December 15, 2017

Final​ ​Frontier​ ​Design​ ​and​ ​Starfighters​ ​Aerospace​ Advance​ ​Space Suit Testing (Source: FFD)
Starfighters Aerospace and Final Frontier Design (FFD) have completed a System Definition Review for integration of a space suit into the Starfighters F-104 aircraft. The review marks the first physical fitting of the FFD space suit in the F-104, along with a baseline definition of all systems required for flight. The review took place at Starfighter’s hangar at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport.

FFD’s space suit is a full pressure Intra Vehicular Activity (IVA) safety garment designed for wearer protection in case of a high-altitude emergencies. The suit used for the review was built in 2017 and included customized and unique interfaces designed to utilize vehicle life support equipment, including breathing oxygen, ventilation gas, parachute interfaces, and communications. The review included suit integration with the F-104 ejection seat, along with pilot assessment of vehicle control under pressurized conditions.

The legendary F-104 supersonic jet, based on NASA D-3380 documents, can achieve up to 90 seconds of microgravity, speeds up to Mach 2.2, and altitudes above 85,000 ft. Starfighters currently owns and operates eight F-104s at the Shuttle Landing Facility. “FFD’s space suit feels ready to fly!" said Starfighters Director of Flight Operations Piercarlo Ciacchi. "We are looking forward to using it in our missions.” Click here for photos. (12/15)

SpaceX Launches ISS Cargo, Sticks Landing at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: SPACErePORT)
SpaceX resumed launch operations at Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport with Friday's launch of 4,800 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station. In a first for the company and the industry, both the Falcon rocket and Dragon capsule were used on previous missions. The rocket's first stage was successfully recovered (the 20th so far) with an on-target landing at the spaceport, and the Dragon capsule will ultimately return to Earth with hardware and experiments from the space station. (12/15)

Israeli Team Must Raise Cash to Remain in Google Moon Race (Source: Space News)
The Israeli team competing in the Google Lunar X Prize competition says it needs to raise $7.5 million by next week to stay in the race. SpaceIL has lined up $22.5 million in pledges, but needs $7.5 million by Dec. 20 in order to maintain its launch contract and complete assembly and testing of its lander. Even with full funding, SpaceIL's CEO said it will be difficult to launch the spacecraft before the competition's end-of-March deadline. With other teams in similar situations, SpaceIL is hoping the prize deadline is extended by several months. (12/15)

National Space Council: Bringing American Values to Space (Source: Space Policy Online)
The executive secretary of the National Space Council said the administration's approach to space policy will be one of "bringing American values to space." In a luncheon speech this week, Scott Pace said there are seven core elements of that policy approach, ranging from supporting private sector activities to conducting activities that advance U.S. interests internationally. Pace, asked about the potential of increased cooperation with China, said there are possibilities in some areas, but that it would depend on the broader geopolitical relationship between the two countries. (12/15)

Thales Supports Deep Space Hab Projects (Source: Space News)
Thales Alenia Space is working with three U.S. companies being paid by NASA to study deep space habitation modules. Thales said Thursday that in addition to working with Lockheed Martin and Orbital ATK, it also is working with Boeing on its NextSTEP-2 study. A Thales executive said the company's work with Orbital ATK is focused on applications of the Cygnus cargo spacecraft, for which Thales provides the pressurized cargo module. The Boeing and Lockheed work is for those companies' own, separate concepts for habitation modules that could be used on the Deep Space Gateway. (12/15)

Arizona Court Rules in Favor in World View Lease Incentive Controversy (Source: Inside Tucson Business)
Pima County’s deal with space balloon company World View Enterprises can move forward after the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the lease agreement, overturning the lower court’s February ruling. The Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank, sued the county in April, saying the deal with World View didn’t follow the competitive bidding process required when leasing property.

Pima signed a 20-year lease with World View in April 2016, which included the county promising a $15 million investment on a launch pad and 135,000 square-foot facility on county-owned land. World View would repay the county over the life of the lease. The company would pursue “space tourism” and also launch “stratollites” into space, high-altitude balloons that double as satellites for a cheaper price. They also agreed to bring with them a number of well-paying jobs.

The court’s unanimous ruling cited a statute that says the county doesn’t have to follow a competitive bidding process when lease agreements relate to economic development purposes. County Administrator Chuck Huckleberry said such lease agreements are what companies look for when relocating or expanding. He said the county will use the same statute when making deals with other major employers, such as Vector Space. (12/15)  

Vector Signs Launch Agreement (Source: Vector Space)
Vector announced Thursday it has signed an agreement with Astro Digital to launch one of that company's satellites. Vector said it will launch an Astro Digital Landmapper-HD Earth-imaging cubesat on its Vector-R small launch vehicle in 2018. Astro Digital's first two satellites malfunctioned after deployment as secondary payloads on a Soyuz launch in July, and two more were lost on a Soyuz launch failure last month. Vector plans to conduct the first orbital launch of its Vector-R next year. (12/15)  

UAE Sees Strong Interest in Astronaut Recruitment (Source: Arabian Business)
The UAE's first astronaut recruitment effort has already attracted more than 1,000 applicants. The government announced earlier this month it was seeking applications from young Emiratis to be part of the country's new astronaut corps, with plans to select four astronauts next year. The government says those people will later fly to the International Space Station, but did not disclose when that would take place, or with which ISS partner. (12/15)

Updating US Weapons to GPS III to Surpass Budget (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
The Defense Department will likely spend billions more than the $2.5 billion allocated for upgrading weapons systems to take advantage of new GPS III technology, according to a Government Accountability Office report. The cost stems from schedule pressure and technical problems relating to the new satellites. (12/14)

MyRadar Lets You Explore Mars on Your Mobile Phone (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
If you have ever wanted to explore Mars on your mobile phone – without the pesky dangers of the Red Planet’s 95-percent carbon dioxide atmosphere – a company with employees in Orlando has made that a reality. ACME AtronOmatic, which developed the popular MyRadar weather application, has also recently teamed up with a video game company Star Citizen to use its data visualizations to explore virtual moons in its highly anticipated upcoming game.

Players can also explore those virtual moons on the MyRadar app. The company has about 10 employees in a 4,200-square-foot office along Orange Avenue near Lake Ivanhoe. ACME, which started operating in Orlando in 2012, partnered with the creators of Star Citizen, a massive-multiplayer game that has players traveling through space on trading missions, to create the virtual planets. (12/14)

NASA Finds Solar System Filled With as Many Planets as Our Own (Source: Independent)
Nasa has found an entire solar system with as many planets as our own. The discovery of a new planet around the Kepler-90 star, which looks like our own sun, means the distant solar system has a total of eight known planets. And those planets look like those in our own neighbourhood: rocky planets orbit close to the star, with gas giants further away.

The star and its family of planets were already known about, having been detected by the Kepler space telescope. But the breakthrough came when astronomers found the new world, which was done using Google’s artificial intelligence technology. A computer was trained to look through the data from the Kepler space telescope, and look for signals that might belong to planets. And it found new planets within existing systems, by spotting signals that seemed to indicate something of interest but were too weak to have been spotted by humans. (12/14)

NanoRacks Integrates Largest New Shepard Payload Manifest to Date (Source: NanoRacks)
NanoRacks is pleased to have taken part in yet another successful Blue Origin New Shepard space vehicle mission. This morning marked New Shepard’s 7th flight, and the third flight in which NanoRacks has managed customer payload integration.

As a part of the NanoRacks teaming agreement with Blue Origin, the Company partakes in both business development and payload integration. Payload integration begins with customer service through the NanoRacks Mission Management team, and ends with final on-site integration with the customer at Blue Origin’s West Texas Launch Site (WTLS). Payloads range from small student NanoLabs flying in the NanoRacks Feather Frame to larger professional-grade payload lockers. (12/14)

Two Embry-Riddle Research Payloads Traveled to Suborbital Space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard Rocket (Source: ERAU)
For less than four minutes at the edge of space, T-cells from mice in an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University experiment in partnership with the University of Texas Health Science Center and the Medical University of South Carolina were exposed to microgravity onboard a successful Blue Origin launch in the hope of one day finding new treatments for cancer.

The payload from Embry-Riddle’s Daytona Beach Campus flew Dec. 12 on Blue Origin’s New Shepard space vehicle to assess how microgravity impacts the cellular processes of T-cells or T-lymphocytes, which develop from stem cells in the bone marrow and are key to the immune system. The suborbital rocket, launched from Blue Origin’s West Texas Launch Site, traveled about 62 miles or close to 330,000 feet above Earth carrying two payloads that Embry-Riddle students, faculty and alumni had a big hand in designing and building.

The second Embry-Riddle payload is studying how microgravity affects genes that play a role in tumor growth. Embry-Riddle’s two experiments were part of 12 commercial, research and educational payloads onboard the first flight of Crew Capsule 2.0, which according to Blue Origin had the largest windows in space.  Known as Mission 7 (M7), the mission also featured the next-generation booster. (12/13)

Snazzy Videos of Blue Origin's Flight (Source: SPACErePORT)
Click here to see the interior of the Blue Origin space capsule during its recent flight, including Mannequin Skywalker, a dummy strapped into the capsule's seat. And click here to see the external video of the countdown, launch, first-stage vertical landing, and capsule landing. (12/14)

Blue Origin Subcontractor Barge Fire Caused by Fuel Spill (Source: Florida Today)
A fuel spill aboard a barge for a Blue Origin subcontractor caused a small fire Thursday morning. The fire happened about 9:30 a.m. and was put out. No one was injured and there were no serious damages, Blue Origin officials said. The barge was parked at a part of Port Canaveral run by Patrick Air Force Base, according to Canaveral Port Authority.

Blue Origin officials said the fire broke out while work was being done to cut a weld holding one of Blue Origin's propellant tanks onto a barge at Port Canaveral. The work was being performed by Hansa-Meyer, who is under subcontract to Chart Industries, which is providing the tanks to Blue Origin, the company said. (12/14)

These 90 Private Companies are Reshaping the Space Industry (Source: CNBC)
Morgan Stanley is further backing its prediction the space industry will triple in size, announcing Wednesday the launch of a new "space disruptor series." The firm identified 90 private companies "on the forefront of space disruption," writing in a note to investors. Headlined by Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and telecom satellite startup OneWeb, the report says that "the universe of private space companies is likely much broader" than even this list.

"While public investors may find it challenging to invest in space exploration, the private side is a different story. As we expand our knowledge of the private side, we expect to offer more valuable insights to public investors," Morgan Stanley said.

Morgan Stanley divvies up the space sector into 11 sub-industries: satellite launch, satellite internet, deep space exploration, lunar landing, earth observation, asteroid mining, space debris, space tourism, space research, manufacturing and other. Click here. (12/14)

Germany and Japan Sign Collaboration on Climate Research (Source: DLR)
On 12 December 2017, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Japanese National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) signed a collaboration agreement regarding remote sensing of greenhouse gases. Remote sensing of greenhouse gases is important, not only to globally monitor the 'input' of carbon and methane into the atmosphere, but also to determine the average rise in atmospheric temperature and draw conclusions regarding climate change.

JAXA's further agreements with ESA, CNES and NASA on 12 December 2017 in Paris, will unite the world’s leading space agencies in an international network – the ‘Global Carbon Observatory’. (12/12)

Black Holes in the Proposed UK Space Legislation (Source: Jurist)
The global space market was valued at $329 billion in 2016 and private sub-orbital flights and launches of small satellites alone are anticipated to be worth £25 billion pounds over the next 20 years. It is therefore unsurprising that the UK seeks to become a major player in the private commercial space industry. To facilitate its ambition to launch the very first spaceflight from UK territory by 2020, the government has proposed the Space Industry Bill which is currently before parliament.

If passed, it will significantly reduce, if not eliminate, the UK's reliance on foreign launch services, facilitate innovative research, create hundreds of jobs and contribute to the growth of the country's NewSpace sector. Some provisions of the Bill could be viewed as counterproductive to efforts intended to establish the UK as an attractive business environment for commercial space activities. For example, the Bill does not limit space operators' liability for damage to property or injury to persons but only grants discretion to the regulator to do so. Whilst this might be considered useful in discouraging risky business practices, it is also likely to put off investors. Click here. (12/11)

RUAG Space Lands Contract Extension to Develop Crucial Parts for Galileo Satellites (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
OHB System AG, the prime contractor for Europe’s Galileo navigation satellites, has extended its contract with RUAG Space to produce 12 additional Control and Data Units for these spacecraft. The Control and Data Unit is an onboard computer that controls and monitors the navigation payload and numerous other subsystems of the spacecraft. Under the newly extended contract, RUAG Space was obligated to deliver the parts between November 2018 and December 2019. (12/14)

ArianeGroup Signs Contract with ESA for Future Prometheus Engine (Source: ArianeGroup)
Prometheus is a European demonstrator for a very low cost reusable engine, running on liquid oxygen (LOx) and methane. It is the precursor for future European launcher engines as of 2030. The aim is to be able to build future liquid propellant engines with a unit cost of about 1 million euros, or 10 times less than the cost of producing existing engines such as the Vulcain2.

The success of this type of technological challenge demands an entirely new approach  and the use of innovative design and production methods and tools. Apart from switching from the traditional Ariane propellant (transition from the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen combination to a combination of liquid oxygen and methane), the demonstrator will entail major developments, including digitilization of engine control and diagnostics, and manufacturing  using 3D printing in a connected factory environment. (12/13)