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This page provides a compilation of links to articles,
blog postings, videos, and other resources for significant
events and developments during 2012 in the New
Space area. Unless otherwise indicated, the links
are to the Space
Transport News blog.
Note: I exclude most of the posts related to
the NASA budget and policy fights in Congress. This
would overwhelm the log here and is not directly related
to New Space except for areas such as the commercial
crew transport services. See Space
Transport News and the Space
Policy category for posts about the NASA budget
controversy and battles.
Logs for previous years:
The following Highlights section describes particular
NewSpace events of interest during the 2010 and points
to sets of links with additional information and resources
about those events.
Highlights:
- May
* Flights/Flight
Tests
- May
2: Boeing carries out a drop test of a prototype
CST-100 capsule
- April
* Flights/Flight
Tests
- April
30: SpaceX successfully carried out a two
second hot fire test of the Falcon 9/Dragon on
the pad.
- April
24: NASA and SpaceX decide to delay the Falcon
9/Dragon mission to the ISS by one week to finish
software and hardware-in-the-loop testing.
- April
24: The company Planetary
Resources, backed by Charles Simonyi, James
Cameron, and other moguls, unveils its plan for
asteroid mining. They will work incrementally,
starting with LEO space telescopes to search for
NEOs of interest and then send probes to investigte
promising objects. The third stage will attempt
extraction technques.
- April
21: this month the Florida governor signed
legislation backing a spaceport at Cecil Field
in Jacksonville. In Colorado the governor signed
a bill backing a commecial spaceport at Front
Range Airport near Denver.
- April
16: NASA and SpaceX hold a flight readiness
review and determine that the Falcon 9/Dragon
mission to the ISS can launch on April 30, assuming
some final software tests are completed satisfactorily.
- April
6: FAA document is posted about an environmental
impact statement for a possible spaceport for
SpaceX near Brownsville, Texas.
- April.2:
Rand
Simberg and the Competitive
Enterprise Institute (CEI) released a study
on how private property claims in space could
be recognized by the US and still remain within
the bounds of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.
- March
* Flights/Flight
Tests
- Mar
9: NASA, Canadian Space Agency and MDA carried
out 3 days of testing with the Robotic
Refueling Mission mHomesteadProposalodule
outside the ISS. With the Dextre external remote
controled robot, they tested techniques for refueling
a spacecraft that was not designed for in-space
refueling.
- Mar. 1:
SpaceX carried out a successful wet dress rehearsal
for the Falcon 9/Dragon that will carryout the
COTS 2/3 launch to the ISS later in the spring.
Vehicle fueled as for the launch and all procedures
up to just before engine firing were carried out.
- February
* Flights/Flight
Tests
- Feb.27
- XCOR announces that it had successfully closed
a $5M round in equity fund raising.
- Feb.27
-29 - The Next-Generation
Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC 2012)
took place in California. Over 400 attendees -
twice the number at the first meeting in 2010.
- Feb.17
- Masten
Space
Systems Xaero vertical takeoff and landing
vehicle does a free flight to 61 m and then comes
back down for a powered landing.
- Feb.16-17
- The FAA held its annual Commercial Space Transportation
conference in Washington, D.C. The sessions covered
a wide array of topics such as NASA's commercial
crew & cargo program, spaceports, private
space transport company progress, etc.
- Feb.7
- NASA held a forum on the Commercial Crew Program
and laid out the agency's plan for the next phase
of the funding and team selection.
- Feb.2
- Draper Lab team flew Masten Space's Xombie vehicle
on a up-over-down lunar lander challenge type
of flight using their own autonomous GN&C
system.
- January
* Flights/Flight
Tests
- Jan.28:
Armadillo flies the STIG-A tube rocket to an estimated
altitude of 82 km. Ballute deployment failed but
"the vehicle was successfully recovered within
the predicted operating area and the nose cone
and ballute were separately recovered intact on
the Spaceport property".
- Jan.13:
MDA and Intelsat announced they had terminated
the agreement in which Intelsat would pay MDA
up to $280M for refueling/servicing of its satellites
in GEO orbit.
- December
* Flights/Flight
Tests
- November
* Flights/Flight
Tests
- October
* Flights/Flight
Tests
- September
* Flights/Flight
Tests
- August *
Flights/Flight
Tests
- July *
Flights/Flight
Tests
- June *
Flights/Flight
Tests
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