NASA SLS rocket system: RS-25 Rocket Engine test project begins

RS-25 rocket engine No. 0525 is positioned onto the A-1 Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi in preparation for a series of developmental tests. 

Credit: NASA

Engineers have taken a crucial step in preparing to test parts of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will send humans to new destinations in the solar system.

They installed on Thursday an RS-25 engine on the A-1 Test Stand at the agency's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

The Stennis team will perform developmental and flight certification testing of the RS-25 engine, a modified version of the space shuttle main engine that powered missions into space from 1981 to 2011.

The SLS's core stage will be powered by a configuration of four RS-25 engines, like the one recently installed on the A-1 stand.

"This test series is a major milestone because it will be our first opportunity to operate the engine with a new controller and to test propellant inlet conditions for SLS that are different than the space shuttle," said Steve Wofford, SLS Liquid Engines Element manager.

"This testing will confirm the RS-25 will be successful at powering SLS."

Early tests on the engine will collect data on the performance of its new advanced engine controller and other modifications.

The controller regulates valves that direct the flow of propellant to the engine, which determines the amount of thrust generated during an engine test, known as a hotfire test.

In flight, propellant flow and engine thrust determine the speed and trajectory of a spacecraft. The controller also regulates the engine startup sequence, which is especially important on an engine as sophisticated as the RS-25.

Likewise, the controller determines the engine shutdown sequence, ensuring it will proceed properly under both normal and emergency conditions.

"Installation of RS-25 engine No. 0525 signals the launch of another major rocket engine test project for human space exploration on the A-1 Test Stand," said Gary Benton, RS-25 rocket engine test project manager at Stennis.

The SLS is designed to carry astronauts in NASA's Orion spacecraft deeper into space than ever before, to destinations including an asteroid and Mars.

NASA is using existing and in-development hardware and infrastructure, including the RS-25 engine, to the maximum extent possible to enable NASA to begin deep space missions sooner.

Testing of engine No. 0525 begins in the coming weeks on a test stand originally built in the 1960s for Apollo-era engines that helped launch the lunar missions.

The stand has since been used for several major testing projects, and NASA spent almost a year modifying the structure to accommodate the RS-25 engine.

The SLS Program is managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, California, is on contract with NASA to adapt the RS-25 engines for SLS missions.

Hubble Begins Search Beyond Pluto For Potential Flyby Targets

This is an artist's rendering of the New Horizons spacecraft encountering a Kuiper Belt object - a city-sized icy relic left over from the birth of our solar system. 

The sun, more than 4.1 billion miles (6.7 billion kilometers) away, shines as a bright star embedded in the glow of the zodiacal dust cloud. 

Jupiter and Neptune are visible as orange and blue "stars" to the right of the sun. 

Image courtesy JHUAPL /SwRI.

After careful consideration and analysis, the Hubble Space Telescope Time Allocation Committee has recommended using Hubble to search for an object the Pluto-bound NASA New Horizons mission could visit after its flyby of Pluto in July 2015.

The planned search will involve targeting a small area of sky in search of a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) for the outbound spacecraft to visit.

The Kuiper Belt is a vast debris field of icy bodies left over from the solar system's formation 4.6 billion years ago.

A KBO has never been seen up close because the belt is so far from the sun, stretching out to a distance of 5 billion miles into a never-before-visited frontier of the solar system.

"I am pleased that our science peer-review process arrived at a consensus as to how to effectively use Hubble's unique capabilities to support the science goals of the New Horizons mission," said Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland.

Fully carrying out the KBO search is contingent on the results from a pilot observation using Hubble data.

The space telescope will scan an area of sky in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius to try and identify any objects orbiting within the Kuiper Belt.

To discriminate between a foreground KBO and the clutter of background stars in Sagittarius, the telescope will turn at the predicted rate that KBOs are moving against the background stars.

In the resulting images, the stars will be streaked, but any KBOs should appear as pinpoint objects.

If the test observation identifies at least two KBOs of a specified brightness it will demonstrate statistically that Hubble has a chance of finding an appropriate KBO for New Horizons to visit.

At that point, an additional allotment of observing time will continue the search across a field of view roughly the angular size of the full moon.

Astronomers around the world apply for observing time on the Hubble Space Telescope. Competition for time on the telescope is extremely intense and the requested observing time significantly exceeds the observing time available in a given year.

Proposals must address significant astronomical questions that can only be addressed with Hubble's unique capabilities, and are beyond the capabilities of ground-based telescopes.

The proposals are peer reviewed annually by an expert committee, which looks for the best possible science that can be conducted by Hubble and recommends to the Space Telescope Science Institute director a balanced program of small, medium, and large investigations.

Though Hubble is powerful enough to see galaxies near the horizon of the universe, finding a KBO is a challenging needle-in-haystack search.

A typical KBO along the New Horizons trajectory may be no larger than Manhattan Island and as black as charcoal.

ASTROBOTIC: Testing begins for real at Masten Space Systems

When Astrobotic's Griffin lander descends to the lunar surface, it will precisely target a small landing ellipse (a small area where it might land) and autonomously maneuver to avoid hazards such as rocks bigger than 25cm and slopes greater than 15. 

Last month Astrobotic introduced the landing sensor package and the concept of map registration - a technique that matches ("registers") a location in an in-flight image to the same location on a map.

Kevin Peterson

Now, an Astrobotic team led by Kevin Peterson is headed out to Masten Space Systems, located at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, CA, to fly the landing sensor package and software system on the Masten Xombie suborbital rocket.

This is the first of three flights on Masten's reusable launch vehicles - all made possible by a NASA Flight Opportunities award.

The first flight will operate the system in an open-loop mode, where Astrobotic's sensor package captures the same data it would use for an autonomous landing, but without actually controlling the vehicle.

The second and third flights, slated for later this spring, will be closed-loop flights where Astrobotic's landing software uses the sensor-package data in real time to guide the vehicle's landing.

Terrestrial simulation of the landing task requires creativity. Over the last year, Astrobotic has used a variety of test environments to exercise the landing system components and gather data about their operation.

Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser: Wings and Tail ground testing

Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser successfully rolls through two tow tests at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in California in preparation for future flight testing later this year.

Sierra Nevada Corporation's winged Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle is moving forward with a series of ground tests at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California that will soon lead to dramatic aerial flight tests throughout 2013.

Pathfinding tow tests on Dryden's concrete runway aim to validate the performance of the vehicles' nose skid, brakes, tires and other systems to prove that it can safely land an astronaut crew after surviving the searing re-entry from Earth orbit.

The Dream Chaser is one of the three types of private sector 'space taxis' being developed with NASA seed money to restore America's capability to blast humans to Earth orbit from American soil – a capability which was totally lost following the forced shutdown of NASA's Space Shuttle program in 2011.

For the initial ground tests, the engineering test article was pulled by a tow truck at 10 and 20 MPH. Later this month tow speeds will be ramped up to 40 to 60 MPH.

Final assembly of the Dream Chaser test vehicle was completed at Dryden with installation of the wings and tail, following shipment from SNC's Space Systems headquarters in Louisville, Colo.

Watch this exciting minute-long, time-lapse video showing attachment of the wings and tail:



In the next phase later this year, Sierra Nevada will conduct airborne captive carry tests using an Erickson Skycrane helicopter.

Atmospheric drop tests of the engineering test vehicle in an autonomous free flight mode, for Approach and Landing Tests (ALT), will follow to check the aerodynamic handling.

The engineering test article is a full sized vehicle.

Dream Chaser is a reusable mini shuttle that launches from the Florida Space Coast atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and lands on the shuttle landing facility (SLF) runway at the Kennedy Space Center, like the Space Shuttle.

Dream Chaser awaits launch atop Atlas V rocket.

"It's not outfitted for orbital flight. It is outfitted for atmospheric flight tests," said Marc Sirangelo, Sierra Nevada Corp. vice president and SNC Space Systems chairman.

"The best analogy is that it's very similar to what NASA did in the shuttle program with the Enterprise. We are creating a vehicle that is able to make a significant number of flights. One whose design would feed or filter into the final vehicle, for orbital flight," Sirangelo told reporters.

Lone Signal Project Begins Beaming Your Messages Into Deep Space

CREDIT: Lone Signal Media

In 18 years, messages beamed out into space from Earth by a new alien-messaging project Monday (June 17) will reach a distant star system known as Gliese 526.

Officials with the Lone Signal project — a newly launched website designed to send user-written notices to any extraterrestrials who may receive them — hope that their messages might open the first dialogue between Earth and other intelligent life forms.

One of the company's first message beamed to the Gliese 526 system, located 17.6 light-years from Earth was sent by famous futurist Ray Kurzweil and reads: "Greetings to Gliese 526 from Singularity University."

"As you receive this, our computers have made us smarter, the better to understand you and the wisdom of the universe…"

"This signal, in 19 hours, will go farther than the Voyager spacecraft has in 40 years," Jason Silva, the host of "Brain Games" on the National Geographic Channel said.

He spoke to a crowd of fashion models, businessmen and a handful of scientists in downtown Manhattan honouring Lone Signal's launch on Monday.

The Jamesburg Earth Station will be responsible for transmitting the messages contributed to the Lone Signal project.

NASA 2010: Final Space Shuttle Year Begins With Last Night Launch

NASA on Wednesday gave the green light for the US Endeavour space shuttle to blast off towards the International Space Station on February 7 carrying six astronauts.

Lift-off is set for 04:39 am (0939 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida in what marks the final year of space exploration for the shuttle fleet, which is due to be mothballed at the end of September.

Only five more shuttle flights, including the Endeavour launch, are planned, NASA said in a statement after a meeting of the US space agency's scientists.

During its 13-day mission Endeavour's crew will deliver the US module Tranquility, the last big piece of equipment to be flown to the ISS for installation.

Tranquility will provide extra room for crew members as well as the life support and environmental control systems. It will also help recycle waste water and produce oxygen.

The Endeavour's crew will also carry out three spacewalks during the mission.