India launches five satellites into orbit

AFP...

BANGALORE, India — India successfully launched five satellites into orbit on Monday, three months after the country's space ambitions suffered a setback when a rocket crashed at lift-off.

The five satellites included an advanced remote sensing satellite called Cartosat-2B, as well as a satellite from Algeria.
Three other smaller experimental devices from India, Canada and Switzerland were also released.
"The rocket deployed the five satellites in the intended polar orbits after a textbook launch from the spaceport under perfect weather conditions," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) director S. Satish told AFP.
The launch site was at Sriharikota, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) northeast of Chennai.
In April an Indian rocket showcasing domestically-built booster technology crashed soon after lift-off from the same site.
The first Indian-made cryogenic powered rocket, a complex technology mastered by just five countries, fell into the Bay of Bengal due to a component failure.
India aims to launch its first manned space mission in 2016 and wants to grab a larger share of the multi-billion-dollar market for launching commercial satellites.
Last August India's first unmanned moon mission, launched amid much fanfare in 2008, came to an abrupt end when controllers lost contact with the craft.
But gloom turned to delight in September when data collected from the mission showed water on the moon, boosting India's credibility.
India began its space programme in 1963 and has developed its own satellites and launch vehicles to cut dependence on other countries.

Suborbital Spacecraft Aims To Take Civilians Into Space

Dassault Aviation are working on a spacecraft that is designed to take civilians into space, and their new spacecraft is based on NASA’s X-38 experimental plane.

The new spacecraft is reusable and it will be launched off the wing of a commercial aircraft which is flying at about 25,000 feet in the air.

Suborbital Spacecraft Aims To Take Civilians Into Space

This new Suborbital spacecraft is designed to take up to six passengers at Mach 3.5 up to 62 miles high, which is just on the edge of space, they passengers will then remain in space for just three minutes and then glide back down to earth, the spacecraft will be able to land like a commercial aircraft.

There are no details on how much these space flights will cost, but we suspect they will probably cost more than your house, and no details on when you will actually be able to travel into space.

Space Technology Run Australia’s Mining Miracle

The heavy clank of machinery rings out across a seemingly deserted Outback mine site as an invisible satellite signal fires Rio Tinto’s production line into motion.
Massive stackers and reclaimers begin the task of sifting through rust-coloured piles of rich iron ore, readying them for the rail journey hundreds of kilometres from mine to port.
It’s an industrious scene — with hardly a living being in sight.
“People frequently ask whether we have anyone working here at all,” one miner at Rio’s Dampier operations told AFP.
“Due to automation and stuff most people are pretty well tucked away from the heat. There’s not a lot of manual workers.”
Automation has long been a part of the mining industry, but advances in satellite, motion-sensor technology and robotics have made the stuff of science fiction a fact of everyday life.
Machines which scoop the ore, dump it on a conveyor belt and hose it down are now controlled from the air-conditioned comfort of Rio Tinto’s Perth operations centre, 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) away from the arid mine pit.
Hundreds of specially trained operators who once directed machines from on-site offices watch and direct the action from afar using satellite technology, with surveillance cameras feeding into some 440 monitors.
Once fully operational — currently scheduled for June — the operations centre will allow all of Rio’s rail, mine and port systems to be coordinated from one place.
Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto is one of the world’s biggest mining companies, with aluminium, copper, diamonds, gold and iron ore among its major products.
“Process plants have long been managed from a console — it’s just as if this task is now performed with a much, much longer extension cord,” Rio said in its latest innovations update.
“But never before, on anything like this scale, has the huge number of tasks been accomplished in full view and full knowledge of everyone else involved.”
The operations centre in Perth is central to Rio’s “Mine of the Future” programme, which aims for driverless trucks and trains, and sensor-fitted “smart drills” that can be operated remotely.
Since December 2008 it has been trialling automation technologies at a test site called “A-Pit”, where robotic trucks with artificial intelligence “learn” the layout of the mine and use sensors to sense and avoid obstacles.
Australian government scientists are working closely with the mining industry, drawing inspiration from space exploration to troubleshoot, explains researcher Ian Gipps.
“It sounds crazy but quite a few of the problems in space and in remote mining can be similar,” said Gipps, from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
“You don’t necessarily want to have people there… so a lot of exploration on planets requires automated and remote operating systems, particularly automated.”
Current research was focusing on the use of robots fixed with radar and light-spectrum technology to detect and gauge the quality of minerals, he added. It could be available in as little as two years.
“We want to be able to put sensors on machines that can look at the (rock) face and say, ‘the ore’s on one half of the face and not the other half of the face and the ore’s of a particular grade’,” Gipps said.
“You can’t just take a sample and send it off to a lab and get it back in 24 hours or 48 hours and say, ‘ok, we want to mine that area’. We want to know that within a couple of seconds of being there,” said Gipps.
The shift to automation is not without its challenges — chief among them securing vast satellite networks against cyber-attacks — but Gipps said it was critical to addressing chronic labour shortages.
“If the industry wants to keep on advancing then it has to make employment more attractive,” he said.
In the cyclone-prone and brutally hot Pilbara, the “A-Pit” trial is due to finish later this year. Its findings will form the basis for an operations-wide rollout of remote and driverless technologies.
Chief executive Tom Albanese hopes to position Rio as the world’s most technologically advanced mining company, describing it as key to the company’s ambitions to boost annual iron ore production above 600 million tonnes.
“Rio Tinto is changing the face of mining,” he said at the Mine of the Future’s 2008 launch.
But will humans ever be removed entirely from the equation? Gipps is sceptical.
“A lot of the challenge is getting machines to understand what’s happening around them,” he said. “It’s remarkable how clever a human is in doing that.”

Nasa:Space Shuttle Can Fly Beyond 2010, If Money is There

WASHINGTON : The US space shuttle fleet can continue flying beyond Nasa’s September 30 deadline if the money is made available to keep it going, a US space agency official told reporters on Tuesday.
“I think the real issue that the agency and the nation has to address is the expense,” said Space Shuttle Program Manager John Shannon, noting the shuttle fleet costs the National Aeronautics and Space Administration 200 million dollars per month to maintain it in working condition.
“Where that money comes from is the big question,” he added.
Shannon’s briefing was about Nasa’s April 5 Discovery mission to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS), one of three shuttle flights remaining before the program is shut down at the end of September after 29 years of service.
Several lawmakers have recently urged the shuttle program be extended to reduce US dependency on Russia’s Soyuz spacecrafts in order to continue building the ISS until the shuttle’s successor can take off by 2015 at the earliest.
Taking up her colleagues’ concerns, Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison last week presented a bill calling for extending the shuttle program beyond its termination deadline.
On presenting his 2011 budget plan in January, US President Barack Obama confirmed the shuttle fleet’s demise this year, as well as dropping the Constellation program his predecessor George W. Bush announced in 2004 to return Americans to the moon by 2020.
Constellation included the development of the Ares 1 rocket, and its abandonment has also put into question the feasibility of the shuttle’s successor spacecraft.
Obama also asked Nasa to partner with the private sector, using funds from an economic stimulus package to develop low-cost, primary services transporting astronauts to the ISS.

Astronauts inspect shuttle on way to space station

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Endeavour's astronauts inspected their ship early Tuesday for any launch damage as they raced toward a 200-mile-high rendezvous with the International Space Station.
Barely a day after blasting into orbit, the space shuttle crew used a 100-foot, laser-tipped boom to check the thermal shielding on the wings and nose. A few pieces of foam insulation broke off the external fuel tank during Monday morning's launch, including a narrow 1-foot strip. But there was no indication anything hit the shuttle.
Commander George Zamka and his crew performed the routine survey to make sure the launch cameras did not miss something. A foam strike brought down Columbia in 2003, and orbiting astronauts have carried out exhaustive inspections ever since.
The long, laborious process got under way late Monday and was expected to stretch well into Tuesday morning.
Endeavour will catch up with the space station early Wednesday, performing a slow-motion pirouette for the cameras before docking. The close-up pictures of the shuttle's belly — impossible to see any other way in such detail — will provide even more information regarding Endeavour's health.
The shuttle is delivering a new room to the space station, as well as the biggest window ever launched, part of a fancy domed compartment. Together, the additions are worth more than $400 million.
The five space station residents couldn't wait to see their six shuttle friends.
"Yeah! Endeavour is on our way!" Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi cheered in a Twitter update.
It's been nearly three months since the last shuttle visit. Five missions are on tap this year, then NASA plans to retire the three remaining shuttles.
The space station will be 98 percent complete once the new room, Tranquility, and seven-windowed dome are installed by Endeavour's crew. It will be the final major construction job at the station.
Tranquility eventually will house life-support and exercise equipment, and a toilet. The dome — resembling a big bay window — will provide unprecedented views of Earth, outer space and the space station itself. The round central window is 31 inches across; the six surrounding windows are smaller.
The European Space Agency provided the Tranquility and dome.
The first of three spacewalks to install those compartments is set for Thursday night.
NASA has been flying space shuttles for 29 years and building the space station for 11 years.