Private space company Final Frontier Design shows off the latest orbital fashion.
Read more at: PopSci : New for Space Tourists: A Light Comfy Space Suit
PopSci | Comfortable Light Weight Space Suit for Commercial Space Travel
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Category Archives: Space
Wired : Space photo of the day
This image emphasizes the beautiful rays of Qi Baishi, in the top of the image. The crater was named for the Chinese painter, Qi Baishi, known for his whimsical watercolors. The extensive rays of the crater mimic such whimsicality, extending far from the impact, exposing new material across the scene. The bright ray system indicates that Qi Baishi is relatively young, compared to other visible features. Notice the lack of rays extending from the west of the crater. This asymmetry indicates that the impactor struck at a relatively low incidence angle from the west.
This image was acquired as a targeted high-resolution 11-color image set. Acquiring 11-color targets is a new campaign that began in March 2013 and that utilizes all of the WAC’s 11 narrow-band color filters. Because of the large data volume involved, only features of special scientific interest are targeted for imaging in all 11 colors.
More at: Wired : Colorful Mercury Rays
And they are Fantastic
England takes a bet on Space
The Sabre air breathing rocket and the Skylon single stage to orbit craft grow more real with time. We should all remember that England was a hot bed of jet engine development in the early years and is still a leader (Rolls Royce.)
The announcement late last month that the Chancellor, George Osborne, is planning to put a chunk of the country’s meagre resources for capital expenditure behind a British project to develop a revolutionary jet engine for a reusable space plane, suggests the government has high hopes of the space engineering sector.
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The Chancellor’s interest in Skylon centres on the hybrid air-breathing rocket engine, known as SABRE, which would power it into orbit in a single stage. The engine relies on an entirely new pre-cooling technology that allows it to function at extremely high speeds, at plus Mach 5. The project has no competitor. If successful it would offer a uniquely lightweight and therefore more affordable means of reaching space. It has already completed a series of tests and the next stage is to build a full-scale prototype.
Read more: The Engineer : Career opportunities in the UK space sector
Also the company developing the tech: Reaction Engines 
Uh, Guys, the ‘scope’s pointed in the wrong direction?!
An artist’s rendering of the proposed telescope on the Malapert crater on the moon. Moon Express/ILOA
Read more at: Wired: The Private Plan to Put a Telescope on the Moon
So yes you need an Earth link but I think Earth would be below the local horizon and a mast with a laser or smaller high frequency antenna would provide that link. I imagine the picture was marketing/art departments idea and it is cool.
The whole mission concept is cool and seems to make a lot of sense.
One thing we forget in this ‘later’ more ‘modern’ age is that historically science and scientific instruments were private, and they were not inexpensive it was a rich man’s game and often rich patron’s egos that got us to to the beginning of the twentieth century.
Looks like a great application of a ‘striped down’ mod of a SpaceX Dragon vertical lander…
To the Moon Gracie!
AWST Staff: Source: Aerospace Daily & Defense Report : NASA Calls For Private Lunar Lander Partners
Piggybacking on the Google Lunar X Prize and various commercial endeavors, NASA has offered its expertise and test facilities to potential lunar-lander partners who might be able to help mount scientific missions to the Moon’s surface as early as 2018.
A request for information published July 2 seeks concepts for “an industry-developed robotic lander that can be integrated with a launch vehicle for the purposes of supporting commercial (and potentially future NASA) missions.”
The U.S. space agency is interested in landers that can put two classes of payload on the lunar surface — 30-100 kg. (70-220 lb.) and 250-450 kg. Potential missions “of interest to NASA” include prospecting for volatiles at the Moon’s poles, sample return and setting up geophysical networks.
“U.S. industry is flourishing with innovative ideas based on NASA’s pioneering work to explore space, including low-Earth orbit and the Moon,” said William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations (HEO) in Washington. He suggested that, data from commercial lunar landers, like space station research, could aid the agency’s plans to explore an asteroid and Mars.
“New robotic commercial capabilities on the Moon could extend that research in important ways, just as NASA expertise could help advance commercial endeavors to reach the Moon.”
The HEO directorate is proposing no-exchange-of-funds partnerships under Space Act agreements or other mechanisms, offering its technical expertise, unique test facilities, and some hardware and software to private companies willing to put up funding for lander development.
“NASA envisions that an integrated team comprised of NASA civil servants and the industry partner personnel could work together to design, develop and test landers,” the RFI says.
Responses to the RFI are due Aug. 2. Interest in private lunar landers has soared over the past three years after Google offered $30 million in prizes through the X Prize Foundation to teams that can land a robotic spacecraft on the lunar surface, have it move at least 500 meters, and send back video, images and data. Presently 22 teams worldwide are in the running, working against a deadline of Dec. 31, 2015.
‘Nuff said, really cool stuff
Kick it Beyond the Moon
MIT TR: Kickstarter Campaign Wants to Send Tiny Satellites out of Earth Orbit
Space loaf: This artist’s rendering shows a three-unit CubeSat with a propulsion unit.
A mini-satellite, no bigger than a loaf of bread, could push itself out of Earth’s orbit as soon as next year if a crowdfunding campaign to support development of a diminutive propulsion system succeeds. If such small spacecraft can be made to operate far from Earth, they could one day make inexpensive expeditions to asteroids, Mars, and beyond.
Now that’s neat, the ion thruster is pretty crude and tech leaders doubt it will work, but things ‘scale’ oddly, a honeybee can only fly because at it’s scale air is much more viscous…sticky…than we experience it. So it’s possible this simple small relatively short lived little exploring skiff will sail. And just think, if we can flip out these tiny surveyors to asteroids and comets for this sort of investment the haul of new knowledge will be huge.
Slash/Gear NASA 3D printed rocket injector test firing
…NASA didn’t use ABS plastic that most 3D-printers use. Instead, the agency used custom 3D printers to spray layers of metallic powder using lasers. The lasers spray the powder in a specific pattern in order to come up with the desired shape for an object. In this case: a rocket engine injector.
Read more at: Slash/Gear http://www.slashgear.com/nasa-3d-printed-rocket-injector-undergoes-first-test-firing-12290238/
SpaceYES!!
SpaceX continues to drive down the barriers like the aggressive but rationale organization they are and the world needs to move us to the next level of Earth to orbit operations. And having a dream and stretch goals are required elements.
From NASA Spaceflight: Dragon Roadmap: From domestic crew independence to humans on Mars
July 5, 2013 by Chris Bergin
Grasshopper reaches a thousand feet in new nav test. Read more at: SpaceX shows off new nav gear with latest Grasshopper rocket launch-and-landing (video)
By Timothy J. Seppala posted Jul 6th, 2013 at 3:47 PM
Ten thousandth near-Earth object unearthed in space
Asteroid 2013 MZ5 as seen in this University of Hawaii picture from the PanSTARR-1 telescope. The Asteroid is in the right of the image, towards the top, moving diagonally left/down. Credit: PS-1/UH
Read more at:Ten thousandth near-Earth object unearthed in space
“Finding 10,000 near-Earth objects is a significant milestone,” said Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA Headquarters, Washington. “But there are at least 10 times that many more to be found before we can be assured we will have found any and all that could impact and do significant harm to the citizens of Earth.” During Johnson’s decade-long tenure, 76 percent of the NEO discoveries have been made.
Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets that can approach the Earth’s orbital distance to within about 28 million miles (45 million kilometers). They range in size from as small as a few feet to as large as 25 miles (41 kilometers) for the largest near-Earth asteroid, 1036 Ganymed.
Asteroid 2013 MZ5 is approximately 1,000 feet (300 meters) across. Its orbit is well understood and will not approach close enough to Earth to be considered potentially hazardous.
Lots of resources to be developed for the expansion of humanity in space and the reduction of our impact on Earth, in a half century or so, when we will really understand we need it.
This World and Others 