France Proceeding with Next Generation Communications despite budget cuts

French officials continue to debate whether to outsource the nation’s next-generation Syracuse military telecommunications system (above, Syracuse 3A satellite) to the private sector, as has been done in Britain and, to a lesser extent, in Italy and Germany; or to proceed with a conventional procurement. 

Credit: Thales Alenia artist's concept

The French Defense Ministry on Oct. 1 said its planned electronic-intelligence satellite and next-generation military telecommunications satellite systems have survived a rough arbitrage of France’s budget and would be under contract in 2015.

The budget package outlined Oct. 1 does not specify cost amounts. It further suggests that the Defense Ministry may have recourse to a sale-and-leaseback formula to generate near-term cash that will help meet the requirements of its priority programs.

Dossier Information

French officials continue to debate whether to outsource the nation’s next-generation Thales Syracuse military telecommunications system to the private sector, as has been done in Britain and, to a lesser extent, in Italy and Germany; or to proceed with a conventional procurement.

France has also been talking with Italian and British military planners about combining at least part of their future military satellite communications needs, perhaps with a jointly owned satellite that would act as a backup for these nations’ primary satellite telecommunications assets.

Meanwhile, France’s Ceres electronic-intelligence satellite system, planned as three spacecraft flying in formation in low Earth orbit, has been a French priority for several years but has struggled for traction in a harsh budget environment.

Here is a translated extract from the French Finance Bill 2014 "The program CERES 20 is to have an operational capacity to listen, that could allow the interception and location of electromagnetic emissions from space (detection and radar transmitters or telecommunications location). This need was formalized through the launch of the preparation stage of the operation CERES, June 27, 2007. The system cost is estimated at around 460 million euros."

"The financial effort applied to the French Ministry of Defence at work 2011-2013 triennial budget planning has resulted in a shift of the CERES program. Planning now assumes an operational implementation in 2020."

Adding to the problem has been France’s inability to interest other European nations in joining Ceres.

"In autumn 2007, the EMA and the DGA jointly proposed to the countries cooperating MUSIS, as well as Sweden and Switzerland to join the operation CERES. Only Greece and Sweden have responded positively to the preparatory work and contributed financially. At the end of the work, in May 2011, Sweden announced it would terminate its participation for budgetary reasons."

Airbus Defence and Space (EADS) and Thales Alenia Space, Europe’s two biggest satellite manufacturers, which both have a large presence in France, are already under contract for initial Ceres studies.

Both have also expressed interest in managing the future military telecommunications satellite program with France as the anchor customer.

Boeing CST-100: Next Generation ISS Crew spacecraft

The Boeing CST-100 was designed as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. In September, 2014, Boeing was selected to manufacture the CST-100 as NASA’s human spacecraft provider.

The CST-100 is designed to transport up to seven passengers or a mix of crew and cargo to low-Earth orbit destinations such as the International Space Station (ISS) and the Bigelow planned station.

The CST-100 was designed at the Houston Product Support Center and will be manufactured at the Commercial Crew Processing Facility (C3PF), formerly Orbiter Processing Facility-3 (OPF3), at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Boeing will immediately begin manufacturing three CST-100 structural test articles at the Commercial Crew Processing Facility pending NASA award.

These test articles will be used in the pad abort test in 2016, first uncrewed flight in early 2017, as well as the first crewed flight to the ISS in mid-2017.

Crew Space Transportation CST-100

Key Features

• Reusable up to 10 times
• Weldless structure
• Tablet technology
• Wireless Internet
• Boeing LED “Sky Lighting”

SpaceX Dragon V2 Spacecraft: The next generation ISS Crew spacecraft

Meet SpaceX's Dragon V2 spacecraft, the next generation spacecraft designed to carry astronauts to Earth orbit and beyond.

Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX's Crew Dragon will be capable of carrying up to seven crew members, landing under its own propulsion almost anywhere on Earth, and refueling and flying again for rapid reuse.

Dragon was designed from the beginning to carry humans, and the upgraded human-rated vehicle will be one of the safest, most reliable spacecraft ever flown.

The vehicle holds seats for 7 passengers, and includes an Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) that provides a comfortable environment for crew members.

Crew Dragon’s powerful launch escape system, the first of its kind, will provide escape capability from the time the crew enters the vehicle all the way to orbit.

Should an emergency occur during launch, eight SuperDraco engines built into the side walls of the Dragon spacecraft will produce up to 120,000 pounds of axial thrust to carry astronauts to safety.

This decision builds on SpaceX’s track record of successfully delivering critical cargo and science experiments to the space station for NASA.

The Dragon spacecraft currently resupplies the space station under a $1.6 billion Cargo Resupply Services contract with NASA.

A full press release is available from NASA.

NASA JWST NIRSpec: Next Generation Microshutter Array Technology

The image shows a close-up view of the next-generation microshutter arrays, designed to accommodate the needs of future observatories, during the fabrication process.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Hrybyk

The microshutters are a new technology that was developed for the Webb telescope mission.

The microshutter device is a key component Webb's Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec).

NIRSpec is a powerful instrument that will record the spectra of light from distant objects.

The microshutter device only lets light in from selected objects to shine through NIRSpec.



NASA technologists have hurdled a number of significant challenges in their quest to improve a revolutionary observing technology originally created for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Determined to make the Webb telescope's microshutter technology more broadly available, a team of technologists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center spent the past four years experimenting with techniques to advance this capability.

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Mirror Array

One of the first things the team did was eliminate the magnet that sweeps over the shutter arrays to activate them, replacing it with electrostatic actuation.

Just as significant is the voltage needed to actuate the arrays.

By last year, the team had achieved a major milestone by activating the shutters with just 30 volts.

The team used atomic layer deposition, a state-of-the-art fabrication technology, to fully insulate the tiny space between the electrodes to eliminate potential electrical crosstalk that could interfere with the arrays’ operation.

They also applied a very thin anti-stiction coating to prevent the shutters from sticking when opened.

Delta IV rocket blasts off carrying "next generation" GPS satellite

Delta IV rocket blasts off carrying "next generation" satellite

The Delta IV rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying a "next-generation" satellite for the U.S. Air Force.

MIT Develop Microthruster for next generation Cube satellites

Lozano holds a prototype of a microthruster, developed to propel small satellites in space. Credit: Bryce Vickmark

The MIT News Office is reporting that the University's Space Power and Propulsion Laboratory (headed by Paulo Lozano) is seeing progress with micro-sized thruster design to power the next generation of self-propelled cubesats.

Because traditional combustion or electric engines don't scale down well, the team has been testing ion electrospray thrusters that can be made as small as a postage stamp.

For most of their still relatively short history, satellites have been extremely expensive ventures, both to design and build and to launch into space.

Paulo Lozano

With the miniaturization of electronics, however, scientists see a way to reduce the costs associated with sending craft into orbit, and also for sending them into outer space—cubesats—satellites that are tiny versions of the older models.

They range in size from a shoebox to a Rubix cube. The current versions are sent aloft (sans engine) as part of a cargo load carrying other bigger equipment and remain orbiting the planet for a short time, till gravity pulls them back down.

To get more out of their investment, scientists would like to put an engine on the little satellites so that they could stay in orbit, or even be sent to other parts of the solar system.

Current research has centered around plasma or colloid thrusters.

The researchers at MIT believe that ion thrusters are the better bet.

Their idea is to use solar power to generate a charge to electrify a very small amount of liquid propellant—releasing an ion stream through a nozzle—generating just enough thrust to change the course of a cubesat or push it forward.

Four of the thrusters would be sufficient to provide both attitude control and propulsion.

Scientists believe it might be possible in the near future to send an entire fleet of cubesats into space for the amount of money it currently takes to send just one.

In addition to designing tiny engines for them, engineers have also been hard at work designing other components necessary for fully utilizing such a satellite—one such example is the recently developed (also at MIT) inflatable antennae that greatly extends their range. Some suggest cubesats may even provide the long-sought solution to cleaning up space junk.

French Bond Issue to Fund Next Gen Rocket

The French space agency, CNES, expects to award contracts valued at more than $900 million in September as part of a multibillion-dollar French government bond issue that has earmarked funds for work on a next-generation rocket, two Earth observation satellites and satellite-delivered broadband, a senior CNES official said June 4.

Marc Pircher, director of CNES’s Toulouse Space Center, said a total of 750 million euros ($915 million) will be divided evenly among the three project categories. A formal request for bids will be issued in July, Pircher said during a press briefing on the eve of the Toulouse Space Show, which begins June 7.

One-third of the funds will be spent on demonstrators and early design work on a next-generation launch vehicle to succeed today’s heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket. France is focusing on a modular rocket whose different versions would carry government satellites into low Earth orbit and commercial telecommunications satellites weighing up to 6,000 kilograms into geostationary-transfer orbit, one at a time.

According to current thinking, the vehicle could succeed both the Ariane 5 and the European version of Russia’s Soyuz vehicle. Designed to appeal first and foremost to European government customers, the vehicle program’s financial health would be much less dependent on the commercial launch market than today’s Ariane 5.

A second category of funds will be for two environmental satellites. A methane-measuring spacecraft, formerly called Charme and now known as Merlin, will be built jointly with Germany. France will be financing half the mission’s estimated 160 million euros in total costs.

The second environmental satellite, named SWOT, or Surface Water Ocean Topography, is a joint French-U.S. mission to follow on from the Topex-Poseidon and Jason series of ocean-altimetry satellites.

Pircher said CNES is ready to invest some 170 million euros in SWOT, which he said is equivalent to around 30 percent of the total mission cost. NASA has not yet confirmed SWOT as a mission. But Pircher said ocean altimetry remains a high priority for France and the early SWOT investment is intended both to maintain French expertise and to signal France’s commitment to NASA.

The final area of space-related investment for the French bond proceeds is to extend broadband access to regions in France that lack high-speed terrestrial links.

Pircher said some funds are likely to be spent on demonstration projects using the large all-Ka-band Ka-Sat satellite to be launched by fleet operator Eutelsat of Paris late this year.

Longer term, the broadband financing will be directed to technologies for future superfast broadband connections via satellite, and a small next-generation broadband satellite to be called Megasat.

Pircher said it has not been decided how much of this 250 million-euro envelope will be spent on near-term broadband penetration with Ka-Sat, and how much will be reserved to develop future, higher-speed broadband technologies.

ESA Eumetsat: Meteosat not next generation weather system, yet

The ruling council of Europe’s Eumetsat meteorological satellite organisation failed to approve a $4.4 billion next-generation weather-satellite system when two of its 26 members withheld their votes, Eumetsat officials said.

With unanimity required to move the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) program forward, the project will essentially stand still until these two nations, which Eumetsat declined to identify, give their written endorsement for the approval process to restart.

For reasons related to the work assigned to their respective industries, Germany and Spain raised questions about the MTG project, European government and industry officials said. One industry official said Portugal also has objections, but it was unclear whether Portugal or Spain had withheld its vote.

Eumetsat Director of Administration Angiolo Rolli said in an interview that the two nations that withheld their votes had nonetheless expressed support for MTG and said they would deliver a formal opinion on it by June 30.

MTG is a six-satellite system designed to provide some 20 years of meteorological data starting in 2016 or 2017. It is budgeted at about 3.3 billion euros ($4.4 billion), with Eumetsat paying 75 percent of the cost and the 18-nation European Space Agency (ESA) funding the remaining share.

Read the full article in Space News, here

NASA Robonaut2, the Next Generation Dexterous Robot

Robonaut2, the Next Generation Dexterous Robot

JSC2010-E-017534 (11 Jan. 2010) --- Robonaut2 surpasses previous dexterous humanoid robots in strength, yet it is safe enough to work side-by-side with humans.

It is able to lift, not just hold, this 20-pound weight (about four times heavier than what other dexterous robots can handle) both near and away from its body.

More images available on the NASA Technology site here

ESA's EUMETSAT - European next generation weather satellites

The choice of an industrial team to build the next generation of weather satellites - or Meteosats - for Europe has been delayed by three months.

The Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) programme will cost about 3.4bn euros in total, and should guarantee space-borne weather data until at least 2040.

Thales Alenia Space of France and EADS Astrium of Germany are in competition to lead the satellites' development.

The European Space Agency said it still needed more information from the teams.

"Both are good but both have weaknesses, and we want to give both constructors the opportunity to improve," explained Volker Liebig, the agency's director of Earth observation.

"We will ask them to deliver by the end of January their new reports, in time for our Industrial Policy Committee in March," he told BBC News.

The selection of the winning team had been expected this week. The Paris-based organisation will oversee the research and development phase of the MTG project.

This will include two prototype Meteosats: an imaging spacecraft and a sounding spacecraft (one which can return information about different layers in the atmosphere).

Another pan-European agency, Eumetsat, will operate these platforms once they are launched and pay for their follow-ups. It is envisaged that the MTG programme will comprise six satellites in all, launched at intervals of a few years.

The Meteosat series stretches back to 1977. Currently, two platforms - Meteosat-8 and Meteosat-9 - provide the space data on which daily weather forecasts for Europe depend.

Esa member-states committed just under a billion euros to the MTG programme at a ministerial meeting last year. The details of the Eumetsat contribution, which will amount to more than 2.4bn euros, are expected to be finalised by its member states in mid-2010.

Eumetsat is holding a special council meeting in March to discuss MTG, and the intention is to nominate the industrial team for the space segment before that gathering.