Rybo

You can never be too excited for cool stuff being done in space! The really exciting part of the MAVEN aerobrake is that it was never intended to do it in the first place. It doesn't have a heat shield. It's original areocentric capture orbit and subsequent orbital adjustments were all accomplished with it's Aerojet thrusters.

Copy-pasta from the InsideLM article:

I love the "sounds" from space. Absolutely incredible.

The massive vortex at the center of Saturn's north pole hexagon.

Never hurts to apply when the reqs start dropping. The worst they can say is no

Ill have to ask around to be sure, but I believe Lucy funding is from FY2016 and is currently capped. I haven't seen the FY2018 NASA et al. allocations but it's unlikely that it will include any further funding for Lucy, although it probably covers Psyche.

First returned image!

Hello all! Most of you are probably unaware that Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company recently won the contract for the Lucy Spacecraft set to launch in 2021 to visit a handful of Jupiter Trojans. The Lucy team will be fairly small (relatively speaking) given the shrinking budgets of interplanetary missions lately, but LM WILL be hiring new talent in the near future so keep your eyes open for opportunities if you feel you are eligible: http://search.lockheedmartinjobs.com The initial hiring wave will be primarily experienced engineers to design and integrate the bus and payload systems, and a second wave a year or so later will be build and test technicians such as solderers, cable and harness fabricators, and ground test equipment fabrication and installation technicians. If you don't feel qualified but want to be qualified it may be worth obtaining an IPC or J-STD solder certificate through your local community college if it's offered, or getting any job in electronics fabrication, repair, or installation and gaining some professional experience. I must admit I'm not on the forums all that often but I'll do my best to answer any questions you may have. Cheers!

If there's anything you should know about this business in the real world it's that it is extremely dynamic. WorldView-4 is now slated for the 11th of this month. The launch date of the 9th exceeds the battery life of the batteries on the Atlas and they must be removed, conditioned, and recharged at the ULA battery lab in Denver. Normally this could induce up to several months delay but instead the WV-4 team has coordinated with the NROL-79 team and they will be removing the batteries from AV-068 which still have several months remaining in their lifespan. This may or may not further delay NROL-79 depending on how quickly the battery lab can get them turned around. The ripple effect of the fire is incredible.

WV-4 bumped to the 9th of this month. NROL-79 moved up a day to Jan. 26th.

WV-4 is launching on the 6th of this month. NROL-79 was delayed because WV-4 was delayed and the new tentative date is Jan/27. Hope that clarifies.

A new little birdie told me it's now moved up to Jan/27.

As I'm sure most of you are aware, Worldview is scheduled to go on 11/6. Furthermore, a little birdie told me that NROL-79 is tentatively scheduled for Feb/14.

Further update...probably the last for a while since I'm finally headed back to home base. VAFB is still a madhouse of contractors and people all trying to figure things out. SLC-3 is still on generator power and there is still no firm date for WV4 (which will almost certainly delay the NROL launch in December). At this point the pessimist in me suspects that WV4 will be lucky to launch before the end of the year and that NROL-79 will be early spring. I'll keep my ears open back home but I certainly won't have access to the information that I have here.

Today I was able to get some more info about a few things. Currently, WV-4 launch remains unscheduled but is likely to occur sometime between 10/10-10/15. The only thing currently preventing launch is that the SLC is still operating on generator power. The power lines themselves are down because the fire burned the poles to the ground. Launch can't proceed until they are repaired and they are back on the VAFB UPS system (uninterruptible power supply). If those repairs take longer than expected for some reason, launch date could slip later into October or November. If it were to slip even later there is talk about reorganizing the entire schedule to ensure that other ULA customer needs are met. ULA has 1 primary Atlas V launch team and they work both coasts. With 6 total Atlas V launches in the next 5 months (WV4, NROL-79, SBIRS, GOES, Echostar, and AEHF), you can see why they might need to change the scheduling to make their other customers (read: their customers with larger budgets) happy.