Russia to supply US with six RD-180 rocket engines this year

Russian rocket engine manufacturer NPO Energomash plans to ship six RD-180 rocket engines to the United States this year, government procurement website data shows. The RD-180 engines will be used to power the first stage of the Atlas V launch vehicles. In December, Energomash said that it shipped a total of six RD-180 rocket engines to the United States in 2019. In October, Roscosmos subsidiary Energomash was preparing to deliver three more RD-180 engines for use with Atlas V launch vehicles. Previously, Energomash already shipped three RD-180 rocket engines to the US in June as part of a separate contract. Since 1999, Lockheed Martin Atlas III and Atlas V launch vehicles have made at least 86 flights using the RD-180. According to Energomash figures, the US has now received 116 such engines. The RD-180 is a derivative of the RD-170/171 series of rocket engines, created for the super-heavy Energiya launch vehicle, which could shuttle up to 100 tonnes of cargo into Low Earth orbit, and which was used to launch the Buran shuttle into space. In the late 1980s, this rocket was envisioned as the launch vehicle which would send up new space stations into orbit to succeed the Mir and to prepare for missions to the Moon and Mars.

Russian Space Agency to Test Modernized Fregat Upper Stage During Launch of Meteor Satellite in 2020

Russian state space corporation Roscosmos will test the modernized Fregat upper stage in 2020 during the blastoff of the Meteor-M meteorological satellite No. 2-3 from the Vostochny space centre, according to materials on the government procurement website. Earlier it was reported Roscosmos planned to create a modernized Fregat upper stage with a new control system by November 30, 2020, with 672 million rubles ($10.2 million) planned to be spent on this work. In July Russia successfully launched its Soyuz-2.1a carrier with Meridian military communications satellite from Plesetsk cosmodrome, located in Arkhangelsk region in Russia. The Meridian military communications satellite separated from Fregat upper stage and was placed into calculated orbit, the Russian Defence Ministry said.

First Angara A5V Heavy-Class Rocket Launch to Take Place in 2026 - Roscosmos

The first heavy-lift Angara A5V carrier rocket equipped with a hydrogen space tug will be launched from the Vostochny space center in Russia's Far East in 2026, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said on Sunday. The rocket's launch was initially set to take place in 2027, according to the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center. "On Vostochny [space center]... 2026 - the beginning of flight tests of Angara A5V with a hydrogen stage," Rogozin wrote on Twitter. The Angara family of space launch vehicles is designed to provide lifting capabilities of between 2 and 40.5 metric tonnes into low Earth orbit. It has been in development since 1995 and was the first orbit-capable rocket developed by Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union to replace the older Proton-M rockets.

Russia's Roscosmos confirms computer glitch on board ISS

According to Roscosmos, the reported glitch will not hamper operations on board the ISS, and the affected computer will be rebooted on Thursday. Russia's State Space Corporation Roscosmos confirmed on Tuesday that one of the three computers on the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) had been out of service due to a software glitch. "It will not affect the operations on board the orbital outpost as the standard cyclogram allows us to work with only two computers and still be able to fly for an indeterminately long time," Roscosmos said in a statement. The agency also stressed that there was no need to replace the computer, however it will be rebooted ahead of the arrival of Progress space freighted to the ISS. "In order to ensure the safety of the November docking with the Progress spacecraft, we will perform the reboot on November 8, 2018," the statement said. Last month, an accident occurred during the launch of a Soyuz-FG launch vehicle carrying the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft with two new ISS crew members on board. Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin NASA astronaut Nick Hague safely returned to Earth in a jettisoned escape capsule.

The incident became the first failure of a manned space launch in modern Russian history. The crash is being investigated by a special commission of Russia's space agency Roscosmos. All manned launches from Baikonur Cosmodrome have been suspended until the commission finds out the causes of the failure.

'Dust up' on International Space Station hints at sources of structure

Imagine looking under your couch and instead of finding fluffy dust bunnies, you see the dust is arranged in straight lines - you might wonder what caused this order. Scientists are experiencing that same feeling, not with dust under a couch, but with electrically charged dust in the microgravity of space. The dust the scientists are studying is made up of tiny spheres 10 times smaller than the width of a human hair. This dust becomes electrically charged when it collects electrons from an energetic gas called a plasma. In a lab on Earth, electrically charged dust generally lines up either along the downward pull of gravity or across it. Scientists at the Center for Astrophysics, Space Physics, and Engineering Research (CASPER), at Baylor University, got a surprise when examining data from a similar experiment on the International Space Station orbiting 248 miles above Earth where gravity is much weaker. Rather than the dust bouncing around randomly, the dust often wiggled around in straight lines, even without gravity. "Gravity on Earth is at least as strong as the electric forces between the dust grains. In microgravity we expected the dust particles to spread out," said Truell Hyde, director of CASPER, who leads the study. "Instead, we found that the small forces between the dust particles and the atoms in the plasma impose order on the system." Dr. Hyde and his research group are presenting their findings at the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics meeting in Portland, Ore.

The study was carried out on the PK-4 experiment, short for Plasma Kristall-4, which was built through a partnership between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos). The research is the first project of this kind on the space station with direct involvement of U.S. research groups and is funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA.

Learning that dust grains line up in microgravity is potentially important for understanding how groups of things attain structure. At small sizes, forces between atoms provide structure for molecules and proteins, while at very large sizes gravity provides the structure for stars and galaxies. Hyde said, "This experiment may help explain how structures form when they are between very small and very large sizes."

Airbus wins ESA studies for future human base in lunar orbit

The European Space Agency (ESA) has commissioned Airbus for two studies for possible European involvement in the future human base in lunar orbit. The Gateway, previously known as the Deep Space Gateway (DSG) or Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G), is a project involving the US, Russian, Canadian, Japanese and European space agencies (NASA, Roscosmos, CSA, JAXA and ESA). Over the next 15 months, Airbus will develop a concept for a habitation and research module as part of the first study (habitat, approximately 6.5 x 4.5 metres and weighing some 9 tonnes). In the second study, Airbus will design a concept for an infrastructure element for refuelling, docking and telecommunications, which will also serve as an airlock for scientific equipment (known as Esprit, around 3 x 3 metres and weighing around 4 tonnes). Both studies will be developed as part of a far-reaching European partnership. Under NASA's overall design leadership, other elements - such as a second habitat, an airlock for scientific payloads and a logistics module - will be designed by international and commercial partners. NASA has plans to launch the first module - the central power propulsion element (PPE) - into lunar orbit in the early 2020's.

"The experience and know-how that ESA and Airbus have gained during flagship projects such as the Columbus space laboratory, the ATV space transporter and the European service module for Orion provide solid foundations for the studies," said Oliver Juckenhofel, Head of On-Orbit Services and Exploration at Airbus.

"When developing the new lunar platforms, robotic and human space exploration go hand in hand. Europe has a fantastic track record in both, and these two studies will help to ensure a strong European presence in future space exploration."

David Parker, Director of Human and Robotic Exploration at ESA, said: "With these studies and other preparations, ESA aims to stay at the centre of human space exploration. The Gateway will become humanity's most remote research outpost and we hope Europe will benefit from the world of innovation, discovery and excitement that lies ahead."

Unlike the International Space Station (ISS), the Gateway is not intended to be continually inhabited. It is envisaged that the lunar platform will act as a staging point for human missions to the Moon or Mars, and testing is planned for a series of technologies and procedures that will be needed.

Airbus will present its initial designs for the Gateway at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Bremen on 3 October 2018.

Russia may use ISS Modules in Lunar Gateway Project

Russia may decide to stop the construction of its segment of the International Space Station (ISS) and to use the ordered modules for the Lunar Orbital Platform - Gateway (LOP-G) project, a source in Russia's rocket and space industry told Sputnik on Wednesday. "Due to the fact that the ISS operation is planned to be terminated in 2024, and the Russian segment is still not completed, there are proposals to complete its [ISS] creation in the current configuration, and the [Russian] ordered modules will be used to expand Russian participation in the Lunar Orbital Platform - Gateway project," the source said. The source specified that the proposal concerned a node module with six ports for docking as well as a scientific and energy module that could significantly expand the space on the lunar station. In September, Moscow and Washington signed an agreement on creation of a new space station dubbed Deep Space Gateway on the orbit of the moon, later its name was changed to the Lunar Orbital Platform - Gateway. According to preliminary accords, Russia could build a segment that would serve as an exit for astronauts going on spacewalks. The start of the LOP-G assembly is set for 2022.

Russia's State Space Corporation Roscosmos is planning to add a total of three modules to the ISS, including a Multipurpose Laboratory Module Nauka, expected in 2019, a hub module Prichal set to arrive in 2020, and Science-Power Module-1.