December 19, 2012: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo successfully completed its first unpowered test flight with the rocket motor and all of its components (including tanks) installed, and with thermal protection applied to the craft's leading edges. At least two more glide flights are planned before the first powered flight test.

December 3: The Spaceport America Newsletter announced that  the terminal and hanger building is complete to the point that Virgin Galactic will become a tenant in mid-January. Construction drawings will be finished by the end of December for the on-site Visitors Center ("Spaceport Central") and an off-site Welcome Center in Truth or Consequences, NM.

November 29: NASA released an image combining data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico. The image shows optically invisible, 1.5-million-light-year-wide jets of very-high-energy plasma beams, subatomic particles and magnetic fields streaming from a massive black hole at the center of the Hercules A galaxy.

November 26: A team of researchers, including engineers from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, successfully tested a small, simple, reliable nuclear reactor that could be used on space flights. The reactor was cooled by a heat pipe-a technology invented at Los Alamos Lab in 1963.

November 20: New Mexico Spaceport Authority Executive Director Christine Anderson and Virgin Galactic Chief Technology Officer Steve Isakowitz were appointed to the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee of the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation.

November 15: "Save Our Spaceport," a newly formed coalition, held a 90-minute press conference in Albuquerque. Speakers, including Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides, explained why it is vitally important for the New Mexico legislature to pass an expanded informed consent law in its early 2013 session.

November 13: Scientists released the latest results of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) that examined more than 48,000 quasars to measure the cosmic expansion rate 11.5 billion years ago. Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope at Apache Point, New Mexico, the researchers determined that the universe's expansion was decelerating until about 7 billion years ago, when it began to accelerate.

November 8: The NM Space Authority approved two contracts for the final phase of Spaceport America construction. One is for overseeing and managing phase 2 of construction, which includes the on-site visitor center, the runway extension, internal road realignment, construction of the entrance facility and associated utilities extensions. The other is for quality assurance testing of the runway extension.

November 3: Armadillo Aerospace launched its second STIG-B rocket from Spaceport America. The rocket did not reach its planned altitude of 100 km, but it returned intact to the intended recovery area on Spaceport property. It was the second FAA-licensed launch from the Spaceport's vertical launch facility, the third test launch by Armadillo Aerospace from the Spaceport this year, and the seventeenth vertical launch at the Spaceport since 2006.

October 17: The National Space Society (NSS) announced a partnership with the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo. The museum will provide a permanent home for the  NSS collection of historic records chronicling the development of the space activist community and the US space industry.

October 17-18: The eighth annual International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight took place in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Speakers and exhibitors represented major players in the industry, including Virgin Galactic, EXCOR, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, United Launch Alliance, Boeing, White Sands Missile Range, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Commercial Spaceflight Federation, and NASA.

October 14: Congratulations to Felix Baumgartner for a spectacular, successful jump!

October 9 is the revised target date for Felix Baumgartner's ultimate high-altitude parachute jump at Roswell, New Mexico. Originally scheduled for October 8, it was postponed a day because of wind in the forecast. The jump from an altitude of 23 miles will test spacesuit and parachute designs and man's ability to withstand such a jump.

October 6: Armadillo Aerospace successfully launched a STIG-B rocket from Spaceport America. The flight was aborted during flight, but the rocket was recovered undamaged. Another launch is expected in "a couple of weeks," according to Armadillo's founder John Carmack.

October 4: NASA and the Louisiana Space Consortium are accepting applications from undergraduate and graduate university students to send experiments to a near-space environment by high-altitude balloon. Twelve experiments will be selected for the fall 2013 launch from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Applications are due by December 14, 2012. See details at LaSPACE.

September 24: Christine Anderson, Executive Director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, told her board of directors that Virgin Galactic expects to begin commercial operations at the spaceport in February 2014.

September 24: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority approved contracts for extension of the spaceport's runway to 12,000 feet and for construction of a welcome center in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. For security and environmental reasons, access to the spaceport will be restricted; however, visitors will be able to take a bus tour starting at the welcome center.

September 15: The Las Cruces Sun News reported Virgin Galactic's CEO George Whitesides as saying that SpaceShipTwo hit a major milestone the previous week when "it wrapped up the final stage of its subsonic, unpowered flight tests." The next step is to install the fuel tank and start rocket-powered test flights. Whitesides declined to say when those tests will begin.

August 30: Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory designed and will operate an instrument to analyze the Van Allen radiation belt. The high-energy particles in the belt pose a serious threat to spacecraft passing through it. The HOPE (Helium Oxygen Proton Electron) analyzer is one of several instruments aboard a pair of probes launched April 30. These Radiation Belt Storm Probes will orbit at different speeds for the next two years, examining the radiation belt near each other and widely separated.

August 9: The Red Bull Stratos team announced that Felix Baumgartner's capsule was damaged when it landed after his parachute jump in July. The capsule is being repaired and is scheduled for an altitude chamber test around September 24. Assuming that test is successful, Baumgartner's ultimate jump from 120,000 feet will take place during the first two weeks of October from Roswell, New Mexico.

August 9: The latest release of data from the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey comprises the largest three-dimensional map of the universe ever created. The recently enhanced telescope at Apache Point, New Mexico, captured images of 200 million galaxies, and spectra of 102,000 quasars, 116,500 stars, and 1.35 million galaxies (including 536,000 galaxies that had not been observed before).

August 5: Curiosity rover landed on Mars, carrying experiments that were designed and will be monitored by New Mexico scientists. Team members at Los Alamos National Labs are in charge of the ChemCam laser, while researchers at the University of New Mexico are managing the Alpha-Particle X-Ray Spectrometer that will analyze Martian soil and rocks. Another Los Alamos National Labs team developed the plutonium-based system that will power Curiosity for two years. Emcore, an Albuquerque-based company, supplied the solar panels that provided power to the spacecraft that carried the rover to Mars.

August 2: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority approved the site for a Spaceport America welcome center in Truth or Consequences (TorC), New Mexico. The site is half a mile off Interstate 25, on the way in to TorC. An access road to the spaceport begins near the downtown area.

July 26: Armadillo Aerospace received its commercial launch license from the FAA. A Stig B launch scheduled for late August at Spaceport America will carry payloads for Vega Space and Purdue University.

July 25: Felix Baumgartner parachuted from an altitude of 97,146 feet near Roswell, New Mexico. This was his second successful practice jump in preparation for a record-breaking attempt later this summer. NASA is watching his high-altitude jumps to gain information that may be used for spaceflight escape procedures.

July 11: A NASA rocket launched at White Sands Missile Range carried a telescope that produced the highest resolution images ever taken of the sun's corona. During the 620-second flight, the High Resolution Coronal imager (HI-C) took 165 images that showed the solar atmosphere's dynamic structure in great detail.

July 3: Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey being conducted at New Mexico's Apache Point Observatory, an international team of researchers concluded that the Milky Way galaxy is "ringing like a bell" from one or more encounters with a small galaxy or a massive dark matter structure. Researchers are unsure whether the event(s) occurred around 100 million years ago or the encounter is still occurring.

June 28: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority reported that the Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space (terminal hanger facility) at Spaceport America has received final approval from the State Fire Marshall and has received a Temporary Certificate of Completion from the NM Construction Industries Division's building inspector. Interior build-out should begin soon. Also, interior build-out designs for the Spaceport Operations Center will be completed in November, and the interior should be complete in May 2013.

June 26: Scaled Composites completed a successful glide test of SpaceShipTwo, the first since the ship's rocket engine was installed. On the same day, Sierra Nevada Space Systems conducted a successful full-scale test firing of the new rocket engine. The drop test was from an altitude of 51,000 feet, and the ground-based rocket firing test lasted 55 seconds.

June 26: Boeing reported completing successful tests of the dual-role propulsion thrusters for its Crew Space Transportation vehicle, CST-100. The tests, conducted in a vacuum chamber at NASA's White Sands Test Facility, simulated a space-like environment with an altitude of 100,000 feet.

June 1: Scaled Composites conducted three hours of taxi tests on SpaceShipTwo's new higher capacity brakes. Three different pilots performed tests at speeds ranging from 30 to 65 mph.

May 30: The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted an experimental launch permit for SpaceShipTwo. This will allow test flights of the vehicle using its own rocket engine, probably beginning toward the end of 2012. Until now, SpaceShipTwo has completed 16 unpowered flights without the engine being mounted on the vehicle.

May 9: An innovative infrared camera was tested on the 3.5-meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, NM. Developed by University of Wyoming physics and astronomy Associate Professor Michael Pierce, the camera has one of the widest currently available fields of view: about half the size of the moon. Beginning this summer, the camera will operate regularly at Apache Point.

April 30: The Astronomical Journal published an article by Vanderbilt University researchers who identified a group of more than 675 hypervelocity stars that have been ejected from the Milky Way's galactic core. Using results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey conducted at Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico, the researchers concluded the stars are located in intergalactic space between the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy.

April 19: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority awarded two more contracts to in-state companies. One is for general services at the spaceport, and the other is for fit-out design of the Spaceport Operations Center (formerly called the Air Rescue and Fire Facility (ARFF).

April 11: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority awarded contracts to three in-state companies for information technology services, space operations services, and an environmental assessment for paving the southern access road to the spaceport.

March 30: Results were reported from the first eighteen months of observations using the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), part of the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey being conducted at Apache Point Observatory in southern New Mexico. Researchers measured how fast the universe was expanding six billion years ago, to an accuracy of 2 percent. "For the past thirteen years, we've had a simple model of how dark energy works," said BOSS's principal investigator, David Schlegel of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "But the truth is, we only have a little bit of data, and we're just beginning to explore the times when dark energy turned on."

March 30: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority will re-allocate $7 million of its funding to extend the 10,000-foot runway another 2,000 feet. Flight tests of SpaceShipTwo and contingency analysis of a full-fuel landing (because of a launch abort) indicate the need for the longer runway to ensure safety.

March 30: The April 5, 2012, launch of UP Aerospace's SpaceLoft-6 rocket from Spaceport America will be the first of the company's missions to carry only Department of Defense payloads. "This suborbital launch allows us to explore the kind of approaches we would take for payload integration testing and flight for other missions," said Steven Buckley, the Operationally Responsive Space missions launch director for this flight. "It's quick and efficient, as well as [it] allows us to do a lot of things in a less-costly environment before we go into a mission that might cost double-digit million dollars."

March 22: Construction of Phase II of Spaceport America is under way. It includes improvement of the vertical launch facility, construction of the on-site visitor center, and paving of the southern road to the spaceport. With completion in 2013, the spaceport will be fully operational.

March 21: Researchers using the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque conducted experiments on the compressibility of water that challenge scientists' understanding of the internal structure of "ice giant" planets such as Neptune and Uranus. The machine used magnetic fields to propel metal plates at velocities up to 60,000 mph into water samples, compressing to about one-fourth their original volumes. The results, ten times as accurate as previous experiments, agree closely those of researchers at the University of Rostock in Germany, who applied Schrodinger's wave equation to predict water's behavior under extreme pressure.

March 19: Richard Branson announced the sale of the 500th ticket for a SpaceShipTwo flight from Spaceport America. The purchaser: Aston Kutcher.

March 15: Felix Baumgartner took the first of a series of three successively higher parachute jumps above Roswell, stepping out of his gondola at an altitude of 71,580 feet. The next jump, when the seasonal winds calm down, will be from 90,000 feet. In the meantime, he wants his suit to be modified to better protect him from the extreme cold at the very high altitudes.

March 6: The Red Bull Stratos team released photos and descriptions of the capsule that will carry Felix Baumgartner to 120,000 feet by helium balloon. Baumgartner, who will skydive out of the capsule, is expected to break the sound barrier protected only by a pressure suit. "The aim is to improve the safety for space professionals as well as potential space tourists," said the team's medical director. The balloon will launch from Roswell, New Mexico, sometime this summer. See more information at the Red Bull Stratos website.

February 27: Virgin Galactic chose NanoRacks LLC to build a rack system to carry research payloads aboard its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle. NanoRacks has built a similar system for the International Space Station.

February 24: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority issued a request for proposals for design and construction management for the interior build-out of the Spaceport Operations Center. A second RFP seeks proposals for a general services contract for spaceport maintenance, fuel storage, and grounds keeping.

February 7: A consulting team headed by IDEAS Orlando presented to the New Mexico Spaceport Authority board their vision of the "visitor experience" that will be offered beginning in 2013. Spaceport Welcome Centers will be built in the communities of Hatch and Truth or Consequences; from there, visitors will be able to take a four-and-a-half-hour excursion to the spaceport itself, where a Visitor Center near the terminal/hanger facility (THF) will offer educational exhibits and hands-on activities as well as a guided tour of the spaceport with access to parts of the THF (the Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space). More detailed plans will be announced in six months.

February 7: A bill to protect spacecraft parts suppliers from lawsuits by injured passengers stalled in committees in both houses of the New Mexico legislature. The proposal would have exempted manufacturers from liability unless they knowingly provided faulty parts.

January 28: Armadillo Aerospace tested its STIG-A rocket at Spaceport America. It flew to an altitude exceeding 137,000 feet, but a malfunction of the recovery system resulted in a hard landing. It was Armadillo Aerospace's fourth launch from the spaceport, and the fourteenth vertical launch since 2006 at the facility.

January 10: In deference to widespread resistance to renaming the Very Large Array, the director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory announced the original name will be kept. However, in recognition of the recent upgrade that increased the VLA's power tenfold, the official new name will be the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array. Radio astronomy is based on Jansky's 1933 discovery of naturally occurring extraterrestrial radio wave emissions. The VLA is located 50 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico.

January 3: Lowell Randall, the last surviving member of Robert Goddard's research team, died in Las Cruces. He joined Goddard's crew in 1941 to help with research on jet assisted take-off of airplanes for the US military.

January 3: Some Virgin Galactic staff members from Britain have arrived at the company's new headquarters in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and others are on the way. The company is beginning to advertise jobs and hire personnel, with preference being given to New Mexico residents. Commercial flights may begin in 2013.

Photo Credits
Robert Goddard towing one of his rockets to the launch site near Roswell about 1931, courtesy of NASA.

WhiteKnightTwo carrying SpaceShipTwo at Spaceport America runway dedication flyover, photo by Loretta Hall.

Unless otherwise credited, all material on this site is © Loretta Hall 2010-2017.
New Mexico's 2012 Space News Archives
New Mexico Space  News 2012 Archives
December 19, 2012: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo successfully completed its first unpowered test flight with the rocket motor and all of its components (including tanks) installed, and with thermal protection applied to the craft's leading edges. At least two more glide flights are planned before the first powered flight test.

December 3
: The Spaceport America Newsletter announced that  the terminal and hanger building is complete to the point that Virgin Galactic will become a tenant in mid-January. Construction drawings will be finished by the end of December for the on-site Visitors Center ("Spaceport Central") and an off-site Welcome Center in Truth or Consequences, NM.

November 29
: NASA released an image combining data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico. The image shows optically invisible, 1.5-million-light-year-wide jets of very-high-energy plasma beams, subatomic particles and magnetic fields streaming from a massive black hole at the center of the Hercules A galaxy.

November 26
: A team of researchers, including engineers from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, successfully tested a small, simple, reliable nuclear reactor that could be used on space flights. The reactor was cooled by a heat pipe
-a technology invented at Los Alamos Lab in 1963.

November 20: New Mexico Spaceport Authority Executive Director Christine Anderson and Virgin Galactic Chief Technology Officer Steve Isakowitz were appointed to the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee of the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation.

November 15
: "Save Our Spaceport," a newly formed coalition, held a 90-minute press conference in Albuquerque. Speakers, including Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides, explained why it is vitally important for the New Mexico legislature to pass an expanded informed consent law in its early 2013 session.

November 13
: Scientists released the latest results of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) that examined more than 48,000 quasars to measure the cosmic expansion rate 11.5 billion years ago. Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope at Apache Point, New Mexico, the researchers determined that the universe's expansion was decelerating until about 7 billion years ago, when it began to accelerate.

November 8
: The NM Space Authority approved two contracts for the final phase of Spaceport America construction. One is for overseeing and managing phase 2 of construction, which includes the on-site visitor center, the runway extension, internal road realignment, construction of the entrance facility and associated utilities extensions. The other is for quality assurance testing of the runway extension.

November 3
: Armadillo Aerospace launched its second STIG-B rocket from Spaceport America. The rocket did not reach its planned altitude of 100 km, but it returned intact to the intended recovery area on Spaceport property. It was the second FAA-licensed launch from the Spaceport's vertical launch facility, the third test launch by Armadillo Aerospace from the Spaceport this year, and the seventeenth vertical launch at the Spaceport since 2006.

October 17
: The National Space Society (NSS) announced a partnership with the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo. The museum will provide a permanent home for the  NSS collection of historic records chronicling the development of the space activist community and the US space industry.

October 17-18
: The eighth annual International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight took place in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Speakers and exhibitors represented major players in the industry, including Virgin Galactic, EXCOR, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, United Launch Alliance, Boeing, White Sands Missile Range, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Commercial Spaceflight Federation, and NASA.

October 14
: Congratulations to Felix Baumgartner for a spectacular, successful jump!

October 9
is the revised target date for Felix Baumgartner's ultimate high-altitude parachute jump at Roswell, New Mexico. Originally scheduled for October 8, it was postponed a day because of wind in the forecast. The jump from an altitude of 23 miles will test spacesuit and parachute designs and man's ability to withstand such a jump.

October 6
: Armadillo Aerospace successfully launched a STIG-B rocket from Spaceport America. The flight was aborted during flight, but the rocket was recovered undamaged. Another launch is expected in "a couple of weeks," according to Armadillo's founder John Carmack.

October 4
: NASA and the Louisiana Space Consortium are accepting applications from undergraduate and graduate university students to send experiments to a near-space environment by high-altitude balloon. Twelve experiments will be selected for the fall 2013 launch from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Applications are due by December 14, 2012. See details at LaSPACE.

September 24: Christine Anderson, Executive Director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, told her board of directors that Virgin Galactic expects to begin commercial operations at the spaceport in February 2014.

September 24
: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority approved contracts for extension of the spaceport's runway to 12,000 feet and for construction of a welcome center in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. For security and environmental reasons, access to the spaceport will be restricted; however, visitors will be able to take a bus tour starting at the welcome center.

September 15
: The Las Cruces Sun News reported Virgin Galactic's CEO George Whitesides as saying that SpaceShipTwo hit a major milestone the previous week when "it wrapped up the final stage of its subsonic, unpowered flight tests." The next step is to install the fuel tank and start rocket-powered test flights. Whitesides declined to say when those tests will begin.

August 30
: Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory designed and will operate an instrument to analyze the Van Allen radiation belt. The high-energy particles in the belt pose a serious threat to spacecraft passing through it. The HOPE (Helium Oxygen Proton Electron) analyzer is one of several instruments aboard a pair of probes launched April 30. These Radiation Belt Storm Probes will orbit at different speeds for the next two years, examining the radiation belt near each other and widely separated.

August 9
: The Red Bull Stratos team announced that Felix Baumgartner's capsule was damaged when it landed after his parachute jump in July. The capsule is being repaired and is scheduled for an altitude chamber test around September 24. Assuming that test is successful, Baumgartner's ultimate jump from 120,000 feet will take place during the first two weeks of October from Roswell, New Mexico.

August 9
: The latest release of data from the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey comprises the largest three-dimensional map of the universe ever created. The recently enhanced telescope at Apache Point, New Mexico, captured images of 200 million galaxies, and spectra of 102,000 quasars, 116,500 stars, and 1.35 million galaxies (including 536,000 galaxies that had not been observed before).

August 5
: Curiosity rover landed on Mars, carrying experiments that were designed and will be monitored by New Mexico scientists. Team members at Los Alamos National Labs are in charge of the ChemCam laser, while researchers at the University of New Mexico are managing the Alpha-Particle X-Ray Spectrometer that will analyze Martian soil and rocks. Another Los Alamos National Labs team developed the plutonium-based system that will power Curiosity for two years. Emcore, an Albuquerque-based company, supplied the solar panels that provided power to the spacecraft that carried the rover to Mars.

August 2
: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority approved the site for a Spaceport America welcome center in Truth or Consequences (TorC), New Mexico. The site is half a mile off Interstate 25, on the way in to TorC. An access road to the spaceport begins near the downtown area.

July 26
: Armadillo Aerospace received its commercial launch license from the FAA. A Stig B launch scheduled for late August at Spaceport America will carry payloads for Vega Space and Purdue University.

July 25
: Felix Baumgartner parachuted from an altitude of 97,146 feet near Roswell, New Mexico. This was his second successful practice jump in preparation for a record-breaking attempt later this summer. NASA is watching his high-altitude jumps to gain information that may be used for spaceflight escape procedures.

July 11
: A NASA rocket launched at White Sands Missile Range carried a telescope that produced the highest resolution images ever taken of the sun's corona. During the 620-second flight, the High Resolution Coronal imager (HI-C) took 165 images that showed the solar atmosphere's dynamic structure in great detail.

July 3
: Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey being conducted at New Mexico's Apache Point Observatory, an international team of researchers concluded that the Milky Way galaxy is "ringing like a bell" from one or more encounters with a small galaxy or a massive dark matter structure. Researchers are unsure whether the event(s) occurred around 100 million years ago or the encounter is still occurring.

June 28
: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority reported that the Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space (terminal hanger facility) at Spaceport America has received final approval from the State Fire Marshall and has received a Temporary Certificate of Completion from the NM Construction Industries Division's building inspector. Interior build-out should begin soon. Also, interior build-out designs for the Spaceport Operations Center will be completed in November, and the interior should be complete in May 2013.

June 26
: Scaled Composites completed a successful glide test of SpaceShipTwo, the first since the ship's rocket engine was installed. On the same day, Sierra Nevada Space Systems conducted a successful full-scale test firing of the new rocket engine. The drop test was from an altitude of 51,000 feet, and the ground-based rocket firing test lasted 55 seconds.

June 26
: Boeing reported completing successful tests of the dual-role propulsion thrusters for its Crew Space Transportation vehicle, CST-100. The tests, conducted in a vacuum chamber at NASA's White Sands Test Facility, simulated a space-like environment with an altitude of 100,000 feet.

June 1
: Scaled Composites conducted three hours of taxi tests on SpaceShipTwo's new higher capacity brakes. Three different pilots performed tests at speeds ranging from 30 to 65 mph.

May 30
: The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted an experimental launch permit for SpaceShipTwo. This will allow test flights of the vehicle using its own rocket engine, probably beginning toward the end of 2012. Until now, SpaceShipTwo has completed 16 unpowered flights without the engine being mounted on the vehicle.

May 9
: An innovative infrared camera was tested on the 3.5-meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, NM. Developed by University of Wyoming physics and astronomy Associate Professor Michael Pierce, the camera has one of the widest currently available fields of view: about half the size of the moon. Beginning this summer, the camera will operate regularly at Apache Point.

April 30
: The Astronomical Journal published an article by Vanderbilt University researchers who identified a group of more than 675 hypervelocity stars that have been ejected from the Milky Way's galactic core. Using results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey conducted at Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico, the researchers concluded the stars are located in intergalactic space between the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy.

April 19
: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority awarded two more contracts to in-state companies. One is for general services at the spaceport, and the other is for fit-out design of the Spaceport Operations Center (formerly called the Air Rescue and Fire Facility (ARFF).

April 11
: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority awarded contracts to three in-state companies for information technology services, space operations services, and an environmental assessment for paving the southern access road to the spaceport.

March 30: Results were reported from the first eighteen months of observations using the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), part of the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey being conducted at Apache Point Observatory in southern New Mexico. Researchers measured how fast the universe was expanding six billion years ago, to an accuracy of 2 percent. "For the past thirteen years, we've had a simple model of how dark energy works," said BOSS's principal investigator, David Schlegel of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "But the truth is, we only have a little bit of data, and we're just beginning to explore the times when dark energy turned on."

March 30
: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority will re-allocate $7 million of its funding to extend the 10,000-foot runway another 2,000 feet. Flight tests of SpaceShipTwo and contingency analysis of a full-fuel landing (because of a launch abort) indicate the need for the longer runway to ensure safety.

March 30
: The April 5, 2012, launch of UP Aerospace's SpaceLoft-6 rocket from Spaceport America will be the first of the company's missions to carry only Department of Defense payloads. "This suborbital launch allows us to explore the kind of approaches we would take for payload integration testing and flight for other missions," said Steven Buckley, the Operationally Responsive Space missions launch director for this flight. "It's quick and efficient, as well as [it] allows us to do a lot of things in a less-costly environment before we go into a mission that might cost double-digit million dollars."

March 22
: Construction of Phase II of Spaceport America is under way. It includes improvement of the vertical launch facility, construction of the on-site visitor center, and paving of the southern road to the spaceport. With completion in 2013, the spaceport will be fully operational.

March 21
: Researchers using the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque conducted experiments on the compressibility of water that challenge scientists' understanding of the internal structure of "ice giant" planets such as Neptune and Uranus. The machine used magnetic fields to propel metal plates at velocities up to 60,000 mph into water samples, compressing to about one-fourth their original volumes. The results, ten times as accurate as previous experiments, agree closely those of researchers at the University of Rostock in Germany, who applied Schrodinger's wave equation to predict water's behavior under extreme pressure.

March 19
: Richard Branson announced the sale of the 500th ticket for a SpaceShipTwo flight from Spaceport America. The purchaser: Aston Kutcher.

March 15
: Felix Baumgartner took the first of a series of three successively higher parachute jumps above Roswell, stepping out of his gondola at an altitude of 71,580 feet. The next jump, when the seasonal winds calm down, will be from 90,000 feet. In the meantime, he wants his suit to be modified to better protect him from the extreme cold at the very high altitudes.

March 6
: The Red Bull Stratos team released photos and descriptions of the capsule that will carry Felix Baumgartner to 120,000 feet by helium balloon. Baumgartner, who will skydive out of the capsule, is expected to break the sound barrier protected only by a pressure suit. "The aim is to improve the safety for space professionals as well as potential space tourists," said the team's medical director. The balloon will launch from Roswell, New Mexico, sometime this summer. See more information at the Red Bull Stratos website.

February 27: Virgin Galactic chose NanoRacks LLC to build a rack system to carry research payloads aboard its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle. NanoRacks has built a similar system for the International Space Station.

February 24
: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority issued a request for proposals for design and construction management for the interior build-out of the Spaceport Operations Center. A second RFP seeks proposals for a general services contract for spaceport maintenance, fuel storage, and grounds keeping.

February 7
: A consulting team headed by IDEAS Orlando presented to the New Mexico Spaceport Authority board their vision of the "visitor experience" that will be offered beginning in 2013. Spaceport Welcome Centers will be built in the communities of Hatch and Truth or Consequences; from there, visitors will be able to take a four-and-a-half-hour excursion to the spaceport itself, where a Visitor Center near the terminal/hanger facility (THF) will offer educational exhibits and hands-on activities as well as a guided tour of the spaceport with access to parts of the THF (the Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space). More detailed plans will be announced in six months.

February 7
: A bill to protect spacecraft parts suppliers from lawsuits by injured passengers stalled in committees in both houses of the New Mexico legislature. The proposal would have exempted manufacturers from liability unless they knowingly provided faulty parts.

January 28
: Armadillo Aerospace tested its STIG-A rocket at Spaceport America. It flew to an altitude exceeding 137,000 feet, but a malfunction of the recovery system resulted in a hard landing. It was Armadillo Aerospace's fourth launch from the spaceport, and the fourteenth vertical launch since 2006 at the facility.

January 10
: In deference to widespread resistance to renaming the Very Large Array, the director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory announced the original name will be kept. However, in recognition of the recent upgrade that increased the VLA's power tenfold, the official new name will be the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array. Radio astronomy is based on Jansky's 1933 discovery of naturally occurring extraterrestrial radio wave emissions. The VLA is located 50 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico.

January 3
: Lowell Randall, the last surviving member of Robert Goddard's research team, died in Las Cruces. He joined Goddard's crew in 1941 to help with research on jet assisted take-off of airplanes for the US military.

January 3
: Some Virgin Galactic staff members from Britain have arrived at the company's new headquarters in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and others are on the way. The company is beginning to advertise jobs and hire personnel, with preference being given to New Mexico residents. Commercial flights may begin in 2013.

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Photo Credits
Robert Goddard towing one of his rockets to the launch site near Roswell about 1931, courtesy of NASA.

WhiteKnightTwo carrying SpaceShipTwo at Spaceport America runway dedication flyover, photo by Loretta Hall.
Unless otherwise credited, all material on this site is © Loretta Hall 2010-2017.