Daily Archives: October 6, 2012

Hawthorne-based rocket maker SpaceX is poised to return to the International Space Station with its Dragon spacecraft to carry out the first contracted cargo resupply flight in NASA's history.

SpaceX performed a successful demonstration mission to the space station in May, showing NASA that the company could do the job. SpaceX has secured a $1.6-billion contract to carry out 12 such cargo missions, and Sunday's mission would be the first.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is set to blast off at 8:34 p.m. EDT Sunday from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, Fla., carrying the Dragon capsule packed with 1,000 pounds of food, water and supplies.

"I'm still quite nervous about it because it's just our second mission to the station," Elon Musk, SpaceX's 41-year-old billionaire founder and chief executive said. "We're hoping that this mission goes as smoothly as the last one."

With last year's retirement of the space shuttle fleet, NASA is eager to give private industry the job of carrying cargo and crews, in hopes of cutting costs. Meanwhile, the space agency will focus on deep-space missions to land probes on asteroids and Mars.

Another aerospace firm, Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., is nipping at SpaceX's heels with a test flight of its commercial rocket set for later this year. Orbital has a $1.9-billion cargo-hauling contract with NASA. The company is running tests on its Antares rocket at a launch pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia for a separate resupply mission.

Critics, including some former astronauts and members of Congress, have voiced concerns about NASA's move toward private space missions. They contend that private space companies are risky ventures with unproven technology and say that the missions should be handled by NASA flight-proven hardware.

But SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has quieted many opponents after its successful demonstration mission, though it still faces opposition.

"A SpaceX failure back then, or indeed a slip-up on the next launch, would give ammunition to congressional critics, who in many cases are trying to bring home the bacon for their own constituents," said Tim Farrar, president of the consulting and research firm Telecom, Media & Finance Associates Inc. in Menlo Park, Calif. "Continued success on SpaceX's part makes it much harder to argue for continuing to invest in traditional contracts."

During that nine-day demonstration, the Dragon spacecraft rendezvoused with the $100-billion space station and tested sensors and processors by linking up with the orbiting outpost's onboard computers.

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SpaceX ready to resupply space station

The first-ever year-long mission to the International Space Station will launch in 2015 and feature an American-Russian crew, NASA revealed today (Oct. 5).

Two astronauts one Russian and one American will launch together in spring 2015 on an experimental endurance mission that will last twice as long as current stays aboard the orbiting lab. The main goal is to gather data that will help lay the groundwork for manned flights to destinations in deep space, officials said.

"In order for us to eventually move beyond low-Earth orbit, we need to better understand how humans adapt to long-term spaceflight," NASA's Michael Suffredini, International Space Station program manager, said in a statement. "The space station serves as a vital scientific resource for teaching us those lessons, and this year-long expedition aboard the complex will help us move closer to those journeys."

The announcement confirms speculation that has been bubbling for several months. Earlier this week, a Russian space official claimed the marathon mission was a done deal, but until today NASA had simply said that such a flight was under consideration. [Most Extreme Human Spaceflight Records]

Launching two astronauts means that one seat on the mission's three-person Soyuz spacecraft may be available for another crewmember. On Oct. 10, British singer Sarah Brightman will make a "groundbreaking announcement" about space travel, and some observers speculate that she or somebody else may be taking the Soyuz' third seat as a space tourist.

During the 12 years that people have lived continuously aboard the space station, scientists have learned a lot about how microgravity affects the human body. They've documented significant effects, for example, on bone density, muscle mass, strength and vision.

But that information has been based on orbital stays that lasted a maximum of six months. Studying astronauts on a year-long mission should yield even greater insights into crew health and performance, researchers said.

"We have gained new knowledge about the effects of spaceflight on the human body from the scientific research conducted on the space station, and it is the perfect time to test a one-year expedition aboard the orbital laboratory," said Julie Robinson, NASA's program scientist for the International Space Station. "What we will gain from this expedition will influence the way we structure our human research plans in the future."

NASA has a keen interest in learning how the human body holds up for long stretches in space, for the agency is currently working to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 and Mars by the mid-2030s. A manned roundtrip journey to Mars could take around two years, according to some mission concepts.

Neither NASA nor the Russian Federal Space Agency, which is known as Roscosmos, has revealed who the two astronauts will be. A few months ago, however, Russia's Interfax news agency reported that the NASA crewmember could be Peggy Whitson, who recently stepped down as the agency's chief astronaut to rejoin its active spaceflying ranks.

Link:
One Year In Space: US-Russian Crew Launching Audacious Spaceflight in 2015

Cape Canaveral, Florida (Reuters) - Space Exploration Technologies, the first private company to fly to the International Space Station, is poised to launch its initial cargo mission to the orbital outpost as part of a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to deliver supplies.

Liftoff of the company's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule is scheduled for 8:35 p.m. EDT on Sunday (0035 GMT Monday) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

If successful, the company, founded and run by Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, will restore a U.S. supply line to the station that was cut off by the retirement of the space shuttles last year.

Since then, NASA has been dependent on Russian, European and Japanese freighters to service the station, a permanently staffed research laboratory that flies about 250 miles above Earth.

In May the firm, also known as SpaceX, made a practice run to the $100 billion orbital outpost, a project of 15 countries, clearing the way for the first of 12 cargo runs.

SpaceX is one of two firms hired by NASA to deliver cargo to the station.

Its other contractor, Orbital Sciences Corp., on October 1 rolled out its first Antares rocket to a new launch pad on Wallops Island, Virginia, for an engine test-firing slated for this month or early November.

The rocket is scheduled to make its debut flight before the end of the year.

Orbital also plans a practice run to the space station, similar to what SpaceX did when its Dragon ship docked at the station. If all goes well, Orbital will be cleared to begin work on its $1.9-billion NASA contract to fly cargo to the station.

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SpaceX set for its first cargo run to space station