Space Exploration Fuels
Potential Insurance Snags (Source: IBA)
All of the increased demand and new product offerings for space
transport mean amplified insurance complications. says Sima Adhya, Head
of Space with Torus. Coverage like “launch plus one”—which covers the
insured from the point of ignition—is a bit underpriced.
“The space market has been fairly profitable over the last decade, but
unfortunately, rates are very competitive right now,” Adhya said.
“We’re being asked by brokers to insure things that previously, we
would have been able to have exclusions for. There’s a lot of rate
pressure right now.”
The low coverage prices are the result of rapid technological
development, an influx of manufacturers into the space and insurers
eager to cover those vehicles. In the last few years alone, Adhya has
seen two to three new market entrants in the space insurance market.
(5/14)
Hadfield's 'Space Oddity'
Removed From YouTube (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
A year ago, while commander of the ISS, the Canadian covered David
Bowie’s 1969 tune ‘Space Oddity’ from orbit. Now the Youtube video of
the performance is to be taken down. Hadfield’s recording was no spur
of the moment inspiration. It was made over a period of six months and
involved Canadian producer Joe Corcoran, who did the musical
arrangement, and compatriot film-maker Andrew Tidby, who engineered the
classy video, later watched by an Internet audience of 22 million.
Playing the piano intro was Emm Gryner – a member of Bowie’s band in
1999-2000.
The video was released onto Youtube, with Bowie’s blessing and a
one-year license, upon Hadfield’s return to Earth. The license expires
today and the five-and-a-half-minute recording, which has attracted
more than 22 million plays, will no longer be watchable on-line. Yet it
has helped inspire a new generation of spaceflight enthusiasts with its
spectacular views both inside and outside the ISS backed by one of the
most iconic tunes of the Space Age. (5/14)
Boeing: No New Russian
RD-180 Engines Needed For ULA Bulk Buy Deal (Source:
Aviation Week)
United Launch Alliance (ULA), which operates the embattled Atlas V, has
enough of the rocket’s Russian engines in storage to meet its
commitment to the U.S. Air Force in the company’s 36-booster bulk buy
inked in December, according to a Boeing executive.
"We believe we can deliver on the block buy with the engines we have,"
says Roger Krone, president of Boeing Network and Space Systems. ULA
has 16 RD-180s on U.S. soil, according to an industry official. Should
it run short of RD-180s, ULA and U.S. Air Force, its customer, can
shift some launches from the Atlas V manifest to Delta IV. "That is not
our desired approach," Krone says. "We’d just as soon not move the
manifest." (5/14)
New Techniques Could Help
Find Exomoons Orbiting Distant Planets (Source:
SpaceFlight Insider)
Exoplanets orbiting distant stars are now being discovered in the
thousands, with a new discovery made almost every week now. But what
about exomoons? In our own solar system, moons far outnumber planets,
so it should be considered likely that many of those other planets out
there would also have moons.
The problem is size; moons tend to be much smaller than planets in most
cases, so detecting them orbiting such far away worlds is very
difficult. Thankfully, however, technology is now at the point where
just such detections should begin to be possible. A new technique how
now been proposed that could allow astronomers to bring exomoons from
theoretical concepts to reality.
Previous techniques being tried could realistically only detect moons
which were several times the mass of the largest moon in our solar
system, Ganymede. The new technique however, could find smaller moons
typically found in our solar system by using a unique eclipsing effect
of moons when viewed against the background radiance of their host
stars. (5/14)
Japan Plans to Have a
Power Plant in Space in a Decade (Source: Motherboard)
Japan, where the disastrous Fukushima meltdown heightened the search
for safe, sustainable alternative energy, is answering that need by
sending a power plant into space. Actually, the plan to power the globe
with gigantic space-based solar panels has been kicking around since
the '60s. But thanks to a perfect storm of technological
advances—strong but lightweight tether materials, swarming worker
robots that can self-assemble, more efficient solar panels, and cheaper
payload launches—this thing is actually looking feasible. (5/14)
Russia Is Turning Elon
Musk into Tony Stark (Source: Bloomberg)
If the Ukraine crisis did not exist, Tesla founder Elon Musk would want
to invent it. The new Cold War between the U.S. and Russia is helping
Musk realize his dream of wresting the U.S. space launch market from
behemoths Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which control it through their
United Launch Alliance. Musk's biggest helper? A spiteful, nationalist
Russian politician named Dmitri Rogozin, the deputy prime minister in
charge of the country's defense industry.
Like Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, Musk wants to be the U.S.
government's favorite high-tech supplier and has been rather successful
so far: His projects, including SpaceX, have received generous
subsidies. More surprising than Musk's public lobbying is Rogozin's
boorish cluelessness as to his country's interests. Russia, a leader in
rocket technology, does not want to get locked out of the U.S. market,
as China is.
Yet the head of Putin's military-industrial complex threatens to halt
engine sales, stop funding the International Space Station after 2020,
and switch off GPS terrestrial measuring stations in Russia. Musk
should be paying the man a salary for providing him with the business
opportunity of a lifetime. (5/14)
Embry-Riddle Brings Land,
Air, Water Vehicles to Unmanned Systems Demo (Source: ERAU
A Ford Escape Hybrid, equipped by a team of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University students and faculty with a GrayMatter Autonomous Vehicle
System, navigated around NASA’s Kennedy Space Center track on its own
on May 11. The car uses GPS and a scanner with 64 lasers to detect its
position and environment.
The university also pitted its Androne aircraft against 10 other
organizations’ unmanned drones, and displayed its Minion boat, a fully
autonomous Wave Adaptive Modular Vessel. The demonstrations were part
of Embry-Riddle’s involvement in the Space Florida Unmanned Systems
Demonstration on May 11 at the spaceport. (5/14)
Embry Riddle Team
Competes in NASA Robotic Mars Mining Competition (Source:
ERAU)
An Embry-Riddle robotics team will travel to Kennedy Space Center again
May 19-23 to compete against 40 other teams at the fifth-annual NASA
Robotic Mining Competition. Machines must cross a simulated Martian
landscape, excavate surface materials and deposit them into a collector
bin within 10 minutes. The winning team will receive a trophy, Kennedy
Space Center launch invitations and a $5,000 scholarship. Technology
concepts developed by the teams could be the forerunners to robots
mining resources in space. Click here.
(5/14)
Giant Planet Found
Orbiting Dwarf Star (Source: CBC)
A gigantic planet-like object like no other has been found circling a
tiny star at a record distance. The object is a kind of "super Jupiter"
– a gas giant about 10 times bigger than the biggest planet in our
solar system, says Marie-Eve Naud, a PhD student at the University of
Montreal and lead author of a scientific report describing the planet.
The study is being published in the Astrophysical Journal this week.
GU PSc b is 2,000 times farther from its star than the Earth is from
the sun, 67 times farther than Neptune and 50 times farther than Pluto
— more distant than any planet ever discovered by a long shot, said
René Doyon. But despite the vast distance between them, the planet is
bound to its star via gravity. The researchers estimate that the planet
completes its orbit around the star about once every 80,000 years.
(5/14)
Testing Satellites … By
Nuking Them (Source: Medium)
Here’s the challenge. You want to make sure your military satellite is
tough enough to withstand the radiation from a nuclear blast. Here’s
the problem. You can’t just put the sat in orbit and nuke it. That’s
illegal and dangerous. Plus, you’ll need to study the spacecraft after
the test in order to get the results—something hard to do if it’s a
cloud of radioactive shrapnel. So how do you do it? With clever
thinking and big, wacky hardware, is how. Click here.
(5/14)
The U.S. Must Speed Up
its Space Rocket Development (Source: Daily Star)
NASA's Commercial Crew approach has been controversial. In 2010,
astronauts Gene Cernan (Apollo 17), Jim Lovell (Apollos 8 and 13), and
Neil Armstrong (Apollo 11) protested NASA’s approach in a letter to
U.S. President Barack Obama. They warned that failure to pursue an
aggressive government-funded space program “destines our nation to
become one of second- or even third-rate stature.”
The debate is still raging. There are those who argue that we need to
maintain a traditional approach to human spaceflight, with NASA owning
and operating the launchers through contractors. Others embrace the
private-sector option, which allows entrepreneurial firms to pursue
innovative approaches to human spaceflight. The success demonstrated
thus far heartens many, but if NASA’s approach fails, the United States
may find itself indefinitely relying on the Russians for access to the
ISS.
To avoid reliance on good Russian-American relations, the U.S. must
accelerate the development of an American rocket. Bolden has already
asked for this, telling the U.S. Congress that “the choice here is
between fully funding the request to bring space launches back to
American soil or continue to send millions to the Russians.” Thus far,
Congress has not acted to accelerate the development of an
American-built rocket. (5/14)
DigitalGlobe's New Bird
Needs Government OK to Sell Close-Up Images (Source:
Denver Post)
To remain globally competitive, DigitalGlobe needs the federal
government to lift restrictions on commercial use of the
high-resolution images captured by WorldView-3, its newest satellite.
Boulder-based Ball Aerospace & Technologies hosted the last
public viewing of the 6,200-pound bird that it built for DigitalGlobe.
Ball is finishing its final tests on the satellite and preparing to
ship it to the launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base. (5/14)
Ex-Im Bank’s 2013 Deal of
the Year award for ABS-2 Satellite (Source: The Lawyer)
Allen & Overy has been presented with the 2013 Deal of the Year
award by the Export-Import Bank of the US (US Ex-Im) at the bank’s 39th
Annual Conference in Washington DC. The firm advised US Ex-Im as lender
in the $471m (£280m) debt financing to Kingsbridge, the holding company
of Asia Broadcast Satellite’s (ABS’s) group of operating companies, for
the procurement, construction, launch and operation of three new
satellites.
Bermuda’s Kingsbridge, the head of company of ABS Group, signed the
three-tranche credit facility, worth $471m, with a tenor of 12.5 + 8.5
years with US Ex-Im and achieved financial close in February 2014.
According to Allen & Overy, the hybrid corporate and project
financing structure features a unique part-export refinancing feature
for an existing $215m bank loan as well as a substantial new capex
financing, allowing the company to fund construction, launch and
insurance of three new-built satellites into a single long-term
committed debt package. (5/14)
Why “Exoatmospheric War
Zone” is Part of the Outlook for Space Companies (Source:
Quartz)
SpaceX claims it is making great progress toward a reusable rocket,
while Russia and the US are playing a tit-for-tat game of space
sanctions, refusing each other rocket engines and satellite tracking
stations. Together, this is a recipe for space war, at least according
to the geo-strategic consulting firm Wikistrat.
In a new report released today, the firm revealed its efforts to
forecast the future of the private space industry with a two-week
simulation created by 75 analysts and led by Dr. Bruce Wald, the former
director of the US Navy’s space research program. Wikistrat uses an
online platform to conduct crowd-sourced strategic analysis for
corporate and government clients, including NATO.
The simulation identified two overriding trends that will determine the
future of the private sector outside of earth: The level of
international tension, which will determine the types of activities
occurring outside of earth’s atmosphere, and the cost of putting stuff
in space, which will determine how much of it is done. Based on that
rubric, the simulation found four possible scenarios for the latter
half of the 21st century. Click here.
(5/14)
US Eases Export Control
Norms on Satellites, Components (Source: The Hindu)
In a move that could open the door for greater India US collaboration,
the Obama Administration on Tuesday said it would relax its export
control norms on satellite and its components. These changes have been
made part of the US President’s Export Control Reform Initiative, and
will increase the competitiveness of cutting-edge, well-paying
manufacturing and technology sectors by better aligning export controls
with national security priorities, the State Department said.
According to the new regulations, these changes allow most commercial,
scientific, and civil satellites and their parts and components to move
to the Department of Commerce’s Commerce Control List. This revision
removes from the US Munitions List communication satellites that do not
contain classified components. (5/14)
Onward to Europa
(Source: Aeon)
Europa is roughly the same size as Earth’s Moon, and some researchers
thought that it too might have an ancient, inert surface scarred by
giant impact craters. Instead, they were surprised to see Europa
bearing a bright and icy crust relatively free of blemishes, a sign
that its outer shell is active enough to hide the telltale craters that
scar the face of a world over geological time. Click here.
(5/14)
Inside Lockheed Martin's
New Space Research Center (Source: Silicon Valley Business
Journal)
Lockheed Martin's R&D facility in Palo Alto is an aerospace
fantasy camp, with 37 labs working on technologies like 3-D printing,
nanotechnology and thermal sciences. The 82,000 square-foot space
houses 130 Lockheed engineers working on problems like how to 3-D print
a small satellite rather than hefting school-bus sized hunks of metal
into orbit. Lockheed's center, which opened this spring, recently
renamed itself to STAR Labs, standing for Space Technology Advanced
Research and Development Labs. (5/12)
We’re Not Impressed With
Your Space Tantrum, Mr. Putin (Source: TIME)
Here’s why we’re not impressed: First of all, you’ve conveniently
scheduled the shutdown of your Soyuz taxi service for 2020, four years
before we plan to abandon the ISS anyway. Why wait until then? Could it
be the cool $76 million we pay you per seat? But, as you surely know,
at least two American companies will all but certainly have their own
spacecraft flying well before then, and even NASA may be back in the
game by 2020.
In other words, you’re going to quit selling us a service we weren’t
planning to use anymore anyway. As for the engines: yes, it’s true that
the NK-33 and D-180 are nice bits of hardware and the Atlas does rely
on them. But the Atlas pre-dates you, Vlad. You don’t want the revenue
that comes from globalized trade? OK, so we’ll in-source our engines
again and keep the cash at home.
History will decide if your Ukrainian adventure was a winning hand. But
the Space Race is over and America won. Even decades after the glory
days of the moon landings, it’s still NASA that’s got spacecraft
approaching, orbiting or on the surface of Mercury, Mars, Jupiter,
Saturn, Pluto and multiple asteroids. Russia? Not so much. The world
will have to reckon with you for as long as you choose to misbehave in
Europe and anywhere else your eye may wander. But in space? We’re fine
without you. Tranquility Base, out. (5/13)
Russia's New Space
Sanctions Mean SpaceX Is About to Get Paid (Source:
Motherboard)
Russia will stop supporting ISS six years from now, which isn't
entirely urgent. But Bolden has to be worried about how American
astronauts are going to get to and from the ISS if Russia next decides
to pull out of its already-signed contracts to sell rides to Americans
through at least 2017. As of now, there’s no indication that Russia
plans to cut the US out immediately, but the ISS is now clearly in the
diplomatic playing field.
And that brings us to SpaceX. The company stands to gain greatly from
both bits of news Rogozin announced today. If ULA is blocked from
buying Russian engines for their Atlas V and Delta IV from the other
side (it’s worth noting that both countries have threatened to ban the
companies from buying Russian engines), the Air Force once again has
incentive to look at SpaceX as a legitimate option to launch military
satellites. (5/13)
Intergalactic
Entrepreneurs Prepare for Blast-Off (Source: MIT
Technology Review)
It was a rare meeting of minds. Representatives from 13 commercial
space companies gathered on May 1 at a place dedicated to going where
few have gone before: the Explorers Club in New York. Amid the mansions
and high-end apartment buildings just off Central Park, executives from
space-tourism companies, rocket-making startups, and even a business
that hopes to make money by mining asteroids for useful materials
showed off displays and gave presentations. Click here.
(5/13)
Japan's First Space
Station Commander and Crewmates Head Home (Source: Reuters)
The first Japanese to command a space mission and crewmates from the
United States and Russia wrapped up a 188-day stay aboard the
International Space Station on Tuesday and headed back to Earth.
Returning space station commander Koichi Wakata, NASA astronaut Rick
Mastracchio and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin climbed inside their
Russian Soyuz capsule and departed the orbital outpost at 6:36 p.m.
EDT. Touchdown was near the town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan at about
10:00 p.m. EDT. (5/13)
Boeing Tries to Build a
Ship Space Tourists Won't Hate (Source: Popular Mechanics)
In the not-too-distant future, when private space is an established
industry, different carriers will provide distinctive customer
experiences for space tourists—just as Jet Blue and Delta airlines
provide different inflight amenities. At least that's what Boeing is
banking on with its recently unveiled interior designs for the CST-100
space capsule.
The CST-100 (CST stands for Crew Space Transportation) is Boeing's
gumdrop-shaped candidate for NASA's Commercial Crew Development
program. The seven-seater capsule is intended to carry astronauts to
the International Space Station and later, perhaps, to tourist
destinations in orbit, such as the Bigelow inflatable space hotel.
Click here.
(5/13)
NASA Considering
Recycling Plastic for 3D Printing on ISS (Source: GigaOM)
When NASA sends a 3D printer to the International Space Station, it
will dramatically improve the crew’s ability to fix unforeseen problems
like broken parts and supply shortages. It will also reduce how much
mass needs to be carried into space; instead of having a spare copy of
everything, astronauts can just print parts as they are needed.
NASA is considering taking that reduction in material one step further
by putting a plastic recycler on the ISS. The Made in Space printer
that will board the ISS later this year prints in ABS plastic, which is
the same type used in Legos and other common items. A recycler would
allow the ISS crew to turn broken parts and other unneeded items back
into the raw material on which the printer relies.
NASA is supporting research into a recycler with two $125,000 grants.
One went to Made in Space, which is developing a recycler known as
R3DO. The other was awarded to Tethers Unlimited, a company based
outside Seattle that is pursuing robotics-based systems that could 3D
print and assemble large structures in space. (5/13)
KSC's Future Hinges on
Space Launch System (Source: Florida Today)
Kennedy Space Center's future hinges on a rocket and spacecraft NASA is
developing to send astronauts beyond Earth's orbit, the center's
director said. "This is our only reason to exist," Bob Cabana told the
National Space Club Florida Committee in Cape Canaveral. "If we do not
have this capability to fly beyond our planet to explore on a
government rocket —something that is way too expensive for a commercial
company to do — we don't need KSC anymore." (5/13)
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