NASA may partner with Space Florida to operate Shuttle Landing Facility

NASA has selected Space Florida, the aerospace economic development agency for the state of Florida, for negotiations toward a partnership agreement to maintain and operate the historic Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF).

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and the director of NASA's Kennedy SpaceCenter, Robert Cabana, announced the selection during a news conference Friday at Kennedy's Visitor Complex in Florida.

"This agreement will continue to expand Kennedy's viability as a multi-user spaceport and strengthen the economic opportunities for Florida and the nation," Bolden said. "It also continues to demonstrate NASA's commitment and progress in building a strong commercial space industry so that American companies are providing safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation to and from the International Space Station and other low Earth orbit destinations."

NASA issued a Request For Information document in August 2012 to identify new and innovative ways to use the SLF for current and future commercial and government mission activities. Space Florida's proposal is aligned closely with Kennedy's vision for creating a multi-user spaceport.

The SLF opened for flights in 1976. The concrete runway is 15,000 feet long and 300 feet wide.

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L-1011 takes off from Vandenberg carrying Pegasus XL rocket

An Orbital Sciences L-1011 carrier aircraft takes off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on a mission to launch NASA's IRIS spacecraft into low-Earth orbit. IRIS, short for Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, was launched on Thursday aboard an Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket released from the L-1011.

IRIS is a NASA Small Explorer Mission to observe how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up as it travels through a little-understood region in the sun's lower atmosphere. This interface region between the sun's photosphere and corona powers its dynamic million-degree atmosphere and drives the solar wind.

Leasing company takes delivery of its first Boeing 787

The Boeing Company, International Lease Finance Corp. (ILFC) and Norwegian celebrated several milestones Thursday during a delivery ceremony for a new 787 Dreamliner. It was the first 787 delivered to ILFC and its lessee, Norwegian, which will operate the airplane. The 787 also marked the 700th airplane Boeing delivered to ILFC.

"Norwegian gains a significant competitive advantage by opening its long-haul routes with this airplane,” said Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Ray Conner.

The delivery to ILFC builds on Boeing's 40-year relationship with the Los Angeles-based leasing company and largest 787 customer with 74 Dreamliners on order.

Norwegian Chief Executive Officer Bjorn Kjos said, "Both our many customers and we at Norwegian have been looking forward to this for several months.”

Norwegian currently has eight 787s on order through lease agreements and direct deliveries. The carrier will use the 787s to service its new long-haul routes from Oslo and Stockholm to New York and Bangkok. In November, the airline also will operate the 787 to Fort Lauderdale from Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen.

To date, the 787 has accumulated 930 orders from 58 customers worldwide.

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New solar research satellite embarks on two-year mission

Scientists will soon be able to observe the sun like never before, thanks to the successful launch of the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft. IRIS was launched Thursday at 10:27 p.m. EDT aboard a Pegasus XL rocket on a mission to study the solar atmosphere.

"IRIS will help scientists understand the mysterious and energetic interface between the surface and corona of the sun,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington.

IRIS will observe how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up as it travels through a little-understood region in the sun's lower atmosphere. This interface region between the sun's photosphere and corona powers its dynamic million-degree atmosphere and drives the solar wind. The interface region also is where most of the sun's ultraviolet emission is generated. These emissions impact the near-Earth space environment and Earth's climate.

The Pegasus rocket, carrying IRIS, was dropped from a L-1011 aircraft over the Pacific Ocean at an altitude of 39,000 feet, about 100 miles northwest of Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The rocket placed IRIS into a sun-synchronous polar orbit that will allow it to make almost continuous solar observations during its two-year mission.

The L-1011 crew released Pegasus at 10:27 p.m. The first stage ignited five seconds later to carry IRIS into space. IRIS successfully separated from the third stage of the Pegasus rocket at 10:40 p.m. At 11:05 p.m., the IRIS team confirmed the spacecraft had successfully deployed its solar arrays, has power and has acquired the sun, indications that all systems are operating as expected.

"Now that IRIS is in orbit, we can begin our 30-day engineering checkout followed by a 30-day science checkout and calibration period,” said IRIS project manager Gary Kushner of the Lockheed Martin Solar andAtmospheric Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif. During this phase, the team will check image quality and perform calibrations and other tests to ensure a successful mission. Following the 60-day checkout period, IRIS will start science observations.

NASA's Explorer Program at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., provides overall management of the IRIS mission. The principal investigator institution is Lockheed Martin Space Systems Advanced Technology Center. NASA's Ames Research Center will perform ground commanding and flight operations and receive science data and spacecraft telemetry.

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory designed the IRIS telescope. The Norwegian Space Centre and NASA's Near Earth Network provide the ground stations using antennas at Svalbard, Norway; Fairbanks, Alaska; McMurdo, Antarctica; and Wallops Island, Va.

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One of the world’s most sophisticated communications satellites

Arianespace is keeping up the mission pace at its French Guiana spaceport with the acceptance of another heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket, which now is being readied for the integration of a dual-satellite payload to be orbited on July 25.

Designated Flight VA214 (signifying the 214th liftoff of an Ariane-series vehicle), the mission will mark the 70th launch of an Ariane 5. The vehicle will carry the INSAT-3D meteorological satellite along with the Alphasat communications relay platform.

INSAT-3D

INSAT-3D was developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and carries weather forecasting payloads along with a search and rescue relay system. Its liftoff mass will be approximately 2,100 kilograms.

As part of the pre-launch checkout process, INSAT-3D underwent a test deployment of its solar panels in the spaceport’s clean room facilities – which is a typical checkout step performed by ISRO with its satellites once they are in French Guiana.

Alphasat

Riding as co-passenger on the upcoming Ariane 5 flight is Europe’s Alphasat, which is ranked as one of the world’s most sophisticated communications satellites. Alphasat carries a new-generation advanced mobile L-band communications payload along with four technological demonstration payloads for the European Space Agency (ESA).

Built by Astrium, Alphasat will have a mass of more than six metric tons at launch, and is to be operated under an agreement between the ESA and European commercial satellite operator Inmarsat.

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Video: Author's first children's book launched into space

L.A. native and middle school author/teacher Joseph Gutiz literally launched his first children's novel into space recently using a weather balloon, a GoPro camera and a GPS satellite-tracking device.

Gutiz wanted to do something different for the launching of his children's novel, The Adventures of Chubby Cheeks: The Pro Quest. His out of the box idea turned out to be a success as he was able to retrieve the video with all of its footage 80 miles into the Mojave Desert, from where it was launched.

The Adventures of Chubby Cheeks: The Pro Quest is a novel for ages 8-13, but can be a good read for adults as well. This urban novel brings awareness to the various common issues that plague today's youth. Diverse characters are featured in a well-plotted story that eventually leads to an inspirational Venice Beach skateboarding competition between his bullies and his group of friends.

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Join the hunt for potentially hazardous asteroids

The asteroid mining company Planetary Resources announced on Thursday that they have entered into a collaboration with Zooniverse that will empower the general public to aid in the search for dangerous near Earth asteroids (NEAs).

It's been 66 million years since scientists believe a 10-kilometer asteroid slammed into the Earth, leading to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today, there are approximately 620,000 objects that are actively tracked in our Solar System, which represents merely one percent of the 60 million asteroids estimated to orbit the Sun.

Planetary Resources is in the final stretch of its Kickstarter campaign, ARKYD- the world's first crowdfunded space telescope for the public, which has generated nearly 15,000 supporters and $1.2 million in pledges. If pledges reach $1.7 million in the three remaining days of the campaign, Planetary Resources and Zooniverse will create Asteroid Zoo, a program to allow students, citizen scientists and space enthusiasts to find potentially hazardous asteroids.

Modeled after Zooniverse's popular Galaxy Zoo and other astronomy projects, Asteroid Zoo will allow the public to search through more than three-million images collected by Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) for undiscovered asteroids in a fun, game-like process from their personal computers. The public's findings will be used by scientists to develop advanced asteroid-searching technology for telescopes on Earth and in space, including the ARKYD. Of all the asteroids ever discovered, 93 percent were found in the last 15 years and nearly half of the near-Earth asteroids were discovered by CSS.

Chris Lintott, astronomer at the University of Oxford and Zooniverse principal investigator said, "Zooniverse volunteers have already inspected more than a million galaxies, discovered planets and kept an eye on solar storms. We're looking forward to working with Planetary Resources to make sure citizen scientists everywhere can make a real contribution to spotting asteroids too."

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