March 31

Commercial Teachers in Space Program Takes Off

For teacher Pam Leestma it was a higher-education boost in her quest to travel into space.

Leestma and pilot Bob Ray took off on Wednesday from a Reno, Nevada airfield aboard "Maching Bird 1" - a twin seat MiG-21UM jet - owned and operated by a commercial spaceflight firm - X-Rocket, LLC of Bothell, Washington. The proficiency flight was part of X-Rocket's Teacher in Space program.

According to company president Edward Wright, X-Rocket plans to operate a fleet of suborbital aerospace trainers that will serve multiple functions, from advanced test pilot training to adventure tourism experiences to Teacher in Space flights. Wright's vision is to fly as many as 200 teachers a year.

Funds to do so, however, would have to be raised.

A goal is to have thousands of astronaut teachers in schools all across the country, within the next decade, he said. A 30-year experienced educator, Leestma teaches at Valley Christian Elementary School in Bellflower, California.

And if the name Leestma is a bit space familiar, she's the cousin of NASA astronaut, David Leestma, a three shuttle flight veteran.

-- Leonard David

March 30

SMART-1 Moon Probe Outsmarts Itself

The European Space Agency's (ESA) SMART-1 Moon probe had a bit of unexpected engine action. Spacecraft operators last month were surprised to find the craft's ion motor happily at work.

"The software error for the unexpected activation of the electric propulsion of the engine has been found and corrected," explained Sven Grahn, Vice President Engineering & Corporate Communications for the Swedish Space Corporation, the prime contractor for SMART-1.

The event seems to be related to a shift of memory addresses caused by the uploading of a major software patch. The patch was not uploaded to fix a problem, but to provide new functionality for the lunar orbiter's science instruments, Grahn told SPACE.com.

"Simulations and tests were run before the patch was uploaded, but somehow the tests and simulations did not catch this glitch," he said.

Grahn said that the inadvertent turn-on of the electric propulsion is now fully understood and there is no risk of a repetition. "But of course, the age-old lesson is never touch a working system...and if you must...be sure to check. We checked, but still the glitch occurred. However, the consequences of the glitch were very small, luckily."

The craft's ion engine kicked on for 11 hours and 22 minutes in February 28, consuming some 200 grams of precious Xenon fuel. A subsequent correction maneuver by SMART-1 as it orbits the Moon was done on March 12 to avoid too long of eclipses in April, added Bernard Foing, Chief Scientist for ESA's science program. [Smart Science]

-- Leonard David

March 29

Shuttle Discovery Delivered to Vehicle Assembly Building

CAPE CANAVERAL - Shuttle Discovery carefully backed out of its hangar overnight after more than two years of preparations, then made the one-hour roll into the Vehicle Assembly Building early today.

A handful of shuttle workers, walking ahead of the orbiter's rear end as it inched out, lofted a sign saying "We're behind you Discovery!" The first movement of the vehicle, at 1:29 a.m., ended more than two years of preparations for the orbiter that will return the shuttle fleet to space in the wake of the Columbia accident.

Kennedy Space Center workers scrambled Monday to get shuttle Discovery ready for the overnight tow from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the mammoth VAB. A small crowd of reporters and space workers braved chilly gusts to watch the middle-of-the-night action. NASA plans to hoist Discovery atop a mobile launcher platform later today, and attach the spaceship to a 15-story external fuel tank. Twin solid rocket boosters already are connected to the tank.

The fully assembled shuttle will be driven out to Pad 39B in about a week. NASA and United Space Alliance workers toiled through Easter weekend, hoping to get Discovery to the VAB early Monday. But they were held up by a late-developing glitch with the 76-wheel transporter used to tow the orbiter. The yellow transporter would not line up correctly with the back end of the vehicle. The team had to unhook the orbiter, back the transporter out of the hangar and try again. The movement was slow once it started this morning. It took about 30 minutes to get half of the orbiter out the doors.

Then the pace quickened. The orbiter was inside the VAB before 2:40 a.m. Discovery is set to launch May 15 on the first shuttle mission since the Columbia disaster.

-- Todd Halvorson and John Kelly, Florida Today

March 28

Shuttle Rollover to Vehicle Assembly Building Delayed

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Shuttle Discovery will move from its hangar to the Vehicle Assembly Building no earlier than 11 p.m. today.

The orbiter was to move around 10 a.m. this morning. Overnight, however, there was a problem with the transporter that tows the orbiter to the VAB.

The transporter is like a giant flatbed truck without the flat bed.

Technicians realized the 72-wheeled yellow transporter was not properly aligned with the rear of Discovery.

KSC teams are working to unhook the orbiter, pull the transporter back out of the Orbiter Processing Facility and then properly align it to drive back in.

The weather was looking bad anyway this morning. The sky is overcast and it is raining on and off this morning. That's expected to continue most of the morning and early afternoon.

NASA prefers not to move the orbiter in the rain because drops of water can damage the thermal protection system.

-- Florida Today

March 25

NASA to Study Toxicity of Moon Dust

NASA scientists are worried about just how toxic lunar dust might be to future Moonwalkers. How to prevent its potentially hazardous effects if a person is exposed to the material is on the space agency's need-to-know list.

A workshop on the biological effects of lunar dust is being held at month's end, co-sponsored by NASA Headquarters, NASA Ames Research Center and NASA Johnson Space Center.

Leading scientists and physicians will meet in Sunnyvale, California to review current knowledge about lunar dust and its medical risks. They'll be recommending strategies to obtain new information needed for medical and engineering experts to manage the particulate risk for lunar exploration.

"NASA is planning to begin human explorations of the moon between 2015 and 2020 in preparation for human expeditions to Mars," said Russell Kerschmann, chief of the Life Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.

Kerschmann said the impact of lunar dust on crews and equipment is a high risk area. The upcoming workshop will focus on defining those hazards in order to assure the safety of astronauts returning to the Moon as part of President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, he said.

-- Leonard David

March 24

Contest Winner To Be Launched into Space

A Colorado man has won a free ride to the edge of space in a rocket plane to be built by billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson. The announcement will be made today in New York City.

Doug Ramsburg was selected at random from 135,000 entries in a contest sponsored by Branson's new Virgin Galactic company and Volvo Cars of North America. As the winner, Ramsburg will be one of the first passengers to fly in an enlarged SpaceShipOne - the first commercially financed plane to reach space last fall. Virgin Galactic licensed SpaceShipOne's technology in order to modify it for extra passengers.

The first flights - expected to begin in two or three years, pending safety and regulatory approval - will cost about $200,000. Like all prospective astronauts, Ramsburg will go through some basic training, as well as pass a physical 10 days before his flight. None of this is supposed to so strenuous as to exclude the general public.

"You look up at the stars and you think, 'Wow, wouldn't it be awesome to be able to look back on the planet from space,' " Ramburg told The Rocky Mountain News. "And I'm getting that opportunity."

-- SPACE.com Staff

March 23

Weighing a Black Hole

Scientists have weighed a black hole by observing strong X-ray outbursts from it. The timing and regularity of the bursts - seen by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory - imply an object 10,000 times more massive than our Sun. This might sound like a bundle, but in the boxing ring of black holes, it qualifies only as middleweight.

Astronomers have previously observed stellar-mass black holes - with about 10 solar masses - and supermassive black holes - with a million or more solar masses. The recent measurements of a black hole in M74, a galaxy 32 million light years away, are the best evidence so far for an intermediate-mass black hole.

"It is important to verify the existence of intermediate-mass black holes, because they would bridge the gap between stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies," said Jifeng Liu of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Liu and his colleagues found that the M74 source varied in its X-ray brightness every two hours, providing an important clue to the black holes' mass.

Some scientists had speculated that ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs), of which the M74 object is one, are stellar-mass black holes that look brighter because they are beaming X-rays directly at Earth. However, the variation pattern observed by Liu's team seems to require a bigger black hole.

If the object is indeed one of the elusive intermediate-mass black holes, the next question is how did it form. One of the leading theories is that hundreds of stellar-mass black holes (which form out of the deaths of massive stars) merge together at the center of a dense star cluster.

Another possibility is that the intermediate object was the central black hole of a small galaxy that is being eaten by the larger M74 galaxy.

The results appeared in the March 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

-- Michael Schirber

March 22

Public Hearings Set for Pluto Mission

The countdown clock is ticking toward a January liftoff of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft bound for Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

"The spacecraft and instruments are undergoing a very rigorous test program over the next few months," said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "This begins with systems testing, and then proceeds to shake tests and space environment thermal vacuum testing," he told SPACE.com.

Also among a series of steps still to be undertaken is launch approval of the nuclear-powered probe. The power source for New Horizons is a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). It uses heat from the decay of plutonium dioxide to produce electricity.

On March 29 and 30, NASA will host meetings at the Florida Solar Energy Center in Cocoa - a research institute of the University of Central Florida -- where the public can comment on a New Horizons Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and learn more about the proposed mission.

After reviews are completed under the National Environmental Policy Act, if NASA decides to proceed with the mission, the spacecraft would await presidential approval to launch next January.

New Horizons is to be launched aboard an Atlas 5. The piano-sized probe would cross the entire span of the solar system -- in record time -- and conduct flyby studies of Pluto and its moon, Charon, in 2015. New Horizons would also voyage into the Kuiper Belt of smaller, icy objects. [More]

-- Leonard David

March 21

Congress Moves on Amateur Asteroid-Watching Bill

The U.S. House of Representative's Science Committee on March 17 passed a bill that would help discover near-Earth asteroids.

Passed by voice vote last week, the bill -- House Resolution 1023 (HR 1023) -- is also known as the Charles "Pete" Conrad Astronomy Awards Act and has been championed by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.

The bill is named for the third man to walk on the Moon. Conrad died in 1999 as the result of injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident.

The bill authorizes the NASA Administrator to establish an awards program in honor of Conrad that flags the discoveries and contributions made by amateur astronomers regarding asteroids with near-Earth orbit trajectories.

Cash awards are called for in the bill, to encourage amateur astronomers to discover and track near-Earth asteroids. An award under the program is valued at $3,000. You have to be a citizen or permanent resident of the United States at the time of the discovery or contribution to receive an award under the Act.

The NASA Administrator would make awards under the program based on the recommendations of the Minor Planet Center of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert noted that the U.S. Senate ran out of time in taking the bill up last go-round, but was optimistic about it moving through the entire process this Congress.

-- Leonard David

March 18

China Tracks Space Debris

China has set up a dedicated center to monitor space trash in orbit, the country's Xinhua News Agency reported.

China established the tracking station - which carries the weighty name of Space Target and Debris Observation and Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences - at the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing earlier this month. Space debris, trash cast off by humans and spacecraft while in Earth orbit, ranges from derelict satellites to expended stages and other components of launch vehicles.

Chinese space officials expect the new tracking center to study the motions and affects of space debris in orbit in order to protect future manned spacecraft and unmanned satellites, Xinhua reported.

Researchers at Purple Mountain Observatory told the Xinhua News Agency that if the current rate of space debris accumulation continues - about 2 percent to 5 percent each year - it could be unsafe to launch anything into orbit by the year 2300.

March 15

New Mexico May Get New Deep Space Antennas

ALBUQUERQUE (AP) - NASA is considering New Mexico as the new US home for a cluster of dish-shaped radio antennas.

The antennas would be used to communicate with NASA's spacecraft.

Deep Space Network Array project manager Joe Statman said Monday that officials are considering two sites next to White Sands Missile Range. The antennas would replace an aging station in Goldstone, California. Goldstone also is in the running for the replacement array. Statman says it'll be several years before a decision is made.

NASA is doing preliminary environmental analyses of the candidate sites, and the project doesn't yet have federal funding.

-- Associated Press

March 14

Space Radar Antenna: Lightweight and Lengthy

Here's the long and short of it. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is delving into Innovative Space Based Radar Antenna Technology, dubbed the ISAT program.

These revolutionary, extremely lightweight and lengthy radar antennas would be stationed in space. The assignment: to provide continuous tactical-grade tracking of moving ground targets or airborne targets, such as cruise missiles.

When ready for rocket liftoff, the antennas would be packed up tight to about the size of a sport utility vehicle.

But once on orbit, the antennas would unfold to a structure that could be, in the fully operational version, the length of the Empire State Building - that's 1,250 feet long or equal to 102 stories.

Measurable progress has been made in the ISAT effort, detailed this week in submitted testimony of Tony Tether, Director of DARPA before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.

Tether reported that last year DARPA successfully built and deployed a single section of the antenna on the ground. In addition, engineers demonstrated techniques that would measure the position and shape of the antenna to within one millimeter on-orbit.

Multiple sections of the antenna will be built this next year, combined, and deployed and tested in a thermal vacuum chamber that simulates the space environment. The ISAT space-based demonstration of a one-third-scale antenna is planned for 2010, Tether noted.

-- Leonard David

March 10

April Auctions Bring Space Sales

April is auction season with no less than three independent space sales scheduled over the four weeks. First to the mailbox with their catalog (although second to sell by calendar date) is Regency-Superior of Beverly Hills, which offers 377 lots in the Space section of their April 9, public auction. Here are a few of the highlights:

1965 Gagarin Training Centrifuge Presentation Model (Lot 1932) - Scale model of actual centrifuge located at Center of Cosmonauts Training in Star City. Estimate: $750

1969 Armstrong, Aldrin & Collins Signed Photo (Lot 1696) - Color 8"x10" photo on Kodak professional paper signed by all three with the same blue pen. Estimate: $1,000

1971 Jim Irwin's Flown Personal Preference Kit (Lot 1734) - Personal preference kit flown to the Moon on Apollo 15. The white beta cloth bag is 6"x9" & has draw string through brass grommet at the top. Estimate: $10,000

1972 Flown Beef Sandwiches (Lot 1744) - Package containing group of bite-sized beef sandwiches from Gene Cernan's private collection of left-over meals that were flown to the Moon on the Apollo 17 mission. Estimate: $3,500

1990s Flown Sokol Presure Gloves (Lot 1860) - Each with initials LAI standing for Lazutkin Alexander Ivanovich , member of both TM-25 and TM-34 crews. Estimate: $1,000

Regency-Superior's auction is preceded by New York-based Swann Galleries on April 2 and followed by Aurora Galleries' two day space sale in California on April 23-24.

For more lot previews, auction coverage, and prices realized after each sale, see collectSPACE.com.

-- Robert Pearlman

March 9

In China, Female Astronauts Must Wait

As China prepares for its second manned spaceflight, officials with the country's space agency say it will be a while before female Chinese astronauts reach orbit.

According to Qi Faren, chief designer for China's manned spacecraft, there are not yet any female astronauts or pilots qualified to ride aboard a space-bound Shenzhou spacecraft, China's Xinhua News Agency reported.

Chinese astronaut candidates typically amass about 700 hours flying fighter planes to qualify for astronaut status, Xinhua stated.

"Although China has many women aviators now, none of them meet the minimum requirement," Qi told Xinhua.

China was the third nation, after Russia and the U.S., to build a manned spacecraft and launch it into Earth orbit.

It took Russia two years since launching the first human in space - cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1 in April 1961 - to loft the first woman, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who flew aboard Vostok 6 in June 1963. In June of 1983, the first U.S. female astronaut, Sally Ride, launched spaceward aboard the space shuttle Challenger 22 years after NASA launched its first human, Alan Shepard, on a sub-orbital flight inside the Freedom 7 spacecraft in May 1961.

China's first manned spaceflight, Shenzhou-5, launched and landed safely in October 2003 with astronaut Yang Liwei at the helm during a 21-hour mission that circled the Earth 14 times. That flight will be followed by Shenzhou-6, a five-day mission manned by two astronauts, which is expected to launch this fall, Qi said, adding that flight's spacecraft has already been assembled for astronaut training.

-- Tariq Malik

March 8

135,000 Enter 'Boldly Go' Sweepstakes for Ticket to Space

During the Superbowl, Volvo launched a "Boldly Go" ad campaign that compared its new XC90 SUV to a rocket blasting into space. The ad involved complex tie-ins and an offer to send a sweepstakes contestant to space.

The company is now calling it "Volvo's most successful integrated marketing campaign," generating the advertising equivalency for press coverage more than double the investment in the expensive ad.

In the commercial, the rocket pilot turns out to be billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, the money man behind the recent record-setting plane flight by Steve Fossett in the GlobalFlyer aircraft. Branson is also founder and chairman of The Virgin Group of Companies, which last year announced Virgin Galactic, a new company that aims to take tourists to space within three years. That bold plan is based on Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, the sub-orbital craft that last year won the X Prize (Rutan also designed GlobalFlyer).

The final piece of this high-powered relationship puzzle: Volvo's ads (also in print and online) invited people to register (sorry, through Feb. 22) to win a seat on a Virgin spaceflight. Volvo says 135,000 people signed up online.

The company also received more than 1,000 pre-orders for its new V8 machine. While the vehicle won't quite rocket off the planet, the campaign suggests space remains a good marketing vehicle.

The sweepstakes winner will be announced March 24 at the New York International Auto Show.

-- SPACE.com Staff

March 7

Rocket Crashes after Alaskan Launch

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) _ A rocket launched to collect information on the aurora's appearance and movement flew for five minutes before crashing in the mountains north of Fairbanks.

The 70-foot Black Brant XII rocket was launched Sunday from the Poker Flat Research Range. It should have flown for 40 minutes, said Greg Walker, the range manager.

Walker said range staff searching by air and on ground with snowmobiles found the rocket based on its final global positioning system transmissions.

"It was right where it was supposed to be,'' Walker said.

Range staff planned to retrieve the rocket debris and analyze it to determine what caused the crash.

The rocket was to fly through the aurora and investigate how and why the aurora moves and appears the way it does on Earth, Hartley said.

Poker Flat Research Range has been the site of more than 2,000 rocket launches since it opened in 1969. It is about 30 miles north of Fairbanks.

-- Associated Press

March 4

China's Next Space Travelers in Training

China is ramping up preparations for that country's second human spaceflight later this year. According to the Xinhua news agency, 10 astronauts in five pairs are in the run-up to pilot the Shenzhou-6 spaceship.

The two-person crew will not be selected "until the last minute" said Huang Chunping, the chief launch vehicle designer of China's human spaceflight program, he was quoted as saying, based on a report in the Beijing Times newspaper Friday.

China's first piloted spaceflight was carried out in October 2003, a mission lasting a little over 21 hours in duration. At the controls of that craft was Yang Liwei - who is also among the trainees for the upcoming two-person space shot expected to last for over five days.

Huang also said Shenhou-6 will carry two new upgrades: a video transmission system so ground controllers can monitor the separation of the rocket and the spaceship live; and a better escape system for the pilots in case of emergencies. Lastly, Huang said the two space travelers would enter the roomy forward module of Shenzhou-6 to carry out experiments.

There are no plans for the crew to carry out a space walk, he said.

-- Leonard David

March 2

Finally! Deep Space Personal Ads Become a Reality

Seems like every Silicon Valley technocrat worth his or her salt can't wait to get off-world. It was announced earlier this week that groovy Internet community craigslist has plans to offer its users the opportunity to have their postings - personals, want ads, etc., -- transmitted trillions of miles beyond the confines of the Solar System.

"It looks like we may hit 2 billion page views per month in March here on Earth," craigslist customer service rep and founder, Craig Newmark said in a press release touting the concept. "We wanted to be the first to offer free job postings, apartment listings, personals and other classifieds to the extraterrestrial community. We believe there could be an infinite market opportunity."

The craigslist currently handles 5 million earthly postings each month, from 8 million humans, in 99 cities and 19 countries on the planetary surface.

The company announced the plan after CEO Jim Buckmaster won an auction on eBay for the first private communication to be transmitted into deep space by Deep Space Communications Network, of Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Noting that such transmissions have long been the exclusive domain of military and research institutions, Buckmaster said "We're thrilled to offer our users this historic opportunity", and added that negotiations were ongoing with DSCN for transmission capacity orders of magnitude beyond those offered in the original auction, to accommodate the interstellar messaging needs of the mammoth online community."

March 1

Soviet Space Diaries Found, Translators Wanted

The NASA History Office in Washington, D.C. is on the prowl for an editor and translator services to dive into the diaries of two key Soviet space officials.

The hand-written diaries of the Soviet space pioneers -- Vasiliy Mishin and Konstantin Feoktistov -- are in the Russian language and have not been published in English.

Mishin was a Russian rocket pioneer, later leading the development of a mammoth booster for that country's failed attempt to beat the U.S. Apollo project in landing humans on the Moon. He died in 2001.

The Mishin diaries consist of several thousand pages.

The other space official, Konstantin Feoktistov, is a former Soviet cosmonaut. The spacecraft engineer flew onboard the three-seater Voskhod 1 in 1964. Feoktistov was a key figure in the design and construction of Salyut and Mir space stations, later to serve as a high-ranking official in mission control center at the Baikonur spaceport. The Feoktistov diaries equal several hundred pages.

The contractor selected by NASA will be responsible for selecting and translating the most important portions of the diaries, adding editorial context for the diarists' often-cryptic references, and preparing the material for publication. Key historical time periods are to be culled from the writings.

The goal of the effort is to provide new insights regarding the Soviet space program.

-- Leonard David

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