AmericaSpace

Time 2020-07-25 04:05:20

Web Name: AmericaSpace

WebSite: http://www.americaspace.com

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For decades, we have grown used to watching launches from Cape Canaveral. But until the arrival of the rockets and the rocketeers, the Cape was a sleepy place, characterized by dense thickets of cane vegetation and home to scattered farming and fishing communities, as well as alligators, racoons, scorpions and ubiquitous mosquitoes. When the first military personnel arrived here to set up the Army’s Long Range Proving Ground in early 1950, a joke soon made the rounds that the security detail would bed down in their tents each night, only to awaken the next morning to the most unwelcome of bedfellows: a bunch of fearsome rattlesnakes. It is hard to imagine, seeing what we see today, what a different world this place once was. And on 24 July 1950—70 years ago today—the Cape observed its very first rocket launch with the flight of Bumper 8.As United Launch Alliance (ULA) counts down to next year’s liftoff of the first Vulcan-Centaur booster, efforts continue to crank up in Florida not only to receive hardware for the new vehicle, but also to flight-test critical components on several forthcoming Atlas V missions. Earlier this month, a new-style payload fairing for Vulcan-Centaur—fabricated with the “Out-of-Autoclave” manufacturing process—was delivered to Cape Canaveral. And now the first members of a fourth-generation Graphite Epoxy Motor (GEM) have been transported from Northrop Grumman Corp.’s facility in Magna, Utah, to the Cape, where they will be utilized on an Atlas V mission to deliver the NROL-101 classified payload to orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office, later this fall. This summer promises to be a hot and heavy one, with all eyes laser-focused on “Green Run” testing of the Space Launch System (SLS) core stage at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Miss. Three of the eight key milestones have already been completed in the B-2 Test Stand, with a full-flight-duration static-firing of the four RS-25 engines for Artemis-1—the first flight of a human-rated spacecraft to lunar distance since Apollo 17—anticipated later this fall. Hopes remain high that Artemis-1 may fly its uncrewed mission around the Moon towards the end of 2021, but much attention is also riveted upon Artemis-2, a voyage to transport the first humans across the vast gulf of cislunar space since December 1972. And Aerojet Rocketdyne recently announced that it has completed its share of the propulsive muscle that will get Artemis-2 to the Moon.Two NASA astronauts smoothly powered through a lengthy spacewalk on Tuesday, tending to a multitude of tasks which will expand the capabilities of the International Space Station (ISS). Expedition 63 crewmen Bob Behnken and Chris Cassidy were both embarking on the tenth EVAs of their respective careers—jointly tying an already-extant record for the greatest number of spacewalks by a U.S. citizen—and spent five hours and 29 minutes outside the sprawling orbital complex. By the time they returned back to the station’s Quest airlock, Behnken had established his new credentials as the fourth most experienced spacewalker in history, whilst Cassidy has nudged himself into the Top Ten.The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the much-anticipated new space observatory that is regarded as being the follow-on successor to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The launch of JWST has been delayed multiple times, however, due to technical and other challenges, and, most recently, COVID-19. But now, NASA has just announced a new launch date for its premiere space observatory: Oct. 31, 2021. The previous launch date had been sometime in March 2021.If Dragon Endeavour crewmen Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken happened to look down towards Cape Canaveral earlier this evening, they may have experienced a peculiar pang of déjà vu, as the very same booster core which launched them into space seven weeks ago—tailnumbered “B1058”—rose again from Earth on another mission to orbit. Liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 occurred at 5:30 p.m. EDT from storied Space Launch Complex (SLC)-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. And in scenes which we dwellers of the second decade of the 21st century have now become comfortably accustomed, a few minutes after launch B1058 plummeted back through the atmosphere to alight with pinpoint grace on the deck of the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (ASDS), even as the second stage headed towards geostationary transfer orbit.It has been less than three weeks since SpaceX last launched a Falcon 9, but it has felt almost like a multi-month hiatus in operations, with not one but two missions repeatedly delayed by a cocktail of weather and technical problems. All that is expected to end on Monday, 20 July, when the previously-flown B1058 core—which last saw service on 30 May to boost Dragon Endeavour into orbit for “Bob and Doug’s Excellent Adventure” to the International Space Station (ISS)—lifts off from historic Space Launch Complex (SLC)-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., laden with South Korea’s first secure military communications satellite, ANASIS-II. In so doing, B1058 should set a new launch-to-launch record of 51 days between two flights by a single Falcon 9 core and also eclipse the now-retired Space Shuttle Atlantis for the shortest interval between two missions by a reusable orbital-class launch vehicle.We watchers of the space program became accustomed to Space Shuttle landings, almost as much as we did the launches. On more than a hundred occasions between April 1981 and July 2011, we watched as the sleek black-and-white orbiters appeared in the Florida, California or—in the case of STS-3—in the New Mexico skies, plummeted like fast-moving bricks towards their runways and alighted with pinpoint grace on concrete or dry-lakebed runways. Most landed without incident, although a few succumbed to shredded and burst tires, seized brakes and one almost did a “wheelie”. It would be foolhardy to think that shuttle landings were ever routine and their inherent dangers prompted the development of complex technologies to keep the vehicles and their crews safe. Thirty years ago this month, in July 1990, NASA started testing one such technology that would improve safety to a new level and become an instantly recognizable piece of shuttle hardware: the “drag chute”.Only weeks after naming its first Dream Chaser as “Tenacity”, Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) has announced contracts with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to use its Shooting Star expendable cargo vehicle as a possible commercial solution for a high-powered Unmanned Orbital Outpost. The 16-foot-long (4.8-meter) Shooting Star is currently planned to be attached to the end of Dream Chaser to accommodate secondary cargo or disposable waste from the International Space Station (ISS), but SNC has previously noted that this highly versatile vehicle can be used for other missions, including the Lunar Gateway.Solar Orbiter, a joint mission between NASA and ESA to study the Sun in unprecedented detail, has just returned the closest images of our local star ever taken, and they are amazing. The images, and other data, were sent back after the spacecraft s first close flyby of the Sun in mid-June. The images were released during a joint online NASA/ESA press conference that was streamed live on NASA s website.AmericaSpace CountdownNext Launch ANASIS-2 on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral AFB, FLscheduled for:20 Jul 20 at 21:30 GMT20 Jul 20 at 5:30pm Eastern

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