A manned mission to a near Earth object (NEO) would require a robotic precursor mission for safety, according to a NASA Constellation programme office study obtained by Flight International. The robotic reconnaissance spacecraft could detect hazards such as satellites of the asteroid-like NEO and help determine the local gravitational field and the target object’s composition [...]
Applied Aerospace Structures in Stockton has been awarded a contract by Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., to manufacture sections of a launch abort system for NASA’s planned Orion space vehicle. The Orion will succeed the space shuttle as the vehicle to take people to the international space station, the moon, and eventually, Mars. Applied [...]
Team Ares, a collaboration between ATK, Lockheed Martin, and Pratt & Whitney, is hard at work conducting technical risk reduction activities for the Ares I booster’s upper stage using internal company funds. The team is focusing on several specific areas of risk reduction including fabrication of a common bulkhead that separates the fuel and oxidizer [...]
Trips into outer space have become so common that the public hardly pays attention. But a 4-by-6-inch hole created in space shuttle Atlantis’ thermal blanket during Friday’s launch has prompted some to take notice. It’s a stark reminder that NASA is dealing with an aging fleet of vehicles that need to be upgraded for the [...]
Playing hooky is rarely a good career move. But when young John Elbon went AWOL from elementary school it changed his life. He felt that he just had to watch those grainy black and white TV images beamed back from the moon. The jerky video, sent by the first space travelers to land on another [...]
Before it ever leaves the launch pad, a new spacecraft designed to take humans back to the moon will be pummeled with electromagnetic radiation and blasted with heat lamps reaching temperatures of 300 degrees. Testing on the craft, called the Orion, is critical for the country’s next phase of space exploration and for workers at [...]
Pictures of Plum Brook Testing Center where NASA will test Orion. View pictures
NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin said Friday that he regretted having sparked a furor last week when, in an interview with National Public Radio, he said he was not sure climate change“is a problem we must wrestle with.” “To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today [...]
Kipling, Dante and Buzz Aldrin collide beautifully in this unique collection of images from the Apollo missions. Alastair Smart talks to the man who introduced NASA’s most hard-bitten astronauts to their inner poets Blame Hollywood special effects; blame Richard Branson; or perhaps blame Lisa Marie Nowak, the troubled female astronaut who crossed America to kill [...]
There are only about 16 flights left before NASA’s space shuttle fleet retires in 2010, but an ambitious plan is in place to have a replacement spacecraft ready by 2013. This is two years earlier than NASA’s previously stated goal of getting the next generation Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and the Ares I and Ares [...]