Roscosmos Ostapenko calls for end to Foreign communication satellites

Head of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) Oleg Ostapenko has sent a letter to Vice Premier Dmitry Rogozin suggesting giving up the practice of ordering civilian communication and broadcasting satellites abroad, Kommersant daily reported on Friday.

The new head of Roscosmos regards it as a form of covert subsidizing of foreign manufacturers.

As a result Europe's aerospace & defence corporation, EADS may lose part of Russian contracts and Information Satellite Systems (ISS) OJSC may become the sole supplier of civilian communication satellites, the newspaper concludes.

In this context the Roscosmos and the Federal Communication Agency will consider issues of developing delivery vehicles and guarantees of launching Express-AMU2, Express-AMU3 and Express-AMU4 satellites as they will be compiling the Federal Space Program for 2016-2025 "considering the placement of orders for the delivery of the said satellites from a sole supplier - ISS OJSC.

"However, Roscosmos does not conceal the fact that while fulfilling civilian orders ISS is forced to attract "foreign contactors."

Thus, a modification of Express-A series was developed together with Alcatel Space, while two direct broadcasting satellites Express-AT1 and Express-AT2 are being developed in partnership with the French division of Thales Alenia Space.

The newspaper adds that it follows from Ostapenko's letter that ISS has difficulties with the fulfillment of current orders.

Thus, Express-AM8 satellite can be launched in August 2014 the earliest "given delays in the delivery and repairs of onboard equipment," the letter says.

Did Comet attacks end 9,000-year-old Clovis culture?

Sandia National Laboratories' Mark Boslough rebuts a speculative hypothesis about comets leading to the end of the Clovis culture in North America. Photo by Randy Montoya.

Sandia lead author Mark Boslough rebuts a speculative hypothesis that comet explosions changed Earth's climate sufficiently to end the Clovis culture in North America about 13,000 years ago.

He and other researchers from 14 academic institutions assert that some other, more plausible, explanations must be found for the apparent disappearance.

"There's no plausible mechanism to get airbursts over an entire continent," said Boslough, a physicist. "For this and other reasons, we conclude that the impact hypothesis is, unfortunately, bogus."

In a December 2012 American Geophysical Union (AGU) monograph, first available in January, the researchers point out that no appropriately sized impact craters from that time period have been discovered, nor have any unambiguously "shocked" materials been found.

In addition, proposed fragmentation and explosion mechanisms "do not conserve energy or momentum," a basic law of physics that must be satisfied for impact-caused climate change to have validity, the authors write.

Also absent are physics-based models that support the impact hypothesis. Models that do exist, write the authors, contradict the asteroid-impact hypothesis.

The authors also charge that "several independent researchers have been unable to reproduce reported results" and that samples presented in support of the asteroid impact hypothesis were later discovered by carbon dating to be contaminated with modern material.

NB: Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.