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Media will have the opportunity June 4-5 for tours, interviews and photographs of NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) as it prepares to leave Vandenberg Air Force Base in California for a scheduled mid-June launchfrom Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

ICON team members will be available to answer questions about Orbital ATK’s Pegasus XL rocket, which is attached to the company’s L-1011 “Stargazer” aircraft and will carry ICON into orbit. There also will be opportunities to tour the aircraft and witness itstakeoff on its ferry flight to the island.The observatory will leave Vandenberg June 5 for ascheduled launch on June 15 from Kwajalein (June 14 in the continental United States).

ICON will study the frontier of space: the dynamic zone high in Earth’s atmosphere where terrestrial weather from below meets space weather from above. This area at times can be filled with such beauty as the aurora, and at other times experience increases in radiation that can interfere with radio communications, satellites and even astronauts. ICON will help determine the physical process at play in this space environment and pave the way for mitigating their effects on our technology, communications systems and society.

This event is open only to U.S. citizens who possess a government-issued photo identification. One form of government-issued photo identification is required and must be a driver’s license or passport.

To apply for media credentials, go to https://media.ksc.nasa.gov. Media interested in attending this event must also RSVP via email at ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov. In your RSVP, please include your driver’s license number and its state of issuance. The deadline for submitting credentials and to RSVP is no later than noon EDT Tuesday, May 22.

An artist concept of NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer. The spacecraft will observe colorful swaths of light called airglow to track how Earth’s weather and space weather interact.

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Computational Materials

Solvay (Brussels, Belgium) and MultiMechanics (Omaha, NE, US) announced May 17 they have partnered to develop a material simulation software platform that could reduce the time and cost of developing and certifying new materials by 40%. Currently, the time and cost to a material supplier to develop and certify a new structural aerospace material can take five years and up to $50M, while the cost to the OEM to certify the material can be even higher.

Scientists at Solvay were looking for a simulation tool that could:

Process inputs such as fiber volume fraction, fiber orientation, interface effects, resin ductility, material variability
Handle the amount of explicit inputs required in order to properly define and test new materials
Quickly provide insight into how changes at the constituent material level affect overall mechanical performance at the composite level
Shorten the feedback loop from new constituent synthesis to composite property determination

MultiMechanics partnered with Solvay to address these challenges, and in 2017, Solvay Ventures co-invested $1.9 million to speed up the development of the MultiMechanics solution. Since then, MultiMechanics has enabled the Solvay team to understand their materials on a deeper level, expedite the material development process, and enter into new markets. The team can now send new material designs to be physically tested with greater confidence that their new design will pass testing. They also have insight into exactly how, when, and where damage will occur, and how they can mitigate it.

“We are confident this software can accelerate innovation in complex materials and the penetration of composites in the automotive and aerospace industries,” says Nicolas Cudré Mauroux, chief technology officer at Solvay. “The accuracy and speed afforded by MultiMechanics, and its efficient integration with commonly used commercial finite element software packages, is changing the way we develop new materials and interact with our customers.”

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Computational Materials

New carbon fiber composite manufacturing process exhibits improved fabric formability characteristics compared to traditional woven materials.

The Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI, Knoxville, TN, US), a public/private consortium designed to accelerate composite materials and process development in the US, announced May 15 the Phase I completion of a project led by DuPont (Wilmington, DE, US), with project partnership from Fibrtec (Atlanta, TX, US) and Purdue University. The conclusion of Phase I validates the creation of a new carbon fiber composite manufacturing process that exhibits improved fabric formability characteristics compared to traditional woven materials. The implications of the Phase I results are driving Phase II of the project, and can lead to a decrease in cost for carbon fiber composite structures, making them more amenable for adoption in the automotive and other high volume industries.

The new material created through this IACMI project combines Fibrtec’s flexible coated tow, Fibrflex, with DuPont’s Rapid Fabric Formation (RFF) technology, and a proprietary DuPont polyamide resin, all supported by Purdue University’s modeling and characterization capabilities. The coated tow material is a partially impregnated carbon fiber/polyamide composite tow where the carbon fiber is not fully wetted with the polyamide, yielding a more flexible tow material than one that is fully impregnated. The RFF process is a way of manufacturing fabrics with tows in varying orientations without the need to lift the tow during processing. Experiments, modeling and simulations, have reportedly shown that this process/materials combination is a potential method for producing lower cost continuous fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) thermoplastic materials that conform well during molding.

DuPont’s Rapid Fabric Formation technology deploying Fibrflex at high shear angles.

Full Story at compositesworld.com

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NASA has selected two finalist concepts for a robotic mission planned to launch in the mid-2020s: a comet sample return mission and a drone-like rotorcraft that would explore potential landing sites on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.

The agency announced the concepts Wednesday, following an extensive and competitive peer review process. The concepts were chosen from 12 proposals submitted in April under a New Frontiers program announcement of opportunity.

“This is a giant leap forward in developing our next bold mission of science discovery,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “These are tantalizing investigations that seek to answer some of the biggest questions in our solar system today.”

The finalists are:

Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return (CAESAR)

The CAESAR mission seeks to return a sample from 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a comet that was successfully explored by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft, to determine its origin and history. Led by Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, CAESAR would be managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Dragonfly

Dragonfly is a drone-like rotorcraft that would explore the prebiotic chemistry and habitability of dozens of sites on Saturn’s moon Titan, an ocean world in our solar system. Elizabeth Turtle from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, is the lead investigator, with APL providing project management.

The CAESAR and Dragonfly missions will receive funding through the end of 2018 to further develop and mature their concepts. NASA plans to select one of these investigations in the spring of 2019 to continue on to subsequent mission phases.

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Computational Materials

Dream Chaser inches closer to first flight in the run-up to servicing the International Space Station, starting in 2020.

Sierra Nevada Corp. (Sparks, NV, US) reported on Nov. 13 that it has completed a successful atmospheric free-flight test of its composites-intensive Dream Chaser spacecraft, signaling the program is another achievement closer to orbital operations.

The full-scale Dream Chaser test vehicle was lifted from a Columbia Helicopters Model 234 UT Chinook helicopter on Saturday, released and flew a preplanned flight path ending with an autonomous landing on Runway 22L at Edwards Air Force Base, CA, US.

“The Dream Chaser flight test demonstrated excellent performance of the spacecraft’s aerodynamic design and the data shows that we are firmly on the path for safe, reliable orbital flight,” says Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president of SNC’s Space System business area.

The first orbital vehicle is scheduled to go to the International Space Station as soon as 2020 for at least six missions as part of NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract (CRS2). The missions will supply astronauts with much-needed supplies and technical support elements and enable the return of scientific experiments. The test vehicle was originally developed under the Commercial Crew Integrated Capabilities agreement (CCiCap).

“The Dream Chaser spacecraft today has proven its atmospheric flight performance along with its return and landing capability. This advances our program and the Dream Chaser towards orbital flight, while meeting the final milestone for our NASA CCiCap agreement and supporting milestone 5 of the CRS2 contract,” Sirangelo adds.

The test verified and validated the performance of the Dream Chaser spacecraft in the final approach and landing phase of flight, modeling a successful return from the space station. Most critically, by flying the same flight path that would be used returning from orbit, this free flight proves the highly important landing attributes needed to bring back science and experiments from the space station.

Dream Chaser, during its free-flight test.

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Materials Genome Initiative

Nanomaterial Discovery

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a process that can produce ultrafine fibers — whose diameter is measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter — that are exceptionally strong and tough. These fibers, which the researchers say should be inexpensive and easy to produce, reportedly could be choice materials for many applications, such as protective armor and nanocomposites.

The process, called gel electrospinning, is described in a paper by MIT professor of chemical engineering Gregory Rutledge and postdoc Jay Park. The paper appears online and will be published in the February edition of the Journal of Materials Science.

In materials science, Rutledge explains, “there are a lot of tradeoffs.” Typically researchers can enhance one characteristic of a material but will see a decline in a different characteristic. “Strength and toughness are a pair like that: Usually when you get high strength, you lose something in the toughness,” he says. “The material becomes more brittle and therefore doesn’t have the mechanism for absorbing energy, and it tends to break.” But in the fibers made by the new process, many of those tradeoffs are eliminated.

“It’s a big deal when you get a material that has very high strength and high toughness,” Rutledge says. That’s the case with this process, which uses a variation of a traditional method called gel spinning but adds electrical forces. The results are ultrafine fibers of polyethylene that match or exceed the properties of some of the strongest fiber materials, such as Kevlar and Dyneema, which are used for applications including bullet-stopping body armor.

MIT’s new ultrafine fibers are made via gel electrospinning of polyethylene.

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United Launch Alliance (ULA) has concluded an Atlas V launch segment design certification review (DCR) designed for Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft.

The spacecraft is expected to carry astronauts to the International Space Station onboard a ULA Atlas V rocket from the US.

The recently completed Atlas V DCR was conducted to support the Boeing International Space Station (ISS) DCR, which was held last month with Nasa at Kennedy Space Center in the US.

“The design certification review is a significant milestone that completes the design phase of the programme, paving the way for operations.”

ULA Commercial Crew programme manager Barb Egan said: “The design certification review is a significant milestone that completes the design phase of the programme, paving the way for operations.

“Hardware and software final qualification tests are underway, as well as a major integrated test series, including structural loads.

“Future tests will involve launch vehicle hardware such as jettison tests, acoustic tests, and, finally, a pad abort test in White Sands, New Mexico.”

ULA is also involved in the production of a launch vehicle that intends to undergo an unmanned orbital flight test (OFT) in August.

The OFT booster for the upcoming unmanned flight is currently in final assembly phase at ULA’s factory in Decatur, Alabama, US. ULA has also completed pressure testing for the OFT Centaur upper stage.

Other hardware such as the launch vehicle adapter and aeroskirt production are ongoing to support test articles and flight.

ULA has so far launched more than 120 satellites into orbit to help meteorologists to track severe weather, provide critical capabilities for troops in the field, and enable GPS navigation and other missions.

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Researchers from the US Geological Survey (USGS) have spotted eight sites on Mars where thick deposits of ice beneath the surface of the planet are exposed at steep slopes. Shown is a cross-section of underground ice is exposed at the steep slope that appears bright blue in this enhanced-color view from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

With slopes as steep as 55°, the eight scarps are expected to unveil new data on the internal layered structure of previously found underground ice sheets in Mars’ middle latitudes, as well as the planet’s climate history.

The discovery was made using the University of Arizona-led HiRISE camera aboard Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

“What we’ve seen here are cross-sections through the ice that give us a 3D view with more detail than ever before.”

HiRISE also revealed that the newly found sites are situated in both the northern and southern hemispheres of Mars and equivalent to Scotland or the tip of South America in size.

Believed to have amassed as snow long ago, the deposits are exposed in cross-sections as relatively pure water ice and could provide a source of drinking water for future astronauts visiting Mars.

USGS Arizona Astrogeology Science Center researcher and lead author of the research Colin Dundas said: “There is shallow ground ice under roughly a third of the Martian surface, which records the recent history of Mars.

“What we’ve seen here are cross-sections through the ice that give us a 3D view with more detail than ever before.”

Findings of the latest research have also suggested that the eight new sites could offer a direct access to ice at latitudes with less hostile conditions than those at Mars’ polar ice caps.

A cross-section of underground ice is exposed at the steep slope that appears bright blue in this enhanced-color view from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

http://www.aerospace-technology.com/news/usgs-researchers-spot-deposits-buried-…

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Computational Materials

Solvay Composite Materials (Brussels) and Strata (Dubai) have formalized their Joint Venture (JV) to supply Boeing with advanced composite materials from a high-tech facility to be built in Al Ain. Following the signature of the JV agreement, the parties will seek anti-trust approvals.

The equal ownership joint venture will be the UAE’s first supplier of pre-impregnated carbon fibers.

The partnership marks Solvay’s entry into advanced materials manufacturing in the UAE, and Mubadala’s entry into advanced materials manufacturing for the aerospace industry through its wholly owned business, Strata Manufacturing.

“Over the last ten years, Mubadala has helped to create an advanced and sustainable aerospace industry in line with Abu Dhabi’s economic diversification vision,” said Khaled Abdulla Al Qubaisi, CEO Aerospace, Renewables and ICT, Mubadala. “This agreement with Solvay fits perfectly with our growth strategy, focusing as it does on high-tech manufacturing capabilities, and demonstrates our commitment to providing competitive offerings to the world’s leading OEMs.”

“This joint venture showcases Solvay’s capabilities in advanced aerospace composite technologies, including for aircraft primary structures as a growth pillar for our materials business,” said Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, CEO of Solvay.

The new approximately 8,500 square meter facility will supply Boeing with carbon fiber prepreg for primary structure applications in its new 777X program. Solvay’s prepreg technology consists of fiber reinforcements pre-impregnated with a resin matrix to manufacture composite parts, providing exceptional performance at lower weight compared to metal structures.

CompositsWorld.com