December 5, 2017

UrtheCast Plans Chinese Partnership (Source: Space News)
UrtheCast has signed a partnership deal with a Chinese Earth-imaging company. UrtheCast and Beijing Space View Technology have agreed to offer images from each others' satellites to their customers. Each company currently operates two imaging satellites, but with plans to develop larger constellations. The deal gives UrtheCast access to more imagery after an agreement with RSC Energia to operate cameras mounted on the Russian segment of the ISS expired at the end of 2016. (12/5)

Planet Plans India Partnership (Source: PTI)
Planet will establish a development center in India. Karthik Govindhasamy, chief technology officer and executive vice president of engineering at Planet, said the center will work on technologies to analyze data from the company's constellation of Earth-imaging satellites. The center will also market imagery and data to customers in India, including government agencies and businesses. (12/5)

Regulation and Compliance for Nontraditional Space Missions (Source: Space Daily)
Center for Space Policy and Strategy has released a policy paper, Navigating the Space Compliance Roadmap for Small Satellites. The paper explores U.S. spaceflight regulations and how they apply to the increasingly common "nontraditional missions," which do not match the historical norm of a single large government satellite on a launch vehicle. This paper provides roadmaps to help new mission planners obtain the proper approvals prior to launch.

The release of Aerospace's analysis is timely, as Congress is considering new legislation, The American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act of 2017, intended to foster a "more favorable legal and policy environment for free enterprise." "Launches today rarely consist of one satellite on one launch vehicle owned by a single agency," said Sims. "The emerging trends that we're seeing now are a large number of new entrants, space launches that provide multiple rideshares, satellites carrying hosted payloads, and the proliferation of small satellites." (12/5)

Guatemala Leverages SES Networks' to Deliver Better Connectivity (Source: Space Daily)
Comnet, one of Guatemala's leading service providers, is the first to tap into the newly-launched SES Networks Enterprise+ Broadband for Latin America to enable the delivery of Quantum, a high-performance next-generation broadband service, to its end customers spanning the agricultural, tourism and mining industries. (12/5)

5 Commercial Markets for Space (Source: Space News)
Commercial space is such a vibrant and dynamic industry that it’s hard to define. It includes multinational corporations that have been around for decades, billionaire astropreneurs, myriad component suppliers and startups so new they remain in “stealth mode” with mysterious websites or none at all. What is clear is that the commercial space sector continues to dominate the market. In 2016, commercial space activities generated $253 billion, just over three-quarters of the global space industry’s $329 billion revenues while government space budgets accounted for about $76 billion, or 24 percent of the total, according to the Space Foundation. Click here. (12/5)

SpaceX Now Targeting Dec. 12 Launch of ISS Supplies From Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Florida Today)
SpaceX's next launch of International Space Station supplies from Cape Canaveral has slipped at least four days and is now targeted for Dec. 12, before noon. No reason was given immediately for the delay. The launch previously had been targeted for Dec. 8. The Falcon 9 booster being prepared for launch next week already has one mission under its belt, having launched cargo to the ISS in June. The mission will be SpaceX's fourth reflying a used Falcon booster. The mission is SpaceX's 13th under a NASA Commercial Resupply Services contract initially awarded nine years ago. (12/5)

Defenders of the Planet (Source: Air & Space)
Lindley Johnson is NASA’s first Planetary Defense Officer, charged with keeping Earth safe from rocks in the solar system on a path to collide with us. His work at the staff college when Shoemaker-Levy was discovered helped convince Air Force leadership that a potential strike from one of the objects in the solar system was a threat that needed their attention. “Impacts by even a modest-size asteroid, something a couple of hundred meters in size—it would be a catastrophic event unlike anything we ever had to deal with, particularly if it’s near a metropolitan area,” Johnson says. Click here. (12/5)

The German Space Program That Never Was (Source: Hackaday)
The V-2 wasn’t the only rocket-powered vehicle that the Germans were working on, a whole series of follow-up vehicles were in the design phase when the Allies took Berlin in 1945. Some were weapons, but not all. Pioneers like Walter Dornberger and Wernher von Braun saw that rocketry had more to offer mankind than a new way to deliver warheads to the enemy, and the team at Peenemünde had begun laying the groundwork for a series of rockets that could have put mankind into space years before the Soviets. Click here. (12/4)

NASA Expects Commercial Crew Providers to Achieve Safety Requirements (Source: Space News)
As the two companies developing commercial crew vehicles prepare for test flights in the next 12 months, a NASA official said the agency expects those companies to be able to meet, or come close to, stringent safety requirements for those spacecraft. At a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council, Lisa Colloredo, deputy program manager for NASA’s commercial crew program, said Boeing and SpaceX were making good progress toward achieving a “loss of crew”, or LOC, requirement established by NASA.

The LOC requirement states that the odds of an accident killing or causing serious injury to a crewmember be no more than 1 in 270 flights for a 210-day mission at the International Space Station. That covers all aspects of the mission, including launch and reentry.

“We have a very difficult LOC requirement to meet, and we knew that when we going in,” Colloredo said. The 1-in-270 LOC requirement for commercial crew is more stringent than the 1-in-90 value at the end of the shuttle program. “I would say that we’ve made a lot of progress, and the providers have both done a lot of redesign work to improve their LOC numbers.” (12/4)

Jupiter’s Moons, Black Holes, Exoplanets Among JWST’s First Scientific Targets (Source: Spaceflight Now)
The James Webb Space Telescope should start returning its first scientific results by the end of 2019, and scientists recently announced a slate of observations selected to whet the appetites of astronomers who will use the multibillion-dollar facility well into the 2020s.

The observatory’s initial scientific targets will include Jupiter and its moons, supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies, planets orbiting other stars, and some of the oldest observable galaxies in the universe. The director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, Ken Sembach, selected 13 observation plans last month from more than 100 proposals submitted by global science teams for the chance to be among the first to use JWST after its launch in early 2019. (12/4)

NASA Extends Expandable Habitat's Time on the Space Station (Source: NASA)
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, known as BEAM, will remain attached to the International Space Station to provide additional performance data on expandable habitat technologies and enable new technology demonstrations. NASA awarded a sole-source contract to Bigelow Aerospace to support extension of the life of the privately-owned module, and its use to stow spare space station hardware.

After NASA and Bigelow successfully completed collaborative analyses on BEAM life extension and stowage feasibility, astronauts began the process to provide additional storage capability aboard the station by removing hardware used for the initial BEAM expansion. They then converted sensors that monitor the BEAM environment from wireless to wired (to prevent interference from future stowage items on transmission of sensor data). Next they installed air ducting, netting, and large empty bags to define the stowage volume for hardware inside BEAM.

NASA and Bigelow later will likely add a power and data interface to BEAM, which will allow additional technology demonstrations to take place for the duration of the partnership agreement. This new contract, which began in November, will run for a minimum of three years, with two options to extend for one additional year. (12/4)

Trump to Nominate Former NASA Chief Griffin for Defense Undersecretary (Source: Reuters)
U.S. President Donald Trump intends to nominate Michael Griffin, a former administrator of NASA, as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, the White House said on Monday. The White House had said in October that Trump intended to tap Griffin for principal deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics. Monday’s announcement did not give a reason for the change.

Griffin most recently served as chairman and chief executive officer of the Schafer Corporation, a provider of scientific, engineering, and technical services and products in the national security sector, the White House said. He held the top NASA job from 2005 to 2009. (12/4)

Smackdown! Mini-Moons Punched Straight Through the Planet’s Core (Source: Cosmos)
Comparatively small moon-like objects smashed into the young Earth, bringing elements such as gold and platinum and adding substantially to the planet’s mass, say US scientists. A small team led by Simone Marchi of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, US, used a computational method known as smoothed-particle hydrodynamics to simulate a violent period of the Earth’s life immediately following the formation of the moon.

The moon came into being about 4.5 billion years ago – around 40 million years after the solar system began. It formed due to the clumping together of debris thrown out when the proto-Earth, then a smallish object, smashed into another wayward planet about the size of Mars.

Following this episode, the Earth – larger now, because of the collision, but still smaller than it is today – was bombarded by lots of objects collectively known as planetesimals. These accrued from clumps of interstellar matter left over from the creation of solar nebula, forming rocks that varied from the size of a grain of sand to monstrous flying lumps more than 3000 kilometers across. (12/5)

Battle Brewing in the Pentagon Over Military Space Investments (Source: Space News)
The space arms race is accelerating and rivals are closing in on the United States, military officials have warned. But on the question of what to do next, opinions diverge. Military and civilian leaders have warned that the Pentagon is taking for granted its access and dominance in space while adversaries keep plugging away. Electronic weapons now being developed by Russia and China, they warn, will one day be aimed at U.S. military satellites in orbit.

The United States can win in space today but “it’s not prepared to fight in the future,” said Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command. “The strength we have today is based on the sheer mass and numbers of capabilities we put up over the years. It dwarves any adversary we face,” Hyten said Dec. 2 at the Reagan National Defense Forum.

But Hyten sees complacency with regard to space. “I’m worried about the future. Somehow this country lost the ability to go fast. I don’t know how that happened,” he said. “We take four years to study a problem before we do anything. We do four years of risk reduction on technologies we built 50 years ago.” (12/4)

DoD Space Policy Chief: ‘It’s Imperative That We Innovate’ (Source: Space News)
As competition ratchets up for space dominance, adversaries are poised to challenge the United States, causing real concern among policy makers at the Pentagon. “The threats are moving fast and we need to stay ahead of it,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Stephen Kitay. “We absolutely need to move with urgency,” Kitay said. “Space is not a sea of tranquility.” (12/4)

Team Indus Will Try Crowd-Funding (Source: The Hindu)
TeamIndus, a private aerospace start-up, and the only Indian team attempting to launch a spacecraft on the moon, is exploring crowd funding, sponsorship and ticketing route as possible fund raising options. The start-up which has, so far, raised $35 million (approximately ₹250 crore), has to raise the other half of $35 million within a revised deadline of March 2018. The project is estimated to cost close to $ 65-70 million (approximately 500 crore).

According to Sheelika Ravishankar, Marketing and Outreach, TeamIndus, the company would launch a platform (for crowd funding) in the next couple of weeks inviting people to contribute towards its ‘Moon Mission’. The Bengaluru-based start-up, is among the five finalists in the $30 million race to the moon, under the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition. It invites privately funded teams to place a spacecraft on the moon’s surface, travel 500 meters and transmit high definition video and images back to earth. (12/4)

Adam Savage's New Tool Bag Styled After Apollo Astronaut 'Purse' (Source: collectSPACE)
The former "Mythbusters" co-host and Tested.com editor-in-chief, Savage recently introduced his first original product, a tool bag dubbed the "EDC One." The every day carry (hence EDC) evolved from Savage's decades-long pursuit of a durable, yet simple and stylish bag to hold his stuff.

"The origins of the EDC One go all the way back to my tool kits I used as a model maker in the '90s, up to working at Industrial Light & Magic and on Warner Bros. films, through the beginning of 'Mythbusters,'" said Savage. "My tool boxes started out as leather doctor bags of roughly a similar size and shape to the EDC One." Savage's leather bags eventually gave way to kits he built out of aluminum. But for the EDC One, he looked to a different type of hardware. (12/4)

Extreme Radiation Around small Stars May Not Doom Life Nearby (Source: New Scientist)
Could our Milky Way’s many red and white dwarf stars be home to alien life? These tiny, dim stars seem inhospitable with intense flares and destructive tidal forces. But with just the right circumstances, life forms on nearby planets could survive.

Our galaxy is full of small, cool stars. Red dwarfs are common but rambunctious stars that lash out in fierce flares. White dwarfs are calmer smoldering remnants of dying stars too small to explode in a nova, but only form after a star swells into a planet-destroying red giant. These dwarf stars have narrow habitable zones — the region around each star that could have liquid water – yet their prevalence makes them tempting targets in the search for life. Click here. (12/4)