Animals
Health
Environment
Technology
History
Strange News
Space & Astronomy
Society
In a mission update from Bigelow Aerospace, the firm’s Genesis-1 orbiting expandable module has nearly damped out its tumble rate. After launch, the module was rotating at one revolution per six minutes.
Now, thanks to the module’s attitude control system, that tumble rate is now less than one revolution per orbit – taking roughly 100 minutes to circle the Earth.
According to Bigelow Aerospace’s top executive, Robert Bigelow, ground teams discovered and fixed several minor glitches with the module, leading to activation of the attitude control system hardware. “It has been active for the past several days and has dramatically slowed down the rotation of the spacecraft,” Bigelow reported in an August 10 communiqué.
“We expect to achieve a gravity gradient stabilized orbit, where the major axis of the vehicle is pointing at Earth throughout its orbit, in the next several days. This will give a substantial boost to the duration and reliability of our communication links with the spacecraft, and is another major achievement for the Genesis program,” Bigelow reported.
A Genesis-2 module is now undergoing checkout and evaluation at the firm’s Las Vegas, Nevada headquarters. It will be lofted in late January of next year.
Bigelow Aerospace’s mission is to validate expandable structures as a certified spaceflight technology and to provide a low-cost, low Earth orbit human-rated space complex that is accessible to the commercial sector.
The private group is focused on developing an affordable and flexible space complex architecture that can be adapted for any human or unpiloted mission requiring a large pressurized volume. The group is also developing a ground-based infrastructure that commercial and public groups can utilize for developing low-cost, space-based missions.
