August 18, 2017

Q&A With "Astronaut Abby" at KSC (Source: Kira Kira)
I am an aspiring astronaut and astrobiologist currently working as an intern in a Mars lab at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and junior at Wellesley College. I have wanted to be an astronaut since as young as I can remember and as I grew older and began to focus on my goal more with more intention, I gained tremendous support from my family and community. Click here. (8/17)

Air Force Names Space operations Officials (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Air Force has named Shawn Barnes to be assistant deputy chief of staff for space operations directorate, and Maj. Gen. Pamela Lincoln to be mobilization assistant to the deputy chief of staff for space operations.

The Air Force has yet to name the deputy chief for the new directorate, but Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein noted in June the job will be filled by a “a new three-star deputy chief of staff for space” who “will increase decision making speed and help ensure freedom from attack and freedom to maneuver,”

Barnes is now Air Force’s Legislative Liaison Directorate deputy director. He had served in the Air Force between 1985 and 2013, retiring as a colonel. Lincoln is the now mobilization assistant to the Commander, 14th Air Force (Air Forces Strategic), Air Force Space Command; and commander, Joint Functional Component Command for Space, U.S. Strategic Command, Vandenberg Air Force Base. (8/17)

We May Have Caught Supernova Debris Slamming into Neighboring Stars (Source: Ars Technica)
Supernovae are some of the most energetic events in the Universe, sending massive shock waves out into the interstellar medium. And there's every reason to think those shock waves run into things before they've had much of a chance to dissipate. Many stars have companions, either planets or other stars that orbit in reasonable proximity. In fact, there's an entire subtype of supernova that appears to require a nearby companion.

So what happens to these objects when the shock wave hits? With our improved ability to rapidly identify supernovae, we may be on the cusp of finding out. Several times recently, researchers have spotted an extra blue glow to the burst of light from a supernova. And, in the most detailed observations yet, they make the case this glow comes from the supernova debris slamming into a companion star. (8/17)

Air Force Prepping Mysterious X-37B Space Plane for September Launch (Source: Space.com)
The US Air Force's X-37B program is readying its next robotic mini-shuttle for launch, this time atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The liftoff is scheduled to take place in early September, according to media reports.

Capt. Annmarie Annicelli, a U.S. Air Force spokeswoman, told Inside Outer Space: "At this time, I do not have the launch date to release." The upcoming X-37B mission — which is known as Orbital Test Vehicle-5 (OTV-5) — will lift off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (8/17)

Options Grow for Smallsats Seeking Secondary Payload Opportunities (Source: Space News)
As the number of small satellites seeking launch continues to grow, new opportunities are emerging fly those satellites as secondary payloads on other launches as well as tools to identify those opportunities.

The latest entrant in the field is Precious Payload, a company that seeks to provide a global reservation service for smallsat secondary payloads analogous to booking airline tickets or hotel rooms.

Andrey Maksimov, the company’s founder, said in an Aug. 6 interview that he decided to pursue the venture after talking with people developing smallsats who found it difficult and expensive to find accommodations for their spacecraft. “When I started to engage with different companies, I easily recognized that the bottleneck, the biggest problem for them, is actually to find a space launch,” he said. (8/17)

How Will California's Solar Grid React to the Eclipse? (Source: WIRED)
With thousands of rooftop solar panels and big desert solar farms, California will be hardest hit, according to Anne Gonzales, a spokeswoman for the California Independent System Operator in Folsom. The state generates more than a quarter of its electricity from solar farms and rooftop panels.

So even though no Californians will experience full totality—the eclipse’s path intersects with the west coast in Oregon—a partial eclipse will be enough to drop solar power supplies by 6,000 megawatts during the entire two and a half hours of the eclipse. (8/17)

Russian Cosmonauts on Spacewalk Deploy Nanosatellites to Honor Sputnik (Source: Collect Space)
Two cosmonauts stepped outside the International Space Station for a seven-hour spacewalk on Thursday (Aug. 17), in part to deploy three small satellites in tribute to the dawn of the space age 60 years ago.

Fyodor Yurchikhin, commander of the Expedition 52 crew, and Sergey Ryazanskiy, both of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, opened the hatch to the station's Pirs airlock at 10:36 a.m. EDT (1436 GMT), starting the extravehicular activity (EVA).

Yurchikhin, perched on a ladder just outside of the airlock, deployed the first nanosatellite — one of three created by Russian college students to honor the 60th anniversary of the launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, on Oct. 4, 1957 by the Soviet Union. (8/17)

Reaching for the Stars: NASA Science for Girl Scouts (Source: SETI Institute)
On August 21, as the shadow of the moon races across the continental United States at more than 1,000 miles per hour, Girl Scouts of the USA – councils, volunteers and girls – will be poised to safely view the solar eclipse and engage in the interactive astronomy event of the decade. The SETI Institute’s project, “Reaching for the Stars: NASA Science for Girl Scouts,” created activities and tools to prepare the Girl Scouts for the total solar eclipse. 

We created ”Eclipse Boxes” featuring 14 activities for Girl Scouts of all ages, including chalk art, modeling magnetism, experimenting with light, scale modeling the solar system, and how eclipses work. Nine activities promote girls’ understanding of our place in the solar system, sun, Earth and moon. Five eclipse activities, resources and safe viewing instructions complete the guide. You can download a copy of the Eclipse Box Activity Guide here. To prepare for the eclipse, Girl Scouts also learned about the sun, Earth and moon at events and summer camps held by 90 Girl Scout councils across the nation. (8/17)

Yes, It Really Has Taken NASA 11 Years to Develop a Parachute (Source: Ars Technica)
Last week, NASA’s acting chief technologist, Douglas Terrier, visited one of NASA’s main contractors in the Houston area, Jacobs. Along with a handful of media members, he spent about an hour touring the company’s engineering development facility, where the company supports NASA programs from the International Space Station to the Orion spacecraft.

At one stop during the tour, Terrier learned about a new distiller that might more efficiently recover water from urine during long-duration missions. At another, he learned about new debris sensors that will go to the station to record micrometeorite and orbital debris impacts. And at yet another, he heard about the parachute system that Jacobs has helped develop for the Orion spacecraft.

The Jacobs engineer who talked about the contract said the company had partnered with several Houston-based firms and leveraged knowledge from the region’s large oil-and-gas economy. These partnerships, she said, had saved money for NASA over the course of the agency’s 11-year contract with Jacobs to design and build Orion’s parachutes. (8/17)

No, a Map NASA Sent to Space Is Not Dangerous to Earth (Source: NatGeo)
Let’s be clear: The map to Earth that NASA sent into space aboard the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft is not dangerous. It certainly hasn’t “made it a lot easier for aliens to attack Earth,” it won’t “lead to extraterrestrials taking over” our planet, and no one is rethinking this “unintended ‘foolish’ act.”

These claims, which have been seeping through the news media over the past 24 hours, are based on a misinterpretation of a story we published about this map in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Voyager launches. That story describes how 14 known pulsars can be used as galactic signposts to help aliens find Earth, should the spacecraft bearing them across the cosmos be intercepted in the near future. (8/17)

The Question Dana Rohrabacher Should Have Asked NASA (Source: The Hill)
During a recent hearing before the House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) posed a question to NASA scientist Ken Farley that has had social media popping ever since. “You have indicated that Mars was totally different thousands of years ago. Is it possible that there was a civilization on Mars thousands of years ago?” Farley, appropriately deadpan, replied, “I will say that is extremely unlikely.”

Social media jumped on the question with both feet. While many scientists believe life may have existed on Mars billions of years ago, they are pretty sure that the Red Planet was, as it is now, an arid, desolate place with little or no life to speak of thousands of years ago. That is because Mars lacks a magnetic field to shield it from the solar wind, which stripped the planet of its atmosphere, causing whatever surface water it may have had to dry up.

The idea that Mars may have had life, not to speak of intelligent life, thousands of years ago, is ludicrous. The mockery that Rohrabacher received was merciless. A charitable interpretation of Rohrabacher’s question would conclude that he misspoke, saying “thousands” when he should have said “billions.” The congressman is not unintelligent. He has been a champion of space commercialization for many years and has sat on the House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee for much of his career in Congress. (8/17)

The Americans are Testing a Superfast Rocket (Source: Mice Times)
The American company Generation Orbit Launch Services in the near future will begin a series of tests of a prototype advanced hypersonic missile carrier Launcher 1, which will allow you to display different payload on a suborbital trajectory. As written by Aviation Week, will soon begin test firing of the rocket, and then flight tests on the aircraft carrier. These inspections will be conducted at the site of the air base, the U.S. air force “Edwards” in California.

Currently, the us developers don’t have tools that would allow a broad range of research in the field of microgravity and high-speed atmospheric flight. Prior to 1968, such research in the USA was conducted using the experimental rocket plane X-15, originally engineered for space flight with the carrier aircraft. Before closing the program X-15 rocketplane with different equipment were used for studies whose data was used, including in the development of the American space program. (8/17)

Wyler: OneWeb Ready to Solve the Ultimate Connectivity Problem (Source: Via Satellite)
As the recent failed merger with Intelsat shows, there are likely to be a few twists and turns as one of the most ambitious satellite projects finds its feet and aims to be a lasting force in the satellite industry. In many ways, OneWeb is a continuation of O3b Networks. O3b targeted the “other three billion” people on Earth who lack connectivity, and so I ask Wyler whether OneWeb is really just an amped up version of the older company. He says OneWeb will operate at a different scale. Click here. (8/17)