James Dean

FLORIDA TODAY

Although it lost a bid to launch NASA astronauts, a smaller version of Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dream Chaser mini-shuttle could still launch people from Kennedy Space Center if a partnership announced last week comes to fruition.

SNC and Stratolaunch Systems said they were exploring the possibility of developing a smaller Dream Chaser, able to carry three people, that would launch on the end of a rocket dropped at altitude from the world's largest aircraft.

"Combining a scaled version of SNC's Dream Chaser with the Stratolaunch air launch system could provide a highly responsive capability with the potential to reach a variety of (low Earth orbit) destinations and return astronauts or payloads to a U.S. runway within 24 hours," said Chuck Beames, executive director for Stratolaunch Systems.

Stratoluanch is the venture unveiled three years ago by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, reviving his partnership with SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan. The company's Eagles Launch System is developing the giant carrier aircraft initially to air-launch satellites with the Thunderbolt rocket from Orbital Sciences.

Hoping to launch by 2018, the company has not yet committed to a base for its flight operations. But KSC's wide, three-mile-long runway has always been considered a good fit for the carrier aircraft's football field-length wingspan, and was even featured in the company's promotional video.

The company has discussed potential options with Space Florida, which has been negotiating with NASA for more than a year to take over KSC's Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF). NASA last used the runway for a shuttle-related operation when Endeavour departed for a California museum atop a 747 carrier aircraft two years ago.

In addition to Stratolaunch taking off from the SLF, the little Dream Chaser could land there.

Sierra Nevada last week also announced a "Global Project" offering crewed or uncrewed Dream Chaser missions to customers internationally. The company has protested NASA's award last month of commercial crew contracts worth up to $6.8 billion to Boeing and SpaceX, a case the U.S. Government Accountability Office will rule on by early January.



Atlantis exhibit reaches milestone

Some of NASA's retired space shuttles are back in the spotlight this week.

The KSC Visitor Complex on Thursday will host a special event to celebrate the one-year anniversary of its $100 million, 90,000-square-foot Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibit. (The actual anniversary was June 29.)

The "Atlantis Astronaut Adventure" will feature 12 former Atlantis crew members: Clayton Anderson, Bo Bobko, John Creighton, Charlie Walker, Hoot Gibson, Fred Gregory, Ken Ham, Mike McCulley, Jerry Ross, Brian Duffy, Bob Springer and Dan Tani.

The NASA astronauts will discuss their missions, sign autographs and have lunch with some guests (for an extra fee). Find details at KennedySpaceCenter.com.

Meanwhile, out at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, operations are under way to open Endeavour's payload bay doors and install a payload — a flown Spacehab module — in an orbiter for the last time.

The museum says it will be the first time an orbiter's payload bay doors have been opened anywhere other than in orbit, at Kennedy Space Center or the Palmdale, Calif., facility where orbiters were assembled and sometimes serviced. The job requires special equipment because the doors were designed to open in orbit, not Earth's gravity.

The science center hopes to open a new building displaying Endeavour in a vertical launch position by 2018.

In addition to Atlantis and Endeavour, Discovery is on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center in in Chantilly, Va. Orbiter prototype Enterprise moved from there to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City.

Space for peace rallies planned in Colorado

Saturday marked the start of "Keep Space for Peace Week," organized by Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space to protest what it calls the militarization of space.

A poster promoting the week of nonviolent events features a bloodshot eyeball wearing an American flag-themed top hat high in a sky swarming with drones and Sputnik-style satellites, looking down at protesters on the ground carrying banners reading "No more war!", "Save the Environment!", "No drones!", and "Justice!"

"Shall the people of earth submit to full corporate surveillance and domination of every aspect of our lives?" the poster asks. "We say no! Military satellites now allow surveillance under programs like NSA and NRO."

A preliminary list of events included a Tuesday vigil by Citizens for Peace in Space outside Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, but none in Florida.

Maintenance walks on tap at ISS

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and German astronaut Alexander Gerst will perform International Space Station maintenance during a spacewalk Tuesday morning , the first of two within eight days.

Wiseman and NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore are scheduled to follow up with another excursion Oct. 15.

Some of their work will prepare for the planned relocation of a station closet (the Permanent Multipurpose Module, or PMM) next summer, which is part of preparations for future commercial crew vehicles.

You can watch both six-and-a-half-hour spacewalks live on NASA TV starting at 7 a.m.

NASA, India discuss space partnership

Days after both agencies placed spacecraft in orbit around Mars, NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced a formal process to study collaboration on a future Mars mission, and agreed to work together on an Earth-observing satellite.

NASA's Maven spacecraft arrived Sept. 21 to study Mars' upper atmosphere. ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) followed Sept. 23, successfully completing India's first launch to Mars.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com