Recently in Rocket Category

Armadillo Aerospace Launches Their Third "STIG-A" Rocket from Spaceport America

"Saturday's Armadillo launch successfully lifted off at approximately 11:15 a.m. (MDT), which was within the dedicated, five-hour launch window, and flight data indicates the rocket attained a maximum altitude of approximately 82-km (~50 miles). A failure of the ballute (balloon-parachute) recovery system meant that the GPS-steerable main parachute could not be deployed as intended; however, the vehicle was successfully recovered within the predicted operating area and the nose cone and ballute were separately recovered intact on the Spaceport property."

World's Largest Rocket Contest Helps Aspiring STEM Leaders Take Off

"Nearly 700 teams of middle and high school students across 48 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands are gearing up for the 2012 Team America Rocketry Challenge, the world's largest student rocket contest and a critical piece of the aerospace industry's workforce development pipeline. The 10th anniversary competition is the most challenging in the history of the event. This year, each team is tasked with designing and building a rocket carrying a two egg payload to 800 feet and back during a 43- to 47-second flight without cracking. A strict limit on liftoff weight forces students to focus on designing the payload bay while building a lighter, stronger rocket. The top 100 teams will advance to the National Finals May 12 at Great Meadow in The Plains, Va."

Fifty-Seven Student Rocket Teams to Take NASA Launch Challenge

"More than 500 students from middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities in 29 states will show their rocketeering prowess in the 2011-12 NASA Student Launch Projects flight challenge. The teams will build and test large-scale rockets of their own design in April 2012. NASA created the twin Student Launch Projects to spark students' imaginations, challenge their problem-solving skills and give them real-world experience. The project aims to complement the science, mathematics and engineering lessons they study in the classroom."

Armadillo Aerospace Launches Successfully from Spaceport America

"New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA) officials announced today a successful launch over the weekend of an advanced sounding rocket designed and built by Armadillo Aerospace. The launch took place from Spaceport America's vertical launch complex on Sun., Dec. 4. The test flight was a non-public, unpublished event at the request of Armadillo Aerospace, as the company is testing proprietary advanced launch technologies."

NASA Postpones Nov. 4 Robotic Lander Test

"NASA has postponed Friday's 10:30 a.m. CDT 100-foot robotic lander altitude flight test to allow engineers more time to assess data from a recent test regarding an issue with the vehicle's propellant usage. The test now is targeted for no earlier than Friday, Nov. 9, from the U.S. Army Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala. On Thursday, managers from the Robotic Lander Development Project at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., decided that more time is needed to analyze the test data to confirm the vehicle's propellant rate usage."

NASA Robotic Lander Test Flight Nov. 4

"NASA will conduct a 100-foot robotic lander altitude test flight Friday, Nov. 4, to mature the technology needed to develop a new generation of small, smart, versatile robotic landers capable of achieving scientific and exploration goals on the surface of the moon, asteroids or other airless bodies."

Team America Rocketry Challenge Registration Opens

"Registration for the world's largest student rocket competition is open now through November 30. The Team America Rocketry Challenge will accept up to 1,000 student teams in grades 7-12 from any U.S. school, home school or non-profit youth organization. The 2012 contest rules and registration information are available at www.rocketcontest.org."

On September 30, 2011 at 11:08am, Derek Deville's Qu8k (pronounced "Quake") launched from the Black Rock Desert in Nevada to an altitude of 121,000' before returning safely to earth. Above 99% of the atmosphere the sky turns black in the middle of the day and the curvature of the earth is clearly visible.

Photos

Rocketry Winners Come to Washington, John Easum via OSTP

"Last week Michael Gerritsen, Colt McNally, Landon Fisher, and I visited Washington, DC as ambassadors for the Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC).  We spoke on Capitol Hill on September 14th and met with leaders in the Obama Administration, including his science and technology advisor Dr. John Holdren, Administrator of NASA Charlie Bolden, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Our team of four competed in the Team America Rocketry Challenge, which is a nation-wide contest where students in 7th through 12th grades design, build, and fly a rocket to reach specific parameters while competing for over $60,000 in scholarships and prizes."

During the season of gift-giving, many youngsters may have had toy rocket ships on their wish-lists. In this eye-to-eye interview, we learn how one boy didnt send a letter to the North Pole to get a rocket, rather to the NIH to fund a rocket. We talked to Terence Boylan, who with his friend Bruce Cook, asked for an NIH grant back in April of 1957. Since Terences father was a physician and medical researcher at the University of Buffalo, the nine-year-old thought NIH was the place to go for money. Dr. Ernest Allen received Terences letter, and helped reward the youngsters request with ten dollars.

Launch into the new school year with a new Do-It-Yourself Podcast topic module: Rocket Science. NASA Launch Vehicle Systems Analyst (rocket scientist) Tristan Curry provides expert sound bites for students to build podcast episodes about the laws of physics that govern building and launching rockets. Education specialist Fred Kepner explains the stability of a rocket and how to achieve it.

Whether you're building a film canister rocket or a launch vehicle to travel beyond Earth, the science behind rockets is the same. The topic module includes 33 video clips with Curry, Kepner, historical footage of rockets and shuttle launches, and animations. Sixteen audio clips also are included in the module. Students may download these NASA multimedia materials and integrate them into their own recordings and narration to create a podcast.

Other DIY Podcast topic modules are:

-- Fitness.
-- Lab Safety.
-- Newton's Laws.
-- Robots.
-- Solar Arrays.
-- Spacesuits.
-- Sports Demo.

Students can build their own multimedia projects, while teachers meet national education standards. A companion blog offers tips and suggestions for incorporating the DIY Podcast into the classroom. To learn more and to start building podcasts, visit http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/diypodcast/index.html.

Copenhagen Suborbitals open-source private space rocket was launched and is being recovered. Go to: http://raketvenner.dk/launch/ for coverage and updates.

- Some People REALLY Want To Go Into Space, earlier post
- Video: HEAT1X-Tycho Brahe Rocket Flight From the Pilot's Point of View
- Video: Copenhagen Suborbitals Launch of HEAT-X1 Rocket

Chirag Parikh & Phil Larson: Earlier this month, we were honored to be invited to the Team America Rocketry Challenge held about 50 miles outside Washington, DC. There, hundreds of middle- and high-school students were participating in a model rocketry competition sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association.

As two guys with aerospace in our blood, we know firsthand the excitement and adrenaline rush of launching model rockets. For many youngsters--us among them--model rocketry is a rite of passage that springboards early dreamers to become the engineers and aerospace professionals of tomorrow. They will be the ones designing, building, and operating the next-generation rockets that launch astronauts into space, probes into the farthest reaches of our solar system, and Earth-orbiting satellites that touch every facet of our daily lives.

Competitions like the one we attended this month help embed in students the qualities necessary to succeed, such as creative thinking, problem solving, and teamwork. Each three- to 10-person team was challenged to design and build a rocket to climb exactly 750 feet during a 40- to 45-second flight. The payload, a raw egg, had to return to the ground by parachute undamaged.

Full post at OSTP with photos

Close-up of pump being tested on a Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket mission from the Wallops Flight Facility in June. Credit: NASA Larger image

The more advanced the electronics, the more power they use. The more power they use, the hotter they get. The hotter they get, the more likely they'll overheat. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand what typically happens next: The electronics fry.

Click to enlarge

A new microsatellite designed to give scientists less expensive access to space will be demonstrated during a NASA Terrier-Improved Orion suborbital sounding rocket flight between 7 and 10 a.m., June 9, from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The backup launch day is June 10.

A short documentary about the PhoneSat suborbital test launch in the Black Rock desert, this video covers both launches of the Nexus One cell phone. Watch to find out whether they survived their 5-second, 18G trips miles into the atmosphere! More videos.

A combined view of ground video, on-rocket video, and accelerometer data from the Nexus One rocket launch. More videos here.

A team from Rockwall-Heath High School in Heath, Tex., took first place at the ninth annual Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC) finals Saturday afternoon, besting 99 teams from across the country to earn the title of national champion. Rockwall-Heath joined more than 600 participating teams in September 2010 on a journey that included rocketry design, simulated flights and test launches. Sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association and the National Association of Rocketry, the contest encourages students to prepare for careers in the aerospace industry, which is working to boost the pipeline of students with science, technology, engineering and math skills. More

NASA will launch a Virginia Tech University experiment to measure nitric oxide in the upper atmosphere this winter from the Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska. The Polar Night Nitric Oxide experiment will be launched on a suborbital flight aboard a NASA Black Brant IX sounding rocket. The launch is scheduled for no earlier than January 30. Scott Bailey, assistant professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, is leading the experiment called "Polar NOx." The experiment is designed to measure the intensity of nitric oxide in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere in the polar region.

Less than three years after obtaining college degrees, a group of early-career employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., can now add "rocket launch" to their resumes. Recent graduates who work for JPL launched a sounding rocket 120 kilometers (75 miles) above Earth's surface on Monday, Dec. 6. The rocket flew from the U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, with four cameras on board. The cameras recorded real-time ground imagery throughout the flight, both after launch as the rocket climbed beyond the atmosphere, and during its descent back to White Sands. Those data will be compared with existing maps to develop terrain-modeling algorithms. This project will improve precision landing for future missions to Mars and other locations.

Danish inventors produce first amateur rocket designed to send humans into space (and one of them is going to test it out himself), Daily Mail

"It might not look much. In fact, it looks practically suicidal. But two Danish inventors hope to launch the world's first amateur-built rocket for human space travel. The homemade rocket is the brainchild of Danish firm Copenhagen Suborbitals, headed by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen."

Copenhagen Suborbitals

"Welcome to Copenhagen Suborbitals Our mission is very simple. We are working towards launching a human being into space. This is a non-profit suborbital space endeavor lead by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen, based entirely on sponsors and volunteers."

Cheaper, Better Satellites Made From Cellphones and Toys, Wired

"Instead of investing in their own computer research and development, engineers at the NASA Ames Research Center are looking to cellphones and off-the-shelf toys to power the future of low-cost satellite technology. The smartphone in your pocket has about 120 times more computing power than the average satellite, which has the equivalent of a 1984-era computer inside. "You can go to Walmart and buy toys that work better than satellites did 20 years ago," said NASA physicist Chris Boshuizen. "And your cellphone is really a $500 robot in your pocket that can't get around. A lot of the real innovation now happens in entertainment and cellphone technology, and NASA should be going forward with their stuff."

Video from a Google NexusOne smartphone with specially programmed Android apps, installed aboard James Dougherty's Intimidator-5 on a CTI N4100 load. Launch from Black Rock Playa on 24-July-2010 thanks to Maverick Civilian Space Foundation.