United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket lifts Orion to EFT-1 - Video

NASA’s inaugural Orion spaceship has set sail on a two-orbit, four-hour shakedown cruise around the Earth, leaving port atop a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket and its incandescent power at 7:05 a.m. EST today.

The 46,000-pound craft rocketed into its preliminary orbit, setting the stage for a coast period and another engine firing by the Delta 4-Heavy rocket later this morning to put Orion on a trajectory to travel 15 times higher than the International Space Station before re-entering over the Pacific Ocean and splashing down 600 miles southwest of San Diego at 11:23 a.m. EST (1623 GMT).

“This is going to be a vehicle that could fly for us for 30 years, potentially, and this is the first one, the first tailnumber coming out the chute. This is like the forefather of this great fleet of vehicles that’s going to be coming online,” said astronaut Rex Walheim, part of the Orion development team and member of the final space shuttle crew.

The Orion Spacecraft in development. This image shows its heat shield.

Credit: NASA

“This is the opening of a new era. It is the opening of the Orion program. It’s really exciting because it’s that transition we have been waiting for. It’s been about three-and-a-half years since I last flew on the space shuttle (and) closed the program down with the anticipation these new programs would be coming along. Now here we are. It’s really exciting to see the first flight of Orion,” Walheim said.

This mission is known as Exploration Flight Test No. 1 (EFT 1) to gather real-life data on the performance of Orion’s avionics, software, radiation protection, heat shield, parachutes and recovery systems.



“EFT 1 is a compilation of the riskiest events that we are going to see when we fly people. So this test flight is a great opportunity to fly those and see them in operation. Some of these events are difficult or even impossible to test on the ground. EFT 1 gives us a chance to put all those together,” said Mark Geyer, Orion program manager.

“Using the Delta 4 heavy gets us 15 times higher than space station and about 84 percent of lunar entry velocity,” he said.

“So we start seeing that different physics, we start seeing those very high temperatures, high velocities, so that’s one of the big things we’ll test.

“And as we go through the Van Allen belts, we’re going to see this radiation effect on the computers. We’re going to measure, with dosimeters, the environment but we’re also going to see how the avionics behave, which is actually more important, and how do our mitigations work?”

As for re-entry, “we have a lot of parachutes because we need to slow the vehicle down from about 300 mph to 20 mph, so we do that in stages,” he said.

“We’ve done a lot of drop tests out in Yuma (Arizona) and looked at failure cases, but until you’ve actually dropped it in the exact air density and speed you’re going to see, we’re certainly going to learn stuff from that.”

Second US Judge Lifts Temporary Injunction on Russian Rocket Engine Purchases

An RD-180 engine and Atlas 5 first stage arrive at the launch pad in Florida.

Credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller

U.S. federal judge on Thursday (May 8) lifted an injunction that temporarily barred the U.S. Air Force and United Launch Alliance from buying Russian-made rocket engines for launching launch national security missions that had been issued out of concern that the purchases violated sanctions against Russian leaders.

In issuing the temporary injunction April 30, Judge Susan Braden of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims cited the possibility that money from the transactions could wind up in the hands of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees Russia’s space industry.

Rogozin is one of 11 senior Russian officials sanctioned by the U.S. government following Russia’s incursions into Ukraine.

The engine in question is the RD-180, which is built by NPO Energomash of Russia and sold to ULA by RD-Amross, a joint venture between Energomash and United Technologies Corp.

The engine is used on the first stage of ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket, one of two vehicles operated by the company.

Braden specified that the injunction would stand pending a determination by the U.S. Treasury, Commerce and State departments that RD-180 purchases did not specifically violate the sanctions.

In letters filed with the court May 6, officials with those departments said no decision had been made to specifically label NPO Energomash as a Rogozin-controlled enterprise.

Additionally, "to the best of our knowledge, purchases from and payments to NPO Energomash currently do not directly or indirectly contravene" the sanctions, Bradley Smith, chief counsel for the Treasury Department, said in a letter to the court.

The State Department's letter echoed that sentiment, while Commerce deferred to the other agencies.

Based on those letters, Braden wrote May 8, she was dissolving the temporary injunction.

"If the Government receives any indication, however, that purchases from or payment of money to NPO Energomash by ULS, ULA, or the United States Air Force will directly or indirectly" violate the White House sanctions, the government must inform the court immediately, she wrote.

Wearable Muscle-Enhancing Suit from Japan

IN a lab in downtown Tokyo, grinning engineering students are peering past PC monitors and half-completed gadgets to watch one try and lift 40 kilograms of rice.

No mean feat, but luckily the student is about to be given a power boost.

He shuffles between some boxes and squat down as instructed by research student Hideyuki Umehara, aware of the clutter around him as he fights for floor space with the lower half of a mannequin, an electric wheelchair and an eerily realistic robotic head. 

Umehara places the bag of rice onto my outstretched arms. Then he presses a switch on the rucksack-like jacket the student is wearing, his hips are propelled forward and gradually his legs straighten until they are completely upright.

It takes a second to register, but the 40 kg of rice he just picked up like a human forklift truck suddenly seem as light as a feather. Thanks to the "muscle suit" Umehara slipped onto my back prior to the exercise. 

Fixed at the hips and shoulders by a padded waistband and straps, and extending part-way down the side of his legs, the exoskeleton has an A-shaped aluminium frame and sleeves that rotate freely at elbow and shoulder joints.

It weighs 9.2 kg, but the burst of air that Umehara injected into four artificial muscles attached on the back of the frame make both jacket and rice feel virtually weightless.

The muscle suit is one of a series of cybernetic exoskeletons developed by Hiroshi Kobayashi's team at the Tokyo University of Science in Japan. 

Scheduled for commercial release early next year, the wearable robot takes two forms: one augmenting the arms and back that is aimed at areas of commerce where heavy lifting is required. 

The other, a lighter, 5 kg version, will target the nursing industry to assist in lifting people in and out of bed, for example.

Kobayashi's muscle suit is the latest in a long line of exoskeletons dating back to General Electric's 1965 "man amplifier", the Hardiman. 

In the intervening years there have been a number of attempts to build devices that augment performance for soldiers, or to help disabled people. 

Some successful creations, such as the HULC by Ekso Bionics and Raytheon's XOS2, are still in development for the military.

Yet many exoskeleton projects hit problems early on that delayed or prevented commercial release. Most relate to the inability to generate sufficient power to safely drive the multiple motors required to mobilise the often-hefty suits.

Kobayashi believes his suit will be different. It doesn't have heavy electric actuators and hydraulics, but instead comes with PAMs - pneumatic artificial muscles. These lightweight, mesh-encased rubber bladders are designed to contract when pressurised air is pumped in. 

The PAMs give up to 30 kg of instant support or more, depending on how far the weight is away from the body. 

"The power-to-weight ratio is 400 times greater than motor-driven suits," says Kobayashi, who adds that unlike motors, PAMs are unaffected by water and dirt. 

A regulator controls the compressed air output based on a signal given by a microprocessor, which in turn communicates with an acceleration sensor in the frame that detects and responds to movement.

As well as its high power-to-weight ratio, the muscle suit's huge advantage, Kobayashi says, are its simple controls, which are largely preprogrammed to mimic natural human movements. 

Walking or lifting are triggered via the jacket's sensor, which responds to both simple voice commands, such as "start or "stop", and the body's acceleration. 

If the wearer is standing upright or moving more slowly than the preset acceleration threshold then the device will not move. A simple dial can control the suit's speed. 

The exoskeleton will be available to rent from ¥15,000 (£115) per month, although Japan's health insurance will cover 90 per cent of the charge in many cases.

"Years ago I was attracted by cool-looking robots, but basically they were of little use to society," Kobayashi said from his office, which is decorated with achievement awards and houses the prototype for his best-known creation, Saya the humanoid robot teacher. "I think our muscle suit is the only practically usable tool worldwide."

In Japan there has been a surge in R&D into exoskeletons, largely because of the country's rapidly ageing population: more than 30 per cent may be over 65 by 2025. In a recent science and technology white paper the government emphasised the need for robotic devices in a society where increasingly "the elderly will be caring for the elderly".

Later that day, the student gets the chance to try out the simpler version of the suit, which has no metal sleeves to support the arm. It is noticeably lighter, though the final product, says Umehara, will be lighter still, weighing around 4 kg. "I always thought this was part of fiction," he says, "but now, it's just a step away."

NASA Shuttle Discovery: NASA 905 is close to OV103 for mating operations.

NASA Shuttle Discovery (905) is close to OV103 for mating operations.


More Images available at NASA Kennedy Space Centre Flickr site.

Credit: NASA

Disability Robotic Aid: Cyberdyne's HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb)

At University of Tsukuba, Yoshiyuki Sankai, professor of Cybernics, unveils a robot suit entitled HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb), with a 60kg anti radiation jacket, in Tsukuba city, Ibaraki prefecture.

HAL robot suits, developed by Cyberdyne, detect signals from the brain to assist in the wearer's movement, and were developed for disabled and handicaped people.

Picture: YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images

Functional Description
"When a person attempts to move, nerve signals are sent from the brain to the muscles via motoneuron, moving the musculoskeletal system as a consequence.

At this moment, very weak bio-signals can be detected on the surface of the skin. "HAL" catches these signals through a sensor attached on the skin of the wearer.

Based on the signals obtained, the power unit is controlled to move the joint unitedly with the wearer's muscle movement, enabling to support the wearer's daily activities.

This is what we call a 'voluntary control system' that provides movement interpreting the wearer's intention from the biosignals in advance of the actual movement.

Not only a 'voluntary control system' "HAL" has, but also a 'robotic autonomous control system' that provides human-like movement based on a robotic system which integrally work together with the 'autonomous control system'.

"HAL" is the world's first cyborg-type robot controlled by this unique Hybrid System."

Watch the video below to see it in action.

US Lifts Russian space ban: Iranian Nuclear Armament Proliferation Sanctions

The U.S. government has lifted sanctions against the Russian space organisation Glavkosmos, the U.S. Federal Register said on Thursday.

The United States imposed economic sanctions against Glavkosmos on July 30, 1998, accusing it of export control violations and engaging in proliferation activities related to Iran's missile program.

The sanctions barred the company from exporting or importing goods to the United States and also blocked it from receiving any U.S. assistance.

The decision to remove the sanctions appeared earlier this week, and came into force on Wednesday.

Glavkosmos had faced an earlier set of U.S. sanctions in May 1992, after it signed a $400 million deal with the Indian Space Research Organization on the transfer of rocket engine technology, which was deemed inconsistent with Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) guidelines.

The sanctions were removed after Russia and India signed a new deal for the sales of the engines without the transfer of technology.

In addition, after 2010 the US have no vehicle to uplift astronauts and payloads to the ISS. In previous years the US were deholding to ESA to act as a go-between for the US, when dealing with Russian aerospace projects.

This explains why NASA astronauts have in the past and are currently being trained by Russian space programme, for uplift in the Soyuz Proton transport.