Home The Swedish space industry Space in Sweden SpaceOps 2012 The Exhibitors People at SpaceOps 2012. Monday. People at SpaceOps 2012. Wednesday. What did I learn at SpaceOps 2012? Space museums Contact Search Login SpaceOps 2012: International space conference in Stockholm, Sweden. Read here about the first days of the conference! More texts about the conference will follow today and tomorrow.    In the meny to the left, you will find photos of many of the stands in "The exhibitors" and photos from the different days at the conference in "People at SpaceOps.". (More to come!) Some of the presentations from SpaceOps 2012: Carol Polanskey (JPL) talking about Dawn. (Efficacy of the Dawn Vesta Science Plan)  Timothy Weise (JPL) also talking about Dawn. (Automation and process improvment enables a small team to operate a low thrust mission in orbit around the asteroid Vesta.) Michael Holguin (ULA) is talking about Atlas V. (Atlas V Launch Vehicle for Commercial Crew.) Frederic Pelletier (JPL) about Cassini. (Cassini orbit determination performance.) Niklas Ahlgren at OHB Sweden told us that the demand from space agencys in many countries has been big to rent the Prisma-satellites after their swedish mission.   Read more about the Prisma-satellites: www.ohb-sweden.se/Prisma  United Launch Alliance is rebuilding the rocket Atlas V for manned spaceflight.  NASA has the following agreements (CCDev2) with the purpose to create commercial manned spaceflight: (2012-06-18) Funded Space Acts Blue Origin Space Act Agreement The Boeing Company Space Act Agreement Sierra Nevada Company Space Act Agreement Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Space Act Agreement Unfunded Space Acts United Launch Alliance Space Act Agreement Alliance Techsystems, Inc. Space Act Agreement Excalibur Almaz, Inc. Space Act Agreement SpaceX has built a rocket, but Blue Origin, Boeing and Sierra Nevada has made an agreement with ULA to send their spaceships with the rocket Atlas V. This is a model that has been used for many years, it has been launched flawless 60 times. Michael Holguin from ULA had a presentation on Tuesday about Atlas V and about the cooperation between ULA and the companies that are building new spaceships. According to Wikipedia: “United Launch Alliance (ULA) is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. ULA was formed in December 2006 by combining the teams at these companies which provide spacecraft launch services to the government of the United States. U.S. government launch customers include both the Department of Defense and NASA, as well as other organizations." So one of the companies building a spaceship is Boeing, one of the mother-companies of ULA. Boeing has huge economic resourses. Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada are relatively small companies, they were born with the new commercial space-economy.    I talked to Michael Holguin after his presentation and asked him if he believed that the two smaller companies could succeed. His answer was diplomatic. He says he believes in their technical solutions. But when I asked him if they have the financial strength to succeed then he did not want to give his opinion.  The spacecraft Dawn has been in orbit for almost a year around the asteroid Vesta and in August it will go on to the asteroid Ceres, who is considered a “dwarf planet” It will arrive to Ceres in 2015. (2012-06-18) Dawn is carrying many scientific instruments ( Framing camera, Gamma ray and neutron detector, Visible and infrared mapping spectrometer). The scientists believe that Vesta and Ceres were formed early in the history of the solar system and they hope that Dawn will give us some answers about the formation of the planets. In a presentation on Monday at the conference, Carol Polanskey talked about the scientific instruments on Dawn, and on Tuesday Timothy Weise talked about the operation of the spacecraft. Polanskey and Weise are scientists at JPL, USA. I talked with Carol Polanskey after her presentation. She told me how exciting it felt to receive the first close-up pictures ever from Vesta. She also said that millions of years ago there must have been a collision between Vesta and some huge moon or asteroid, because many of the meteors that reach earth has originated on Vesta. Watch the photos that Dawn has taken of Vesta at the web-site of JPL. The second day of the space conference started with a discussion with the exciting title: "Exploration/Human Spaceflight - Future Visions for Space Science, Robotics and Human Spaceflight." (2012-06-18) The participants of the plenary. The swedish astronaut sits in the middle. The participants of the plenary are all working with human spaceflight. The Swedish participant was the astronaut Christer Fuglesang, now at the ESA administration. The others were: Bill Gerstenmaier (USA), Seiichi Ueno (Japan) and Pierre Jean (Kanada). These are all directors of manned spaceflight. Chair was Manfred Warhaut from ESA. The participants of the plenary had different opinion of where we should go next in space. Fuglesang wants to go to the Moon and then to Mars. Warhaut wants to go to an asteroid. Gerstenmaier considered it good that USA does not yet have a decision of where to go, because as soon as there is a decision then there is always some group that wants to cancel it. They all agreed that it is important to use the international space station as much as possible until 2020, because it is possible that the station is closed down then. (But probably it will be used even until 2028) The participants of the plenary discussed how the costs of using the space station could be lowered and the possibility of more international cooperation with space activities. Fuglesang, Jean och Warhaut. Welcome to SpaceOps 2012. SpaceOps 2012 is the first big international space conference in Sweden. The purpose is to discuss space operations (not the construction of rockets and satellites!). The conference was opened by H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. (2012-06-11)    (The picture of the king came out blured. Sorry.) The king talked about the importance of using the knowledge from space research for making the world a better place. The children in the Prisma choir entertained the space people with ABBA-songs.    Annika Benson, SSC, Chair of the Local Organizing Committee, welcomed us to the conference. Sven Grahn has worked at SSC most of his life and started building rockets when he was 13. He gave a speech that was interesting and amusing. He told us about his meetings with von Braun and Gagarin, and his work with many of the swedish satellites. Mattias Klum is a world-famous photografer of the rainforest and animals. He showed some amazing photos from Borneo and other places. He is very engaged in the struggle to stop the destruction of the rainforest.       I can´t remember the name of this cute animal but it is worth saving from the greed and violence of the humans. If we don´t stop cutting down the forest where this animal lives then this is what we get: After the opening ceremony the delegates could visit the exhibition hall or listen to presentations. And there were many presentations! Since I am not a scientist or technician I had troubles understanding many of the presentations.  I give you a few examples of that:    "SMOS Payload performance maintenance" (Mariano Kornberg, LSE Space.) "Satellite visualization tool based on the ArcGIS Engine and OpenGI" (Hao Wu, AOE) "The WSO-UV space telescope operation from UCM" (Ana Gomez de Castro, Universidad Complutense de Madrid) Finally I found a presentation that I could understand. Carol Polanskey from NASA:s Jet Propulsion Laboratory talked about Dawn that has orbited the asteroid Vesta for some months. Dawn will go to the asteroid Ceres in August.  The conference continues to friday. Arielspace will cover the conference everyday. Already today I learned many things about the future plans of companies and space agencys. I will write about that later during the week.    Updated 21/06/2012 Printer friendly page rymden@arielspace.se

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