Via NASA
NASA’s first test flight for the agency’s next-generation spacecraft and launch vehicle system is launching in 2009. The test flight, called Ares I-X, will bring NASA one step closer to its exploration goals — to return to the moon for more ambitious exploration of the lunar surface and to travel to Mars and destinations beyond.
The Ares I-X flight will provide NASA an early opportunity to test and prove hardware, facilities and ground operations associated with the Ares I crew launch vehicle. It also will allow NASA to gather critical data during ascent of the integrated Orion crew exploration vehicle and the Ares I launch vehicle stack — data that will ensure the vehicle system as a whole is safe and fully operational before astronauts begin traveling into orbit.
Tags: NASA·rocket·space
Lockheed and Raytheon Vie for MKV
Via aviationweek.com
Via globalsecurity.org
Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are taking very different design approaches as they compete to address the Missile Defense Agency’s growing concerns about tracking and destroying multiple targets, even decoys, lofted by ballistic missiles aimed at the U.S.
Intelligence officials are concerned that decoy technologies developed by the former Soviet Union and Russia have spread to would-be adversaries or could be duplicated by countries building up arsenals of ballistic missiles. Decoys can be as unsophisticated as metal fragments or balloons that are released along with a warhead when a ballistic missile’s nose cone opens up in flight. Or they can be more complicated and emulate the infrared signature of a ballistic missile or warhead. They are all designed to fool the MDA’s ground- and space-based sensor network as well as the infrared seekers on U.S. kill vehicles that are ultimately responsible for the endgame of a missile defense engagement.
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Tags: missile·MKV·space
