video

"Starmade... NOT Starbound"- Starmade Gameplay
Welcome to the world of Starmade...NOT Starbound. Witness the pure AWESOME of ship building and space flight. Not sure I #39;ll make more videos on this so let me know if you want more! The footage...

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"Starmade... NOT Starbound"- Starmade Gameplay - Video

22 hours ago

A European supply ship will undock from the International Space Station on Saturday as scheduled but be destroyed 12 days earlier than planned because of a power hitch, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Friday.

The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) Georges Lemaitre will separate from the ISS on Saturday at 1344 GMT at the end of its six-month mission, it said.

But the loss of one of its four power sources means that, as a precaution, the ATV will be destroyed on Sunday rather than on February 27 as initially planned.

"It's a minor concern rather than a critical problem," Dominique Siruguet, deputy head of ESA's ATV programme, told AFP.

"The ATV has four solar panels," he said.

"It can operate as normal using three power chains, but even if this were reduced to two, it would still be able to separate from the ISS and perform re-entry satisfactorily."

Re-entry entails sending the vehicle earthward at a steep angle so that it burns up on friction with the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.

The ATV is the fifth and final cargo ship that ESA contracted to provide for the US-led ISS project.

Named after the father of the "Big Bang" theory, the spaceship is designed to navigate by starlight and dock automatically with the manned outpost in space.

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Power hiccup to speed end of Europe's space truck

Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) - five years observing the Sun
NASA #39;s Solar Dynamics Observatory celebrates its 5th anniversary since it launched on February 11, 2010. The time-lapse video captures one frame every 8 hours from June 2010 to February 8,...

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Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) - five years observing the Sun - Video

Conrad Industries, Inc. announced today its receipt of the NASA Space Flight Awareness Supplier Award based on its performance with the conversion of the NASA Pegasus barge. This annual award honors outstanding performance by hardware, software, or service suppliers who support NASA human space flight programs. Awardees are chosen based on their production of high-quality products, excellent technical and cost performance, and adherence to schedules.

The Pegasus barge was built to replace NASA's aging Poseidon and Orion barges -- both built in the 1940s to serve in World War II and converted in the 1960s for NASA's Apollo program. In 2002 it became the sole means of transport for the shuttle external tanks. Today, it's the only barge of its kind in NASA's inventory. The long-serving Pegasus barge will begin transporting rocket components for NASA's next-generation Space Launch System (SLS) between manufacturing, testing and launch locations upon its completion. Conrad has lengthened the barge from 260 feet to 310 feet so it can handle Space Launch System hardware and components, which are dramatically larger than the older space shuttle propulsion systems. Conrad will perform maintenance and refurbishment to ensure the restored vessel meets American Bureau of Shipping standards.

Astronaut Capt.Stephen G. Bowenalong withStephen Doering, Director of Center operations at Marshall Space Flight Center,Teresa Vanhooser, Deputy Center Director, Marshall Space Flight Center,Michael Kynard, Deputy Director, Michoud Assembly Facility andMalcolm Wood, Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Michoud Assembly Facility visited Conrad to present the award. "The Pegasus barge will play a crucial role in our ability to get the hardware from the Marshall Space Center, or Stennis, or Michoud to Kennedy for the launch, so it's an absolutely critical role," said Doering.

Dan Conrad, Senior Vice President of Conrad Shipyard commented, "From our beginnings in 1948 building wooden Shrimp trawlers, to supporting our countries space exploration program is humbling. We must give appreciation to our valued workforce who have done a fantastic job of completing our scope on time, and most importantly, safely."

Conrad Industries, Inc., established in 1948 and headquartered inMorgan City, Louisiana, designs, builds and overhauls tugboats, ferries, liftboats, barges, offshore supply vessels and other steel and aluminum products for both the commercial and government markets. The company provides both repair and new construction services at its five shipyards located in southernLouisianaandTexas.

For Information Contact:Robert Sampey(985) 380-2142 RASampey@ConradIndustries.com

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Conrad Shipyard Receives NASA Space Flight Awareness Supplier Award for Pegasus Barge Conversion Project

History records that 88 rockets launched to space in 1991. That count, it would seem, is off by one.

Granted, it was a really small rocket.

The world's first model rocket to soar into space did so on April 5, 1991. Standing just 7 inches tall (18 centimeters), the one-stage rocket lifted off, not by the thrust of a black powder engine, but rather on the space shuttle Atlantis. [Student Model Rocket Launches for NASA (Photos)]

Now, nearly a quarter of a century later, that model rocket has landed at The Museum of Flight in Seattle just in time for NARCON 2015, the National Association of Rocketry's annual convention. On Feb. 21, the man behind the rocket and the astronaut who flew it to space will be in Seattle for the meeting and to help dedicate an exhibit on the history of model rocketry.

"The convention's featured guest speaker will be astronaut Jay Apt, who carried a special Astron Scout model rocket belonging to Vern Estes into orbit on STS-37. That model and a host of other rocketry artifacts will form a permanent exhibit in the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery," wrote Pat Fitzpatrick, vice chairman of the Museum of Flight space flight committee, in an email to collectSPACE.

During the shuttle program, astronauts were able to fly a number of mementos for individuals and organizations that supported their mission. Apt, on the first of his four flights, chose the Estes Industries' Astron Scout for the role that model rocketry played in shaping his future.

"I got my first Estes [rocketry] catalog from a friend at my 13th birthday party in 1962," Apt recounted in an interview with collectSPACE. "My first kit was an Astron Mark, with the second a Scout. Estes Industries was a portal into the future."

"Whenever the red tubes containing motors or the boxes containing parts arrived, I was able to learn and practice the skills and sense of wonder that took me off this planet when I was an adult," Apt said.

In fact, Apt noted, all of his STS-37 crew mates had flown model rockets as teenagers.

"Rocketry played a critical role in stimulating our interest in engineering, science and exploration," he said.

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First Model Rocket to Fly in Space Lands on Museum Display

NASAs new manned spacecraft for deep space flight enabled by Intersil technology

MILPITAS, CALIF. Intersil Corporation (NASDAQ: ISIL), a leading provider of innovative power management and precision analog solutions, today announced that 16 of its radiation-hardened ICs were onboard the Dec. 5, 2014 maiden voyage of NASAs Orion spacecraft, also known as the uncrewed Exploration Flight Test 1. The Orion spacecraft is designed to go where no man has gone before, including astronauts exploring and collecting asteroid samples from a future planned robotic mission to redirect an asteroid to orbit the moon, and the long sought after manned mission to Mars.

Intersils rad-hard ICs are deployed in Orions crew module, where they are used to support subsystems for mission critical applications in power distribution, navigation and flight control, and in the inertial measurement unit. A wide range of Intersil rad-hard solutions are used including voltage regulators, comparators, multiplexers, PWM controllers, MOSFET drivers, dual analog switches, quad differential receivers and microprocessor supervisory circuits.

Intersils innovative rad-hard ICs are playing a key role in NASAs next big step into deep space exploration, which is energizing a new generation of engineers, scientists and astronauts, said Philip Chesley, senior vice president of Precision Products at Intersil. The successful Orion test flight is a major achievement, and were proud to be a part of it.

Intersil's history and experience in the space and defense industries spans almost six decades, beginning with the founding of Radiation Inc. in 1950. Since then, virtually every satellite, shuttle launch and deep-space mission has included Intersil products. All Intersil SMD products are MIL-PRF-38535/QML compliant and are 100% burned in.

Intersils space flight IC capabilities include:

~300 space-qualified radiation-hardened products available Consistent design and manufacturing in Intersil's MIL-PRF-38535-qualified facility located in Palm Bay, Florida Intersil is one of only 15 RHA Defense Logistics Agency (Land and Maritime) QML suppliers All products are fully Class V (space level) compliant All products are on individual DLA SMD drawings

For additional information on Intersil's space, defense and hi-reliability solutions or on its low dose rate radiation testing facility, please visit: http://www.intersil.com/space/.

About Intersil Intersil Corporation is a leading provider of innovative power management and precision analog solutions. The company's products form the building blocks of increasingly intelligent, mobile and power hungry electronics, enabling advances in power management to improve efficiency and extend battery life. With a deep portfolio of intellectual property and a rich history of design and process innovation, Intersil is the trusted partner to leading companies in some of the worlds largest markets, including industrial and infrastructure, mobile computing, automotive and aerospace. For more information about Intersil, visit our website at http://www.intersil.com.

Company Contact: Mark Alden Intersil Corporation +1 (408) 546-3402 malden@intersil.com

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Intersil's Rad-Hard ICs Blast off on Orion's Flight Test

A European mini-space shuttle prototype launched into space Wednesday (Feb. 11) and then zoomed back to Earth in a daring test of innovative technologies for future reusable spacecraft.

The European Space Agency's car-sizeIntermediate eXperimental Vehicle(IXV) blasted off atop a Vega rocket from the European Spaceport in French Guiana at 8:40 a.m. EST (1340 GMT) Wednesday. The spacecraft was initially expected to launch at 8 a.m. EST, but a problem with telemetry delayed the liftoff within the one hour and 45 minute launch window. The craft came back to Earth about 100 minutes after launch, making a parachute-assisted splashdown in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at about10:20 a.m. (1520 GMT).A recovery ship is stationed near the splashdown zone and is on its way to collect the IXV, European Space Agency (ESA) officials said.

"It [the test flight] couldn't have been better, but the mission itself is not yet over," Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of ESA, said through a translator after splashdown was confirmed. "Now it's going to be necessary to analyze all of the data that was collected throughout the flight." [Photos: Europe's IXV Reusable Space Plane Prototype]

The experimental vehicle is a wingless "lifting body" rather than a true space plane. It measures 16.4 feet long by 4.9 feet high by 7.2 feet wide (5 by 1.5 by 2.2 meters) and weighs almost 2 tons (1,814 kilograms) when fully fueled, ESA officials said.

During today's suborbital flight, the IXV was expected to reach a maximum altitude of about 261 miles (420 kilometers), then barrel back intoEarth's atmosphereat a speed of 16,800 mph (27,037 km/h). The vehicle was also designed to use an advanced infrared camera and more than 300 other sensors to assess how its thermal protection, guidance and other key systems perform during re-entry.

ESA considers IXV an important step along the path to mastering autonomous, controlled re-entry technology.

"Such a capability is essential for developing a wide range of space transportation applications, including space planes, reusable launcher stages, planetary probes and sample return, cargo and crew transport vehicles," ESA officials wrote in anIXV mission FAQ. "Mastery of re-entry technology could also be useful in innovative future missions for Earth observation, microgravity experimentation, high-altitude atmospheric research and servicing and disposing of future-generation satellites."

IXV is considered "intermediate" because it follows the 1998 flight of the Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator (ARD) capsule and precedes an envisioned space plane project called PRIDE (Program for Reusable In-orbit Demonstrator for Europe).

The "PRIDE space plane will be similar to, but smaller and cheaper than, the U.S.s X-37B but, unlike the X-37B, would be managed under civil auspices," ESA officials wrote. (The roboticX-37B space plane, which has flown three space missions to date, is operated by the United States Air Force.)

"It would be launched by Europes Vega light rocket, orbit robotically, operate in orbit and land automatically on ground in a runway," they added. "The mission will focus on system and technology performance verification under all flight conditions hypersonic, supersonic, transonic and subsonic."

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Test flight of tiny European space shuttle a success

Commercial space flight took another step forward Tuesday (10.02.2015) as the SpaceX Dragon freighter safely returned to earth from the International Space Station (ISS).

The unmanned craft left the ISS at 2:10 p.m. EST (19:10 GMT) and splash-landed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California just over five hours later. The vehicle was carrying nearly 1,700 kilograms (almost 2 tons) of cargo - including scientific materials, research equipment, 3D printed parts and even a faulty spacesuit. There were no astronauts on board.

The smooth landing was another victory for United States-based commercial space flight company SpaceX and its CEO Elon Musk, who also heads electric car company Tesla Motors. It was the fifth successful roundtrip mission to the ISS performed by the company for NASA.

Landings becoming routine

Currently, the Dragon craft is the only space cargo vessel in the world that is capable of making the return trip back to earth. For scientists and researchers with experiments returning from the ISS onboard, the safe landing was a relief.

The pioneering work of SpaceX appears to be making commercial space travel with private companies viable. Space travel experts in Germany say they only pay passing attention to successful launches and landings now.

"It's becoming more routine for us," said Johannes Weppler, a scientist at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). "We notice it and are happy when things are successful - but it's not that we are anticipating these things," he told DW.

Weppler praised SpaceX, adding that he has high confidence in the quality of the company's work. "They have put on a program that is very impressive and has a lot of potential for the future," Weppler said.

Still a risky buisness

But Weppler acknowledged that there are still risks involved with each launch and landings performed by private space companies. Yesterday's successful mission by SpaceX comes just three months after a spectacular failure by another private US space company, Orbital Sciences.

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SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft splashes down after trip to ISS