February 16, 2018

NASA Invites Media to See How Oklahoma Small Business Supports Space Exploration (Source: SpaceRef)
NASA and industry partners will visit Oklahoma the week of Feb. 20, to highlight the work being done across the state to build and supply aerospace components for the agency's new heavy-lift rocket and crew vehicle, the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft. SLS will enable a new era of exploration, launching astronauts in the Orion spacecraft on deep space exploration missions to the Moon and ultimately Mars.

Media are invited to Stillwater, Oklahoma, at 10:15 a.m. CST, Wednesday, Feb. 21, to Frontier Electronic Systems, a Native American, woman-owned, small business building electronics critical to controlling the flight of SLS, which will be the world's most powerful rocket. (2/16)

World's Largest Plane Could Give Elon Musk The Space Race He's Craving (Source: Jalopnik)
Billionaires are taking to space the way wistful young men take to the sea in 19th Century novels. Last week, Elon Musk launched his Tesla Roadster at the astroid belt using the world’s most powerful rocket currently in operation. Not to be outdone, Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen also has a big plan (and a big plane) for going to space.

In December of last year, the Stratolaunch performed its first taxi at the Mojave Air & Space Port in Mojave, CA. While that doesn’t seem terribly exciting, it’s the first step to getting the Stratolaunch, the world’s largest plane ever (via wingspan) into the air. (2/15)

SpaceX Hits Two Milestones in Plan for Low-Latency Satellite Broadband (Source: Ars Technica)
SpaceX's satellite broadband plans are getting closer to reality. The company is about to launch two demonstration satellites, and it is on track to get the Federal Communications Commission's permission to offer satellite Internet service in the US. Neither development is surprising, but they're both necessary steps for SpaceX to enter the satellite broadband market. SpaceX is one of several companies planning low-Earth orbit satellite broadband networks that could offer much higher speeds and much lower latency than existing satellite Internet services. Click here. (2/15)

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Mission for Air Force Targets June Launch (Source: Bloomberg)
SpaceX fans still flying high from last week’s Falcon Heavy rocket launch may want to mark their calendars for June. The U.S. Air Force is targeting that month for its Space Test Program 2 mission, or STP-2, a spokeswoman for the Space and Missile Systems Center said in an email. The launch can take place before SpaceX’s more powerful rocket is certified by the military because the mission is considered experimental. Falcon Heavy will eventually have to complete the validation process to carry out national security launches.

STP-2 has a number of objectives, including demonstrating the new rocket’s capabilities and launching several satellites. It will likely be Falcon Heavy’s first launch for a paying customer. Three commercial satellite operators -- Arabsat, Inmarsat and Viasat -- have also signed on to fly with the 27-engine vehicle, according to SpaceX’s launch manifest. (2/14)

NASA Gears Up for Brisk Launch Pace, Starting with Weather Satellite (Source: SpaceFlightNow)
Engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center tasked with overseeing launches of scientific satellites and interplanetary probes will be responsible later this year for ensuring six major missions safely get into space over a span of a little more than six months, beginning with the launch of NOAA’s new GOES-S weather observatory on an Atlas 5 rocket March 1.

After overseeing the launch of NOAA’s latest weather satellite, NASA plans to put up a spacecraft to search for planets circling other stars, a lander that will travel to Mars, a small satellite to study the interaction between solar activity and Earth’s atmosphere, a probe to travel closer to the sun than any previous mission, and a mission to measure Earth’s thinning polar ice sheets and glaciers.

It’s a big year for NASA’s Launch Services Program, an office headquartered at the Kennedy Space Center charged with ensuring the agency’s robotic missions safely reach space. The brisk pace of launches planned for this year will be spread among six different rocket configurations from six different launch sites. The missions will loft around $6 billion in NASA and NOAA assets, according to Robert Cabana, director of the Kennedy Space Center. (2/15)

Colorado Leads World In Aerospace Employment As New Company Moves In (Source: CBS4 Denver)
Colorado is continuing to lead the world in aerospace after Maxar Technologies announced Wednesday it would move its corporate headquarters to Westminster. It is expecting to hire about 800 people over the next decade in Colorado, as DigitalGlobe expands. DigitalGlobe currently has about 1,000 employees in Colorado. Colorado is home to 400 aerospace companies with about 28,000 employees in the field. (2/15)

The Astro-Couple (Source: Air & Space)
In those early days of space exploration, that’s about all astronaut wives could do. Since then, there have been more than a dozen astronaut couples who’ve both experienced spaceflight firsthand. NASA’s first class of space shuttle astronauts—the first to include women—had three such couples: Rhea Seddon and Hoot Gibson, Bill and Anna Fisher, and Steve Hawley and Sally Ride. Click here. (2/14)

Did Crystals from Ancient Lakes on Mars Form These Tiny, Weird Things? (Source: Space.com)
NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars found tiny, dark bumps on a Martian ridge that are similar to those found around gypsum crystals that form in drying lakes on Earth, according to a statement from the space agency. The tiny bumps are less than a half an inch wide. Some are star-shaped, while others are part of more complex V-shaped "swallowtails." The features are not crystals themselves, but could have formed over the crystals, like plaster over a mold. Researchers think the features are yet another sign that liquid water once flowed on the Red Planet.

"These [types of features] can form when salts become concentrated in water, such as in an evaporating lake," Sanjeev Gupta, a Curiosity science team member at Imperial College, London, said in a statement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Gupta previously studied gypsum crystals in the rocks of Scotland. (2/14)

Inside the First Commercial Astronaut Training Program (Source: Motherboard)
John Rost was all smiles as he climbed down from the cockpit of an F-104 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center last week. Just 30 minutes before, I had watched Rost and his instructor, former Italian Air Force pilot Piercarlo Ciacchi, taxi down the same runway that hosted space shuttle landings less than a decade before. After idling for a moment, the blue-and-white checkered jet exploded down the runway and went screaming into the restricted airspace around Kennedy.

Rost is the first pilot in a fledgling commercial astronaut training program run by Starfighters Inc., and this was his fourth flight. “That was fucking awesome,” Rost, an amateur pilot who is the CEO of Fiesta Auto Insurance when he’s not training to be an astronaut, said when we spoke after his flight. “It’s just like being on a spaceship. Driving into Kennedy Space Center, flying around and seeing all the launch pads, the Vehicle Assembly Building—you feel like you’re Neil Armstrong.”

Starfighters is attempting to create the first commercial astronaut training program for space tourists who hope to catch a ride on SpaceX or Blue Origin rockets in the future. For now, it offers a high performance training program that teaches pilots like Rost how to fly F-104 fighter jets. The company hopes to one day be part of a more comprehensive astronaut training program, and to play a central role in creating federal regulations for commercial astronaut training programs in the US. Click here. (2/15)

Jacksonville's Cecil Spaceport Gains Access Road with Florida Grant Funds (Source: WOKV)
Nine projects around the state are getting a share of $35 million, including an access road in Jacksonville. Florida Governor Rick Scott stopped in Jacksonville to announce Florida Job Growth Grant Fund projects. The Executive Director of the Department of Economic Opportunity says more than 225 grant proposals were received, which totaled more than $821 million.

$6 million has been approved for the construction of a 1.5-mile access road to the Cecil Commerce Center, to provide access for the manufacturing industry. WOKV is working to learn more details on the specific project. In order to get funding, the state says the projects need to show they will strengthen Florida’s business climate by enhancing community infrastructure or developing workforce training programs. (2/6)