Showing posts with label EXPERIMENTS IN SPACE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EXPERIMENTS IN SPACE. Show all posts

Friday, July 6, 2012

X-37B ORBITAL TEST VEHICLE


FROM:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
The Air Force's unmanned, reusable space plane landed in the early morning of June 16 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., a successful conclusion to a record-setting test-flight mission that began March 5 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. (U.S. Air Force file photo) 

Written on JULY 4, 2012 AT 7:17 AM by JTOZER 
Coming In For A  Landing
The Air Force‘s unmanned, reusable space plane landed in the early morning of June 16 atVandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., a successful conclusion to a record-setting test-flight mission that began March 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, one of two such vehicles, spent 469 days in orbit to conduct on-orbit experiments, primarily checkout of the vehicle itself.

“The vehicle was designed for a mission duration of about 270 days,” said Lt. Col. Tom McIntyre, the X-37B program manager. “We knew from post-flight assessments from the first mission that OTV-1 could have stayed in orbit longer. So one of the goals of this mission was to see how much farther we could push the on-orbit duration.”

Managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, the X-37B program performs risk reduction, experimentation, and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies. The X-37B mission is the longest space mission only after the NASA Discovery shuttle program.

The 11,000-pound state-of-the-art vehicle, which is about a fourth the size of the shuttle, allows space technology experts to continue sending up experiments, with results returning safely to Earth for study.

“With the retirement of the space shuttle fleet, the X-37B OTV program brings a singular capability to space technology development,” McIntyre said. “The return capability allows the Air Force to test new technologies without the same risk commitment faced by other programs.”

Thursday, March 29, 2012

NASA'S FLIGHT OPPORTUNITIES PROGRAM SELECTS 24 SPACE TECHNOLOGY PAYLOADS FOR FLIGHTS


The following excerpt is from the NASA website: 
WASHINGTON -- NASA's Flight Opportunities Program has selected 24
cutting-edge space technology payloads for flights on commercial
reusable launch vehicles, balloons and a commercial parabolic
aircraft.

Sixteen of the payloads will ride on parabolic aircraft flights, which
provide brief periods of weightlessness. Five will fly on suborbital
reusable launch vehicle test flights. Two will ride on high-altitude
balloons that fly above 65,000 feet. One payload will fly on the
suborbital launch vehicle and high-altitude balloon platforms. The
flights will take place in 2012 and 2013.

Flight platforms include the Zero-G parabolic airplane, Near Space
Corp. high altitude balloons and reusable launch vehicles from
Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems, UP Aerospace and Virgin
Galactic.

"NASA's Flight Opportunities Program leverages investment in
commercially available vehicles and platforms to enable new
technology discoveries," said Michael Gazarik, director of NASA's
Space Technology Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These
flights enable researchers to demonstrate the viability of their
technologies while taking advantage of American commercial access to
near-space."

Payloads selected for flight on a parabolic aircraft are:
-- "Microgravity Health Care," Scott Alexander Dulchavsky, Henry Ford
Health System, Detroit
-- "Activity Monitoring During Parabolic Flight," Peter Cavanagh,
University of Washington, Seattle
-- "Physics of Regolith Impacts in Microgravity Experiment," Josh
Colwell, University of Central Florida, Orlando
-- "UAH CubeSat Parabolic Flight Testing," Francis Wessling,
University of Alabama, Huntsville
-- "Fuel Mass Gauging Under Zero-G Environment Based on Electrical
Capacitance Volumatric Tomography Techniques," Manohar Deshpande,
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
-- "Microgravity Effects of Nanoscale Mixing on Diffusion Limited
Processes Using Electrochemical Electrodes," Carlos Cabrera,
University of Puerto Rico, San Juan
-- "Effects of Reduced Gravity on Flow Boiling and Condensation,"
Issam Mudawar, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind.
-- "OSIRIS-REx Low-Gravity Regolith Sampling Tests," Joseph Vellinga,
Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Denver
-- "Parabolic Flight: Validation of Electro-Hydrodynamic Gas-Liquid
Phase Separation in Microgravity," Boris Khusid, New Jersey Institute
of Technology, Newark
-- "Non-Invasive Hemodynamic Monitoring in Microgravity," Gregory
Kovacs, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.
-- "Parabolic Flight Evaluation of a Hermetic Surgery System for
Reduced Gravity," George Pantalos, University of Louisville,
Louisville, Ky.
-- "Evaporative Heat Transfer Mechanisms within a Heat Melt Compactor
Experiment," Eric Golliher, NASA's Glenn Research Center, Cleveland
-- "Effects of Reduced and Hyper Gravity on Functional Near-Infrared
Spectroscopy Instrumentation," Greg Adamovsky, NASA Glenn
-- "Sintering of Composite Materials Under Reduced Gravity Conditions
("Cosmic" Project), Orazio Chiarenza, the Advanced Technical
Institute, Fuscaldo, Italy
-- "Boston University Student Proposal for Deployable Solar and
Antenna Array Microgravity Testing," Theodore Fritz, Boston
University
-- "Particle Dispersion System for Microgravity Environments," John
Marshall, SETI Institute, Mountain View, Calif.

Payloads selected for flight on a suborbital launch vehicle are:
-- "Near-Zero Gravity Cryogenic Line Chilldown Experiment in a
Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicle," Jacob Chung, University of
Florida, Gainesville, Fla.
-- "Collection of Regolith Experiment on a Commercial Suborbital
Vehicle," and "Collisions Into Dust Experiment on a Commercial
Suborbital Vehicle, Josh Colwell, University of Central Florida,
Orlando
-- "Polar Mesospheric Cloud Imaging and Tomography Experiment," Jason
David Reimuller, Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
-- "Vision Navigation System Technology Demonstration," Douglas
Zimpfer, Draper Laboratory, Houston

Payloads selected for flight on a high altitude balloon are:
-- "Flight Demonstration of an Integrated Camera and Solid-State Fine
Steering System," Eliot Young, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder,
Colo.
-- "Initial Flight Testing of a UAT ADS-B Transmitter Prototype for
Commercial Space Transportation Using a High Altitude Balloon,"
Richard Stansbury, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona
Beach, Fla.

The "Structural Health Monitoring for Commercial Space Vehicles"
payload from Andrei Zagrai of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and
Technology in Socorro, will fly on a suborbital launch vehicle and a
high-altitude balloon.

NASA manages the Flight Opportunities Program manifest, matching
payloads with flights, and will pay for payload integration and the
flight costs for the selected payloads. No funds are provided for the
development of these payloads. Other suborbital flight vendors on
contract to NASA will provide flights after they have successfully
flown their qualifying vehicles.

The Flight Opportunities Program, part of NASA's Space Technology
Program, is managed at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in
Edwards, Calif. NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.
manages the payload activities for the program.



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