At the 2008 Lunar Lander Challenge last October, Rocket Racing and Armadillo Aerospace announced a joint venture to develop vertical takeoff, vertical landing vehicles for suborbital space tourism. However, Armadillo Aerospace founder John Carmark revealed at Space Access ’09 this morning that this deal—at least, as announced in October—has fallen through. Carmack said that while […]
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The high point, arguably, Friday at Space Access ’09 was a presentation by Jeff Greason, president of XCOR Aerospace. There were no major announcements in his talk (a contrast to last year, when XCOR spoke at Space Access immediately after announcing their Lynx suborbital vehicle) but there were some items of note: Their engine development […] Eric Anderson of Space Adventures held a short teleconference Friday afternoon (Friday morning here in Arizona) to discuss a new development in his company’s efforts to fly paying customers to the ISS. Highlights: The new development was that there is a possibility that a seat may become open on the Soyuz TMA-16 mission, scheduled for […] Virgin Galactic issued a press release today about the third flight of the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft, which took place on Wednesday. Some highlights: The flight’s duration was over 2.5 hours. WK2 reached its fastest speed yet, 140 knots (259 km/h) The aircraft flew to an altitude of over 18,000 feet (5,490 feet) The flight […] Space tourism companies (with the exception of Astrium, as previously noted) have remained optimistic about their prospects despite the current economic crisis. Virgin Galactic’s Will Whitehorn said last month that they continued to sign up customers and had nearly 300 at the time, with only a few asking for their deposits back. XCOR had also […] The Las Cruces Sun-News reported Monday that Spaceport America officials expected the FAA to issue Monday an environmental impact report associated with the spaceport, one of the final steps before the FAA would issue a spaceport license (officially a “launch site operator’s license”) for the planned commercial spaceport. Well, Spaceport America not only got the […] At the press conference yesterday after Armadillo won the Level 1 Lunar Lander Challenge, Peter Diamandis said that Armadillo would get the official $350,000 prize check at a ceremony in Washington, DC, at a date to be determined. However, as the activities today were winding down at the airport, after Armadillo scrubbed for the day, […] Armadillo departed the staging area right on schedule at 7:30 am MDT with the Pixel vehicle. They will be flying at around 8:15-8:30 am to compete for the Level 2 of the Lunar Lander Challenge and its $1 million first prize. More updates as they’re available. Update 8:30 am MDT: Pixel ignited its engine […] Armadillo Aerospace has officially won the Level 1 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. The check will actually be awarded in Washington DC at a future date TBD (hopefully two checks, John Carmack said.) The focus for Armadillo now will be Level 2 with their Pixel vehicle. they will have up to three opportunities to win […] After the TrueZer0 post-mortem this afternoon, the X Prize Foundation announced a judging ruling that positively affected Armadillo’s chances of winning the Level 1 prize. The judges ruled that since Armadillo’s effort this morning was stopped not because they had run out of competition time but instead because of the closure of the FAA airspace […] |
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