Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Solar sail hitches Atlas V ride with X-37B space plane

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: May 20, 2015 at 9:50:13 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Solar sail hitches Atlas V ride with X-37B space plane

Solar sail hitches Atlas V ride with military space plane
James Dean, FLORIDA TODAY 10:15 p.m. EDT May 19, 2015
Bill Nye "the science guy" was in Brevard Tuesday for Wednesday's launch. The Planetary Society will launch LightSail, their prototype spacecraft. The launch is on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Nye was standing next to a scale model of the LightSail while he spoke to the media. (Photo: MALCOLM DENEMARK/FLORIDA TODAY)
(Photo: United Launch Alliance)
One mission will fly under a cloak of darkness, another will test flying by light.
The Air Force's secretive X-37B space plane and a citizen-funded solar sailing experiment headline an eclectic group of spacecraft targeting an 11:05 a.m. launch Wednesday from Cape Canaveral atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
The entire launch window won't be made public until Wednesday because of the the unpiloted mini-shuttle's mostly classified mission — the fourth by a military program moving its operations from California to Kennedy Space Center.
But in a somewhat strange pairing, the same launch brought Bill Nye the Science Guy, who is CEO of The Planetary Society, to Cape Canaveral on Tuesday to discuss the organization's first LightSail mission.
"You can go to very distant destinations in the solar system without any fuel," the bow tie-clad Nye explained of the solar sailing technology, speaking to reporters at the Air Force's Space and Missile History Center. "You can do it much more cheaply."
Through donations from more than 40,000 of its members, including some large gifts by undisclosed donors, the nonprofit Planetary Society raised $4.3 million to develop the LightSail mission.
No bigger than a loaf of bread, the spacecraft is the first of two designed to deploy a square sheet of Mylar measuring 322 square feet.
The sail will catch the sun's steady stream of radiation to maneuver the spacecraft, a bit more slowly than traditional chemical propulsion. A small satellite could reach the moon in a month rather than days, said Nye, or head for Mars or an asteroid.
"You get a continuous very small push, indefinitely," he said. "You can tack, just like a sailboat, this really elegant, wonderful thing."
The spacecraft launching today is one of 10 small satellites known as CubeSats that are hitching rides with the X-37B. The National Reconnaissance Office sponsored nine of them, while NASA facilitated the launch of the first LightSail mission.
Only in orbit for about a month, "LightSail A" won't actually sail but will serve as a shakedown cruise ahead of next year's planned launch by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket of "Lightsail B" on a months-long sailing demonstration.
This test mission hopes to confirm that booms will properly deploy the sail's four triangular sections about two weeks after launch, that software can control the spacecraft and that engineers can communicate with it. Cameras are expected to provide some images from space.
Carl Sagan, one of The Planetary Society's founders, embraced the concept of solar sailing as far back as 1976, when he discussed the idea on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson. The organization attempted to launch a sail in 2005, but a submarine-launched Russian rocket failed.
A Japanese mission successfully demonstrated solar sailing in 2010, but LightSail will be the first to try it with low-cost CubeSats used widely for university-led missions and increasingly for commercial applications.
A recently announced Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign quickly raised more than $500,000 supporting next year's LightSail flight.
Said Nye of LightSail's thousands of donors: "Mostly it was people who just think it's cool. They want to participate in space exploration."
Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at facebook.com/jamesdeanspace.
Launch details:
Rocket: United Launch Alliance Atlas V ("501" configuration)
Mission: U.S. Air Force's fourth X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle mission
Launch time: 11:05 a.m.
Launch window: To be disclosed Wednesday; no more than four hours
Launch complex: 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
Weather: 60 percent "go"
Visit floridatoday.com at 10 a.m. for countdown updates, chat and streaming of ULA's launch Webcast beginning at 10:45 a.m.
Copyright © 2015 www.floridatoday.com. All rights reserved.

Citizen-funded CubeSat ready to go solar sailing
Posted on May 19, 2015 by Stephen Clark
Credit: Josh Spradling / The Planetary Society
A shoebox-sized satellite conceived and funded by members of the Planetary Society, an advocacy organization co-founded by Carl Sagan, is fastened to an Atlas 5 rocket for launch Wednesday to test one of the late celebrity-astronomer's futuristic concepts for exploring the cosmos.
Sagan and other proponents of solar sailing pitch the technology as a way to cheaply glide through the solar system, harnessing energy from sunlight to slightly nudge a spacecraft toward its destination.
The solar sail prototype is going to an orbit a few hundred miles above Earth, where atmospheric drag will overpower any propulsion from the sun. A follow-up mission next year will try to use sun beams to change its orbit.
"We won't fly high enough above the Earth's atmosphere for solar sailing, due to atmospheric drag, but we'll do critical tests of several systems over a 28+ day mission, including a zero-gravity test of our sail deployment sequence and attempt to snap pictures documenting the operation of the booms that support the sails," the Planetary Society wrote on in a summary of the mission.
The satellite, named LightSail, is among a clutch of small payloads fastened to an Atlas 5 rocket for launch Wednesday with the U.S. Air Force's X-37B spaceplane.
If everything goes according to plan, LightSail will spring-eject from its pod mounted to the aft bulkhead of the Atlas 5's Centaur upper stage, deploy its power-generating solar panels. Engineers on Earth will check the satellite's readiness for its big moment, which is set to come about four weeks after liftoff.
Four triangular mylar sails wound up inside the tiny satellite for launch will unfurl to cover an area of 344 square feet.
The spacecraft is about the size of a loaf of bread and weighs about 10 pounds. It is a three-unit version of the popular CubeSat platform, which companies, governments and research institutions are increasingly using to try out innovative technologies at a fraction of the cost of traditional space missions.
Construction of the spacecraft was funded by private citizens and donors, and NASA is paying for LightSail's ride into orbit.
The Planetary Society says the project's total cost is $5.45 million. The group launched a Kickstarter page requesting donations from the public to cover $1.2 million of the cost.
Engineers are preparing a similar spacecraft for launch in 2016 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, which will boost the second LightSail platform to a higher orbit for a full-up solar sailing demo.
LightSail follows other solar sail projects launched by Japan and NASA.
"Through this proof-of-concept mission, we will use CubeSats to open new paths beyond Earth and, one day, potentially to other planets with an inexpensive, inexhaustible means of propulsion: photons, solar energy in its purest form," Planetary Society chief executive Bill Nye wrote on the LightSail Kickstarter page.
"Imagine it: unlimited free energy from the Sun will provide CubeSats with propulsion and revolutionize access to space for low-cost citizen projects—projects like ours or by teams of students and faculty at universities," Nye wrote. "This means that spacecraft, especially small ones like CubeSats, won't have to carry heavy fuels into orbit, and that the acceleration will be continuous."

Photos: Atlas 5 on the pad for X-37B launch
May 19, 2015 by Justin Ray
The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket stands poised for flight with the Air Force's X-37B spaceplane and a batch of CubeSats including the LightSail. The rocket was rolled to Complex 41 on Tuesday in preparation for launch on Wednesday.
Photo credit: Alex Polimeni / Spaceflight Now

© 2015 Spaceflight Now Inc.

X-37B Headed Back to Orbit on a (Mostly) Secret Mission
by Mike Gruss — May 19, 2015
The U.S. Air Force's X-37B spaceplane landed Oct. 17, 2014 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California following 674 days in orbit. Credit: Boeing
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force's secret X-37B spaceplane will embark on its fourth mission May 20 when it launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.
The Air Force does not discuss the X-37B missions, which can last well over a year, beyond acknowledging the program and releasing photographs of the two orbital vehicles, built by Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems of El Segundo, California. Resembling mini space shuttles, the spaceplanes launch vertically atop expendable rockets, are capable of maneuvering on orbit, and then re-enter the atmosphere and glide back to Earth for a runway landing.
Here is some information about the upcoming mission:
• The launch will carry a secondary payload package of 10 cubesats, nine of which are sponsored by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which manages the nation's spy satellites, the other by NASA. NASA's cubesat will demonstrate an on-orbit deployment mechanism for a solar sail. Of the NRO-sponsored cubesats, three were built by the U.S. Naval Academy, three by the California Polytechnic State University, two by the Aerospace Corp. and one by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. The latter cubesat will test on-orbit propulsion technology.
The NRO has published additional information on the cubesat missions on its web site.
The Air Force's AFSPC-5 payload, encapsulated inside a 5-meter diameter payload fairing, is mated to an Atlas 5 booster inside the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex-41. Credit: United Launch Alliance.
• Although the Air Force isn't saying anything about the X-37B's mission, ULA said the vehicle is providing "reusable spacecraft technologies for America's future in space and operating experiments which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth." Brian Weeden, a former Air Force officer specializing in space surveillance who now works as a technical adviser at the Secure World Foundation, has said the spaceplane likely is used both for reconnaissance, and for testing guidance and thermal protection systems for reusable spacecraft. Although the X-37B features an on-orbit maneuvering capability and a cargo bay, Weeden said it is unlikely the vehicle is being used for up-close inspection, repair or retrieval of space objects.
• During an interview that recently aired on CBS News' "60 Minutes," Gen. John Hyten, commander of Air Force Space Command, said the X-37B is being used "really for cool things" in orbit. "It goes up to space but unlike other satellites, it actually comes back," he said. "Anything that we put in the payload bay that we take up to space we can now bring back. And we can learn from that." As for the future of the program, Hyten said, "I'm not going to say what it's going to become —because we're experimenting."
• The Air Force isn't discussing the duration of the upcoming mission, but the vehicle is carrying a NASA materials exposure experiment in its cargo bay that the civilian space agency says will spend at least 200 days in orbit. The X-37B vehicles have flown a combined three missions to date, each lasting longer than the previous one. On its last mission, the vehicle spent 674 days in space.
• The previous X-37B missions launched from the Cape and landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Capt Chris Hoyler, an Air Force spokesman, said "work is still ongoing to stand-up Florida as a landing site for the X-37B, and Vandenberg AFB is still being maintained as a landing location."
• The X-37B program "selects the orbital test vehicle for each activity based upon the experiment objectives," Hoyler said.

© 2015 SpaceNews, Inc. All rights reserved.

AmericaSpace
For a nation that explores
May 19th, 2015
PHOTOS: Atlas-V Ready to Launch AFSPC-5 Mission with X-37B Spaceplane and Lightsail Wednesday
By Mike Killian
A United Launch Alliance Atlas-V 501 rocket stands tall atop Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral AFS on May 19, 2015. The Air Force X-37B OTV-4 spaceplane is onboard, as well as the Planetary Society's Lightsail test article, several small satellites for the NAVY and NRO, and a NASA materials science experiment. Liftoff is scheduled for May 20 between 11:05 a.m. EDT and 1:30 p.m. EDT. Photo Credit: Mike Killian / AmericaSpace
The 196-foot tall United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas-V rocket tasked with launching the Air Force's secretive X-37B spaceplane on its fourth mission arrived at its launch pad today, standing tall and counting down towards a launch attempt tomorrow, May 20. The Air Force AFSPC-5 mission will also deliver The Planetary Society's privately-funded Lightsail spacecraft test article to orbit. Several small satellites for the NAVY and NRO, as well as a NASA materials science experiment, will be hitching a ride on the X-37B.
First motion of the rocket rolling out of its seaside Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) occurred at 9:04 a.m. EDT this morning. Liftoff is scheduled to occur sometime between 10:45 a.m. EDT and 2:45 p.m. EDT. Due to the secretive nature of the X-37B the actual launch window will not be announced until the day of launch, however the airspace closure around Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is from 11:05 a.m. EDT – 1:30 p.m. EDT, hinting that the first launch attempt could be as early as 11:05 a.m. EDT.
Photo Credit: Alan Walters / AmericaSpace
FOLLOW our AFSPC-5 Launch Tracker for updates and LIVE COVERAGE on launch day.
The Air Force's secretive X-37B, the AFSPC-5 primary payload known as the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), will fly at least two publicly disclosed experiments onboard: a NASA materials science investigation and a military electric propulsion test important to spacecraft longevity in geosynchronous orbit. Three small U.S. Naval Academy satellites and two small Aerospace Corp. satellites demonstrating military technologies, as well as several more secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) spacecraft, are all onboard the X-37B, which itself looks uncannily similar to NASA's retired space shuttle, albeit a quarter of the size, but its true capabilities and primary mission(s) have always been classified, as is its whereabouts on orbit and mission duration.
However, according to Canadian researcher Ted Molczan in our in-depth launch and mission preview story, the previous three X-37B flights have all flown in 40-43 degree orbits, and the OTV-4 onboard AFSPC-5 will be launched into about a 350-km (218-mile) orbit, inclined 39 degrees. The Centaur will then be maneuvered into a 350 x 700 km (218 x 435 mi) orbit inclined 57 degrees, where it will deploy the LightSail and other spacecraft.
Described as "the United States' newest and most advanced re-entry spacecraft," the OTV's close resemblance to the space shuttle is misleading. In orbit, it deploys an array of gallium arsenide solar cells, which, when combined with power from a set of lithium-ion batteries, have thus far enabled it to remain aloft for more than 30 times longer than the average shuttle mission. Its payload bay measures 7 feet long and 4 feet wide and can house cargoes weighing between 500-660 pounds. An advanced avionics suite and airframe, together with electromechanical actuators and autonomous guidance controls, has focused the OTV's mandate onto "risk reduction, experimentation, and operational concept development for reusable vehicle technologies in support of long-term developmental space objectives."
The Planetary Society's solar sail satellite Lightsail, which is funded entirely by private citizens, will be hitching a ride to orbit on AFSPC-5 as well, as part of a secondary payload dubbed ULTRASat. Lightsail will conduct its first flight test via AFSPC-5, giving its team an opportunity to check the operation of vital systems in the extreme environment of space in low-Earth orbit (LEO). A mission-ready Lightsail is expected launch to Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket as early as 2016. However, being that a Falcon Heavy has yet to fly, and not expected to conduct a test flight until at least the fall, a 2016 operational Falcon Heavy launch with customer payloads is questionable at best.

BELOW: Photos Credit: Alan Walters / Mike Killian / AmericaSpace. Video and additional photos courtesy of ULA.

Photo: ULA
Photo: ULA

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

Tiny Solar Sail 'Cubesat' Launching with X-37B Space Plane on Wednesday
by Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | May 19, 2015 07:00am ET

Artist's concept of the Planetary Society's LightSail spacecraft in orbit.
Credit: The Planetary Society View full size image
A tiny solar-sailing spacecraft will hitch a ride on the rocket that blasts the United States Air Force's X-37B space plane into orbit on its latest mystery mission tomorrow (May 20).
The robotic X-37B spacecraft is scheduled to launch tomorrow at 10:45 a.m. EDT (1445 GMT) atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The booster will also loft 10 tiny "cubesats," including a spacecraft called LightSail, which is about the size of a loaf of bread.
LightSail is part of the nonprofit Planetary Society's effort to develop and advance solar sail technology. Solar sails harness solar radiation pressure, which imparts a tiny but continuous push that can accelerate a spacecraft to tremendous speeds over time,. [Photos: Solar Sail Evolution for Space Travel]
Solar sailing holds a great deal of promise for cubesats, advocates say. These tiny spacecraft don't have a lot of room for onboard fuel, and they generally launch as ride-alongs on rockets carrying much more expensive primary payloads.
"The group buying the rocket — the primary payload — they get a little bit nervous about, say, 10 miniature fuel banks on your cubesat when they have a multimillion-dollar payload sitting on top of it," said Jason Davis, a digital editor at The Planetary Society, which is headed by former TV "Science Guy" Bill Nye.
"That's what's kind of kept cubesats limited thus far," Davis told Space.com. "So we're trying to show that solar sailing is one way that you can have sort of free propulsion, which could conceivably take cubesats to the next level."
LightSail is equipped with a solar sail that, once deployed, will cover an area of 344 square feet (32 square meters). But the spacecraft isn't going high enough to do any real sailing on this mission; atmospheric drag will likely pull LightSail down two to 10 days after it unfurls its sail (a move planned to occur 28 days after the cubesat starts flying freely).
But that's just fine, Planetary Society representatives say. This first LightSail flight is a shakeout cruise designed to test out the cubesat's attitude-control and sail systems ahead of a true solar sailing trial with a second LightSail craft in Earth orbit next year.
That second mission, which is scheduled to launch on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, aims to demonstrate controlled sailing in Earth orbit for the first time, Davis said. (NASA's NanoSail-D spacecraft unfurled a sail in orbit in January 2011 but more or less fell to Earth, as the first LightSail will do. Japan's Ikaros probe began sailing successfully in deep space in June 2010, after launching with the nation's Akatsuki Venus spacecraft.)
LightSail won't be in the sky for long on its maiden flight, but sharp-eyed skywatchers may still be able to spot the spacecraft after it deploys its sail, Davis said.
"It will be naked-eye visible. The trick will be, if you're in the right place at the right time," he said. The Planetary Society will provide viewing maps on its website (www.planetary.org) during the mission, Davis added.
Several other sail-equipped cubesats will follow the two LightSails to space in short order: NASA's Lunar Flashlight and Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) Scout spacecraft are scheduled to launch in 2018, on the first flight of the agency's Space Launch System megarocket.
Lunar Flashlight will cruise to lunar orbit and then use its sail as a mirror, shining light into shadowed craters at the moon's poles to hunt for water ice. NEA Scout, meanwhile, is designed to demonstrate a cheap and efficient way to travel to and study asteroids.
Both Lunar Flashlight and NEA Scout are bigger than LightSail, and their sail systems are slightly different than that of the Planetary Society spacecraft, Davis said. But the teams behind the NASA vehicles will be keeping a close eye on how LightSail does.
"They are actually very interested in us, and we are doing technical exchanges with them," Davis said. "They want to see how our deployment fares — any problems that we might run into — so that they can learn from it for their missions."

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