Digital Sprocket

2006 was a pretty good year in space. The international launch community averaged over one orbital launch per week. U.S. and Russian providers carried out the bulk of the operations but the E.U., Japan, Israel and China also had successes under their belts. With four failed launch attempts, the failure rate was a mere 6%, which is considerably better than the historical average of 10%.

Manned spaceflight had a banner year. The International Space Station returned to a three-person crew and played host to astronauts and cosmonauts from the U.S., Russia, Germany, Sweden, and Japan. Although U.S. citizens, Astronauts born in Australia and England also visited the ISS and truly put the “International” in the International Space Station. Anousheh Ansari, perhaps the most famous space tourist to date, traveled to the station on one of two Soyuz flights this year. Her blog carried many dreamers with her on the ten-day journey.

NASA also managed to conduct two ISS construction flights. Space walkers and the robotic arm installed the P4 solar arrays, the P5 spacer truss, and rewired the electrical system to its permanent configuration. For the first time several years, the ISS actually looks different from the outside. Not only that, the increased power supplied by the new photovoltaic cells sets the stage for the installation of Japanese and European modules over the course of the next two years.

The emerging aerospace companies had more of a mixed year. SpaceX attempted to launch a partly reusable Falcon 1 at the start of the year, but suffered a major engine failure. Even with the loss of the vehicle, NASA still awarded them $278 million to develop cargo delivery and possibly human taxi services to the ISS. Rocketplane-Kistler won the other COTS development contract for $207 million to develop the same services.

UP Aerospace and Armadillo Aerospace both struggled with suborbital flights. UP Aerospace lost their launcher the New Mexico’s innaugerral spaceport flight, when it veered off course and disappeared into the White Sands Missile Range. It took them over a week to recover the broken hardware so they could analyze the failure.

Armadillo conducted several spectacular flights at the X Prize Cup in October. In an attempt to secure the Lunar Lander Challenge, a golf cart sized LH/LOX rocket vehicle named Pixel had to traverse 100 feet, land, and then return to its launch pad. The team made three tries at the event, and accomplished the first half of the challenge, but suffered equipment malfunctions and other difficulties at the landing site. If their vehicle had been a bit more robust, they certainly would have succeeded.

Bigelow Aerospace impressed most space watchers with the launch of their first test of an inflatable orbital habitat. The subscale vehicle was launched on a Russian Dnepr rocket and surpassed expectations. The inflation was flawless, and the mini-space station established contact with Beigelow’s ground station. The on-board thrusters stabilized the initial tumbling, and the solar cells fed power to the systems. Video cameras mounted inside and outside let the world witness this privately funded success.

In the next installment we’ll take a look at the accomplishments of our unmanned explorers over 2006.