AirSpaceMag.com

If you like this Chang'e 1 image, you'll love Chang'e 2.

China’s ambitions in space are often exaggerated and held up as a threat to U.S. preeminence in the field, mostly as a scare tactic to shake more money for NASA out of Congress. A lot of the huffing and puffing you can safely ignore. But the Chinese have made solid progress over the last decade in both human and robotic spaceflight, and tomorrow will send a second, more sophisticated Chang’e orbiter to the moon, onboard a Long March rocket fired from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center.

A few improvements over Chang’e-1, which operated from 2007 to 2009: The lunar pictures will be 10 to 20 times sharper, with resolutions down to five meters. The trip to the moon will be more direct, with no transitional parking orbit around Earth. And the data rate will be higher. Basically, it’s the same mission, only better.

Chang’e-2 will be scouting locations for China’s first lander/rover, Chang’e-3, currently scheduled to launch by 2013. After that, the nation has plans for a lunar sample return mission sometime around 2017 or 2018.

Full coverage of the Chang’e-2 launch is at China Central TV.

Update, 7: 45 EST, October 1: Chang’e 2 launched successfully and is headed for the moon.

This MIT researcher’s work is cool enough—he’s trying to develop a small UAV that can land on a perch like a bird.

But this slow-mo video of an owl coming in for a landing is what really wowed me:

Space shuttle historian Dennis Jenkins took a poignant ride alongside the vehicle’s last external tank on Monday as it completed its long journey to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. A NASA contract engineer with 30 years in the shuttle program,  Jenkins also is the author of Space Shuttle, The History of Developing the National Space Transportation System, which he’s currently updating to include the final missions. Jenkins shared his thoughts about the ride (and photos) in an email:

“Well, that was fun. I got the chance to ride the Pegasus barge that was delivering the last ET [external tank], ET-122, although it will be used on STS-134, the next-to-last flight, probably.

We got a tug at the Navy Port in Port Canaveral and met the solid rocket booster retrieval ship Freedom Star and Pegasus at the mouth of the channel.

Freedom Star tows Pegasus, with ET-122 inside.

As the tug took up its position on the stern, pushing the barge, the five of us who were joining for the ride upriver jumped over to Pegasus. Freedom Star had towed Pegasus from Gulfport, Mississippi, near New Orleans (actually, Michoud) where the ETs are manufactured. Soon Freedom left and a bow tug took her place. We got on the tug at 06:00 and docked in the Turn Basin next to the VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building) about 13:30 after cruising through the Port Canaveral locks and up the Banana River.

The tug tows the barge on the final leg, in the channel at KSC.

Pegasus is an unpowered barge, but is nicely equipped: a small galley, some bunks, a head (all air conditioned). It was a great little cruise.

Pegasus at the Turn Basin at KSC.

ET-122 is called the “Katrina Tank” because it was at Michoud when Hurricane Katrina hit, damaging some of the foam on the ET. It has been repaired, recertified, and is ready for flight. ET-138 was originally manifested for STS-134 and ET-122 was the Launch On Need tank [a rescue mission in case STS-134 becomes stranded in orbit]. After thinking about it for a while, Engineering decided that it made more sense to reserve the ‘best’ tank for the LON vehicle since there is no rescue vehicle available if something happens going uphill. Since ET-138 is the ‘best’ tank we have (many fewer repairs than ET-122, all of which are well inspected but still pose some very slight risk, as well as improvements made in production over the last 16 tanks) the program decided to reserve ET-138 for the LON flight, which hopefully will become STS-135, and use the Katrina Tank for STS-134.

Front view of ET inside Pegasus.

ET-122 is the first, and likely only, ET that has ‘nose art’ even if it is not on the nose. The nose art is on the intertank access door. The folks (unknown) at Michoud painted it. We’re pretty sure that is the flight door [the one that will go to space], since it is composite; there is a metal ‘ground door’ we use at KSC while we work on the tank. So we are pretty certain the art will fly on STS-134. Since the gaseous hydrogen umbilical is right beside it (above it in the orientation in the photo), it should get a fair amount of exposure, since that umbilical is a favorite to show on television.”

The intertank access door on ET-122.

A closer look at the intertank door: The first and last shuttle "nose art." And it's headed to space.

Even if you don’t understand Russian (and I don’t) this TV Roskosmos mini-documentary on animals in space is worth watching. You’ll see footage of the usual celebrities, including astro dogs Laika and Belka and Strelka. Laika’s trainer Oleg Gazenko, a key figure in early space animal experiments who died in 2007, appears early in the film, as do father-son astronauts Alexander and Sergei Volkov.

We also see (at about the 8:00 mark) a hatchling trying to flap its wings in zero-g, and various other creatures, including monkeys, being prepared for spaceflight.

The bumper stickers available at the door read, “My other vehicle is unmanned.”

More and more, that’s becoming true for a variety of government agencies—and not just the defense department—as was evident at the UAV Technology Fair held yesterday at the Rayburn House office building in Washington, D.C. There were models of UAVs and plenty of vivid video graphics designed to show policy makers how far remotely piloted aircraft have come. The third Congressional UAV Caucus event for 2010, the fair was organized by Congressmen Howard “Buck” McKeon of California and Alan Mollohan of West Virginia.

Representative "Buck" McKeon, second from left, watches a demonstraton of a rotary UAV.

Clustered in the north foyer on the second floor of the building, with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked across Independence Avenue at the Capitol dome, officials from the military, industry, law enforcement, and NASA watched high-definition videos taken from UAVs that far surpassed the typical scenes we’re accustomed to seeing on the evening news. Visitors, including the general public, were invited to touch models of the vehicles and ask questions.

There were plenty of odd shapes and sizes, such as the Aurora Flight Sciences backpackable UAV called the Skate, after the flat marine animal of the same name. Several UAVs claim to be backpackable, but, says Aurora’s Patti Woodside, “When a soldier is already carrying 12o pounds of gear, he’s not going to add another 15 pounds.” Aurora’s answer: a tactical field UAV still in the prototype phase, only 2.5 pounds with a 2.5-mile flying radius, and a battery the size of a cell phone that keeps the UAV in the air for an hour. The whole thing folds up to the size of a laptop computer, with two props the size of a human hand that are held onto the vehicle by magnets. It takes off vertically, then travels forward at 55 miles an hour. Coolest of all: It was developed by four Aurora employees in their 20s who begged for $3,000 in seed money from the boss. “It started as a nights and weekends thing,” says program manager George Kiwada, “and went from a platform for testing [flight] control to what we always wanted to build: a UAV.”

The National Institute of Justice was there demonstrating a rotary UAV that is helping law enforcement personnel in Texas with their narcotics missions, search and rescue, forensics, and surveillance. Another rotary UAV, from Weber State University, had four props, two of which turn in one direction and two in the other, for stability. Persistent observation is the whole point. “It’s not important for this model to be a greyhound,” says Brad Stringer, Executive Director of the Utah Center for Aeronautical Innovation & Design, while holding the three-pound UAV with one hand.

Lording over the room were scaled-down models of the ever popular Global Hawk, which has revolutionized aerial warfare and surveillance. NASA is even using one to do hurricane studies. And they don’t need to keep it in Florida. They fly it leisurely from the Dryden Flight Research Center in California, all the way across the country and out into the Atlantic for hours on end, then all the way back to California. A 24-hour shift still requires three  pilot-shifts on the ground at the joy stick.

An overriding question: Why the need for a UAV caucus on Capitol Hill? Isn’t there enough demand for them without worrying about lobbying? “Great question,” answered Andy Graham, legislative fellow to McKeon, by email. “There are still a lot of misconceptions about unmanned systems. The common perception of the UAV is the Predator B Reaper drone firing missiles at terrorists.

The RQ-7 Shadow 200, by AAI Corp.

While the Reaper does perform this valuable mission, it represents only a very small fraction of the sizes, types, and missions that unmanned systems perform. As the technology and the demand for it evolve, existing airspace regulations become obsolete. One of the missions of the Caucus is to advocate for the military, industry, NASA, the Department of Homeland Security, the FAA, and other stakeholders to seek fair and equitable solutions to challenges created by UAV operations in the national air space. The Caucus brings together U.S. Representatives from both political parties who believe in the utility and longevity of unmanned aerial vehicles, and want to see their use expanded.”