September 15, 2017

Cassini Spacecraft Just Crashed Into Saturn (Source: Washington Post)
NASA scientists just received their last message from the Cassini spacecraft, which plunged into Saturn early Friday morning. Those final bits of data signal the end of one of the most successful planetary science missions in history. Cassini was the first human probe to orbit Saturn.

Built and operated at JPL, it launched in 1997 and inserted into orbit in 2004. The spacecraft revealed the structure of Saturn's rings and, by delivering the Huygens probe to the moon Titan, executed the first landing of a spacecraft in the outer solar system. It also exposed two moons — Titan, a land of methane lakes, and Enceladus, which has jets of water streaming from its southern pole — as prime targets in the search for life beyond Earth.

After 13 years in orbit, Cassini leaves researchers with still more mysteries to ponder: They don't know the length of the Saturn day or understand the quirks of its magnetic field. And it will fall to a future mission to discover whether one of Saturn's potentially habitable moons could truly be home to alien life. (9/15)

NASA Engineer Sues Homeland Security (Source: Ars Technica)
A Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer, a California artist, a limousine driver, and several other Americans have sued the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection over what they say are unconstitutional and warrantless searches of their digital devices at the United States border.

The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Massachusetts on Wednesday, is the first of its kind to directly challenge the government’s claim that it can demand travelers' passwords at the border in order to search a device in the wake of a key 2014 Supreme Court decision. (9/13)

Alarming Study Indicates Why Certain Bacteria Are More Resistant to Drugs in Space (Source: Gizmodo)
To learn more about why some germs seem harder to kill in near-weightless conditions, scientists aboard the ISS recently doused a batch of bacteria with antibiotics—an experiment which resulted in a series of startling physical changes that may be helping the bacteria to survive and thrive in space.

Whether we like it or not, bacteria are going to be our partners as we venture out into space. It’s imperative, therefore, that we learn as much about these microorganisms as possible in the event an astronaut develops a life-threatening infection, or to prevent problematic “biofilm” formation inside the ISS and other spacecraft (such as a ship en route to Mars).

As previous studies have shown, bacteria behave differently in space, in some cases acquiring mutations that make them better at reproduction and more resilient to the effects of antibiotics. (9/13)

SpaceX Releases Explosive Mega-Collection of Greatest Rocket Failures (Source: Gizmodo)
Elon Musk has been sitting on a trove of spectacular fail videos from the SpaceX archives, and on August 31st he promised to release a blooper reel with “some epic explosion footage.” This morning, he made good on that promise. Now you can watch many millions of dollars go kaboom in just over two minutes. Click here. (9/14)

AsiaSat to Plans Small Satellite Order (Source: Space News)
AsiaSat plans to soon order a small high-throughput satellite (HTS) to serve China. AsiaSat's chief commercial officer, Barrie Woolston, said Thursday that the "modest" spacecraft, AsiaSat-10, would launch in 2020 and be designed primarily to serve China. Woolston added that AsiaSat-10 could be followed by a more powerful HTS spacecraft once the company better understands the capabilities such satellites can offer. (9/15)

NASA Supports Project Blue Space Telescope Initiative (Source: Space News)
NASA has signed a Space Act Agreement with a private organization planning a space telescope. The agreement, which involves no exchange of funds, will support Project Blue, a proposed mission being developed by the BoldlyGo Institute to launch a small space telescope to search for Earth-like planets orbiting Alpha Centauri. BoldlyGo is currently seeking to raise $175,000 through a crowdfunding campaign to support engineering studies of the mission. (9/15)

Satellite Customer Demands Push Rapid Production, Standardization (Source: Space News)
Demand for more satellites, built more quickly, are pushing manufacturers towards standardization. Some customers, manufacturers said in a panel discussion this week, are now asking for satellites with lead times of just 12 to 18 months, versus 36 months in the past. Proposed constellations, meanwhile, require the assembly of hundreds of identical satellites. These trends, manufacturers said, are pushing them towards standardized, modular designs for their spacecraft. (9/15)

Earth Imaging Demands Driving New New Companies, New Products (Source: Space News)
Growth in the commercial Earth imaging business will require not just new data but also new user-friendly products. Companies in the sector said that the emergence of new companies in the business will not necessarily hurt established companies, since more data is needed to better serve a wide variety of customers. Those customers, though, will require better tools, such as artificial intelligence, to analyze that data and extract key information in order to be useful. (9/15)

Japan's Astroscale Plans Orbital Debris Service (Source: Space News)
A Japanese company believes it can make money cleaning up orbital debris. Chris Blackerby, NASA's former attaché in Tokyo who became chief operating officer of Astroscale last month, said his company is looking at working with developers of mega-constellations of satellites. Astroscale said it can help remove failed satellites in those constellations to avoid them becoming dangerous debris. The company's first satellite, Idea OSG-1, will launch next year to measure submillimeter debris too small to be tracked from the ground. (9/15)

Tucson's Paragon Space Teams on Space-Station Contract (Source: Tucson.com)
Tucson-based Paragon Space Development Corp. has teamed up with a Maryland-based company on a multitask NASA contract for work supporting the International Space Station that could be worth up to $500 million over seven years. Under the contract NASA awarded to Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies, the ISS Program office will issue task orders to provide spaceflight hardware, software, mission integration and operations services on a commercial basis, with minimal government involvement, the companies said. (9/14)

NASA Space Psychology Subjects Ending 8 Months of Isolation (Source: Federal News Radio)
After eight months of living in isolation on a remote Hawaii volcano, six NASA-backed research subjects will emerge from their Mars-like habitat on Sunday and return to civilization. Their first order of business after subsisting on mostly freeze-dried and canned food: Feast on fresh-picked pineapple, papaya, mango, locally-grown vegetables and a fluffy, homemade egg strata cooked by their project’s lead scientist.

The crew of four men and two women were quarantined on a vast plain below the summit of the world’s largest active volcano in January. All of their communications with the outside world were subjected to a 20-minute delay — the time it takes for signals to get from Mars to Earth. (9/15)

ARCA Hosts Open House at New Las Cruces Facilities (Source: Las Cruces Sun-News)
Dumitru Popescu, the CEO and founder of ARCA Space Corp., hosted an open house of the new ARCA Space Corp. fabrication hanger and offices. Popescu hosted the open house to display elements of the Aerospike engine. The Las Cruces aerospace company plans to test the engine, in part at Spaceport America, in the coming months. If successful, the engine would evenually power the Haas 2CA single-stage-to-orbit rocket to take small satellites and other payloads to orbit. (9/14)

Ice Mined on Mars Could Provide Water for Humans Exploring Space (Source: The Conversation)
As humans spread out across the Earth, the locations of new colonies were driven by the accessibility of resources: not only food and water, but also arable land, forests and minerals. Access to such resources remains important as the economy moves into space. Here, water has emerged as the pre-eminent resource to exploit first. The question then becomes, from where will we extract the water? Along with the Moon and near Earth asteroids as potential sources, Mars is an important candidate. Click here. (9/15)

Astronauts Don't Develop Anemia During Spaceflight, NASA Study Suggests (Source: BioMed Central)
Space flight anemia - the reduction of circulating red blood cells (RBCs) during time spent in space - is an established phenomenon, but it may not be a major concern during long-duration space missions, according to a study published in the open access journal BMC Hematology.

"There is an idea of 'space anemia' that is associated with space flight. However, this is based on blood samples from astronauts collected after flight, which may be influenced by various factors, for example the stress of landing and re-adaptation to conditions on Earth." (9/12)

How a Tax Haven is Leading the Race to Privatize Space (Source: Guardian)
On a drizzly afternoon in April, Prince Guillaume, the hereditary grand duke of Luxembourg, and his wife, Princess Stéphanie, sailed through the front doors of an office building in the outskirts of Seattle and into the headquarters of an asteroid-mining startup called Planetary Resources, which plans to “expand the economy into space”.

The nation of Luxembourg is one of Planetary Resources’ main boosters. The country’s pledge of €25m – which includes both direct funding and state support for research and development – is just one element of its wildly ambitious campaign to become a terrestrial hub for the business of mining minerals, metals and other resources on celestial bodies. Click here. (9/15) 

Ariane 6s to Launch Four Galileo Satellites (Source: Aerospace Daily)
Two Ariane 6s will launch four Galileo satellites in 2020-2021, thus making the European Space Agency the first confirmed customer for the new European launcher, launch service operator Arianespace announced Sep. 14. (9/15)