Given the option, would you take a night on the world’s most comfortable mattress or is sleeping even better while circling the Earth while in orbit?

That was the the premise of a recent piece by National Public Radio’s Robert Krulwich.

Krukwich speaks with veteran astronauts Daniel Barry and Marsha Ivins to learn what it is like to sleep in orbit.

A transcript is available as well as a link to the audio version that was played on air. This story, as well as all of Krulwich’s work for NPR is also available as a podcast feed.

It’s definitely worth the read or listen.

NASA managers have decided that more testing and analysis are needed to determine whether the external tank currently attached to Atlantis will be used for the upcoming STS-117 flight or whether the tank will be replaced. On April 10, the teams expect to have the necessary data to make that decision and to establish a potential target launch date.

Officials met today (March 21, 2007) to assess the status of repair work to Space Shuttle Atlantis’ external fuel tank during the course of the past three weeks. The tank was damaged during a Feb. 26 hail storm at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla. The teleconference followed a meeting to assess the ongoing work. Following the internal meeting, NASA officials briefed the media.

All the hail damage spots on the tank have been mapped out. Repair work has been completed on the bottom portion of the tank, the liquid hydrogen section. The damage on the middle part of the tank, or innertank, was superficial and will require little or no repair. There are 2,500 dings, mostly in the top of the tank, that will be reviewed to determine what type of repair technique may be required.

During the STS-117’s 11-day mission, the six-member crew will install a new truss segment, retract a set of solar arrays and unfold a new set on the starboard side of the station. Lessons learned from two previous missions will provide the astronauts with new techniques and tools to perform their duties.

Atlantis Commander Rick Sturckow, Pilot Lee Archambault and Mission Specialists Jim Reilly, Patrick Forrester, Steven Swanson and John “Danny” Olivas will continue training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston as they await a new target launch date.

NASA is currently targeting an April launch for STS-117.

The first stage falls away from SpaceX’s Falcon 1 after a successful launch and climb to space. The image was captured from the company’s video stream and posted on Flickr.

 

Updated: 9:17 p.m., PDT.

By Marc S. Posner
SOAR Magazine

SpaceX’s Falcon 1 used a second launch attempt today to get off the pad and into space, reaching an altitude of 200 miles. However, the company lost communication with the rocket after roughly 5 minutes and 5 seconds of flight when the vehicle rolled out of control and caused the second-stage engine to cutoff about 5 minutes early, according to published reports.

Launch came at 6:10 p.m., PDT, following a scrub on today’s first launch attempt when the main engine fired and almost immediately aborted.

The duration of the Falcon’s flight was sufficient to complete the first stage, attain a separation and have a stable second-stage.

While calling the day’s events a success, SpaceX founder Elon Musk acknowledged to reporters that the Falcon failed to reach a full orbit.

The problem that ended the mission should be easy to correct, he said, adding that the mission cleared the most-difficult hurdles.

“All in all, this test has flight proven 95+ percent of the Falcon 1 systems, which bodes really well for our upcoming flights of Falcon 1 and Falcon 9, which uses similar hardware,” Musk said. “We do not expect any significant delay in the upcoming flights at this point. The Dept of Defense satellite launch is currently scheduled for late Summer and the Malaysian satellite for the Fall.”

This was the second of two test flights for the El Segundo, CA-based company, officially known as Space Exploration Technologies. The first flight ended when a fuel leak caused the rocket to catch fire about 25 seconds into the flight.

SpaceX is setting up for another launch attempt tonight, potentially in the next 10-55 minutes.

Update: SpaceX is now working on re-fueling the Falcon 1 rocket for another launch attempt at 6:10 p.m., PDT, following a 16-minute countdown.

The countdown reached zero this afternoon, but the result was the same for SpaceX officials — their Falcon 1 rocket remains on its Marshall Islands launch pad.

It was the second abort in two days, following a scrub at the T-minus 90-second mark yesterday.

The rocket appears to be in good shape and it has been placed into “safe mode” as company officials move through post-abort checklists and review data.

SpaceX is reporting that the company will delay today’s Falcon 1 launch attempt by a little more than an hour, slipping from 4 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time to 5:05 p.m.

The launch window for today extends from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., PDT.

If SpaceX is unable to launch today, opportunities also exist tomorrow and Thursday.

By Marc S. Posner
SOAR Magazine

SpaceX will give launch of their Falcon 1 rocket another try today, believing they have corrected a software glitch that caused an abort just 90 seconds before yesterday’s planned liftoff.

The El Segunda, CA-based company, officially known as Space Exploration Technologies, plans to launch at the opening of a 4-hour window starting at 4 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time today.

Yesterday’s abort was triggered when the handling of telemetry was switched from a wired infrastructure to a wireless-radio configuration. There was a slight delay in establishing the wireless connection, and the launch software detected a problem and aborted the countdown, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said in a statement.

“The abort that occurred a few minutes before T-0 was triggered by our ground control software,” he said. “It commanded a switchover of range telemetry from landline to radio, which took place correctly, however, because of the hardware involved, this transition takes a few hundred milliseconds. Before it had time to complete, our system verification software examined state and aborted.”

The problem had not previously been seen, Musk said.

“Our simulations done beforehand all passed, because the simulator did not account for a hardware driven delay in the transition,” Musk said.

Some consideration was given yesterday to recycling the countdown and making a second attempt at liftoff from the Kwajalein Atoll launchpad within the window. That idea was eventually ruled out, Musk said.

“We considered putting the vehicle into a safe state yesterday and updating the ground control software to make the very minor fix needed, but the safer course of action was to stand down,” he said. “Yesterday afternoon and evening (Kwaj time), our launch team updated the software to address the timing issue and verified that there were no similar problems elsewhere. We ran the software through several simulated countdowns and then once again with the rocket and range in the loop.”

Yesterday was the first day of a launch window that extends through Thursday.

By Marc S. Posner
SOAR Magazine

SpaceX officials came within 90 seconds of getting their Falcon 1 rocket off it’s Marshall Islands launch pad. The private company — which hopes to pioneer low-cost access to space — said it wasn’t clear what caused the countdown to abort.

Monday’s planned orbital missions had already been postponed by about 45 minutes due to data communications issues between the launch site and the company’s El Segundo, CA headquarters.

The Falcon 1 rocket had its propellants drained, but it remained on the launch pad, leaving open the opportunity for a quick turnaround for the next launch attempt. No time has officially been scheduled thus far.

By Marc S. Posner
SOAR Magazine

Nearly a year ago, following the launch and subsequent loss of a private, unmanned rocket, SpaceX founder Elon Musk vowed that his company would make a successful orbital flight “come hell or high water.”

The first attempt to back that statement could come tomorrow (Monday, March 19, 2007) with a planned liftoff of a Falcon 1 rocket from the Marshall Islands coming at approximately 4 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

Fire doomed the first attempted flight of SpaceX’s Falcon 1 on March 24, 2006, ending what was planned to be the first privately financed orbital space mission. That flight lasted about a minute before the craft appeared to roll out of control as seen from video streamed by the company on the web.

“The flight readiness review conducted tonight shows all systems are go for a launch attempt at 4pm California time (11pm GMT) tomorrow (Monday),” Musk said Sunday in a written statement.

The El Segunda, CA-based company plans to webcast the launch attempt on their website at spacex.com/webcast.php. Coverage is planned to begin at the T-60 minute mark.

Falcon 1 is a two-stage, 70 foot rocket with a single-thruster engine for each of the phases of flight.

As was the case with the initial demonstration flight, tomorrow’s planned mission is being conducted by SpaceX on behalf of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, commonly known by the initials DARPA.

The launch window for this mission extends from March 19-22, 2007.

While the company has not publicly detailed the problems that caused the first flight to catch fire, resulting in its destruction, Musk did address the year-long delay between flight attempts.

“I know it has been a year since our last launch and some people are wondering if launch 3 will also be a year away if something goes wrong this time,” he said in a statement to the media. “The answer is definitely no. The reason it took us a year is that the vehicle on the pad and the ground support equipment have hundreds of robustness upgrades — this is really Falcon 1 version 2.

“There is nothing significant that we can think of to improve the vehicles under construction for the Dept of Defense and Malaysian satellite launches later this year,” Musk continued. “Therefore, no matter what happens, I do not expect there to be a significant delay in their approximate end of summer and mid fall launch dates.”

Welcome to the revitalized SOARmag.com.

SOAR Magazine has rolled out a new look and some new features, and there’s still more to come. We like to think of this as akin to the shuttle heading out the the launch pad — everything is all gussied up, but there’s still work ahead before a successful launch.

Rest assured that there’s more to come than the initial cosmetic touch up we’ve given the site. For starters, SOARmag.com now operates under a new content management system that we hope will be more robust and permit the return of user comments (which were previously closed because of pervasive spam issues).

Then there’s the new Wiki section. Just like the famed Wikipedia, the SOAR Wiki will allow members of our community to contribute their knowledge.

Primarily, I want SOAR to be a place where young minds can find the fascination of space exploration what I discovered as a young boy. I want the site to be filled with the type of information that students can use as a launching pad for essays about space and as a resource that provides accurate information.

Finally, I want SOAR to deliver space to the computer monitor. And, I don’t want it to be just my space — I want it to be your space.

Thanks for joining in.