26 June 2012
Packing Up Tiangong
The first crewed expedition to China's Tiangong 1 space laboratory is drawing to a close. Soon, the astronauts will board the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft that carried them to Tiangong 1 for the return to Earth.
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26 June 2012
China to send foreign astronauts to space with its spacecraft someday
Wu Ping, Spokeswoman for China's Manned Space Programme and Deputy Director of CMSEO, commented during a press conference held by China's State Council Information Office (SCIO) in Beijing on the occassion of the manual space docking mission between the Shenzhou 9 manned spacecraft and the Tiangong 1 lab module on 24 June 2012. She said that it is believed that China will be able to train foreign astronauts with its own space technology and send them to space by Shenzhou spacecraft someday.
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26 June 2012
China invests some 19 billion yuan in space docking missions
Wu Ping, Spokeswoman for China's Manned Space Programme and Deputy Director of CMSEO, confirmed that the budget will cover the ongoing Shenzhou 9 manned docking mission, it covered the previous missions conducted by Shenzhou 7 and Shenzhou 8 spaceships, and will cover as well the mission to be carried out by the Shenzhou 10 spaceship next year. Since starting the manned space missions in 1992, Wu said, the country has spent another 20 billion yuan in investment in manned space missions carried out by Shenzhou 6 and previous spaceships.
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26 June 2012
XCOR and Excalibur Almaz sign MOU for suborbital training services
The agreement signed in conjunction with the Royal Aeronautical Society's 3rd European Space Tourism Conference calls for XCOR to provide suborbital flight familiarization and training using its Lynx vehicle for Excalibur Almaz crews traveling on Earth orbit, circumlunar, and deep space missions.
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26 June 2012
Antares Added to NASA Launch Contract
NASA has added Orbital Sciences Corp.’s Antares rocket to the NASA Launch Services (NLS) 2 contract the agency awarded the Dulles, Va.-based company and several other launch providers in 2010.
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24 June 2012
China conducts first manual space docking
The Chinese spacecraft Shenzhou 9 on Sunday successfully completed the country's first manual docking in orbit, a milestone in an ambitious programme to build a space station by the end of the decade.
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22 June 2012
Boeing Cleared To Begin Design Phase for SLS Core
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., said June 21 that the Space Launch System’s (SLS) cryogenic core stage recently passed its first major technical review, clearing prime contractor Boeing Space Exploration to begin the heavy-lift rocket’s design phase.
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22 June 2012
That's No Lab, It's a Space Station
Tiangong 1 is described by its Chinese builders as a "space laboratory". This term is has been widely adopted by journalists and space analysts. It's probably not inaccurate to call the Tiangong 1 spacecraft, which has received its first crew of astronauts, a laboratory, for scientific experiments are certainly being conducted there. But does this term fully describe Tiangong 1?
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22 June 2012
Russian Cosmonauts Have 'Alien Instructions'
The UN has developed detailed instructions in case of a first contact with aliens, Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka said answering a question on Chinese TV.
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21 June 2012
UK Space Agency To Build 4 Instruments for Solar Orbiter Mission
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21 June 2012
Researchers find evidence of ice content at the moon's south pole
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20 June 2012
NASA Banking on Commercial Crew To Grow ISS Population
NASA is banking on its Commercial Crew Program to increase international space station (ISS) crew capacity to seven from the current six — something that could happen as soon as 2017 if Congress is willing to dramatically increase the program’s budget, the agency’s top human spaceflight official said.
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18 June 2012
First astronauts enter orbiting China space module
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18 June 2012
NASA, FAA Sign Agreement on Human Spaceflight Regulation
When privately operated spacecraft begin ferrying NASA astronauts to the international space station, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will license launch and re-entry but leave it to NASA to decide whether the vehicles are fit to dock with the station and carry astronauts in the first place, the heads of the two agencies said June 18 in a joint press briefing.
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18 June 2012
Grand Finish For X-37B
After a marathon 15-month mission in orbit, the second X-37B spaceplane has finally landed. Launched by the US Air Force on a semi-secret mission, the mission has apparently flown a successful mission, judging from the clear, on-the-record statements issued by the USAF.
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18 June 2012
Kazakhstan gives Russia the go-ahead for Baikonur launches
Kazakhstan has given Russia permission to carry out launches from the Baikonur space center, Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov said on Friday. The delay has already prevented Russia from launching a European weather monitoring satellite on May 23, and a cluster launch of Belarusian, Canadian, German and two Russian satellites on June 7.
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18 June 2012
Flying to space is also women's work: Russian cosmonaut
There are no jobs specifically for men or women, so flying to space is also women's work, former Soviet female cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya told Xinhua in an interview. "Working in space depends on a person's training, psychological and physical status, self-command, personal aims, and so on. If a person is a professional, the gender makes no difference," Savitskaya said.
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15 June 2012
NASA Plans Contribution to European Jupiter Mission
NASA plans to make a $100 million science contribution to the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) program, a large-scale science mission planned by the European Space Agency (ESA) that will launch in 2022 to observe the gas giant and its moons.
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15 June 2012
Data From Voyager 1 Points To Interstellar Future
Data from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft indicate that the venerable deep-space explorer has encountered a region in space where the intensity of charged particles from beyond our solar system has markedly increased. Voyager scientists looking at this rapid rise draw closer to an inevitable but historic conclusion - that humanity's first emissary to interstellar space is on the edge of our solar system.
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14 June 2012
ESA Agrees To Fund ExoMars Until Year's End
The European Space Agency (ESA) agreed June 14 to provide another tranche of funding for its ExoMars robotic mission to Mars with Russia, keeping the mission on life support until the end of the year, an ESA official said.
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14 June 2012
NASA's leader visits SpaceX headquarters
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13 June 2012
Varied Views from the ISS
While the images and videos astronauts capture from station are impressive for their beauty, there is real science behind the data astronauts collect and share through photography. Their imaging efforts can also be part of the Crew Earth Observations, or CEO, investigation on the station.
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12 June 2012
International team starts sea-based asteroid drills
An international team of aquanauts has begun training at a lab deep in the Atlantic Ocean for an eventual visit to an asteroid, NASA said. The scientists, astronauts and engineers making up the 16th excursion of NASA's Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) come from the United States and the space agencies of Japan and Europe.
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12 June 2012
Virgin Galactic Opens New Office
Virgin Galactic opened a new office in Las Cruces, N.M., that will complement the commercial spaceline's growing operations team at Spaceport America and enhance the local economy through jobs, local tourism and hospitality spending. Established in their new location at the LEED-certified Green Offices Building, Virgin Galactic will bring new employment opportunities to the region, with plans to fill several positions in diverse roles as the company ramps up for commercial operations at Spaceport America.
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11 June 2012
NASA's Mars rover zeroes in on August landing
NASA's Mars rover, nicknamed Curiosity, is zeroing in on its August landing on the Red Planet and aims to touch down closer than expected to its mountain target, the US space agency said Monday. With a mission to use its roving toolkit to drill for signs that microbial life may have once existed on Mars, the rover is now set to land about four miles (6.5 kilometers) closer to the mountain than initially planned.
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FOR FURTHER READING
25 June 2012
The space industry grapples with satellite servicing
There’s growing interest in the concept of robotic refueling and repair of satellites, including several ongoing commercial and government efforts. Jeff Foust reports that while many focus on the technology of satellite servicing, the business and regulatory challenges may be the bigger concern.
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25 June 2012
Between the darkness and the light
The decision by the NRO in the 1970s to use the Space Shuttle was a controversial one within the intelligence community. Dwayne Day examines the insights from a newly declassified interview with the NRO’s director about that move to the shuttle.
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25 June 2012
The value of Mars
Critics of proposals for the human exploration of Mars argue that the money spent on that effort would be better used for terrestrial priorities. Frank Stratford claims that a human Mars mission, properly structured, may be the best, and perhaps only, way to help support those other needs.
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25 June 2012
East-west space race or space cooperation?
China has achieved another set of milestones in its human spaceflight program with this month’s launch of Shenzhou-9 and its docking with the Tiangong-1 module. Ayodele Faiyetole wonders if this achievement, and other recent space developments, foretells a new era of international cooperation or competition in space.
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18 June 2012
The Stacksat saga story
There is considerable interest today in using small satellites, or smallsats, to support military and other missions, but the Defense Department’s interest in smallsats is hardly new. Dwayne Day describes the development of a smallsat program nearly a quarter-century ago than ran into a number of problems before ever getting off the ground.
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18 June 2012
And that’s the way it was in space
Walter Cronkite was not only a popular evening news anchor, he was for many the de facto voice of spaceflight during the early Space Age thanks to his detailed coverage of NASA missions on CBS. Jeff Foust looks for insights into Cronkite’s coverage of, and interest in, space contained in a new biography of the legendary journalist.
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18 June 2012
Feedback loop: John Hickman talks to author Allen Steele about science fiction and space as a frontier
For years science fiction author Allen Steele has offered his take on how humanity might spread out into the solar system and beyond. John Hickman talks to Steele for his thoughts on space settlement, governance, and the interplay between science fiction and fact.
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18 June 2012
Code of Conduct: corrections, updates, and thoughts going forward
In the latest update on the development of a code of conduct for outer space activities, Michael Listner corrects some earlier misconceptions about dueling code proposals and prospects for progress on development of an international code later this year.
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