September 18, 2018

Scientists to Study New Propulsion Idea for Spacecraft (Source: Space Daily)
Spacecraft and satellites could in future be launched into space without the need for fuel, thanks to a revolutionary new theory. Dr. Mike McCulloch, from the University of Plymouth, first put forward the idea of quantized inertia (QI) - through which he believes light can be converted into thrust - in 2007.

He has now received $1.3 million from the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a four-year study which aims to make the concept a reality. The QI theory predicts that objects can be pushed by differences in the intensity of so-called Unruh radiation in space, similar to the way in which a ship can be pushed towards a dock because there are more waves hitting it from the seaward side. (9/18)

The Rise Of New Navigation Satellites (Source: Aviation Week)
Positioning, navigation and timing satellite systems have come a long way since the U.S. military launched the first Navigation System with Timing and Ranging spacecraft in 1978. GPS alone now supports more than $70 billion in services. China and the EU are close to completing their own constellations, and the UK is considering an independent system as it prepares to leave the EU. NASA, meanwhile, is taking an otherworldly approach—making plans for a navigation system on the Moon and another to track objects in deep space. Click here. (9/12)

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson's Space Force Proposal has People Buzzing (Source: Space News)
Last week, Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan asked SECAF Heather Wilson and DOD Undersecretary Mike Griffin to recommend concepts for a Space Development Agency (SDA). But Wilson came back with a full-on proposal not just for the SDA but for the Department of the Space Force, laying out in detail how the force should be organized and what its missions should be. Wilson strongly opposes the notion of an SDA as a Pentagon think tank with no direct connection to the military services that organize train, equip and “have the organizational strengths” to bring technologies to fruition.

Her concept “contrasts sharply with an OSD-level technology policy organization that is far removed from operational needs, fielding and sustainment issues.” Wilson now says DoD should put forth a proposal to Congress to stand up a Space Force “the right way,” and not with “half-measures.” Wilson put forward a cost estimate: $13 billion over five years, and a force size of 13,000 personnel. Notably, Wilson articulates a strategic vision for the Space Force and explains what it would do, something that had been missing from the debate since Trump thrust the Space Force into the spotlight six months ago.

One expert speculated that Wilson had purposely piled on so many layers and features into her proposal to make it less likely that Congress will want to embark on a politically fraught effort. “It sounds to me like it's a poison pill,” the expert observed. “A classic case of saying you're supporting something while actively working to undermine it.” (9/17)

USAF Secretary Wants to Grow Ssquadron Numbers by 24% (Source: Flight Global)
Secretary of the US Air Force Heather Wilson says she wants to increase the service’s number of operational squadrons by 24% to 386 by 2025 to 2030. Citing several studies, as well as feedback from service personnel, the USAF is too small to fulfil its mission as outlined in the Department of Defense’s National Defense Strategy, Wilson says.

“We know now from analysis what everyone in this room knows from experience: The Air Force is too small for what the nation expects of us. 312 operational squadrons is not enough,” she says. “The air force we need to implement the National Defense Strategy has 386 operational squadrons.” The USAF’s number of aircraft has fallen from 401 operational squadrons at the end of the Cold War, according to Wilson. Depending on its mission, a squadron can have between 12 to 24 aircraft.

Wilson says she believes the USAF needs five more bomber squadrons, seven more space squadrons, 14 more air tanker squadrons, seven more special operations squadrons, nine more combat search and rescue squadrons, 22 more squadrons of command and control intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, seven fighter squadrons, two remotely piloted aircraft squadrons, and one more airman squadron. (9/17)

AFA Opposes Space Force (Source: Space News)
The Air Force Association (AFA) spoke out against the creation of a separate Space Force. The group, a professional military and aerospace nonprofit association hosting its annual conference this week, argued that air and space were "indivisible" and that splitting off space into its own service "would result in more harm than good." The association didn't rule out the eventual creation of a separate Space Force, but concluded doing so now is premature: "The question of standing up a new armed service for space is not 'if,' but 'when,' and the when is the time all the conditions for creating a separate armed force for space are met." (9/17)

SpaceX Okay with Launching Space Weapons, for Defense (Source: Space News)
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said she would not be opposed to using the company's rockets for launching defensive weapons. Shotwell, speaking at the AFA's conference, said she had not been asked that question before. "If it's for the defense of this country, yes, I think we would," she responded, to applause from the audience. Shotwell said SpaceX, who several years ago sued the Air Force to win the right to launch military payloads, now was in a "good position" with the service. "We're competing. We're wining some, and losing some." (9/17)

Agencies Increasingly Interested in Rideshare (Source: Space News)
Government agencies are increasingly interested in rideshare launch opportunities for its satellites. While the Air Force announced plans a decade ago to include a secondary payload adapter called ESPA on all future launches with excess capacity, those adapters have flown only a handful of times and were rarely full. Surging interest in smallsats, though, has caused agencies to revisit their use of rideshare accommodations, including an announcement by NASA last month that it will fly an ESPA ring with secondary payloads on all future science missions. (9/17)

Flying Under The Radar: Vermont's Aerospace Industry (Source: VPR)
It's out there, Vermont's combined aerospace manufacturing and civil aviation industry accounts for $2 billion a year in economic output each year. Vermont's aerospace industry creates 9,500 jobs in commercial aviation and around 3,600 manufacturing positions. (9/17)

Dawn Spots Signs of Ice Volcanoes on Ceres (Source: Science News)
Images from a NASA spacecraft show that the dwarf planet Ceres has hosted dozens of "ice volcanoes" over its history. Scientists found one cryocolvano, which erupts water ice rather than molten rock, in images from the Dawn spacecraft. A closer analysis of images of the surface, though, turned up faint traces of the remnants of past cryovolcanoes that have since slumped and spread out. Those volcanoes should release about 10,000 cubic meters of water ice a year, thousands of times less than the amount of molten rock released by Earth's volcanoes. (9/17)

'Vulcan' Star Has a Planet (Source: Sky & Telescope)
The star that in the Star Trek universe is home to Vulcan has at least one planet in real life. The star, 40 Eridani, is about 16 light-years away from the Earth, and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, consulting with several astronomers, decided decades ago to make it the home star of Vulcan based on its location and characteristics. An exoplanet survey project has discovered there is at least one planet orbiting the star: a "super-Earth" about twice the diameter and eight to nine times the mass of Earth. The planet is within the star's habitable zone where temperatures would allow the existence of liquid water, but there's no evidence yet of life there, logical or otherwise. (9/17)

NASA Will Pay Anyone $15,700 to Stay in Bed for 70 Days (Source: Space Daily)
NASA scientists will use the results of the "bed rest" study of how the human body adapts to weightlessness to develop countermeasures that will help astronauts on their space missions. If you feel that you're not getting enough sleep, this job may be a dream-come-true: NASA is offering $15,700 to anyone who will stay in bed for 70 days... all in the name of science. The American space agency is recruiting volunteers for a "bed rest" study, which envisages constant monitoring of the human test subjects during their sleep. (9/18)

SpaceX Signs Up Japanese Billionaire for Circumlunar BFR Flight (Source: Space News)
A Japanese billionaire will be paying an undisclosed but significant sum to buy a flight of SpaceX’s next-generation rocket for a flight around the moon carrying a group of artists. Elon Musk announced the first private customer for its Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) system will be Yusaku Maezawa, a 42-year-old former musician who founded Zozotown, a Japanese online fashion retail site.

In the proposed mission, scheduled for 2023, a BFR will launch and fly around the moon before returning to Earth, a flight lasting four to five days. On board will be Maezawa and six to eight artists he will select through a process yet to be determined. Neither Maezawa nor Musk would disclose the price of the flight, but Musk said that Maezawa — who had been a customer for SpaceX’s now-shelved plans for a circumlunar flight on a Dragon announced nearly 18 months ago — had already made a down payment.

“It will have a material effect on paying for the cost of the development of BFR,” Musk said. Musk said the estimated cost of the overall BFR development was about $5 billion. “I don’t think it’s more than 10 [billion dollars], and I don’t think it’s less than two” billion dollars, he said. Musk also used the announcement to announce some changes to the BFR design, focused on the upper stage, or spaceship, portion. The interior cabin volume has been increased to at least 1,000 cubic meters, and up to 1,100. (9/17)

BFR Lunar Mission Starts With Hops From Texas, and TBD Site for Orbital Launches (Sources: Space News, Florida Today)
An initial series of “hopper” test flights of the BFR spaceship are still planned to take place next year at SpaceX’s South Texas launch site under development. That would be followed by high-altitude, high-velocity flights in 2020, along with tests of the booster stage. “If things go well, we could be doing the first orbital flights in about two to three years,” he said, with “many” such test flights planned with crews before humans fly on the vehicle.

Although a graphic of the lunar mission profile showed Florida as the launch and landing point for the lunar mission, Musk said during the event that the launch site is undecided, and potentially could be aboard a floating platform. This is a development that will likely be under close watch by the Space Coast and those hoping for a liftoff from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. (9/18)

Bridenstine Doubles Down on NASA's mission: 'It's Time We Go Back to the Moon.' (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Facing down its 60th anniversary next month, NASA is reaffirming its vision for the next several years of spaceflight. “It’s time we go back to the moon, friends,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told members of the space industry Monday morning at the annual AIAA Space Forum, held in Orlando. Bridenstine, an appointee of President Donald Trump who took over as head of NASA in April, reaffirmed Trump’s 2017 policy directive to return astronauts to the moon — but further described what achieving that mission might look like.

During a keynote address highlighting the history of NASA, Bridenstine outlined the agency’s plans to return to the pace of exploration it set in the 1960s, when, 11 years after the agency’s inception, it put men on the moon. Now, NASA plans to leverage the robust private space industry to create a more sustainable and long-term presence in space. “We are doing it in a way that’s never been done before,” Bridenstine said. “There is only one country on the planet that is going to build an architecture for sustainability so we can go back and forth to the moon.” (9/17)

Astronomers Have Found the Universe's Missing Matter (Source: WIRED)
Astronomers have finally found the last of the missing universe. It’s been hiding since the mid-1990s, when researchers decided to inventory all the “ordinary” matter in the cosmos—stars and planets and gas, anything made out of atomic parts. (This isn’t “dark matter,” which remains a wholly separate enigma.) They had a pretty good idea of how much should be out there. So they added up all the matter they could see—stars and gas clouds and the like, all the so-called baryons. They were able to account for only about 10% of what there should be.

And when they considered that ordinary matter makes up only 15% of all matter in the universe—-dark matter makes up the rest-—they had only inventoried a mere 1.5% of all matter in the universe. Now, astronomers have identified the final chunks of all the ordinary matter in the universe. (They are still deeply perplexed as to what makes up dark matter.) And the researchers spotted it right where they had expected it to be all along: in extensive tendrils of hot gas that span the otherwise empty chasms between galaxies, more properly known as the warm-hot intergalactic medium, or WHIM.

Early indications that there might be extensive spans of effectively invisible gas between galaxies came from computer simulations done in 1998. “We wanted to see what was happening to all the gas in the universe,” said Jeremiah Ostriker, a cosmologist at Princeton University who constructed one of those simulations along with his colleague Renyue Cen. The two ran simulations of gas movements in the universe acted on by gravity, light, supernova explosions and all the forces that move matter in space. “We concluded that the gas will accumulate in filaments that should be detectable,” he said. (9/17)

SpaceX Secondary Payload Delivery Will Send Israeli Lander to Moon in 2019 (Source: Next Big Future)
Space Systems Loral has a Payload Orbital Delivery System (PODS) which is a cost-effective system for sending small satellites to orbit. It carries small spacecraft to orbit attached to large satellites, and then dispenses them as free-flyers near GEO. Satellite rideshare organizer Spaceflight Industries and SpaceX will have first functionally dedicated rideshare mission to a relatively high-energy geostationary transfer orbit.

In 2019, Israel-based company SpaceIL’s lunar lander spacecraft will be launched using rocket ridesharing. There will be rideshare opportunities to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) approximately every 12-18 months, or as customer demand requires. The first mission will launch the Cape Canaveral Spaceport aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 which was procured by SSL, a Maxar Technologies company. It will represent the two companies’ first combined launch and Spaceflight’s first mission beyond Lower Earth Orbit (LEO). (9/13)

UAE Space Agency, Krypto Labs Sign Funding Deal (Source: Trade Arabia)
The UAE Space Agency has signed an agreement of funding with Krypto Labs, the Abu Dhabi-based innovation hub and incubator, to facilitate the development and implementation of the GeoTech Innovation Program. The UAE Space Agency has signed an agreement of funding with Krypto Labs, the Abu Dhabi-based innovation hub and incubator.

As part of the agreement, the UAE Space Agency will facilitate the development and implementation of the GeoTech Innovation Program, which aims to accelerate the growth of three start-ups, enabling them to transform their innovative ideas into commercially viable and scalable market-ready products. (9/17)

America First, In Space (Source: The Interpreter)
Over the past few months, US President Donald Trump has seemed infatuated with outer space. He and Vice President Mike Pence have made grandiose announcements about US space policy, foremost among them, the controversial plan to set up an “American Space Force” as a sixth branch of the US military. Trump even invited his supporters to vote on a possible logo for the proposed space force.

At first sight, it appears that the Trump administration has been consistently and vigorously engaged in the area of outer space. But a closer look reveals a sense of lack of detail and cohesion. Like its terrestrial foreign policy, the actions of the Trump administration in space are framed by an “America First” approach. The administration aspires to promote US interests in space largely through unilateral actions and the interruption of existing cooperative scientific work considered not sufficiently beneficial to the US. (9/17)

What the Reorganization of Special Operations Forces Can Teach Us About Space Force (Source: War on the Rocks)
Sadly, the Star Trek and Star Wars dreams of millions of Americans are not being realized in the Trump administration’s recent decree to create a space force, but the administration has paved a vague path to establishing several new national security space organizations within the Department of Defense. The announcement has raised a number of questions among policymakers and experts: Why a whole new force? Why now?

Can’t the existing military services continue to manage missions in space? Won’t change be too disruptive? Will it rob from one essential mission set to pay for another? For those of us who study Defense Department organizational reform, both the proposals and the debates have a familiar ring to them. In 1987, Congress passed legislation that created U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, and a low-intensity conflict board at the National Security Council.

In the years preceding passage of that law, the Pentagon and Capitol Hill wrangled over the best ways to organize and resource the nation’s special operations forces. Some voices in the House called for a separate special operations military service, and even a whole separate agency, while most in the Pentagon argued for modest adjustments in policy oversight. Click here. (9/17)

The Art of Lawfare and the Real War in Outer Space (Source: Space Review)
Last month’s meeting of the Conference on Disarmament saw a debate on space weaponization. Michael Listner argues this was an example of efforts by China and Russia to attempt to use legal means to gain an advantage on the United States militarily in space. Click here. (9/17)
 
May the Satellite Industry Live in Interesting Times (Source: Space Review)
The mainstream satellite industry has fallen on hard times of sorts in recent years as the number of GEO satellite orders has drastically declined. Jeff Foust reports on the implications for manufacturers and launchers of those satellites amid uncertainty about the future effects of low Earth orbit constellations. Click here. (9/17)
 
Six-Pack for Mars: A Railroad to the Moon and Mars (Source: Space Review)
In-space refueling of upper stages can enable mission architectures like landings on the Moon and Mars without the need for massive launch vehicles. Ajay Kothari describes how this approach can create a “railroad” for frequent, inexpensive access beyond Earth. Click here. (9/17)