Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Human Spaceflight News

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: April 22, 2013 6:22:09 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - April 22, 2013 and JSC Today

Monday, April 22, 2013

JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            Happy Earth Day! Take Your Instruments Outside for 'Music in the Mall'
2.            A Not-So-Secret Garden With a Purpose
3.            Today is Earth Day -- NASA 'Leading the Greening' Shirts at Starport
4.            Get to Know About 'Engineering and Beyond' at the JSC NMA Chapter Luncheon
5.            Book Fair at Starport -- Tomorrow and Wednesday
6.            Starport's Summer League Sports -- Registration Closing Soon
7.            Parent's Night Out at Starport This Friday
8.            Sodexo Satisfaction Survey
9.            James Avery Astronaut is Back Just in Time for Mother's Day
10.          All About E-books at the JSC Library
11.          Escape Your Silo to the Systems Engineering Simulator
12.          Check Out Space Radiation Operations and Research
13.          Project Management Forum
14.          JSC Toastmasters Club Meets Wednesday Nights
15.          TTI DMI Available Only on the RLLS Portal After April 22
16.          Fire Protection and Prevention in Construction ViTS: May 10 - Building 17, Room 2026
17.          Scaffold Users Seminar ViTS: May 24 - Building 17, Room 2026
________________________________________     NASA FACT
" Hubble has been producing ground-breaking science for two decades. During that time, it has benefited from a slew of upgrades from shuttle missions, including the 2009 addition of a new imaging workhorse, the high-resolution Wide Field Camera 3 that recently took a new portrait of the Horsehead Nebula."
________________________________________
1.            Happy Earth Day! Take Your Instruments Outside for 'Music in the Mall'
Today is Earth Day! For our musically inclined JSC employees, please take your normal break at lunch (anywhere between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.) and create music for our ears. In honor of our precious planet, play your instruments outside (weather permitting). Play a tribute to compliment the natural beauty our Earth provides. Find a nice spot near one of the three ponds in the JSC mall area. Join a group already playing their chords. Bring a blanket or lawn chair to sit on and enjoy your break. For music listeners, take your normal lunch break outside and enjoy the tunes!
Event Date: Monday, April 22, 2013   Event Start Time:11:00 AM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Mall area

Add to Calendar

Laurie Peterson x39845 http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/ja/ja13/index.cfm

[top]
2.            A Not-So-Secret Garden With a Purpose
The vegetative roof of Building 12 is not all looks and no substance. In fact, the roof is just one of the many green features that gave the building its gold Leadership in Energy and Environment Design certification. Read on and see the roof in full springtime bloom.
Happy Earth Day!
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x33317

[top]
3.            Today is Earth Day -- NASA 'Leading the Greening' Shirts at Starport
NASA is "Leading The Greening." Show your support with these attractive green-on-black Earth Day shirts -- just $16.50. They are available in the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Gift Shops, or order online.
ShopNASA x35352 http://shopnasa.com/store/product/1274/Earth-Day-Shirt-S/

[top]
4.            Get to Know About 'Engineering and Beyond' at the JSC NMA Chapter Luncheon
Please join us for an exciting April JSC National Management Association (NMA) chapter luncheon presentation next week with JSC Associate Director of Engineering Michael Hess as he speaks about "Engineering and Beyond."
When: Tuesday, April 30
Time: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Location: Gilruth Alamo Ballroom
o             Cost for members: $0
o             Cost for non-members: $20
There are three great menu options to choose from:
o             Pastrami-style Salmon
o             Tortellini and Roasted Portobello in a Blush Sauce
o             Herb-seared Chicken Breast with Tomato Chive Sauce
Desserts: Double Chocolate Mousse Cake and Italian Cream Cake
Please RSVP here by close of business tomorrow, April 23, with your menu selection. For RSVP technical assistance, please contact Amy Kitchen via email or at x35569.
Catherine Williams x33317 http://www.jscnma.com/Events/

[top]
5.            Book Fair at Starport -- Tomorrow and Wednesday
Come and enjoy the Books Are Fun book fair held in the Building 3 café on Tuesday and Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Search through more than 250 great titles in children's books, cookbooks, general-interest books, New York Times bestsellers, stationary and scrapbooking, music collections and more, all at unbelievable prices. Click here for more information.
Event Date: Tuesday, April 23, 2013   Event Start Time:9:00 AM   Event End Time:2:00 PM
Event Location: B3 Cafe

Add to Calendar

Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

[top]
6.            Starport's Summer League Sports -- Registration Closing Soon
Registration is open for most of Starport's popular league sports!
League registration closing soon:
- Volleyball (Rev 4s) | Monday evenings | Registration ends April 24
- Volleyball (coed) | Tuesday evenings | Registration ends April 24
League registration now open:
- Dodgeball (coed) | Thursday evenings | Registration ends May 6
- Kickabll (coed) | Monday evenings | Registration ends May 8
- Softball (men's) | Tuesdays and Wednesdays | Registration ends May 9
- Softball (coed) | Wednesdays and Thursdays | Registration ends May 16
- Ultimate Frisbee (coed) | Monday evenings | Registration ends May 1
Registration opening soon:
- Soccer (coed) | Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Saturdays | Registration May 1 to 23
Free-agent registration now open.
All participants must register here.
For more information, please contact the Gilruth information desk at 281-483-0304.
Steve Schade x30304 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/Sports/index.cfm#SUMMER

[top]
7.            Parent's Night Out at Starport This Friday
Enjoy a night out on the town while your kids enjoy a night with Starport. We will entertain your children with a night of games, crafts, a bounce house, pizza, a movie, dessert and loads of fun!
When: Friday, April 26, from 6 to 10 p.m.
Where: Gilruth Center
Ages: 5 to 12
Cost: $20/first child and $10/each additional sibling if registered by Wednesday. If registered after Wednesday, the fee is $25/first child and $15/additional sibling.
Register at the Gilruth Center front desk.
Event Date: Friday, April 26, 2013   Event Start Time:6:00 PM   Event End Time:10:00 PM
Event Location: Gilruth Center

Add to Calendar

Shericka Phillips x35563 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

[top]
8.            Sodexo Satisfaction Survey
Sodexo Federal Services is committed to exceeding your expectations while working to continually improve your experience.
Our annual survey helps us understand how we are performing. We value this input and use this feedback to ensure we are bringing the highest level of service to you.
This survey should take no more than seven to 10 minutes to complete. Please complete the questionnaire online by clicking this link: Sodexo Customer Satisfaction Survey
The survey will be available now through May 8. You will receive a confirmation upon completion.
Your feedback is extremely important to us. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts.
Danial Hornbuckle x30240 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

[top]
9.            James Avery Astronaut is Back Just in Time for Mother's Day
The James Avery Astronaut charm is now available in the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Gift Shops - just in time for Mother's Day! What a wonderful way to commemorate the women working in the space industry, honor the men they care for who played a part in American history and those who dream of the chance to experience the wonders of space for themselves. Supplies are limited. Order online.
ShopNASA x35352 http://shopnasa.com/store/product/7782/J-Avery-Astronaut-Charm/

[top]
10.          All About E-books at the JSC Library
The JSC Library will have an e-books training webinar on Wednesday, April 24, from 10 to 11 a.m. CDT. Christa George, Scientific and Technical Information Center supervisor, will show users how to search e-book collections such as Knovel, ASM Handbooks Online and the Wiley Online Library.
To register for the WebEx, go to this link and click on "Schedule for Classroom/WebEx Training." Select the appropriate class from the drop-down menu on the registration page.
Provided by the Information Resources Directorate.
Event Date: Wednesday, April 24, 2013   Event Start Time:10:00 AM   Event End Time:11:00 AM
Event Location: WebEx

Add to Calendar

Ebony Fondren x32490 http://library.jsc.nasa.gov

[top]
11.          Escape Your Silo to the Systems Engineering Simulator
The Systems Engineering Simulator (SES) is a real-time, crew-in-the-loop engineering simulator for the International Space Station (ISS), Orion/Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and advanced concepts. It provides the ability to test changes to existing space vehicles and flight software, test the interaction of a new vehicle system with existing systems, develop models of new vehicles (that may or may not yet exist) for engineering analysis and evaluate displays and controls concepts and modifications. In addition to engineering analysis work, the SES supports crew training for ISS robotic operations, including the tracking, capture and berthing of visiting resupply vehicles (HTV, Dragon, Cygnus, etc.). Space is limited, so register today!
Two tours will take place on April 24 at 10 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. Please see our website for details and registration.
Cynthia Rando 281-461-2620 http://sa.jsc.nasa.gov/

[top]
12.          Check Out Space Radiation Operations and Research
This course is designed to provide an overview of the sources of space radiation exposure, differences in low-Earth orbit (LEO) versus exo-LEO environments, dynamics of space weather and JSC radiation operations.
The JSC Space Radiation Analysis Group (SRAG) is actively engaged in operational activities in support of the International Space Station (ISS), future spacecraft and habitats for radiation protection for the crew. SRAG makes measurements on ISS, analyzes space weather data and is continuously involved in creating better tools and models for space weather forecasting and radiation exposure predictions to improve operational decision- making capabilities.
For registration, please go to: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Event Date: Friday, April 26, 2013   Event Start Time:2:00 PM   Event End Time:3:00 PM
Event Location: B15/267

Add to Calendar

Cynthia Rando 281-461-2620 http://sa.jsc.nasa.gov/

[top]
13.          Project Management Forum
The Project Management Forum will be held on Wednesday, May 1, in Building 32, Room 142 and 146, from noon to 1 p.m. At this forum, Gail Chapline will give a brief on the results from the failure investigation on the mishap concerning the Active Response Gravity Offload System. In addition to this, come meet the new Director of Engineering, Lauri Hansen, as she introduces herself and tells you about where the Engineering Directorate is going. All civil servant and contractor project managers are invited to attend. Please feel free to bring your lunch; dessert will be provided.
The purpose of the Project Management Forum is to provide an opportunity for our project managers to freely discuss issues, best practices, lessons learned, tools and opportunities, as well as to collaborate with other project managers.
Event Date: Wednesday, May 1, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Building 32, Room 142 and 146

Add to Calendar

Danielle Bessard x37238 https://oasis.jsc.nasa.gov/sysapp/athena/Athena%20Team/SitePages/Home.aspx

[top]
14.          JSC Toastmasters Club Meets Wednesday Nights
Looking to develop speaking and leadership skills? Ignite your career? Want to increase your self-confidence, become a better speaker or leader and communicate more effectively? Then JSC Toastmasters is for you! Members attend meetings each Wednesday from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the Gilruth Center Rio Grande Room. JSC Toastmasters weekly meetings are learn-by-doing workshops where participants hone their speaking and leadership skills in a pressure-free atmosphere. Membership is open to anyone.
Thomas Bryan x31721 http://3116.toastmastersclubs.org/

[top]
15.          TTI DMI Available Only on the RLLS Portal After April 22
TTI Document Management Interface (DMI) is migrating to the RLLS Portal.
As of April 22, the TTI DMI application that is a storage library for translated documents under the MIC contract will be available from the Translation Module on the RLLS Portal. The previous security measures with limited user access and standalone password will remain in place. If you have any questions, please contact the RLLS Support Center during the normal business hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 281-333-7918. The emergency RLLS on-call support phone after hours is 281-333-7919.
James Welty 281-335-8565 https://www.tti-portal.com

[top]
16.          Fire Protection and Prevention in Construction ViTS: May 10 - Building 17, Room 2026
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0070: This basic course introduces the student to the recognition of potential fire hazards and procedures required to meet the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) 1926.150 - Fire Protection; 1926.151 - Fire Prevention; 1926.152 - Flammable and Combustible Liquids; 1926.153 - Liquefied Petroleum Gas; 1926.154 - Temporary Heating Devices; and 1926.155 - Definitions to this Subpart F to Minimize Losses Due to Fires. There will be a final exam associated with this course, which must be passed with a 70 percent minimum score to receive course credit. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Shirley Robinson x41284

[top]
17.          Scaffold Users Seminar ViTS: May 24 - Building 17, Room 2026
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0316: This four-hour course is based on Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) CFR 1910.28 and 1926.451, requirements for scaffolding safety in the general and construction industries. During the course, the student will receive an overview of those topics needed to work safely on scaffolds, including standards, terminology and inspection of scaffold components; uses of scaffolds; fall-protection requirements; signs and barricades; and more. Those individuals desiring to become "competent persons" for scaffolds should take the three-day Scaffold Safety Course, SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0312. This course will be primarily presented via the NASA target audience: Safety, Reliability, Quality and Maintainability Professionals; and anyone working on operations requiring the use of scaffolds. There will be a final exam associated with this course, which must be passed with a 70 percent minimum score to receive course credit. Use this direct link for registration: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Shirley Robinson x41284

[top]

________________________________________
JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.

NASA TV:
·      10:05 am Central (11:05 EDT) – E35's C. Hadfield w/Canadian Natl Film Board Space School

Human Spaceflight News
Monday, April 22, 2013

A-ONE was A-OKAY: Orbital's Sunday debut liftoff of its Antares rocket captured by NASA's Bill Ingalls

HEADLINES AND LEADS

Antares rocket climbs into space on maiden flight

William Harwood - CBS News

A new rocket built as a commercial venture by Orbital Sciences Corp. blasted off from the Virginia coast and streaked into space Sunday, chalking up a picture-perfect maiden flight that sets the stage for space station cargo delivery missions starting later this year. "It's certainly was an amazing achievement for Orbital today, a great day for NASA, and another historic day for commercial spaceflight in America," said Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of the space agency's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program. "The flight today was just beautiful, and it looks like all the objectives that we established for the flight today were 100 percent met."

Rocket that will carry cargo ship test launched

Brock Vergakis - Associated Press

company contracted by NASA to deliver supplies to the International Space Station successfully launched a rocket on Sunday in a test of its ability to send a cargo ship aloft. About 10 minutes after the launch from Wallops Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore, Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles declared the test a success after observing a practice payload reach orbit and safely separate from the rocket. The Sunday launch comes after two previous attempts were scrubbed. A data cord that was connected to the rocket's second stage came loose just minutes before the rocket was set to lift off Wednesday, and company officials said they were easily able to fix the problem. A second attempt Saturday was scrubbed because of wind.

New U.S. rocket blasts off from Virginia launch pad

Irene Klotz - Reuters

A privately owned rocket built in partnership with NASA to haul cargo to the International Space Station blasted off on Sunday for a debut test flight from a new commercial spaceport in Virginia. The 13-story Antares rocket, developed and flown by Orbital Sciences Corp, lifted off at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) from a Virginia-owned and operated launch pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.

Another Route To Space

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

Launch of the Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares liquid-fueled rocket Sunday gives NASA a second U.S.-owned vehicle to use in resupplying the International Space Station, vindicating a commercial approach that has been in play through two presidential administrations. Although President Barack Obama terminated the Constellation program of human exploration vehicles that NASA started developing under his predecessor, he retained the $500 million Commercial Orbital Resupply Services (COTS) effort launched under President George W. Bush.

Successful launch for rocket Antares at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
Third time's a charm after two previous attempts scrubbed

Tamara Dietrich - The Daily Press (Hampton Roads, VA)

With a gut-rumbling growl, the Antares rocket vaulted from the launch pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Sunday afternoon, finally completing the test flight of a prototype booster designed to ship cargo to the International Space Station. Two previous launch attempts in the last five days had been scrubbed, with Dulles-based rocket-maker Orbital Sciences Corp. citing a technical glitch and risky upper-level winds. But the third time proved the charm. At 5 p.m., the most powerful rocket ever launched from Wallops roared skyward, trailing a jet of bright, liquid-fueled flame and white smoke.

WALLOPS: For rocket, 4th time's a charm

Ted Shockley - Salisbury Daily Times (Maryland)

Mary Ann Bray drove from her Princess Anne home to the NASA Wallops Visitor center on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday to see the launch of the biggest rocket the facility has lofted since it opened in 1945. Each had been canceled. But when she came back on Sunday, on a sunny, chilly afternoon, she saw first-hand the test launch of the 130-foot Antares rocket, part of a program to resupply the International Space Station. Orbital Sciences Corp., which owns the rocket, estimates the Antares program could produce billions in economic activity, and add 1,300 jobs and $64 million in tax revenue to Virginia.

Orbital Sciences launches Antares in key test

Marjorie Censer - Washington Post

Orbital Sciences successfully launched its Antares rocket Sunday in a test that advances its effort to undertake resupply missions to the International Space Station. The launch was an equally important step for the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport facility on Wallops Island, which state officials hope will position Virginia as a commercial space flight hub. The success of the launch and the facility would "put Virginia on the map when it comes to space," said Sean T. Connaughton, Virginia's transportation secretary, in an interview earlier in the week. "We've invested money in this because we believe ... it will keep high-tech jobs in Virginia and grow that base."

NASA Partner Orbital Sciences Tests Rocket

Andy Pasztor - Wall Street Journal

Orbital Sciences Corp. on Sunday blasted a new rocket into space, in a successful test flight aimed at putting the company on a trajectory to become the second commercial entity to transport cargo to the international space station. The 131-foot Antares rocket, making its maiden flight from a recently completed launch complex on Wallops Island off the Virginia coast, lifted off in good weather and 10 minutes later put a dummy payload into orbit. The launch came after a four-day delay prompted by a technical glitch, followed by bad weather.

Antares blasts off on third try
Commercial rocket a test run for shuttling cargo to ISS

James Dean - Florida Today

A new commercial rocket proved it is ready to start boosting cargo to the International Space Station with a historic test flight Sunday from Virginia's Eastern Shore. Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Antares rocket blasted off at 5 p.m. from Wallops Island — becoming the largest rocket to do so — and dropped a simulated spacecraft in orbit 10 minutes later. The milestone set the stage for the Antares to launch a real cargo spacecraft, called Cygnus, on a demonstration mission to the station. That flight is tentatively planned in late June or early July. "That's great news," ISS commander Chris Hadfield radioed after being told of the successful launch. "Congratulations to all concerned, and that bodes well for all of our futures. Super."

Antares rocket blasts into orbit for first time in test for NASA

W.J. Hennigan - Los Angeles Times

In its maiden flight to space, a commercially built 13-story rocket blasted off from a launch pad off the coast of Virginia in a test mission for NASA. The Antares rocket, developed by Orbital Sciences Corp., roared into orbit after launching Sunday at 2 p.m. Pacific time from the newly built Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility. Although it was simply a test flight to reach orbit, the successful launch was another crucial step in NASA's plan to hand off space missions -- carrying cargo and crews -- to private industry now that the space shuttle fleet has been retired.

Orbital's Antares Rocket Successful in Debut Flight

Dan Leone - Space News

Orbital Sciences Corp. successfully launched its Antares cargo rocket to space for the first time April 21, bringing the Dulles, Va., company a big step closer to making routine cargo deliveries to the international space station for NASA. Antares heaved itself slowly off Pad 0-A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Va., at 5 p.m. EDT. About 10 minutes later, the vehicle dropped off its main payload — a sensor-equipped, dummy satellite with roughly the same mass as the Cygnus space tug Orbital will use for cargo deliveries — in a 51.64-degree inclined orbit about 250 kilometers above Earth's surface. This is the same orbit where the real Cygnus would be dropped off at the start of a cargo run.

Antares test launch paves new highway to space station

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

Soaring into a brilliant blue sky from a new launch pad on the Virginia coastline, an Antares rocket owned by Orbital Sciences Corp. blasted off on a successful test flight Sunday, inaugurating a new launch system to resupply the International Space Station. The first launch of the Antares rocket is a major step in a joint venture between Orbital Sciences and NASA to develop two commercial space transportation systems to resupply the space station, replacing much of the cargo-carrying capacity lost when the space shuttle retired in 2011. "Today's successful test marks another significant milestone in NASA's plan to rely on American companies to launch supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station, bringing this important work back to the United States where it belongs," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement.

New Private Rocket Launches Into Orbit On Maiden Voyage

Tariq Malik - Space.com

A new commercial U.S. rocket soared into the Virginia sky Sunday (April 21) on a debut flight that paves the way for eventual cargo flights to the International Space Station for NASA. The third try was the charm for the private Antares rocket, which launched into space from a new pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, its twin engines roaring to life at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) to carry a mock cargo ship out over the Atlantic Ocean and into orbit. The successful liftoff came after two delays caused by a minor mechanical glitch and bad weather.

Orbital Sciences Rocket Lifts Off in Key Test Before Cargo Runs

Nick Taborek - Bloomberg News

Orbital Sciences Corp. (ORB) yesterday launched its 130-foot Antares rocket for the first time, a key milestone in the company's plans to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. The unmanned rocket lifted off at 5 p.m. Washington time from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore. Orbital is seeking to follow Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, which last May became the first company to dock a commercial craft at the station. Yesterday's test launch delivered a mock cargo ship into orbit that separated from the rocket after about 10 minutes, destined to burn up in Earth's atmosphere in a couple of weeks. No contact will be made with the space station on this mission.

SpaceX competitor sends new rocket into orbit

Joseph Abbott - Waco Tribune

SpaceX is finally starting to get some competition. After days of delays both weather and equipment related, Orbital Sciences launched its Antares rocket for the first time from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Antares, a rival to SpaceX's McGregor-tested Falcon 9 rocket, lifted off the Wallops Island pad at 4 p.m. CDT and carried into orbit a dummy version of the Cygnus cargo capsule that Orbital Sciences hopes will compete with SpaceX's Dragon. It also carried experimental small-scale satellites built on the cheap from smartphone parts.

Third Time's the Charm for Orbital's Antares

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.com

Orbital Sciences Corp. has successfully launched its Antares rocket on the long-delayed "A-ONE" test flight from Pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island, Va. Liftoff of the 133-foot-tall vehicle—the first cryogenically-propelled rocket ever built and flown by Orbital—occurred on time at 5:00:02 p.m. EDT, right at the start of the launch window. Antares' beautiful ascent into the early evening sky has surely raised an unbearable weight from the shoulders of Orbital, whose next focus after this mission is to conduct a full-up demo of its Cygnus cargo ship to the International Space Station, possibly as soon as June.

Spacewalk ends; lost experiment no threat to station

William Harwood - CBS News

Veteran cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Roman Romanenko ventured outside the Russian segment of the International Space Station Friday, installing a space weather monitor and replacing a navigation aid before wrapping up a six-hour 38-minute spacewalk. During a final task, Vinogradov, one of the most experienced cosmonauts in the Russian space program and at 59 the oldest man to walk in space, lost control of a materials science space exposure experiment panel after retrieving it from the hull of the station. The panel floated away behind the lab complex and was quickly lost in space.

Russian becomes world's oldest spacewalker at 59

Marcia Dunn - Associated Press

A 59-year-old Russian cosmonaut became the world's oldest spacewalker Friday, joining a much younger cosmonaut's son for maintenance work outside the International Space Station. Pavel Vinogradov, a cosmonaut for two decades, claimed the honor as he emerged from the hatch with Roman Romanenko. But he inadvertently added to the booming population of space junk when he lost his grip on an experiment tray that he was retrieving toward the end of the 6 1/2-hour spacewalk. The lost aluminum panel - 18 inches by 12 inches and about 6 1/2 pounds - contained metal samples. Scientists wanted to see how the samples had fared after a year out in the vacuum of space.

Cosmonauts tackle equipment installation outside space station

Irene Klotz - Reuters

A pair of Russian cosmonauts wrapped up a 6-1/2 hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Friday, the first of up to eight outings this year to install experiments and prepare the orbital outpost for a new module, officials said. Flight engineers Pavel Vinogradov, 59, a veteran of seven spacewalks and Roman Romanenko, 41, a second-generation cosmonaut on his debut spacewalk, floated outside the station's airlock at 10:03 a.m. EDT/1403 GMT as the station soared 262 miles over the southern Pacific Ocean. The primary purpose of the 6-1/2 hour excursion was to set up an experiment that monitors plasma waves in Earth's ionosphere, the outer layer of the planet's atmosphere that extends to about 370 miles into space.

Russian Cosmonauts Complete Spacewalk

RIA Novosti

Two Russian cosmonauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) have completed a spacewalk, Russia's Mission Control Center reported on Saturday. During their more than six-and-a-half-hour extra-vehicular activity, flight engineers Pavel Vinogradov and Roman Romanenko carried out a number of maintenance tasks and returned to the space station.

Russia to deorbit space station's Pirs module in 2013

RIA Novosti

Russia plans to deorbit and sink its Pirs docking module of the International Space Station later this year, a high-ranking official with the Russian space corporation RKK Energia said on Friday. Alexander Kaleri, the head of the company's scientific technical center, said undocking and deorbiting Pirs will take place before a new Russian module docks with the station. Alexander Derechin, RKK Energia deputy chief designer said in late March the launch of the multirole laboratory module (MLM) is tentatively scheduled for the end of 2013.

Russia's Progress Cargo Spacecraft 'Buried' in Pacific

RIA Novosti

The Progress M-17M cargo spacecraft, which undocked from the International Space Station on April 15, was "buried" in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, Russia's Mission Control said. "The cargo spacecraft's fragments fell into the Pacific Ocean at 19.02 Moscow time [15.02 GMT]," Mission Control said.

Sarah Brightman prepares to travel to International Space Station
Before that, singer and former star of Cats will tour here on Earth in support of new album Dreamchaser

Trish Crawford - Toronto Star

A career that began on the stage of London's West End in a production of Cats is headed for the stratosphere — really. Sarah Brightman, whose fabled voice covers three octaves, is scheduled for space flight in 2015. She is to be part of a three-person team travelling to the International Space Station on board a Soyuz rocket for an eight-day stint. Her love of space travel was stoked in 1969 when she watched Neil Armstrong bounce along the moon's surface, released from Apollo 11. What the little girl in Hertfordshire, England, felt was a great sense of possibilities.

Astronaut Hadfield's wife calls space station trip 'safest thing he's ever done'

Peter Rakobowchuk - Canadian Press

As Chris Hadfield orbits the planet once every 92 minutes aboard the International Space Station, his wife Helene doesn't spend her time worrying about her astronaut husband. The Canadian space veteran, who is on a five-month visit to the giant laboratory, is due to return to Earth in mid-May. Since Hadfield and two other astronauts blasted off inside a Russian Soyuz capsule last Dec. 19, his wife, a mother of three adult children, has kept herself busy.

3 inducted into Astronaut Hall of Fame

Britt Kennerly - Florida Today

When Eileen Collins went on a very important job interview in 1990, she wore a suit in a shade she calls "as close to NASA blue as I could find." The retired astronaut (yes, she got the job) went with that same color – actually, the same suit – Saturday for her induction into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. Along with shuttle veterans Curt Brown and Bonnie Dunbar, Collins joined the elite ranks of space exploration heroes, including Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Jim Lovell, Sally Ride and Scott Carpenter. The 2013 class is the first to include two women.

Astronaut Hall of Fame adds space shuttle vets Brown, Collins and Dunbar

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command the space shuttle, entered the ranks of the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame wearing the same two-piece blue suit that she wore to her astronaut selection interview nearly 25 years ago. "It is really old and it is little bit tighter on me, but it is the same suit I wore for the interview and I saved it," Collins told reporters on Saturday, just before attending the ceremony that saw her and her fellow astronauts Curt Brown and Bonnie Dunbar enshrined into the Hall of Fame at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. "It is as close to 'NASA blue' as I could find at the time."

Manned Mars Mission May Use Night Vision Gear in 2018

Mike Wall - Space.com

The Red Planet may have a distinct greenish tinge when the first people to see it up close arrive there five years from now. The nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation aims to launch two astronauts on a historic flyby mission around the Red Planet in January 2018. The explorers will be on Mars' night side when they make their closest approach in August of that year, so the mission team is considering outfitting them with some high-tech night vision gear — which would likely cast the Red Planet in a rather green light.

Orbital in orbit

Charles Babbage - The Economist (Opinion)

On May 25th 2012, a California firm called SpaceX made history by carrying out the first privately run space mission to the International Space Station (ISS). It was a vindication for NASA's decision to outsource its ISS missions to the private sector. Still, purists could argue that something was missing: a proper market has competition, but SpaceX was the only firm capable of flying such a mission. That may be about to change. On April 21st, at NASA's Wallops flight centre in Virginia, another rocket built by another firm—Virginia-based Orbital Sciences—lifted off from the pad, after several delays.

Google Logo Celebrates Earth Day…
__________

COMPLETE STORIES

Antares rocket climbs into space on maiden flight

William Harwood - CBS News

A new rocket built as a commercial venture by Orbital Sciences Corp. blasted off from the Virginia coast and streaked into space Sunday, chalking up a picture-perfect maiden flight that sets the stage for space station cargo delivery missions starting later this year.

"It's certainly was an amazing achievement for Orbital today, a great day for NASA, and another historic day for commercial spaceflight in America," said Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of the space agency's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program.

"The flight today was just beautiful, and it looks like all the objectives that we established for the flight today were 100 percent met."

After a smooth countdown, the 133-foot-tall Antares rocket roared to life with a rush of flaming exhaust at 5 p.m. EDT (GMT-4). Two seconds later, after final engine health checks, the booster climbed away from launch pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport adjacent to NASA's Wallops Island Flight Center.

Running four days late because of a technical glitch last Wednesday and bad weather Friday and Saturday, the Antares booster put on a dramatic afternoon show as its two main engines, gulping a ton of liquid oxygen and kerosene fuel per second, pushed the 600,000-pound rocket skyward with 750,000 pounds of fiery thrust.

Carrying an 8,300-pound instrumented mockup of the Cygnus cargo carrier Orbital plans to use for space station resupply missions, the Antares climbed straight up from its seaside launch pad and then arced away to the southeast, visible from eastern North Carolina, Virginia, Washington DC, Maryland, Delaware, New York and beyond, clouds permitting.

With its first-stage thrust barely exceeding the weight of the rocket, space enthusiasts had more time than usual to enjoy the view.

The Antares climb-out appeared glacial compared to boosters equipped with solid-fuel boosters, with the vehicle taking eight seconds to reach a velocity of 40 mph and 20 seconds to reach 100 mph. The space shuttle, in contrast, weighed 4.5 million pounds at launch but reached 100 mph in less than 10 seconds.

But as the Antares consumed its load of first-stage propellant it steadily accelerated, passing through the speed of sound at an altitude of about 30,000 feet in about 75 seconds.

Three minutes and 50 seconds after liftoff, the two first-stage engines shut down as planned at a predicted altitude of about 70 miles and a velocity of around 9,850 mph. The first stage then fell away and a solid-fuel second stage motor, built by Alliant Techsystems, ignited to continue the push to space, burning for another two minutes and 35 seconds.

Spectacular views from an on-board "rocketcam" showed the motor's fiery exhaust against the deep black of space with the limb of the Earth below.

The ATK Castor-30B motor burned out at an altitude of about 160 miles after boosting the second stage to a velocity of nearly 17,000 mph.

"Antares performance is nominal," said an Orbital Sciences engineer monitoring telemetry from the rocket. "Antares is in orbit."

Two minutes later, the dummy payload was released from the Antares second stage to complete the test flight's primary objective. The Cygnus mockup is expected to re-enter the atmosphere and burn up in about two weeks.

"All the events occurred within a second or so of when we expected them," said Frank Culbertson, a former shuttle commander who is now an Orbital vice president. "We didn't really see any major anomalies at all, so we're very happy with the sequence of events.

"We will obviously go in and analyze it much more carefully in the coming days and replay everything to make sure we get maximum information from the data," he added. "But at first glance, it all looks really good."

Space station commander Chris Hadfield congratulated the launch team, telling flight controllers in Houston "that's super, that's great news, good for them. Congratulations to all concerned. That bodes well for all of our futures. Super!"

Assuming analysis of telemetry from the rocket confirms good performance, Orbital should be clear to proceed with a so-called "demonstration" flight in June or July, this one using a Cygnus cargo capsule that will carry about a ton of equipment and supplies to the space station.

The first operational station resupply mission is targeted for mid September.

Addressing the Orbital Sciences launch team in the control room shortly after the mission ended, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said the flight was "absolutely incredible."

"I cannot say enough about the Orbital team, this was your mission," he said. "And you all demonstrated you could do it. ... Today is an incredibly historic day."

John Holdren, White House science advisor, said in a statement the successful test flight "demonstrates an additional private space-launch capability for the United States and lays the groundwork for the first Antares cargo mission to the International Space Station later this year."

"I congratulate Orbital Sciences and the NASA teams at Wallops, and look forward to more groundbreaking missions in the months and years ahead," he added.

The Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo carrier represent a critical link in NASA's long-range plan to ensure a steady flow of supplies and equipment to the space station in the wake of the space shuttle's retirement.

With the space shuttle's retirement looming, NASA set up the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, or COTS, program in 2006 to encourage, by partially funding, development of unmanned cargo craft that would be procured by the government on a commercial basis.

The space agency ultimately awarded two major contracts.

Orbital Sciences won a contract valued at $1.9 billion for eight resupply flights to the station to deliver 20 tons of cargo. Another $288 million ultimately was budgeted for development, the Antares test flight and the demonstration mission planned for this summer.

Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, holds a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to provide 12 cargo flights to the station for delivery of more than 44,000 pounds of equipment and supplies. A separate $396 million contract covered initial test flights.

SpaceX was first off the pad, successfully launching its Falcon 9 rocket with a dummy payload in 2010. SpaceX then launched two test flights, sending company-built Dragon cargo ships to the station, and two operational resupply missions, the most recent flight in March.

SpaceX builds the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo craft in house with company-designed engines, tanks and other hardware. Orbital Sciences took a more traditional approach, using components supplied by a variety of U.S. and international vendors to assemble the Antares and Cygnus cargo capsule.

The first-stage engines originally were developed for the Soviet Union's mammoth but ill-fated N-1 moon rocket and were stockpiled after the Russian moon program was terminated. Aerojet Corp. bought about 40 of the powerplants in the 1990s and modified them for use aboard U.S. rockets.

The Antares test flight marked the first time the modified Russian powerplants were used to help boost a payload to orbit.

"The two AJ26 engines that launched today's flight were originally slated to power the N-1 rocket on a lunar mission in the early 1970s," Pete Cova, Aerojet executive director, said in a statement. "Today's mission marks the first time these engines are reaching space, which is a significant milestone for both the U.S. and Russian companies involved."

Rocket that will carry cargo ship test launched

Brock Vergakis - Associated Press

company contracted by NASA to deliver supplies to the International Space Station successfully launched a rocket on Sunday in a test of its ability to send a cargo ship aloft.

About 10 minutes after the launch from Wallops Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore, Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles declared the test a success after observing a practice payload reach orbit and safely separate from the rocket.

The Sunday launch comes after two previous attempts were scrubbed. A data cord that was connected to the rocket's second stage came loose just minutes before the rocket was set to lift off Wednesday, and company officials said they were easily able to fix the problem. A second attempt Saturday was scrubbed because of wind.

"It certainly was an amazing achievement for Orbital today, a great day for NASA and another historical day for commercial spaceflight in America. The flight today was just beautiful and it looks like the preliminary data says that all the objectives we established for the flight today were 100 percent met," said Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of NASA's commercial crew and cargo program.

The company from the Washington suburb of Dulles was one of two, along with California-based competitor SpaceX, chosen to supply the space station after NASA ended its three-decade-old shuttle program in 2011. The space agency turned to private companies for the job, saying it would focus on getting manned flights to asteroids and to Mars.

SpaceX was awarded a $1.6 billion contract by NASA in 2006 to make a dozen missions to restock the space station. Orbital got into the mix in 2008 when it was awarded a $1.9 billion contract for eight deliveries.

"We've been playing catch up, but we're about caught up," Frank Culbertson, executive vice president and general manager of Orbital's Advanced Programs Group, said Tuesday. "By the end of next year we should have an additional four or five cargo missions under our belt, so we're going to be moving fast."

SpaceX has connected with the space station three times.

This summer, Orbital plans to launch a rocket carrying its Cygnus cargo ship to see whether it can safely dock with the space station. During the scheduled demonstration flight, the cargo ship would carry about 1,600 pounds of supplies that include food, clothing and spare parts.

Those supplies aren't part of the company's contract. But the company agreed to ferry supplies since it was already going there much like SpaceX did on its first demonstration flight in May 2012, when it dropped off 1,000 pounds of food, clothes, batteries and other provisions.

Orbital is under contract to deliver about 44,000 pounds of supplies to the space station and plans to make about two deliveries per year. Its cargo ship will carry about 4,400 pounds worth of supplies on each of its first three missions and 5,600 pounds on its last five.

Unlike the SpaceX's Dragon capsule, the Orbital cargo ship is not designed to return with experiments or other items from the space station. Instead, plans call for filling the Cygnus ship with garbage that would be incinerated with the vessel upon reentry into Earth's atmosphere. That's also what Russian, European and Japanese cargo ships do.

Orbital had hoped to begin its rocket launches under the commercial resupply program in 2011, but faced a series of delays. That included a delay in the completion of its launch pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia coast. That pad was built specifically for Orbital and is owned by the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority. The pad wasn't delivered to the company until October.

Following Sunday's launch, Culbertson declined to get into specifics about what caused all the delays over the past two years.

"Rockets are hard. Space flight is difficult and getting off the ground is a real challenge for whatever team is trying to do it," he said. "The way I look it is we are on a new schedule now and we're on schedule."

NASA, meanwhile, is looking to private companies to start sending astronauts to the space station in coming years. Orbital is not in the running for that work though SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, Calif., is working to modify its Dragon capsules to transport astronauts. A handful of U.S. companies are competing for that assignment. Until then, U.S. astronauts are hitching rides to the International Space Station on Russian Soyuz rockets.

"With NASA focusing on the challenging and exciting task of sending humans deeper into space than ever before, private companies will be crucial in taking the baton for American cargo and crew launches into low-Earth orbit," John Holdren, assistant to the president for science and technology, said in a blog post on the White House's website congratulating Orbital.

Sunday's launch drew scores of onlookers to Wallops Island's visitor center on the mainland several miles away, where people set up blankets and camp chairs near marshland to view the launch. Road signs also directed rocket launch fans to nearby Assateague Island, where the rocket launch could be seen from the beach.

For Mike Horocofsky of Rock Hall, Md., it was his third time making the drive down to the Virginia facility in hopes of seeing Antares lift off.

"I'd rather be doing this than anything else. It's just something I've enjoyed since I was a boy," Horocofsky said several hours before the launch, while setting up chairs for himself and his wife.

New U.S. rocket blasts off from Virginia launch pad

Irene Klotz - Reuters

A privately owned rocket built in partnership with NASA to haul cargo to the International Space Station blasted off on Sunday for a debut test flight from a new commercial spaceport in Virginia.

The 13-story Antares rocket, developed and flown by Orbital Sciences Corp, lifted off at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) from a Virginia-owned and operated launch pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.

"Beautiful view," said NASA launch commentator Kyle Herring as live video from the rocket, broadcast on NASA TV, showed the booster riding atop a bright plume of fire above the Atlantic Ocean.

Ten minutes later, the rocket deposited its payload - a 8,380-pound (3,800-kg) dummy capsule - into an orbit 158 miles above the planet, fulfilling the primary goal of the test flight.

Orbital Sciences and privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, hold NASA contracts worth a combined $3.5 billion to fly cargo to the space station, a $100 billion research outpost that flies about 250 miles above Earth.

NASA turned to commercial suppliers after retiring the space shuttles in 2011.

Flight controllers radioed news of Antares' successful debut to the station crew shortly after launch.

"Wahoo, that's super," replied station commander Chris Hadfield, with the Canadian Space Agency.

"Congratulations to all concerned. That bodes well for all of our futures," Hadfield said.

On its next flight, scheduled for late June or early July, another Antares rocket will carry a Cygnus cargo ship on a demonstration mission to the station.

California-based SpaceX completed three test flights and last year began delivering cargo to the station under its $1.6 billion contract.

'A long slog'

The debut of Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket was delayed by the construction of its launch pad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, located on the southern end of NASA's Wallops Island facility. Two launch attempts last week were canceled due to a last-minute technical problem followed by bad weather at the launch site.

"It's been a long slog," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said after the launch. "It's absolutely incredible what this team has done."

NASA's share of developing the Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule will total about $288 million upon successful completion of the second and final planned test flight.

Combined, NASA and Orbital Sciences spent about $300 million to develop Cygnus and slightly more than that to develop the rocket, Orbital Sciences Executive Vice President Frank Culbertson told reporters after the launch.

"As a company it was a huge risk to invest in this," he said. "But I think it's going to demonstrate a commercial capability that will pay off in the long run."

"With the right people pulling together and with great teammates, we were able to achieve this. We're real happy," Culbertson said.

NASA's contribution to SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo capsule development was $396 million.

Standing 130 feet tall and packing 740,000 pounds of thrust at liftoff, Antares was the largest rocket to fly from Wallops Island, which has been operating for 68 years as a launch site for smaller suborbital rockets, high-altitude balloons and research aircraft.

In addition to station cargo runs, Orbital Sciences has a separate contract to launch a NASA moon probe aboard a Minotaur 5 rocket from Wallops in August.

Another Route To Space

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

Launch of the Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares liquid-fueled rocket Sunday gives NASA a second U.S.-owned vehicle to use in resupplying the International Space Station, vindicating a commercial approach that has been in play through two presidential administrations.

Although President Barack Obama terminated the Constellation program of human exploration vehicles that NASA started developing under his predecessor, he retained the $500 million Commercial Orbital Resupply Services (COTS) effort launched under President George W. Bush.

SpaceX already has completed its COTS development with the Falcon 9 and Dragon, and is delivering cargo to the station under its Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract. If Orbital Sciences can deliver a demonstration load with its Cygnus cargo vehicle later this year, it can draw its final COTS payment and begin resupplying the station under its own eight-flight, $1.9 billion CRS contract. Essentially, NASA will have spent $288 million on developing the Antares/Cygnus stack.

SpaceX designed its Dragon from the beginning to carry crew, and is making the necessary modifications to its cargo variant under a separate NASA commercial crew development program established along the same lines as COTS. Two other companies -- Boeing and Sierra Nevada -- are developing crew vehicles with NASA seed money, and another -- Blue Origin -- is paying its own way with NASA technical support. Meanwhile, Orbital Sciences decided to focus on cargo and not enter the crew-vehicle sweepstakes, marketing Antares to government and commercial customers as a replacement to the retiring Delta II.

And while Cygnus can't return into the Earth's atmosphere, Orbital already has a NASA contract to use a future Cygnus as a free-flying automatic laboratory for potentially dangerous combustion experiments after it delivers its load to the ISS, and hopes to sell other Cygnus vehicles for similar uses.

It is conventional wisdom in U.S. space-policy circles that the political and spacecraft development cycles are out of sync. Presidents come and go faster than it is possible to develop a major new spacecraft, which leads to wasteful start-and-stop funding as administrations change. Certainly a lot of money went down the drain when Obama killed the Constellation program. But in keeping COTS, a Republican initiative, this Democratic president has saved NASA and the nation some cash.

Successful launch for rocket Antares at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
Third time's a charm after two previous attempts scrubbed

Tamara Dietrich - The Daily Press (Hampton Roads, VA)

With a gut-rumbling growl, the Antares rocket vaulted from the launch pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Sunday afternoon, finally completing the test flight of a prototype booster designed to ship cargo to the International Space Station.

Two previous launch attempts in the last five days had been scrubbed, with Dulles-based rocket-maker Orbital Sciences Corp. citing a technical glitch and risky upper-level winds.

But the third time proved the charm. At 5 p.m., the most powerful rocket ever launched from Wallops roared skyward, trailing a jet of bright, liquid-fueled flame and white smoke.

"You'll be able to see it, hear it and feel it," Dan Thomson, incoming director of the NASA Visitor Center, had said earlier as the center's parking lot filled with visitors eager to witness the maiden voyage of a booster that state officials hope will catapult the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island into a world-class hub of commercial space activity.

Orbital has a $1.9 billion NASA contract to make eight resupply missions to the space station, all of them slated to launch from MARS.

As the 132-foot rocket rose, flight controllers monitored its progress in a live-stream NASA broadcast from ignition to phase 2 separation to achieving orbit to payload separation, accompanied by bursts of applause at each successful stage.

Finally the flight controller announced, "End of mission. … All stations, we have a successful orbit."

For this launch, Orbital was to prove its booster could do the job of lifting its Cygnus cargo ship into orbit so it can dock with the space station. The Cygnus wasn't aboard Sunday, but a simulated version for test purposes.

Afterward, Alan Lindenmoyer of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, met with reporters at the visitor center at Wallops to call it a "great day for Orbital, a great day for NASA and a great day for commercial space flight in America."

Frank Culbertson of Orbital praised the teamwork of all involved.

"When we do this again," he said, "we know how to make it happen."

In one unexpected development, the launch set off a brush fire next to the launch pad that had to be contained by firefighters. Culbertson said there didn't appear to be any damage to hardware or equipment.

Orbital plans a demonstration flight in early summer, when the Antares will boost a Cygnus into orbit so it can attempt to dock with the space station.

A similar demonstration mission by SpaceX last spring grabbed international headlines when it became the first privately held company to dock a commercial craft with the station.

Friday's test launch is the culmination of years of preparation and billions of dollars in combined federal, state and private funds in an effort to transform MARS into the No. 1 commercial spaceport in the country, and Virginia into another Space Coast.

Momentum has been building since the 1980s when the Reagan administration urged a shift to commercial space transportation.

It began to accelerate in the commonwealth in the mid-1990s when engineering professors at Old Dominion University in Norfolk convinced the General Assembly to create a commercial spaceport on Wallops Island and the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority (VCSFA) to oversee it.

It sped up in earnest in 2008 after Orbital landed its $1.9 billion NASA contract, with plans to launch eight resupply missions out of MARS through 2016.

To accommodate those missions, the VCSFA build a $145 liquid-fuel launch pad and support facilities capable of handling more powerful, medium-lift rockets. It's now is seeking out even more commercial space customers.

The new pad isn't designed to handle the heavy-lift rockets necessary for manned flight, but experts have said NASA's nearby 8,750-foot runway could handle spacecraft designed for horizontal takeoffs. If so, experts say this could one day vault Wallops into the space tourism business.

Wallops is NASA's oldest continuous-use rocket-launching facility. Since the first rocket took off on July 4, 1945, some 16,000 have followed to place satellites into orbit, test aircraft models, study Earth and space science, and test re-entry and life-support systems for the manned space program.

WALLOPS: For rocket, 4th time's a charm

Ted Shockley - Salisbury Daily Times (Maryland)

Mary Ann Bray drove from her Princess Anne home to the NASA Wallops Visitor center on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday to see the launch of the biggest rocket the facility has lofted since it opened in 1945.

Each had been canceled. But when she came back on Sunday, on a sunny, chilly afternoon, she saw first-hand the test launch of the 130-foot Antares rocket, part of a program to resupply the International Space Station.

Orbital Sciences Corp., which owns the rocket, estimates the Antares program could produce billions in economic activity, and add 1,300 jobs and $64 million in tax revenue to Virginia.

But Bray's reaction was more patriotic than economic, especially after a week in which bombs exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon and one suspect was arrested, and another killed, in its chaotic aftermath.

"Especially after Boston, it's like, 'Yay, we're still in there," said Bray. "No matter what, you can't put us down."

A crowd at the visitor center estimated at about 1,000 watched the launch five miles away, and untold numbers of viewers traveled to waterfront areas around the region to get a better look at the liftoff.

At the visitor center, spontaneous cheers and applause erupted several times, the loudest when the rocket trailed out of sight, at almost 250,000 feet.

The vehicle, distinguished in the sky by its bright propulsion, reached 10,000 feet in 9 seconds and reached 20,000 feet 4 seconds later.

In less than 15 minutes, it was probably over Africa, said Dan Thomson, director of the visitor center.

"This is the sweetest thing I've ever seen," he said, adding that NASA officials at the center have alternately been "living on adrenaline and depression" as launches were scheduled, and then canceled.

The launch caused a brush fire near the launch pad, which was being battled by firefighters at the Wallops facility.

The launch for the space station could come this summer from the same launching pad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops, which is overseen by the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell hailed the launch and congratulated those involved for their efforts in making the spaceport "one of the most attractive places in the country for the commercial aerospace industry to do business."

Officials also cite the tourism opportunities caused by launches as a financial positive.

Lina Susi of Millsboro, Del., came to watch Sunday with her family after first driving down Saturday, only to have the launch postponed.

"We were sitting in the car for about an hour," she said.

But she added a day later, "We're excited."

Bray, who had been through three cancellations, said she was going to watch the launch in person, whatever it took.

"It could have been number 24 if it had to," she said.

Orbital Sciences launches Antares in key test

Marjorie Censer - Washington Post

Orbital Sciences successfully launched its Antares rocket Sunday in a test that advances its effort to undertake resupply missions to the International Space Station.

The launch was an equally important step for the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport facility on Wallops Island, which state officials hope will position Virginia as a commercial space flight hub.

The success of the launch and the facility would "put Virginia on the map when it comes to space," said Sean T. Connaughton, Virginia's transportation secretary, in an interview earlier in the week. "We've invested money in this because we believe ... it will keep high-tech jobs in Virginia and grow that base."

Orbital's test was focused on its Antares rocket launcher, just one element of the technology needed to deliver supplies to the space station. The Antares vehicle launches the Cygnus space module, which acts as the brains of the operation by housing the avionics, propulsion and navigation systems. Attached to the space module would be a cargo module, which is built by Thales Alenia.

The test launch used a simulator in place of the Cygnus module. The final stage of the Antares rocket and the simulator will go into orbit and remain there for a couple months before they reenter and burn up in the atmosphere, according to an Orbital spokesman.

Orbital has a deal with NASA to launch unmanned space modules that will deliver supplies to the International Space Station, take away its trash and then burn up as they reenter the atmosphere. The company is planning to complete eight supply missions by early 2016.

Connaughton said Virginia hopes to carve out a niche in the commercial space business. Orbital was originally part of the ownership team of a $120 million liquid fuel pad built at the space facility, but the state bought out the company to be able to offer the pad to potential competitors, he said.

To attract commercial businesses, he said the facility will not give government flights priority and will be focused on smaller payloads.

"We are already in discussions with other launch providers," he said. "Whoever signs contracts [will be] ... at the head of the line."

NASA Partner Orbital Sciences Tests Rocket

Andy Pasztor - Wall Street Journal

Orbital Sciences Corp. on Sunday blasted a new rocket into space, in a successful test flight aimed at putting the company on a trajectory to become the second commercial entity to transport cargo to the international space station.

The 131-foot Antares rocket, making its maiden flight from a recently completed launch complex on Wallops Island off the Virginia coast, lifted off in good weather and 10 minutes later put a dummy payload into orbit. The launch came after a four-day delay prompted by a technical glitch, followed by bad weather.

But after years of postponed deadlines and nagging technical problems— including engine troubles and slowdowns in launch-pad construction—company officials said the rocket performed as expected.

Sunday's blast-off capped a roughly $1 billion overall investment, shared by the U.S. government, the company, and a Virginia-led spaceport consortium. The effort is aimed to create an alternative space-transportation system to satisfy commercial launch customers and allow the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to outsource some key functions to private industry.

The effort, which came in more than 50% over budget, carries big risks but also potentially significant long-term benefits for both the U.S. space program and Orbital.

The Dulles, Va., company invested about $550 million over nearly five years, according to Chairman and Chief Executive David Thompson, while NASA capped spending at its initial commitment of roughly $360 million. The Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, primarily supported by Virginia and Maryland, invested roughly $90 million.

In addition to building a new, two-stage launcher using legacy technology that relies on both liquid and solid fuel, Orbital developed the Cygnus cargo capsule slated to fly to the space station on a demonstration mission as early as this summer. If everything works as expected, the company anticipates starting regular cargo deliveries quickly under a $1.9 billion fixed-price NASA contract. Originally, such trips were supposed to begin in 2011.

"The hardware is in shape to allow us to do the first operational mission in the fall," Mr. Thompson said in an interview. Since Orbital historically has averaged about four space missions per year, he said the company has the ability to assemble and launch rockets and capsules at a robust rate.

Besides staking its reputation and lucrative NASA contract on the test flight, Mr. Thompson and his management team see Antares as a catalyst to help transform the company and position it for sustained growth during a period of shrinking Pentagon space budgets accompanied by major changes in commercial and civilian satellite projects.

To some extent, Orbital is following the direction of closely held Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the Southern California company that pioneered commercial-cargo flights into orbit with its larger Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX, as it is called, has garnered world-wide attention and is now focused on building a more powerful booster and developing commercial space taxis able to shuttle U.S. astronauts to and from the space station.

Orbital, however, is crafting a less-ambitious plan. Best known for focusing on smaller satellites and less-powerful rockets, the company eventually hopes to become one of the leading global players in building and launching midsize satellites for commercial, military and scientific uses.

Shrinking U.S. defense spending portends rapid growth of that market segment, with Boeing Co. BA +2.14%and other aerospace giants already maneuvering to capture new business.

"We will face somewhat more intense competition than in the past," said Mr. Thompson. As the number of mega-projects dwindles, he predicted, "the big guys will come down" to compete for smaller contracts "and there will be lots of skirmishes."

Regardless of how well the current design of Antares performs, Orbital and its partners are developing an enhanced second-stage motor. And within a year or so, Orbital will have to decide how to replace limited supplies of the Ukranian-built first-stage motor, slated to run out in the second half of the decade.

Building and demonstrating the reliability of a new rocket is a notoriously risky undertaking, with roughly one of every three first launches failing for some reason.

Orbital, despite a successful, decades-long history providing boosters for the Pentagon and satellites for civilian and commercial applications, has suffered two failed NASA satellite launches since 2009 with its established Taurus booster.

Indeed, the rocket that had its maiden flight Sunday initially was supposed to be named Taurus II, but the moniker was changed in the wake of those previous difficulties.

With Orbital slated to release quarterly results on Tuesday, the launch could help reassure investors about the company's progress toward commercial-cargo delivery.

Antares blasts off on third try
Commercial rocket a test run for shuttling cargo to ISS

James Dean - Florida Today

A new commercial rocket proved it is ready to start boosting cargo to the International Space Station with a historic test flight Sunday from Virginia's Eastern Shore.

Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Antares rocket blasted off at 5 p.m. from Wallops Island — becoming the largest rocket to do so — and dropped a simulated spacecraft in orbit 10 minutes later.

The milestone set the stage for the Antares to launch a real cargo spacecraft, called Cygnus, on a demonstration mission to the station. That flight is tentatively planned in late June or early July.

"That's great news," ISS commander Chris Hadfield radioed after being told of the successful launch. "Congratulations to all concerned, and that bodes well for all of our futures. Super."

The rocket's maiden flight came just more than five years after NASA selected Dulles, Va.-based Orbital to participate in a public-private partnership developing new rockets and spacecraft to resupply the station after the space shuttle's retirement.

The program already included SpaceX, whose Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule last year became the first privately operated vehicles to reach the station and have now completed three successful visits.

NASA wants two commercial cargo suppliers up and running to ensure the station always has enough food and science experiments to support a crew of up to six.

NASA chief Charlie Bolden said the successful Antares launch could also help secure funding to fly astronauts commercially.

"Now we'll be able to go to the Hill and we'll be able to go other places and just say, 'OK, look what we just did. We've got two providers, we know how to do this stuff, and so have faith in American industry,' " Bolden said Sunday in congratulatory remarks to the launch team.

NASA is seeking $821 million next year to design and test private space taxis to carry astronauts under development by three companies — including SpaceX but not Orbital — with the goal of flights to the station by 2017.

The 130-foot Antares lifted off into blue skies on its third try, after a technical glitch and strong winds scrubbed attempts Wednesday and Saturday, respectively.

In addition to testing the rocket systems, the mission dubbed "A-ONE" marked the first use of a new launch pad at Virginia's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport.

After Orbital chose to launch from Wallops Island instead of Cape Canaveral, the state and NASA invested over $140 million in the new pad and other facilities.

"That's a pretty good investment in the Eastern Shore here, and I think it has paid off," said Orbital executive Frank Culbertson, a former astronaut who directed the test flight.

Preliminary results showed the Antares and the pad performed well, though the launch did start a small brush fire that was not considered serious.

The launch team cheered as the rocket's first and second stages separated, then a payload fairing and finally the payload itself, placed in an orbit about 160 miles high.

The 8,400-pound "mass simulator," which had the shape and weight of a Cygnus spacecraft, will stay in orbit for about two weeks before being destroyed during re-entry through the atmosphere.

The dummy payload deployed four miniature satellites, including a trio powered by smart phones.

If the next demonstration mission goes well, Orbital would be cleared to fly the first of eight station resupply missions under a $1.9 billion NASA contract.

Orbital hopes Antares will also win launches of commercial and government satellites.

"We've proven we can do it," said Culbertson.

Antares rocket blasts into orbit for first time in test for NASA

W.J. Hennigan - Los Angeles Times

In its maiden flight to space, a commercially built 13-story rocket blasted off from a launch pad off the coast of Virginia in a test mission for NASA.

The Antares rocket, developed by Orbital Sciences Corp., roared into orbit after launching Sunday at 2 p.m. Pacific time from the newly built Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.

Although it was simply a test flight to reach orbit, the successful launch was another crucial step in NASA's plan to hand off space missions -- carrying cargo and crews -- to private industry now that the space shuttle fleet has been retired.

"Today's successful test marks another significant milestone in NASA's plan to rely on American companies to launch supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station, bringing this important work back to the United States where it belongs," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.

NASA has invested about $288 million in seed money to help the Dulles, Va., company develop its technology, and has an additional $1.9 billion on the table with a contract for eight flights to transport cargo to the International Space Station in the coming years.

Antares' launch was scheduled to take place Friday, but was delayed because of technical issues. High winds postponed the blastoff from Saturday to Sunday.

It was a picture-perfect launch from Wallops, with the Atlantic Ocean lapping against the surf in the near distance.

When the engines first ignited, the white rocket did not lift off from the pad for two full seconds because of its design. After 60 seconds, the vehicle was at more than 3 miles in altitude but still subsonic -- about 460 mph.

It wasn't until about nine minutes into the mission that the rocket was in orbit, at 155 miles in altitude and moving at 17,000 mph.

The two-stage rocket, powered by engines from Aerojet-General Corp. in Sacramento, carried a dummy cargo capsule weighing roughly 8,300 pounds about 160 miles above Earth.

The capsule has instruments onboard to collect data and will remain in orbit for months until natural gravitational forces slowly degrade its orbit and it reenters the atmosphere and burns.

The Antares test flight, more than a year late because of design and launchpad delays, is the first of two missions Orbital is scheduled to conduct in 2013 under its contract with NASA. It hopes to visit the International Space Station later this year.

One commercial company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has successfully resupplied the space station in two missions. The Hawthorne firm, better known as SpaceX, most recently pulled off the feat last month.

Orbital employs about 3,600 people -- about 200 of whom are in California at Orbital's offices in El Segundo and Huntington Beach and at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The company was founded in 1982 and manufactures more than half a dozen small- and medium-class rockets, as well as satellites.

The publicly traded company had about $1.5 billion in revenue last year.

Part of Orbital's selling point -- and what has attracted the government's attention -- is the company's assertions that it can develop and launch rockets at a fraction of the cost of the current generation of spacecraft.

Unlike SpaceX, Orbital does not have a space capsule that can return with cargo. It burns up in the Earth's atmosphere. Nor does it have an astronaut-capable version of the capsule in the works.

For now, company officials said they were content running resupply missions.

Orbital's Antares Rocket Successful in Debut Flight

Dan Leone - Space News

Orbital Sciences Corp. successfully launched its Antares cargo rocket to space for the first time April 21, bringing the Dulles, Va., company a big step closer to making routine cargo deliveries to the international space station for NASA.

Antares heaved itself slowly off Pad 0-A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Va., at 5 p.m. EDT. About 10 minutes later, the vehicle dropped off its main payload — a sensor-equipped, dummy satellite with roughly the same mass as the Cygnus space tug Orbital will use for cargo deliveries — in a 51.64-degree inclined orbit about 250 kilometers above Earth's surface. This is the same orbit where the real Cygnus would be dropped off at the start of a cargo run.

Also carried aloft by Antares were four experimental cubesats, all of which made it to their intended orbits, according to Orbital officials. The hitchhiker payloads were Dove-1, a commercial imaging triple cubesat, and three single-unit cubesats with consumer smartphone cores, which were built at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

The Antares configuration that flew April 21 can send 5,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit.

It took Orbital four tries to get its new rocket off the ground. The first launch attempt April 17 was scrubbed about 10 minutes before the scheduled liftoff because a data cable linking ground computers with Antares' second-stage flight computer disconnected prematurely. Orbital said the cable was hung too tautly to tolerate a sudden movement of a hydraulic arm on the Transporter Erector Launcher vehicle that holds Antares at the pad.

Two subsequent attempts were scrubbed April 19 and April 20 because of poor weather conditions.

With the inaugural Antares flight in the books, Orbital has one more mission to perform before it can begin delivery service under the eight-flight, $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract it got from NASA in 2008. This mission, a demonstration cargo delivery mission to the space station, is scheduled for June or July, said Frank Culbertson, executive vice president and general manager of Orbital's Advanced Programs Group.

Antares test launch paves new highway to space station

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

Soaring into a brilliant blue sky from a new launch pad on the Virginia coastline, an Antares rocket owned by Orbital Sciences Corp. blasted off on a successful test flight Sunday, inaugurating a new launch system to resupply the International Space Station.

The first launch of the Antares rocket is a major step in a joint venture between Orbital Sciences and NASA to develop two commercial space transportation systems to resupply the space station, replacing much of the cargo-carrying capacity lost when the space shuttle retired in 2011.

"Today's successful test marks another significant milestone in NASA's plan to rely on American companies to launch supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station, bringing this important work back to the United States where it belongs," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement.

NASA is turning to the private sector for commercial cargo and crew launches to the space station. Orbital Sciences and SpaceX, which has completed its series of test missions, were picked by NASA for cargo services.

"Congratulations to Orbital Sciences and the NASA team that worked alongside them for the picture-perfect launch of the Antares rocket," Bolden said. "In addition to providing further evidence that our strategic space exploration plan is moving forward, this test also inaugurates America's newest spaceport capable of launching to the space station, opening up additional opportunities for commercial and government users."

Sunday's demonstration flight paves the way for another mission this summer, in which Orbital Sciences will launch its second Antares rocket with a Cygnus spacecraft on top on a mission all the way to the space station.

If successful, the Cygnus mission this summer will clear the path for at least eight operational cargo runs using the Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo craft.

Engineers will analyze data from Sunday's launch before approving the flight to space station, but early indications are everything well according to plan.

"It certainly was an amazing achievement for Orbital today, a great day for NASA, and another historic day for commercial spaceflight in America," said Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, which oversees the agency's agreement with Orbital. "The flight today was just beautiful, and it looks like the preliminary data says all the objectives we established for the flight today were 100 percent met."

The 13-story rocket lifted off at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) from launch pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport - a facility financed by the government of Virginia - and ascended into the sky atop a pillar of bluish golden flame from two main engines.

The launch started slow - as designed - with the rocket's two engines providing just enough power to lift the 300-ton booster from the ground. As the rocket burned propellant, and got lighter, the vehicle accelerated southeast from the launch pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, disappearing from the view of observers on the ground about four minutes into the launch.

"After a while it was going like a scalded ape," said Frank Culbertson, a veteran former NASA astronaut and executive vice president at Orbital Sciences. "It was accelerating quickly, and everything looked very good as it climbed into the sky, and it was a beautiful blue sky today."

The first stage engines, built in Russia in the 1970s and modernized by Aerojet, powered the launcher into the upper atmosphere, sending a wall of sound across the Virginia coast heard for miles around.

The twin-engine first stage shut down less than four minutes into the mission, releasing the rocket's solid-fueled second stage to propel the booster into orbit.

The Castor 30 second stage motor, built by ATK, ignited for a burn lasting two-and-a-half minutes, accelerating the rocket to more than 17,000 mph. Engineers declared the rocket reached orbit, and the upper stage deployed a 8,377-pound block of aluminum designed to mimic the mass characteristics of the Cygnus spacecraft, which will take the dummy payload's place on the next Antares launch.

"All of that demonstrated that when we do this again, we know how to make this happen," Culbertson said. "We'll get that payload - the Cygnus - into orbit and on its way to the International Space Station so it can continue its mission, and we can provide the cargo, the experiments, clothing and food that they need."

The instrumented mass simulator is just dead weight on its own, but a suite of more than 70 accelerometers, thermocouples, thermometers, strain gauges and microphones beamed data back to ground antennas through the rocket's communications radio before it severed ties with the launch vehicle.

The rocket reached a near-circular orbit with an average altitude of about 155 miles, or 250 kilometers.

"We will have to do some additional evaluation to see if we're exactly on target, or if we need to make some adjustments," Culbertson said. "If we need to make adjustments to future flights, we will do so, but we certainly achieved orbit and that was the main goal."

It was the largest rocket ever to launch from the Wallops Flight Facility, which has hosted about 16,000 launches over its 68-year history. With funding from the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, the historic launch base added a new $120 million launch pad with equipment to support larger rockets and cryogenic liquid propellant.

Liquid propellant is a new paradigm for Orbital Sciences, which has flown scores of satellite launchers with all-solid-fueled stages.

Orbital hopes the Antares rocket, which is now on contract to fly nine more times, finds business launching commercial, military and scientific satellites over the next decade or longer.

The 31-year-old company, based in Dulles, Va., started working on the Antares rocket in 2007 as an internal project. Orbital Sciences won an agreement with NASA in February 2008 to share to design, build and test a cargo transportation system using the Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft.

The agreement with NASA is now worth up to $288 million. The space agency pays Orbital upon completion of preset milestones, and Orbital is expected to collect a $4 million payment following Sunday's successful test flight.

Including investments from NASA, Orbital and the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Antares rocket, Cygnus spacecraft and the new launch pad collectively cost nearly $1 billion.

According to Culbertson, development of the Cygnus spacecraft cost about $300 million. The Antares rocket cost a little more, he said, declining to give a specific figure. An official with the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority said the launch pad cost about $120 million.

In December 2008, NASA chose Orbital and SpaceX for operational resupply flights to the space station. NASA's $1.9 billion contract with Orbital covers eight missions to carry at least 20 metric tons to the orbiting complex. SpaceX received a $1.6 billion deal for 12 missions, including the capability to return equipment to Earth.

New Private Rocket Launches Into Orbit On Maiden Voyage

Tariq Malik - Space.com

A new commercial U.S. rocket soared into the Virginia sky Sunday (April 21) on a debut flight that paves the way for eventual cargo flights to the International Space Station for NASA.

The third try was the charm for the private Antares rocket, which launched into space from a new pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, its twin engines roaring to life at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) to carry a mock cargo ship out over the Atlantic Ocean and into orbit. The successful liftoff came after two delays caused by a minor mechanical glitch and bad weather.

Built by the Dulles, Va.- based spaceflight company Orbital Sciences, the Antares rocket is a two-stage booster designed to launch tons of supplies to the International Space Station aboard a new unmanned cargo ship called Cygnus. Orbital has a $1.9 billion contract with NASA to provide at least eight resupply flights to the station using Antares and Cygnus.

"Antares has delivered the A-ONE test mission payload into orbit," an Orbital Sciences commentator said. There were cheers out of Orbital's launch control room at ever successful stage of the launch, with the team breaking out in handshakes and hugs as the rocket reached orbit.

Orbital had much riding on today's successful liftoff, which marked a critical test flight of a new commercial launch system.

The company has invested about $300 million developing the Cygnus spacecraft alone, slightly more in the rocket itself, Orbital executive vice president Frank Culbertson told reporters after the successful launch. The result, he added, was an amazing show with apparently no significant glitches aside from a brush fire ignited near the launch pad.

"This was a majestic liftoff during ascent," said Culbertson, who is a former NASA astronaut and Orbital's general manager for advanced programs. The Antares rocket as a low thrust to weight ratio, which means it has a slow start rising off the launch pad, he added. "It was a beautiful liftoff."

NASA chief Charles Bolden attended the launch and lauded the Orbital launch team on the successful flight.

"This is an incredibly historic day," Bolden told Orbital's team. "You couldn't have gone any farther without today. This was a first, huge step."

Virginia's biggest rocket launch

Antares is the largest rocket ever to launch from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility. It lifted off from the new Pad 0A, which is at Wallops but managed by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) and overseen by the Virginia Commercial Spaceflight Authority. Altogether, the Commonwealth of Virginia and MARS officials spent about $140 million to build the new launch pad complex.

Today's launch was expected to be visible from locations all along the East Coast, from Maine to South Carolina, weather permitting. Orbital even released several photos advising what the rocket would look like from famous landmarks around the Capitol.

Orbital initially tried to launch the Antares rocket on Wednesday (April 17) but called off the attempt when a vital data cable separated from the rocket earlier than planned, about 12 minutes before liftoff. The company spent Thursday analyzing the glitch and opted not to try for a Friday launch due to foul weather. Strong winds forced a delay on Saturday, but Mother Nature cooperated for Sunday's launch.

In a Twitter post before launch, officials at NASA's Wallops facility reported that the site's visitor center was completely packed for today's launch, despite the delays. MARS officials hope the Orbital launches will help serve as a new source of tourism for the region.

"It's definitely something we're all excited about," Basia Shields, manager of the Lighthouse Inn on nearby Chincoteague Island, told SPACE.com before Sunday's liftoff. "I mean this is the off season for us and almost every room is booked just for this thing."

Private space cargo ships

Orbital Sciences is one of two companies with NASA contracts for commercial cargo deliveries to the space station. The other firm is Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., which has a $1.6 billion deal for 12 space station cargo missions.

With the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet in 2011, the agency is relying on commercial companies like Orbital Sciences and SpaceX to provide the vital resupply services — and, eventually, crew launches — required to keep the space station fully stocked and staffed. Before the commercial program, NASA was dependent on Russian, Japanese and European cargo ships for supplies, and it still temporarily relies on Russian Soyuz vehicles for crewed missions.

"This is a new way of doing business, and with any new investment, there is a risk," Alan Lindenmoyer, head of NASA's commercial crew and cargo program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, told reporters after the successful launch. "But it sure is nice to see a return on that investment and things go your way. I think this is a great day for everyone."

NASA picked Orbital Sciences as a commercial cargo partner in 2008, awarding the firm $288 million to begin developing the Cygnus spacecraft under the agency's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. SpaceX won its first COTS award in 2006.

"This is the culmination of a plan that we've been on for several years," NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver told reporters before the Wednesday launch try. "I am thrilled to have two competitors."

Garver said that at least two companies providing cargo services for NASA is vital since it assures access to space and does not allow one company to have a monopoly on station cargo deliveries.

Orbital and SpaceX also offer slightly different services. Unlike SpaceX's Dragon space capsules, which can return cargo to Earth from the station, Orbital's Cygnus vehicles are disposable and are intentionally burned up in the atmosphere at mission's end.

Antares test flight success

During the test launch, the Antares rocket launched on a southeast trajectory over the Atlantic and took 10 minutes to reach its target orbit 155 miles (250 kilometers) above Earth. The rocket carried an 8,377-pound (3,800 kilograms) dummy payload to mimic the weight of an actual Cygnus spacecraft. The mockup was packed with 70 sensors to record how the Antares rocket launch would affect a Cygnus vehicle.

"It looks like all the expectations we had for today's flight were beautifully met," Lindenmoyer said.

The dummy module is expected to spend at least two weeks in orbit before burning up in Earth's atmosphere, Orbital officials said.

Antares also carried three coffee cup-size Phonesat satellites — called Alexander, Graham and Bell — into orbit as part of a space technology experiment for NASA's Ames Research Center in California. The tiny 4-inch-wide satellites use commercial smartphones as their main computers. Another small satellite the size of a bread box, called Dove-1, also rode into orbit as part of a commercial agreement for the California-based company Cosmogia. Dove-1 is reportedly an Earth-observation and remote sensing satellite, according to a NOAA remote sensing license document.

Orbital's Antares rocket is a two-stage booster that stands 131 feet (40 meters) tall and weighs 639,341 pounds (290,000 kilograms) at liftoff.

The first stage is powered by two Aerojet AJ26 liquid-fueled rocket engines originally developed to launch Russia's giant N-1 moon rocket in the 1960s. Today's launch marked their first flight ever from U.S. soil. The Antares second stage is a solid-fueled motor built by Allliant Techsystems (ATK), the same company that built the twin solid rocket boosters for NASA's space shuttle launches.

With the test flight now complete, Orbital is now looking forward to up to two more launches this year, both of them headed to the International Space Station. That first cargo flight, a demonstration mission, could launch in late June or early July, Orbital officials said.

"This is not a one-shot deal," Lindenmoyer said. "They're going to be here awhile."

Culbertson said that Orbital hopes to launch Antares rockets from Wallops every three to six months for the cargo delivery flights.

Orbital Sciences Rocket Lifts Off in Key Test Before Cargo Runs

Nick Taborek - Bloomberg News

Orbital Sciences Corp. (ORB) yesterday launched its 130-foot Antares rocket for the first time, a key milestone in the company's plans to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.

The unmanned rocket lifted off at 5 p.m. Washington time from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore. Orbital is seeking to follow Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, which last May became the first company to dock a commercial craft at the station.

Yesterday's test launch delivered a mock cargo ship into orbit that separated from the rocket after about 10 minutes, destined to burn up in Earth's atmosphere in a couple of weeks. No contact will be made with the space station on this mission.

"Today did go extremely smoothly, and it's a real testament to the team that it did," Frank Culbertson, an Orbital executive vice president and former astronaut, said during a press conference after the launch. "Making it look easy takes a lot of hard work and overcoming a lot of challenges."

The company intends to dock with the space station in June or July, and then make regular cargo deliveries as early as September under a $1.9 billion contract.

Past Delays

The launch came after several delays. An attempt on April 17 was scrubbed 12 minutes before liftoff after a data cable prematurely disconnected from the rocket. An April 20 attempt was called off because of high winds. A launch planned for last August was scrapped in part because of faulty fuel valves at the Wallops Island launchpad, Barron Beneski, an Orbital spokesman, said last year.

Orbital is now moving away from technical and development risks and toward production, said Patrick McCarthy, managing director at Arlington, Virginia-based FBR Capital Markets & Co., who rates Orbital shares outperform.

"That's when stocks tend to work really well," he said in a phone interview.

For Orbital, the stakes are high because any setback raises the risk that NASA could award a greater share of future supply missions to Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX, Loomis said.

"Orbital has to perform well if they want to be competitive," William Loomis, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore, said in a phone interview before the launch. "As each milestone gets behind them, there's less risk."

Stock Gains

Shares of Orbital have gained 18 percent this year after falling 5.2 percent in 2012. A successful launch might boost shares about 5 percent, Loomis, who has a buy rating on the company, wrote in an April 12 note to clients.

NASA is relying on companies such as Orbital and SpaceX to supply the space station with food and other cargo, after retiring its shuttle fleet in 2011. NASA also has agreements with the governments of Europe, Japan and Russia for the work.

The launch "lays the groundwork for the first Antares cargo mission to the International Space Station later this year," John Holdren, a science and technology adviser to President Barack Obama, said in a statement. "The growing potential of America's commercial space industry and NASA's use of public-private partnerships are central to President Obama's strategy to ensure U.S. leadership in space exploration."

Supply Trips

Orbital's contract with NASA includes eight cargo resupply flights to the station. Closely held SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract for a dozen supply trips.

In Orbital's missions, an Antares rocket would launch an unmanned supply ship known as Cygnus into orbit. The one-way spacecraft would then navigate to the space station and deliver about 2 tons of crew supplies, spare parts and science experiments per trip. It, too, will burn upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

Orbital's launch was also a milestone for the NASA facility, located 157 miles (253 kilometers) from the nation's capital. Antares (ANT) was the largest rocket launched from the facility in its 67-year history.

SpaceX competitor sends new rocket into orbit

Joseph Abbott - Waco Tribune

SpaceX is finally starting to get some competition.

After days of delays both weather and equipment related, Orbital Sciences launched its Antares rocket for the first time from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Antares, a rival to SpaceX's McGregor-tested Falcon 9 rocket, lifted off the Wallops Island pad at 4 p.m. CDT and carried into orbit a dummy version of the Cygnus cargo capsule that Orbital Sciences hopes will compete with SpaceX's Dragon. It also carried experimental small-scale satellites built on the cheap from smartphone parts.

A full-fledged version of the Cygnus is set to make a test flight to the International Space Station in late June or early July, although the Cygnus doesn't yet have Dragon's capability to return cargo to Earth.

The first launch attempt was halted Wednesday when a data umbilical prematurely disconnected from the rocket minutes before the scheduled launch. High winds postponed subsequent attempts on Friday and Saturday.

Third Time's the Charm for Orbital's Antares

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.com

Orbital Sciences Corp. has successfully launched its Antares rocket on the long-delayed "A-ONE" test flight from Pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island, Va. Liftoff of the 133-foot-tall vehicle—the first cryogenically-propelled rocket ever built and flown by Orbital—occurred on time at 5:00:02 p.m. EDT, right at the start of the launch window. Antares' beautiful ascent into the early evening sky has surely raised an unbearable weight from the shoulders of Orbital, whose next focus after this mission is to conduct a full-up demo of its Cygnus cargo ship to the International Space Station, possibly as soon as June.

The launch proved charmed with third-time-lucky fortune, as Orbital saw its baby finally fly. Two previous attempts were scrubbed due to technical and weather issues. On Wednesday, a data umbilical cable linking the Transporter Erector Launcher (TEL) to the rocket's second stage prematurely disconnected and prompted a scrub, just 12 minutes ahead of the scheduled liftoff. A second attempt yesterday was also frustrated, not by a technical issue, but by unacceptable high-altitude winds. However, evaluations late last week placed the Orbital team in a position to attempt two back-to-back launch attempts on Saturday and also today, during a two-hour window which extended from 5-7 p.m.

Weather conditions at Wallops at dawn this morning seemed to show a marked improvement over yesterday, and the A-ONE flight controllers received their "Call to Stations" at around 9 a.m. AmericaSpace's Launch Tracker noted meteorologists' predictions of an 80-percent probability of acceptable conditions at T-zero, with the main worry focused on a chance that surface winds could violate the launch attempt. However, balloon deployments during the early afternoon returned positive results, indicating that weather conditions and the range debris limits were both "Green." By 2 p.m., the process of chilling-down the fuel lines of Antares' first stage, which is powered by two Aerojet-built AJ-26 engines, with liquid nitrogen had begun, ahead of the fueling process. This hour-long "chill-down" protocol, explained the Tracker, was designed to "prevent a shock to the equipment being hit by a rapid temperature change which could cause a catastrophic failure." Finally, a little after 3:30 p.m., the A-ONE launch team was polled for its recommendation and returned a unanimous "Go" to march towards a liftoff at the opening of the window at 5 p.m. In the minutes which followed the "Go" call, the first propellants began flowing into the engines' fuel lines. The AJ-26s, which can trace their heritage back to the Soviet Union's ill-fated N-1 lunar rocket, are fed by a refined form of rocket-grade kerosene (known as "RP-1") and liquid oxygen.

The loading process was critically timed to begin about 90 minutes ahead of the scheduled launch, because of time limits associated with the rapid boil-off of the cryogenic propellants. Shortly after the beginning of fueling, the A-ONE team refined the launch time to within a 15-minute block, between 5:00-5:15 p.m. "Extending beyond the 5:15 p.m. deadline will result in an automatic scrub for the day," explained the Tracker. "The reduced timeframe is because of the boiling-off of the [liquid oxygen] … after the completion of the tanking … 15 minutes beyond the planned T-zero will result in too much LOX boiling-off to launch safely to the desired orbit." During the fueling process, a helicopter spotted a fishing boat within the launch danger zone, but by 4:10 p.m. it had been escorted away.

The final polling of the launch team occurred in a two-step process, beginning shortly after 4:30 p.m., with the first confirmation of "Green across all stations." At the same time, out at Pad 0A—as the effects of liquid oxygen boil-off became apparent, almost concealing Antares' name at one stage—the final chill-down of the AJ-26 engines got underway to condition them for the ignition sequence. The 75-minute-long fueling process concluded at 4:45 p.m., with propellants at flight-ready levels, and at 4:48 p.m. the final "Go for Launch" was received from the A-ONE teams. Antares' primary payload—a mass simulator for the Cygnus cargo craft—was transferred to internal power, and at 4:51 p.m. the Transporter Erector Launcher (TEL) was armed to enable it to execute a rapid retraction from the vehicle the moment of liftoff. Five minutes before launch, the Flight Termination System was activated, enabling the ordnance which would destroy Antares in the event of a major malfunction or an off-nominal situation.

At 4:56:30 p.m.—when the clock reached T-3 minutes and 30 seconds—the "terminal count" got underway, with the transfer of command to Antares' autosequencer, which assumed primary control of all vehicle critical functions. Ignition of the twin AJ-26 engines commenced at T-2 seconds, with computer-controlled health checks conducted as they ramped up to full power. Each of these powerplants produces a sea-level thrust of 338,000 pounds and liftoff occurred at 5:00:02 p.m., with Antares clearing the tower five seconds later. Watched by several hundred spectators—including representatives of AmericaSpace—the vehicle immediately commenced a pitch and roll program maneuver, which established it onto the proper flight azimuth of 107.8 degrees.

Within 80 seconds, Antares passed through the period of maximum aerodynamic turbulence (nicknamed "Max Q") and the AJ-26 engines continued to burn hot and hard, finally shutting down—as planned—a little under four minutes after launch. At 5:03:55 p.m., having reached an altitude of 66 miles, the first stage separated, and the vehicle coasted for almost two minutes, before the jettisoning of the bullet-like payload shroud at 5:05:19 p.m. and ignition of the solid-fueled Castor-30A second-stage engine at 5:05:28 p.m. The Castor engine, built by Alliant TechSystems, produced a thrust of 89,000 pounds and burned for two and a half minutes, providing the final impulse to inject the Cygnus mass simulator into a low-Earth orbit of 155-186 miles, inclined 51.6 degrees to the equator. A quartet of tiny picosatellites—three provided by NASA's Ames Research Center of Moffett Field, Calif., to demonstrate the use of smartphones for CubeSat avionics, and an amateur-radio satellite—were deployed from a dispenser at 5:09 p.m.

"This is a great day for the Antares team," said Scott Lehr, vice president and general manager of ATK's Defense and Commercial Division. "We congratulate Orbital for a successful test flight today. ATK is proud to be a part of their Antares team, and we look forward to helping Orbital successfully carry out its first cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year."

ATK contributed the CASTOR 30 motor is the engine that powers Antares upper stage. Upgraded versions of the solid rocket motor's will power Cygnus to its rendezvous with the International Space Station on future Antares flights.

The final key event for A-ONE occurred triumphantly at 5:10:03 p.m., when the 16.5-foot-long Cygnus mass simulator itself separated smoothly from the second stage and entered free flight. Equipped with instrumentation to gather data on the launch, ascent, and orbital flight environments, the 8,400-pound simulator serves as a precursor to the demo mission of a "real" Cygnus to the International Space Station later this summer.

"Today's successful test marks another significant milestone in NASA's plan to rely on American companies to launch supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station, bringing this important work back to the United States where it belongs," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "Congratulations to Orbital Sciences and the NASA team that worked alongside them for the picture-perfect launch of the Antares rocket. In addition to providing further evidence that our strategic space exploration plan is moving forward, this test also inaugurates America's newest spaceport capable of launching to the space station, opening up additional opportunities for commercial and government users."

As described in AmericaSpace's A-ONE preview article, the first flight of this new rocket has come at the end of a long and difficult road for Orbital Sciences, the Dulles, Va.-based aerospace company, which in December 2008 won a $1.9 billion slice of NASA's Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) pie. The provisions of this contract require Orbital to transport upwards of 44,000 pounds of equipment, payloads, and supplies to the International Space Station aboard eight missions of its Antares-boosted Cygnus cargo craft by 2016. However, efforts to configure the MARS site on Wallops Island for Antares operations have been mired with technical difficulty. As part of the redevelopment of the site, Pad 0A was completely demolished and a new complex was assembled with kerosene and liquid oxygen tankage for Antares. Problems with the cryogenic handling equipment and the completion of MARS conspired to delay the A-ONE mission by over a year.

However, today's spectacular launch—nominal in all respects—may still place the company in a strong position to attempt an inaugural demo of the Cygnus craft to the space station "around mid-year," with AmericaSpace's Launch Tracker noting "late June or early July" for the mission. It will deliver 800 pounds of equipment and supplies to the sprawling international outpost. That flight will follow a rendezvous profile not dissimilar to the one followed by CRS competitor SpaceX's Dragon ships: completing a series of incremental steps, over a two-day period, to bring it within range of the station's 57-foot-long Canadarm2 robotic arm for grappling and berthing onto the Harmony node. Orbital's current manifest shows an ambitious 2013 schedule for Antares: following the A-ONE launch, the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demo to the space station will occur in the summer, with the first dedicated CRS mission tentatively slated for September and, perhaps, CRS-2 in December.

Spacewalk ends; lost experiment no threat to station

William Harwood - CBS News

Veteran cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Roman Romanenko ventured outside the Russian segment of the International Space Station Friday, installing a space weather monitor and replacing a navigation aid before wrapping up a six-hour 38-minute spacewalk.

During a final task, Vinogradov, one of the most experienced cosmonauts in the Russian space program and at 59 the oldest man to walk in space, lost control of a materials science space exposure experiment panel after retrieving it from the hull of the station. The panel floated away behind the lab complex and was quickly lost in space.

The panel of metal samples was one of two making up the "Vinoslivost," or "endurance," experiment. It was installed on the Russian Poisk module last year to expose a variety of materials to the space environment for later analysis.

During Friday's spacewalk, the cosmonauts intended to retrieve one of the two Vinoslivost panels. But Vinogradov somehow lost his grip.

"The panel slipped off and flew away!" Vinogradov called, according to a translator. "It slipped off the ret."

"Pavel, am I understanding correctly, the panel slipped off the ret and flew away?" a Russian flight controller asked.

After discussing the panel's trajectory, someone said: "It's unfortunate. What can you do?"

Ballistics engineers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston said the panel, measuring 12-by-18 inches and weighing about 6.5 pounds, departed on a trajectory that would not result in any chance of a collision during subsequent orbits. Instead, the panel will slowly lose altitude due to atmospheric drag and eventually burn up in the atmosphere.

Wearing Russian Orlan spacesuits, the cosmonauts opened the hatch of the Pirs airlock module at 10:03 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) to officially kick off the spacewalk, the first of up to eight excursions planned for 2013.

A few minutes later, Romanenko and Vinogradov floated outside as the space station sailed into an orbital dawn 250 miles above the south Pacific Ocean.

Working smoothly through their timeline, Vinogradov and Romanenko installed an instrument package known as "Obstinofka," or "environment," on the forward part of the Zvezda command module and deployed two antenna-like detectors to study the electrically charged plasma wave environment and its interaction with the ionosphere.

They also replaced a laser retro-reflector on the back end of Zvezda that is part of a system approaching European cargo ships use to home in on the command module's aft docking port. The European Space Agency's Einstein Automated Transfer Vehicle is scheduled to arrive in June.

The third major objective of the spacewalk was to retrieve an experiment package known as "Biorisk," designed to measure the effects of microbial activity on spacecraft structures. The final task was to retrieve the Vinoslivost materials science panel, the only objective of the spacewalk that was not accomplished.

Vinogradov and Romanenko returned to the Pirs module and closed the hatch at 4:41 p.m., officially ending the spacewalk. Hatches that had been closed to isolate the Zvezda and Pirs modules from the rest of the station then were re-opened.

"I don't understand how it just slipped off," a Russian, presumably Vinogradov, said as the cosmonauts repressurized the Pirs module.

"Well, that's unfortunate, you know. There was so much work and effort invested into this panel, and it just slipped off."

This was the 167th spacewalk devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in 1998, the first EVA of 2013, the seventh for Vinogradov and the first for Romanenko, a second-generation cosmonaut whose father logged four spacewalks.

With today's outing, 73 U.S. astronauts, 25 Russian cosmonauts and 12 internaational astronauts have logged 1,055 hours and 39 minutes -- 44 days -- of station EVA time building and maintaining the station.

Up to five more Russian spacewalks are planned for 2013, along with two U.S. excursions on tap this summer.

Russian becomes world's oldest spacewalker at 59

Marcia Dunn - Associated Press

A 59-year-old Russian cosmonaut became the world's oldest spacewalker Friday, joining a much younger cosmonaut's son for maintenance work outside the International Space Station.

Pavel Vinogradov, a cosmonaut for two decades, claimed the honor as he emerged from the hatch with Roman Romanenko. But he inadvertently added to the booming population of space junk when he lost his grip on an experiment tray that he was retrieving toward the end of the 6 1/2-hour spacewalk.

The lost aluminum panel - 18 inches by 12 inches and about 6 1/2 pounds - contained metal samples. Scientists wanted to see how the samples had fared after a year out in the vacuum of space.

Otherwise, the spacewalk had gone well, with the spacewalkers installing new science equipment and replacing a navigation device needed for the June arrival of a European cargo ship.

Collecting the experiment tray was Vinogradov's last task outside.

The tray drifted toward the solar panels of the main Russian space station compartment, called Zvezda, Russian for Star. Flight controllers did not believe it struck anything, and the object was not thought to pose a safety hazard in the hours and days ahead.

"That's unfortunate," someone radioed in Russian.

Another panel of similar experiments will be collected on a future spacewalk.

This is the first of eight spacewalks to be conducted this year, most of them by Russians. Two will be led by NASA this summer.

Until Friday, the oldest spacewalker was retired NASA astronaut Story Musgrave, who was 58 when he helped fix the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993.

Romanenko, 41, is a second-generation spaceman who's following in his father's bootsteps. Retired cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko performed spacewalks back in the 1970s and 1980s. This is the son's first experience out in the vacuum of space.

Vinogradov made his seventh spacewalk; he ventured into a dark, ruptured chamber at Russia's old Mir space station in 1997 following a cargo ship collision. He arrived late last month for a six-month stay at the space station; he'll turn 60 aboard the orbiting complex in August.

The spacewalkers joked as they toiled 260 miles above the planet.

"I'm afraid of the darkness," one of them said in Russian as the space station passed over the night side of Earth.

Russian flight controllers outside Moscow oversaw Friday's action. The four other space station residents monitored the activity from inside; Canadian commander Chris Hadfield drew the short straw and had to work on a balky toilet.

Cosmonauts tackle equipment installation outside space station

Irene Klotz - Reuters

A pair of Russian cosmonauts wrapped up a 6-1/2 hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Friday, the first of up to eight outings this year to install experiments and prepare the orbital outpost for a new module, officials said.

Flight engineers Pavel Vinogradov, 59, a veteran of seven spacewalks and Roman Romanenko, 41, a second-generation cosmonaut on his debut spacewalk, floated outside the station's airlock at 10:03 a.m. EDT/1403 GMT as the station soared 262 miles over the southern Pacific Ocean.

The primary purpose of the 6-1/2 hour excursion was to set up an experiment that monitors plasma waves in Earth's ionosphere, the outer layer of the planet's atmosphere that extends to about 370 miles into space.

Instruments on two boxes attached to handrails on the forward portion of the station's Zvezda module will measure low-frequency electromagnetic radiation, which, among other triggers, has been tied to earthquakes.

At the other end of the Zvezda module, Vinogradov and Romanenko replaced a faulty laser retroreflector that is part of an automated docking system used by the European Space Agency's cargo transports. The next ship is due to launch in June.

Before heading back into the station, the cosmonauts retrieved another experiment designed to study how microbes affect spacecraft structures and whether microbes are affected by solar activity.

The day's only glitch occurred just before the men wrapped up their six-hour, 38-minute spacewalk. Vinogradov lost his grip on a science experiment that was slated to be returned to Earth. It floated away in the gravity-free world of space.

The lost aluminum panel, which measured about 18 inches by 12 inches and weighed about 6.5 pounds (3 kg), had been anchored outside the station to test how various metals wear in the harsh space environment.

It floated off in the direction of the Zvezda module's solar arrays, but engineers determined it did not hit or threaten the station, NASA mission commentator Rob Navias said.

A second panel remains attached to the outside of the station and is slated to be retrieved on a later spacewalk.

"So all is not lost," Navias said. "It was a minor fly in the ointment to what has been a successful spaceflight up that moment."

While his crewmates worked outside, station commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut, had the less glamorous task of replacing a pump separator in one of the station's toilets.

Two more spacewalks by Russian cosmonauts are scheduled for June to prepare for the arrival of a Russian laboratory and docking module that is to be launched in December.

The station, which is staffed by rotating crews of six astronauts and cosmonauts, is a $100 billion research outpost owned by the United States and Russia in partnership with Europe, Japan and Canada.

Russian Cosmonauts Complete Spacewalk

RIA Novosti

Two Russian cosmonauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) have completed a spacewalk, Russia's Mission Control Center reported on Saturday.

During their more than six-and-a-half-hour extra-vehicular activity, flight engineers Pavel Vinogradov and Roman Romanenko carried out a number of maintenance tasks and returned to the space station.

The spacewalk lasted longer than the initially planned six hours because during the installation of the Obstanovka experiment package on the station's Zvezda service module, one unit failed to switch on. Later the problem was solved.

Obstanovka will study plasma waves and the effect of space weather on the Earth's ionosphere.

The cosmonauts also retrieved the second container from the Biorisk experiment, which studied the effect of microbes on spacecraft structures, and replaced a reflector device that will facilitate the docking of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle-4 when it arrives at the orbital outpost in June.

The cosmonauts did not fulfill an additional task, to retrieve a section of the Vynoslivost experiment apparatus, as the section was lost.

Space flight veteran Vinogradov had already logged a total of 31 hours 41 minutes in open space in his previous six spacewalks, while Romanenko ventured outside the ISS for the first time in his career.

Russia to deorbit space station's Pirs module in 2013

RIA Novosti

Russia plans to deorbit and sink its Pirs docking module of the International Space Station later this year, a high-ranking official with the Russian space corporation RKK Energia said on Friday.

Alexander Kaleri, the head of the company's scientific technical center, said undocking and deorbiting Pirs will take place before a new Russian module docks with the station. Alexander Derechin, RKK Energia deputy chief designer said in late March the launch of the multirole laboratory module (MLM) is tentatively scheduled for the end of 2013.

"The final spacewalk [by Russian members of the present ISS crew] is scheduled to take place before the arrival of the new multirole laboratory module (MLM), and will be devoted to the "departure" of the Pirs docking module. It should be deorbited and sunk prior to MLM arrival," he said.

He said that Russian cosmonauts are scheduled to make six spacewalks this year, one of them is currently underway. The six-hour spacewalk by Flight Engineers Pavel Vinogradov and Roman Romanenko is due to end by midnight Moscow time [8:00 p.m. GMT].

Russia is planning to launch four new ISS modules - MLM, a node module and two science-power modules - by 2020, when the time comes to de-orbit the existing international outpost in space.

The ISS currently has five Russian-built modules: the Zvezda service module, the Zarya cargo block, the Pirs docking module, the Poisk ("Search") research module and Rassvet ("Dawn") research module.

Russia's Progress Cargo Spacecraft 'Buried' in Pacific

RIA Novosti

The Progress M-17M cargo spacecraft, which undocked from the International Space Station on April 15, was "buried" in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, Russia's Mission Control said.

"The cargo spacecraft's fragments fell into the Pacific Ocean at 19.02 Moscow time [15.02 GMT]," Mission Control said.

The Progress M-17M arrived at the orbital station on October 31 last year. It was the second spacecraft in the history of the world orbiter's operation that performed an accelerated docking with the ISS just under six hours after liftoff from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan. The first accelerated docking was performed by the M-16M space freighter in August 2012.

The Progress M-17M space freighter undocked from the Zvezda module of the Russian segment on the ISS on April 15 and operated in an autonomous mode in the next six days, conducting a series of scientific experiments under the Radar-Progress project.

The departure of Progress M-17M clears a docking port on the Zvezda module for the next Russian resupply vehicle, Progress M-19M, which will blast off aboard a Soyuz-U carrier rocket from the Baikonur space center on April 24.

With a record of more than 130 launches since 1972, Progress-family freighters remain the backbone of the Russian space cargo fleet. In addition to their main mission as cargo spacecraft, they are used to adjust the space station's orbit and conduct scientific experiments.

Sarah Brightman prepares to travel to International Space Station
Before that, singer and former star of Cats will tour here on Earth in support of new album Dreamchaser

Trish Crawford - Toronto Star

A career that began on the stage of London's West End in a production of Cats is headed for the stratosphere — really.

Sarah Brightman, whose fabled voice covers three octaves, is scheduled for space flight in 2015. She is to be part of a three-person team travelling to the International Space Station on board a Soyuz rocket for an eight-day stint.

Her love of space travel was stoked in 1969 when she watched Neil Armstrong bounce along the moon's surface, released from Apollo 11.

What the little girl in Hertfordshire, England, felt was a great sense of possibilities.

"I started to think we could do extraordinary things," Brightman said in a Toronto interview Wednesday. "I wanted to do something good with my life."

Brightman, in town to promote her space-influenced new album Dreamchaser, acknowledged it's heavily influenced by her fascination with space, exploration and seeking the unknown.

The first song is "Angel" which she says was triggered by her sense as a child of the great benevolence and safety of the sky. When she was stressed, she liked to look up at the night sky.

"It gave me a sense of safety and protection."

On the cover, she is shown in the reflection of a giant, shiny planet. Other photos show her amongst stars. The ethereal music almost sounds like it is coming from the heavens.

It was produced by Mike Hedges (U2, Dido, The Cure). Brightman picked the songs after being tested for space travel, both in Houston, Texas, and Star City, Russia.

Besides many physical tests, including extensive MRIs and blood samples, Brightman was subjected to psychological testing and tests of her computer proficiency.

Not only was she approved for training for space travel, but she might have made it as an astronaut if she had chosen that path earlier.

"It's beautiful. I am learning so much every day. I feel like a child," said Brightman, who will be launch a North American tour in September in Hamilton to promote her CD.

Months on the road will be followed by a six-month training session in Star City; she has experienced G force pressure but not weightlessness.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has already played guitar in space and interacted with students. Brightman says all of the astronauts she has talked to say it is possible to record from outer space, and she can strum and sing for students around the world.

"There is already a guitar up there," she notes.

As a UNESCO Artist for Peace ambassador, Brightman will use her space time to promote peace and sustainability. While orbiting the Earth 16 times a day, she plans to observe deserts, war zones and expanses of ocean covered in plastic.

Upon her return, Brightman will perform Space to Place concerts at UNESCO World Heritage Sites, biospheres and geo-parks.

Astronaut Hadfield's wife calls space station trip 'safest thing he's ever done'

Peter Rakobowchuk - Canadian Press

As Chris Hadfield orbits the planet once every 92 minutes aboard the International Space Station, his wife Helene doesn't spend her time worrying about her astronaut husband.

The Canadian space veteran, who is on a five-month visit to the giant laboratory, is due to return to Earth in mid-May.

Since Hadfield and two other astronauts blasted off inside a Russian Soyuz capsule last Dec. 19, his wife, a mother of three adult children, has kept herself busy.

Her activities have included attending a fitness camp in Utah and an improv class in California.

"It's been fun," Helene, 52, said from the family cottage near Sarnia, Ont. "He can't be the only one that has some adventure, right?"

In a wide-ranging interview with The Canadian Press, she said she isn't preoccupied with the possibility the worst might happen to her husband, the first Canadian to take command of the football-field-sized space lab.

"This is the safest thing he's ever done," she said, noting Hadfield had previously been a test pilot and a fighter pilot.

"But really, if I worried about it all the time I would make myself crazy."

The same can't be said for Evan Hadfield, the couple's younger son who was celebrating his 28th birthday on Friday in Darmstadt, Germany.

The Hadfield family is scattered about the planet; mother Helene lives mostly in Houston along with the families of other astronauts.

The youngest, daughter Kristin, 26, attends Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, while older brother Kyle, 30, is in Wuhan, China.

Evan, who operates a backpacking travel agency, admits he was worried about the December launch after families he knew lost their loved ones in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.

The seven astronauts on board were killed when the shuttle broke apart during re-entry into the atmosphere.

The young Hadfield said his fear is more palpable during any launch of a rocket.

"You're strapping your family member to a bomb and hoping the bomb explodes in the right direction," he added.

Evan added he isn't afraid of his father dying. His concern is that people — particularly the media — would forget the astronaut's accomplishments.

He said his father's life would be turned into the one day when he died, "and I think that's an absolute shame and it would be an insult to the years of dedicated work that he put in."

Since Hadfield's safe arrival on the space station, his son has been keeping an eye on his father's out-of-this-world tweets and acting as an Internet janitor.

"I read seven (thousand) to 13,000 comments a day," Evan said. "Maybe 10 need corrections or some sort of deletion."

But the majority who follow his dad like what the Canadian astronaut is doing and say his photos have rekindled their interest in the space industry.

As of mid-April, one month before his return on May 13, Hadfield, 53, had picked up more than 650,000 followers on Twitter.

In an interview from Dublin, Kristin provided a bit of insight into her father's personality and the man behind those highly animated news conferences from space.

"He's a big joker, he loves puns and loves word play and making jokes," she said.

"I think his public representation is similar to his private representation which is just a really hard-working, focused kind of fun, positive guy."

Her mother said the man who talks to schoolchildren and tweets from space is the real Hadfield.

"It's wonderful that people get to see that because he really is that guy," Helene said. "That's the guy I fell in love with, you know that's the guy I'm still in love with."

Kristin added the family have learned to live apart over the years but still keep in touch by email and get together at Christmas.

"We don't see each other very often at all, but we're very close to one another," she said.

Hadfield has missed a number of family occasions during his latest space adventure.

"My brother turned 30 while my dad was in space, my mom had her birthday, it was their (31st) anniversary while my dad was in space," Kristin noted.

Hadfield's current space station visit is his third trip into the cosmos.

His first space trip was in November 1995 when he visited the Russian Space Station Mir. His second voyage was a visit to the International Space Station in April 2001, when he also performed two space walks.

Hadfield's daughter says neither she nor her two brothers have considered the possibility of following their father's giant leaps into space.

"My brothers are both colour-blind, so neither of them could become astronauts — even if they wanted to — and I get motion-sick so I would be a very poor astronaut candidate," Kristin said.

"I don't think any of us have had any interest either."

She also said her dad has been finding it a bit more challenging to stay in shape.

"It was difficult for him to keep up medically with all the things that they were throwing at him," she said.

"So you know I don't think that he could expect to go into space again."

Hadfield's wife isn't so sure.

"You never know they may be looking for some older guys to go to Mars," she said, citing former NASA astronaut John Glenn.

Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962, also became the oldest person to fly in space, when he flew on a U.S. shuttle in 1998 at the age of 77.

"I mean if John Glenn could fly, then there's no saying that Chris Hadfield couldn't fly again," Helene said.

3 inducted into Astronaut Hall of Fame

Britt Kennerly - Florida Today

When Eileen Collins went on a very important job interview in 1990, she wore a suit in a shade she calls "as close to NASA blue as I could find."

The retired astronaut (yes, she got the job) went with that same color – actually, the same suit – Saturday for her induction into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame.

Along with shuttle veterans Curt Brown and Bonnie Dunbar, Collins joined the elite ranks of space exploration heroes, including Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Jim Lovell, Sally Ride and Scott Carpenter. The 2013 class is the first to include two women.

The ceremony at Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex drew hundreds of attendees, including family and friends of inductees and more than a dozen Hall of Fame members. Among them: moonwalkers Buzz Aldrin, Edgar Mitchell and Charlie Duke; veteran shuttle pilot and mission commander Robert Crippen; and Charlie Bolden, NASA administrator.

Jim and Dorina Osborne of Merritt Island got tickets for the event from a friend. Jim, a Coast Guard veteran, smiled as he mentioned fictional space hero Buck Rogers.

"When I was in 12th grade in 1951, that's when the first 3-stage rocket was developed," he said.

Each of the Class of 2013 flew aboard the shuttle Atlantis, which will be displayed just a few steps away from here starting June 29, said William Moore, CEO of the Visitors Complex.

Dunbar, 64, is a veteran of five shuttle missions, including a German Spacelab mission in 1985 that was the only flight to carry a crew of eight astronauts.

She also flew on two of the nine shuttle missions to Russia's Mir Space Station.

Hall of Fame astronaut Dan Brandenstein shared that Dunbar dreamed big, even as a child growing up on a ranch in Sunnyside, Wash. She made her aspirations clear in a letter to NASA, he said.

"I did send that letter to NASA, when I was 8 or 9, and was inspired by space," said Dunbar, who earned a doctorate in mechanical/biomedical engineering.

"We didn't have much but we certainly had great, open skies at night ... you could see the stars and the Milky Way. I was looking at the stars on a very clear, crisp night and it was like they were sucking me out. I was almost physically weak. I thought, 'This is what I've got to do for the rest of my life. This is what my passion is, and I will do whatever it takes to make it happen, like Flash Gordon.'"

A veteran of six shuttle missions, Brown, 57, commanded Discovery on the flight that returned legendary Mercury astronaut John Glenn to space at age 77, almost 40 years after Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth.

Brown, a retired Air Force colonel, left the crowd howling with laughter with a story about calling his mother to tell her about his upcoming shuttle flights.

For the first four flights, she answered with only, "Well, if that's what you want to do, I support you 100 percent."

But it was a different story in 1998. Once again, Brown called his mother, who interrupted to ask, "Are you on the flight with John Glenn?"

"I wish John could've been here — that would've meant a lot to me," Brown said. "He was a wonderful crew member."

Collins, 56, also a retired Air Force colonel, was described by Hall of Fame astronaut Bob Cabana as "one of the nicest, most diligent, studious, organized, by the book, dedicated astronauts I've ever known."

Collins, the first woman to pilot and the first to command a space shuttle, piloted Discovery on a 1995 mission to rendezvous and make a close approach to the Mir Space Station, and then the sixth shuttle-Mir docking mission in 1997.

In 1999, Collins commanded Columbia on a mission to deploy NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

"We always need to remember the Challenger crew and the Columbia crew," said Collins, who in 2005 commanded the first post-Columbia test flight, returning the United States to human space exploration after a 2 1/2-year hiatus.

"It's hard for us to remember that. It's hard for us to lose our friends, who gave their lives in the name of space exploration. The lessons learned were hard for us ... but those lessons still apply. We need to stay humble. Be good listeners. Think creatively. Respect the hardware."

Along with urging young people to consider college educations in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, Collins asked the crowd to spread the word about Atlantis going on display.

"It will remind us of the great successes of the shuttle program," she said.

And that suit that's hung in her closet throughout her triumphs on Earth and in space?

No, she won't be giving it to the Hall of Fame to go on display with other astronaut-donated memorabilia.

"I almost took it to Goodwill," she said, laughing.

"It's a nice suit. But just because it has special meaning, I'm not going to donate it."

Astronaut Hall of Fame adds space shuttle vets Brown, Collins and Dunbar

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command the space shuttle, entered the ranks of the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame wearing the same two-piece blue suit that she wore to her astronaut selection interview nearly 25 years ago.

"It is really old and it is little bit tighter on me, but it is the same suit I wore for the interview and I saved it," Collins told reporters on Saturday, just before attending the ceremony that saw her and her fellow astronauts Curt Brown and Bonnie Dunbar enshrined into the Hall of Fame at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. "It is as close to 'NASA blue' as I could find at the time."

The twelfth group of space shuttle veterans to be inducted into the Hall, the 2013 class was the first to include more women than men. Collins and Dunbar, the latter a mission specialist and payload commander who flew five times to space, were honored just two months shy of the 30 year anniversary of the first American woman flying in space, the late Sally Ride, who was inducted in 2003.

Two dozen of the Hall of Fame's previous honorees turned out Saturday to welcome Brown, Collins and Dunbar into their ranks, including Apollo moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, first shuttle pilot Robert Crippen and astronaut Charles Bolden, who today serves as NASA Administrator.

"Congratulations to the three incredible inductees," Bolden said.

Brown, Collins and Dunbar are the second group of shuttle veterans to be chosen to enter the Hall since the 30-year winged-orbiter program came to an end in 2011. To have been eligible for this year's class, astronauts had to have launched on their first mission in 1995 or earlier. They also needed to be retired from flight status as a commander, pilot or mission specialist for at least five years, be a U.S. citizen, and have orbited the Earth at least once.

Proud and humbled

Brown, who flew six shuttle flights, including commanding the 1998 mission that returned John Glenn to space more nearly four decades after he became the first American to orbit the Earth, described being inducted into the Hall of Fame as "overwhelming."

"I never imagined as a small kid wanting to fly that I would ever be in this position," Brown told reporters. "First of all, I was very lucky to have the shuttle missions that I had and today, to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, is just beyond belief."

"I was so happy to have my first mission back in 1992. You never know if you are going to have a second one," he said. "And then I got my second one, and my third one and my fourth one and then as you all know, my infamous mission, STS-95, with John Glenn on board. The joke is 'Was John on your mission or was I on his mission?'"

"I think I was the commander of that flight," Brown teased, "but that will definitely be in my memory for a long time."

Dunbar also cited Glenn, who was one of her role models for becoming an astronaut.

"You have to remember my role models were men, so I was watching John Glenn and Alan Shepard and also the engineers I read about [like Mercury spacecraft designer] Max Faget," Dunbar said. "What I am really proud about is that our country decided that it was important to include women in the exploration of space."

Dunbar, whose five flights included the first space shuttle docking to the Russian Mir space station, said she was "deeply honored" by her enshrinement in the Hall of Fame.

"There's probably no other event that would be so special than to be recognized by their peers," she said. "Humbled, but very honored."

Astronauts on display

In addition to celebrating the new Hall of Fame astronauts at Saturday's public ceremony, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex also honors the inductees in a museum dedicated to the space flyers' lives and accomplishments. The Hall of Fame facility is currently located off-site of the main visitor center, but plans are in place to soon move the museum to the visitor complex's grounds and expand its displays to include the new shuttle honorees.

With 85 members, the Astronaut Hall of Fame exhibits the world's largest collection of astronaut memorabilia.

For the 2013 inductees, choosing what to display presents a new challenge.

"I am trying to get over the initial shock of being in the Hall," Brown said. "I don't know [what items I will display], I will have to go back and think about that [but] that is an interesting problem to have."

Collins shared that she has "quite a collection" to choose from, and hoped her display would represent the missions she flew, as well as perhaps "a personal touch."

"I have my clothes, my personal things, and I have quite a large collection of shuttle engineering drawings, training manuals, backup Flight Data Files that did not fly in space — I saved all of it," Collins said. "I can't even tell you how much I have but it is quite a bit."

But, Collins said, she will not be donating the suit that she wore to her astronaut interview and her induction.

"I'm not going to donate it," she commented. "It is a nice suit but just because it has special meaning, I'm not going to donate it."

Manned Mars Mission May Use Night Vision Gear in 2018

Mike Wall - Space.com

The Red Planet may have a distinct greenish tinge when the first people to see it up close arrive there five years from now.

The nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation aims to launch two astronauts on a historic flyby mission around the Red Planet in January 2018. The explorers will be on Mars' night side when they make their closest approach in August of that year, so the mission team is considering outfitting them with some high-tech night vision gear — which would likely cast the Red Planet in a rather green light.

"One of the guys we work with is a military helicopter pilot, and he's talking about night vision goggles," team member John Carrico, of Applied Defense Solutions, Inc., said during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations working group earlier this month. "We're trying to figure out what we would be able to see."

Inspiration Mars hopes its "Mission for America" — which will fly by the Red Planet, not orbit or land on it — aids humanity's expansion out into the solar system and inspires the next generation of American scientists and engineers.

The group is working hard to meet the January 2018 launch window, which will allow a relatively quick 501-day trek to the Red Planet and back. The next such opportunity won't come until 2031, Inspiration Mars officials say.

While it would perhaps be preferable for Mars to be in daylight when the crewmembers zoom just 100 miles (160 kilometers) above its surface, the fast-track mission's geometry makes such a scenario impossible, team members said.

"The opportunities for flybys on the far side or on the near side [of Mars] are different," said Mike Loucks of the Space Exploration Engineering Corp. The 2018 opportunity, he added, "just requires us to go on the other side, and that's the other side from the sun … On this one, there isn't any way around that."

But the unprecedented Martian view should be spectacular regardless, both from relatively far away and closer up, officials said.

"You'll see the deep shadows as you approach, because you're kind of seeing the dawn. So we think it will be very visually stunning that way." Carrico said. "You do go through the dark, so we're thinking about, well, what could we do there? What can we see with some of these night vision goggles?"

"So we have actually talked quite a bit about what we can do there," he added.

Orbital in orbit

Charles Babbage - The Economist (Opinion)

On May 25th 2012, a California firm called SpaceX made history by carrying out the first privately run space mission to the International Space Station (ISS). It was a vindication for NASA's decision to outsource its ISS missions to the private sector. Still, purists could argue that something was missing: a proper market has competition, but SpaceX was the only firm capable of flying such a mission.

That may be about to change. On April 21st, at NASA's Wallops flight centre in Virginia, another rocket built by another firm—Virginia-based Orbital Sciences—lifted off from the pad, after several delays. A launch attempt on April 17th was scrubbed after a data cable came loose. Another try on April 20th had to be abandoned because of high winds. This time, though, nothing went wrong. A few minutes after the launch, the Antares rocket was safely in orbit, prompting cheers and sighs of relief on the ground.

Admittedly, the flight was only an initial test. The Antares will go nowhere near the ISS itself. Nor is it carrying one of Orbital's Cygnus space capsules, which, if all goes according to plan, will one day perform the actual docking with the ISS. But it is an important step: if everything continues to go well, then a Cygnus test flight will take place later this summer, and Orbital's first ISS resupply mission could happen before 2014.

The firm has a $1.9-billion contract with NASA to fly eight cargo missions to the station. That makes it pricier than SpaceX, which will fly 12 missions (two of which it has already completed) for $1.6 billion. But the competition ought to be a good thing for both companies. Indeed, it is hard to think of two more different firms. SpaceX is the flag-bearer for the glamorous "New Space" industry. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, a Silicon Valley entrepeneur who made his name with PayPal, and who claims that his eventual goal is to enable crewed missions to Mars.

Orbital Sciences, by contrast, has been around since 1982. It has significantly more than 500 missions under its belt, and no starry-eyed dreams of manned interplanetary travel. That has led to some unkind comments about "dinosaurs" from New Space fans (the Antares' engines are derived from those originally developed half a century ago for the Soviet Union's abortive moon programme). Appropriately enough, the Antares itself is a ponderous beast, taking more than a minute after launch to break the sound barrier, which is slow for a rocket. But once it had cleared the launchpad, it performed perfectly. And that, ultimately, is all that matters.

END

Keep the shuttle flying

Monday, April 22, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - April 22, 2013 and JSC Today

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

Blog Archive