Here’s a video I shot of the final Mod flight of the day Saturday, which suffered the engine problem that prevented it from landing successfully. The lander is out of view for the second half of the video, hidden by the terrain (including an unfortunately-placed bush), but you can hear the audio of the play-by-play of the flight and the audience reaction when it was announced the vehicle had not landed safely.

I talked briefly with John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace late this afternoon to find out what happened with their failed bid to win Level 1 of the Lunar Lander Challenge. He said that while they had a fine flight on the first leg of their bid, they found the injector clogged again during preparations for the return flight. They tried to clean it out in the field, but when they finally ignited the engine they had a hard start. Carmack said he initially feared that the hard start destroyed the engine, but it continued to fly, so he decided to get the vehicle over to the other pad as fast as possible and hover, hoping the engine would last 90 seconds. It turns out the engine finally failed at the 82-second mark, causing the vehicle to crash-land but not causing any major damage. Dust did not play a factor in the failure, he said; they’re able to fly by instruments very accurately.

Carmack said they will have to replace the engine chamber and a gimbal actuator, but that can be done easily using the spare parts on the other Mod vehicle. They’re also trying to get to the root of the injector problem, which may be caused by fuel contamination. Among the solutions they’re considering is using a filter provided by another LLC team, Unreasonable Rocket. Carmack remains confident that they can win at least Level 1, with a 70% chance of success tomorrow. If they succeed in the morning window, they’ll try for Level 2 in the afternoon; he estimates that they have “only” a 30-40% chance of winning Level 2 if they try Sunday afternoon.

Armadillo came seven seconds and a few meters, it appears, from winning the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Level 1 competition Saturday afternoon at Holloman AFB, NM. The first leg of the flight was flawless, as Mod rose up, translated, and landed on the other pad without incident. After some delays preparing the vehicle for the return flight (a technical issue during propellant loading and pressurization), Mod rose up for the return trip. The vehicle got back to the home pad quickly and hovered over it to build up its flight time to 90 seconds. However, the vehicle appeared to land seven seconds early and tipped over, perhaps because it came down on the edge of or off the pad. The reason for the incident isn’t clear right now, but it may be linked to a loss of visibility caused by kicking up huge clouds of dust during the final hover phase. Also unknown is any damage mod may have sustained.

Armadillo has two more chances, Sunday morning and afternoon, to win the Level 1 prize; if they are able to fly and win the Level 1 prize Sunday morning they can still try for Level 2 in the afternoon.

Armadillo Aerospace just left the staging area to head to the launch pad for their second attempt at the Lunar Lander Challenge Level 1. The problem that forced them to scrub the first attempt was with their igniter, which failed to work at the pad this morning. They found foreign debris in the igniter–perhaps shaken into place during the journey from Dallas to New Mexico–and took the vehicle back to the pad to clean it out. The igniter is working well now and they are confident that they’ll be able to win at least the Level 1 challenge by Sunday afternoon. As John Carmack put it, “It would take extraordinarily bad luck not to walk away with at least the Level 1 prize.”

Armadillo Aerospace’s first attempt to win Level 1 of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge was scrubbed Saturday morning. Details right now are scarce, but apparently the team encountered some kind of technical problem with the Mod vehicle at the pad that could not be fixed there. As far as we know they will try again early this afternoon in the second (and final) window of the day.

I’ve uploaded on Flickr some photos from the media day Friday at the X Prize Cup. There’s a mix of people at the press conference, LLC vehicles on display, and planes practicing their routines for the weekend air show. Oh, and the parachutists who landed on the tarmac a few dozen meters from where a group of us were standing around the LLC exhibits.

As for the Lunar Lander Challenge, the centerpiece of the X Prize Cup: Armadillo Aerospace will be flying its Mod vehicle for the Level 1 challenge and the larger Pixel vehicle (which flew last year) for Level 2. If all goes well, Mod will fly Saturday morning and Pixel will fly Saturday afternoon; if both are successful then they may do some demo flights on Sunday even though they’ve captured the prizes. Should they be unsuccessful Saturday morning, they will keep trying again to win Level 1 before going on to Level 2, according to Armadillo’s Neil Milburn.

Representatives of several other teams are here as well, including Masten Space, Unreasonable Rocket, and SpeedUp. During the press conference, they estimated that they spent anywhere from a little over $100,000 to $3.5 million (what Armadillo has spent since inception), with 45,000 person-hours spent in aggregate by the teams alone in pursuit of the prize.

The X Prize Cup gets started today with an education/media day at Holloman AFB that’s not open to the general public; the full event (open to the public and with free admission) is Saturday and Sunday. There’s a press conference scheduled for late this morning with several announcements planned:

• An unspecified announcement by the Teachers in Space project;
• An announcement by Rocketplane Global (the suborbital arm of Rocketplane Inc.) and Launch Magazine; this is expected to be the unveiling of the new Rocketplane XP design that is a move away from the modified-Learjet design the company had been pursuing in favor of something that is bigger and/or more affordable;
• An announcement by the Rocket Racing League. The league did announce this morning that three new teams had joined the league (one of which is led by former da Vinci Project founder Brian Feeney), but the expectation is that the announcement will be something bigger. RRL CEO Granger Whitelaw was a no-show during a panel session he was supposed to be a part of Thursday afternoon at ISPS; his replacement, another RRL official, said that Whitelaw was “off seeing his rocket fly”. There have been rumors that the cup might feature a video feed of an X-Racer test flight in Mojave; we’ll see…

Like with the ISPS, as time and technology permit I’ll post updates here and on Twitter during the day.

(The picture above doesn’t have anything to do directly with the conference, it’s just a nice view of the Moon rising around sunset Wednesday as seen from the conference site in Las Cruces.)

Yesterday’s sessions of the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight didn’t have any groundbreaking revelations, but there were still some interesting developments and news from the various conference sessions, which I’ll summarize below:

• One of the most informative presentations during the day was the first, by Valin Thorn, deputy program manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew & Cargo Program. He addressed head-on the recent decision to terminate the funded COTS agreement with Rocketplane Kistler, saying that they had missed milestones not only for their financing, but also a cargo module critical design review. He called the K-1 concept “outstanding” and said he wouldn’t be surprised to see them resubmit a revised proposal in the new round of COTS bidding.
• John Herrington, filling in for George French in the same morning session (French was at the conference but called away to a board meeting), confirmed earlier reports that the company had lined up commitments from investors for $300 million of the sought-for $450 million (not $500 million as reported elsewhere), but those plans fell through because of a variety of reasons, including NASA’s agreement to buy Progress and Soyuz flights from Russia as well as comments by unnamed NASA officials that appeared to be disparaging towards COTS.
• Herrington did say that work was proceeding with the XP suborbital spaceplane, and the company plans to announce a revised design of the vehicle on Friday. From what I understand, this will be more than a minor tweak to the existing modified-Learjet approach. Herrington said that some of the investors who has expressed an interest in the K-1 may also be interested in investing in the XP (which is done by a separate subsidiary company, Rocketplane Global), but didn’t have anything specific to say about XP financing.
• Thorn’s talk also revealed some new developments by other companies that have unfunded COTS agreements. SPACEHAB is working on a concept called ARCTUS to develop a cargo spacecraft based on the Centaur upper stage. PlanetSpace, in addition to their work on their Nova booster and spaceplane, is also working on a less-ambitious concept that would use a launch vehicle called the Athena 3 (a Lockheed Martin Athena 2 augmented with two shuttle SRB segments) for carrying cargo to the station.
• SpaceDev CEO Mark Sirangelo said his company is continuing work on its Dream Chaser design for both orbital and suborbital applications, including working with NASA on an unfunded COTS agreement. The company’s operations have been disrupted because of the San Diego wildfires that forced them to evacuate their Poway, California headquarters; he said their team is working on their new COTS proposal from a trailer on a beach near San Diego.
• Sirangelo added that SpaceDev may work with Benson Space Company on engine technology for BSC’s suborbital vehicle, but plans no additional involvement on that project.
• Hugues Laporte-Weywada, senior vice president of EADS Astrium, didn’t offer a lot of new details about his company’s suborbital space tourism vehicle. That effort started in early 2006 with market and design studies; the Rocketplane-like spaceplane won out over rocket-and-capsule and air-launched spaceplane approaches. The company is continuing work on both technology and financing, and hopes to have all the money lined up to develop the vehicle as soon as possible in early 2008.
• The government-commercial synergy panel was a crowded mix of familiar topics (operationally responsive space, the Marine Corps’ SUSTAIN concept, and other RLV technology development work), without a lot of new developments announced.
• Two afternoon panels featuring past and expectant space travelers were combined into one, with Anousheh Ansari and two NASA astronauts (Michael Lopez-Alegria and Dan Barry) discussing what their orbital flights were like, as well as expectant or would-be space tourists Reda Anderson (Rocketplane), Craig Willan (Virgin Galactic), and Lori Garver (who tried to arrange a trip to the ISS in 2002) discussing their expectations. One theme that emerged: when you’re in space, take time to simply soak in the experience rather than get caught up in tasks or taking pictures.

Thursday’s sessions appear focused on spaceport development, financing, and more discussions with astronauts. I will continue, as schedule and technology permits, to microblog some insights from the conference on Twitter during the day.

I’m in Las Cruces, New Mexico for what is arguably the marquee week this year in the space tourism field: the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight this Wednesday and Thursday, and the X Prize Cup Saturday and Sunday at Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo (where the event is billed as the “2007 Holloman Air and Space Expo Featuring The X Prize Cup”.)

The conference will be a good opportunity to get updates on the progress of various ventures (not the least of which being Rocketplane Kistler, now that the company has lost its funded COTS award), while the Cup will be headlined by the Lunar Lander Challenge, with Armadillo Aerospace likely to be the only team flying, unless Acuity, who has been developing their entry largely out of the media spotlight, has made more progress than publicly recognized. There are a number of other announcements by various companies expected at the Cup, primarily during a media day on Friday.

I will be posting updates from both the ISPS and the X Prize Cup, Internet connectivity permitting, as well as get caught up on some other recent developments I haven’t had an opportunity to post here. Also, as an experiment in up-to-the-microsecond microblogging, I’ll attempt to post some quick updates during the events on a newly-created Twitter feed.