Ares 1-X Test Flight Video

This great computer graphics vidieo shows the upcoming flight of NASA's Ares 1-X experimental flight demonstrating the feasibility of the Ares 1 launch vehicle, which NASA is developing as a replacement for the Space Shuttle to transport astronauts into space.

The 1X flight will include a simulated upper stage to measure the relevant parameters of the rocket's flight. In the video we see the burn of the first stage, the separation, and the recovery of the first stage. Included is a nice sequence of the staged parachute opening, which is done to ensure a more gradual decelaration of the empty stage as it returns to earth.

The single solid rocket booster on the first stage of the Ares 1 is a stretched version of the human-rated solid rocket motors that are currently used to power the lift-off of the Space Shuttle. In the case of the Shuttle, these boosters are designed to be recovered from their ocean landing site and re-used in later flights. NASA is also interested in using the same approach for Ares 1.

Australian Partner Lunar Numbat Joins White Label Space

White Label Space is proud to announce its newest partnership with the Australian/New Zealand group called Lunar Numbat. The Lunar Numbat group will use their skills and Open Source technologies to help us develop novel hardware and software solutions for our Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP) mission.

The Numbat is a small and cute marsupial animal native to Western Australia. The Numbat was formerly classified as endagered and had a total population less than 1000 in the 1970's. Today however, its population has increase somewhat and it is classified as 'vulnerable'.

While working with us on GLXP, the Lunar Numbat group also hopes to bring about innovations in space science using open source technologies, to collaborate with other space science entities, to educate as to the benefits that space science provides all people and advocate the formation of an Australian Space Agency. Perhaps the recovery from near-extinction of the Numbat can set a good example for the recovery of the Australian space industry, which is currently in a state of neglect by the Australian government.

In the coming months our White Label Space core engineering team will work together with the Lunar Numbat group to determine which parts or subsystems of our space mission they will develop.

White Label Space looks forward to forming partnerships with other like-minded organisations around world who have the right stuff to undertake ambitious space exploration and to inspire today's generation that wasn't even alive when humans last walked on the Moon.

Euromoon 2000

Euromoon 2000 was an initiative of the European Space Agency (ESA) in the 1990s aiming to land a robotic craft at the Aitken Basin near the Moon's south pole in the year 2000. The budget for the mission was never found but the efforts made at that time are certainly relevant to European team wishing to compete in the Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP).

The mission was envisioned as true partnership between space agency and industry where they both shared the initial costs and any potential financial returns. It also invited additional sponsorship from the European Union, the commercial sphere and the general public. The estimated cost was one ECU per European citizen, which at that time would have equated to around 250 million Euros.

The mission comprised two spacecraft, a lunar Orbiter and a lunar Lander, which were both launched on an Ariane 4 (the no longer operating predescesor to the Ariane 5). After a two-month phase orbiting the Moon and collecting topographical and geographical data, the Lander would separate from the Orbiter and land at a peak of eternal light. Once on the surface, scientific instruments would be used to search for frozen volatiles such as water. The Lander would also carry multiple robotic payloads for a exploration competition called the 'Millennium Challenge', which would have involved a robotic race to the Moon's South Pole.

The efforts to develop the Euromoon 2000 mission plan were led by the Dutch Astronaut Wubbo Ockels, who assembled a team of over 25 engineers and scientists from ESA and industry to make a preliminary mission assessment study, building upon some related studies that took place in the preceding years.

By lobbying the delegates of the various nations that make up ESA, Ockels was able to get the Euromoon 2000 project on the agenda of the ESA Ministerial Council of 1997 with a request for 50 million Euros (the remaining 200 million was to come from private industry). However, much to the dissapointment of the project participants, the ministers present at the council meeting voted not to support the project with any ESA money.

By assembling a sizeable interdisciplinary team working together in one room, the Euromoon 2000 project was the first attempt to do concurrent engineering in ESA and played a major role in the creation of ESA's Concurrent Engineering Facility (CDF), which is still led today by the deputy project manager of Euromoon 2000, Massimo Bandecchi.

British Partnership Aims to Launch Satellites

After many decades without a serious attempt to compete in the satellite launch business, two British firms have formed a partnership to develop a new air-launch service based on the White Knight Two aircraft developed by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites.

Surrey Satellite Technologies Limited (SSTL) and Virgin Galactic are seeking financing to develop a low-cost rocket system that could be carried on the White Knight Two aircraft, which was recently developed with finance from Richard Branson's space tourism venture.

The new launch system would would comprise two solid stages and be capable of injecting satellites from 50kg up to 200kg into a polar orbit of 400km altitude. The target launch price is quoted here at $1 million, which would be a reduction by a factor of 5 to 10 times on the current launch costs for similar sized payloads.

This video explains more details of the partnership.



The predecesor aircraft, "White Knight", was used to win the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE, demonstrating the feasibility of an aircraft launched sub-orbital space tourism system.

Rare Apollo Guidance Computer - AGC video

During the transfer of our blog to it's final domain www.whitelabelspace.com some time has been sent tidying up the old posts, reading the old comments and recategorising the tags. A couple of our posts (Build Your Own Apollo Guidance Computer & Why not try a Virtual Apollo Guidance Computer) centered the Apollo Guidance Computer AGC.

Google Lunar X-PRIZE's own Mike Fabio had commented on one of the posts:

Can we get some videos of this thing in action? That is truly awesome.
The MIT Press (go Engineers!) has recently published a book all about the computers used on the Apollo missions. Check it out here.

Well after another trawl through YouTube's immense archives we finally hit the jackpot. Here's actual footage of the Apollo Guidance Computer staring in it's own YouTube video. We're wondering how much more historically significant space age video will turn up on YouTube & how long that footage will stay available. Let's hope that this one stay's up long enough for you all to see.

SpaceX Sends Message to US Taxpayers - Hire Us

In this update Elon Musk is sending a clear message to American taxpayer - supporting the SpaceX Falcon 9 human rated launcher is in your best interests!

(Image adapted from the SpaceX post)

Elon presents the undeniable logic of his plan as follows:

• it will save the taxpayer $2 billion
• it will bring 1000 high quality jobs
• it will help fill the gap between shuttle and the new manned launcher under development by NASA - the troubled Ares-1

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Upcoming GLXP team White Label Space: Recruiting now open

White Label Space and its Partners are now preparing to recruit talented and motivated staff to help us realize our goals of developing a space mission to win the Google Lunar X PRIZE.

Work locations will be in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Australia.

The roles we are currently seeking qualified staff for are:

• Chemical Propulsion Engineer
• Guidance Navigation and Control Engineer
• Optics Engineer/Physicist
• Space Telecommunications Engineer
• Avionics System Engineer
• Structures Engineer
• Aerospace Engineer
• Thermal Design and Analysis Engineer
• Web Application Developer
• Public Relations Officer

Interns and postgraduate researchers are also welcome to apply.

If you are young, innovative, motivated and passionate about space exploration, please send a copy of your resume with a brief cover letter explaining your vision on how you can be part of our effort to: careers@whitelabelspace.com.

Your details will also be distributed to our Partners unless you request otherwise.

Greatest Space Ads - Irresponsible Astronauts Lose Bridgestone Tires

This space advertisement played on TV during the superbowl features a pair of fun-loving astroanuts enjoying their stay on the Moon but when they come back to their rover, they find that there is a little surprise waiting for them.

Superbowl advertising is the most expensive in the world. In 2009 a 30 second advertisment slot cost $3 million (see USA Today article). We are happy to see that this Superbowl ad included two themes quite close to the Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP) - rovers and Moon exploration.

Project Enterprize - Privately Funded European Space Tourism

Project Enterprise is a German/Swiss/Austrian collaboration started in 2004 as Europe's first privately funded spaceflight project with the goal of carrying out sub orbital flights for space tourism and scientific experiments.
Website: http://www.european-spacetourism.eu/i... (in German only)
Google translation

Kim Jong Il Announces Plan To Bring Moon To North Korea - ONN

The Onion News Network are at it again, this time with a controversial report on Kim Jong Il's plan to bring the Moon to North Korea. If he was to succeed this would of course make nonsense out of Nasa's Lunar program & the Google Lunar X-PRIZE :)



The mission is to be completed by 2015, using 5 rockets to drag the moon back to earth. For the sake of humanity, let's hope this plan does not succeed :)

Google add Mars to the latest release of Google Earth

This is the result of a 3 year cooperation between the Silicon Valley's company with its NASA Ames neighbour aiming to bring the Martian landscape to the public.
Also, note that on this new release, you can Dive beneath the surface and Explore the ocean.




After Earth and the Stars, the now famous Google product "Google Earth" just released a new version with this time the opportunity to explore the Martian surface.

Have a look, explore it and let us know if like us you enjoyed it !

Interview with Dr. Michio Kaku

Steve Paikin from TVO The Agenda interviews Dr. Michio Kaku.
A fascinating talk covering topics from Dr. Michio Kaku's book "Physics of the Impossible".
Subjects discussed range from psychokinesis and telepathy to teleportation and time travel. Impossibilities are split into classes

Class I. Impossibilities Includes force fields, telepathy and antiuniverses. These don't violate the current known laws of science & could be become reality within the next 100 years or so.

Class II. Impossibilities Includes faster than the speed of light travel and parallel universes.

Class III Impossibilities Includes perpetual motion machines and precognition.

In the distant future the need for tons of advanced technology to land payloads on distant planets could be a thing of the past. What will be evidently needed is the ability to harness a power source that is beyond comprehension. The only thing I can say to that is "Beam me up Scotty".

Live 720P HD recording using a Canon 40D & Nikon D700

I'm looking forward to what these hacks will bring us. The Indie film maker has never been in such a good position to produce high quality movies for an extremely low cost.
This is also good news for GLXP teams, as recording their progress in high quality HD suddenly becomes a whole lot more affordable.

Nikon D700

Some Canon die-hards have already managed to coax their DSLRs to record video via live-view, and it looks like Nikon aficionados are now able to do the same, albeit not quite as easily just yet. That's because the mod requires both access to Nikon's SDK for the D700 and the necessary skills to actually do something with it, in this case capturing video from the live-view feed via USB. see rest of story on engadget

Canon 40D

If you're just now starting to come to grips with the fact that Canon's utterly succulent EOS 5D Mark II is just way, way out of reach, here's a little something to lessen the impact of your inferiority complex. An enterprising young buck with a passion to bring video capture abilities to other EOS cameras figured out a way to enable that very capability on all Liveview EOS DSLRs.see rest of story on engadget

Video on Flickr

Near 720p video made with a Canon 40D, using the Live View feature. Camera was connected to the laptop via USB, and a russian program recorded the output. See the video ouput see here on Flickr.

Russian source
Canon 40D-vel készült videó. Részletek a spottr.hu-n!

Migrating from @LunarX_EU to @whitelabelspace

First we would like to thank all the people that have followed us on @LunarX_EU & for all your great comments so far. In the lead up to joining the Google Lunar X-PRIZE we are now migrating over to use our @whitelabelspace account instead as @LunarX_EU as this was only meant as a place holder until we found an official name for our project.

Please join us at @whitelabelspace & feel free to comment/ask questions/make suggestions on how we can improve our chances of winning GLXP, what you would like to know about us, how we can improve our ongoing dialogue with you or how you can join or contribute to our project.

We would like to thank the 600 plus people that have followed us on twitter in the last 4 days. It seems at least that the word has managed to reach many of our blog readers. If you would like to follow our web 2.0 progress on other services, please use the "Contact" link in the navbar above or link here.

Content is sparse at this moment in time but you expect it to start to fill up soon as the details around our team & project become more public. Thanks for all the kind words of support we have received from many of you up to now. We look forward to hearing from you!

Tohoku University's SPRITE-SAT Successfully Launched

The SPRITE-SAT spacecraft designed and built by Tohoku Univeristy, a partner of White Label Space, was successfully launched into space last week on a Japanese H-IIA rocket. The satellite was inserted in the prescribed orbit and radio signals from the satellite have been received at the ground station in Tohoku University, and have confirmed that the satellite is in good health.

SPRITE-SAT has now started its mission to observe Sprites and Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGF). The spacecraft was developed by the faculty and students of Tohoku Univeristy, with technical support from external mentors experienced in satellite development. Students played a leading role in the assembly and testing of the spacecraft, giving a unique opportunity for hands-on education in space science and space engineering.

Onboard the satellite was a minature gallery of art, etched onto a silicon wafer by photolithography, making this mission also one of the first art exhibitions in outer space.

Tohoku University, led by Professor Kazuya Yoshida, will use the experience gained from SPRITE-SAT to develop the rover for our Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP) mission, which will be a small rover capable of travelling at least 500m across the lunar surface and capturing hi-definition videos and photographs for transmission back to Earth.

NASA's Ares-1 "Stick" Broken in Two

This video shows the (intentional) separation of the first and second stages of NASA's planned Ares 1 launcher, which is currently under development as a man-rated replacement for the Space Shuttle.

The separation simulated by this test will take place after the first stage solid motor completes its burn and will be effected by a ring shaped explosive charge that cuts through the aluminium structure that joins the two stages together. Remember, this structure must be thick enough to transmit the high bending loads anticipated during the flight of this long slender rocket, called the "Stick" by some.

The test shown in this slow motion video was to check that the separation charge makes a clean break between the two stages. The shocks generated by the explosive charge were also measured during the test, and this will give important information enabling the engineers to design and layout the nearby equipment mounted in the launcher that must withstand the shock environment.



Earlier Post: When the Change the Ares-1 "Stick" into a Normal Rocket

#spacemashup contest. Winner of the day #1 "marsheimers"

During a twitter conversation today a new word popped up "Marsheimers".
Here at White Label Space HQ we started to discuss what other space related word we could mash together & then thought "why not crowd source it". So we're starting a competition to find the latest & greatest space related mash up words.

If you have a new #spacemashup word please add the tag #spacemashup & tweet it us @whitelabelspace.
We will give a mystery prize to the person that creates the best example.
If you get stuck for ideas then you can always use Naque's Word Mixer but just don't tell us or we will say you cheated :)

Todays winner is @_OM_ & here's the conversation.
@whitelabelspace: NASA Mars rover Spirit has a 'senior moment': Hum, looks like the long-lived Mars rovers are showing their age. .. http://tinyurl.com/dmol4g
@_OM_ @whitelabelspace "Marsheimers"

@_OM_ we owe you one for that great word, drop us a line & we'll send you something.

Hubble - Point and Click

As part of the International Year of Astronomy (http://www.astronomy2009.org/ ) the Hubble Site is letting the public decide where to point their big expensive camera.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched on board Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990, and since then there have been 4 servicing missions by Space Shuttles. The final servicing mission is planned for May this year (read more here). 

The HST stands as a shining example of the need for Human Spaceflight. Without astronauts, the telescope would never have been able to be serviced and upgraded to continue operating till today. 

At White Label Space, the only thing we could think of as being better than a giant telescope in low earth orbit would be a giant telescope on the Moon. With no atmosphere and large open spaces, astronauts could build giant telescopes with unparalleled views of the cosmos.

But at the moment, we've still got Hubble, and you get to pick between six different targets:

• A star forming region
• Two planetary nebulae
• A spiral galaxy
• An edge-on galaxy
• And interacting galaxies

Head on over to http://youdecide.hubblesite.org to cast your vote

In memory of the Challenger crew

On the 28th of January 1986, I remember watching the news on TV some hours after the liftoff the Challenger and the feeling of disbelief that struck me as the rockets malfunctioned causing Challenger to disintegrate in thin air. The most horrific part of the TV reports that day was not the explosion itself but the look on the spectators faces as it slowly dawned on them that something had gone dreadfully wrong. A sad day in space history but one that proves that even the best laid plans can go wrong & space travel is never an easy task. "Failure is not an option" may have been NASA's motto but sometimes the chips are stacked against us & we must live with the cards that we are dealt.

Top 10 Greatest Space Advertisements

Outer space is a big place with lots of advertising opportunities. We compiled this list of top 10 space-linked advertisements for earthly products to explore some of the brand-linkages that are available for space missions that are seeking sponsorship from private companies.

• 1 - Heineken on Mars
• 2 - Pizza Hut on the ISS
• 3 - Pepsi on MIR
• 4 - Space Food Sticks
• 5 - Space Golf by Element 21
• 6 - Martians with Hewlett Packard Printers
• 7 - 7Up Spaceflight Competition
• 8 - Cosmofon's Signal Reaches Space
• 9 - SONY and Space Tourism
• 10 - Johnnie Walker and Space Walking