November 1: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crashed in California, killing one pilot and injuring another. The investigation and construction of a second ship will take at least a year.
October 24: Alan Eustace, a senior vice president of Google, rode a helium balloon to an altitude of 135,890 feet (more than 25 miles) and then parachuted to the ground. Like the 2012 jump by Felix Baumgartner from an altitude of 128,100 feet, this record-breaking event launched from Roswell, New Mexico. Wearing an experimental space suit and life support system, Eustace was suspended beneath the balloon without a capsule. During his 15-minute fall, he fell as fast as 822 miles per hour and broke the sound barrier.
October 23: An UP Aerospace SpaceLoft rocket launched from Spaceport America carried four NASA experiments and commercial payloads on a suborbital mission. The flight's altitude of 77.4 miles set a new record for the spaceport. This was UP Aerospace's thirteenth launch from Spaceport America since 2006.
October 16: Speaking at the 2014 International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Virgin Galactic's CEO George Whitesides announced that the Federal Aviation Administration has just approved the permit that will enable the company to restart powered flights. The new round of test flights will take place in both Mojave, California, and at Spaceport America in New Mexico.
October 7: Virgin Galactic conducted an unmanned flight test of SpaceShipTwo in Mojave, California. Recently, several full-duration ground test of the spacecraft's new hybrid rocket engine have helped bring resumption of powered flights near.
September 30: The Very High Angular Resolution Ultraviolet Telescope (VAULT) was launched at White Sands Missile Range. The suborbital flight reached an altitude of 179 miles, enabling the telescope to capture information about the sun's corona.
September 27: Facing criticism/skepticism over further delays of Virgin Galactic's commercial spaceflight service, Richard Branson told a London Telegraph reporter that "engineers have made the crucial breakthrough on rocket design" for SpaceShipTwo. He predicted the first test flight will be made before Christmas and the first operational flight will be next spring.
September 24-26: The Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, operated by New Mexico State University's Physical Sciences Laboratory in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, launched three balloon experiments on three consecutive days for NASA's Scientific Balloon Program.
September 10: Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo mothership returned to Spaceport America for the first time since the runway dedication in 2011. Four pilots practiced takeoffs and landings at the spaceport. The exercises involved using previously established agreements between Virgin Galactic and White Sands Missile Range, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the New Mexico Spaceport Authority. To date, only one mothership and one spaceship have been built, although a second spaceship is about 60 percent completed. Ultimately, two motherships and five spaceships will be based at Spaceport America.
September 9: Richard Branson said that the first commercial flight of Virgin Galactic will probably be in February or March 2015.
September 2: Land Rover announced a competition to win a trip to space aboard a Virgin Galactic flight from Spaceport America for the winner and three of his/her guests. See details at Land Rover's Go To Space website.
August 21: Spaceport America announced job openings for an aerospace engineer, a flight control specialist, an electrician, and a maintenance technician. One of its contractors, Fiore Industries Inc., also posted an opening for a firefighter/guard at the spaceport. See more information at the Spaceport America website.
August 21: The British developers of the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) project announced plans to possibly move its launch to Spaceport America. The project will launch a model airplane from a stratospheric balloon. The airplane will be constructed by 3D printing and will carry cameras. It will fly to its landing site on autopilot using GPS.
August 18: A balloon launched from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, carried a HyperSpectral Imager for Climate Science instrument on a nine-hour demonstration flight at 123,000 feet altitude. The instrument is designed to detect how much of the sun's radiative energy is reflected by the Earth's atmosphere and surface. Such measurements can help develop more reliable climate models.
August 18: NASA awarded a $500,000 grant to the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium to help fund its Student Launch Program, which gives students an opportunity to build an experiment that will be sent on an unmanned suborbital launch from Spaceport America.
July 29: Virgin Galactic hired Todd Ericson as its fourth pilot.
July 3: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority announced two new positions open for hiring: a flight control specialist and an aerospace engineer.
July 2: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority agreed to allow spaceport officials to seek a $6.5 million loan to build a visitor center in Truth or Consequences, NM, the access point for the paved road to Spaceport America. An RFP will be released soon for paving the southern road to the spaceport.
July 2: Brig. Gen. Timothy Coffin assumed command of White Sands Missile Range. He served previously at Vandenberg Air Force Base as deputy commander of the Joint Functional Componend Command for Space at the US Strategic Command and at the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Alabama as deputy commanding general.
June 18: World View, a commercial balloon spaceflight company, successfully completed a scaled test flight of its system in Roswell, New Mexico. The flight, which lasted five hours, carried a 10 percent scale space capsule system to an altitude of 120,000 feet. As it passed 50,000 feet in its descent, its parafoil landing system was deployed, setting the record for the highest parafoil flight. Passenger flights are expected to begin in 2016.
June 4: NASA announced selection of the first twelve research payloads that will fly aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo reusable suborbital vehicle. The experiments were selected through NASA's Flight Opportunities Program. The selected payloads come from three types of developers: university teams, commercial firms, and NASA researchers.
May 29: Virgin Galactic and Spaceport America have signed a joint agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that established procedures for the FAA's Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center to smoothly and safely provide clear airspace for SpaceShipTwo's flights. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority already has an agreement with White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) to support space launch activities within WSMR's restricted airspace.
May 24: A suborbital flight from White Sands Missile Range carried a sophisticated spectrograph designed to gather information about how stars form. By detecting missing wavelengths of light, CHESS (Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph) will show what atoms and molecules are present in interstellar space, how fast they are moving, and how turbulent the gas is. When a dust cloud becomes dense enough, it collapses and forms a star.
May 23: Virgin Galactic announced its selection of the fuel that will power the remainder of SpaceShipTwo's test flights and the first passenger-carrying operational flights. It is a thermoset plastic similar to nylon. The hybrid engine uses solid fuel grains along with an oxidizer (nitrous oxide) that can be shut off at any time for safety. The engine, developed by Sierra Nevada Corporation, is designed to use either the thermoplastic fuel or the rubber fuel used in SpaceShipOne.
May 20: The terminal/hangar building at Spaceport America was awarded LEED Gold status. The award by the US Green Building Council recognizes the favorable environmental design of the building. New Mexico Spaceport Authority Executive Director Christine Anderson said, "We designed the Gateway to Space building not only to be an iconic inspirational structure but also to respect the environment both in its appearance and in its energy conservation ability." Virgin Galactic has begun a 20-year lease of the building.
May 5: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority announced that Virgin Galactic's operations at Spaceport America have used at least nine New Mexico firms with expenditures totaling about $1 million. SpaceX construction at the spaceport is using more than 20 New Mexico firms with expenditures of about $2 million so far. Twenty unmanned suborbital vertical launches from the spaceport since 2006 have carried 126 payloads from NASA, the Department of Defense, private companies, and students.
April 16: Land Rover has partnered with Virgin Galactic to provide luxury SUVs to transport space travelers to the spaceport for their training and flights.
April 8: Richard Branson said he is "90 percent convinced" that he and his family will fly into space from Spaceport America by this September.
April 2: Spaceport America announced that the launch complex is nearly complete for SpaceX's VTVL rocket testing. The SpaceX Falcon 9R rocket, the next generation of its Grasshopper rocket, will be the largest ever to fly from Spaceport America. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority now has 20 personnel working full time at the spaceport site and 9 personnel working off site.
March 24: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority announced that the planned high-tech visitor center at Spaceport America will not be built until they can earn enough money to finance it. Instead, the planned exhibits and activities will be divided between a planned visitor center in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and a 4,000-square-foot sectioned-off portion of the Gateway to Space terminal/hanger building at the spaceport.
February 12: NASA announced ongoing success with testing the new Wallops Arc Second Pointer (WASP), a device that can aim and maintain stability on astronomical instruments that are floating under a helium balloon above 95 percent of the atmosphere. In 1959, Holloman Air Force Base's Stargazer project sent an astronomer and telescope to an altitude of 82,000 feet above southern New Mexico. Observations were plagued by accuracy and stability problems. In September 2013, NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, tested WASP at an altitude of 122,000 feet. Two more advanced tests will be conducted in September 2014 at Fort Sumner.
February 5: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority reported ongoing progress with preparations for SpaceX's testing of its Falcon 9R rocket. In addition to the state-owned Launch Complex 2, facilities now include additional launch pads, fuel storage pads, equipment storage buildings, and mission control trailers.
February 5: The Spaceport Operations Center (SOC) at Spaceport America is complete and is being occupied by NM Spaceport Authority staff and on-site support contractors.
January 24: Virgin Galactic announced a successful series of tests of the two liquid-fuel rocket engines that will power LauncherOne, the company's small satellite launch vehicle.
January 24: Ten years after landing on Mars, the Opportunity rover is still gathering and relaying valuable data to researchers on Earth. Originally planned for only a three-month mission, the rover has performed amazingly well. Dr. Larry Crumpler, research curator at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, is long-term planning lead for the daily teleconferences that define the rover's activities.
January 17: SpaceShipTwo flew again, only a week after its most recent powered flight. This unpowered, glide flight was the first for new Virgin Galactic pilot Rick Sturckow, a NASA veteran of four space shuttle missions.
January 10: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo soared to 71,000 feet on its third powered test flight.
January 10: Using 3 years of data from continuous observations made by the BOSS (Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey) at Apache Point Observatory in southern New Mexico, astrophysicists have measured the size of the universe with 99 percent accuracy. They have mapped 1.2 million galaxies in an 8,509-square-degree sector of the sky to a distance of more than 6 billion light years. Their analysis of the universe is consistent with Euclidean plane geometry. This means "while we can't say with certainty that it will never come to an end, it's likely the universe extends forever in space and will go on forever in time," said BOSS principal investigator David Schlegel.
January 2: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority reported that the FAA has approved a five-year renewal of its Launch Site Operator License. Also, the Gateway to Space terminal and hangar facility at Spaceport America received two architecture awards, one from the Commercial Real Estate Development Association and one from the American Institute of Architects.
October 24: Alan Eustace, a senior vice president of Google, rode a helium balloon to an altitude of 135,890 feet (more than 25 miles) and then parachuted to the ground. Like the 2012 jump by Felix Baumgartner from an altitude of 128,100 feet, this record-breaking event launched from Roswell, New Mexico. Wearing an experimental space suit and life support system, Eustace was suspended beneath the balloon without a capsule. During his 15-minute fall, he fell as fast as 822 miles per hour and broke the sound barrier.
October 23: An UP Aerospace SpaceLoft rocket launched from Spaceport America carried four NASA experiments and commercial payloads on a suborbital mission. The flight's altitude of 77.4 miles set a new record for the spaceport. This was UP Aerospace's thirteenth launch from Spaceport America since 2006.
October 16: Speaking at the 2014 International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Virgin Galactic's CEO George Whitesides announced that the Federal Aviation Administration has just approved the permit that will enable the company to restart powered flights. The new round of test flights will take place in both Mojave, California, and at Spaceport America in New Mexico.
October 7: Virgin Galactic conducted an unmanned flight test of SpaceShipTwo in Mojave, California. Recently, several full-duration ground test of the spacecraft's new hybrid rocket engine have helped bring resumption of powered flights near.
September 30: The Very High Angular Resolution Ultraviolet Telescope (VAULT) was launched at White Sands Missile Range. The suborbital flight reached an altitude of 179 miles, enabling the telescope to capture information about the sun's corona.
September 27: Facing criticism/skepticism over further delays of Virgin Galactic's commercial spaceflight service, Richard Branson told a London Telegraph reporter that "engineers have made the crucial breakthrough on rocket design" for SpaceShipTwo. He predicted the first test flight will be made before Christmas and the first operational flight will be next spring.
September 24-26: The Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, operated by New Mexico State University's Physical Sciences Laboratory in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, launched three balloon experiments on three consecutive days for NASA's Scientific Balloon Program.
September 10: Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo mothership returned to Spaceport America for the first time since the runway dedication in 2011. Four pilots practiced takeoffs and landings at the spaceport. The exercises involved using previously established agreements between Virgin Galactic and White Sands Missile Range, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the New Mexico Spaceport Authority. To date, only one mothership and one spaceship have been built, although a second spaceship is about 60 percent completed. Ultimately, two motherships and five spaceships will be based at Spaceport America.
September 9: Richard Branson said that the first commercial flight of Virgin Galactic will probably be in February or March 2015.
September 2: Land Rover announced a competition to win a trip to space aboard a Virgin Galactic flight from Spaceport America for the winner and three of his/her guests. See details at Land Rover's Go To Space website.
August 21: Spaceport America announced job openings for an aerospace engineer, a flight control specialist, an electrician, and a maintenance technician. One of its contractors, Fiore Industries Inc., also posted an opening for a firefighter/guard at the spaceport. See more information at the Spaceport America website.
August 21: The British developers of the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) project announced plans to possibly move its launch to Spaceport America. The project will launch a model airplane from a stratospheric balloon. The airplane will be constructed by 3D printing and will carry cameras. It will fly to its landing site on autopilot using GPS.
August 18: A balloon launched from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, carried a HyperSpectral Imager for Climate Science instrument on a nine-hour demonstration flight at 123,000 feet altitude. The instrument is designed to detect how much of the sun's radiative energy is reflected by the Earth's atmosphere and surface. Such measurements can help develop more reliable climate models.
August 18: NASA awarded a $500,000 grant to the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium to help fund its Student Launch Program, which gives students an opportunity to build an experiment that will be sent on an unmanned suborbital launch from Spaceport America.
July 29: Virgin Galactic hired Todd Ericson as its fourth pilot.
July 3: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority announced two new positions open for hiring: a flight control specialist and an aerospace engineer.
July 2: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority agreed to allow spaceport officials to seek a $6.5 million loan to build a visitor center in Truth or Consequences, NM, the access point for the paved road to Spaceport America. An RFP will be released soon for paving the southern road to the spaceport.
July 2: Brig. Gen. Timothy Coffin assumed command of White Sands Missile Range. He served previously at Vandenberg Air Force Base as deputy commander of the Joint Functional Componend Command for Space at the US Strategic Command and at the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Alabama as deputy commanding general.
June 18: World View, a commercial balloon spaceflight company, successfully completed a scaled test flight of its system in Roswell, New Mexico. The flight, which lasted five hours, carried a 10 percent scale space capsule system to an altitude of 120,000 feet. As it passed 50,000 feet in its descent, its parafoil landing system was deployed, setting the record for the highest parafoil flight. Passenger flights are expected to begin in 2016.
June 4: NASA announced selection of the first twelve research payloads that will fly aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo reusable suborbital vehicle. The experiments were selected through NASA's Flight Opportunities Program. The selected payloads come from three types of developers: university teams, commercial firms, and NASA researchers.
May 29: Virgin Galactic and Spaceport America have signed a joint agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that established procedures for the FAA's Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center to smoothly and safely provide clear airspace for SpaceShipTwo's flights. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority already has an agreement with White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) to support space launch activities within WSMR's restricted airspace.
May 24: A suborbital flight from White Sands Missile Range carried a sophisticated spectrograph designed to gather information about how stars form. By detecting missing wavelengths of light, CHESS (Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph) will show what atoms and molecules are present in interstellar space, how fast they are moving, and how turbulent the gas is. When a dust cloud becomes dense enough, it collapses and forms a star.
May 23: Virgin Galactic announced its selection of the fuel that will power the remainder of SpaceShipTwo's test flights and the first passenger-carrying operational flights. It is a thermoset plastic similar to nylon. The hybrid engine uses solid fuel grains along with an oxidizer (nitrous oxide) that can be shut off at any time for safety. The engine, developed by Sierra Nevada Corporation, is designed to use either the thermoplastic fuel or the rubber fuel used in SpaceShipOne.
May 20: The terminal/hangar building at Spaceport America was awarded LEED Gold status. The award by the US Green Building Council recognizes the favorable environmental design of the building. New Mexico Spaceport Authority Executive Director Christine Anderson said, "We designed the Gateway to Space building not only to be an iconic inspirational structure but also to respect the environment both in its appearance and in its energy conservation ability." Virgin Galactic has begun a 20-year lease of the building.
May 5: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority announced that Virgin Galactic's operations at Spaceport America have used at least nine New Mexico firms with expenditures totaling about $1 million. SpaceX construction at the spaceport is using more than 20 New Mexico firms with expenditures of about $2 million so far. Twenty unmanned suborbital vertical launches from the spaceport since 2006 have carried 126 payloads from NASA, the Department of Defense, private companies, and students.
April 16: Land Rover has partnered with Virgin Galactic to provide luxury SUVs to transport space travelers to the spaceport for their training and flights.
April 8: Richard Branson said he is "90 percent convinced" that he and his family will fly into space from Spaceport America by this September.
April 2: Spaceport America announced that the launch complex is nearly complete for SpaceX's VTVL rocket testing. The SpaceX Falcon 9R rocket, the next generation of its Grasshopper rocket, will be the largest ever to fly from Spaceport America. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority now has 20 personnel working full time at the spaceport site and 9 personnel working off site.
March 24: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority announced that the planned high-tech visitor center at Spaceport America will not be built until they can earn enough money to finance it. Instead, the planned exhibits and activities will be divided between a planned visitor center in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and a 4,000-square-foot sectioned-off portion of the Gateway to Space terminal/hanger building at the spaceport.
February 12: NASA announced ongoing success with testing the new Wallops Arc Second Pointer (WASP), a device that can aim and maintain stability on astronomical instruments that are floating under a helium balloon above 95 percent of the atmosphere. In 1959, Holloman Air Force Base's Stargazer project sent an astronomer and telescope to an altitude of 82,000 feet above southern New Mexico. Observations were plagued by accuracy and stability problems. In September 2013, NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, tested WASP at an altitude of 122,000 feet. Two more advanced tests will be conducted in September 2014 at Fort Sumner.
February 5: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority reported ongoing progress with preparations for SpaceX's testing of its Falcon 9R rocket. In addition to the state-owned Launch Complex 2, facilities now include additional launch pads, fuel storage pads, equipment storage buildings, and mission control trailers.
February 5: The Spaceport Operations Center (SOC) at Spaceport America is complete and is being occupied by NM Spaceport Authority staff and on-site support contractors.
January 24: Virgin Galactic announced a successful series of tests of the two liquid-fuel rocket engines that will power LauncherOne, the company's small satellite launch vehicle.
January 24: Ten years after landing on Mars, the Opportunity rover is still gathering and relaying valuable data to researchers on Earth. Originally planned for only a three-month mission, the rover has performed amazingly well. Dr. Larry Crumpler, research curator at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, is long-term planning lead for the daily teleconferences that define the rover's activities.
January 17: SpaceShipTwo flew again, only a week after its most recent powered flight. This unpowered, glide flight was the first for new Virgin Galactic pilot Rick Sturckow, a NASA veteran of four space shuttle missions.
January 10: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo soared to 71,000 feet on its third powered test flight.
January 10: Using 3 years of data from continuous observations made by the BOSS (Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey) at Apache Point Observatory in southern New Mexico, astrophysicists have measured the size of the universe with 99 percent accuracy. They have mapped 1.2 million galaxies in an 8,509-square-degree sector of the sky to a distance of more than 6 billion light years. Their analysis of the universe is consistent with Euclidean plane geometry. This means "while we can't say with certainty that it will never come to an end, it's likely the universe extends forever in space and will go on forever in time," said BOSS principal investigator David Schlegel.
January 2: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority reported that the FAA has approved a five-year renewal of its Launch Site Operator License. Also, the Gateway to Space terminal and hangar facility at Spaceport America received two architecture awards, one from the Commercial Real Estate Development Association and one from the American Institute of Architects.
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.
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 2014 Space News Archives
New Mexico Space News 2014 Archives
November 1: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crashed in California, killing one pilot and injuring another. The investigation and construction of a second ship will take at least a year.
October 24: Alan Eustace, a senior vice president of Google, rode a helium balloon to an altitude of 135,890 feet (more than 25 miles) and then parachuted to the ground. Like the 2012 jump by Felix Baumgartner from an altitude of 128,100 feet, this record-breaking event launched from Roswell, New Mexico. Wearing an experimental space suit and life support system, Eustace was suspended beneath the balloon without a capsule. During his 15-minute fall, he fell as fast as 822 miles per hour and broke the sound barrier.
October 23: An UP Aerospace SpaceLoft rocket launched from Spaceport America carried four NASA experiments and commercial payloads on a suborbital mission. The flight's altitude of 77.4 miles set a new record for the spaceport. This was UP Aerospace's thirteenth launch from Spaceport America since 2006.
October 16: Speaking at the 2014 International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Virgin Galactic's CEO George Whitesides announced that the Federal Aviation Administration has just approved the permit that will enable the company to restart powered flights. The new round of test flights will take place in both Mojave, California, and at Spaceport America in New Mexico.
October 7: Virgin Galactic conducted an unmanned flight test of SpaceShipTwo in Mojave, California. Recently, several full-duration ground test of the spacecraft's new hybrid rocket engine have helped bring resumption of powered flights near.
September 30: The Very High Angular Resolution Ultraviolet Telescope (VAULT) was launched at White Sands Missile Range. The suborbital flight reached an altitude of 179 miles, enabling the telescope to capture information about the sun's corona.
September 27: Facing criticism/skepticism over further delays of Virgin Galactic's commercial spaceflight service, Richard Branson told a London Telegraph reporter that "engineers have made the crucial breakthrough on rocket design" for SpaceShipTwo. He predicted the first test flight will be made before Christmas and the first operational flight will be next spring.
September 24-26: The Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, operated by New Mexico State University's Physical Sciences Laboratory in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, launched three balloon experiments on three consecutive days for NASA's Scientific Balloon Program.
September 10: Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo mothership returned to Spaceport America for the first time since the runway dedication in 2011. Four pilots practiced takeoffs and landings at the spaceport. The exercises involved using previously established agreements between Virgin Galactic and White Sands Missile Range, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the New Mexico Spaceport Authority. To date, only one mothership and one spaceship have been built, although a second spaceship is about 60 percent completed. Ultimately, two motherships and five spaceships will be based at Spaceport America.
September 9: Richard Branson said that the first commercial flight of Virgin Galactic will probably be in February or March 2015.
September 2: Land Rover announced a competition to win a trip to space aboard a Virgin Galactic flight from Spaceport America for the winner and three of his/her guests. See details at Land Rover's Go To Space website.
August 21: Spaceport America announced job openings for an aerospace engineer, a flight control specialist, an electrician, and a maintenance technician. One of its contractors, Fiore Industries Inc., also posted an opening for a firefighter/guard at the spaceport. See more information at the Spaceport America website.
August 21: The British developers of the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) project announced plans to possibly move its launch to Spaceport America. The project will launch a model airplane from a stratospheric balloon. The airplane will be constructed by 3D printing and will carry cameras. It will fly to its landing site on autopilot using GPS.
August 18: A balloon launched from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, carried a HyperSpectral Imager for Climate Science instrument on a nine-hour demonstration flight at 123,000 feet altitude. The instrument is designed to detect how much of the sun's radiative energy is reflected by the Earth's atmosphere and surface. Such measurements can help develop more reliable climate models.
August 18: NASA awarded a $500,000 grant to the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium to help fund its Student Launch Program, which gives students an opportunity to build an experiment that will be sent on an unmanned suborbital launch from Spaceport America.
July 29: Virgin Galactic hired Todd Ericson as its fourth pilot.
July 3: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority announced two new positions open for hiring: a flight control specialist and an aerospace engineer.
July 2: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority agreed to allow spaceport officials to seek a $6.5 million loan to build a visitor center in Truth or Consequences, NM, the access point for the paved road to Spaceport America. An RFP will be released soon for paving the southern road to the spaceport.
July 2: Brig. Gen. Timothy Coffin assumed command of White Sands Missile Range. He served previously at Vandenberg Air Force Base as deputy commander of the Joint Functional Componend Command for Space at the US Strategic Command and at the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Alabama as deputy commanding general.
June 18: World View, a commercial balloon spaceflight company, successfully completed a scaled test flight of its system in Roswell, New Mexico. The flight, which lasted five hours, carried a 10 percent scale space capsule system to an altitude of 120,000 feet. As it passed 50,000 feet in its descent, its parafoil landing system was deployed, setting the record for the highest parafoil flight. Passenger flights are expected to begin in 2016.
June 4: NASA announced selection of the first twelve research payloads that will fly aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo reusable suborbital vehicle. The experiments were selected through NASA's Flight Opportunities Program. The selected payloads come from three types of developers: university teams, commercial firms, and NASA researchers.
May 29: Virgin Galactic and Spaceport America have signed a joint agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that established procedures for the FAA's Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center to smoothly and safely provide clear airspace for SpaceShipTwo's flights. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority already has an agreement with White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) to support space launch activities within WSMR's restricted airspace.
May 24: A suborbital flight from White Sands Missile Range carried a sophisticated spectrograph designed to gather information about how stars form. By detecting missing wavelengths of light, CHESS (Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph) will show what atoms and molecules are present in interstellar space, how fast they are moving, and how turbulent the gas is. When a dust cloud becomes dense enough, it collapses and forms a star.
May 23: Virgin Galactic announced its selection of the fuel that will power the remainder of SpaceShipTwo's test flights and the first passenger-carrying operational flights. It is a thermoset plastic similar to nylon. The hybrid engine uses solid fuel grains along with an oxidizer (nitrous oxide) that can be shut off at any time for safety. The engine, developed by Sierra Nevada Corporation, is designed to use either the thermoplastic fuel or the rubber fuel used in SpaceShipOne.
May 20: The terminal/hangar building at Spaceport America was awarded LEED Gold status. The award by the US Green Building Council recognizes the favorable environmental design of the building. New Mexico Spaceport Authority Executive Director Christine Anderson said, "We designed the Gateway to Space building not only to be an iconic inspirational structure but also to respect the environment both in its appearance and in its energy conservation ability." Virgin Galactic has begun a 20-year lease of the building.
May 5: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority announced that Virgin Galactic's operations at Spaceport America have used at least nine New Mexico firms with expenditures totaling about $1 million. SpaceX construction at the spaceport is using more than 20 New Mexico firms with expenditures of about $2 million so far. Twenty unmanned suborbital vertical launches from the spaceport since 2006 have carried 126 payloads from NASA, the Department of Defense, private companies, and students.
April 16: Land Rover has partnered with Virgin Galactic to provide luxury SUVs to transport space travelers to the spaceport for their training and flights.
April 8: Richard Branson said he is "90 percent convinced" that he and his family will fly into space from Spaceport America by this September.
April 2: Spaceport America announced that the launch complex is nearly complete for SpaceX's VTVL rocket testing. The SpaceX Falcon 9R rocket, the next generation of its Grasshopper rocket, will be the largest ever to fly from Spaceport America. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority now has 20 personnel working full time at the spaceport site and 9 personnel working off site.
March 24: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority announced that the planned high-tech visitor center at Spaceport America will not be built until they can earn enough money to finance it. Instead, the planned exhibits and activities will be divided between a planned visitor center in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and a 4,000-square-foot sectioned-off portion of the Gateway to Space terminal/hanger building at the spaceport.
February 12: NASA announced ongoing success with testing the new Wallops Arc Second Pointer (WASP), a device that can aim and maintain stability on astronomical instruments that are floating under a helium balloon above 95 percent of the atmosphere. In 1959, Holloman Air Force Base's Stargazer project sent an astronomer and telescope to an altitude of 82,000 feet above southern New Mexico. Observations were plagued by accuracy and stability problems. In September 2013, NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, tested WASP at an altitude of 122,000 feet. Two more advanced tests will be conducted in September 2014 at Fort Sumner.
February 5: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority reported ongoing progress with preparations for SpaceX's testing of its Falcon 9R rocket. In addition to the state-owned Launch Complex 2, facilities now include additional launch pads, fuel storage pads, equipment storage buildings, and mission control trailers.
February 5: The Spaceport Operations Center (SOC) at Spaceport America is complete and is being occupied by NM Spaceport Authority staff and on-site support contractors.
January 24: Virgin Galactic announced a successful series of tests of the two liquid-fuel rocket engines that will power LauncherOne, the company's small satellite launch vehicle.
January 24: Ten years after landing on Mars, the Opportunity rover is still gathering and relaying valuable data to researchers on Earth. Originally planned for only a three-month mission, the rover has performed amazingly well. Dr. Larry Crumpler, research curator at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, is long-term planning lead for the daily teleconferences that define the rover's activities.
January 17: SpaceShipTwo flew again, only a week after its most recent powered flight. This unpowered, glide flight was the first for new Virgin Galactic pilot Rick Sturckow, a NASA veteran of four space shuttle missions.
January 10: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo soared to 71,000 feet on its third powered test flight.
January 10: Using 3 years of data from continuous observations made by the BOSS (Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey) at Apache Point Observatory in southern New Mexico, astrophysicists have measured the size of the universe with 99 percent accuracy. They have mapped 1.2 million galaxies in an 8,509-square-degree sector of the sky to a distance of more than 6 billion light years. Their analysis of the universe is consistent with Euclidean plane geometry. This means "while we can't say with certainty that it will never come to an end, it's likely the universe extends forever in space and will go on forever in time," said BOSS principal investigator David Schlegel.
January 2: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority reported that the FAA has approved a five-year renewal of its Launch Site Operator License. Also, the Gateway to Space terminal and hangar facility at Spaceport America received two architecture awards, one from the Commercial Real Estate Development Association and one from the American Institute of Architects.
October 24: Alan Eustace, a senior vice president of Google, rode a helium balloon to an altitude of 135,890 feet (more than 25 miles) and then parachuted to the ground. Like the 2012 jump by Felix Baumgartner from an altitude of 128,100 feet, this record-breaking event launched from Roswell, New Mexico. Wearing an experimental space suit and life support system, Eustace was suspended beneath the balloon without a capsule. During his 15-minute fall, he fell as fast as 822 miles per hour and broke the sound barrier.
October 23: An UP Aerospace SpaceLoft rocket launched from Spaceport America carried four NASA experiments and commercial payloads on a suborbital mission. The flight's altitude of 77.4 miles set a new record for the spaceport. This was UP Aerospace's thirteenth launch from Spaceport America since 2006.
October 16: Speaking at the 2014 International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Virgin Galactic's CEO George Whitesides announced that the Federal Aviation Administration has just approved the permit that will enable the company to restart powered flights. The new round of test flights will take place in both Mojave, California, and at Spaceport America in New Mexico.
October 7: Virgin Galactic conducted an unmanned flight test of SpaceShipTwo in Mojave, California. Recently, several full-duration ground test of the spacecraft's new hybrid rocket engine have helped bring resumption of powered flights near.
September 30: The Very High Angular Resolution Ultraviolet Telescope (VAULT) was launched at White Sands Missile Range. The suborbital flight reached an altitude of 179 miles, enabling the telescope to capture information about the sun's corona.
September 27: Facing criticism/skepticism over further delays of Virgin Galactic's commercial spaceflight service, Richard Branson told a London Telegraph reporter that "engineers have made the crucial breakthrough on rocket design" for SpaceShipTwo. He predicted the first test flight will be made before Christmas and the first operational flight will be next spring.
September 24-26: The Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, operated by New Mexico State University's Physical Sciences Laboratory in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, launched three balloon experiments on three consecutive days for NASA's Scientific Balloon Program.
September 10: Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo mothership returned to Spaceport America for the first time since the runway dedication in 2011. Four pilots practiced takeoffs and landings at the spaceport. The exercises involved using previously established agreements between Virgin Galactic and White Sands Missile Range, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the New Mexico Spaceport Authority. To date, only one mothership and one spaceship have been built, although a second spaceship is about 60 percent completed. Ultimately, two motherships and five spaceships will be based at Spaceport America.
September 9: Richard Branson said that the first commercial flight of Virgin Galactic will probably be in February or March 2015.
September 2: Land Rover announced a competition to win a trip to space aboard a Virgin Galactic flight from Spaceport America for the winner and three of his/her guests. See details at Land Rover's Go To Space website.
August 21: Spaceport America announced job openings for an aerospace engineer, a flight control specialist, an electrician, and a maintenance technician. One of its contractors, Fiore Industries Inc., also posted an opening for a firefighter/guard at the spaceport. See more information at the Spaceport America website.
August 21: The British developers of the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) project announced plans to possibly move its launch to Spaceport America. The project will launch a model airplane from a stratospheric balloon. The airplane will be constructed by 3D printing and will carry cameras. It will fly to its landing site on autopilot using GPS.
August 18: A balloon launched from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, carried a HyperSpectral Imager for Climate Science instrument on a nine-hour demonstration flight at 123,000 feet altitude. The instrument is designed to detect how much of the sun's radiative energy is reflected by the Earth's atmosphere and surface. Such measurements can help develop more reliable climate models.
August 18: NASA awarded a $500,000 grant to the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium to help fund its Student Launch Program, which gives students an opportunity to build an experiment that will be sent on an unmanned suborbital launch from Spaceport America.
July 29: Virgin Galactic hired Todd Ericson as its fourth pilot.
July 3: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority announced two new positions open for hiring: a flight control specialist and an aerospace engineer.
July 2: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority agreed to allow spaceport officials to seek a $6.5 million loan to build a visitor center in Truth or Consequences, NM, the access point for the paved road to Spaceport America. An RFP will be released soon for paving the southern road to the spaceport.
July 2: Brig. Gen. Timothy Coffin assumed command of White Sands Missile Range. He served previously at Vandenberg Air Force Base as deputy commander of the Joint Functional Componend Command for Space at the US Strategic Command and at the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Alabama as deputy commanding general.
June 18: World View, a commercial balloon spaceflight company, successfully completed a scaled test flight of its system in Roswell, New Mexico. The flight, which lasted five hours, carried a 10 percent scale space capsule system to an altitude of 120,000 feet. As it passed 50,000 feet in its descent, its parafoil landing system was deployed, setting the record for the highest parafoil flight. Passenger flights are expected to begin in 2016.
June 4: NASA announced selection of the first twelve research payloads that will fly aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo reusable suborbital vehicle. The experiments were selected through NASA's Flight Opportunities Program. The selected payloads come from three types of developers: university teams, commercial firms, and NASA researchers.
May 29: Virgin Galactic and Spaceport America have signed a joint agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that established procedures for the FAA's Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center to smoothly and safely provide clear airspace for SpaceShipTwo's flights. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority already has an agreement with White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) to support space launch activities within WSMR's restricted airspace.
May 24: A suborbital flight from White Sands Missile Range carried a sophisticated spectrograph designed to gather information about how stars form. By detecting missing wavelengths of light, CHESS (Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph) will show what atoms and molecules are present in interstellar space, how fast they are moving, and how turbulent the gas is. When a dust cloud becomes dense enough, it collapses and forms a star.
May 23: Virgin Galactic announced its selection of the fuel that will power the remainder of SpaceShipTwo's test flights and the first passenger-carrying operational flights. It is a thermoset plastic similar to nylon. The hybrid engine uses solid fuel grains along with an oxidizer (nitrous oxide) that can be shut off at any time for safety. The engine, developed by Sierra Nevada Corporation, is designed to use either the thermoplastic fuel or the rubber fuel used in SpaceShipOne.
May 20: The terminal/hangar building at Spaceport America was awarded LEED Gold status. The award by the US Green Building Council recognizes the favorable environmental design of the building. New Mexico Spaceport Authority Executive Director Christine Anderson said, "We designed the Gateway to Space building not only to be an iconic inspirational structure but also to respect the environment both in its appearance and in its energy conservation ability." Virgin Galactic has begun a 20-year lease of the building.
May 5: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority announced that Virgin Galactic's operations at Spaceport America have used at least nine New Mexico firms with expenditures totaling about $1 million. SpaceX construction at the spaceport is using more than 20 New Mexico firms with expenditures of about $2 million so far. Twenty unmanned suborbital vertical launches from the spaceport since 2006 have carried 126 payloads from NASA, the Department of Defense, private companies, and students.
April 16: Land Rover has partnered with Virgin Galactic to provide luxury SUVs to transport space travelers to the spaceport for their training and flights.
April 8: Richard Branson said he is "90 percent convinced" that he and his family will fly into space from Spaceport America by this September.
April 2: Spaceport America announced that the launch complex is nearly complete for SpaceX's VTVL rocket testing. The SpaceX Falcon 9R rocket, the next generation of its Grasshopper rocket, will be the largest ever to fly from Spaceport America. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority now has 20 personnel working full time at the spaceport site and 9 personnel working off site.
March 24: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority announced that the planned high-tech visitor center at Spaceport America will not be built until they can earn enough money to finance it. Instead, the planned exhibits and activities will be divided between a planned visitor center in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and a 4,000-square-foot sectioned-off portion of the Gateway to Space terminal/hanger building at the spaceport.
February 12: NASA announced ongoing success with testing the new Wallops Arc Second Pointer (WASP), a device that can aim and maintain stability on astronomical instruments that are floating under a helium balloon above 95 percent of the atmosphere. In 1959, Holloman Air Force Base's Stargazer project sent an astronomer and telescope to an altitude of 82,000 feet above southern New Mexico. Observations were plagued by accuracy and stability problems. In September 2013, NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, tested WASP at an altitude of 122,000 feet. Two more advanced tests will be conducted in September 2014 at Fort Sumner.
February 5: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority reported ongoing progress with preparations for SpaceX's testing of its Falcon 9R rocket. In addition to the state-owned Launch Complex 2, facilities now include additional launch pads, fuel storage pads, equipment storage buildings, and mission control trailers.
February 5: The Spaceport Operations Center (SOC) at Spaceport America is complete and is being occupied by NM Spaceport Authority staff and on-site support contractors.
January 24: Virgin Galactic announced a successful series of tests of the two liquid-fuel rocket engines that will power LauncherOne, the company's small satellite launch vehicle.
January 24: Ten years after landing on Mars, the Opportunity rover is still gathering and relaying valuable data to researchers on Earth. Originally planned for only a three-month mission, the rover has performed amazingly well. Dr. Larry Crumpler, research curator at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, is long-term planning lead for the daily teleconferences that define the rover's activities.
January 17: SpaceShipTwo flew again, only a week after its most recent powered flight. This unpowered, glide flight was the first for new Virgin Galactic pilot Rick Sturckow, a NASA veteran of four space shuttle missions.
January 10: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo soared to 71,000 feet on its third powered test flight.
January 10: Using 3 years of data from continuous observations made by the BOSS (Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey) at Apache Point Observatory in southern New Mexico, astrophysicists have measured the size of the universe with 99 percent accuracy. They have mapped 1.2 million galaxies in an 8,509-square-degree sector of the sky to a distance of more than 6 billion light years. Their analysis of the universe is consistent with Euclidean plane geometry. This means "while we can't say with certainty that it will never come to an end, it's likely the universe extends forever in space and will go on forever in time," said BOSS principal investigator David Schlegel.
January 2: The New Mexico Spaceport Authority reported that the FAA has approved a five-year renewal of its Launch Site Operator License. Also, the Gateway to Space terminal and hangar facility at Spaceport America received two architecture awards, one from the Commercial Real Estate Development Association and one from the American Institute of Architects.
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.
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.