The military will launch a sub-scale model of its experimental X-37B space plane from Cape Canaveral in November, taking a launch slot originally set aside for NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The LRO launch will be moved back to February or March.
The whale-like vehicle, measuring in at 27 x 15 feet, will be launched atop an Atlas V rocket. It will orbit the Earth before making an automated landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California, Aviation Week reports.
Virgin Galactic Update: WhiteKnightTwo in Taxi Tests
Rob Coppinger says that Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft has made short taxi tests recently in Mojave, Calif.
“Hyperbola has learnt that Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo has made short runs under its own jet engine power and been shackled to a Mojave air and space port concrete platform test stand so its four Pratt & Whitney 308A [...]
Formula 1 Winner Headed for Space on Virgin Galactic
Lewis romance is out of this world
ThisisLondon.co.uk
After taking the Formula 1 championship at 23, could Lewis Hamilton’s career reach any higher? It seems the answer is yes — now that he plans to take his family and girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger into space.
A source said: “He is on the way to becoming the first billionaire sportsman, [...]
Dyson: Spaceflight Training is Positive Alternative to Double Mastectomy
Esther Dyson has penned a short op-ed piece for The Moscow Times explaining why she is spending about $3 million to train as a backup for a space tourism flight to ISS. It is a standard millionaut bio piece (I had stars in my eyes since I was a kid. This is my dream come [...]
Energia Gets Loan, Kazakh Cosmonaut to Fly Commercial
RIA Novesti reports that Sberbank has loaned Energia 2.9 billion rubles ($106 million) to allow the company to continue production of the Soyuz and Progress vehicles required for the International Space Station (ISS).
Meanwhile, the news agency says that Kazakhstan will be paying a commercial rate to send a cosmonaut to ISS. “‘The only way a [...]
Russian Space Tourist Left Behind as Kazakh Takes His Soyuz Seat
Kazakh astronaut to fly to ISS, Russian hopeful grounded
RIA Novesti
A Kazakh national will fly to the International Space Station in October 2009, a spokesman for the Kazakh National Space Agency said on Thursday. Talgat Musabayev said the Kazakh cosmonaut would fly to the “Russian segment” of the ISS, adding however, that “the financial components of [...]
NASA Raids Science Budgets to Study Launching Science Experiments on Tourism Vehicles
NASA to Study Potential of Piloted Suborbital Flight
Space News
“NASA intends to spend up to $400,000 in 2009 studying whether piloted suborbital spacecraft under development by Virgin Galactic and others have the potential to be useful for scientific research….
“[Ed] Weiler said NASA got a poor response to an unfunded request for information (RFI) it put out [...]
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