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Suborbital flight, "SOCEM," March 11 Kentucky Space recently delivered the remaining SOCEM flight hardware consisting of "ADAMASat" and a Cal Poly 1U, and calibrated the beanie for flight. The launch window for this suborbital mission opens on March 11.
Building a Space Infrastructure in Kentucky Pictured here is the 21 meter tracking antenna as viewed from the ground control room at the brand new Morehead State University Space Sciences Center. One of only a handful of undergraduate centers devoted solely to the space sciences, the center represents a big investment in the future of Kentucky.
Kentucky Space launches Exomedicine initiative Kentucky Space LLC has begun a line of research and development into Exomedicine, defined as the study of disease mitigation and health enhancement in space under microgravity conditions. This initiative will be supported by an interdisciplinary team of top scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, and through a joint venture with NanoRacks LLC based in Houston.
Kentucky Space receives launch date KySat-1 will be on the Glory mission set to launch in November 2010. Gov. Steve Beshear announced that Kentucky Space has received an official launch assignment from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for its first satellite, KySat-1 on the Glory mission set to launch in November 2010.  
And Photons For Your Sails The always interesting Paul Gilster augments the latest news about LightSail, the solar sailing project very similar to the fated NanoSail-D, and includes a note that the planned third photon-powered LightSailwill be sent to L1, where it "can be 'parked' to serve as a solar weather station,".

More than hardware: Discovery flying "new business model" to space station

Nanorack1 Aviation Week has published a terrific article on the Shuttle Discovery flight, STS-131, that will take the innovative microgravity research NanoRacks platform and two "Cubelabs" to the International Space Station next month.

The flight is more than a simple delivery of hardware built right here in Kentucky, exciting as that is, but "could be a harbinger of how the U.S. hopes to do business in space in the years to come."

In addition to space station work, NanoRacks also also discussion with a other space companies about the use of the standard interface across several different space vehicles, orbital and suborbital, "so the customer can concentrate on developing the experiment or other hardware to be flown."

That's key. A focus on something other than the sheer technical challenge of getting to and staying in space represents an exciting new development in the commercialization of space. Working with NanoRacks, Kentucky Space is not only carving out a place for Kentucky-built and integrated suborbital and orbital payloads, but participating directly in the growth of space as a business frontier.

The managing partner for NanoRacks, Jeffrey Manber, also spoke on camera recently while in Lexington about the upcoming flight. Please check it out.

Wayne

 

Video: Titan's "Canyon Country"

Recently released by the Jet Propulsion Lab, this video is the result of work by an amateur researcher working with surface data produced by the Cassini mission. Such terrain bears strong similarities to the Karst topography of Utah, and might even suggest caves below the surface.

For Kentucky Space readers interested in the concept of "citizen science," astronomer Dr. Pamela Gay will be at the Kentucky Center on Friday, April 2 for a brief lecture sponsored by the IdeaFestival that will touch on this new phenomenon. Astronomy and planetary sciences are areas where amateurs can, and do, make significant scientific contributions. Follow @ideafestival on Twitter for more.

Wayne

   

Video: "SOCEM" merges Cubesats with sounding rockets

Uploaded by University of Kentucky student Alex Clements, this video features several Kentucky Space students and two faculty advisors involved with Sub-orbital Cubesat Experimental Mission, or "SOCEM," and offers an overview of why Kentucky Space will be flying ADAMASat on March 11. The launch window opens at 0700 ET.

The launch is a unique marriage of Cubesats with the sounding rocket program at the NASA Wallops facility, the first, perhaps, of many such flights.

As mentioned in the video, free software is available for download to amateur radio enthusiasts wanting to collect packets from ADAMASat during its time in space.

Wayne

   

Cubesat and microscope

Here's an elegantly simple research idea from Google Lunar X PRIZE team Selene that might fly aboard a Cubesat. Study a single cell organism in microgravity with a telescope and stream the video back to Earth.

Wayne

   

Confirmed: "millions of tons" of water ice are on the Moon

"431341main_CPR map North poleFinding "more than 40 small craters with water ice," a NASA radar, Mini-SAR, that flew aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has confirmed the presence of substantial water ice deposits, perhaps as much as 600 million metric tons.

'The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the moon,' said Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. 'The new discoveries show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought.'

The NASA news release is here.

The Discover blog 80beats writes:

Scientists estimate that this amount of water could easily sustain a moon base, or, if the oxygen in the ice was converted to fuel, could fire one space shuttle per day for 2,200 years. Last year, scientists found almost 26 gallons of water ice on the moon’s south pole, by crashing a rocket hull into a cold, dark crater. The crash produced a plume of material that provided evidence of water ice on the moon’s surface.

Wayne

Image source: NASA

   

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