The past year saw the rise of two new commercial space launch
ventures, and new achievements for a pair of established
companies.... most notably SpaceX, which finally accomplished its
first wholly-successful Falcon 1 rocket launch ahead of winning a
lucrative NASA contract.
Speaking of the space agency, NASA sent four shuttle missions
into orbit, significantly expanding the International Space
Station... and its Mars Phoenix lander sent valuable new data from
the surface of the Red Planet. Alas, the year ends on some
discordant notes, as the viability and future of the troubled
Constellation program remains in limbo, while the technical merits
of the Ares I booster rocket remain in question.
Calling a planned White House investigation into the
backgrounds of NASA scientists and engineers a "broad inquisition,"
the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, CA rules the Bush Administration has no right to
conduct such checks
A new, innovative, and very cool (and, somewhat ominous)
"micro-air vehicle" makes its first flight. The RoboSwift -- developed by aerospace
engineering students at Delft University of Technology, in
cooperation with the Experimental Zoology Group of Wageningen
University, Netherlands -- later attempted to imitate its feathered
namesake, with less-than stellar results
"Konichiwa, domo arigato and banzai!" Those
were the words of STS-123 Commander Dominic Gorie, after NASA
mission controllers announced everything was ready for the
nighttime launch of the shuttle Endeavour. The shuttle blasted off
March 11, carrying the first of three components of Japan's new
massive "Kibo" laboratory
In remarks that irk the scientific communities, NASA
Administrator Michael Griffin says the Apollo lunar program "did
more damage than good" -- not exactly what "The Right Stuff" was made
of, over 45 years ago
The verdict is still out on whether a new shuttle heat-shield tile repair method
will prove to be the kind of solution NASA has been looking for...
but early results are very promising, following on-orbit testing by
the STS-123 crew
XCOR Aerospace, which built and tested the first rocket-powered
racing aircraft for Rocket Racing, "welcomes" the addition of Armadillo Aerospace
as an additional rocket propulsion supplier to the
League.
Expedition 16 crewmembers Commander Peggy Whitson and cosmonaut
Yuri Malenchenko, along with South Korean 'tourinaut' So-yeon Yi,
survive a harrowing reentry in their Soyuz TMA-11 capsule. The Russian spacecraft reentered the atmosphere in a
ballistic trajectory, landing hard 300 miles away from
the target zone.
A report issued by
NASA's Inspector General reveals the board established to review
development and construction of the agency's upcoming Orion manned
spacecraft includes six employees of companies tasked with building
the capsule... a violation of both federal law, and common-sense
ethics
AIAA Executive Director Robert Dickman testifies before the
Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that, with
a funding level of only a fraction of a percent of the annual
federal budget, NASA is unable to adequately fund all of its necessary
programs, and that this is putting America’s
overall technical strength and long-term economic growth at
risk
The crew members of space shuttle Discovery spend their last
full day in orbit getting ready for their return home, and the end
of the STS-124 mission... but not without a bit of drama
A NASA memo calling for a few good men and women to make an
important donation to its Constellation space program -- urine --
is leaked to an agency watchdog site, and
picked up with some measurable glee by the Associated Press
Three attempts... three failures. No matter
the reasons, that's the tally after the third unsuccessful launch
of a Falcon 1 rocket by Hawthorne, CA-based SpaceX
China successfully launches its third manned spaceflight, sending three taikonauts onboard the Shenzhou 7 into
orbit in a dramatic nighttime launch from Jiuquan
Satellite Launch Center in the desert of northwest China's Gansu
province
After three losses, it's all smiles for the gang at SpaceX... as
the company's fourth Falcon I rocket performs flawlessly in a
10-minute ride to the heavens, becoming the first
privately-developed liquid fueled launch vehicle to reach
orbit
NASA revises its estimate of job losses following the
retirement of its shuttle fleet to 4,500 positions by 2011, not the earlier estimate of 6,400 by 2012.
While 4,500 still sounds bad, the number doesn't account for a
thousand new jobs involved in the Constellation program which will
follow the shuttle
Noted space historian John Logsdon writes in a Washington Post
op-ed the benefits of retiring the shuttle fleet on-time in
2010 outweigh the distasteful aspects of relying on
Russia for space access over the next five years
Space takes a giant leap closer to Earth, with
the launch of a new joint commercial spaceflight venture between
Rocket Racing, Inc. (RRI), Armadillo Aerospace and the government
of New Mexico
NASA's high-performance J-2X rocket engine --
a modern derivative of the same motor that launched Saturn V
rockets to the moon 40 years ago -- successfully completes its
critical design review
Thwarted earlier this year by a series of technical problems
onboard the orbital observatory, NASA announces the space shuttle
Atlantis' STS-125 mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope has been rescheduled to launch May 12,
2009
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