August 19, 2017

Japan Launches Navigation Satellite After week-Long Delay (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
A Japanese H-2A rocket soared away from a launch pad on a rocky overlook on the Pacific Ocean on Saturday, hauling into orbit the country’s third Michibiki satellite to join a constellation of navigation aids to improve positioning services across the country.

The third satellite to join Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System took off Saturday, eight days later than originally scheduled. Weather pushed back the mission’s initial Aug. 11 launch date, and a leaky helium pressurization system scrubbed a launch attempt Aug. 12, forcing ground crews to roll the rocket back to its hangar for repairs.

The 174-foot-tall (53-meter) H-2A launcher, powered by a hydrogen-fueled main engine and four strap-on solid rocket boosters, headed east from the Tanegashima Space Center, a spaceport built on an island at the southwestern edge of the country. (8/19)

American Marketing Casts Its Shadow (Source: The Atlantic)
Earlier this month, cylinder-shaped packages containing posters depicting a solar eclipse arrived at the desks of several journalists. In the illustration, the black disk of the moon obscures most of the sun, leaving a curved slice of sunlight shining against the darkness. There, smack in the middle of the yellow crescent, is a familiar blue sticker usually worn by grocery-store produce. Chiquita had turned the upcoming eclipse into an ad for bananas. Click here. (8/18)

Large Near-Earth Asteroid will Sweep Past Us in September (Source: IBT)
Asteroid Florence will fly by Earth on 1 September at a safe distance of seven million km or "18 Earth-Moon" distances. Florence is about 4.4km wide and is known to be one of the largest near-Earth asteroids according to Nasa. Near-Earth objects are heavenly bodies that enter the Earth's neighbourhood influenced by the gravity of nearby planets.

Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, stressed the significance of this event when he said, "Florence is the largest asteroid to pass by our planet this close since the NASA program to detect and track near-Earth asteroids began." (8/18)

Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' Of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Wrong (Source: Forbes)
The Voyager Golden Record contains songs, images, and sounds of Earth. It was designed to be an information-laden cosmic time capsule, capable of being easily deciphered by any intelligent alien species to come upon it. On the cover of the record, a series of diagrams was emblazoned, including one very important one: a map of Earth's location in the galaxy.

Although the method used to locate Earth was very clever, it's now understood to be inherently flawed, meaning anyone receiving it will most likely be unable to track down exactly where our planet is, after all. Click here. (8/18)

TDRS Launch Marks End of an Era (Source: Space News)
The successful launch of a NASA communications satellite Aug. 18 is the final flight of the current generation of data relay spacecraft as well as for a venerable satellite bus.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 401 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 8:29 a.m. Eastern. The launch was delayed by 26 minutes because of an issue with the temperature on the Centaur upper stage detected during the standard T-4 minute hold.

The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) M spacecraft separated from the Centaur in a geostationary transfer orbit nearly two hours after liftoff. In a statement, NASA confirmed TDRS-M was in good health and in contact with controllers after separation. (8/18)

1st ASTS Provides Critical Support for Minotaur Launch at Cape (Source: AFSPC)
The 1st Air and Space Test Squadron at Vandenberg Air Force Base will be assisting with the first ever Minotaur IV launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The 1st ASTS team coordinated the transport for the first three stages of the engine to Cape Canaveral AFS where they will provide support through the day of launch. The Minotaur IV is an expendable launch system derived from an old Peacekeeper Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. (8/17)

Ukraine Changes Tactics on North Korea Engine Claims (Source: Space News)
In the days that followed Monday’s report in The New York Times that North Korea may have illicitly procured advanced Soviet-era rocket engines from Ukraine, the response out of the post-Soviet nation could best be described as trolling.

Not long after the report was published, outraged Ukrainian social media users directed their outrage at the source of the allegations: Michael Elleman, a missile defense expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Rather than challenge Elleman’s argument, Ukrainian social media users quickly made things personal. Freelance investigators scoured his Facebook and Twitter profiles to find evidence that Elleman was a Russian agent peddling propaganda. Click here. (8/18)

Roscosmos Denies Cooperation with North Korea in Missile Technologies (Source: Tass)
Russia’s government-run corporation Roscosmos denies charges of its alleged cooperation with North Korea in missile technologies. "Roscosmos and its affiliates do not carry out interaction with the DPRK...in their activity they strictly comply with Russian legislation, international rules of control of weapons and non-proliferation, including the control of missile technologies and strictly abide by instructions and restrictions (sectoral measures) imposed by the UN Security Council," Roscosmos said.

Ukrainian National Security Council Secretary Aleksandr Turchinov said Ukrainian defense and aerospace industries had not supplied any weapons or military technologies to North Korea. Ukrainian enterprise Yuzhmash disclaimed any connection with North Korea’s missile programs. After that Kiev claimed Moscow might have been behind rumored supplies of Ukrainian missile engines to Pyongyang. (8/18)

Russian Government Allocates $39 Million for Vostochny Spaceport Operation (Source: Tass)
The Russian government has instructed the Finance Ministry to transfer 2.3 billion rubles ($39 million) to the State Space Corporation Roscosmos for the operation of the Vostochny spaceport, according to the government’s resolution posted on the legal information web portal on Friday. The sum has been allocated from the funds set aside for outer space exploration, the materials say. (8/18)

Central Floridians Eagerly Await Eclipse (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
The eclipse’s “path of totality” cuts generally southeast through the U.S. from Salem, Ore., to Charleston, S.C. In Central Florida, eager eclipse watchers will see about 85 percent to 88 percent of the sun blotted out when the eclipse reaches its peak. In Orlando, that’s about 2:51 p.m.; the moon will start to pass in front of the sun at about 1:19 p.m., with the eclipse lasting until 4:14 p.m. (8/18)

Explore the Moon Using Augmented Reality (Source: WIRED)
For a brief, non-shining moment on August 21, the moon will be the most important object in the daytime sky. Not that you’ll get a good look at much besides its backlit outline. And sure, it is uncanny and cool that the moon sits at just the right distance from the Earth to blot out the sun. But real lunatics—er, luna-philes? Let’s go with moon fans—know the moon’s real calling card is its wild topography, visible almost nightly with the right telescope.

But maybe you’re not a fan of hunched-over squinting into a telescope's eyepiece amid swarms of nipping insects, while taking brief breaks to shine your red-filtered flashlight down at a reference guide. And most moon maps kind of suck—the lunar features get distorted by flattened projections, and it's really hard to orient yourself without familiar continents or other landmarks to guide your eye.

Or, you could buy a 3-D printed moonlet from AstroReality, and hold the moon in your hand. The San Francisco-based company also created a smartphone augmented reality app to work with it: Aim your phone’s camera at the model, and labels pop up over the craters, mare, and Apollo landing sites. Heck, you can even walk outside and hold it up in front of the sun, simulating your own personal eclipse (though, admittedly, you won’t get the eerie effects of totality). (8/18)

Meet Gwynne Shotwell, the Woman Who Could Take Us to Mars (Source: Marie Claire)
Few things about Gwynne Shotwell shout "rocket scientist." Sure, the president of aerospace startup SpaceX holds a mechanical-engineering degree and a master's in applied mathematics from Northwestern University, but she towers above the company's sea of T-shirts and sneakers in her black skinny jeans and sky-high platform heels, happily chats about her love of Chardonnay, and drives a bright-red Tesla Model S.

Yet she spends her days sending hulking pieces of metal into space. Debunking nerdy stereotypes about engineering is a favorite pastime of Shotwell's because it was, in fact, a sartorial choice that first piqued her interest in the subject. When she was a teenager growing up in Chicago, her mom planned a secret weekend activity: attending a Society of Women Engineers conference.

"She didn't tell me where we were going ahead of time because I would not have gone," Shotwell says. She begrudgingly sat in the audience, listening to panel after panel, when a certain speaker caught her eye. "Her shoes were marvelous, her bag matched, and she just made mechanical engineering accessible to me," Shotwell recalls. At the time, she didn't have a particular career in mind, and her mom was pushing her to pick a focus. "I left that event saying, 'Okay, I'll be a mechanical engineer,' because I thought she was cool." Click here. (8/17)

Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Moon Express to Hire 800-plus for High-Tech Jobs (Source: Orlando Business Journal)
With all of the rocket, missile and spacecraft development activity happening in Central Florida, high-tech and advanced manufacturing jobs are not in short supply.

Nearly three times a month, rockets are blasting off from Florida's Space Coast and more companies are wising up to the idea of either building rockets here or refurbishing them for launch again — saving time and money. And while rockets are shaping up on the coast, other space-related companies are building space capsules and rovers for space exploration and mining. Meanwhile, defense companies are landing military contracts to develop parts and design missiles. Click here. (8/17)

Still No Countdown for Spaceport Certification in Kona (Source: Hawaii Tribune-Herald)
The Office of Aerospace Development, a division of the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, has worked for years to obtain a spaceport certification for Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport. If the airport is granted the certification, tourists in Kona could become quasi-astronauts for a day, boarding a space plane that, propelled by a rocket engine, would lift the aircraft into suborbit before returning to Kona roughly an hour later.

Jim Crisafulli — former state Office of Aerospace Development director, who recently retired — was hopeful an environmental assessment to clear the way for the burgeoning industry in West Hawaii might be completed by summer 2016. But a year later, the assessment is still underway with no firm end in site. “The timetable for completion of the Environmental Assessment document depends on the community, the State Department of Transportation, and the Federal Aviation Administration,” DBEDT Deputy Director Mary Alice Evans wrote in an email.

She did not provide an approximate date. “The FAA is trying to be as thorough as possible,” he said. The flights would result in sonic booms, though it is not assured they’d be heard on the island. After the assessment is complete, public meetings would be scheduled. The last such meetings about this issue occurred in 2013. (8/18)

Space Flights, Nuclear Power and a Missile Shield (Source: Frontline)
If India is one of the top players in the world in space, nuclear power and missiles despite embargoes and technology-denial regimes heaped on it, a large share of the credit should go to the founding fathers of these programmes, Vikram Sarabhai, Homi J. Bhabha and Air Vice Marshal V.S. Narayanan respectively.

Those who came after them built on this foundation to make the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) institutions that earned the respect of the world. Click here. (8/18)

CubeSat Could Find Out What Those Dark Streaks Are on Venus (Source: America Space)
Even though Venus is Earth’s closest planetary neighbor, it is still one of the most mysterious. Numerous landers and orbiters have visited this extremely hostile world, but there are still many unanswered questions to be resolved. Now, NASA is proposing a new mission using a small CubeSat, called CubeSat UV Experiment (CUVE), to further study Venus’ atmosphere and hopefully solve at least one of the more perplexing mysteries.

The mission concept has now received funding from the agency’s Planetary Science Deep Space SmallSat Studies (PSDS3). Something in the atmosphere of Venus is absorbing ultraviolet light and scientists still don’t know what it is. When seen in visible light, Venus looks rather bland and featureless, with the thick, perpetual cloud layers obscuring the view of the surface.

But when viewed in ultraviolet light, unusual dark bands become clearly visible in the atmosphere. This indicates that something in the clouds is absorbing ultraviolet light. But what is it? “The exact nature of the cloud top absorber has not been established,” said CUVE Principal Investigator Valeria Cottini, a researcher at the University of Maryland. “This is one of the unanswered questions and it’s an important one.” (8/18)

IAI Sees Demand in Earth Observation, but Few Opportunities in Telecom (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
Fresh off the successful launch and initial checkout of two of its spacecraft earlier this month, Israel’s top satellite manufacturer sees a robust global market for new low-altitude reconnaissance payloads, but little international demand for its communications satellites. Israel Aerospace Industries built two satellites that launched together Aug. 2 on a European Vega rocket from French Guiana.

One of the payloads, named Optsat 3000, will collect high-resolution surveillance imagery for the Italian military, while the other satellite, named Venµs, is part of a French-Israeli project to track the health of vegetation.

The double launch symbolized IAI’s recent growth in the field of Earth observation satellites, particularly in the construction of satellites for foreign governments. The successful Vega liftoff with Optsat 3000 and Venµs came 11 months after the the last Israeli-built communications satellite — Amos 6 — was destroyed in the explosion of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during a countdown rehearsal at Cape Canaveral. (8/18)