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Scientists involved with the first space mission attempting to sample asteroid surface material and return to Earth, have confirmed presence of particles collected from a small container aboard the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Hayabusa spacecraft.
On June 13, 2010, Hayabusa visited the near-Earth asteroid, called Itokawa. The spacecraft landed at Australia's remote Woomera Test Range in South Australia, concluding a remarkable mission of exploration - one in which NASA scientists and engineers played a contributing role.
Initial research from an electron microscope reveals about 1500 grains identified as rocky particles, and judged to be of extraterrestrial origin from the asteroid. Their size is mostly less than 10 micrometers.
Handling these grains requires very special skills and techniques. JAXA is developing the necessary handling techniques and preparing the associated equipment for further analyses.
Launched May 9, 2003, from the Kagoshima Space Center, Uchinoura, Japan, Hayabusa was designed as a flying testbed. Its mission: to research several new engineering technologies necessary for returning planetary samples to Earth for further study.
Washington (CNN) -- The United States is beefing up its firepower in Afghanistan by employing heavily armored tanks in Afghanistan for the first time in the nine-year war, a military spokesman said Friday.
The U.S. Marine Corps plans to use a company of M1A1 Abrams tanks in restive Helmand province by early spring, said Marine Maj. Gabrielle Chapin.
The M1A1 tank is the fastest and most deadly ground combat weapons system available There goes the A2 SEP. It will allow for more aggressive missions while mitigating risks to U.S. forces, the military said.
U.S. forces used the tanks to battle insurgents successfully in Iraq's Anbar province, Chapin said.
"They bring superior optics, maneuverability and precision firepower that will enable us to isolate insurgent forces from key population centers and provide the ability to project power into insurgent safe havens," he said.
Other coalition forces, including those from Canada, already have used tanks in Afghanistan.
The decision comes as Afghanistan tops the agenda at the NATO summit that starts Friday in Lisbon, Portugal, and amid a public dispute between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and NATO leaders over military strategy.
UAC President Alexei Fyodorov told reporters in Ulyanovsk. “We plan to build over 50 jets for the Defense Ministry before 2020. That would be the largest order for Aviastar-SP in the near future,” he said.
The Ulyanovsk plant keeps to the schedule, Fyodorov said. “Production of all the [aircraft] units has begun, and we hope that the aircraft will make its first flight next year,” he said.The Ulyanovsk plant has a large portfolio of orders, so it needs to expand, Fyodorov said.
Meanwhile, Aviastar-SP General Director Sergei Dementyev said that the plant personnel would grow from 2,500 to 7,900 by 2016.
Certification flights of the Il-476 may start in October 2011, and preparations for production will be over in 2013. Starting from 2015, ten aircraft will be produced per year.
The combined contract value of $4.6 billion means the average cost per aircraft is over $148 million, or about 3% less than a nearly $153 million average cost for 17 LRIP-3 jets. Those numbers do not include costs to develop the F-35 so far.
A decade after they were unceremoniously sidelined, two experimental NASA space planes could be on the cusp of a dramatic comeback. Last week, NASA contractors moved the two, 59-foot-long X-34s from open storage to a test pilot school in California’s Mojave Desert. There, workers from Orbital Sciences, the X-34’s original builder, will inspect the two robotic rocketships with an eye to flying them again. If the X-34s have held up since their 2001 parking, they could help boost America’s tiny-but-growing arsenal of super-fast, inexpensive, reusable spacecraft.
The X-34 program was a product of a mid-1990s space-plane craze (a revival of a movement from the ’60s) that aimed to reduce the number of rocket stages needed to get into orbit. Over roughly a decade, NASA and the Air Force experimented with a number of single-stage vehicles. Some of those programs hit insurmountable technical obstacles. Others proved too expensive. By the early 2000s, almost all of them had gone defunct. After spending $200 million, NASA shut down the X-34 program before the first flight, citing “technical risk” mostly related to the craft’s engines. Moreover, the space agency had lost faith in the whole concept of cheap, single-stage spaceflight.
Then, in 2004, famed aviation designer Burt Rutan and aerospace firm Scaled Composites launched their rubber-fueled Space Ship One rocketship into near-orbit, snagging a $10-million prize and proving that low-cost space access actually was possible. That seemed to reinvigorate government space-plane efforts. Embattled tech reformer Franz Gayl got busy arguing on behalf of a plan to build space transports for the Marine Corps. The Air Force quietly readied its mysterious X-37B “mini-Space Shuttle,” which today prowls orbit on secret errands. Now NASA could get back into the space-plane game in short order, provided the X-34s are still flyable.
Any fresh X-34 test program would likely mirror the abortive efforts a decade ago. A modified airliner would launch the X-34 from high altitude, much like the White Knight motherships launch Rutan’s space planes. The X-34’s own engine would boost it into orbit. After testing, the craft would land like an airplane, ready to be refueled, refurbished and launched right back into space.
Russia's Energia space corporation said on Tuesday it is planning to start working on standardized space modules with nuclear-powered propulsion systems next year.
Energia director Vitaly Lopota said the first launches with a capacity of 150 to 500 KW could be made some time in 2020.
Federal Space Agency Roscosmos director Anatoly Perminov previously said the development of Megawatt-class nuclear space power systems (MCNSPS) for manned spacecraft was crucial if Russia wanted to maintain a competitive edge in the space race, including the exploration of the moon and Mars.
The project will require an estimated 17 billion rubles (over $580 million) in funding.
Energia earlier said it is also ready to design a space-based nuclear power station with a service life of 10-15 years, to be initially placed on the moon or Mars.
It is also working on a concept of a nuclear-powered space tug, which could more than halve satellite launching and orbiting costs.
KOROLYOV (Moscow region), November 23 (RIA Novosti)
Meanwhile South Korea and Indonesia have recently agreed to jointly develop a new fighter, the KFX. This would be an aircraft with capabilities somewhat beyond the top-line American F-16 Block 60. The best example of this is a special version of the Block 60 developed for the UAE (United Arab Emirates). The UAE bought 80 "Desert Falcons" (the F-16E) which is optimized for air combat. It is a 22 ton aircraft based on the Block 52 model, but with an AESA (phased array) radar and lots of other additional goodies.
KFX development is expected to take ten years and cost $2 billion.
Is So-ko really capable of producing this within a decade? Wiki says KFX is a stealth platform, no mention of that in this article though.
When generously supported by LM SoKo can get the job done in the given time frame. The real challange for them will come when they have to work without the support from LM & the khans.
^^^ Apparently the rafale didnt Crash it was ditched.. 2 Planes flew for a sortie over Astan and quickly returned to within the operating space of their carrier before the pilot ditched his plane. Possibly it was faulty ordnance and could not be jettisioned. SOP is to ditched the plane rather than bring the malfunctioned ordnance on-board the carrier.
According Inozemtseva, the new engine should enter the market no later than the 2015-2016 years., Since the later will be ready the next generation of engines of foreign competitors. He said that the developers create the PD-14 with very stringent requirements. In particular, the reliability of the engine should reach 99.95%, fuel consumption reduced by 10-15%, and life cycle cost is reduced by 15-20% compared with the existing foreign counterparts ,will be offered to a promising medium military transport aircraft MTA.
Along with the developers involved in testing the gas generator working off of the key technologies that will enable the planned characteristics of the motor - hollow titanium fan blades, composite fan case protection, a ceramic coating the hot part of the turbine and composite structures motogonodoly. In addition, the first new engine designed for a given cost, to reduce cost of ownership for them to airlines .
Cassem noted the value of a second seat in complex missions, a view echoed by U.S. Navy Cmdr. Steve Comstock from the F/A-18E/F program office. “I was a single-seat pilot with a lot of pride in that accomplishment,” Comstock said. But after the APG-79 AESA radar arrived, “a lot of pride-swallowing went on.” The AESA’s ability to “interleave” different modes is best exploited by a crew of two—for example, with the pilot managing the air picture and the weapon system operator searching for ground targets. The radar itself is running at a mean time between failure of 850 hr., versus an F/A-18 family record of 100-110 hr. for the older APG-73 radar, as supported by Patria for the Finnish air force.
seems like India is right in choosing our FAKFA version as mainly 2 seater.
‘‘The aircraft would not have arrived safely in Singapore without the focused and effective action of the flight crew,’’ he said.
A faulty oil stub pipe is the leading culprit, which in a domino effect, is thought to have allowed oil to leak into the engine, catch fire and cause the heavy turbine disc to fracture and fly out of the engine, which along with other internal engine parts, struck the wing and fuselage.
The safety bureau has issued a new warning on the part, requiring operators of the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines to carry out immediate inspections of the component on engines fitted to the Airbus A380s, in addition to existing checks.
Mr Dolan said it was not absolutely certain the pipe was the cause of the problem but said the flaw in the pipe's manufacturing was "significant enough it needs to be dealt with".
Misaligned counter-bore. Photo: Australian Transport Safety Bureau
The US Air Force's secrecy-shrouded X-37B unmanned spaceplane has returned to Earth after more than seven months in orbit on a classified mission.
Air Force spokesman Jeremy Eggers says the winged craft autonomously landed at 1:16 am PST (0916 GMT) today at Vandenberg Air Force Base on the California coast 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
The X-37B was launched by an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 22, 2010, with a maximum mission duration of 270 days.
Also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle, the Boeing-built spacecraft was originally a NASA project before being taken over by the military.
The Air Force has not said whether it carried anything in its cargo bay, but insists the primary purpose of the mission was to test the craft itself
In reality, the figure of "more than 1,500 aircraft" is most likely to include 350-400 new combat aircraft, about 100 military transports of different types, and 120-140 Yak-130 Mitten trainer aircraft. The remaining 800-900 aircraft will be helicopters and drones.
Quote:
A Japanese probe reached Venus on Tuesday and prepared to enter orbit on a two-year mission that would mark a major milestone for Japan's space program and could shed light on the climate of Earth's mysterious neighbor.The probe, called Akatsuki, which means "dawn," would be the first Japan has ever placed into orbit around another planet and comes after the country recently brought a probe back from a trip to an asteroid.
Other space programs, including the Americans' and the Europeans', have successfully orbited other planets.Scientists said they would know later Tuesday whether the probe had successfully entered its orbit. They said they briefly lost contact with the probe early in the day, but that communication had been restored.Japan has been overshadowed in recent years by the big strides of China, which has put astronauts in space twice since 2003 and was the third country to send a human into orbit after Russia and the United States,However, Japan has long been one of the world's leading space-faring nations. It was the first Asian country to put a satellite in orbit around the Earth - in 1970 - and has developed a highly reliable booster rocket in its H-2 series.
"We struggled with the Hayabusa probe. It's such a difficult task to control a probe that is far away from Earth. However, there may be another chance to take action when the Akatsuki comes close to Venus again six years from now," Uesugi said. "The Hayabusa overcame such difficult challenges. Nozomi also came close to Mars by extending its scheduled flight by four years. Those involved in the Akatsuki project shouldn't give up hope even though it'll take a long time to complete their mission."
deviated from its course by 8 degrees, resulting in the loss of the DM-3 booster with the satellites. According to unofficial reports, the spacecraft fell into the Pacific Ocean to the northwest of Hawaii.
"According to preliminary information, there were no technical problems with the Proton itself during lift-off. A range of specialists consider that program errors in Proton's onboard computer led to the engines failing to function as normal, giving the rocket an extra boost and taking it into the wrong orbit,"
Geomagnetic storms do not affect the combat readiness of the Strategic Rocket Forces ( via rian.ru )
Coming soon geomagnetic storms caused by solar flares, as well as other weather phenomena do not have a material impact on the performance of systems, command and control of Strategic Rocket Forces (RVSN), told reporters in Moscow on Thursday Press secretary of the press service of Defense Ministry and the information on the SMF Colonel Vadim Koval.
"Existing in the SMF command and control system allow us to exclude any influence of external sources to the combat readiness of troops," - he said.
According to Koval, the paths communicating orders and gathering reports, automated command and control forces are formed by wire, radio and satellite communications and have the necessary vitality and noise immunity.
"At the same time, very importantly, provides command and control would bring orders directly to the launchers, bypassing intermediaries, including in nuclear effects and jamming," - said the representative of the SRF.
At the same time they possess properties such as compactness, stealth communication, resilience and reliability of the operation, said Koval.
The system of combat duty in the Strategic Missile Forces have built strictly "vertical" and provides it with the bearing on the central control SRF paragraphs management associations, formations and military units, directly on the missile and nuclear weapons, as well as communication centers, technical positions and airfields.
The government trials of Russia’s new attack helicopter – Kamov Ka-52, dubbed Alligator, will be finished in 2010, promised the Air Force Commander Col. Gen. Alexander Zelin in early August. In September the helicopter should start flight testing with its new onboard Arbalet radar station.
The twin seat Ka-52 was developed in the early 1990s on the basis of the single-seat Kamov Ka-50 Black Shark assault helicopter after it became clear that Russian Air Force want to have a new assault helicopter with two pilots, so Ka-50 is losing to Mil Mi-28N. The first Ka-52 prototype made its maiden flight in 1997.In 2003 the military selected Mi-28N as a main attack helicopter obviously because of its better armor protection. Although Ka-50 has armor equal to the Mil machine, Kamov designers had to sacrifice it developing Ka-52 in order keep the take-off weight at 10,000 kg mark. The Kamov designers admit that Ka-52’s pilots have protective armor only from the back of their seats.
But the Air Force found a special role for the Kamov helicopter. As the Air Force’s Chief of Armaments Maj. Gen. Oleg Barmin explained that Ka-52 is suited more for combat missions in urban terrain and in mountains as well as for air surveillance and target detection.Kamov designers stress that Ka-52 is not a simple two-seat modification of the Black Shark but a deeply modernized version. The helicopter is powered by a pair of new Klimov 2500 hp VK-2500 engines. Agility is achieved by the use of coaxial rotor design. It enables the helicopter to fly sideward with a speed of 80 km/h and backward at 90 km/h. Coaxial rotors also increase the vertical speed and the helicopter’s ceiling because, as one of Kamov designer explained, the lack of tail rotor allows to direct all power of the engines to the main rotors. During the flight tests Ka-52 demonstrated a vertical lift speed of 30 m/s.
The Alligator is armed with 30-mm 2A42 gun and 12 Vikhr (AT-12) laser-guided antitank missiles. The Kamov designers say the next step may be the introduction of new Hermes-A ATGMs with self homing device that has a range of 15-20 km compared to 10 km at Vikhr. But the military is likely to unify the weaponry with Mi-28N and to use radio-guided Ataka-V missiles. Ka-52 can also carry 4 Igla-V or 2 R-73 air-to-air missiles as well as 80-mm unguided rockets.
Ka-52 completed the first phase of the government testing at the end of 2008. At that time the military approved the production of pre-series batch of 12 helicopters at Arseniev-based Progress facility. According to Barmin, the exact number of helicopters to be purchased through 2020 is to not specified yet, but initial plans calls for more than 25 rotorcraft.
So far the main disappointment for the military was the lack of Arbalet radar station at Ka-52 prototypes. Now the problem is solved as the first radar was to be installed at the helicopter at the end of August. According to the Phazotron-NIIR Corporation, the designer of Arbalet, the delays was caused by the decision to relocate Ka-52’s GOES electro-optical sensor system in the nose cone what takes some space earlier assigned for Arbalet antenna. So the Phazotron specialists have to lift the antenna in the upper section of the nose cone and make its shape more elliptical, explained Phazotron chief designer Yury Gouskov. "Now the radar bean became wider and is capable to cover broader area”, he told.
The 8-mm wavelength Arbalet unified radar can detect and track moving tank-sized targets at up to 30km away. It can also detect airborne targets including planes, helicopters and missiles. The Arbalet will be integrated into a new Argument-2000 onboard navigation and flight and weapons control complex that enables the helicopter to operate round-o-clock in all weather condition. Ka-52’s communication system enables to exchange the information and distribute targets between other helicopters of the group on the battlefield turning the Alligator into a command aircraft.
Once the LOLA team had the spot narrowed down to a small area, the LROC team commanded a NAC stereo pair (12 August 2010) to get an even higher resolution measurement of the elevation and coordinates of the highest point. Once the stereo pair was on the ground, the LROC team processed the images into a digital elevation model (DEM), or topographic map.
Though it is actually higher than the peak of Mount Everest, as the photo shows the moon's topmost spot is far less dramatic - more in the nature of a high plain or plateau, with the ground sloping away around it at no more than 3° according to Robinson (apart from impact craters). It lies near the Engel'gardt crater on the fringe of the Korolev plain, on the lunar far side. Robinson considers that it was probably formed by ejecta - molten rock - piled up during the cataclysmic South Pole-Aitken meteor impact over four billion years ago.The LRO was launched back when NASA was still expecting to send humans back to the Moon in the near future, and perhaps to establish permanent inhabited bases there. Thus it was of the first importance to thoroughly map the surface, in order to avoid hairy landings into the unknown like those made by the early Apollo astronauts. Though President Obama has now decreed that there will be no return to the Moon, the LRO has still made many interesting discoveries. ®
I cannot fathom why they'd offer this instead of the SABR when they have been looking for a launch customer for the SABR. Raytheon may have an opening here by offering the RACR. SoKo had been looking for an AESA for the F/A-50 too, but there too the US laws did not permit integration of an AESA and they were forced to go with Elta 2032 instead.
