Obama has appointed U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden to lead a new task force in order to try and find a way to best spend $40 million dollars. Allow me to suggest a small donation of $5 million by Gary and Charles to Spacevidcast if I may. That $40 million was actually promised by President Obama at his April 15th Speech at Kennedy Space Center. While the President is INCREASING NASA’s budget, he is still slashing Constellation, assuming his plan is passed by Congress. This slash will unroot many native Floridians who work on NASA’s Human Space Flight program. When this year winds down we will no longer have a space shuttle program. Since Constellation is canceled, we won’t have a replacement program either. That’s going to displace a lot of people. This $40 million dollars is slated to help train the current workforce so they can find jobs outside of their current area of expertise, as well as keep the space based economy in Florida from collapsing. The due date for the task force’s homework assignment is August 15th of this year. It will not be graded on a curve.

Remember that Galaxy 15 zombiesat we talked about yesterday? They tried one last hail mary to try and get the satellite to shut down and go dark. Alas, this final attempt failed as well. It is now up to SES World Skies to try and keep the Intelsat run Galaxy 15 from causing a blackout of their own AMC-11. This will be a difficult to impossible task of moving the AMC-11 satellite while still maintaining its proper place in orbit. All the while they will need to ensure that they don’t cross the streams!

Lets head back over to Kennedy Space Center where the SpaceX built Falcon 9 rocket sits ready to launch. And by ready I mean completely grounded by the Air Force. While the rocket itself is ready, the Flight Termination System has not yet approved. The FTS is designed to destroy the rocket in case SpaceX loses control and it endangers the range or crew. Falcon 9 has a No Earlier Than launch date of May 16th, 2010 but that doesn’t mean it will actually launch then, that just means it can’t launch BEFORE then. SpaceX is required to give a date to the space center, and that’s what they did. Hopes are that we’ll see the Falcon 9 lift off for its maiden voyage mid May, but rumors say that we’re out until at least June. Originally we were supposed to see a launch on November 29th, 2009. That got delayed to Feburary 9th, 2010 which was in turn delayed to March 3rd, which was delayed to March 8th which has now been delayed to May 16th. Still slated for 2010 is the launch of the Falcon 9 heavy and Dragon capsule. Of course, the Air Force has to let them FLY first!

US space programs are not the only ones with issues. India has delayed their first commercial launch of 2010 due to a problem with their rocket. During a pre-launch test ISRO scientists saw an unexpected pressure drop in the second stage. The PSLV rocket is cool in that every other stage alternates between solid and liquid fuels. So the first stage is solid, the second stage is liquid, the third stage is solid again and the forth stage is liquid. Kinda neat. While the drop is pressure was minor, they are a bit jumpy as on April 15th an ISRO rocket decided that it wanted to take a quick swim in the sea rather than float around in outer space. Little known fact, space based payloads such as satellites don’t like to get wet.

And it seems that Arianespace is meeting a similar fate to that of India. The first flight of the Ariane 5 for 2010 was postponed back in April of this year and now it looks like the shiny new vehicle built for Arianespace will be delayed as well. Known as Vega this new rocket was supposed to enter service in 2010 giving the space program a fleet of three different rocket designs. Vega is designed to take small payloads to orbit. It has no strap on boosters and three solid rocket stages. Oh, and that delayed mission from April we mentioned… Yeah, that still has not launched. No ETA.

In all fairness to all of these companies, yes, it really is rocket science.

Speaking of delays… Should we be talking about the scheduled May 14th launch of STS-132 in this episode or would that just be jinx it? Because STS-132…

On April 5th, 2010 Intelsat lost control of the Orbital Sciences built Galaxy 15 satellite and has been unable to regain it’s correct position in orbit. Losing communication with a multi-million dollar satellite is generally not that great of a thing to have happen, but in this case it is even worse. The bird itself is floating around with its transponders still active. Now for the really fun part: the satellite is moving out of its assigned orbital slot and is about to enter in to range of another satellite: AMC-11.

Typically one would be worried of an impact event which then causes tons of space debris, but in this case the problem will be interference. Since both satellites will be broadcasting at the same time in the same orbital slot, the malfunctioning Galaxy 15 could end up knocking out communications of AMC-11 when it gets too close. Right now best estimates put that date at May 23rd. Then we’ll have TWO decommissioned satellites.

But the fun doesn’t end there! If ground controllers can’t regain control of Galaxy 15, and it keeps drifting, eventually it will exit the assigned orbital slot for AMC-11 some time around June 7th, and could then move on to take out the next satellite in its way. And so forth and so on until they can either shut it down or it loses its Earth pointing capability which would then cause the solor arrays to lose lock with the sun, and a couple of hours later the batteries would drain and the unit would shut down on its own.

Yesterday Intelsat was going to try one last hail mary to see if they can’t get control of the satellite. Well, less control and more of an emergency shutdown command. This was a powerful command sent for around 30 minutes to try and get Galaxy 15 to turn off its transponders and go dark so it won’t wreak havoc on the satellite constellation. No word yet on if this attempt worked or not.

Galaxy 15 has been replaced by Galaxy 12 which was already located at another orbital location and moved in to the proper orbital slot for the old Galaxy 15. Since most of the transponders on Galaxy 15 match that of Galaxy 12, that was a fairly good workaround, although Galaxy 12 is missing L-Band units that were available on the other satellite.

If the satellite is not shut down, then around July 13th it should reach the vicinity of Galaxy 13, on July 30th it will reach Galaxy 14 and in Mid August it will reach Galaxy 18. Eventually it is expected to reach the satellite wasteland at 105 degrees west where satellites go to die. There are two parking lots for satellites, one at 105 degrees west and one at 75 degrees east. Current estimates put more than 160 zombiesats parked at these two locations. This will be the first Orbital Sciences built satellite to get zombified.

Last Wednesday, April 28th at 17:15 UTC a Russian Soyuz-U carrier rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome en route to the International Space Station.

Aboard the rocket was the Progress 37P spacecraft. And aboard the craft was fresh food and supplies for the Expedition 23 crew aboard the Space Station. The cool thing about the Progress-M spacecraft is that it employs an automated docking mechanism to glide it in and safely have it dock with the International Space Station. This automated system is known as Kurs and has been in use by Russia since the Mir space station days. Of course in an emergency an astronaut or cosmonaut can take manual control over the spacecraft locally or from the International Space Station. And that’s just what happened.

During rendezvous operations, when the spacecraft was about a kilometer from the space station, the Kurs system failed. No problem. Cosmonaut Oleg Kotov used the backup TORU system to manually control the Progress vehicle in to a safe and stable dock. Oleg has now set a record for the furthest distance a Progress spacecraft has flown under manual control.

If the TORU or Teleoperated Mode of (spacecraft) Control rings a bell, that’s because on June 25th, 1997 it became quite famous. During a test of the Progress 234 docking system with the Mir space station, the Progress vehicle slammed in to the Mir causing a rupture in the Spektr module which in turn began depressurizing the station itself. This also cause the Mir to go into a spin which then caused a power outage. Without power the spin became uncontrolled. Ground control sent a command to Mir to fire the engines trying to help reduce the spin and get the station back under control. Fortunately the Cosmonauts were able to get the systems back online, get Mir in to a stable orbit and no one was hurt. I wonder if Kotov was thinking of the Mir incident when he glided the Progress vehicle in to a smooth docking using the TORU system.

It seems that unmanned space planes are all the rage these days. The Air Force recently launched their X-37B and last Friday Russia hinted that they may revive one of their long dead space plane programs. The Russian Multipurpose Aerospace System or MAKS is an innovative space plane that had its development frozen in 1991. In response to the US Air Force’s recent launch of the X-37B, the Russian aerospace designer Vladimir Skorodelov has said that this could spur Russia to restart their own defunct Space Plane program.

The Russian Shuttle is much like the X-37B, about the same size, same style, it is unmanned and can’t get to orbit on its own. Back when it was designed in the 80′s the Russian shuttle would launch aboard an An-225 airplane carrier, much like Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnight carrier. Unlike Virgin Galactic the MAKS vehicle will sit atop the airplane, not below it.

The interesting thing about MAKS is that there is both an unmanned and manned configuration of the vehicle. Actually, there are three versions of MAKS on the table: MAKS-OS which is the manned orbital plane. MAKS-T which is designed to inject heavy payloads in to orbit. And finally MAKS-M which is a completely reusable unmanned space plane.

This isn’t the first space shuttle that Russia has designed and then cancelled. Back in 1988 the Soviet Union launched the unmanned Buran space shuttle. Buran was about the same size and shape as NASA’s current fleet of orbiters, but unlike NASA’s orbiters was able to fly completely unmanned. Due to financial difficulties the program never got any additional traction and only the one unmanned flight was made in November of 1988 and in 1992 the program was cancelled.

The development of the MAKS aerospace system started when Buran was still in the creation phase. The major goal of the MAKS project was to reduce the cost of space transportation operations and to increase the efficiency of the launch system itself. The current cost of sending 2.2 pounds of material to space aboard the US Space Shuttle is around $20,000 dollars. That means that 1 gallon of water would cost nearly $100,000 dollars to fly to the International Space station. It was and still is hoped that MAKS will be able to deliver the same weight for an estimated $1,000 to $1,200 dollars. Now, that same gallon of water would cost around $5,500 to bring to the ISS.

Of course it could be that nothing ever comes of this. Vladimir is the chief designer of NOP Molniya which was the company founded for the creation of the Buran shuttle and today works on reusable launch systems. This could just be wishful thinking on his part. Or it really could spur re-investment in to MAKS system for a next generation shuttle. While there are a few reports out there indicating that MAKS has been revived and is being pushed for launch as soon as possible, we have been unable to confirm said rumor and can only speculate at this time. Nevertheless, it sure would be cool if it was!

And don’t forget to join us this Friday at 0200 UTC for Spacevidcast Live. This week we will have on guest Bill Suitor who is the author of Rocketbet Pilot’s Manual. This is your chance to ask someone who has actually flown a rocketbelt your own questions. For those of you in the US the show will be this Thursday at 7:00pm PDT or 10:00pm EDT. Remember to pick up your copy of the Rocketbelt Pilot’s Manual from Apogeebooks.com before the show and we’ll see you there!

Last Thursday, April 22nd at 2300 UTC an all new rocket from the US Air Force and Orbial Sciences launched: The Minotaur IV Light. This new rocket uses U.S. Government furnished solid rocket motors from decommissioned peacekeeper ICBM’s as well as a commercial solid rocket upper stage. The rest of the vehicle is based on Orbital’s past rockets such as the smaller Minotaur I and Pegasus. While this particular launch was sub-orbital, the Minotaur IV is actually designed to be a orbital launch system.

The Minotaur IV has seen some delays. It was discovered that a gas generator in the 3rd stage of the rocket would produce unintended thrust after the motor burned out. Engineers had to go back and design a new diffuser to reduce that unintended thrust, which then delayed the debut of the rocket itself. Projects such as the Space Based Space Surveillance Satellite or SBSS have been delayed since October of last year due to the Minotaur IV issues. This setback has caused a cascading delay for military satellite deployment. Some satellites have been moved to other launch vehicles such as the Delta II while others have had to wait for the Minotaur IV configuration to be fixed. Now that the Air Force and Orbital have been able to successfully launch the Minotaur IV, it is expected that they will be able to catch up on that backlog.

While the launch itself was a success, the payload, not so much. Aboard the Minotaur IV Light was DARPA’s Hypersonic test vehicle. The payload was known as the Falcon HTV-2a Glide Vehicle and is designed to re-enter the atmosphere and fly across the Pacific Ocean at speeds of around 13,000 miles per hour, or 20,000 kilometers per hour. The HTV was supposed to test technologies that could eventually be employed by a system capable of prompt global response missions. Well, that was the plan at least.

The vehicle was released from the Minotaur’s third stage and it looks like Orbital’s rocket did deliver the HTV glide vehicle and separate as planned, but something went wrong. The craft was supposed to try out its aerodynamic control systems, do a bunch of turns to burn off some energy and then glide over the Pacific Ocean at that awesome 13,000 miles per hour before splashing down in the sea near the US Army’s Regan Test Site. Unfortunately, Tracking systems lost contact with the Falcon HTV-2a around 9 minutes after liftoff. DARPA has not yet said if any of the HTVs mission objectives were completed before communications with the craft were lost. Hehe, oops.

And finally, 51 years ago today the Mercury 7 Astronauts first reported for duty. Project Mercury was the first Human Space Flight program in the United States running from 1959 to 1963. The goal of Project Mercury was to put a human in orbit around the Earth. The first human flight on Mercury was with Alan Shepard on May 5th, 1961 which was a sub-orbital flight, and on February 20th, 1962 the goal of orbiting the Earth was met with Astronaut John Glenn.

Don’t forget to join us this Friday at 0200 UTC for Spacevidcast Live. This week we will have on guest Bill Suitor who is the author of Rocketbet Pilot’s Manual. This is your chance to ask someone who has actually flown a rocketbelt your own questions. For those of you in the US the show will be this Thursday at 7:00pm PDT or 10:00pm EDT. Remember to pick up your copy of the Rocketbelt Pilot’s Manual from Apogeebooks.com before the show and we’ll see you there!

While NASA’s Space Shuttle fleet only has 3 missions remaining, a new space shuttle is arriving on the scene. The Air Force is testing their all new and classified X-37B Space Plane. Of course there are a few key differences between the X-37B and NASA’s Space Shuttle. For one, the X-37B can’t carry any passengers. This is a robotic only vehicle. And since passengers are not required, the size of the vehicle is quite a bit smaller than the space shuttle. So small that it can fi,t as the primary payload on an Atlas 5 rocket. And that’s exactly what the Air Force did. On Thursday, April 22nd at 2352 UTC an Atlas 5 rocket carried the X-37B in to space to begin testing of this new and secretive vehicle. They will be demonstrating and validating the guidance, navigation and control systems which includes an autonomous re-renty and landing at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, much like the X-40 free flight test shown here.

Speaking of shuttles, Orbital Vehicle 104 or better known as Space Shuttle Atlantis has rolled out to launch pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center this last Wednesday. Atlantis is prepping for her final flight of STS-132 currently slated for May 14th, 2010 although the vehicle won’t be fully retired after this mission. Atlantis will be used as a standby vehicle for STS-335 which is the Launch On Need mission for the final space shuttle flight ever. If Space Shuttle Discovery encounters problems on STS-133 and a rescue mission is needed, NASA will call on Atlantis to bring the crew home safely. Since the inception of the Launch On Need missions with STS-114, NASA has never needed to fly a STS-300 series rescue mission. Chances are, STS-132 will be the last time Space Shuttle Atlantis will see space. But what better shuttle to have as a backup for the end of the Space Shuttle era than Atlantis.

17 years ago today Space Shuttle Columbia launched for mission STS-55 from pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. Columbia was originally supposed to launch in late Feburary but this date slipped due to possible issues with the space shuttle main engine oxidizer turbo-pumps. All three turbo-pumps were replaced at the pad, but then Columbia saw further delays when a hydrolic flex hose burst in the aft compartment during a flight readiness test. The lines were removed, inspected and three replacements were installed. A launch attempt on March 22nd further delayed Columbia as the launch was aborted at T-3 seconds when computers detected an incomplete ignition of the number three space shuttle main engine. Finally on April 26th, 1993 Space Shuttle Columbia launched for her Spacelab mission involving 88 different experiments.

And don’t forget to join us this Friday at 0200 UTC for Spacevidcast Live. This week we will have on guest Bill Suitor who is the author of the Rocketbelt Pilot’s Manual. This is your chance to ask someone who has actually flown a rocketbelt, your very own questions. For those of you in the US the show will be this Thursday at 7:00pm PDT or 10:00pm EDT. Remember to pick up your copy of the Rocketbelt Pilot’s Manual from Apogeebooks.com before the show and we’ll see you there!

As most of you know, the Hubble Space Telescope has had it’s last repair. Which is what much of the new movie Hubble 3D is about. Not to worry though. As Hubble will end it’s days sometime around 2020 peacefully, there is a new tele on the block that is just rearing to go! The James Webb Space Telescope. Or JWST for short.

As you can see there is a lot of excitement about this new telescope! Now the JWST will not be a complete successor of Hubble’s, because it won’t be sensitive to all of the light wavelengths that Hubble is. The main scientific goal is to observe the most distant objects in the universe. Or to steal from some famous words… where no man has seen before.

If you can’t wait for the Webb telescope, then fret not… STS-131 is only 6 days away from launch!

Starting late on April 4th and going in to April 5th Spacevidcast will be streaming live coverage of STS-131′s launch in High Definition. Not only is Spacevidcast.com the only place on the planet that you can get live high definition streaming of shuttle launches, but you can also ask your questions of astronauts, reporters and crew working down at KSC during the launch. If you can’t watch one of the final 4 launches in person, then at least watch it in HD with us!

Today in space history: Rocketdyne was awarded in 1964 a contract for the production of 76 F-1 rocket engines to be used on the first stage of the Saturn V launch vehicle. The F-1 engine was the most powerful single nozzle, liquid fueled rocket engine, ever used in service. These are the engines that were used to first get humans to the moon and were the driving force of the most powerful rocket ever built.

And of course, don’t forget to join us this Friday at 2 am Coordinated Universal Time for a live interview with Ed Buckbee. Mr. Buckbee was NASA PAO working with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts and is also the founder of Space Camp. Grab a copy of his book “The Real Space Cowboys” from Apogee books and join us to ask your questions of Ed live!

On March 22nd, 2010 Virgin Galactic made it one step closer to bringing paying passengers in to sub-orbital space. VSS Enterprise, also known as SpaceShip Two made its first “Captive Carry” test with VMS Eve or White Knight Two.

For the first time ever, VSS Enterprise flew up to 45 thousand feet and was in the air for just a pinch under 3 hours. Engineer test pilot Mark Stuckey seemed to have a boyish grin on his face when he describes how the test flight went.

Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites still have a lot more work before they will be ready to take paying passengers up. The tests will continue through 2011 moving from captive carry to independent glide, much like how they tested the first space shuttle, also named Enterprise. Once they are happy with the independent glide, the next test will be powered flight followed by, yup, actual commercial launches. Get your checkbooks ready, it will cost you $200,000 to fly aboard VSS Enterprise and that will get you 5 minutes of actual space time. Of course you’ll be among a select few who have actually made it in to sub-orbital space and the view will be, well, like nothing on Earth.

Also preparing to launch, STS-131. We’re only 7 days away from one of the final 4 space shuttle missions, ever.

Starting late April 4th and going in to April 5th Spacevidcast will be streaming live coverage of STS-131′s launch in High Definition. Not only is Spacevidcast.com the only place on the planet that you can get live high definition streaming of shuttle launches, but you can also ask your questions of astronauts, reporters and crew working down at KSC during the launch. If you can’t watch one of the final 4 launches in person, then at least watch it in HD!

Today in space history, Mariner 10 did its first flyby of the planet Mercury in 1974. The pictures sent back to Earth on this first flyby revealed that the surface was cratered much like our own moon and that our inner most planet also has a slight atmosphere made up mostly of helium.

And finally, don’t forget to join us this Friday at 2 am Coordinated Universal Time for a live interview with Ed Buckbee. Ed was NASA PAO working with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts and is also the founder of Space Camp. Grab a copy of his book “The Real Space Cowboys” from Apogee books and ask your questions of Ed live!

What do you think of this new proposed path for NASA? Good? Bad? Something else completely? Join us live this Friday at 0200 UTC to chat in person right here on Spacevidcast.com!

For the 10 minute press conference clip subscribe to Spacevidcast epic at http://www.spacevidcast.com/epic