Shenzhou 8 Spacecraft
China launched the Shenzhou 8 spacecraft into orbit on Tuesday morning (local China time), from the western city of Jiuquan. The country is continuing to make strides in space exploration and the launch of the unmanned spacecraft is important to its space program.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) is attempting to perform their first docking maneuver in space. Shenzhou 8 will dock with the Tiangong 1 module (also called “Heavenly Palace”) that was launched a month ago. If all goes well, CNSA could launch two more modules for further testing next year. One test may include a manned launch of taikonauts (Chinese astronauts)  with a module in order to test manual docking procedures.

For China, this is an important step toward launching the nation’s own space station in 2020. China is not one of the 16 nations that utilize the International Space Station (ISS).

Shenzhou 8 will be directed by ground control until it is close enough to interact with the Tiangong 1 module. Tiangong 1 designer, Bai Mingsheng, stated that, ”Within 50 kilometers, the two vehicles will be able to recognize each other through sensors and communication equipment, and will dock to each other automatically.”

The Chinese Long March-2F rocket was used to launch Shenzhou 8 into orbit.

Boeing Space Taxi
Boeing has reached an agreement with the Florida government agency, Space Florida, and NASA to lease the Orbiter Processing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center, in order to build the Crew Space Transport – 100 capsule (CST-100). The reusable capsule will be used as a space taxi, which is expected to shuttle astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS), and space tourists to the Bigelow Aerospace Orbital Space Complex.

The agreement is expected to create hundreds of jobs in Florida, and is part of the Obama administration’s plan to place astronauts on board commercial spaceflights to the ISS by the end of 2015. Since the retirement of the space shuttles, the United States has agreed to pay Russia to send astronauts to space on board Soyuz rockets. The agreement to let astronauts hitch-a-ride prices each seat at more than $50 million.

The CST-100 crew capsule will be able to accommodate up to seven passengers and it will be capable of being launched on Atlas, Delta, and Falcon rockets. The Boeing designed capsule will be smaller than the Orion, but bigger than the Apollo.

Space Tourism in 2013
When Scaled Composites won the $10 million Ansari X Prize, in 2004, for sending the same spaceship into space twice within two weeks, everyone thought that space tourism was just a year, or  two, or three, or four away.

As it turns out, although it’s been seven years since the prize was awarded, Virgin Galactic has at least another two years before the company starts sending the 450+ prepaying space tourists on suborbital spaceflights. This revelation was made in a Wall Street Journal interview with David Mackay, the company’s first commercial astronaut pilot.

The excitement surrounding the very real possibility of being one of the few humans to ever leave the earth, compelled hundreds of extreme athletes and adrenaline junkies, with $200,000 to spare (or at least a $20,000 deposit), to pay for their spaceflights up front.

However, time has gotten to at least one would be space tourist who asked Virgin Galactic for a refund earlier this year.

Being what amounts to a start-up space agency, Virgin Galactic has no room for error when it comes to safety. A deadly explosion or crash would be horrific at any time. But, if it happens at the beginning of the company’s spaceflight operations, the space tourism industry as a whole could be derailed for years and Virgin Galactic could be out of business before it really gets started. The current posture of Congress is to let the industry grow without constricting it through over-regulation. However, that could all change at the first sign that the industry is not prepared to overcome safety concerns that are inherent to space travel.

Virgin Galactic is expected to continue testing the rocket and propulsion system in SpaceShipTwo through next year, along with various aspects of the spacecraft’s launch and descent capabilities.

Who Owns the Moon?
While the answer seems obvious, it may be more of a topic for conversation and water cooler debate than one would think.

If you ask the United Nations, no one owns the moon. According to the Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (often referred to as the Moon Treaty), which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979,

“The exploration of the Moon shall be the province of all mankind and shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all  countries…”

The treaty also goes on to state that,

“The Moon is not subject to national appropriation by any claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means…Neither the surface nor the subsurface of the Moon, nor any part thereof or natural resources in place, shall become property of any state, international intergovernmental or non-governmental organization, national organization or non-governmental entity or of any natural person.”

Countries engaged in exploration of the Moon are prohibited from:

• The threat of, or use of force and hostile acts on the Moon
• Establishing military bases
• Conducting military maneuvers
• Testing weapons

Lunar Embassy
The Moon Treaty however,  didn’t stop Dennis Hope from submitting a claim to the Moon, to the United Nations in 1980. After his registered claim received no response, his company, the Lunar Emabassy Corporation, began selling 1 acre plots of “prime view lunar properties.” In 1990, CNN reported that the company had sold more than 300,000 pieces of lunar property. According to Wikipedia, as of 2009, Hope has claimed to sell over 2.5 million 1 acre plots of the lunar surface. The company currently sells Deeds for $22.49, plus a $1.51 lunar tax.

Galactic Government?
In an apparent attempt to solidify his position, Hope formed the Galactic Government which claimed sovereignty over the Moon in 2004. The Declaration of Galactic Independence and the Constitution of the Galactic  Government seem to have been “recognized” (to some small degree) by the United States, in a Department of State document, that was signed by Hillary Clinton in December of 2009.

The United States and the Moon Treaty
With the Lunar Embassy selling off prime locations for space vacation resorts, and areas for mining regolith for helium-3, one might conclude that the United States would be ready to defend the Moon Treaty. That simply is not the case. For all of the grand and sweeping language that was included in the United Nations document, the treaty was not ratified by any of the nation states that are capable of launching people into space. It’s been 32 years since the treaty was adopted, and it has yet to be ratified by the United States, The Russian Federation, The European Union (collectively), the United Kingdom, Japan, India, and the Peoples Republic of China; all of which are spacefaring countries.

This means that an enterprising country such as China, with their ambitious plans for space exploration, and healthy budget, will not be bound by the United Nations or any other international authority, if its people succeed in reaching the Moon.

When Americans landed on the Moon in 1969, they did so using computer technology that essentially equates to a modern day calculator. Today, China, Russia and other spacefaring countries would be far more capable of setting up a permanent moon base for their national interests.

Will astronauts from a country other than the United States choose to moon walk through the foot prints of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, essentially destroying the defacto historic landmark that many Americans consider the Apollo 11 lunar landing site to be? (although the lunar environment will ultimately do that itself). There is no international document that requires the preservation of the landing site and the equipment that was left behind for the sake of posterity.

Additionally, none of the space-capable countries have signed away their ‘right’ to weaponize the natural satellite.

So, the next time that you gaze up at the Moon, or look at its craters through a telescope, consider whether or not the answer to the question ‘who owns the Moon?’ will be ‘no one,’ 100 years from now, or 50 years from now for that matter.

Now that the space shuttle fleet is retired, NASA is in an interesting situation. For at least the next few years the space agency must pay Russia for rides to the International Space Station (ISS). The price for each American astronaut is more than $50 million per ride on board a Russian Soyuz rocket. The space agency is hoping that commercial space flight companies, such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, come of age relatively quickly enough to begin shuttling astronauts to the ISS in 2016.

Paying Russia for additional rides to the ISS would cost about $450 million per year according to NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver.

NASA has already paid or set aside $388 million in funding to help commercial companies create the space flight vehicles that will be needed. The agency is requesting a budget of $850 million to keep that effort on track.

Currently, there is a bill in the in the House that cuts  the request to $312 million, and a bill in the senate that cuts it to $500 million. Last week, at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight, Garver said

“If you take the Senate ($500 million) mark, take it up $350 million, giving it to U.S. companies today to get to our requested amount, it gives us the best chance to be able to replace this foreign government service by 2016. That’s the choice.”

NASA will have to pay someone to get crews to the ISS. But, how long the U.S. continues to rely on the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, or shifts to American made space taxis depends in part on how tightly Congress holds its purse strings.

Are you raising a budding young scientist? Does your son or daughter love astronomy, physics, biology, or science in general? If so, your child may have an opportunity to send his or her experiment to the International Space Station (ISS). YouTube, Space Adventures, NASA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), in conjunction with Lenovo, have created a contest called Space Lab.

Teenagers ages 14 – 18, worldwide, will have the opportunity to pitch their ideas to a panel of expert judges, by submitting a two minute video describing their experiments to YouTube. The entry video doesn’t have to be complicated or even show the experiment. It can be as simple as your child explaining how their experiment works. As with any science project, your child will need to have a hypothesis, a method in which the experiment will be conducted, and state the expected results.

Zahaan Bharmal,  Head of Marketing Operations – Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Google, states that “Space Lab is a global program challenging students to design and experiment for space.”

The winning experiment will be rocketed to the ISS and conducted in front of live, streaming video. Entries must be received by December 7, 2011. For more information view the Space Lab website.

With NASA scaling down its workforce, much, much smaller, and very operationally inexperienced companies in the space tourism industry have the opportunity fill their rosters of senior management officials with executives who have real world experience in spaceflight operations.

That’s exactly what Virgin Galactic did when the company announced on Tuesday that former NASA Space Shuttle Launch Integration Manager, Mike Moses was hired as Vice President of Operations.

Mike Moses earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Purdue University. He received a master’s degree in astrophysics from the Florida Institute of Technology and an additional master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Purdue University.

He started his work with NASA as a contractor in 1995 and become an agency employee in 1998. Early in his career,  Mike Moses worked in the Space Shuttle Propulsion Systems Group (PROP). he became group lead for that team in 2001 and in 2003 he moved on to be group lead of  the Shuttle Electrical Systems Group (EGIL). In 2005 he was selected as a flight director. He had been the Launch Integration Manager since 2008 and worked on space shuttle missions until the retirement of the fleet this past July.

Virgin Galactic, which is headquartered in New Mexico, may start its space tourism service as early as next year. The company will provide suborbital spaceflights for would be space tourists at the the rate of $200,000 per ticket. There are currently, about 450 people who have prepaid or submitted a deposit for a ticket.

Fresh off of a weekend filled with watching hours of Star Trek (Deep Space Nine). I’m not sure why, but I woke up this morning in the mood of a realist. When I look at the news today, there will not be any updates about a NASA warp drive engine. No one will be returning from Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth (after the Sun of course), or even heading toward it for that matter. We earthlings will just have to be content  with the latest news about the next group of cosmonauts and (hitchhiking) astronauts puttering their way to the International Space Station (ISS), on board a Russian Soyuz rocket. After all, just getting away from low earth orbit (LEO) seems to be a challenge. But, that’s a discussion for another day.

Today, let’s just recognize how slow we are, in terms of  being a spacefaring race of sentient beings. Let’s ignore the physics of mass accelerating toward the speed of light. Let’s forget about things like spaceship occupants being bombarded with radiation from stars and muscle atrophy in low or no gravity environments (unless someone invents inertial dampeners).

Let’s just concern ourselves with speed. And for this exercise, our speed will be the speed of light, which is 186,282 miles per second.

Traveling through our solar system would  almost be a blur. It would take 1.3 seconds to get from the Earth to the Moon, 4.4 minutes to get to Mars, 1.2 hours to get to Saturn and 5.4 hours to get to the dwarf planet Pluto. With times like those, traveling at the speed of light would seem to solve our problem of traversing large distances in reasonable periods of time.

Before the Space Shuttles were retired, they would travel around the Earth at an orbiting speed of 17,500 miles per hour. At that rate, it would take 13.6 hours to get to the Moon and 3.9 months to reach Mars. We get a real appreciation for the the speed of light when the destination is Saturn, which traveling at the speed of a Space Shuttle, would take 5.2 years. By extension, a generation of people would come and go on the Earth before a space traveler would complete the 23.3 year mission to Pluto.

While those rates of travel aren’t bad per se, we consider the distance from Earth to the edge of our solar system (the definition of which is debatable) to be vast. But, traveling to the nearest star would certainly change our definition of vast. It would be nice to get to Proxima Centauri at light speed (4.2 years). But, in this day and age,  the 164,000 years it would take to get there at space shuttle speed helps us to realize that we’ll have to settle for near earth objects for a very, very long time.

Of course, we can select other stars to visit, but that just means much, much more travel time in most cases. So, if we humans decided to just turn our attention to the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, the 17,500 mph trip would take 1.14 billion years. Traveling at light speed would greatly reduce the time, but a 29,900 year trip would be very problematic for any group of space tourists.

Although we’re talking about interstellar travel, if we really thought big and decided to go intergalactic, cruising at space shuttle velocity would get space explorers to the Andromeda galaxy in 95.7 billion years. We can hardly say that the speed of light would save the day with a trip time of 2.5 million years.

Moving at light speed, 186,282 thousand miles per second, every second, would get a space traveler to the edge of the observable universe in 13.7 billion years. That’s a lot better, relatively speaking, than a Space Shuttle  which would finally reach the edge of the observable universe in 528,000 billion years (that’ 528 thousand billion years!)

This could have been a comparison between the speed of light and Voyager 1 (114,000 mph). But the point is the same. Star Trek, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica and Farscape give us something to dream about. But, without warp drive engines, or learning to expand and stabilize worm holes so that spaceships can fly through them, or people can walk through them (think Stargate SG1), just getting a human, just one human, to Mars would be a an unbelievable accomplishment. And that’s the reality of the matter.

While Captain James T. Kirk had no problem going ‘where no man has gone before,’ the space tourism industry seems to be a little slow about sending tourists where few people have gone before. After Scaled Composites won the Ansari X Prize in October of 2004, for sending the same manned spacecraft into space within a two week period of time, the widely held expectation was that space tourists would start their sub-orbital forays into space as early as 2007.

While it may not be fair to consider the commercial manned space industry slow, given the difficulty of the task, there are some potential space tourists who have given deposits, or paid for tickets in full, as long as 7 years ago.

That’s what venture capitalist, Alan Walton did. Although he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, reached the North Pole and skydived above Mount Everest, waiting seven years and reaching the age of 75 was enough to cause him to cancel his would be, out of this world adventure. In fact, he requested a refund of $200,000 from Virgin Galactic on his 75th birthday, earlier this year.

Creating a fleet of spaceships that are profitable and safe, is not for the faint of heart. Tepid CEOs need not apply. Given that private industry is relatively new to what NASA had been doing for decades, Virgin Galactic, lead by Richard Branson,  may be on pace to shuttle passengers into space as early as next year.

NASA has announced that the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) will be the future of manned space exploration for the agency.

According to NASA, the spacecraft:

• will serve as the primary crew vehicle for missions beyond LEO
• will be capable of conducting regular in-space operations (rendezvous, docking, extravehicular activity) in conjunction with payloads delivered by SLS for missions beyond LEO
• will have the capability to be a backup system for ISS cargo and crew delivery

Source SPACE.com

Virgin Galactic continues to make progress toward its first commercial space flight, which is expected to take place next year. On Wednesday May 4, 2011, high above the Mojave Air and Spaceport in California, SpaceShipTwo (SS2) completed its first ever ‘feathered’ flight reentry configuration.

While attached to its mothership, WhiteKnightTwo (WK2), SpaceShipTwo was flown to an elevation of 51,500 ft. where it was released to fall toward Earth. After a short time, the tail section of the ship rotated upward so that it and the fuselage formed a 65 degree angle. In this configuration, the speed of descent began to slow down.

What’s unique about the feather configuration is that it creates enough drag on the spaceship that the speed of the craft slows to a point where the friction generated by falling through the atmosphere does not create enough heat to require heat shields. U.S. space shuttles for example, were built with a need for thermal tiles to protect the surface of the space crafts.

After about 1 minute and 15 seconds of remaining in a feathered descent, and its fall reduced to a speed of 15,500 ft per minute, at an altitude of 33,500 ft., SpaceShipTwo returned to its normal gliding configuration and landed on a runway about 11 minutes and 5 seconds after it first began to free fall.

Virgin Galactic will continue to test the spaceship before the first space tourists begin their suborbital flights.

On Wednesday, SpaceX positioned itself among an elite class. Only the United States, Russia, Japan, India, China, and the European Space Agency (representing multiple countries) had successfully recovered a spaceship after it orbited the Earth and reentered the atmosphere. Yesterday, Space Exploration Technologies Inc., referred to often as SpaceX, became the first private company to join that group.

At 10:43 AM EST, the company’s Falcon 9 Rocket launched into space while carrying the Dragon capsule. The capsule circled the Earth at speeds exceeding 17,000 mph. And after successfully orbiting the Earth twice, the capsule splashed down in the Pacific ocean, where it was retrieved shortly after 2 PM EST.

“What a great day for SpaceX. What a great day for NASA. And what a historic day for commercial space flight” said Alan Lindenmoyer, Manager of the Commercial Crew and Cargo Program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

This was the first space flight associated with NASA’s COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) program, which is designed to develop commercial transport and supply missions to the International Space Station (ISS).

During the subsequent press conference, CEO and Chief Technology Officer, Elon Musk said that “I think it’s just a testament to the incredible work of people at SpaceX. I mean, everyone just did their job so well.”

He added that “For a rocket to work and then a spacecraft to work, they’re both incredibly complex devices. There’s so much that can go wrong. And it all went right.”

Space Explorations Technology Corp., otherwise know as SpaceX, received the first FAA approved commercial spaceship reentry license from the agency on Monday.

In a statement released by NASA, the agency’s Administrator, Charlie Bolden, said that “With this license in hand, SpaceX can proceed with its launch of the Dragon capsule. The flight of Dragon will be an important step toward commercial cargo delivery to the International Space Station. NASA wishes SpaceX every success with the launch.”

SpaceX was required to obtain the reentry license before launching a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule into orbit next month for a test flight. After reentering the atmosphere, the Dragon capsule will splash down in the pacific ocean, near southern California.

In light of the impending retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet, NASA is looking at utilizing the transport capabilities of commercial enterprises. SpaceX is currently under contract, as part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Program (COTS), to eventually help resupply the International Space Station (ISS).

After successfully completing all of the necessary flight and reentry testing, SpaceX will begin resupplying the ISS under a the NASA awarded Cargo Resupply Services contract (CSR), which has a minimum value of $1.6 billion. The company is expected to conduct at least 12 cargo flights to the ISS.

The November 1st Space Shuttle Discovery launch is expected to be the second to last shuttle launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Slated for a launch time of 4:40 pm EDT, shuttle mission STS-133 will supply the International Space Station (ISS) with a MultiPurpose Logistics Module (MPLM), the Express Logistics Carrier 4 (ELC4), and spare components.

This is the last mission for Discovery before being retired. Workers at the space center and their family members watched the shuttle’s last rollout. Discovery was moved from the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy late last night and arrived at the launch pad early this morning. The 3.4 mile journey was made, on top of a crawler-transporter, at a speed of less than 1 mph.

Six astronauts will be aboard Discovery on its 39th, and final flight. Unless an extra Atlantis Space Shuttle flight is approved by congress, mission STS-134, scheduled for February 26, 2011, utilizing Space Shuttle Endeavour will be the last mission before the entire shuttle fleet is retired.

NASA will purchase seats aboard Russian space vehicles until commercial enterprises such as Boeing create space transportation that can safely send astronauts to the ISS. NASA has been given direction by President Obama to focus on engineering spacecrafts that can reach a near Earth object (neo) such as an asteroid and a distant destination, possibly Mars.

The Skylon spaceplane that was developed by Reaction Engines with the aid of the UK space agency is expected to be ready before 2020. Like a traditional plane, Skylon departs from a typical airport runway. It would eventually reach speeds that surpass the speed of sound by more than five times.

Liquid hydrogen and oxygen will be used to fuel the spaceplane. The two engine design will allow it to escape the Earth’s atmosphere by a distance of up to 18 miles. Skylon is a single stage rocket and differs from U.S. Space Shuttles in that it is not going to use an external fuel tank.

Unlike other vehicles designed for space tourism, the 270 foot transport will be pilotless.

Skylon will be able to orbit the Earth for up to seven days before returning to the ground by way of runway landing. A maximum of 24 passengers can be ferried into low earth orbit (LEO). In addition, Skylon can handle a payload of up to 15 tons.

Reaction Engines hopes that a spaceplane concept will reduce the overall cost of access to space.

“Access to space is extraordinarily expensive, yet there’s no law of physics that says it has to be that way,” stated Richard Varvill to The Engineer Magazine.