NASA says it will modify an existing and proven Delta IV rocket second stage to launch an Orion spacecraft on an unmanned test flight in 2017.

A manned flight to lunar orbit is planned for four years after that, the agency said.

The Boeing upper stage is “the only means available to support the immediate in-space propulsion needs” for the excursions, NASA said in a statement.

An internal study of in-space propulsion systems available in the United States, Europe and Japan determined the Delta IV upper stage “is the only known in-space stage requiring relatively minor modifications” to meet mission requirements as well as the launch schedule, NASA said.

The Delta IV second stage is powered by a single Pratt & Whitney RL-10B2 engine fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

Both Orion missions will be launched from complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center on early versions of NASA’s new heavy-lift Space Launch System, Florida Today reported.

The California-based company SpaceX on Saturday scrubbed the launch of its Dragon capsule toward the International Space Station at the last second due to a rocket engine problem.

The abort came a half-second before liftoff due to high pressure in the center engine of the Falcon 9 rocket, forcing a shutdown of the launch attempt. The next try is expected May 22 at 3:44 am (0744 GMT).

“This is not failure. We aborted with purpose. It would be a failure if we were to have lifted off with an engine trending in this direction,” SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell told reporters after the launch was scrubbed.

The postponement came when an engine controller noted high chamber pressure in engine five of the rocket, which requires all nine engines for a successful liftoff.

Inspectors would be searching for a root cause to the problem later Saturday, she said.

A similar issue with engine five forced a temporary delay of the Falcon 9′s first-ever flight, but that liftoff was not scrubbed because there was a longer launch window and SpaceX was able to recycle the attempt, Shotwell said.

However, this time there was a very narrow window of opportunity to launch toward the ISS so the attempt was put off.

“We will be out there looking for whatever we can find and we will put out a statement as soon as we find a root cause,” Shotwell said, adding that early indications have ruled out a sensor failure or a faulty fuel valve.

The launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the unmanned Dragon and over half a ton of cargo toward the orbiting lab, would mark the first attempt to send a privately built spacecraft to the research outpost, where it plans to do a fly-under followed by a berthing.

SpaceX is the first of several US competitors to try sending its own cargo-bearing spacecraft to the ISS with the goal of restoring US access to space for human travelers by 2015.

The company made history with its Dragon launch in December 2010, becoming the first commercial outfit to send a spacecraft into orbit and back.

Until now, only the space agencies of Russia, Japan and Europe have been able to send supply ships to the ISS.

The United States had that capacity too, with its iconic space shuttle that long served as part astronaut bus, part delivery truck for the lab.

But the 30-year shuttle program ended for good in 2011, leaving Russia as the sole taxi for astronauts to the ISS until private industry could come up with a replacement.

SpaceX has benefited from NASA dollars in its quest but has also poured its own money into the endeavor.

SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation both have billion-dollar contracts with NASA to supply cargo to the ISS in the coming years, and they get NASA funds in exchange for meeting key milestones in their projects.

NASA has given SpaceX about $390 million so far of the total $680 million SpaceX has spent on cargo development, Shotwell said.

SpaceX also gets funding from NASA on a separate effort to develop a commercial crew vehicle for carrying astronauts to space, along with competitors Blue Origin, Boeing and Sierra Nevada.

In a few years’ time, Shotwell said she hopes SpaceX will be able to undercut the hefty price NASA pays Russia for US astronauts to get a seat aboard the Soyuz space capsule — around $63 million a ticket.

With seven seats aboard the Dragon capsule, she said SpaceX could someday offer that to NASA for $140 million per mission — about $20 million per seat.

North Korea on Friday denied it had jammed the GPS systems of hundreds of civilian aircraft and ships in South Korea, accusing the South of using problems with navigation equipment to smear the North.

Pyongyang’s telecommunications ministry spokesman said the South’s allegations that the North jammed GPS signals from April 28 to May 13 were “sheer fabrication” aimed at slandering the communist state.

“The traitors’ group was at first stupefied in the face of this chaos and then tried to slander us with fabricated allegations,” the spokesman was quoted as saying by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency.

The South was again displaying its “habitual bad behaviour of seeking to blame others for their own fault”, he said.

“Repeating their bad habit of blaming others for their own problems, the traitors’ group again revealed its true nature as a swarm of rats wearing human-shaped masks,” he said.

South Korean officials said the signals, originating from the North’s border city of Kaesong, forced sea and air traffic to use other navigational equipment to avoid compromising safety.

The GPS jamming incident came at a time of high cross-border tensions.

The North has threatened “sacred war” against the South in retaliation for perceived insults during Pyongyang’s commemoration in April of the centenary of the birth of founding leader Kim Il-Sung.

The North has twice before been accused by Seoul of jamming GPS systems although there was no previous widespread effect on civilian flights.

South Korea complained about the jamming to Pyongyang, the International Telecommunication Union and International Civil Aviation Organisation.

Japan joined the commercial space race Friday after its workhorse rocket put a paid-for South Korean satellite into orbit, pitting the country against Russia and Europe in the competition for customers.

But despite a degree of self-congratulation, space officials admitted they had to work hard to lower their prices if they were going to become truly competitive.

The H-IIA rocket took off from the southern island of Tanegashima on schedule at 1:39 am (1639 GMT Thursday), according to live images relayed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The separation of South Korea’s KOMPSAT-3 satellite from the rocket was confirmed around 16 minutes after take-off, followed shortly afterwards by the separation of three Japanese satellites that were also being carried.

“We were able to build a record of success for the first time. This gives us a springboard to win future contracts,” said Hideaki Okuma, president of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which built the rocket.

The company, which has been operating the rocket since its 2007 privatisation, hopes to carry out more contract launches and secure a foothold in a potentially lucrative market currently dominated by Europe and Russia.

Science Minister Hirofumi Hirano said: “The success of the first commercial launch… is a reflection of steady technological advancement and improving reliability.”

The launch Friday of the JAXA-developed rocket was its 20th success, set against one failure in 2003 when a rocket booster failed to separate after the launch and was destroyed.

The first foreign customer for H-IIA, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), whose multi-purpose earth observation satellite was aboard, praised the Japanese technology.

“We are very happy with the launch by the H-IIA,” KARI President Kim Seung-Jo told Japanese media in Tanegashima. “The credit for the success goes to the sophisticated capability of the H-IIA rocket.”

The institute paid several billion yen (tens of millions of dollars), “the cheapest price in an international auction”, the Sankei Shimbun reported, citing the institute. MHI declined to confirm the report.

But MHI President Omiya admitted that his firm needs to lower the launch cost to compete against foreign rivals.

“We are deepening our confidence in H-IIA. But the launch cost is higher than the international standard,” he said. “We would like to make utmost effort to drive down the cost.”

The rocket also put into space JAXA’s Shizuku satellite, which will be used to monitor the circulation of water on Earth, officials said. The other two satellites were small experimental Japanese models.

Shaking off jitters, SpaceX counted down Friday to liftoff of its Dragon capsule to the International Space Station in what may be a historic mission for private spaceflight.

The blastoff of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the unmanned Dragon and over half a ton of cargo toward the orbiting lab, is scheduled for 4:55 am (0855 GMT) Saturday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in south Florida.

Air Force weather officials said the forecast was 70 percent favorable for the first-of-its kind attempt to send a privately built spacecraft to the research outpost, where it plans to do a fly-under followed by a berthing in the coming days.

Until now, only the space agencies of Russia, Japan and Europe have been able to send supply ships to the ISS.

The United States had that capacity too, with its iconic space shuttle that long served as part astronaut bus, part delivery truck for the lab.

But the 30-year shuttle program ended for good in 2011, leaving Russia as the sole astro-taxi to the ISS until private industry could come up with a replacement.

SpaceX is the first of several US competitors to try sending its own cargo-bearing spacecraft to the ISS with the goal of restoring US access to space for human travelers by 2015.

The company made history with its Dragon launch in December 2010, becoming the first commercial outfit to send a spacecraft into orbit and back.

“If successful, there is no doubt this is a historic flight,” said SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell. “We really stand in awe of the opportunity to attempt this.”

However, she acknowledged that even if liftoff goes as planned, many complicated and risky maneuvers lie ahead as the Dragon attempts to berth with the space outpost, which has six astronauts on board.

“I think we are going to be biting off our fingers between now and hour 75,” she said, referring to the time span between Saturday’s launch and berthing, scheduled for Tuesday.

“I don’t think there is going to be a lot of sleep in the next 70 or 75 hours for folks at SpaceX.”

Another key hurdle is the near-instantaneous launch window, which, if not met within seconds, would force the mission to be postponed until May 22, 25 or 29, Shotwell said. Slightly less favorable windows also open on May 23 and 26.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk, an Internet entrepreneur, billionaire and cofounder of PayPal, also admitted to having sleepless nights in an interview with AFP earlier this month.

Musk has also publicly fretted over the the complicated matter of latching on to the space station, which he described as moving faster than a speeding bullet.

“The space station is zooming around the Earth every 90 minutes, and it is going 17,000 miles (27,000 kilometers) an hour,” he said.

“So you have got to launch up there and you’ve got to rendezvous and be backing into the space station within inches really, and this is something that is going 12 times faster than the bullet from an assault rifle. So it’s hard.”

Speaking to reporters on Friday, NASA’s acting director of Commercial Spaceflight Development Phil McAlister played down expectations for the flight.

“This is a test flight. NASA views test flights primarily as learning opportunities,” said McAlister.

“If it gets us in a better posture to fly next time, that is a good thing.”

SpaceX, a California-based company, has benefited from NASA dollars in its quest but has also poured its own money into the endeavor.

Shotwell said SpaceX is firmly in the black and has been for years, even after spending about $1.2 billion on its space projects so far.

SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation both have billion-dollar contracts with NASA to supply cargo to the ISS in the coming years, and they get NASA funds in exchange for meeting key milestones in their projects.

NASA has given SpaceX about $390 million so far of the total $680 million SpaceX has spent on cargo development, she said.

SpaceX also gets funding from NASA on a separate effort to develop a commercial crew vehicle for carrying astronauts to space, along with competitors Blue Origin, Boeing and Sierra Nevada.

In a few years’ time, Shotwell said she hopes SpaceX will be able to undercut the hefty price NASA pays Russia for US astronauts to get a seat aboard the Soyuz space capsule — around $63 million a ticket.

With seven seats aboard the Dragon capsule, she said SpaceX could someday offer that to NASA for $140 million per mission — about $20 million per seat.

One of the world’s leading figures in future air space travel, Dr Mark J Lewis, will visit the University of Strathclyde to highlight the progress in technology that could see round-the-world flights taking a fraction of the time that they do currently.

Dr Lewis’s public lecture, Progress in Hypersonic Flight: Pushing the Envelope Higher and Faster, is closely linked to the work of the University’s Centre for Future Air-Space Transportation Technology (cFASTT), a research centre dedicated to revolutionising future air and space travel.

A professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland, Dr Lewis is Director-elect of the Science and Technology Institute, Institute for Defense Analyses, Virginia, USA. He was the longest-serving Chief Scientist in US Air Force history and is also Immediate Past President of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the foremost technical society of aerospace engineers.

His visit to the University will see him deliver the second James Weir Lecture, part of a series of lectures on engineering and technology that aim to inform, educate and challenge current thinking.

Professor Richard Brown, Director of cFASTT said: “Hypersonic technology is on the cusp of revolutionising the way we travel around the world. Although there are still major challenges in materials science, propulsion and aerodynamics that need to be resolved, tantalizing progress has been made.

“The ten seconds of flight of the X-43 unmanned hypersonic aircraft may seem short compared to the sustained performance that one day will be required to wing us in comfort to Tokyo in two hours, but it is an auspicious start. We do need to remember that the first flight by the Wright brothers was shorter than the wingspan of the jumbo jets that now routinely carry us from one corner of the globe to the other.

“Here at Strathclyde we are contributing to the work of the international community that is grappling with the huge scientific and technological challenges that Dr Lewis has described. The promise is that future hypersonic vehicles will help create a world where Sydney or Cape Town or Beijing are only as far away as London is by domestic flight today.”

Dr Lewis obtained his professional degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautics and astronautics and Bachelor of Science degree in earth and planetary science (1984), Master of Science (1985) and Doctor of Science (1988) in aeronautics and astronautics.

Dr Lewis is the author of more than 280 technical publications, and has been adviser to more than 60 graduate students. He is active in national and international professional societies and has served on various advisory boards for NASA and the US Air Force.

Competition is vital to the race among private companies to replace the space shuttle, NASA said Thursday, after Congress called for the US space agency to fund a single company.

“We believe that competition is key to accelerating this program,” said NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver in a conference call with reporters.

“We are ushering in a new era that embraces the innovation of the private sector along with the importance of what we do here in the government.”

The renewed debate over how to quickly restore US access to the International Space Station following the shuttle’s retirement comes as California-based SpaceX is preparing for its first cargo test flight to the orbiting lab on Saturday.

But with plans for a crew-capable spacecraft not expected before the 2015-2017 timeframe, and NASA pouring hundreds of millions of dollars in seed money into four private companies, some lawmakers have urged a narrower process.

The House of Representatives last week passed a bill that calls on NASA to make an immediate choice of one company for the commercial crew funding it plans to distribute later this year, expected to be around $500 million.

Last year, NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program gave nearly $270 million to four companies: Blue Origin ($22 million), Boeing ($92.3 million), SpaceX ($75 million), and Sierra Nevada ($80 million).

Congressman Frank Wolf, a Republican from Virginia and chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA’s budget, said last week the current approach “runs a high risk of failure” by funding numerous companies.

The scheme makes it likely to leave the “taxpayer with no tangible benefits in exchange for a substantial investment,” he added.

The Senate would have to approve the bill for it to take effect, but NASA bristled at the suggestion that less competition would be more cost-effective.

“Obviously, while we believe in competition, we recognize that we are to the point now where we want to have the most realistic and the best chance of success at meeting our goals to be transporting astronauts to the International Space Station as soon as possible,” Garver said.

When awards are decided on this year, NASA hoped the selection would allow that “to happen in the very soonest timeframe while keeping some competition,” she added.

SpaceX is clearly in the lead among its competitors. Its upcoming cargo test flight uses the Dragon space capsule that is also built to carry up to seven crew.

Sierra Nevada is also poised to start localized tests of its Dream Chaser vehicle this month. And Orbital Sciences Corporation, which has a separate contract with NASA for cargo missions to the ISS, is expected to do a test launch later this year.

“The first to market doesn’t always win either so there are a lot of interesting times ahead,” said Jeff Greason, president of XCOR Aerospace and an executive committee member of the Commercial SpaceFlight Federation.

Greason lamented the high cost of paying Russia $63 million dollars a seat so US astronauts can hitch a ride to the ISS, a cost that the United States began paying once the 30-year space shuttle program ended in 2011.

“Relying on the Soyuz or any sole system as the only means of transport to the ISS isn’t wise. The Soyuz has been a great spacecraft but the Russians are not immune to hardware problems,” he said.

Former NASA astronaut and president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation Michael Lopez-Alegria said that reducing competition now would raise prices, not lower them.

“Once you get out of the competition phase, you start getting into monopoly pricing and not only is it going to cost more but it is going to take longer,” he told reporters.

“So we need to resist the temptation of saying, ‘If we want to have it sooner we should just throw money at less companies because they’ll have more money to go faster.’ That is not the path to success.”

In the meantime, Lopez-Alegria said he and many others will be closely watching SpaceX’s cargo attempt, scheduled to lift off Saturday at 4:55 am (0855 GMT).

“It is by all accounts an important step, bordering on a giant leap for commercial spaceflight,” he said.

“Although SpaceX’s efforts are in today’s spotlight, they are but one player on a team that is fully engaged in reducing the cost of access to space for people and payloads.”

Two Russians and an American joined three colleagues aboard the International Space Station Thursday for a mission that should include receiving the orbiter’s first visit from a private spacecraft.

The Soyuz TMA-04M capsule with Russians Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and Joseph Acaba of NASA aboard automatically docked with the space station at 0436 GMT.

Russian mission control said the team unsealed the heavy hatch about two hours later and stepped onto to the international orbiter for what is expected to be a 126-day stay.

The trio blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday morning in Russia’s first manned space launch for almost five months after their start date was put back due to technical problems.

The three newcomers join Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Dutch spaceman Andre Kuipers, who have already been on the station almost five months since their December launch.

Regular space missions stretch as long as six months but the new crew’s visit was shortened by initial concerns about the safety of the Soyuz capsule’s seal, forcing the replacement of the vessel.

The crew will compensate with a packed schedule comprised of hundreds of experiments and the expected arrival of the first private cargo vessel at the ISS.

Private firm SpaceX is seeking to launch its Dragon spacecraft carrying cargo for the ISS on May 19 from Cape Canaveral, Florida in what the company hopes will be the first step towards an eventual private manned mission.

According to CEO of Russia’s Almaz-Antei advanced arms makers Dr Vladislav Menshikov, his company continues work, started decades ago in the Soviet Union, to develop powerful airborne lasers capable of shooting down hostile aircraft and incoming missiles. Sources say a weapon of this kind can destroy targets travelling at altitudes of up to 40 kilometers.

Chief Editor of the Natsionalnaya Oborona (National Defence) journal Dr Igor Korothcenko is ‘moderately skeptical’:

“Laser weapons will catch on, but not before 30 to 40 years from now. The problem is that developing them is exorbitantly costly. In the near future, guided missiles will be doing the air defence job. In the meantime, Russia has made considerable progress in laser weapon development. Its work in this field is focused on powerful airborne laser guns.”

Laser weapon R and D in the US is on hold, but is likely to be reactivated, as the Americans build missile defence systems and consider plans to take weapons to orbit. Russia is doing everything in its power to avert a costly arms race in space.

Source: Voice of Russia