SpaceX Hopeful For a Successful Test Flight Today

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sits poised on Cape Canaveral to begin a new era in space flight, as the company received their final clearance from the U.S. Air Force to make their first launch attempt today, June 4, 2010. The launch window is from 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. EDT (1500 and 1900 GMT) (a� live webcast will be available here).


The importance of this flight test is not lost on anyone at SpaceX or the space community, as NASA's new plan rolled out by President Obama depends largely on the  [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art20669/spacex-hopeful-for-a-successful-test-flight-today.html

Space X to launch Falcon 9 at 15:00 UT today

The private rocket company SpaceX plans to have its first test launch of the Falcon 9 rocket today! The launch window opens at 15:00 UT (11:00 a.m. Eastern time), and lasts for four hours. They will start a webcast of the launch at 14:40 UT. The ultimate goal is to get the bird into orbit, but they have a number of flight milestones to achieve.

On the rocket will be their qualification version of the Dragon payload capsule. This allows them to test both the rocket and the capsule simultaneously.

Weather looks pretty good for liftoff as I write this, though there’s a 40% chance of delays. They also have a launch window for the same times reserved for the next day, Saturday, June 5. Stay tuned, and check the SpaceX site for updates!

Image credit: Chris Thompson/SpaceX

Full story at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BadAstronomyBlog/~3/nMJok-AKt60/

Hubble Catches Stars on the Move

There are surprising signs of unrest in a massive cluster of stars. By comparing observations made ten years apart of the nebula NGC 3603, astronomers have for the first time measured the tiny motions of several hundred young stars.


The results were surprising: this massive star cluster has not yet settled down. The stars? velocities are independent of their mass and thus still reflect the conditions from when the cluster formed, about a million years ago.

Stars are born when a giganti [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art20627/hubble-catches-stars-on-the-move.html

Light-Duty Day for Station Crew

The new Expedition 24 crew aboard the International Space Station had a light-duty workday Wednesday following the Expedition 23 crew?s return to Earth Tuesday.

Commander Alexander Skvortsov and Flight Engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Mikhail Kornienko shifted their sleep schedules, waking at 9:30 a.m. EDT, then had time slated to perform some routine maintenance tasks along with their daily physical exercise.



Expedition 23 Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineers T.J. Creamer an [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art20631/light-duty-day-for-station-crew.html

Mars 'expedition' starts in Moscow

MOSCOW - Six people will take part in the experiment in the Mars-500 module, which will simulate all aspects of a journey to the Red Planet, with a 250-day trip there, a 30-day stay on its surface, and a 240-day return flight, Pavel Morgunov said.

The exploration of Mars has been an important part of the space exploration programs of the Soviet Union, the United States, Europe, and Japan. It has become a focus of the U.S. space program as President Barack Obama scrapped the lunar program earl [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art20635/mars-expedition-starts-in-moscow.html

Followup: Rep. Ralph Hall?s unbelievable statement on science funding bill

Hey, remember Congressman Ralph Hall (R-TX) who inserted a totally non sequitur amendment into a science research and education funding bill in a blatant partisan ploy to derail the bill and make Democrats look bad? And remember how the Democrats tried to compromise, removing almost $40 billion of the funding from the bill, but Republicans still stonewalled?

After the Democrats managed to pass the bill despite this, guess what the honorable Ralph Hall had to say. Go on. Guess.

Did you guess this?

"I am disappointed that my Democratic colleagues resorted to using a procedural tactic to defeat Republican changes that would have saved over $40 billion and restored the original COMPETES priority of basic research," science committee ranking member Ralph Hall said in a press release after the vote.

Oh, Representative Hall. It wasn’t enough for you to accuse the Democrats of blatant and transparent partisan parliamentary tactics when they were responding to your very own blatant and transparent partisan parliamentary tactics, was it? So you went ahead and blamed them for not saving the $40 billion that they offered to cut to make you happy in the first place. Instead of taking that compromise, you slammed the door in their face.

Oh, that wacky, wacky Representative Hall. Hyperpartisan hypocritical hackery doesn’t look good on anyone, sir. I sometimes think the Emperor would be better off just coming out and saying he’s naked, rather than trying to sell us on his new clothes.

Full story at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BadAstronomyBlog/~3/c-zFe1OAedI/

Preparations For First Falcon 9 Test Launch

SpaceX is now targeting Friday, June 4th for its first test launch attempt of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle.

The primary schedule driver for the first Falcon 9 test launch has been certification of the flight termination system (FTS). The FTS ensures that Air Force Range safety officials can command the destruction of the vehicle should it stray from its designated flight path.



The successful liftoff of the recent GPS satellite launch last Thursday freed up the necessary range resources t [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art20606/preparations-for-first-falcon-9-test-launch.html

Russia needs long-term space strategy to remain a cosmic superpower

WASHINGTON - "Unfortunately, Russia has no long-term space strategy. For some 15 or maybe 20 more years Russia will remain a space superpower, but after this period, Russia will become a second-league space power if a long-term space strategy is not adopted," Baturin, a Lomonosov Moscow State University professor, said during his speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington on Tuesday.

Baturin was talking about his vision of space development in the next 100 years, which he had presented [...]

Full story at http://spacefellowship.com/news/art20610/russia-needs-long-term-space-strategy-to-remain-a-cosmic-superpower.html