While the Ares I-X was technically a success, there was a bit of damage to both the pad and solid rocket booster. According to NASASpaceFlight.com’s L2 section the vehicle actually was supposed to launch at a bit of an angle to help it clear the Fixed Service Structure or FSS.  The known downside of this was a couple of seconds of the massively hot Ares first stage exhaust hitting the FSS. While we were speculating about the apparent angle at liftoff during our live coverage, that was in fact planned but did damage pad 39B in the process.

NASASpaceFlight.com L2 Resources:

Ares I-X SRB additional pics – http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=19398.0

LC-39B additional pics – http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=19300.0

Underwater SRB pictures – http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=19283.0

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or MRO seems to be having a few issues.  The $720 million dollar mission is on hold while scientists try and determine why the system keeps rebooting.  In fact the MRO has had 4 computer resets this year before NASA scientists put the spacecraft in to safe mode.  While in safe mode the spacecraft has its solar arrays tracking the sun and communications antennae pointed at Earth to allow additional communications and software uplinks.

Technical issues prevented our live interview with Jerry Carr and that will be rescheduled for a future date and time. Spacevidcaster and SEDS member extraordinaire Rick Hanton saves the day talking about the upcoming SpaceVision 09 conference and a bit about how he got started in SEDS.

Four years, three teams, 2 million dollars put up by NASA Centennial Challenges… Sound familiar?  ……  Just… it’s what some people are calling the next generation in space travel: The Space Elevator.

Since 2005 the competition has admittedly changed quite a bit, but the same principals are still in place.  How do we get a robot to climb a tether in a geosynchronous orbit in an efficient way while keeping the power source on the ground?  And once we have that robot, how do we make that tether able to be strong and light enough to handle such a “lofty” goal?

Ok, so we’ve told you the basics on the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge and if you missed them you can head to our website and search for NGLLC.

But, what you haven’t heard is the unofficial, soon to be official outcomes.

We chat with @mmealling about Masten Space’s additional day to compete in the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.

The launch of the Ares I-X test vehicle from NASA at 15:30 UTC on October 28th, 2009.
To view just the launch jump to 5:07 in the video!

Sy Liebergot was the EECOM on duty when Apollo 13 called out ‘Houston, We’ve Had a Problem”. From that moment forward all eyes were on Sy to figure out what had happened to the crippled CSM. EECOM stands for Electrical, Environmental and Consumables Manager which means Sy was right in the thick of the problem!

Space Exploration Technologies or ‘SpaceX’ has already flown their single engine rocket, the Falcon 1, successfully twice. Now it’s time to move on to bigger and badder things: the rocket with 8 additional Merlin engines and aptly named Falcon 9. One of the biggest changes between the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9, besides the engines, is the use of Florida’s Cape Canaveral as a launching location.

We cover space news for the week of October 11th to the 17th, 2009 in this live epicsode. We also talk a bit about cross contamination of planets.

The jagged edges of what’s commonly referred to as lunar regolith, can create some serious issues when it comes to critical things for living on the moon, like keeping airlock seals tight or not ripping apart the lungs of astronauts. This stuff’s not all bad. If we can find a way to mine and collect the regolith we can utilize it to help build our future lunar colonies. We can possibly use it to provide shielding from meteorites, thermal extremes, radiation, both natural and man-made, and the blast effects of rockets landing and taking off. Oh, and the material contains He-3 which could, you know, solve the world’s energy crisis.

We all know that NASA has had their issues with weather delaying some of the most recent STS missions, not to mention all kinds of other delays in the past as well… but this next potential delay is not due to any weather or technical issues…  but rather good old scheduling issues.  

Purdue, NASA, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Pennsylvania State University are all working together on a new rocket propellant called ALICE. Not named for anyone’s girlfriend or mother, the name ALICE comes from what the propellant is made out of: frozen mixture of water and “nanoscale aluminum” powder.

On Friday October 9th, 2009 at 1131 UTC LCROSS slammed in to the moon, hopefully kicking up water to be analyzed and used for future human colonization of our nearest neighbor.

Masten Space gives us a behind the scenes look at their new launch vehicle and talks about their qualifying run at the LLC Level 1 prize. We talk about saving the world one drop of water at a time. And we talk about the ZOMG LCROSS IS GOING TO DESTROY THE MOON AND ALL HUMANITY WILL FAIL!!!111!!! You know, or maybe not.

As if it wasn’t exciting enough, this year’s Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge is getting more and more interesting each day! At the start of this competition season we had three teams competing… and now we have four: Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems, Unreasonable Rocket and the newcomer Bon Nova.

NASA, along with just about everyone else down here on Earth, is looking to see if there is water on the Moon. And not just random bits of ice on the surface, but really big quantities of water that we can use, should humans ever have a Lunar colony.

Did you know that October is the month where we celebrate World Blindness Awareness, Breast Cancer Awareness and Domestic Violence Awareness? October also means World Space Week.

It seems that we will be seeing a larger number and more frequent space tourists even sooner than most of us had previously thought. According to a Russian official who is connected to the Space Adventures Company, space tourists by the fist full should be going up in Soyuz spacecraft as soon as early 2012.

This is a NASA produced video about Orion in Low Earth Orbit. Guests Julie Kramer White and John Curry discuss the Orion in Low Earth Orbit and its missions to the International Space Station. I have no idea why they put the ‘Constellation in Low Earth Orbit’ title up there, this really speaks to Orion.