NASA Studying Larger
Lunar Landers (Source: SpacePolicyOnline)
NASA is studying ways to accelerate the development of larger lunar
landers. The "quick-look" study, expected to take one month, will
examine alternatives to current plans to fund development of
medium-sized and large lunar landers expected to start launching in the
mid to late 2020s. That study could support planning for NASA's fiscal
year 2020 budget request. NASA is already working with industry to buy
payload space on smaller commercially developed landers, and it's not
clear the role industry would have with larger landers. (7/10)
Demolition of LC-17 at
the Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Florida Today)
Two historic launch towers at Cape Canaveral will be demolished this
week. The twin towers at Launch Complex 17 will be brought down by
controlled detonations Thursday morning. The complex, used for Delta 2
launches, last hosted a launch in 2011, and the site is currently used
by Moon Express to develop and test, but not launch, its commercial
lunar landers. (7/11)
Hispasat to Invest in
LeoSat Broadband Constellation (Source: Space News)
Hispasat has agreed to invest in broadband satellite constellation
startup LeoSat. Hispasat's investment in LeoSat matches the undisclosed
amount another satellite operator, Sky Perfect JSAT, made in LeoSat
last year. The company is still working to close a $100 million Series
A round of funding, with the overall system projected to cost $3.6
billion. LeoSat also announced it's dropped plans to launch two
demonstration satellites next year after concluding technology
demonstration efforts on the ground were sufficient to prove out key
subsystems, including intersatellite links. (7/11)
Kepler Communications
Works With UK For Third Satellite (Source: Space News)
Canadian startup Kepler Communications will work with a British
organization to build its third satellite. Kepler said it teamed up
with the Satellite Applications Catapult, who will partially fund the
satellite and help Kepler establish a U.K. office. That cubesat is
planned for launch in mid-2019. Kepler currently has one cubesat-class
satellite in orbit, demonstrating store-and-forward communications
services, with a second one scheduled to launch later this year. (7/11)
The Race to Get Tourists
to Suborbital Space is Heating Up (Source: WIRED)
Already, you can buy tickets for (as-yet-unscheduled) flights aboard
SpaceShipTwo, the crew vehicle developed by Richard Branson’s Virgin
Galactic. And at a NewSpace conference in Seattle last month, Blue
Origin—helmed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—announced that it has plans
to sell tickets to wannabe space tourists as early as next year. Both
companies have solid plans to cash in on human space travel (and then,
of course, there’s SpaceX, which will focus first on shuttling
astronauts to and from the space station).
Branson has said that Virgin Galactic is in a race with itself, not
other companies, to achieve safe human space flight. But with Blue
Origin aiming to start selling tickets next year, both companies could
be competing for business sooner rather than later. They’ll have to
work hard to differentiate themselves: Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic
plan to offer pretty much the same experience. Neither will take
tourists into orbit; instead, they’ll touch of the edge of space,
crossing an imaginary boundary known as the Kármán line 62 miles up.
The differences come down to propulsion. Virgin Galactic’s plan is to
launch its two-winged SpaceShipTwo while it’s attached to a carrier
vehicle, WhiteKnightTwo. Reminiscent of the X-planes that originally
broke the sound barrier, the SpaceShipTwo will drop from its carrier,
ignite its rocket engines, and then land on a runway like a commercial
airliner. Blue Origin, meanwhile, will use a more traditional capsule
and booster, both of which are designed to be reusable. (7/11)
NASA Spends 72 Cents of
Every SLS Dollar on Overhead Costs (Source: Ars Technica)
According to a new report published by the nonpartisan think tank
Center for a New American Security, NASA has spent $19 billion on
rockets, first on Ares I and V, and now on the SLS. Additionally, the
agency has spent $13.9 billion on the Orion spacecraft. The agency
hopes to finally fly its first crewed mission with the new vehicles in
2021. If it does so, the report estimates the agency will have spent
$43 billion before that first flight, essentially a reprise of the
Apollo 8 mission around the Moon.
These costs can then be compared to the total cost of the entire Apollo
program, which featured six separate human landings on the Moon.
According to two separate estimates, the Apollo program cost between
$100 billion and $110 billion in 2010 dollars. Thus just the
development effort for SLS and Orion, which includes none of the
expenses related to in-space activities or landing anywhere, are
already nearly half that of the Apollo program.
The new report argues that, given these high costs, NASA should turn
over the construction of rockets and spacecraft to the private sector.
It buttresses this argument with a remarkable claim about the
"overhead" costs associated with the NASA-led programs. For Orion,
according to the report, approximately 56 percent of the program's
cost, has gone to NASA instead of the main contractor, Lockheed Martin,
and others. For the SLS rocket and its predecessors, the estimated
fraction of NASA-related costs is higher—72 percent. (7/11)
Why China Wants A Super
Rocket Like NASA's Space Launch System (Source: Forbes)
The principle mission of SLS, though, is not to get to Low Earth Orbit.
It is designed to support deep space exploration, with an eye to one
day visiting Mars -- the only other Earth-like planet in the solar
system. However, China has announced no plans for going to Mars. So why
does it want a rocket that can lift even more than SLS?
The official story is that China too wants to pursue deep space
exploration, but here's another possibility. Like SLS, China's planned
super-heavy-lift rocket will have a much bigger diameter than anything
in the current Long March fleet. That means the payload fairing at the
top will also be wider -- wide enough to accommodate novel spacecraft
that today could only be orbited with great difficulty. Spacecraft that
might give the Peoples Liberation Army significant new capabilities.
(7/10)
NASA Funds Study on
SpaceX BFR as Option for Massive Space Telescope Launch
(Source: Teslarati)
Dr. Debra Fischer briefly revealed that NASA had funded a study that
would examine SpaceX’s next-gen BFR rocket as an option for launching
LUVOIR, a massive space telescope expected to take the reigns of
exoplanet research in the 2030s.
Conceptualized to follow in the footsteps of NASA’s current space
telescope expertise and (hopefully) to learn from the many various
mistakes made by their contractors, the LUVOIR (shorthand for Large
UV/Optical/IR Surveyor) concept is currently grouped into two different
categories, A and B. A is a full-scale, uncompromised telescope with an
unfathomably vast 15-meter primary mirror and a sunshade with an area
anywhere from 5000 to 20000 square meters (1-4 acres).
B is a comparatively watered-down take on the broadband surveyor
telescope, with a much smaller 8-meter primary mirror, likely
accompanied by a similarly reduced sunshade (and price tag,
presumably). Remember, this is a space telescope that would need to fit
into the payload fairing of a rocket, survive the launch into orbit,
and then journey nearly one million miles from Earth to its final
operational destination, all before deploying a mirror and starshade as
large or larger than Mr Steven’s SpaceX fairing recovery net.
(7/10)
NASA Adding More SLS
Block 1 Launches to Manifest (Source: Space News)
With two more launches of the Block 1 version of the Space Launch
System now planned, NASA is starting work to procure and human-rate
additional upper stages.
NASA originally expected to fly the Block 1 version of the SLS only
once before moving to the more powerful Block 1B version of the rocket.
The Block 1 uses an upper stage known as the Interim Cryogenic
Propulsion Stage (ICPS), based on the Delta 4 upper stage. The Block 1B
will replace the ICPS with the Exploration Upper Stage, a larger upper
stage under development.
However, with funding from Congress provided in the fiscal year 2018
omnibus appropriations bill to build a second mobile launch platform,
NASA now expects to use the Block 1 version more than once. Those
additional launches can take place using the existing mobile launch
platform while the new one, designed for Block 1B, is built. That move
is designed to reduce concerns about a long gap between SLS missions
had NASA gone through with original plans to modify the mobile launch
platform after the first SLS mission so it could be used for the Block
1B. (7/10)
Commercial Chinese
Companies Set Sights on Methalox Rockets, First Orbital Launches
(Source: Space News)
One of China’s emerging commercial launch companies says it has
designed a methane- and liquid-oxygen-powered rocket it aims to test
launch in 2020. Beijing-based Landspace is developing the Zhuque-2
(ZQ-2) rocket with the goal of completing ground testing in 2019 ahead
of debuting the launch vehicle the following year.
The two-stage ZQ-2 was presented July 5 at a press conference in
Beijing and will measure 48.8-meters tall with a diameter of 3.35
meters, giving it apparent similarities to the state’s established
hypergolic Long March 2 series rockets. The company claims the launch
vehicle will also be economical, capable of being mass produced and
reusable, and plans to follow up with much larger ZQ-2A, B and C
three-stage rockets in the future. (7/10)
Space Investment
Quarterly: Q2 2018 (Source: Space Angels)
In our previous issue, we saw massive momentum in commercial launch
from 2017 carry into the first quarter of 2018, leading us to predict
2018 to be the Year of Small Launch. So far, we are seeing this
prediction hold true, as 62% of non-government equity investment
year-to-date in the space industry has gone into Launch companies.
While Launch has certainly carried strongly into 2018, we also saw a
surge in Satellite investment in Q2: the number of Satellite deals has
increased 25% in just three months. Click here.
(7/10)
Alaska Aerospace Launches
Subsidiary Company to Reduce Costs (Source: The Eagle)
Alaska Aerospace has launched a subsidiary company that aims to save
taxpayer money by reducing personnel costs, officials said. The
state-owned corporation announced last week the opening of the
Anchorage-based Aurora Launch Services, which will be the exclusive
service provider at the spaceport complex on Kodiak Island. The
corporation has struggled to break even over the last seven years,
receiving at least $16 million in operating funds from the state and $3
million for a capital improvement project. (7/10)
Whoops! NASA Burned Best
Evidence for Life on Mars 40 Years Ago (Source: New
Scientist)
In 1976, NASA’s twin Viking landers conducted the first experiments
that searched for organic matter on the Red Planet. Researchers had
long known that all planets receive a steady rain of carbon-rich
micrometeorites and dust from space, meaning that Mars should be
smothered in organic molecules. But the Viking landers found nothing,
leaving researchers dumbstruck.
“It was just completely unexpected and inconsistent with what we knew,”
says Chris McKay at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in Mountain View,
California. Haunted by Mars’s missing molecules, researchers proposed
one explanation after another, but none seemed to fit – until yet
another probe came into play. Click here.
(7/10)
Hunt for Dark Matter
Turns to Ancient Minerals (Source: Nature)
Minerals deep inside Earth might contain telltale traces of collisions
with dark matter — the elusive stuff that researchers think makes up
most of the matter in the Universe. Experiments designed to search for
these traces could one day complement or even compete with ongoing
efforts to detect dark matter directly.
Researchers using sophisticated detectors sunk deep underground have
searched for signs of dark matter for decades. But now, Katherine
Freese, a physicist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and her
colleagues suggest that minerals such as halite (sodium chloride) and
zabuyelite (lithium carbonate), can act as ready-made detectors.
Minerals such as halite and zabuyelite are already deep inside Earth
and thus are shielded from cosmic rays. According to the team’s
analysis, published last month on the preprint server arXiv, if a WIMP
were to smash into the nucleus of an atom of, say, sodium or chlorine,
the nucleus would recoil. This would etch a path anywhere from 1 to
1,000 nanometres long in the mineral. (7/10)
Rocket Lab Selects Four
Finalists for U.S. Launch Site (Source: Space News)
Rocket Lab announced July 10 that it has selected four potential
locations for an American launch site for its Electron rocket, with a
final decision to come in August. In a statement, the company said it
had shortlisted Cape Canaveral, Florida; Pacific Spaceport Complex –
Alaska; Vandenberg Air Force Base, California; and Wallops Flight
Facility in Virginia as the potential locations of what it calls Launch
Complex 2.
Rocket Lab said it will select from among those four sites for the
complex in August and start construction “immediately” thereafter. The
company said it expected to have the site completed and ready to host
its first launch in the second quarter of 2019. Editor's Note:
I'm surprised to see that Georgia's proposed spaceport is not listed
among the finalists. (7/10)
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