LADEE begins collecting data

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft, in orbit above the Moon, as dust scatters light during lunar sunset [NASA/ARC/JAXA/Dana Berry].

Rachel Hoover
NASA Ames Research Center

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is ready to begin collecting science data about the Moon.

On November 20, the spacecraft successfully entered its planned orbit around the Moon's equator -- a unique position allowing the small probe to make frequent passes from lunar day to lunar night. This will provide a full view of the changes and processes occurring within the moon's tenuous atmosphere.

LADEE now orbits the moon about every two hours at an altitude of 12 to 60 km above the Moon's surface. For about 100 days, the spacecraft will gather detailed information about the structure and composition of the thin lunar atmosphere and determine whether dust is being lofted into the lunar sky.

Scientists will be able to study the conditions in the atmosphere during lunar sunrise and sunset, where previous crewed and robotic missions detected a glow of rays and streamers reaching high into the lunar sky.

“This is what we’ve been waiting for – we are already seeing the shape of things to come,” said Rick Elphic, LADEE project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California

On November 20, flight controllers in the LADEE Mission Operations Center at Ames confirmed LADEE performed a crucial burn of its orbit control system to lower the spacecraft into its optimal position to enable science collection. Mission managers will continuously monitor the spacecraft's altitude and make adjustments as necessary.

"Due to the lumpiness of the moon's gravitational field, LADEE's orbit requires significant maintenance activity with maneuvers taking place as often as every three to five days, or as infrequently as once every two weeks," said Butler Hine, LADEE project manager at Ames. "LADEE will perform regular orbital maintenance maneuvers to keep the spacecraft’s altitude within a safe range above the surface that maximizes the science return."

In addition to science instruments, the spacecraft carried the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration, NASA's first high-data-rate laser communication system. It is designed to enable satellite communication at rates similar to those of high-speed fiber optic networks on Earth. The system was tested successfully during the commissioning phase of the mission, while LADEE was still at a higher altitude.

LADEE was launched September 6 on a US Air Force Minotaur V, an excess ballistic missile converted into a space launch vehicle and operated by Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Virginia. LADEE is the first spacecraft designed, developed, built, integrated and tested at Ames, and it is the first probe launched beyond Earth orbit from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia's Eastern Shore.

NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington funds the LADEE mission. Ames manages the overall mission and serves as a base for mission operations and real-time control of the probe. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the science instruments and technology demonstration payload, the science operations center and overall mission support. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages LADEE within the Lunar Quest Program Office.

LADEE legacies

In planning since 2008, LADEE's reason-for-being emerged from mapping science goals believed essential before any permanent manned presence on the Moon's surface could begin. Fortunately, like LRO, LCROSS and GRAIL, planning and development were well underway and within budget when Congress eventually scrubbed the Constellation brand and manned Altair lander [NASA].

Like "The Blind Men and the Elephant" the most important moving part of many riding along with LADEE to the Moon very much depends on your personal perspective.

What might seem a low-priority mission, accompanied by an appropriate degree of "hype," and has modest fundamental goals under the banner of experimental modular designs and revolutionary high speed communications, - only a 100 day science mission, LADEE has been in development for more than five years. The advanced vehicle also carries with it hopes of some that go back nine times that period, covering a lot of political ground and many changes, even over the relatively short time since its framing and approval.

Gene Cernan (by Harrison Schmitt) at the close-out of the third and final EVA of Apollo 17, and the last manned visit to the Moon in December 1972. The commander's spacesuit is blackened by exceeding fine lunar dust, more than just a problem of appearances, a real hazard that might have caused hatch and spacesuit seals to fail on a longer surface mission. Constellation planners understood they needed to get a handle on mitigating the hazard posed by omnipresent dust while also gaining an better understanding of the dynamics of a primal airless Moon and its surface before humans return to stay [NASA/JSC].

Few watching the LADEE/Minotaur V launch, critical for Orbital Sciences Corporation, from Wallops Island, are likely to be reminded that the mission owes its existence to the catastrophic loss of Space Shuttle Challenger ten years ago. But it is possible to appreciate the things NASA logically wants emphasized without forgetting LADEE is the beginning of the end of the defunct Constellation program that so many wanted dead and buried in 2009.

LADEE is the last of the unmanned precursor missions once believed essential before "extended human activity" on the Moon could begin. The absolutely remarkable Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will likely still be orbiting the Moon for a few years after LADEE's mission-terminating guided impact a few months from now, but none of these 21st century American unmanned lunar missions are likely to have have occurred before today without the initial political will put in motion after the report of the Challenger Accident Investigation Board (CAIB).

LRO, LCROSS, GRAIL and now LADEE each owe their reason for being to the loss of a second Space Shuttle and crew in 2003.

Very simple schematic of the lunar exosphere. The Moon's surface turned out to be a very dynamic place, after all, with water and exotic metals and volatiles trapped in permanent shadow and also hiding in plain sight [Halekas/LEAG/NASA].

If you've seen the movie footage of Neil Armstrong immediately after setting that first boot on the Moon, backing away from the ladder tethered to the spacecraft then you may have guessed there once was real fear that he might just suddenly disappear in a bog of dust.

Such concern had mostly been dispelled by July 1969, though, after none of the successful unmanned Surveyor landers had encountered anything other than a hard-packed lunar surface. And yet the Moon was correctly presumed to be a very dusty place, constantly "gardened" by micrometeorites (and some not so micro) together with energetic cosmic and solar radiation. Without direct samples, however, no one correctly guessed just how "fine" the dusty powder on the lunar surface could be.

By the time Gene Cernan climbed back into the Apollo 17 lunar module in late 1972 at the end of the program another hazard from this dust had become apparent instead. Rather than sinking into feathery banks of fluffy snowbanks astronauts had to deal instead with a film of electrostatic-charged, clinging and microscopic glassy razor blades. It smelled like gun powder and got into everything, and seemed impossible to clean.

The dark dust of the Moon's immediate surface threatened hatch seals, it scared and tore into spacesuits and, following EVA close-outs became lodged in every conceivable place on an astronaut's body, including up their noses, in their lungs and also lingering in their softest places.

Clearly, "dust mitigation," by then long acknowledged as a real mission and health hazard, came forward as a priority science goal when before new lunar surface expeditions could be carried out. It is accepted as a similar threat to manned travel to Mars, and to the asteroids.

All models of what has become known as a "dynamic" rather than "static" lunar surface include production and trapping of volatile compounds once thought essentially non-existent on the Moon. The speed of this production, it's true dynamics, badly need to be studied before we can return to the Moon with impunity.

Every time an unmanned spacecraft (or a manned lunar module) has landed or taken off from the Moon it's certain some of the dust propelled away by exhaust reaches escape velocity. A larger part of this spiny cloud is put into orbit or on a ballistic path carrying these particles all over the lunar surface. LADEE is designed to establish some natural baseline for this dust before humans start stirring things up. The impact of spacecraft is comparable to the occasional larger natural impact, but hot gas exhaust and its effects is something new.

The delicate bright dust lanes of the Reiner Gamma "swirl albedo" phenomena, stretching at least 550 km southwest from the dormant volcanic Marius domes to the western frontier of Oceanus Procellarum. Seen here in an LROC WAC mosaic from 2010 under early morning shadows. Detailed laser altimetry confirms little to no topographic component, though it does closely correlate with a well-mapped anomalous crustal magnetic field that must be older than exposure to the Sun and space weathering would allow the surface here to remain so bright. Migration of dust, alternately charged and discharged, dislodged by micro-bombardment is alternately attracted and repelled, here, by the local magnetic field lines, keeping the new dust constantly renewed and gathered no more than a meter or so deep [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Whether or not this was really a guesstimate or hard science, by the time Congress seriously committed to return to the Moon to stay investigators had acknowledged that a kind of primal state existed there that was worth scientific study for its own sake, before human engaged in any "extended activity." And herein is the compelling interest for funding the LADEE mission. It's one way of discovering the state of the lunar exosphere, its dynamics in and out of Earth's extended magnetic field, under a traveling solar incidence, and through a good sampling of lunar days and nights before things inevitably get busy.

The hyperfast laser-based communications and modular spacecraft design for LADEE will be much talked about in reports about this mission, over the next few days and months. That's "all good," as they say, but it might be worth it to also remember the mission's origins going back before Surveyor or Apollo and also offer at least some thanks to the crew of Columbia. We owe the recent renewed short burst in lunar exploration and our added knowledge of the Moon directly to the loss of that spacecraft and crew.

Another lunar mission (and one of only two American missions to the Moon between 1972 and 2009) was also justified as a test platform for new technologies. Now "lost and gone forever," Clementine (1994) spent a year in lunar orbit operated by both NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense. Here Clementine's star-tracking camera finally definitively photographed the "horizon glow" caught previously in the lunar night from the surface by Surveyor 7 and described by Apollo astronauts in lunar orbit twenty years before. This is the phenomena, believed to be back-lit lunar dust, that LADEE is designed to directly sample [NASA/DOD].

And whenever humans eventually return to the Moon for their inevitable extended stay, they will owe much of their preparation to that spacecraft and crew.

Related Posts:
LADEE Prelaunch Mission Briefing (September 6, 2013)
ESA prepares for LADEE (July 31, 2013)
LADEE arrives at Wallops Island (June 5, 2013)
LADEE ready to baseline dusty lunar exosphere (June 5, 2013)
First laser comm system ready for launch on LADEE (March 16, 2013)
LADEE project manager update (February 6, 2013)
The Mona Lisa test for LADEE communications (January 21, 2013)
Toxicity of lunar dust (July 2, 2012)
Expectations for the LADEE LDEX (March 23, 2012)
The Dust Management Project (August 9, 2010)
LADEE architecture and mission design (July 6, 2010)
DesertRatS testing electrodynamic dust shield (July 5, 2010)
Dust transport and its importance in the origin of lunar swirls (February 21, 2010)
Dust accumulation on Apollo laser reflectors may indicate a surprisingly fast and
more dynamic lunar exosphere (February 16, 2010)
NASA applies low cost lessons to LADEE (January 18, 2010)
Nanotech advances in lunar dust mitigation (August 19, 2009)
Moon dust hazard influenced by Sun's elevation (April 17, 2009)
LADEE launch by Orbital from Wallops Island (April 14, 2009)
Understanding the activation and solution properties of lunar dust
for future lunar habitation (March 2, 2009)
Respiratory toxicity of lunar highland dust (January 19, 2009)
Toxicological effects of moon dust (June 25, 2008)
Moon dust and duct tape (April 22, 2008)

LADEE arrives at Wallops Island

Special Delivery. The Moon-bound LADEE lunar orbiter arrives at NASA Goddard's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Virginia [NASA].

NASA - The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) arrived today at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility to begin final processing for its trip to the moon later this year. LADEE is a robotic mission that will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the lunar atmosphere, conditions near the surface and environmental influences on lunar dust. A thorough understanding of these characteristics will address long-standing unknowns, and help scientists understand other planetary bodies as well. LADEE has three science instruments and one technology demonstration onboard.

LADEE’s scheduled September 5 launch will mark several firsts. LADEE will be the first payload to launch on a U.S. Air Force Minotaur V rocket integrated by Orbital Sciences Corporation and the first deep space mission to launch from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s Wallops Flight Facility.

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington funds the LADEE mission, a cooperative effort led by NASA’s Ames Research Center. ARC in California is responsible for managing the mission, building the spacecraft and performing mission operations. 

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is responsible for managing the science instruments and technology demonstration payload, and the science operations center. 

Wallops Flight Facility is responsible for launch vehicle integration, launch services, and launch range operations.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama manages LADEE within the Lunar Quest Program Office.

For more information about the LADEE Mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/LADEE

LADEE ready to baseline the dusty lunar exosphere and test high-speed data link

Idealized view of LADEE, last of the Constellation 'precursors,' in lunar orbit [NASA/ARC].

Steve Nerlich
AmericaSpace.com

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is due for launch in September 2013 from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. LADEE will study the composition and structure of the tenuous lunar atmosphere, including dust that may be lofted up from the surface. It will also undertake a demonstration of a laser-mediated communications system.

In a thick atmosphere like Earth’s, particles are constantly colliding with each other and hence moving in random and frequently-changing directions. The Moon is thought to have a surface boundary exosphere, which is a thin, collision-free atmosphere in which particles follow largely uninterrupted paths.

A key goal of the LADEE mission is to understand the dynamics of a surface boundary exosphere and how it changes over time, as external conditions vary. A surface boundary exosphere is probably the most common atmosphere found around celestial bodies in the Solar System, including Mercury, the majority of the large asteroids, the moons around our major planets, and the majority of large Kuiper Belt Objects. So, getting a better understanding of the Moon’s surface boundary exosphere is a good start to understanding those environments as well.

Indeed, there is a certain imperative to undertake this research now. The increasing interest in the Moon by a number of nations will lead to a steadily increasing frequency of lunar exploration missions that could change the natural composition of the lunar atmosphere, both through the stirring up of surface dust and by the addition of rocket exhaust components.

Read the article at AmericaSpace.com, HERE.

Related Posts:

First laser comm system ready for launch on LADEE (March 16, 2013)
LADEE project manager update (February 6, 2013)
The Mona Lisa test for LADEE communications (January 21, 2013)
Expectations for the LADEE LDEX (March 23, 2012)
LADEE architecture and mission design (July 6, 2010)
NASA applies low cost lessons to LADEE (January 18, 2010)
LADEE launch by Orbital from Wallops Island (April 14, 2009)

Expectations for the LADEE LDEX

The 'Dust, Atmosphere, and Plasma: Moon and Small Bodies' (DAP-2012) meeting will take place in Boulder, June 6-8, 2012. Please visit our webpages http://ldap2012.colorado.edu/  to register and submit an abstract by 3/30/2012, if you plan to attend.

We are looking forward to see you in Boulder!

- Alan Stern and Mihaly Horanyi

A lasting lesson from Apollo. The lunar exosphere gets into everything, fine as talcum, abrasive as broken glass, and a significant cumulative threat to seals and any and all working parts generally, whether biological and mechanical. Beyond its demonstrated mission threat the Moon's dusty environment is a delicate, "pristine" and important  part of a 4.5 billion year history of space weather near Earth. Apollo 17 lunar module pilot and geologist Harrison H. "Jack" Schmitt moves forward with the patina of 22 hours activity on the lunar surface clinging to his suit. AS17-145-22157 [NASA/JSC/ALSJ].

The Moon's sodium tail,
Potter and Morgan (1998).

The Lunar Dust Environment:
Expectations for the LADEE
Lunar Dust Experiment (LDEX)
Mihaly Horanyi, Sternovsky & Shul
with Colette, Grün, Kempf, Srama & Mocker
43rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, #2635

Introduction: The lunar dust environment is expected to be dominated by submicron-sized dust particles released from the Moon due to the continual bombardment by micrometeoroids, and due to plasma-induced near-surface intense electric fields. The Lunar Dust EXperiment (LDEX) is designed to map the spatial and temporal variability of the dust size and density distributions in the lunar environment on-board the upcoming Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission

LDEX is an impact detector, capable of measuring the mass of submicron sized dust grains. LDEX will also measure the collective signal of dust grains below the detection threshold for single dust impacts; hence it can search for the putative population of grains with r ~ 0.1 μm lofted over the terminator regions by plasma effects.

LDEX has been developed at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies (LASP/CCLDAS, University of Colorado at Boulder) and has a high degree of heritage based on similar instruments on the HEOS 2, Ulysses, Galileo, and Cassini missions. The LDEX flight model will be tested and calibrated at both the (Max-Planck-Institute for Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg, Germany) and Boulder dust accelerator facilities.

At the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, March 21, 2012, Dr. Horányi summarized expected capabilities of LDEX and made predictions for its measurements in lunar orbit, based on current theoretical models. The authors also discussed a proposed LDEXPLUS instrument being developed for a possible LADEE follow-up mission to add the instrument's design capability for in-situ chemical analysis of impacting dust particles, perhaps to verify "the existence of water ice on the lunar surface and map the density of valuable resources of commercial interest".

Figure 1. LDEX EM and FM units and the schematic drawings of the instrument.

The LDEX instrument: The two expected sources of dust in the lunar environment are ejecta production due to continual bombardment by interplanetary meteoroids and lofting due to plasma effects. LDEX is an impact ionization dust detector with a sensor area of ~0.01 m\2. LDEX is a low risk, compact instrument and uses no flight software (Figure 1). In addition to individual dust impacts of grains with radii r > 0.3 μm, LDEX can identify a large population of smaller grains (0.1 < r < 0.3 μm) by measuring their collective signal.The expected impact rates, and the signature of lofted small grains expected over the terminators are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Expected impact rates on a 30x100 km orbit with its pericenter over the morning terminator.

Initial test and calibration of the LDEX FM model were done at the CCLDAS dust accelerator facility. Full calibrations are planned in early 2012 at both the Heidelberg and the Boulder facilities. Figure 3 shows the preliminary test results, indicating that LDEX will meet or exceed its measurement requirements.

Figure 3. Initial test results for the LDEX FM instrument showing the detected particle mass versus their velocity. At the expected impact speed of 1.6 km/s,

LDEX will detect particles with radii r > 0.4 μm. The ratio of detected and undetected particles matches the expected value due to the duty cycle of the electronics and the transparency of the screens that provide shielding and exclude the solar wind electrons from entering LDEX.

The LDEX-PLUS instrument extends the LDEX capabilities to also measure the chemical composition of the impacting particles with a mass resolution of M/ΔM > 30. Traditional methods to analyze surfaces of airless planetary objects from an orbiter are IR and gamma-ray spectroscopy, and neutron backscatter measurements. A complementary method is to analyze dust particles as samples of planetary objects from which they were released. The source region of each analyzed grain can be determined with accuracy at the surface that is approximately the altitude of the orbit.

This ‘dust spectrometer’ approach provides key chemical constraints for varying provinces on the lunar surfaces. LDEX-PLUS is of particular interest to verify from orbit the presence of water ice in the permanently shadowed lunar craters. LDEX-PLUS combines the impact detection capabilities of LDEX with a linear time-of-flight system, similar to the Cassini Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) instrument. Figure 4 shows an example time-of-flight mass spectrum of an ice-bearing dust grain.

Figure 4. Spectrum of a water ice particle obtained at ~ 4 km/s impact speed by the Cassini CDA instrument in Saturn's E ring. The dominant peaks are mass lines of water cluster ions (H2O)nH+, generated upon impact of an ice-bearing particle.

Schematic of documented species of horizon glow, such as the famous mid-lunar night imagery captured by Surveyor 7 in 1968.

Conclusions. LDEX, on-board LADEE, is scheduled to launch in May 2013 and will be capable of mapping the density distributions of both the large ejecta particles and the collective signal of small lofted grains. LDEX-PLUS, on-board a follow-up lunar mission, can collect a large number of samples from a greater part of the entire surface for analysis.

The instrument is especially sensitive to the metallic compounds of minerals and any species which easily form ions (e.g. water). The accuracy of the trajectory back-tracing to the surface is comparable to the altitude of the satellite. This in-situ method allows compositional surface mapping of the Moon. Since the dust spectrometer is particularly sensitive to refractory compounds which are difficult to access by other methods it is also complementary to remote sensing spectroscopy and an ion or neutral mass spectrometer. A ram pointing dust spectrometer and a nadir pointing remote sensing instrument collect data from approximately the same spot on the surface of the Moon, hence the combination of these measurements greatly enhances our ability to map the chemical composition of the surface and identify water-bearing regions.

An LDEX-PLUS type instrument can also address many of the science goals of a Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM) regarding the surface chemistry of icy satellites. See original Conference abstract, HERE, for citations.

Lunar Horizon Glow (LHC) as televised (vidicon photography) in local night, early 1968 [NASA].

LADEE Architecture & Mission Design

Updated 1238 UT 6 July 2010
The precursor Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) lunar orbiter (2012) [NASA/ARC].

Butler Hine, Stevan Spremo, Mark Turner
NASA Ames Research Center

Robert Caffrey
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is a Lunar science orbiter mission currently under development to address the goals of the National Research Council decadal surveys and the recent "Scientific Context for Exploration of the Moon" (Final Report, 2007) to study the pristine state of the lunar atmosphere and dust environment prior to significant human activities.

LADEE will determine the composition of the lunar atmosphere and investigate the processes that control its distribution and variability, including sources, sinks, and surface interactions. LADEE will also determine whether dust is present in the lunar exosphere, and reveal the processes that contribute to its sources and variability.

These investigations are relevant to our understanding of surface boundary exospheres and dust processes throughout the solar system, address questions regarding the origin and evolution of lunar volatiles, and have potential implications for future exploration activities.

The LADEE mission will use a Minotaur V launch vehicle with WFF as the launch site (Pad 0B). The expected launch date is late 2012. The Minotaur V is a new launch vehicle, and is evolved from the Minotaur IV design. It includes a new 3-4 interstage, new stage 5 avionics cylinder, stage 5 spin/de-spin, PAF, and the STAR 37 motor. The first three stages of the Minotaur IV, in turn, are based on the highly successful Peacekeeper Missile [NASA/ARC].

LADEE employs a highheritage science instrument payload including a neutral mass spectrometer, ultraviolet spectrometer, and dust sensor. In addition to the science payloads, LADEE will fly a laser communications system technology demonstration that could provide a building block for future space communications architectures.

LADEE is an important component in NASA's portfolio of near-term lunar missions, addressing objectives that are currently not covered by other U.S. or international efforts, and whose observations must be conducted before large-scale human or robotic activities irrevocably perturb the tenuous and fragile lunar atmosphere. LADEE will also demonstrate the effectiveness of a low-cost, rapid-development program utilizing a modular bus design launched on the new Minotaur V launch vehicle. Once proven, this capability could enable future lunar missions in a highly cost constrained environment.

Review a recent paper (PDF) HERE, describing LADEE objectives,
mission design, and technical approach.

NASA selects Boeing and Lockheed Martin for Commercial Crew Development Program

[Editor's Note: After the understandable enthusiasm for the Obama administration's proposed NASA program changes and 2011 budget wains a bit, it will be fair to ask if some some people might be confusing the new commercial space initiative with "privatization." It would be foolish to suspend critical judgment because of a passionate desire, because the new NASA initiative appears to match a certain assumption of what commercial space ought to be.

The end of Constellation probably means an end to Orion, certainly Altair; vehicles being designed and built by Northrup Grumman and Boeing. Along with Lockheed Martin, these are commercial companies, also. Despite being latecomers whose joint initiative ultimately lost out to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences for the first twenty ATV launches to ISS, it would be foolish to underestimate their competitve ability if the new initiative gains congressional approval.

United Launch Alliance (ULA) is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing formed in December 2006.]

February 2. NASA announced today its selection of United Launch Alliance to participate in its new Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) Program. NASA created the CCDev Program to develop system concepts, key technologies, and capabilities that ultimately will be used in commercial crew space transportation systems. ULA was awarded $6.7 million to develop an Emergency Detection System (EDS), which is a significant element necessary for a safe and highly reliable human rated launch vehicle.

"ULA is pleased to participate with NASA on the CCDev Program," said Michael Gass, ULA President and Chief Executive Officer. "We look forward to supporting NASA as they embark on a new initiative that emphasizes commercial access to space. We are confident that our flight-proven Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles can help NASA achieve its goals."

The EDS monitors critical launch vehicle and spacecraft systems and issues status, warning and abort commands to the crew during their mission to low Earth orbit. ULA studies show that the development of the EDS will help meet the requirements for human rating the Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles.

The CCDev Program will allow ULA to build upon its heritage launch systems and its on-going company investments toward commercial human space flight. ULA will work closely with NASA to identify critical failure modes of the flight-proven Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles. ULA will then develop the hardware components and software processes that will detect these modes allowing for rigorous and exhaustive testing on a prototype EDS before an initial crewed flight.

With ULA's unparalleled heritage and experience in expendable launch vehicle development and operation, ULA is uniquely qualified to support NASA in developing and demonstrating the EDS for a Commercial Crew Program. ULA's goal is to develop a system for NASA that builds upon the proven reliability of both the Atlas V and Delta IV for safe human space flight.

ULA program management, engineering, test and mission support functions are headquartered in Denver, Colo. Manufacturing, assembly and integration operations are located at Decatur, Ala., Harlingen, Texas, and San Diego, Calif. Launch operations are located at CCAFS, Fla., and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

For more information on the ULA joint venture, visit the ULA website at www.ulalaunch.com, or call the ULA Launch Hotline at 1-877-ULA-4321 (852-4321).

NASA applys low-cost lessons to LADEE

Horizon glow, as televised from north of Tycho by Surveyor 7 during a long lunar night in 1968, the first dramatic hint of many that the Moon's submicron dust made up a dynamic component of the lunar exosphere. The Apollo missions to the lunar surface would further demonstrate the challenge to lunar exploration safety presented by electrostatic dust whose origins are thought to be a direct result of the persentent "gardening" of the lunar surface by micrometeorite bombardment and radiation. The LADEE mission is designed to definitively determine those dynamics with a mission beginning in late 2012.

Michael Mecham
Aviation Week

NASA’s first use of a low-cost, modular spacecraft design will be put into an unusually low orbit of the Moon to sample its atmosphere and dust and create a profile that will be useful for studies throughout the Solar System.

The Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer (Ladee) is still in the early days of mission and science planning but is booked for an Oct. 28, 2012, liftoff on an Orbital Sciences Minotaur V from NASA’s Wallops Island, Va., space complex. It will be the debut of the five-stage solid propellant Minotaur V as a low-cost alternative for planetary missions.

Ladee is the first application of NASA Ames Research Center’s Modular Common Bus, a tiered satellite development program that aims for all-inclusive costs of as little as $50 million for simple missions (AW&amp;amp;ST Jan. 5, 2009, p. 32). With four tiers, Ladee is more complex than that; its budget is $200 million.

The project will rely heavily on the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) systems and instruments approach that is basic to the low-cost/quick-build common bus concept.

The first contract has gone to Space Systems/Loral to build a propulsion system derived from its signature 1300-series communications satellite platform. Ladee will circle the Moon’s equator at a 5-deg. inclination at a nominal altitude of just 50 km. (31 mi.), lower than any previous lunar satellite’s planned orbit.

Read the article HERE.

Successful Taurus II second stage ground test

Artist's rendering of Taurus II on the launch pad at Wallops Flight Facility, VA

Orbital Sciences Corp. has Begus development testing for the medium-Ccass Taurus II launch vehicle in preparation for its first flight in 2011. Alliant Techsystems and the U.S. Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) successfully ground tested the second stage motor of the Taurus II at AEDC in Tennessee.

The solid-fuel CASTOR 30 motor, supplied to by ATK Space Systems was test fired for around 150 seconds, producing 72,000 lbs. of max thrust. To accurately test performance the static fire test was conducted in a vacuum chamber designed to simulate conditions at over 30 kilometers altitude.

"We are very pleased with the results. The Castor 30 motor performed according to the specifications built into the design of the Taurus II rocket," said Brent Collins, Orbital's Taurus II Program Manager. "The ground test of the Castor 30 motor is the first major event in the testing phase of the Taurus II development program, having completed the engineering design and procurement work over the past year and a half."

"In addition to the second stage testing, we will soon begin the testing process for the rocket's liquid fuel first stage at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi."

NASA: 'Outlook Bleak'

Jim Garettson
ExecutiveBiz Bog

After just seven more missions to the International Space Station (ISS), the Space Shuttle will retire without a replacement. Ex-Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, chair of the United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee review, has published his committee’s findings, and NASA’s budgetary future looks bleak. Augustine told PBS “the human space flight program really isn’t executable with the money we have.” Augustine has given the “White House a dilemma” of accepting the necessary increase in spending or continuing on a path that leads to severely constrained and delayed space exploration.

To find alternatives, NASA has committed $500 million dollars in stimulus funds to help two private firms, Space Exploration Technologies (better known as SpaceX) and Orbital Sciences Corp (NYSE: ORB), deliver cargo to the station, but will only commit $50 million dollars for commercial human transport to the ISS. For perspective, “Fifty million is what it costs for one seat on the (Russian) Soyuz,” according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk.

But Lockheed Martin warns that commercial transit to the ISS would be costly and unsafe. John Stevens, director of business development for human spaceflight at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, said “we’re having a hard time affording the Orion program, which is designed to take humans to the station and the Moon, and now they’re talking about starting a commercial program to take humans [to the ISS]…If we can’t afford one program, how can we afford two?”

Bottom line: unless NASA’s budget gets some significant breathing room, the US may lose its edge in manned space exploration.

Orbital discusses 2011 Taurus II launch plans with Wallops Island community

Notional launch of Orbital Taurus II Medium-Class Launch Vehicle, now rescheduled for Spring 2011, from Wallops Island, Virginia's Mid-Atlantic Spaceport. (Orbital Sciences Corporation Taurus II Fact Sheet)

Carol Vaughn
Staff Writer
Delmarvanow.com

Accomac - Orbital Sciences Corp. launch site manager Norm Bobczynski appeared before the Accomack County Board of Supervisors for the first time Wednesday to update the county about progress on Orbital's Taurus II rocket project at Wallops Island.

Bobczynski, a Norfolk native, has worked for decades in the space industry, including in the Atlas rocket program and most recently for Orbital's competitor SpaceX. He began work at Orbital in June 2008, the same week the company committed to using Wallops Island as the launch site for its Taurus II rocket, which will carry cargo to the International Space Station in eight contracted missions between 2011 and 2015.

An initial demonstration flight previously scheduled for December 2010 is now expected to happen in spring 2011.

Bobczynski said the company has the capability to launch more than those missions NASA has contracted for and expects to get more business from the Department of Defense and other commercial missions after it completes an initial launch of Taurus II successfully.

"It is important to Orbital Sciences Corp. to have a good working relationship with the community," Bobczynski said, adding that the company hopes to provide good jobs in the future.

Read the full article HERE.

Wallops "KSC North"

Wallops Island, along with White Sands and Edwards, home of America's official rocketry beginning in 1946 when U.S. Navy moved it home-grown sea-launched guided missile program away from Topsail Island in North Carolina. Advances in rocket efficiencies and the rise of commercial space have witnessed the return of orbital missions originating here, hundreds of miles farther from the equator than Cape Canaveral. The facility has been the site of NASA's sub-orbital sounding rocket program for fifty years. Orbital Sciences has facilities here, with other companies on the way, urged on by a strong state-incentives investment by Virginia and the Commonwealth's Mid-Atlantic Spaceport.

History gets warped, a little, in the headline from the story in Sunday's Baltimore Sun, referring to the older facility on Virginia's small part of the Delmarva peninsula Eastern Shore as "The Cape Kennedy of the North" when KSC would more properly be called "Wallops Island South."

Paul West of the Sun looks close by and joins in rediscovering the sudden growth in interest in Wallops Island.

Wallops Island, Va. — - There isn't much to see yet at the grandly named Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, just the skeleton of an old launch gantry on a piece of oceanfront leased from the federal government.

But promoters expect something remarkable to blossom on this sun-baked spit of sand and scrub on the Eastern Shore.

David Smith, a state official from Virginia, which joined with Maryland six years ago to operate a commercial spaceflight center with the lofty acronym MARS, says the area is on track to become "the Cape Canaveral of the North."

For now, though, it's the Wal-Mart of spaceports.

"They can do more with a dollar than anyone else within NASA," said Robert Strain, director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center, which operates the Wallops Flight Facility where MARS is based.

The facility operates out of a one-room former gas station on NASA property, not far from a busy highway that takes beach-bound visitors to the southern end of Assateague Island. It employs six people.

Spaceport officials like to tout their cut-rate location, a barrier island just off the Delmarva Peninsula. From here, they say, it's a shorter shot to the orbiting International Space Station, which means lower bills for rocket fuel. Insurance is cheaper, too, since flights go almost entirely over water (trajectories from Florida cross Europe and the Middle East).

MARS' new $10 million rocket assembly building, soon to go up near a new launch pad, is so modestly sized that 50 of them could fit into the Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida with room to spare. The Mid-Atlantic spaceport's sole rocket provider fashions launch vehicles, in part, from fuel tanks and engines developed for intercontinental ballistic missiles by the United States and its Soviet bloc adversaries and decommissioned after the Cold War.

"These guys have to live by their wits," Strain said, getting work wherever they can. "It keeps them more clever."

A flourishing space complex on the Maryland-Virginia coast remains a shaky prospect in a time of economic recession, tight budgets and uncertainty about the next stage of America's human space flight program. But events over the past year, which have drawn little attention outside the space industry and the local community, have nudged the future closer.

Already, the Wallops facility, about 10 miles south of the Maryland-Virginia line and less than a three-hour drive from Baltimore, is stealing business and jobs from Cape Canaveral.

Supply missions to the space station are in the works. A first-ever moon shot, yet to be publicly announced, is planned for less than three years from now.

Local boosters expect repeat invasions of space enthusiasts, lured by the thunderous spectacle of the largest rockets ever launched on the Atlantic coast outside Florida.

A trigger for all this was NASA's selection of Orbital Sciences Corp., a Washington-area space technology company, for a private-public partnership to ferry cargo to the space station. The supply flights are needed to fill a gap after the U.S. space shuttle program ends next year.

As early as next month, MARS will start constructing a launch pad for Orbital's new Taurus II rocket, designed to carry an unmanned craft into orbit 200 miles above the Earth for a rendezvous with the space station and its human crew. The target date for the first flight is less than two years away, with a total of eight resupply missions planned through 2015.

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat whose patronage has been crucial to the spaceport's development, said the project will generate hundreds of jobs in an area that has suffered from the collapse of housing markets in Ocean City and other nearby towns.

NASA awarded a $1.9 billion federal contract to Orbital in December, and the company is investing an initial $150 million in private funds. The project employs hundreds of people at Orbital's facility in Greenbelt, where its Cygnus cargo craft is being developed, in addition to the new work at Wallops.

"This is aimed at developing Wallops into the first rank of major, international space launch sites to serve both government and commercial customers," said David W. Thompson, chairman of Orbital, currently the spaceport's only customer for rocket launches, including some under contract with the Air Force.

Similar claims, over the past 15 years, turned out to be pie in the sky. But if the spaceport has truly turned a corner, it could transform the country's oldest operating launch site, which NASA shares with the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, the independent agency that owns MARS.

Sixty-four years ago this weekend, on July 4, 1945, scientists launched the first small rocket from this low-lying coastal island, whose tantalizing curve of sandy beach has eroded badly over the years. But Wallops never built the capacity to launch large rockets, and there were proposals to shut the NASA facility down in the early 1990s, when budgets got squeezed.

Read the balance of the Article HERE.

Orbital in $250 million deal with Thales for pressurized cargo modules for ISS resupply

Orbital Sciences, with SpaceX, last year won NASA contracts to fly twenty Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) cargo re-supply flights to the International Space Station through mid-2015.

Thales announced on Wednesday that Orbital has contracted with Thales Alenia in a $250 million deal to design and build the pressurized modules for Orbital's own ATV, Cygnus.

"The contract foresees the first unit delivery in December 2010," Thales announced. "The Pressurized Cargo Modules will be designed and developed for Orbital’s CRS (Commercial Resupply Services) contract with NASA."

"Cygnus first flight is planned for the spring of 2011."

"The maneuvering spacecraft will consist of Orbital’s Service Module with which the PCM, will be integrated. The PCMs to be developed by Thales Alenia Space has experience acquired from previous ISS-related programs, such as the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Leonardo built on behalf of the Italian Space Agency and NASA, and the ATV Jules Verne produced by Thales Alenia Space for ESA."

"The nine PCMs will start with one built for a COTS demonstration mission"

The COTS demonstration mission is scheduled to take place in the fourth quarter of 2010.

"With the award of the Commercial Resupply Service," said Orbital, "NASA has selected Orbital to provide 8 pressurized cargo missions beginning in the latter half of 2011

For NASA, CRS will provide a U.S.-produced and-operated automated cargo delivery service for ISS logistic support, to complement Russian, European and Japanese ISS cargo vehicles.

(Which seems to beg the question whether Thales is building the Japanese ATV, as well, and whether they've played any role in announced improvements in Russia's standard Progress ATV's.)

"Orbital will carry out design, manufacturing and test of the new Taurus II launch vehicle in Dulles, Virginia and Chandler, Arizona.

"The company’s development, production and integration of its Cygnus spacecraft and cargo modules will be done in Dulles and Wallops Island.

"The Taurus II launch vehicle will have a payload capacity of 4,750 to 6,250 Kg to low-Earth orbits (depending on altitude and inclination). The Cygnus spacecraft will be capable of delivering up to 2,700 Kg of pressurized or unpressurized cargo to the ISS, and will be capable of returning up to 1,200 Kg of cargo from ISS to Earth."

Of the twenty CRS ISS resupply missions NASA awarded nine to Orbital and eleven to SpaceX of California, now testing engines for their Falcon 9 vehicle already deployed at Cape Canaveral."

Minotaur 1 launched with PharmSat

From Lunar Pioneer

After a twenty minute hold, brought about by a wayward boat that strayed into waters downrange from Wallops Island, Orbital Science's Minotaur 1 showed its stuff at 19:55 ET.

On-board was the payload was NASA Ames' mini-satellite PharmSat, a breadbox-sized experiment to determine the effects of the near-Earth environment on certain pharmaceutical precursors.

"Grow yeasties, grow," Ames director Pete Wordan Twittered.

The lower show above, in this composite shows the how merciless the crosswinds must have been on the vehicle. The shot was taken approximately 220 kilometers to the south by southwest, not far from the coastal waters of North Carolina.

Lost in space, rescued by private enterprise

Op Ed by David Kerr
Fredricksburg, Virginia
The Free Lance Star

DURING the first decade of the 21st century there has been a quiet revolution taking place in America's space program. It began in 2004 when Scaled Composites Inc. launched the first-ever privately funded craft to take a human into space.

Before then the business of putting astronauts into space was the exclusive domain of large government organizations. "SpaceShip-One," as this first privately funded manned space venture was called, changed all that.

With surprising ease the private sector has gone from this first flight to the edge of establishing a serious and long-term presence in space. With a flexible and innovative approach to design, the private sector--which now includes several space companies--has managed to develop several new and efficient classes of delivery systems. These are rockets that are strong enough to reach orbit and big enough to carry substantial payloads.

However, space entrepreneurs aren't just building rockets. They are designing and building vehicles that, though intended in the early stages to carry cargo, could rapidly be modified to carry astronauts. With government-built space-delivery systems and vehicles, developments like this normally take far longer.

In 2010, the U.S. will face a crisis in its space-flight program. The shuttle, which first carried a crew into orbit in 1981, is coming to an end. There is nothing waiting to take its place. America has no large-scale delivery systems ready to carry matériel and equipment, let alone humans, into orbit.

NASA is developing its Ares rockets and Orion cargo and crew vehicles, but even on an aggressive development schedule they won't be ready until 2015. Despite the fact that the U.S. funded and--for the most part--built the International Space Station, there will be no way for Americans to get there. Russians can come and go as they please, but the U.S., at least temporarily, is grounded--unless we want to catch a ride with the Russians.

In late 2008, in what can be considered a watershed event, NASA awarded two contracts for Commercial Orbital Transportation Services to supply the International Space Station: to Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and to Virginia's Orbital Sciences Corp. The arrangement calls for 20 delivery flights: These two private companies will provide up to 70 percent of America's equipment and supply requirements to the station. The rest will be carried aboard unmanned Russian cargo vehicles.

This represents a major evolution in the philosophical perspective of the space agency. Orbital Sciences Corp. will launch its resupply missions from several locations, including Wallops Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore. SpaceX will send its payloads into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral.

SpaceX is developing a system to launch a vehicle--called the Dragon--that could easily be modified to carry astronauts, potentially as many as seven of them. The Dragon's maiden flight into orbital trajectory, which will be unmanned, is expected later this year. If the two companies are successful, NASA might be ready to let a private company not only carry cargo into space but carry astronauts as well.

The potential for reinvigorating our space program is immense. By turning delivery systems and orbital operations over to the private sector, NASA will have the opportunity to do what it excels at, and that is to explore space. This could be the beginning of an entirely new approach to manned space flight.

David Kerr of Stafford County works on Capitol Hill.

PlanetSpace appeal denied

Robert Block of the Orlando Sentinel's The Write Stuff notes that the U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) has quietly denied an appeal by PlanetSpace, Inc. of awards made last December by NASA of twenty ATV ISS resupply missions last December made to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation.

Background HERE.

"PlanetSpace filed an official protest to the General Accountability Office in January after NASA awarded SpaceX and Orbital the contract to resupply the international Space Station during the transition between the retirement of the space shuttle and when the Constellation program becomes operational after 2015."

The Wright Stuff HERE.

Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel Annual Report: The Gap unavoidable

NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel has issued it's Annual Report dashing hopes for additional Space Shuttle missions, reiterating many of the same safety issues mentioned here two days ago. The thirty-year-old program has safety limits put in place after Columbia greatly limiting its range of use, beyond its present flights designed to complete the International Space Station.

The panel also conflicts with recent publicity summarizing a report issued by the Congressional Budget Office that the Constellation program will need "billion more" than already slated now and in the "out-years" to become viable and tests of the Ares-X1, later this year, are needed before further conclusions should be made.

The panel also does not share optimism by many that Commercial Orbital Transportation Services projects (COTS), already awarded twenty ISS cargo re-supply missions by NASA made to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, will be able in time to perform manned missions to ISS to evade an inevitable "gap" in U.S. manned missions into Space prior to Constellation. Although cautious to admit concerns about relying on the Russian Soyuz to carry astronauts to and from ISS in the interim, the Panel cited its 40-year-record of demonstrated reliability.

Mark Matthews of The Orlando Sentinel's Right Stuff has details.
The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel's Annual Report (pdf) can be downloaded HERE.

LADEE launch by Orbital from Wallops Island

UPDATED: 0240 14 April (ZULU)
Buzz is running high saying Virginia and Wallops Island will host the launching in 2011 of an important part of NASA's Lunar Precursor Robotics program, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE).

The mission remains listed on the NASA Science Directorate's website as still "under study" but its mission, along with the International Lunar Network, are considered vital follow-up missions to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and LCROSS now impactor scheduled for launch on the same booster in early June.

The LADEE Science Definition Team made a report on the goals of the mission in May 2008 to NASA's Science Directorate, recommending the NASA launch LADEE as a single payload with less weight restrictions.

Out-year budget planning has been moving up fast, but preliminary designs called for LADEE to share a its ride with GRAIL, the mission to map the Moon's lumpy gravity field. The LADEE Science Definition Team made a strong case, however, for LADEE being most likely to succeed in its sensitive science mission if constructed slightly outside the weight restrictions needed to share its Atlas-Centaur with GRAIL.

Today's news has also fueled a rumor that data returned over the past year by Japan's Kaguya sub-satellite gravity survey may have made JPL's GRAIL mission unnecessary.

Understanding the dynamics of the Moon's dusty exosphere, believed to consist of a solar-charge-driven and levitated wave of exceedingly fine sub-micron-sized dust particles thought to continuously following the Moon's terminator, and acted upon further by the Moon's monthly encounter with the Earth's magnetic field, is considered to be a very important "early" mission.

Lunar Dust mitigation and study by NASA has been rated most highly in follow-up assessment s of agency's progress in returning to the Moon, but also lacking needed progress. Just one difficulty in discovering the true dynamics of the dusty lunar exosphere is sensitive instrumentation. Theory has exceeded intrumentation. Though it is believed some charged dust is levitated on ballistic paths higher than 100 kilometers, such particles are microscopic.

The Science Definition Team has set a course for LADEE that coincides with the complex positioning needed to sense dust in motion, but the planning is almost based entirely on theory. The best data the mission is built upon are observations made prior to orbital sunrise during the Apollo Era, a solar wind experiment showing instead fast moving "winds" of dust performed on the surface and famous nighttime photographs of horizon glow returned by Surveyor 7 forty years ago.

Mitigating the hazards to personnel and equipment presented by the presence, apparently everywhere on the surface of the Moon, of lunar dust has made the 140 kilo LADEE mission important "before extended human activity" on the Moon can begin, according to the Science Definition Team chair Laurie Leshin of NASA Goddard.

The National Academy of Sciences influential "Scientific Context for the Exploration of the Moon (2007)" cited the unknown hazards to explorers, well-remembered by the Apollo pioneers, and also a need to study the lunar exosphere "while still in a relatively pristine state."

Assessing conditions on the surface has always presented an unexpected set of frustrations in the history of lunar exploration. In November 1969 Pete Conrad and Alan Bean landed roughtly 170 meters from the landing site of Surveyor 3, southwest of Copernicus. Retrieval and careful study on Earth of artifacts from the robotic lander revealed most, if not all weathering that could be discovered after more than 20 months on the lunar surface had been the result of the arrival of Apollo 12.

It is now generally accepted that the original decompression of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle added around 5 percent to the total gaseous element of the lunar exosphere. The arrival (and departure) of all powered soft landings on the Moon are now known to have propelled at least some microscopic dust to escape velocities.

The choice of Wallops Island adds to a rich history as an original home for America's Atlantic Missile Range, prior to the move to Cape Canaveral fifty years ago. NASA's facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore has been home since then to almost continuous sub-orbital sounding rocket experiments, to study, among other things, dynamics of Earth's atmosphere.

Like California, Florida, New Mexico and elsewhere Virginia's state government has been enacting tax breaks and doing what it can to attract future sub-orbital space tourism and commercial launch work to the Eastern Shore.

The Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, immediately adjacent to Wallops Island, is part of a tax break and incentives-driven commitment that has drawn, and its most famous tenant Orbital Sciences Corporation.

NASA recently announced its robotic ATV ISS orbiting resupply program will be a publicly-funded private affair, awarding eight ISS resupply missions to Orbital Sciences' Cygnus ATV and twelve to the SpaceX Dragon, totaling twenty ATV ISS resupply flights after the retirement of the Space Shuttle in late 2010.

While SpaceX, on its fourth attempt, managed to orbit a small payload from Kwajalein, near the equator, and is readying its heavier Falcon 9 booster for a test flight from Kennedy Space Center, Orbital Science has yet to launch its five stage Minotaur V booster. Nevertheless, using boosters like the L-1011 wing-launched Pegasus, Orbital has launched 55 payloads into orbit since 1990.

What "Gap?"

With retirement for the Space Shuttle only eight (possibly nine) missions away, in late 2010, and with its ostensible replacement Orion Block One stretching into "the out years," with manned launches unlikely before 2016, talk of "The Gap," which began in space industry conferences years ago is just now reaching down to the level of conventional wisdom.

Fortunately NASA, ESA, JAXA, Roscosmos and the United States' commercial space industry all are already apparently moving on, in ways unimaginable to less attentive observers. News late last year, for example, only temporarily stayed by appeal, that SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation had been awarded 20 autonomous transfer vehicle cargo flights in support of ISS went largely unreported.

With barely more notice from America's "legacy media" the outstanding mission of the European Space Agency's ATV Jules Verne didn't make the radar, even as the ESA's ATV performed exceptionally parking, docking and even boosting ISS orbit. What were whispers of the ESA ATV graduating into a service module for crew rotations suddenly became loud and proud policy.

Both SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are equally confident their American ATV's will eventually make the same leap, as Russia and ESA announced they will partner to launch the new generation of Soyuz and Progress vehicles from ESA's equatorial launch site at Kourou in French Guyana.

By the time congressional planners intend Orion to begin cargo and crew rotations to ISS in 2016, or so, it's likely that phase in its development as "replacement for the Space Shuttle" will no longer be needed. American scientists and crew will have already arrived at ISS, perhaps on American vehicles. Orion can "get ahead" supporting the next scientific outpost in Space by rotating crews and cargo to and from the Moon.

Hat Tip tp Spaceports for casting a light on ESA's growing confidence in a man-rated ATV, posted on YouTube, HERE.

Contract protests: a growing cancer on the space industry

As mentioned here January 16, the contracting review process has stopped the innovative award to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation of 20 cargo supply missions to the ISS right in its tracks. "PlanetSpace," a collaborative subcontracting spin off of two aerospace giants are game to use their experience working the halls of Congress and the Pentagon to game the system in their favor.

Demonstrating why it is essential to keep up with the sober voices of The Space Review, Taylor Dinerman wrote a great backgrounder on this situation three days later. We wanted to flag it now as essential reading.

Last week’s announcement by PlanetSpace that it plans to protest the ISS Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) awards made last month to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences is bad news for the space industry. Over at the Defense Department these protests have become a way of life, and are slowly but surely wrecking the defense industry, turing it from an collection of firms whose purpose was to build hardware into a giant jobs program for contract lawyers, litigators, and lobbyists.

A NASA technical analysis reportedly gave PlanetSpace’s proposal a higher mark than that of Orbital Sciences. However, based on their experience and on the record of firms that rely too heavily on subcontractors, the leadership at the space agency choose to go with Orbital: a pragmatic decision derived from the history of the space industry rather than from the legalistic details of the federal contracting process.

As Dan Quayle once said, “There’s something wrong with an economy that employs 70 percent of the world’s lawyers.” Our government procurement system is so big and so complex that, for a program such as CRS, not to mention a larger one, any competent team of lawyers can find flaws in the tens of thousands of documents, emails, and other evidence. It now seems that once a contract has been awarded its fulfillment relies on the goodwill or a calculated decision by the loser not to contest. This effective veto power will eventually strangle the entire system and force through a set of reforms—possibly on an emergency basis—and the results will not be pretty.

Read and comment on the entire story HERE.