August 17, 2017

Station Managers Push Back Next Cygnus Cargo Flight to November (Source: Spaceflight Now)
NASA and Orbital ATK have agreed to schedule the launch of the next Cygnus supply ship for Nov. 10 from Wallops Island on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, a delay of a month from the mission’s earlier target launch date to allow the flight to carry more cargo to the International Space Station. The new launch date also will allow time for station astronauts to complete three spacewalks in late October and early November to swap out a latching end effector on the station’s Canadian-built robotic arm and complete other maintenance tasks, according to Dan Hartman, NASA’s deputy space station program manager. (8/16)

ASRC Federal Takes $319M NASA KSC IT Contract (Source: Washington Technology)
ASRC Federal has won a potential five-year, $319 million contract to help run the IT infrastructure, applications and communications environment of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. NASA competed the Kennedy Infrastructure, Applications and Communication contract for 8(a) small businesses only. KIAC covers two base years followed by one two-year option and an additional option year.

This award unseats incumbent Abacus Technology Corp., which was awarded the predecessor contract in 2008 for a potential seven-year, $944 million value. NASA has to-date spent approximately $673 million on the KSC Information Management and Communication Support contract, which Deltek says expires on Sept. 30. (8/16)

Proton-M Launches Russian Defense Satellite from Baikonur (Source: Tass)
A Proton-M carrier rocket with a military satellite has been launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan.The rocket was launched under control of commander of the space troops and deputy commander-in-chief of the Russian aerospace forces, Colonel General Alexander Golovko. (8/17)

New Mexico Company to Provide Internet for Space Tourists (Source: KRQE)
At a small workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Solstar Space CEO M. Brian Barnett and VP Gary Ebersole hover over an empty microwave sized black carbon-fiber box. On top of the box is an electronics assembly, an assortment of electrical components and wires that make up the prototype of the Solstar Space Communicator. They need to install the communicator in the box so it can be bolted inside a space capsule for a journey 70 miles above the earth.

“We want to provide commercial internet services to people and experiments that are flying into space,” said Barnett. The former NASA scientist, now entrepreneur, has already successfully sent the first text messages to a spacecraft during a launch of an Up Aerospace rocket from New Mexico’s Spaceport America.

Now, he and Ebersole are ready to test their prototype space communicator designed to provide full WiFi and internet service wherever needed above the planet. The first Blue Origin spacecraft will blast-off soon from a site near Van Horn in West Texas, on a mission to test the capsule’s escape system. Solstar’s internet device will ride along. “We’ll be testing that our WiFi connections and internet connection is going well for future astronauts and experimenters in space,” said Barnett. (8/16)

Google Lunar XPRIZE Extends Deadline, Offers In-Space Milestone Awards (Source: Business Wire)
XPRIZE and Google announce that $4.75M in additional Milestone Prize money will be available to Google Lunar XPRIZE finalist teams for achieving technological milestones along the way to the Moon. Teams can compete for one or both of the following prizes:

A $1.75M Lunar Arrival Milestone Prize requires the spacecraft to complete one orbit around the Moon or enter a direct descent approach to the lunar surface. A $3M Soft Landing Milestone Prize requires the spacecraft to transmit data proving it soft-landed on the lunar surface. The Milestone Prize purses will be evenly distributed between all teams who have achieved each milestone by March 31, 2018.

Earlier this year, XPRIZE announced the five finalist teams with verified launch contracts: SpaceIL (Israel), Moon Express (USA), Synergy Moon (International), TeamIndus (India) and HAKUTO (Japan). Additionally, XPRIZE established a mission completion deadline of March 31, 2018, regardless of the initiation date, in order for teams to win the Grand or Second-Place Prizes. (8/17)

The Algae That Terraformed Earth (Source: BBC)
A planetary takeover by ocean-dwelling algae 650 million years ago was the kick that transformed life on Earth. That's what geochemists argue in Nature this week, on the basis of invisibly small traces of biomolecules dug up from beneath the Australian desert. The molecules mark an explosion in the quantity of algae in the oceans.

This in turn fueled a change in the food web that allowed the first microscopic animals to evolve, the authors suggest. "This is one the most profound ecological and evolutionary transitions in Earth's history," lead researcher Jochen Brocks told the BBC's Science in Action program.

The events took place a hundred million years before the so-called Cambrian Explosion, an eruption of complex life recorded in fossils around the world that puzzled Darwin and always hinted at some kind of biological prehistory.
Scattered traces of those precursor multi-celled organisms have since been recognized, but the evolutionary driver that led to their rise has been much argued over. (8/17)

NASA's Ambitious Plan to Save the Earth From a Supervolcano (Source: BBC)
Lying beneath the tranquil settings of Yellowstone National Park in the US lies an enormous magma chamber. It’s responsible for the geysers and hot springs that define the area, but for scientists at Nasa, it’s also one of the greatest natural threats to human civilization as we know it: a potential supervolcano.

Following an article we published about supervolcanoes last month, a group of NASA researchers got in touch to share a report previously unseen outside the space agency about the threat – and what could be done about it. Click here. (8/17)

Ruins of UK Space Program - We Could Have Led World But We Gave it Away (Source: Express)
The immutable sandstone launch blocks, where scores of massively powerful rocket engines were tested and perfected, stand as a shaming monument to political short-sightedness, scientific penny-pinching and the decline of British standing in the world. In the immediate post-war period Britain was a serious player in three-horse race with Russia and the USA in the battle to perfect rocket technology.

The driver of course was not pure science. The world had just witnessed the terrible power of nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the imperative military goal was to team a thermonuclear device with a dependable targetable, rocket. The Americans had sneaked arch-Nazi and architect of the V2 bomb Werner von Braun to the US and the Russians had collected what was left of his missile team. But Britain still had the home-grown brains and technological clout to punch above its weight in the race to space. Click here. (8/14)

How Three Recent Launches Signaled New Leaps in North Korea’s Missile Capabilities (Source: Washington Post)
The missile tested in May was an intermediate-range projectile that on a more horizontal trajectory could probably reach Guam, according to physicist David Wright, co-director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Global Security Program. The missiles tested in July were the ones the world had been dreading: two-stage Hwasong-14 ICBMs that appeared quite capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. A two-stage rocket has a second fuel supply that takes over when the first burns out, allowing it to fly farther than a single-stage rocket.

Wright calculated that, depending on fuel, the weight of a warhead and the rotation of Earth, the first ICBM would have been able to reach Alaska. Much of the continental United States would be in range of the second one, he said, including New York and Boston. Washington, D.C., probably would be just outside it. Click here. (8/10)

Outward Bound: Colonizing Mars (Source: Science & Futurism)
We begin the new Outward Bound series by discussing the Colonization of Mars, and survey all the colonizing and terraforming options from the early settlement days to the far future and a Green Mars. We will also look at alternatives to terraforming which might make more sense for Mars, like bioforming the people to the environment, rather than terraforming it to our environment. Click here. (8/17)

Public-Private Space Ventures Need Oversight (Source: Daily News)
Public-private partnerships in space travel hold much promise, and greater cost-efficiency, but government should be transparent about the risks and inevitable failures. Public-private partnerships can be nerve-wracking for taxpayers.

In June 2015, a SpaceX Falcon 9 preparing to resupply the space station exploded on the launch pad during fueling for a pre-flight engine test. Last month, NASA announced that it would not publicly release the results of its investigation into the failure.

That was a reversal for NASA, which had earlier promised to release a summary of its investigation. Now the agency says it was “not required to complete a formal final report or public summary” because the flight was under the FAA’s jurisdiction. Click here. (8/15)

GAO Study Updates Government Position on Using ICBM Assets for Commercial Launches (Source: GAO)
The DOD could use several methods to set the sale prices of surplus ICBM rocket motors that could be converted and used in vehicles for commercial launch if current rules prohibiting such sales were changed. One method would be to determine a breakeven price. Below this price, DOD would not recuperate its costs, and, above this price, DOD would potentially save. GAO estimated that DOD could sell three Peacekeeper motors—the number required for one launch, or, a “motor set”—at a breakeven price of about $8.36 million and two Minuteman II motors for about $3.96 million.

Editor's Note: Orbital ATK is under contract to the US military to put these ICBM rocket motors to use in their Minotaur rockets for launching Government payloads. Changes to law and policy would be required to allow them to be used for commercial launches. Orbital ATK is rumored to be seeking such changes to allow Minotaur rockets to launch commercial microsatellites.

The decades-old argument that releasing these ICBM assets into the commercial marketplace would negatively impact commercial launch vehicle development seems to have been bourne out. Without the 'subsidized' Minotaurs serving the microsatellite launch market, a growing number of small launch vehicles is being developed by purely commercial competitors. Click here. (8/15)

Winnipeg Woman Puts $20K Toward Commercial Space Flight (Source: CBC News)
Judy Anderson has always wanted to be out of this world. Now the University of Manitoba biological sciences professor is on her way, after putting a $20,000 down payment on a flight with Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic commercial space flights. The total cost of the trip will be $200,000.

"I always wanted to float in space, and see a pebble float, and see black space, and watch the Earth curve, and you know, watch the weather and the whole deal." Anderson said she heard about the trips in 2010 and decided to try. She said she's hopeful she will get to go. (8/15)

SoCal Aerospace Company Cuts Nearly 100 Jobs, SpaceX Spinoff Could Bring 300 Jobs (Source: Daily Breeze)
One longtime Torrance defense contractor is shedding almost 100 jobs, while a SpaceX spin-off that could create up to 300 jobs within three years is in talks to move to the South Bay’s largest city, company and municipal officials have confirmed.

Chemring Energetic Devices, which makes missile components, radar detection systems and other defense-related products, has notified the state Employment Development Department as required by law of its plans to lay off 93 of its workers as manufacturing winds down there by mid-2018. However, in a move demonstrating the cyclical nature of the aerospace industry, a SpaceX startup officials would not name was in discussions to move to Torrance and hire as many as 200 employees within three years.

Torrance is benefiting from a tighter commercial office market and higher lease costs in cities like El Segundo. Indeed, a trio of small aerospace companies— including Microcosm Inc., and Scorpius Space Launch Co. — recently relocated to Torrance from Hawthorne, bringing about 25 jobs, Fulton said. They were displaced from a building soon to be occupied by the headquarters of Urth Caffe. (8/15)

Welcome to the Second Space Race (Source: The National)
We are living in the second great age of space exploration. The first was born from the ashes of the Second World War and was fuelled by the fight for supremacy between capitalism and communism, the defining struggle of the last century. It ended with American footprints on the Moon and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, unable to keep up the pace, both economically and technologically.

This second space race, like our world today, is more complex and multifaceted than the first. It is driven by many factors and many, many more players. Some are familiar faces. NASA, the United States government agency behind both the Apollo Moon missions and the space shuttle, still explores our solar system, but its budget is a fraction of the glory days of the 1960s and it is currently unable to send a human into orbit.

Russia retains its ageing Soyuz rockets as a kind of flying taxi service to the International Space Station, due to celebrate its 30th birthday next year. Its grander visions of rockets carrying the red star to other worlds decay and rust in corners of the cosmodromes in far-flung former satellite states of the USSR. Other nations still see space exploration as an expression of national pride and ambition. Click here. (8/15)

Space Exploration Will Send Our Economy Into Orbit (Source: The National)
The UAE’s space programme drew sceptical responses from some quarters in the beginning. To others, space exploration has always seemed like a waste of resources. This is a profoundly misplaced view. It is a catalyst for technological innovations; in addition to making hugely important discoveries in space, it gives rise to unexpected inventions on earth that benefit us all. John F Kennedy understood this; as, in our own day, does Sheikh Mohammed.

The computer microchip, the CAT scanner, the satellite television and the smoke detector – these are all among the dozens of technologies we now take for granted but which would not be available to us were it not for space research. As Dr Ahmad Belhoul, the UAE’s Minister of State for Higher Education and the Chairman of the UAE Space Agency, wrote last month, “space exploration is a necessity not only because of its tangible benefits to our everyday lives, but because of its potential to inspire and uplift mankind in ways we can only imagine”. It will, in short, drive the knowledge economy and ensure that our post-oil economy receives a necessary boost of rocket fuel. (8/15)

Zenit Could Fly Again on Sea Launch Platform (Source: Space Daily)
Russia's S7 Space Transportation Systems company plans to start launching Zenit-3SL rockets from the Sea Launch floating platform and continue until 2023. "Work is underway to end the conservation of the complex and to restore launch activities with the use of Zenit carrier rockets in the current configuration until 2023," the company said.

Sea Launch was formed in 1995 as a consortium of four companies from Norway, Russia, Ukraine and the U.S., and was initially managed by Boeing. The company was purchased by Russia's S7 Group in September 2016. The only rocket that could be launched from the pad is Zenit-3SL, manufactured by the Ukrainian Yuzhmash construction bureau and using Russian RD-171 engines produced by the NPO Energomash manufacturer. The last Zenit launch from the Sea Launch was carried out in 2014. In April, Yuzhmash and S7 Sea Launch Limited signed a deal on supply of 12 Zenit-3 SL rockets. (8/15)

Yuzhnoye Denies Link to North Korean ICBM Engines (Source: Space News)
Ukrainian rocket designer Yuzhnoye issued a strongly worded rebuttal to claims that North Korea had furthered its missile program by gaining rocket technology through Ukraine. In an Aug. 15 post on the company website, Yuzhnoye said the engines depicted in the New York Times Aug. 14 article "North Korea’s Missile Success Is Linked to Ukrainian Plant, Investigators Say" are not the RD-250, nor does Yuzhnoye have the production means to produce them today. (8/16)