Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser spacecraft composite airframe unveiled

The airframe for the Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser spacecraft at a Lockheed Martin facility in Fort Worth, Texas.

Credit: Lockheed Martin

The world has gotten its first look at the body of a space plane due to launch into orbit in 2016.

The composite airframe of Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser space plane, which is designed to carry astronauts into space, was revealed on Aug. 1.

The structure will be used in Dream Chaser's first orbital test flight, which is scheduled for November 2016, SNC representatives said.

"We are able to tailor our best manufacturing processes, and our innovative technology from across the corporation to fit the needs of the Dream Chaser program," Jim Crocker, vice president of Lockheed Martin’s space systems company civil space line of business, said in a statement.



Lockheed Martin builds Dream Chaser's airframe for Sierra Nevada. Lockheed began manufacturing the structure earlier this year at the Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana, which is a part of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Assembly is taking place at a Lockheed facility in Fort Worth, Texas.

Sierra Nevada hopes that NASA chooses Dream Chaser to ferry its astronauts to and from the International Space Station, beginning in 2017.

The agency is encouraging the development of private American astronaut taxis to fill the shoes of the space shuttle, which retired in 2011.

SNC is receiving money from NASA under an agency Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) agreement, and so far has 92 percent of the funds promised.

A prototype of the Dream Chaser space plane built by Sierra Nevada Space Systems is seen at dawn at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California during its drop-test campaign. 

Credit: Sierra Nevada Space Systems

Later this year, NASA is expected to announce the next stage of funding in the commercial crew program. It is unclear if all three participating funded companies (which also include Boeing and SpaceX) will receive money at that stage.

In late July, SNC also announced that Dream Chaser had passed several major systems tests, and that it had signed two agreements for educational and technological projects related to the spacecraft.

The Nevada-based firm has finished risk reduction and technology readiness testing on systems for the crew, environmental control and life support, structures and thermal control and protection.

This comes about a month after Sierra Nevada finished other tests on its propulsion and reaction control systems.

SpaceX unveils Dragon V2, an upgraded capsule to uplift astronauts to space - Video

The interior of SpaceX's new seven-seat Dragon V2 spacecraft, the company’s next generation version of the Dragon ship designed to carry astronauts into space, as seen at a press conference in Hawthorne, California, on May 29, 2014

A sleek, white gumdrop-shaped space capsule that aims to carry up to seven astronauts to the International Space Station and return to land anywhere on Earth was unveiled Thursday by SpaceX.

The Dragon V2, short for version two, is the first attempt by a private company to restore Americans' ability to send people to the orbiting space station in the wake of the space shuttle program's retirement in 2011.

"It's all around, I think, really a big leap forward in technology. It really takes things to the next level," said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.



SpaceX is competing with other companies, including Boeing, Sierra Nevada and Blue Origin, to be the first commercial outfit to take astronauts to space, possibly as early as 2017.

Until then, the world's astronauts must rely on Russian Soyuz spacecraft at a cost of $70 million per seat.

The Dragon V2 was shown for the first time at a jam-packed evening press conference in Hawthorne, California.

The shiny Dragon V2 sat on a white stage floor, as a scorched Dragon cargo capsule was suspended above, bearing the blackened markings of a capsule that had returned to Earth from orbit.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule in 2012 became the first private spacecraft to carry supplies to the ISS and back.

Since then, Orbital Sciences has followed with its Cygnus, a capsule shaped like a beer keg that can carry supplies to the space station but burns upon re-entry to Earth's atmosphere.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk introduces SpaceX's Dragon V2 spacecraft, the company's next generation version of the Dragon ship, designed to carry astronauts into space, at a press conference in Hawthorne, California, on May 29, 2014

Musk said a key feature of the Dragon V2 is that it will be able to "land anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter."

The crew spacecraft will be able to use rocket propulsion and deploy legs to land, instead of using parachutes to make an ocean splash-landing the way the cargo capsule does.

It will however still have parachutes that it can use for a landing in case any engine problems are detected before touchdown on Earth.

The V2 also carries an improved heat shield and will be able to autonomously dock with the space station, instead of needing the space station's robotic arm to catch it and pull it in.

"That is a significant upgrade as well," Musk said.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk introduces SpaceX's Dragon V2 spacecraft, the company's next generation version of the Dragon ship designed to carry astronauts into space, at a press conference in Hawthorne, California, on May 29, 2014

Musk touted the reusability of the Dragon V2, allowing it to cut back on expensive space journeys.

"You can just reload propellant and then fly again. This is extremely important for revolutionizing access to space," Musk said.

"Because as long as we continue to throw away rockets and spacecraft, we will never have true access to space. It will always be incredibly expensive," he added.

"If aircraft were thrown away with each flight, nobody would be able to fly."

The Internet entrepreneur and billionaire co-founder of PayPal did not say when the Dragon V2's first test flight would take place.

Advanced Humanoid 'Atlas' Robot Unveiled - Video

Boston Dynamics developed the robot for DARPA. It will compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials at the Homestead-Miami Speedway in December 2013. 

Advancing the technology to assist humans in disaster response is the goal.

NASA LADEE lunar probe unveiled

The LADEE spacecraft awaits spin balance testing, conducted to ensure stability during flight, at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. 

LADEE is slated to liftoff from Wallops on Sept. 5, 2013. 

Credit: NASA/Patrick Black

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) Observatory has arrived at the launch site on the Eastern Shore of Virginia at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island and is now in the midst of weeks of performance testing to ensure it is ready for liftoff in early September.

The LADEE lunar orbiting probe will be the first planetary science mission ever launched from NASA Wallops and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS).

It will soar to space atop a solid fueled Minotaur V rocket on its maiden flight.

LADEE will blaze a brilliant trail to the Moon during a spectacular nighttime blastoff slated for Sept. 5, 2013 at 11:27 PM from Launch Pad 0B.

LADEE is equipped with three science instruments to gather detailed information about the lunar atmosphere, conditions near the surface and environmental influences on lunar dust.

"LADEE will investigate the moons tenuous exosphere, trace outgases like the sodium halo and lofted dust at the terminator," said Jim Green, Planetary Science Division Director at NASA HQ.

"The spacecraft has a mass spectrometer to identify the gases, a physical dust detector and an imager to look at scattered light from the dust. These processes also occur at asteroids."

"And it will also test a laser communications system that is a technology demonstrator for future planetary science missions. It communicates at 650 megabits per second," Green explained to me.

Credit: NASA

The couch sized 844 pound (383 kg) robotic explorer was assembled at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field Calif., and is a cooperative project with NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland.

The spacecraft was then shipped cross country by a dedicated truck inside a specially-designed shipping container – blanketed with protective nitrogen – which insulated the spacecraft from temperature, moisture, bumps in the road and more than a few crazy drivers.

The first leg of LADEE's trip to the Moon took 5 days. The trans lunar leg will take 30 days.

It's standard practice that whenever space probes are moved by ground transportation that they are accompanied by a caravan that includes a lead scout vehicle to ensure safe road conditions and followed by engineers monitoring the health and environmental storage conditions.

Technicians are now engaged in a lengthy series of performance tests to confirm that LADEE was not damaged during the road trip and that all spacecraft systems are functioning properly.

"One important preparation about to begin is spin-balancing LADEE," says Butler Hine, LADEE Project Manager.

"During this procedure, the spacecraft is mounted to a spin table and rotated at a high-speed to make sure it is perfectly balanced for launch."

After all spacecraft systems pass the performance tests, LADEE will be fueled, encapsulated and moved to the Wallops Island launch pad later this summer for mating with the five stage Minotaur V booster stack.

"I'm excited about the night launch because people up and down the Atlantic seacoast will be able to see it," Green told me.

World's Largest Milky Way Image Unveiled

The world's largest picture of the Milky Way, taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, is being unveiled today at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

The new image is of galactic proportions, covering an area that is 120 feet (37 meters) long, 3 feet (1 meter) tall at its sides and 6 feet (2 meters) tall in the middle, where our galaxy's central bulge is depicted.

The panorama represents the combined effort of two Spitzer survey teams, who used two of the telescope's onboard instruments, the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) and the Multiband Imaging Photometer.

The large image was made from stitching together 800,000 individual pictures taken by Spitzer, for a total of 2.5 billion infrared pixels. It covers an area of the sky about as wide as a pointer finger and as long as the length of arms outstretched, which might sound small, but covers about half of the entire galaxy, says Robert Hurt, of the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech.

"This is the highest-resolution, largest, most sensitive infrared picture ever taken of our Milky Way," said Sean Carey of the Spitzer Science Center, who led one of the teams that created the image.

"I suspect that Spitzer's view of the galaxy is the best that we'll have for the foreseeable future. There is currently no mission planned that has both a wide field of view and the sensitivity needed to probe the Milky Way at these infrared wavelengths," said Barbara Whitney of the Space Science Institute in Madison, Wis., also part of one of the Spitzer teams.

The image is set to be unveiled by the scientists who created it at 3 p.m. EST at Chicago's Adler Planetarium.