NASA's Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research Program (CRuSR) has awarded a total of approximately $475,000 to Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwall, Texas and Masten Space Systems of Mojave, Calif. The awards will allow the two companies to perform test flights of their experimental vehicles near the edge of space. The flights will demonstrate the capabilities of new vehicles to provide recoverable launch and testing of small payloads going to "near-space," the region of Earth's atmosphere between 65,000 and 350,000 feet. The CRuSR program fosters the development of commercial reusable transportation to near space. The overall goal of the program is regular, frequent and predictable access to near-space at a reasonable cost with easy recovery of intact payloads.
"These two awards are just the beginning of an innovative teaming relationship with industry to provide affordable access to the edge of space while evaluating the microgravity environment for future science and technology experiments," said NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "CRuSR represents the sort of government-commercial partnership that will facilitate near-space access at affordable costs." The CRuSR awards will fund two flights this fall and one this winter of Armadillo's Super-Mod vehicle from Spaceport America in New Mexico. The first two flights will be to an altitude of approximately nine miles and the third to approximately 25 miles.
The Masten Space Systems' Xaero vehicle will make four flights this winter from the Mojave Spaceport in California. Two flights will reach an altitude of approximately three miles and two others will be to approximately 18 miles, with an engine shutdown during flight. Both launch vehicles will be modified to mount three antennas for the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) payload. ADS-B-equipped vehicles can determine their position using global navigation satellite systems. The vehicles can periodically broadcast position data and other relevant information to ground stations and other similarly equipped aircraft. In NASA's fiscal 2011 Space Technology Program, CRuSR will become an integral part of the Flight Opportunities Program within the Office of the Chief Technologist.
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NASA is challenging high school teams to design software to program small satellites aboard the International Space Station. The competition centers on the Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites, or SPHERES. SPHERES are bowling ball-sized spherical satellites used to test maneuvers for spacecraft performing autonomous rendezvous and docking. Three of these satellites fly inside the station's cabin. Each is self-contained with power, propulsion, computing and navigation equipment. The Zero-Robotics investigation, run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., is designed to inspire future scientists and engineers.
The teams are asked to address challenges of satellite docking, assembly and flight formation. The 2010 Zero-Robotics Challenge expands on a limited pilot program performed in fall 2009. This expanded pilot, called HelioSPHERES, will involve high schools from across the country during the 2010 - 2011 academic year. This new education program builds critical engineering skills for students, such as problem solving, design thought process, operations training, teamwork and presentation skills. The first 100 high school teams to register by Sept. 10 will be selected for the competition. Their full proposals are due by Sept. 14. Twenty teams selected from the 100 candidates will compete using simulations and ground-based testing at MIT.
The software of the top 10 winners will be sent to the station, and an astronaut aboard the orbiting laboratory will program the SPHERES satellites to run the students' tests. MIT's Space Systems Laboratory developed the SPHERES program to provide the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, NASA and other researchers with a long-term test bed for validating technologies critical to the operation of future satellites, docking missions and satellite autonomous maneuvers. SPHERES have been used by many organizations, including other government agencies and graduate student research groups, since the program began in 2006. The satellites provide opportunities to test a wide range of hardware and software at an affordable cost.
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It was a perfect STORRM. On Tuesday, July 20, NASA and its industry partners Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., successfully demonstrated a new sensor technology that will make it easier and safer for spacecraft to rendezvous and dock to the International Space Station. This new docking navigation system prototype consists of an eye-safe lidar Vision Navigation Sensor, or VNS, a high-definition docking camera, as well as the avionics and flight software. Both sensors will provide real-time three-dimensional images to the crew with a resolution 16 times higher than the current space shuttle sensors.
This next generation system also provides data from as far away as three miles three times the range of the current shuttle navigation sensor. "You are looking at the future of rendezvous and docking right here," said David L. Taylor, president and CEO of Ball Aerospace, as he welcomed dozens of NASA and industry engineers to the demonstration. The hardware will be tested by astronauts aboard STS-134, the last planned shuttle mission, currently scheduled for February 2011, as part of the Sensor Test for Orion Relative Navigation Risk Mitigation (STORRM) Development Test Objective (DTO).
On Flight Day 11 of the mission, the shuttle crew will conduct an unprecedented on-orbit maneuver; they will undock from the space station and then re-rendezvous with the station on an Orion-like approach. Five retro-reflectors, which will serve as targets for the VNS, were installed on the station's visual docking target during the STS-131 shuttle mission in May. The demonstration, held at Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colo. offered the STORRM team the chance to operate the flight hardware for personnel who will be supporting STORRM during the mission the astronaut crew, flight director, and mission operations personnel.
Engineers have conducted a fuel tank check of one of NASA's GRAIL mission spacecraft (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory), scheduled for launch in 2011. Confirming the size and fit of manufactured components is one of the steps required prior to welding the spacecraft's fuel tanks into the propulsion system's feed lines. The image was taken on June 29, 2010, during the propulsion subsystem assembly and integration effort in the Space Support Building clean room at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver.
The GRAIL mission will fly twin spacecraft (spacecraft "A" and "B") in tandem orbits around the moon for several months to measure its gravity field in unprecedented detail. The mission will also answer longstanding questions about Earth's moon, and provide scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed. The mission also will reply longstanding questions about Earth's moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.
Scientists will use the gravity field information from the two satellites to X-ray the moon from top to core to expose the moon's subsurface structures and, indirectly, its thermal history.The measurement technique that GRAIL will use was pioneered by the combined U.S.-German Earth observing Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, mission launched in 2002. The GRACE satellites measure gravity changes connected to the movement of mass within Earth, such as the melting of ice at the poles and changes in ocean transmission. As with GRACE and GRAIL spacecraft will be launch on a single launch vehicle.
NASA and Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company paid tribute to the workforce who built the external tanks for the space shuttle fleet on Thursday at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. ET-138, the last newly manufactured tank to roll out of the assembly building, served as a backdrop for speakers praising the employees. "This is a bittersweet moment for everyone who's been part of this great and dedicated NASA and Lockheed Martin external tank production team," said John Honeycutt, manager of the External Tank Project Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
"ET-138 is the last in a series of tanks that has provided increasingly safer launches of space shuttles." Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company of Denver was awarded a contract in 1973 to build the external tanks. Through almost 30 years of shuttle flights, Lockheed Martin workers at Michoud have built and delivered 134 flight tanks to the Space Shuttle Program. "Today is an emotional one for us," said Mark Bryant, vice president, Lockheed Martin External Tank Project at Michoud. "We have worked hard to build safe tanks for NASA, and I think this last one can be the safest yet. Yes, we've persevered through the challenges of Return to Flight and Katrina.
Those events made us stronger, and as a result, we have developed better, more efficient ways to build even safer tanks."Following the ceremony, a traditional New Orleans brass band and hundreds of handkerchief-waving employees escorted ET-138 on its rollout to Michoud Harbor. The tank was scheduled to depart after the ceremony aboard the Pegasus barge on a six-day, 900-mile sea journey to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Two tugs will tow Pegasus to the Port of Gulfport where Freedom Star, NASA's solid rocket booster recovery ship, is waiting to tow the tank to Kennedy.
NASA has awarded contracts to three companies and one university for crew robotics and vehicle equipment work. The combined total value of the four contracts is not to exceed $70 million. The companies selected are ATK Space Systems of Brigham City, Utah; Oceaneering International and Wyle Integrated Science and Engineering, both of Houston; and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The cost-plus-fixed-fee, performance-based contracts run through June 2015.
The contracts involve spacewalk activity equipment, spacecraft flight crew equipment, crew health and conditioning systems, spacewalk robotics equipment, environmental control and life support equipment, active thermal control systems, avionics equipment and ground support systems. The equipment is for use in the space shuttle, International Space Station and other advanced development programs.The contracts with ATK, Oceaneering and Wyle were awarded as a result of a full and open competition. The University of Alabama contract was awarded based on a competition open to educational and nonprofit institutions. The work will be conducted at contractor and subcontractor facilities.
NASA's Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research Program (CRuSR) has awarded a total of approximately $475,000 to Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwall, Texas and Masten Space Systems of Mojave, Calif. The awards will allow the two companies to perform test flights of their experimental vehicles near the edge of space. The flights will demonstrate the capabilities of new vehicles to provide recoverable launch and testing of small payloads going to "near-space," the region of Earth's atmosphere between 65,000 and 350,000 feet. The CRuSR program fosters the development of commercial reusable transportation to near space. The overall goal of the program is regular, frequent and predictable access to near-space at a reasonable cost with easy recovery of intact payloads.
