Crash Forces Robotic Rebuild for Competition

The road to this year's FIRST robotics competition proved unusually rough for a pair of teams when their robots were severely damaged in a car accident on the way to the University of Central Florida arena.

The high school students and their engineering mentors spent overnight hours salvaging usable pieces and the working components of the broken machines. The groups that had taken months to build the originals, rebuilt the pieces into a pair of new robots.

"Some of the students and one of the mentors stayed up all night," said mentor Paul Remmel. "(They) cobbled together two robots out of those parts and built other parts we didn't have."

The squads, called Horsepower and Bionic Tigers, competed in all their scheduled matches, using the time between sessions to refine their rebuilt machines.

"None of them even thought, 'We're not going to be able to get it back together,'" said Paul Ranyek, a Team Horsepower mentor.

Students from other teams also joined in the effort to salvage the damaged robots.

"They had about a day to rebuild six weeks' worth of work," said Deanna D'Alessandro of the Bionic Bears. "We all came together and right now those two robots are working. It was a great sense of pride for everyone when we saw those two robots actually working."

Ride with Astronaut Rick Mastracchio as Space Station Flight Engineer Seven

Astronaut and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio is assigned to serve on International Space Station (ISS) Expeditions 38 and 39. The mission is scheduled for launch November 2013 and landing May 2014. Before launch, Flight Engineer Mastracchio and his crew members will participate in a number of training activities to prepare them for their jobs on the mission, include a wide spectrum of disciplines, from science research and on-orbit medical operations to spacewalk procedures and robotics. His training will also include extensive travel to other station partner countries, such as Japan and Russia, to practice and learn the specialized hardware and equipment provided by these nations. Flight Engineer Mastracchio will share with the public ‘behind the scenes’ of what it’s like to train like an astronaut for a mission aboard the International Space Station via Twitter.

Train alongside Flight Engineer Mastracchio as a “virtual crewmember!” Follow @AstroRM, who will tweet and share his training experience during his finals months of mission preparations. Followers will learn about human space exploration, astronaut training and the research and technology aboard the International Space Station.

How to play?

On a monthly basis, Mastracchio will ask a trivia question about his training for followers to answer. The first person to @AstroRM with the correct answer wins. Use the hashtag #ISSFE7 after your reply. Players who compete and win will have their photo uplinked to ISS for Mastracchio to print out (or display on a laptop), photograph and share via Twitter highlighting them as a “Virtual Crewmember” on his ISS mission. At the end of each month, the trivia question and answer will be posted along with the winner’s name and photo.

Dragon Readies for Operational Delivery Flight

 

SpaceX is set to launch the first of a dozen operational missions for NASA to deliver more than 1,000 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station on Oct. 7. Launch time is 8:35 p.m. from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, just a few miles south of the space shuttle launch pads. The spacecraft will be joined to the station three days later.

The flight, known as CRS-1, will launch and perform the same rendezvous with the station as a previous SpaceX craft.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule will ride into space on the strength of the company's Falcon 9 rocket and the booster's nine first stage kerosene- and oxygen-powered Merlin engines. The Falcon 9's second stage uses a single Merlin engine to boost the Dragon into its final orbit.

Eleven minutes after launch, when the Dragon capsule is safely in orbit, a pair of solar arrays will deploy from the sides of the Dragon and controllers on Earth will begin testing rendezvous sensors.

The mission is similar to the demonstration flight in May when a Dragon was grappled by the station's robotic arm to complete the first rendezvous and berthing by a private spacecraft at the space station.

Read more on http://www.nasa.gov/

NASA Partner Orbital Tests Rocket, Newest U.S. Launch Pad

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. - NASA commercial partner Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Va., successfully conducted an engine test of its Antares rocket Friday, February 22, at the nation's newest launch pad.

The company fired dual AJ26 rocket engines for approximately 30 seconds while the first stage of Orbital's Antares rocket was held down on the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va. The test demonstrated the readiness of the rocket's first stage and launch pad fueling systems to support upcoming test flights.

"This pad test is an important reminder of how strong and diverse the commercial space industry is in our nation,” said Phil McAlister, director of Commercial Spaceflight Development at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “A little more than one year after the retirement of the space shuttle, we had a U.S company resupplying the space station, and another is now taking the next critical steps to launch from America’s newest gateway to low-Earth Orbit. Today marks significant progress for Orbital, MARS and the NASA team."

Orbital is building and testing its new rocket and Cygnus cargo spacecraft under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. A demonstration flight of Antares and Cygnus to the space station is planned for later this year. Following the successful completion of the COTS demonstration mission to the station, Orbital will begin conducting eight planed cargo resupply flights to the orbiting laboratory through NASA's $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract with the company.

Wallops, which has launched more than 16,000 rockets in its 67-year history, provided launch range support for the hot fire test, including communications, data collection, range safety and area clearance.

NASA initiatives like COTS are helping develop a robust U.S. commercial space transportation industry with the goal of achieving safe, reliable and cost-effective transportation to and from the space station and low-Earth orbit. In parallel, NASA's Commercial Crew Program is working with commercial space partners developing capabilities to launch U.S. astronauts from U.S. soil in the next few years.