July 21, 2018

Boeing, SpaceX Delays May Mean 'Gap' in Access to Space Station (Source: Huntsville Times)
Delays by Boeing and SpaceX in getting their space capsules ready to fly may mean the International Space Station orbits Earth for at least nine months with no Americans on board, government auditors warned this month. The station is an orbiting research laboratory, and the round-the-clock operations center at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville coordinates all the U.S., European, Japanese, and Canadian experiments on board.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued its latest report on NASA's Commercial Crew Program July 11. The headline was direct: "Plan Needed to Ensure Uninterrupted Access to the International Space Station." But America only has seats booked on Soyuz rockets through 2019. And buying more seats isn't an option, partly because Russia can't build another Soyuz in time. According to the GAO report, Boeing can't get its CST-100 Starliner ready for NASA's certification until January 2019. SpaceX can't get its Dragon 2 capsule ready for certification until February 2019. (7/20)

Welcome to the Era of Orbital Publicity Stunts (Source: WIRED)
In January a company called Rocket Lab secretly added an extra point of light to the night sky. Dubbed the Humanity Star, it was a faceted carbon-fiber sphere parked in low Earth orbit, designed to twinkle as it caught the sun’s rays, thus creating a “shared experience for everyone on the planet.”

Astronomers were not amused. Some saw it as a publicity stunt, confirming their worst fears about private spaceflight. What’s next, they fumed, billboards in space? (Two weeks later, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched a Tesla Roadster into solar orbit.) Others called it vandalism. The epithet that stuck was space graffiti. Exploits like the Tesla shot may be just public tagging by attention-­hungry moguls. But some space graffiti may find a place—like terrestrial graffiti—as a valid form of expression. It wouldn’t be any stranger than disco making a comeback. (7/20)

ULA Hopes to Launch More Affordable Rocket (Source: WAFF)
Tory Bruno and ULA Vice President Mark Peller say ULA has spent two years re-configuring and reconstructing its Decatur factory to make room for one more rocket line - a rocket named "Vulcan" they want to see fly in just 24 months, joining two other rockets they already have flying. "We start flying Vulcan in a couple of years. The Delta 4H will continue out until the mid 2020s and the Atlas will continue to work until the early 2020s." said Bruno.

What will thrust Vulcan off the ground and toward the moon? That's still literally up in the air. The engines will be American made by either Aerojet Rocketdyne or Blue Origin. For several years, ULA will be manufacturing three rockets under one roof. Eventually, Vulcan will replace them all because they say it will be smarter, cheaper, faster to manufacture and very flexible to fly.

Bruno says that ULA-Decatur employs 860 people but there are 5-10 additional jobs associated with these primary jobs to create a pretty big supply-chain footprint in the Tennessee Valley. In fact, ULA is investing more than $115 million into Vulcan and the Alabama Department of Commerce says that helped put Morgan County on top in the state for aerospace-industry investments in 2017. (7/20)

Putin Challenges Roscosmos to “Drastically Improve” on Space and Launch (Source: Space News)
Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Roscosmos to meet deadlines for the nation’s future Angara, Soyuz-5 and “super-heavy class” rockets while fixing quality-control issues that have dogged Russian spacecraft and launch vehicles in recent years.

According to the Kremlin’s published transcript of Putin’s remarks during a July 18 meeting with the state-run space corporation Roscosmos, Putin said it “is necessary to drastically improve the quality and reliability of space and launch vehicles” and to preserve Russia’s increasingly threatened leadership in space. Russia’s Proton rocket has suffered more than half a dozen full or partial failures this decade, and was sidelined for much of 2016 and 2017 for an anomaly review and the subsequent unrelated discovery of incorrectly built engines.

This spring, Russian officials gave up on recovering the Angosat-1 satellite after the satellite began malfunctioning shortly following its December launch. The communications satellite, built for Angola, was a rare export for Russian satellite manufacturers. Putin said test flights of Soyuz-5, which RSC Energia will design and build under a contract signed July 17, “should begin in 2022.” Regarding a “super-heavy class rocket,” Putin said that flight tests “should begin in 2028 as planned.” (7/20)

Russia Preparing Plesetsk Spaceport Infrastructure for Sarmat ICBM Flight Tests (Source: TASS)
Specialists are preparing infrastructure at the Plesetsk spaceport in north Russia for the flight tests of the promising Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov said on the single military output acceptance day on Friday.

"Work continues to create infrastructure for Yars stationary and mobile [intercontinental ballistic] missile systems and concurrently efforts are underway to prepare the infrastructure of the 1st State Testing Cosmodrome for conducting the flight tests of the promising stationary Sarmat missile system," he said. (7/20)

Triumph Agrees to Support $64.5M for MRO Construction in Northwest Florida (Source: Triumph)
Triumph Gulf Coast today gave preliminary approval to $64.5 million in grants to expand the region’s aerospace and aviation infrastructure. The Triumph board voted unanimously to support $56 million in major expansions of the Pensacola International Airport’s maintenance, repair and overhaul facilities and $8.5 million for substantial expansion of Whiting Aviation Park in Santa Rosa County.

“These transformative investments will directly create over 3,100 high-paying jobs, generate hundreds more jobs in support and supply areas and grow Northwest Florida as a leader in aviation and aerospace,” said Triumph Chairman Don Gaetz. Triumph Gulf Coast, Inc., is a nonprofit corporation organized to oversee the expenditure of 75 percent of all funds recovered by the Florida attorney general for economic damages to the state that resulted from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. (7/19)

Vector Runs Rocket Tests in Kodiak (Source: Alaska Aerospace)
A spaceflight startup rehearsed its launch procedures this week at the Kodiak spaceport. Arizona-based Vector Launch, Inc. conducted a telemetry test on Tuesday, to check communications between the rocket and the spaceport command center. On Wednesday, it performed a fueling test. During both, employees raised a 43-foot replica of the “Vector-R” rocket to a vertical position on launch pad C, where the company hopes to launch later this year. (7/13)

Where Are All the Aliens? (Source: TED)
The universe is incredibly old, astoundingly vast and populated by trillions of planets -- so where are all the aliens? Astronomer Stephen Webb has an explanation: we're alone in the universe. In a mind-expanding talk, he spells out the remarkable barriers a planet would need to clear in order to host an extraterrestrial civilization -- and makes a case for the beauty of our potential cosmic loneliness. "The silence of the universe is shouting, 'We're the creatures who got lucky,'" Webb says. Click here. (7/20)

Gingrich: 49 Years Ago We Stepped on the Moon -- Now it's Time to Dream Big Again (Source: FOX News)
In 1969, it was reasonable to expect that our space program would continue to move at the pace of the Apollo program. It was therefore reasonable to think that by 2018 we would have four to five colonies on the moon, space-based outposts in various lunar and cislunar orbits, mining operations on several asteroids, and a preliminary habitat on Mars.

In fact, when Arthur C. Clarke wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey” in 1968, it made sense to mark 2001 as the timeframe in which humans would develop the technology and shape the reality that he described. We have clearly fallen short of Armstrong’s and Clarke’s visions. Instead of building a robust space program, we built a robust space bureaucracy. After nearly 50 years wandering in a mostly Earth-bound wilderness of red tape – and spending roughly $555 billion on risk-averse, underwhelming, mostly unmanned space observation projects – we have not truly taken Armstrong’s giant leap.

Trump and Pence want ordinary Americans with modest training going into space as pioneers and colonizers. Their vision inherently requires dramatic drops in cost and increases in capability. This is the same model we followed while exploring the North American continent. First came the “professionals” and then came the settlers as soon as economic viability was established. Fifty years after the first human extraterrestrial landings, we are about to enter the second phase of American space exploration. (7/20)

Presidential Message on Space Exploration Day (Source: White House)
On Space Exploration Day, our Nation celebrates the history of American space travel, and we reaffirm our determination to continue to lead the world in the exploration and development of space. Nearly half a century ago, with great skill and courage to conquer the unknown, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins led the mission to land the first Americans on the surface of the Moon.

Since then, people around the world have marveled at the technological advancements in space exploration made by NASA and the private sector. As history has shown, there is no limit to the imagination and determination of the American people, and we will continue this proud tradition of innovation in space exploration. Click here. (7/20)

Some Scientists Work With China in Space, But NASA Won't (Source: WIRED)
Working with both NASA and China may seem like a contradiction, or even a conflict. The two superpowers are butting heads on trade, military, and cybersecurity issues. Congress has banned NASA officials and NASA money from going to China. That might be because of a recent history of Chinese espionage targeting US military, aerospace, and technological secrets.

But for this French scientist, it’s better to understand what Chinese scientists are doing than keep them at arm's length. “We keep closed doors from the different projects,” he says. “I’m not going to give them any technology of the (Mars) rovers. Yes, there is collaboration at the science level, but we try to do it in a very professional way. When they ask us questions, it's mostly about data. We don’t talk about coding or nuts and bolts.”

Sylvestre is helping the Chinese space agency build a second-generation chemical-sensing camera for its Mars mission, which will launch in 2020. That's a big year for the Red Planet, which will be visited by China along with missions from NASA, Europe, and the United Arab Emirates. “We cannot ignore that they are a major player in space,” Sylvestre says about China. “They want to explore the solar system in a more guided way. They decide on a target and they go for it.” Click here. (7/20)

NASA Is Making Troves of Satellite Data More Accessible Than Ever (Source: NextGov)
NASA on Wednesday launched an online toolkit that could make it easier than ever for businesses and entrepreneurs to cash in on the space agency’s troves of satellite data. For years groups have used NASA satellite imagery to forecast crop growth, monitor wildlife and even enhance video games, but the data and analytics tools behind those applications were scattered across more than 50 agency websites.

Scientists and researchers eventually learned to navigate the maze of resources, but general users faced a higher barrier to entry, according to Daniel Lockney, head of NASA’s Technology Transfer Program, which works to bring space technologies to the public. (7/20)

ISRO Transfers Top Scientist (Source: Deccan Herald)
In an unusual move, the Indian Space Research Organisation has transferred one of the top scientists, heading an important research establishment in Ahmedabad, to an advisory position at the ISRO headquarters in Bengaluru. Tapan Misra, a distinguished scientist and director of Ahmedabad-based Space Application Centre, has been asked to report to the ISRO headquarters as an advisor to ISRO Chairman, sources told DH. At the moment, there is no such post. (7/20)

Facebook Confirms It's Working on a New Internet Satellite (Source: WIRED)
A host of companies believe the better way to connect the estimated half of Earth’s population that’s still offline is to launch “constellations” of smaller satellites into low Earth orbit, around 100 to 1,250 miles above our planet. According to emails obtained from the Federal Communications Commission in response to a Freedom of Information Act, and a confirmation from the company itself, Facebook is officially one of them. The emails show that the social network wants to launch Athena, its very own internet satellite, in early 2019. (7/20)

Who Owns the Moon? A Space Lawyer Answers (Source: The Conversation)
Of course, claiming new national territories had been very much a European habit, applied to non-European parts of the world. In particular the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the French and the English created huge colonial empires. But while their attitude was very Europe-centric, the legal notion that planting a flag was an act of establishing sovereignty quickly stuck and became accepted worldwide as part and parcel of the law of nations.

The U.S. flag [planted on the moon during Apollo 11] was not a manifestation of claiming sovereignty, but of honoring the U.S. taxpayers and engineers who made Armstrong, Aldrin, and third astronaut Michael Collins’ mission possible. Furthermore, the United States and NASA lived up to their commitment by sharing the moon rocks and other samples of soil from the lunar surface with the rest of the world, whether by giving them away to foreign governments or by allowing scientists from all over the globe to access them for scientific analysis and discussion.

Case closed, no need for space lawyers anymore then? Not so fast. While the legal status of the Moon as a “global commons” accessible to all countries on peaceful missions did not meet any substantial resistance or challenge, the Outer Space Treaty left further details unsettled. Click here. (7/20)

NASA Performs Another Test of Orion’s Parachute System (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
Last week, NASA tested the parachute system for the space agency’s Orion spacecraft, which is being designed to send astronauts into deep space in the 2020s. The July 12, 2018, test took place at the U.S. Army Proving Ground in Yuma, Arizona, and was the seventh drop in a series of eight qualification test. For this particular evaluation, a dart-shaped test article was used. The space agency said this was the final test using that device and the next test, scheduled for September, will used a capsule-shaped test article.

NASA said this drop was used to demonstrate the parachute system’s robustness. It involved flying the article to an altitude of about 6.6 miles (10.6 kilometers) to drop from an aircraft. This altitude allowed it to generate enough speed to simulate forces almost twice as much on the main chutes as would occur during a nominal descent.

According to NASA, the system has 11 parachutes in total—three forward-bay cover parachutes, two drogue parachutes, three pilot parachutes and three main parachutes. These are designed to reduce a returning capsule’s speed after reentry to support a safe ocean splashdown, the space agency said. (7/21)

What's Your Idea to 3D Print on the Moon - To Make it Feel Like Home? (Source: ESA)
A new ESA-led project is investigating the ways that 3D printing could be used to create and run a habitat on the Moon. Everything from building materials to solar panels, equipment and tools to clothes, even nutrients and food ingredients can potentially be 3D printed. But if you were headed to the Moon, what would you want to 3D print, to turn a lunar base into a place that feels like home? Tell us your idea, to win a chance of actually getting it printed.

Global space agencies are focused on the concept of a lunar base as the next step in human space exploration – and 3D printing represents a key technology for making it happen. The aim would be to ‘live off the land’ as much as possible, by printing as many structures, items and spares out of lunar regolith as possible, or by using and reusing materials brought for the mission, rather than continuously relying on the long, expensive supply line from Earth. (7/20)