The WhiteKnightTwo — the mega mothership that will tote skyward the passenger-carrying SpaceShipTwo — is picking up speed - literally. The plane is being built by Scaled Composites in Mojave, California and is expected to be airborne in the next two to three weeks.

That’s the word today here at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, New Mexico. One of the future passengers on SpaceShipTwo has received a recent briefing regarding the test program for WhiteKnightTwo from spaceline operator, Virgin Galactic.

Michael Blum said today that extensive ground testing of WhiteKnightTwo systems is underway at the Mojave Air and Space Port. Those tests have culminated in a recent high-speed taxi evaluation, Blum said.

Blum added that WhiteKnightTwo is some two to three weeks away from the craft taking to the skies for the first time - all in hush-hush status.

From there, Blum continued, the aircraft will go through a series of takeoffs and landings, as well as low altitude flights - a shakeout program that would last for several weeks, if not several months, he said.

That activity is to lead to an early summer to June time frame for the first flight of WhiteKnightTwo carrying the SpaceShipTwo up to altitude.

Blum said that by end of next year to expect the first tests of SpaceShipTwo in space. A minimum of 30 SpaceShipTwo flights would be made before a decision is made on readiness of the system to begin commercial operations, Blum said.

Blum is the founder and managing director of Hong Kong-based Repulse Bay Capital Ltd and is the co-president and CEO at Research Edge, LLC.

Space-based solar power has been mostly all-talk - now it’s time to energize the idea with some electrifying experiments!

And that’s the goal of the “One Lightbulb” project.

In December, the Eisenhower Center for Space and Defense Studies at the U.S. Air Force Academy will begin the process of building two small satellites.

The bright idea here is demonstrate by doing - that is, power beam between low Earth orbit and the Earth to illuminate a single one-tenth of a watt LED lightbulb.

The project as now blueprinted involves the building of two satellite systems concurrently, one “heavy” and one “light.” This dual approach using different methods provides a measure of assurance that success can be attained given technical, legal, financial, or other challenges that might bog down one of the two satellite designs.

Each satellite would weigh some 400 pounds or less, with the desired launch dates in 2010.

The “heavy” satellite mission represents a more complicated set of tasks and greater expense than its counterpart. It involves placing on orbit a satellite that will collect power and broadcast it to Earth via laser, broadcasting it to a special ground receiving station where a lightbulb would be illuminated.

The “light” satellite mission would receive laser energy from the ground, lighting up a lightbulb. Visual observation of the light on the satellite being illuminated during the laser broadcast will indicate success.

If given the chance, both satellites may fly, said M.V. “Coyote” Smith, leader of the effort and a Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, now a PhD student at the University of Reading in the UK. He is also Associate Director for Space Solar Power Projects at the Eisenhower Center, U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

“We are trying to prevent resource wars by developing yet another source of safe, clean energy that can be shared widely across the planet,” Smith told me.

To keep an eye on this energetic idea, along with more details on the project, go to:

http://spacesolarpower.wordpress.com/

During China’s recent three-person Shenzhou-7 space trek — including a space walk — that mission also ejected a small satellite weighing all of 40 kilograms. Labeled the BX-1, the camera toting toddler of a spacecraft — dubbed a picosat — took images of the Shenzhou-7 as it circled the Earth.

Tracking data shows the BX-1, which was deployed from Shenzhou-7 on September 27 — was ejected just minutes after the International Space Station passed in front of the Shenzhou-7.

According to T.S. Kelso, a senior research astrodynamicist at the Center for Space Standards & Innovation in Colorado Springs, the BX-1 passed within 25 kilometers of the ISS. His analysis shows that the Shenzhou-7 made its own close approach to the station, flying by at one point some 46 kilometers distance.

On the one hand, there was never any concern about a potential collision, and none of the thresholds for ISS collision avoidance considerations were reached, I’ve been told. The passage was like lots of other passes which occur frequently among the resident space object population.

In fact, China’s BX-1 microsat continues in an orbit similar to a left-in-space Shenzhou-7 orbital module.

But all this cosmic closeness has stirred up blog chats - even the specter that the BX-1 is a further honing of China’s anti-satellite skills. Others believe that the “conjunction” of BX-1 and the ISS was coincidental.

Alternatively, one take home message — whether intended by China or not — is the ability for future Shenzhou missions to rendezvous and dock with the ISS - either for logistics supply or crew transfer purposes.

To do that, Shenzhou would have to demonstrate a slightly higher inclination (51.6 degrees versus 42.4 degrees for the last three piloted Chinese flights). They already have the altitude needed.

According to one source, if the Long March launcher used to boost Shenzhou craft into orbit does not already have the excess capacity for the higher ISS inclination, such would certainly appear to be within reach, given a modest modification to their booster.

So what’s all this about?

“I’d venture that this goes back to the issue of Chinese opacity in their space program,” said Dean Cheng, Senior Asia Analyst with CNA in Alexandria, Virginia.

“Either the Chinese knew that their Shenzhou would close to a fair distance of the ISS, and their picosat would get even closer, or they did not,” Cheng advised me.

Cheng added: “Neither should be reassuring. If they did not, why not, especially since the ISS’ orbit is known and they could easily have obtained this information simply by asking. If they did, then the question becomes why they did such a close approach…what political and perhaps even military messages does this portend?”

The lack of transparency means that Western analysts have little basis for determining which of the two may be true, Cheng said. “In a crisis situation, such a close approach to military satellites — as opposed to the ISS — might well be seen as escalatory, or at least provocative.”

A nearly two-decades old bit of space junk has been found in the Australian outback.

A solid rocket motor casing from a U.S. Delta 2 launch vehicle nearly 18 years after it reentered was found last July during a routine muster of cattle on a three-million-acre pastoral property.

First spotted by air from a Cessna aircraft flying over the property, the debris was later identified using a serial number - traced to the motor casing of a Delta 2 booster used on June 12, 1990 to deliver the Indian INSAT-1D into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

According to NASA’s Orbital Debris Quarterly News, the object joins similar solid rocket motor casings found in Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Argentina during the past several years.

The on/off switch for the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge is now in the “on” position.

It now will be held at the Las Cruces International Airport in New Mexico, with hardware to fly on October 24-25. A few weeks ago, the word was that a conflict at neighboring Holloman Air Force Base caused the cancellation of the Challenge. Inside word was that a classified program was to be evaluated at Holloman and the Challenge was asked to depart the scene.

But things are now back on track - a two-level, two million dollar competition requiring a team’s vehicle to simulate hops between the Moon’s surface and lunar orbit.

The State of New Mexico is the event sponsor, with the Challenge hosted by the X Prize Foundation, with additional financial support coming from Northrop Grumman.

The Centennial Challenge Prize of two million dollars is being provided by NASA.

For updates on this event and other space activities in New Mexico - specifically, the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight, go to:

http://spacegrant.nmsu.edu/ispcs/

So…the countdown is back on. Rockets away!

Tomorrow, a NASA decision may be forthcoming on the cost-overrun and highly complex Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. Will a decision be made to stay the course to Mars with a liftoff next year…or move it to 2011?…or decide its fate at a later time? But time is running out. The call itself is expected to come from NASA chief, Mike Griffin.

MSL is being tagged as “the first real astrobiology mission to Mars” - with a price tag sailing past $2 billion. The project has already exceeded the 15 percent “overguide”, (that’s an “overrun” in taxpayer parlance) set by Congress in the fiscal year 2008 NASA authorization law.

The next overguide benchmark is 30 percent. MSL’s total cost overrun is expected to be between 33 and 40 percent.

Why not delay the launch to 2011? Doing so will cost NASA an additional $300 million - $400 million.

MSL almost certainly will reach the 30 percent overguide ceiling say NASA insiders, at which point Congress has the authority to cancel the mission.

NASA officials anticipate that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) — where MSL has been designed and is being built — has its hand out for more than $100 million extra that’s to be spread out over Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010.

Finding all the needed Mars moola for MSL is sure to have a ripple effect in other space science efforts. Possible sources of extra money for MSL include impacting the Jupiter Juno mission, the lunar Grail and LADEE missions, the newly picked MAVEN Mars Scout mission, and even NASA instruments to be flown on Europe’s ExoMars rover.

The technical readiness of the mission has to be weighed - and there’s worry that JPL’s MSL workers are already pushed to the limit in readying the huge Mars rover. They could be pushed even harder if a go for 2009 is given, raising the risk of errors and failure, according to senior management at NASA.

All concerned don’t want to see an expensive “smoking hole” or a “nuclear crater” on Mars instead of an MSL rock-solid soft landing on the red planet.

Indeed, one concern is MSL’s nuclear power sources. Smacking into Mars at high speed with those heat sources might lead to a subsurface melting of possible ice - a no-no in astrobiology circles.