SSI News
Asteroid makes close pass of Earth on 15 February
A Near Earth Object (NEO) asteroid 2012 DA14 is due to make a very close pass of Earth on 15 February as it flies well within the Geostationary Orbital altitude of 36,000km at circa 1800-2200 GMT. Observers in Europe wanting to view the object should see it moving across Ursa Major (aka Great Bear, Big Dipper, Plough) constellation from 2100 GMT onwards.
Boeing sues Energia and Yuznoye for Sea Launch investment cash
On the same day of Sea Launch’s most recent launch failure event which lost the Intelsat 27 spacecraft, on 1 February, Boeing filed a lawsuit against the firms RSC Enegria and Yuznoye at the US District Court in Los Angeles demanding the payment of $356 million. Boeing alleges it is owed the money according to agreement it made with its Sea Launch partners during the setting up of the joint firm which noted that should the firm fail or be restructured, Boeing woud be paid its part of its investment back.
On a lighter note: I want to go into space says Iran’s President and USA will want him to go (corrected)
Following the successful suborbital launch by Iran of a Rhesus monkey (albeit that there was some confusion of its identity) Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced that he wants to become an astronaut on a flight of Iran’s Kavoshgar suborbital launch vehicle. While some of his opponents and critics have (somewhat unfairly) compared President Ahmadinejad to a monkey himself, given Iran’s somewhat dodgy launch reliabililty record (the previous flight of the Kavoshgar launch vehicle is thought to have failed killng its monkey payload) it is a good bet that the US State Department will shortly putting up the funding for his flight.
Monkey business is over as Iran says we used wrong pictures
While Iran announced, to great fanfare, that it had launched its first monkey into suborbital space and recovered him safely, it then made a great public relations mistake in releasing “before” and “after” pictures of the said Rhesus monkey. The problem was, that not only did the monkey look thorougly miserable in his padding before the trip, after the trip he had appeared to have changed colour and facial markings. Media types cried foul and assumed that there had been a switich suggesting that this was either due to a dead monkey or because the flight had never even taken place. It is more simple than that said official Iranian sources: the pictures were mixed up. Hyperbola gives the Iranian space programme the benefit of the doubt…this time.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo is currently insured as an aviation risk rather than a space one
At the International Institute of Space Commerce’ sponsored event “Space Tourism: Risks and Solutions” workshop which was held at Lloyds of London under an arrangement with the Broker Aon, the insurance of suborbital space tourism was discussed. Apart form the obvious risks to astronaut human life and third party life and property, other risks were considered including political, reputational and financial risks. However, it was the risk to the passengers and their potential for claims, along with how to insure the spaceplane hulls, that most exercised most of the attendees.
On a sadder but lighter note: Apologetic tribute to Hyperbola’s typo spotters and English teacher
While a few of our readers have gleefully pointed out the fistful of spelling errors, grammatical mistakes and typographic faults that sometimes appear in our (well mainly this writer’s) Hyperbola space blog stories, one who may now be turning in his grave will be your space correspondent’s old English school teacher and first year form master, Bruce Ritchie, who sadly passed away last October.
Intelsat 27 satellite lost in launch failure
A Sea Launch Zenit 3SL launch vehicle attempted to launch the Intelsat 27 satellite at 0656 on 1 February from its Odyssey launch platform located on the Equator in the Pacific Ocean at 154 degrees West. Early reports indicate that after 25 seconds of flight the first...
Atlas launches TDRS K satellite
A US Atlas V 401 launch vehicle successfully launched NASA's TDRS K communications relay satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit at 0148 GMT on 31 January 2013. The satellite will be used to relay signals from other craft such as the International Space Station...
Analysis: Lockheed Martin finally gets onto a genuine runner in commercial space transport race
The news that Lockheed Martin has finally got back into commercial manned spaceflight transportation by joining the Sierra Nevada led team building the second Dreamchaser spaceplane will probably be a relief to its board. For while Lockheed Martin beat its main rival Boeing to the glory of building the Orion space capule for NASA’s long range manned exploration extravaganzas (to borrow from Neil Armstrong’s quip: Orion was the one part of Project Constellation that could not be “executed”) in truth, this victory was a slightly hollow one.
Elon Musk says Boeing 787 batteries are unsafe
While NASA is already helping Boeing with its inquiry into how and why Boeing 787 aircraft batteries have been over heating recently, the rocket-to-electric car entrepreneur who leads both SpaceX and Tesla Motors, Elon Musk has given his opinion to Flightglobal about why, in his view, the lithium-ion batteries used on the Boeing 787 are fundementally unsafe. Musk notes that the cells are too large and not protected enough to not get into runaway overheating state.
Stay Informed with Seradata
Stay informed on the latest news, insights, and more from Seradata by signing up for our newsletter.