September 14, 2018

Amazon's Rising Stock Gives Jeff Bezos 'Financial Muscle' in Outer Space Equal to Whole Countries (Source: CNBC)
Jeff Bezos is better known for building the e-commerce empire of Amazon than his entrepreneurial work at rocket-builder Blue Origin — but Morgan Stanley says that may change. "We believe investors may want to pay far more attention to another emerging force for the advancement of efforts in Space that has both the will and, increasingly, the financial muscle to put to work. That force is Jeff Bezos," Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said.

Bezos pours about $1 billion of his Amazon stock into his space venture each year, with Blue Origin expected to begin competing directly with Elon Musk's SpaceX in 2020. Morgan Stanley estimated Bezos' Amazon shares are worth about $160 billion — in other words, "equal to around 16 years worth of NASA expenditures on Space exploration," the firm said. Morgan Stanley advised its clients to take note of that comparison as Bezos' wealth continues to grow.

"As the value of Jeff Bezos's Amazon stake approaches $200 billion, his ability to influence private, commercial, and even government efforts in space grows, potentially accelerating capabilities and capital formation," Jonas said. Bezos has said publicly that Blue Origin is "the most important work" he's doing, Morgan Stanley noted. He also has said there should be "a permanent human settlement on one of the poles of the moon" and thinks it's not just time for humans to return to the moon, it's "time to stay." (9/13)

UN Space Agency Ready to Support States Willing to Adopt Arms Control in Space (Source: Space Daily)
UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) is ready to provide its technical expertise to member states willing to adopt a multilateral treaty on space arms control similar to the one proposed by China and Russia, said Simonetta Di Pippo, the director of the organization. She noted that UNOOSA could bring a lot to the table if member states wanted to receive technical support.

In addition, UNOOSA was looking to Russia to provide additional voluntary funding to be able to make progress on confidence-building measures and transparency. "We would really love to have champions - countries which could on a voluntary basis provide funds to us... Russia could be one, if they have any intention of doing that, for sure," Di Pippo said. (9/12)

SpaceX Signs First Private Passenger for Lunar Mission on Futuristic BFR Launch Vehicle (Source: Florida Today)
The first human to fly around the moon since the storied astronauts of the Apollo era will get there on SpaceX's next-generation Big Falcon Rocket, the company said Thursday night, further teasing an event next week that will reveal details about the launch vehicle and passenger.

"SpaceX has signed the world's first private passenger to fly around the moon aboard our BFR launch vehicle," the California-based company said via Twitter, adding that it's "an important step toward enabling access for everyday people who dream of traveling to space." SpaceX will announce more details about BFR and the passenger on Monday at 9 p.m. ET. (9/13)

Arianespace CEO Urges Europe To Mull Human Spaceflights (Source: Aviation Week)
The imminent restart of manned spaceflights from U.S. soil raises questions for Europe, Arianespace CEO Stephane Israel said. “Manned flight is close to my heart; with their know-how, Europeans could do it,” he says. Israel refers to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) experience with the automated transfer vehicle (ATV), used to resupply the International Space Station. The ATV belongs to the reusable space capsule category, Israel said. He also emphasized Ariane’s reliability. “We have all the bricks,” he said. “We have a beautiful European space policy, with superb missions ... Manned flight is the only conquest we lack,” Israel tweeted.

Editor's Note: With its use of Soyuz rockets at the Kourou spaceport, I understand Arianespace designed the launch pad to accommodate crewed versions of the venerable Russian launcher. Of course that would require much closer collaboration with Russia. (9/12)

ULA Readies for Final Launch of 30-Year-Old Delta II Rocket (Source: Teslarati)
United Launch Alliance (ULA) is nearly ready for the final launch of Boeing’s Delta II family of rockets, culminating a nearly 30-year history mostly dominated by routine success. If completed without failure, the launch of NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite – built to track global ice-sheet variation with a huge space-based laser – will mark Delta II’s 100th consecutive success and the rocket’s 153rd fully successful launch overall, an immensely impressive and laudable achievement regardless of the vehicle’s lack of competitive advantage in the modern launch industry. (9/13)

New Coalition Aims to Pressure Canadian Focus on Space (Source: SpaceQ)
A new coalition of organizations looking to convince the government of the value of investing in Canada’s space program began what will be a major marketing campaign today. The campaign is called Don’t Let Go Canada. The campaign has a website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts and will include an advertising campaign. The organizations involved include some of the biggest names in Canadian space, along with industry and advocacy groups.

The 18 organizations involved are; MDA, Honeywell, Canadensys, Deltion innovations Ltd, SED, Magellan Aerospace, Xiphos Technologies, ABB, Menya Solutions, IMP Group, Neptec, SATCAN, Mission Control Space Services, the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute, the Planetary Society, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, the Canadian Space Society, and the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada. The coalition hopes to add more members as the campaign progresses. (9/13)

New UCF-Led Study Rejects IAU Rationale for Demoting Pluto (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
A new study that has reviewed some 200 years of scientific literature regarding usage of the term “planet” calls into question the  planet definition adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which requires objects to “clear their orbits” to be considered planets. Philip Metzger of the Florida Space Institute and lead author of the paper published in the journal Icarus, noted he found just one scientific paper paper among two centuries of studies on planet classification that used orbit clearing as a defining criterion for planet status, and that was published in 1802.

“Since Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s four largest moons, these moons and other spherical satellites of planets have been referred to as planets in scientific literature,” Metzger noted. Even asteroids were considered a subclass of planets after their demotion in the mid-19th century. Only in the 1950s, after Gerard Kuiper published a paper arguing that asteroids and planets underwent different formation processes, were asteroids classified as non-planets.

“We now have a list of well over 100 recent examples of planetary scientists using the word planet in a way that violates the IAU definition, but they are doing so because it’s functionally useful,” he said. Metzger and study co-authors Mark Sykes of the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) in Tucson, Arizona, Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), and Kirby Runyon of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) argue that planets should be defined by their intrinsic properties rather than by extrinsic properties, such as their orbital dynamics. (9/13)

New Mexico Observatory Closed by FBI Under Mysterious Circumstances (Source: Alamogordo News)
The Sunspot Observatory is temporarily closed due to a security issue at the facility that’s located 17 miles south of Cloudcroft in the Sacramento Mountains Friday, an Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) spokeswoman Shari Lifson said. “The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy who manages the facility is addressing a security issue at this time,” Lifson said. “We have decided to vacate the facility at this time as precautionary measure. It was our decision to evacuate the facility.”

She said she cannot comment on whether the FBI was involved in the situation. Otero County Sheriff Benny House said the Otero County Sheriff’s Office was asked to standby. “The FBI is refusing to tell us what’s going on,” House said. “We’ve got people up there (at Sunspot) that requested us to standby while they evacuate it. Nobody would really elaborate on any of the circumstances as to why. The FBI were up there. What their purpose was nobody will say.” He said he has a lot of unanswered question about what occurred at Sunspot. (9/7)