Universe Today

The comet chasing spacecraft Rosetta will make its third and final swing by the Earth on November 13th to pick up more speed for the last part of a 10-year journey that lies ahead. Its mission is to place a lander on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and chase the comet for an entire year on its orbit around the Sun. The spacecraft will be visible to observers from the ground in certain locations on the Earth. This last flyby will increase the spacecraft's speed by 3.6 km/s (2.2 miles/s) with respect to the Sun, giving Rosetta the energy it needs to boost it to the outer regions of the Solar System. Read more…

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After giving up on re-establishing contact with the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chairman G. Madhavan Nair announced the space agency hopes to launch its first mission to Mars sometime between 2013 and 2015. Nair said the termination of Chandrayaan-1, although sad, is not a setback and India will move ahead with its plans for the Chandrayaan-2 mission to land an unmanned rover on the moon’s surface to prospect for chemicals, and in four to six years launch a robotic mission to Mars.

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As the technology driving aeronautics advances, we are constantly trying to find ways to do spaceflight better, faster, and cheaper. This is especially important as the world is now in the throes of a global recession that is causing many nations to cut space program budgets. Trying to find ways to cut costs one of the methods being considered to make space missions cheaper is to make launches more affordable and efficient. One method now being researched is air launches or specifically air launches to orbit.

You may be familiar with this type of launch if you saw Superman Returns and saw the scene where Superman saves a space shuttle and a 757 after a failed launch. This method is basically launching a space craft off the back of a flying air craft. It is already being tested by companies such as Air Launch LLC. The biggest cost of a traditional launch is the fuel. It takes a lot of fuel just to get a spacecraft to escape the Earth’s atmosphere and its gravitational pull. This translates into millions when considering the number of missions and the rising cost of producing fuel across the board. Air launches solve this problem by using novel ways to get the space craft as far up into the atmosphere as possible before launching it into space. This makes a lot of sense since aeronautics for atmosphere based aircraft has already advanced enough to allow most aircraft to reach the middle to upper layers of the atmosphere.

If an effective and reliable form of air launch can be implemented, it would be a huge cost saving measure for space programs world wide.

Air launches are mainly used by the military as a method of firing missiles and launching air craft such as unmanned drones. The real advances for spacecraft air launch to orbit has so far come from the private sector. The main vehicle of these advances is competitions like the Ansari X-prize, a $10 million dollar contest that gives awards to private person and companies that come up with new innovations in technology. The winning entry for the 2004 competition the SpaceShipOne by Space composites was the first space vehicle to be successfully launched from the back of an aircraft. Due to its success, other companies like Air Launch LLC are already working on refining and improving upon the process. NASA has also shown interest.

Universe today has other articles about this subject that might interest you. One article is about another launch attempt by Virgin Galactic. You can also see an article about NASA's attempt at air launch to orbit.

If you want learn more about how the process works here are great links one is the Illini Space Jet website. One paper on the site in particular really explains the benefits.

You might also want to listen to this astronomy cast on advanced propulsion systems.

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