Lockheed Martin Orion spacecraft EFT-1 imminent

As we move closer to the highly anticipated first ever test flight of the Orion spacecraft, there's an aerospace company which would be keeping its fingers tightly crossed during this nail-biting moment for the U.S. spaceflight.

Lockheed Martin which built the manned capsule that will take American astronauts far beyond Earth, is much more than excited about the milestone flight.

"We live for this kind of project. We will tell our kids and our grandkids about this," Allison Rakes, Lockheed Martin spokesperson told reporters.

The company's hard working crew literally lives for this first step of future deep space exploration.

"We've had a team in Florida working around the clock for the past several months preparing for this moment. Once that Delta IV lifts off, you're going to see quite the celebration," Rakes added.

Lockheed Martin pursues compact fusion reactor concept - Video

Lockheed Martin is making news this week with declarations about putting the Atomic Age on Restart and advancing in the realm of energy.

"We are on the fast track to developing compact nuclear fusion reactors to serve the world's ever-growing energy needs."

The company's Skunk Works has provided new details to the public about its work in compact fusion.

"At Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, we're making advancements in the development of fusion energy, the ultimate form of renewable power."

"Our scientists and engineers are looking at the biggest natural fusion reactor for inspiration, the sun."

"By containing the power of the sun in a small magnetic bottle, we are on the fast track to developing compact fusion reactors to serve the world's ever-growing energy needs."

Thomas McGuire, compact fusion project lead, said they think they can get to a prototype in about five years. "That's what we are doing here; we are testing the concept out."

He said, 50 years ago when people were "super-excited" about nuclear power, "we tried putting it on everything," including airplanes.

He said some big operational issues prevented widespread use. "Fusion is a much safer option," he stated.

The next generation of airplanes not relying on fuel can just stay aloft, with unlimited range, unlimited endurance. That's what nuclear fusion can do for an airplane.

The old promise of Atoms for Peace was a noble one, but the technology wasn't right for it. "We can achieve that grand vision and bring clean power to people. The true Atomic Age can start," he said.

Lockheed defines fusion as "the process by which a gas is heated up and separated into its ions and electrons.

When the ions get hot enough, they can overcome their mutual repulsion and collide, fusing together.

When this happens, they release a lot of energy, about one million times more powerful than a chemical reaction and 3-4 times more powerful than a fission reaction."

A reactor small enough to fit on a truck could provide enough power for a small city of up to 100,000 people.

Lockheed Martin successfully mates NOAA GOES-R satellite modules

Lockheed Martin successfully mated together the large system and propulsion modules of the first GOES-R series weather satellite at the company’s Space Systems facilities near Denver, Colorado.

Credit: Lockheed Martin

A team of technicians and engineers at Lockheed Martin has successfully mated together the large system and propulsion modules of the first GOES-R series weather satellite at the company's Space Systems facilities near Denver, Colorado.

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R series (GOES-R) is NOAA's next-generation geostationary weather satellites.

The system module of the A2100-based satellite houses more than 70 electronics boxes that comprise the three major electrical subsystems; command and data handling, communication, and electrical power.

The propulsion core contains the integrated propulsion system and serves as the structural backbone of the satellite.

The propulsion subsystem is essential for maneuvering the GOES-R satellite during transfer orbit to its final location, as well as conducting on-orbit repositioning maneuvers throughout its mission life.

"Positioning these large modules together in such a precise manor is a challenging task," said Tim Gasparrini, vice president and program manager for GOES-R at Lockheed Martin Space Systems.

"Our team spent many hours modeling and analyzing the procedure in our virtual reality lab called the CHIL before tackling the mate in the cleanroom."

"This was a critical step in the integration of GOES-R and the team did an outstanding job."

With the core spacecraft completed, the team will begin installing the six weather and solar-monitoring instruments onto the satellite.

Functional testing and environmental testing phases of the program will follow this fall. GOES-R is scheduled to be launched in early 2016.

Data from NOAA's GOES-R satellites provides accurate real-time weather forecasts and early warning products to NOAA's National Weather Service and other public and private sectors.

The advanced spacecraft and instrument technology on the GOES-R series will vastly improve forecasting quality and timeliness, generating significant benefits to the U.S. and Western Hemisphere in the areas of public safety, severe weather monitoring, space weather prediction, ecosystems management, commerce and transportation.

Lockheed taps GenDyn unit for Space Fence ground equipment structures

Ground structures for housing the U.S. Space Fence program are to be designed and built by a General Dynamics business unit under contract from Lockheed Martin.

The structures, as well as integration of mechanical systems for the project, will start next year on Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

"Just like the precision radio-telescope antennas, General Dynamics C4 Systems SATCOM Technologies' expertise in building exceptionally large, exquisitely engineered structures will contribute to keeping the satellites we depend on for communications, weather forecasting and other services from colliding with space debris," said Chris Marzilli, president of General Dynamics C4 Systems.

Space Fence is a new ground-based radar system for detecting and tracking the more than 100,000 objects currently in space to help avoid collisions. Lockheed is building the radar system for the U.S. Air Force.

General Dynamics C4 Systems SATCOM Technologies is a supplier of base station and Earth station communications products and services, such as satellite antennas and antenna systems and cyber-secure wireless communication products, and also engages in the design and building of advanced optical telescope mirror structures and radio telescope antennas.

NASA Preparations for Second Orion Underway Recovery Test

At the U.S. Naval Base San Diego in California, the NASA Orion boilerplate test vehicle and support hardware are secured in the well deck of the USS Anchorage on July 29, 2014 for Underway Recovery Test 2.

NASA, Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Navy will conduct tests in the Pacific Ocean to prepare for recovery of the Orion crew module, forward bay cover and parachutes on its return from a deep space mission. 

The second underway recovery test will allow the teams to demonstrate and evaluate the recovery processes, procedures, new hardware and personnel in open waters. 

The Ground Systems Development and Operations (GSDO) Program is conducting the underway recovery tests.

Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Orion is the exploration spacecraft designed to carry astronauts to destinations not yet explored by humans, including an asteroid and Mars.

It will have emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.

After traveling 3,600 miles into space in December on the uncrewed Exploration Flight Test-1, Orion will return to Earth at a speed of 20,000 miles per hour and endure temperatures near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit before landing in the Pacific Ocean.

For the team tasked with recovering it, that is where the work begins.

NASA and Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin are teaming up with the U.S. Navy and Department of Defense's Human Space Flight Support Detachment 3 to test techniques for recovering Orion from the water during Underway Recovery Test (URT) 2, Aug. 1-4, off the coast of San Diego, California.

URT 2 will pick up where URT 1 left off. During that first underway recovery test in February, dynamic conditions caused activities to conclude before all of the test objectives were met.

Since then, the team has been working on concepts that would allow them to safely recover Orion despite such conditions.

"During this test, the team will investigate alternative procedures and recovery methods," said Mike Generale, Orion Recovery Operations manager and Recovery Test director at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "One of the goals of the test is to have a primary and alternate means of recovering the Orion crew module for Exploration Flight Test-1 later this year."

The data gathered during Exploration Flight Test-1 will influence design decisions, validate existing computer models and innovative new approaches to space systems development, and reduce overall mission risks and costs for later Orion flights.

The recovery of the vehicle is one of the things the flight will test, and the underway recovery tests prepare the combined NASA, Lockheed, and U.S. Navy team for the task.

Read the full article here

Watch the complete photostream of NASA preparations on Flickr

US to launch production of Russian RD-180 rocket engines

The US Air Force is studying the possibility of launching the licensed production of Russian RD-180 rocket engines in the United States.

The US will begin assessing the licensed production of such engines in the next few weeks.

The Russian-made RD-180 rocket engine is one of the few high-tech Russian products that are in demand in the United States.

The engines are manufactured by the Energomash Russian power engineering corporation.

In the United States, the RD Amross joint venture adapts the engines for use in the heavy Atlas-V launch systems.

RD-180 rocket engines is one half of the RD-170 four-nozzle engine, which was designed for the first stage of the Energiaheavy-lift expandable launch system decades ago.

In 1996, the RD-180 project won the tender for developing and delivering the first stage engine for an updated PH Atlas rocket, manufactured by the US Lockheed Martin Corporation.

The development of the engine, based on the series-produced RD-170/171, helped Energomash survive the hardest years for Russian rocket-building companies, - from the mid-1990s to the mid-zeros.

An agreement was signed in 1997 on the delivery to the United States of 101 RD-180 rocket engines until the end of 2018.

By late last year, Energomash had supplied to the US more than 70 rocket engines for 10 million dollars each, which accounted for a sizeable part of the corporation's revenues, - more than a third, according to some estimates.

Given that the supply of engines to the home market yielded hardly any profit at the time, it is safe to claim that the RD-180 rocket engines programme kept the corporation out of bankruptcy.

ATLAS EELV Family

Political complications
The agreement with the United States has been performed by 75% (?).

However, the US is not about to stop using its Atlas rockets, which will call for extending the agreement.

Russia considered the cessation of deliveries of RD-180 rocket engines to the United States in summer 2013 since the US has been using its Atlas-V launch systems to place defence-related devices into orbit.

Although no decision was made, but the fact that Russia considered stopping supplies, the US decided to overhaul its space launch programme.

According to one option, Washington could launch the series licensed production of RD-180 rocket engines in the United States but the option obviously suffers from a couple of flaws; the cost of the engine is estimated to grow by approximately 50% and; a licensed agreement per se and the supply of key engine components from Russia call for trust-based relations between the two countries.

The full-cycle production of RD-180 rocket engines in the United States would prove a guarantee against any risks, of course, but Russia is hardly prepared to accept that and, besides, the expenditures will be comparable to the spending on the designing of a new engine.

Mars One Mission: Private Enterprise cite 2018 as launch date

Plans for a permanent human colony on Mars will be preceded by a robotic mission that will take off in 2018, it's been confirmed. 

The initial phase of the private Mars One project – whose (now closed) public appeal for volunteer colonists attracted a stunning 202,586 applicants – has been put back to 2018, though the final goal remains the same: to send four astronauts on a one-way mission to Mars every two years.

The proof-of-concept robotic mission will require a communications satellite to orbit the Sun and a rover to land on the surface of Mars to identify a landing position for later missions. 

The robotic lander, which will also install a communications system ahead of the first manned mission planned for the 2020s, will be built by Mars specialists at Lockheed Martin, with the communications satellite constructed by the UK space company Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL).

Northrop Grumman RQ-180: US Air Force has secret new stealth drone

The RQ180, a large, classified unmanned aircraft developed by Northrop Grumman, is now flying—and it demonstrates a major advance in combining stealth and aerodynamic efficiency.

Defense and intelligence officials say the secret unmanned aerial system (UAS), designed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, is scheduled to enter production for the U.S. Air Force and could be operational by 2015.

Funded through the Air Force’s classified budget, the program to build this new UAS, the RQ-180, was awarded to Northrop Grumman after a competition that included Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

The aircraft will conduct the penetrating ISR mission that has been left unaddressed, and under wide debate, since retirement of the Lockheed SR-71 (Blackbird) in 1998.

Neither the Air Force nor Northrop Grumman would speak about the classified airplane. When queried about the project, Air Force spokeswoman Jennifer Cassidy said, “The Air Force does not discuss this program.”

RQ-180

The RQ-180 carries radio-frequency sensors such as active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radar and passive electronic surveillance measures, according to one defense official. It could also be capable of electronic attack missions.

This aircraft’s design is key for the shift of Air Force ISR assets away from “permissive” environments—such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where Northrop Grumman’s non-stealthy Global Hawk and General Atomics’ Reaper operate—and toward operations in “contested” or “denied” airspace.

RQ-4B Global Hawk

The new UAS underpins the Air Force’s determination to retire a version of the RQ-4B Global Hawk after 2014, despite congressional resistance.

RQ-170 Sentinel

The RQ-180 eclipses the smaller, less stealthy and shorter-range RQ-170 Sentinel.

If the previous patterns for secret ISR aircraft operations are followed, the new UAV will be jointly controlled by the Air Force and the CIA, with the program managed by the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office and flight operations sustained by the Air Force.

This arrangement has been used for the RQ-170, which is operated by the Air Force’s 30th Reconnaissance Sqdn., according to a fact sheet the Air Force released after one of the aircraft turned up in Iran.

Read the full story here

Mycrocryocooler: Satellite Cooling System Developed by Lockheed Martin

Weighing just over 11 ounces, and less than four inches long in greatest dimension, the microcryocooler is expected to have an operating life of 10 years or more.

Scientists and engineers at the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center (ATC) have developed the lightest satellite cryocooler, (cooling system) ever built.

The breakthrough is seen as a game-changer in the design of affordable, advanced-technology flight systems, as it costs up to ten thousand dollars a pound for a satellite to orbit the Earth.

Known as a microcryocooler, the new cooling system weighs approximately 11 ounces, three times lighter than its predecessor, and is expected to have an operating life of at least ten years.

The microcryocooler operates like a refrigerator, drawing heat out of sensor systems and delivering highly efficient cooling to small science satellites orbiting the Earth and on missions to the outer planets.

"Temperatures as low as -320 F are required for infrared instruments and the coolers must operate with minimum power and long lifetimes," said Ted Nast, Lockheed Martin fellow at the ATC in Palo Alto.

"That is why we constantly pursue a deeper understanding of the dynamic effects of temperature on cutting-edge technology and develop new systems, like our microcryocooler, that will perform successfully within the demands and constraints presented by severe, operational thermal environments."

Lockheed Martin is the industry leader in satellite cooling systems, having successfully flown more than 25 cryocoolers in space over the past 40 years- most recently on the WISE and Gravity Probe-B NASA science satellites.

In addition to space applications, the microcryocooler can be utilized in tactical systems, such as unmanned aerial vehicles and tanks.

Lockheed Martin developing Supersonic Spaceplane SR-72

Lockheed Martin SR-72

Lockheed Martin has begun work on a successor to the supersonic Blackbird SR-71 spy plane.

The unmanned SR-72 will use an engine that combines a turbine and a ramjet to reach its top speed of Mach 6 - about 3,600mph (5,800km/h).

Like its predecessor, the SR-72 will be designed for high-altitude surveillance but might also be fitted with weapons to strike targets.

Lockheed said the aircraft should be operational by 2030.

Jet engines
The SR-72 is being developed at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works R&D centre in California that designed and built the original Blackbird.

That aircraft first flew in 1964 and was a mainstay of US Air Force spying and surveillance work until 1998. It typically flew at altitudes of 24,000m (80,000ft) and could reach speeds of Mach 3.

Blackbird SR-71 spy plane

In a blogpost about the SR-72, Lockheed Martin said the aircraft would operate at similar altitudes but would fly far faster.

At Mach 6 the plane could travel the 3,500 miles (5,500km) from New York to London in less than an hour.

While spy satellites can photograph enemy territory, the relatively long time it takes for them to be moved to a new orbit so they pass over a target can limit their usefulness.

By contrast, wrote Lockheed Martin, the SR-72 "would be so fast, an adversary would have no time to react or hide".

For the SR-72, Lockheed Martin is drawing on work done on the Falcon HTV-2 hypersonic technology vehicle.

This is a test-bed for the futuristic technologies needed to support safe hypersonic flight and cope with the extreme conditions encountered by any object flying at such a speed.

For instance, on one test flight of the HTV-2, the aircraft hit a top speed of Mach 20 and its flight surfaces reached 1,927C (3,500F).

To reach Mach 6, the SR-72 will use an engine that acts like a normal jet turbine until speeds of Mach 3 are reached but which then operates like a ramjet to accelerate beyond that.

"Speed is the next aviation advancement to counter emerging threats in the next several decades," said Brad Leland, Lockheed Martin's hypersonic programme manager on the blog.

"The technology would be a game-changer in theatre, similar to how stealth is changing the battlespace today."

NASA IRIS: Preparation for Launch of Next Solar Satellite

This is a photo of the complete IRIS observatory with the solar arrays deployed. 

This is taken in a large clean tent at Lockheed Martin prior to vibration testing and prior to installation of the flight MLI blankets. 

The solar arrays have just been deployed using flight commands. 

Image credit: LM Photo

NASA's next scientific satellite, which is scheduled for launch June 26, will provide the most detailed look ever at the sun's lower atmosphere or interface region.

The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission will observe how solar material moves, gathers energy, and heats up as it travels through this largely unexplored region of the solar atmosphere.

The interface region, located between the sun's visible surface and upper atmosphere, is where most of the sun's ultraviolet emission is generated. These emissions impact the near-Earth space environment and Earth's climate.

The IRIS spacecraft was designed and built by Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center. It will launch aboard a Pegasus XL rocket deployed by an Orbital Sciences L-1011 aircraft from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast.

"IRIS data will fill a crucial gap in our understanding of the solar interface region upon joining our fleet of heliophysics spacecraft," said Jeffrey Newmark, NASA's IRIS program scientist in Washington.

"For the first time we will have the necessary observations for understanding how energy is delivered to the million-degree outer solar corona and how the base of the solar wind is driven."

IRIS carries an ultraviolet telescope that feeds a multi-channel imaging spectrograph. The satellite is the first mission designed to use an ultraviolet telescope to obtain high-resolution images and spectra every few seconds and provide observations of areas as small as 150 miles across the sun.

"Previous observations suggest there are structures in this region of the solar atmosphere 100 to 150 miles wide, but 100,000 miles long," said Alan Title, IRIS principal investigator at Lockheed Martin.

"Imagine giant jets like huge fountains that have a footprint the size of Los Angeles and are long enough and fast enough to circle Earth in 20 seconds.

IRIS will provide our first high-resolution views of these structures along with information about their velocity, temperature and density."

After launch, IRIS will travel in a polar, sun-synchronous orbit around Earth, crossing nearly directly over the poles in such a way that it moves over the equator at the same local time each day.

The spacecraft will orbit at an altitude range of 390 miles to 420 miles. This orbit allows for almost continuous solar observations on IRIS' two-year mission.

IRIS' unique capabilities will be coupled with state of the art 3-D numerical modeling on supercomputers, such as Pleiades, housed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

Recent improvements in the power of supercomputers, such as Pleiades, to analyze large amounts of data will enable IRIS to provide better information about the region than ever before.

Lockheed Martin: Marlin AUV - New System for Underwater Inspection

Lockheed Martin is leveraging its proven capabilities and technology with autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) toward the application of the Marlin class of AUVs for use in offshore oil and gas, science and oceanography, and other applications.

Lockheed Martin is leveraging its proven capabilities and technology with autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) to enable the oil and gas industry to perform subsea inspections faster, safer and more effectively with its Marlin AUV System.

Following Marlin's successful inspection of 14 offshore sites and surrounding seabed last summer in the Gulf of Mexico for a major operating company, Lockheed Martin is making the Marlin system available for sale or lease to oil and gas service providers for underwater inspections.

Marlin is a 10-foot long AUV equipped with advanced autonomy and high resolution optical and acoustic sensors that generates 3-D geo-referenced models of underwater platforms and surrounding seabed, creating an accurate view of the area.

"We developed the Marlin from our extensive AUV systems experience to fill a need in the commercial sector," said Dan McLeod, program manager of Lockheed Martin's Offshore Systems and Sensors business.

"The Marlin essentially creates a window below the surface of the water that allows operators to manage what they typically cannot see, which is a game changer for our customers."

US to launch a new Pilotless Secretive space plane - X-37B

The United States is planning a new launch of its tiny, pilotless military space plane on Tuesday as part of a futuristic Air Force program that has fueled speculation over its mission.

The X-37B, which weighs five tonnes and is 29 feet (8.9 meters) long, can return material to Earth in the way of the retired shuttle Orbiter program but is designed to stay in orbit for much longer at 270 days.

The last X-37B returned in June after orbiting for 469 days in a test of endurance.

The United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, approved the X-37B at Cape Canaveral in Florida after finding no danger following an anomaly during a separate launch two months ago.

The company said in a statement that a Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite was put into orbit as expected on October 4 but that a fuel leak took place inside the thrust chamber, triggering an investigation.

Patrick Air Force Base gave notice of a hazard from a launch between 10:45 am to 5:15 pm (1545 to 2215 GMT) on Tuesday.

Authorities have said little more about the X-37B. An Air Force fact sheet described it as "experimental test program to demonstrate technologies for a reliable, reusable, unmanned space test platform for the US Air Force."

The secretive nature of the equipment on the X-37B has led to speculation in the media over its true nature, with some experts saying it could eventually be designed to tamper with satellites from rival nations.

China in 2007 became the first nation after the United States and the former Soviet Union to shoot down one of its own satellites, in a test seen in Washington as a sign of the rising power's ambitions in space.

The X-37B project was launched by the space agency NASA in 1999 before being adopted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which designs new technologies for the US military.

Liberty completes commercial crew development agreement with NASA

ATK (NYSE: ATK), the company leading the development of the Liberty commercial spacecraft, has been successful in reaching the last milestone under the company's unfunded Space Act Agreement (SAA) with NASA for the Commercial Crew Development Program (CCDev-2).

The Liberty Rocket is a commercial crew space system with ATK as main contractor.

Astrium-EADS and Lockheed Martin also serve as sub-contractors.

The first unmanned test flights are forecast to begin in 2014, with crewed flights being planned for 2015. Liberty hopes it will be able to take NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) from 2016 onwards.

The Program Status Review (PSR) was the milestone in the Commercial Crew Development Program (CCDev-2) in which the Liberty team submitted a detailed progress report to NASA.

This included a flight test plan, system safety review, software status, system requirements and the integrated master schedule. ATK have previously completed five milestones.

Read the full article here: Liberty agreement with NASA

US Air Force Reusable Rockets: Giant Leap From Spaceport America

Lockheed Martin’s Reusable Booster System Flight Demonstrator Program is under way, designed to advance the affordability, operability and responsiveness of future spacelift capabilities over current expendable launchers. 

This image shows how the vehicle would land.

CREDIT: Lockheed Martin

Billed as the nation’s first dedicated commercial spaceport, New Mexico's Spaceport America is becoming a desirable location to experiment with new types of reusable booster systems.

Armadillo Aerospace, of Heath, Texas, used the site on Dec. 4 to test their STIG A reusable suborbital rocket technology. The rocket shot to a projected suborbital altitude of 137,500 feet (about 42 kilometers) above the Earth.

The STIG A flight demonstrated a number of technologies that Armadillo is assessing for a human-passenger suborbital program, said Neil Milburn, vice president of program management at Armadillo Aerospace.

Armadillo's test program is geared toward providing a way for civilians to access suborbital space through a partnership with Space Adventures Ltd., a space tourism firm based in Vienna, Va.

Lockheed Martin's Green Supersonic Machine

An artist's impression of Nasa and Lockheed Martin's Green Supersonic Machine, capable of supersonic, sub-orbital space flight. 

Planes travelling at five times the speed of sound and passenger aircraft flying in formation could come to pass in the last part of this century, according to a report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

Picture: NASA/Lockheed Martin/PA

ESA: Ariane 5 VA203 ready for launch

The next Ariane 5 launch is scheduled for 1 July. It will carry the ASTRA 1N and BSAT-3c/JCSAT-110R satellites into their planned geostationary transfer orbits. This will be the 59th launch of Ariane 5.


The Spaceport’s ELA-3 launch zone has welcomed another heavy-lift Ariane 5 as preparations enter the final phase for Arianespace’s dual-passenger mission tomorrow with the ASTRA 1N and BSAT-3c/JCSAT-110R satellites.

Emerging from the Final Assembly Building in the French Guiana sunshine, the Ariane 5 was transferred atop one of two operational mobile launch tables for the workhorse Arianespace vehicle.

All is ready for the countdown leading to a liftoff on July 1 during a launch window that opens at 6:43 p.m. (21h43 Universal time) on Arianespace’s fourth mission in 2011.

The two passengers for this flight are direct-to-home (DTH) television broadcasting satellites with coverage over Europe and Japan, which are to be delivered to geostationary transfer orbit by the Ariane 5.

To be deployed first during the 38-minute mission is ASTRA 1N, which was built by EADS Astrium in Toulouse, France for the Luxembourg-based operator SES Astra. 

Based on Astrium’s Eurostar E3000 platform, ASTRA 1N has an estimated liftoff mass of 5,350 kg. and is fitted with 52 active Ku-band transponders. 

It initially is to deliver interim capacity from an orbital position of 28.2 deg. East, and subsequently will move to SES ASTRA’s prime location at 19.2 deg. East for primary and backup services during a designed operational lifetime of 15 years.

BSAT-3c/JCSAT-110R was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems at its plant in Newtown, Pennsylvania as part of a turnkey contract for Japanese operators B-SAT Corporation and SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation.

Produced using an A2100 A platform, this satellite will weigh approximately 2,910 kg. at launch, and is to be positioned at 110 deg.

East longitude in geostationary orbit, and offers a design life exceeding 16 years. BSAT-3c/JCSAT-110R is fitted with 24 active Ku-band transponders, and is primarily designed to provide direct TV broadcast links for all of Japan.

NASA - A First Look at Aircraft Flight in 2025

In late 2010, NASA awarded contracts to three teams — Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, The Boeing Company — to study advanced concept designs for aircraft that could take to the skies in the year 2025.

At the time of the award, the team gave NASA a sneak peek of the particular design they plan to pursue.

Each design looks very different, but all final designs have to meet NASA's goals for less noise, cleaner exhaust and lower fuel consumption.

Each aircraft has to be able to do all of those things at the same time, which requires a complex dance of tradeoffs between all of the new advanced technologies that will be on these vehicles.

The proposed aircraft will also have to operate safely in a more modernized air traffic management system.

And each design has to fly up to 85 percent of the speed of sound; cover a range of approximately 7,000 miles; and carry between 50,000 and 100,000 pounds of payload, either passengers or cargo.

For the rest of this year, each team will be exploring, testing, simulating, keeping and discarding innovations and technologies to make their design a winner.

How different will the final designs look from these initial glimpses?

NASA Supersonic Green Machine

This future aircraft design concept for supersonic flight over land comes from the team led by the Lockheed Martin Corporation.

The team's simulation shows possibility for achieving overland flight by dramatically lowering the level of sonic booms.

They do this through the use of an "inverted-V" engine-under wing configuration.

Other revolutionary technologies help achieve range, payload and environmental goals.

This supersonic cruise concept is among the designs presented in April 2010 to the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate for its NASA Research Announcement-funded studies into advanced aircraft that could enter service in the 2030-2035 timeframe.

Image credit: NASA/Lockheed Martin Corporation

More images available at the NASA Image Gallery