April 15, 2019

Israel's Beresheet Lander Dropped Lunar Library Intact (Source: Ars Technica)
The Arch Mission Foundation sponsored a unique Lunar Library payload aboard Israel's ill-fated Beresheet lunar lander. The Lunar Library is a 30-million-page archive intended to serve as "a backup of planet Earth." Based on the durability of the library disk and the lander's estimated impact, Arch Mission Foundation believes the Lunar Library now rests intact on the lunar surface.

"Now the hunt is on to find where exactly on the moon it landed. The Arch Mission Foundation is putting together a team of experts -- everyone from Stephen Wolfram to a world-class treasure hunter -- to help locate the disc." The foundation therefore considers Beresheet to be a success in delivering the first commercial payload to the Moon. (4/15)

If At First You Don't Succeed...  Israel's SpaceIL Commits to Second Lunar Mission (Source: Tech Crunch)
The minds behind Israel’s SpaceIL  attempted lunar landing convened today to begin planning for a second lunar mission. In an announcement yesterday, the chairman of SpaceIL, Morris Kahn, said that the leaders of the group behind the Beresheet launch would begin meeting to find a new group of donors for another run at a lunar landing.

On Thursday the first Israeli mission to the moon ended in failure when the organization’s spacecraft Beresheet (which means Genesis in Hebrew) crashed on the lunar surface. “This is part of my message to the younger generation: Even if you do not succeed, you get up again and try,” Kahn said. At a cost of $200 million the Beresheet mission would have been among the cheapest lunar landings ever attempted — and the first legitimate attempt by a private organization to make it to the moon (even though the SpaceIL organization had significant backing from the Israeli government). (4/14)

Florida Tech to Host Space Technology Day May 23 (Source: Florida Tech)
The Florida Tech Office of Research in collaboration with NASA will host Space Technology Day on the university’s Melbourne campus Thursday, May 23. Due to limited seating, pre-registration is required. There will be no on-site registration. This free, daylong event will bring together professors, students, engineers, technologists and business leaders from around Florida to engage on NASA’s current and future space technology activities and the agency’s plans for exploring the Moon, Mars and beyond.

NASA’s Acting Space Technology Mission Directorate Associate Administrator Jim Reuter will offer an opening address at 8:45 a.m. NASA Associate Administrator Steve Jurczyk has been invited to give an afternoon keynote address from 1:30-2:00 p.m. Both presentations will take place in the Hartley Room on the second floor of the university’s Denius Student Center. Registration is available here. (4/15)

SpaceX Is Raising $500 Million Amid Internal Questions Over Satellite Internet Business (Source: Wall Street Journal)
Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is raising another $500 million in funding amid internal questions about the viability of an internet-via-satellite business considered key to the company’s growth. The fundraising, outlined in a regulatory filing last week, comes four months after a similarly sized deal for the closely held company, which is trying to accelerate development of its ambitious satellite venture, called Starlink, along with work on various rocket and spacecraft projects.

“I’m pretty sure we can launch satellites into orbit," said SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell. "It’s worthy of the hard thought and the hard work we’re putting into it. But is it feasible with our approach or not? It’s still TBD." Shotwell says SpaceX management is closely monitoring its level of investment for the satellite business: “We can’t be unwise in what we spend on that ... if we’re not sure about whether we can make money or not.” SpaceX is "not really focused on the business side of things right now" for Starlink, Shotwell said. “We’re really still focused on the technical side, which will drive business, right?” (4/15)

Social Media Leads NASA's 7 Webby Award Nominations (Source: NASA)
Want to talk about how to land spacecraft onto other planets? We're here for you. Looking for the latest news or in-depth stories about science, technology and exploration? We've got those, too. And apparently, people have noticed. Seven of NASA's digital properties have been nominated for the 2019 Webby Awards, which recognize excellence in digital communications. Three others have been designate honorees in this years awards.

"We're really excited to have all of these efforts recognized," said Bettina Inclán. "They represent hundreds of people across NASA who are committed to bringing the excitement of exploration to everyone." The social media team for NASA's InSight Mars Lander, nominated in the Education & Discovery category, helped to make the hashtag #MarsLanding the No. 1 globally trending topic on Twitter on Nov. 26, 2018, the spacecraft's landing day. That day was also Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., reputed to be the busiest online shopping day of the year and #MarsLanding trended even higher than the hashtag #CyberMonday. (4/5)

Roscosmos, S7 Group Mull Developing Reusable Commercial Space Vehicle (Source: Sputnik)
Russia's State Space Corporation Roscosmos and S7 Group are planning to develop the Soyuz-5 Light reusable launch vehicle based on the Soyuz-5 carrier rocket, Roscosmos General Director Dmitry Rogozin told Sputnik. "They [S7 Group] will be very useful to us from the point of view of developing Soyuz-5 Light, a lightweight commercial version of the [Soyuz-5] rocket [...] We want to advance to the reusability stage. It cannot be done now, but at the next stage we can do it with them", Rogozin said.

Rogozin earlier told Sputnik that he invited co-owner of the S7Ggroup, Vladislav Filev, to participate in talks in late April on the future of the Baiterek project, which involves launching Soyuz-5 [Irtysh] carrier rockets from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. Natalia Fileva, the co-owner of Russia's S7 Airlines, died in a plane crash in central Germany in late March. Russia's State Space Corporation Director Dmitry Rogozin has said he had taken the death of Natalia Fileva, whom he called Natasha, as a personal loss. (4/15)

Proton-Seller ILS Folded Into Soyuz-Seller Glavkosmos (Source: Space News)
International Launch Services (ILS) is now a part of Glavkosmos, a Roscosmos subsidiary that sells Soyuz rocket launches. ILS, which had been part of Proton manufacturer Khrunichev, said Friday it will now serve as the North American marketing arm of Glavkosmos, selling both Soyuz and Proton launches. ILS said the move will allow it to reduce prices on the Proton "squarely in line with our customers' needs." The Proton, once a mainstay of the commercial launch market, has seen demand drop sharply given a decline in GEO satellite orders, competition from vehicles like the Falcon 9 and a series of launch mishaps. (4/15)

Russian Oligarch at S7 Dies in Plane Crash After Plans to Cancel Ukrainian Rocket Deal (Sources: SPACErePORT, Sputnik)
Three days after an article on Russia's state-controlled Sputnik news site announced that Russia's S7 will scrap a contract with Ukraine's Yuzhmash to produce 12 Zenit rockets for S7's re-birth of Sea Launch, the co-owner of S7 was killed in a plane crash in Germany. Natalia Fileva was one of Russia's richest women and was the chair and major shareholder in S7.

Yuzhmash had hoped to continue producing Zenit rockets for Sea Launch after the operation was purchased by S7. S7 was also considering other Russian launch vehicles for the commercial floating spaceport. The company launched over 30 rockets from the floating spaceport in based Long Beach, California by 2014 but the project was stalled amid a row between Ukraine and Russia. (4/1)

Canadian Space Agency Sees Science Cooperation With Russia as Area of Growth (Source: Sputnik)
The Canadian Space Agency considers the cooperation with Russia on space science as a promising area of growth, the agency's President Sylvain Laporte said. "We are getting into a lot of science missions, for example. And I do know that our researchers both in Canada and in Russia collaborate a lot on writing different types of papers [...] So the collaboration is there. But the foundation of more collaboration for space science is certainly well-established. So, that would be an area of growth", Laporte said. (4/12)

Canada to Focus on Health Tech for Deep Space Exploration (Source: SpaceQ)
The Canadian Space Agency announced it has awarded 13 contracts to the health and biomedical communities as part of their health technologies initiative for for Deep-Space Exploration. Four are for Category A of the initiative, Technology Concept Studies and Prototyping of Health Technologies for Deep Space Missions – Decision Support Systems. The other 9 contracts are for Category B, Technology Concept Studies in the Fields of Medical Diagnostic Tools, Radiation Protection, and Medical Training and Simulation for Deep Space Missions

The total value of all 13 contracts is $1.3 million. The funding comes from the Space Technology Development Program. These contracts are part of the agency's long-term goal of positioning Canada as a leader in health technologies as humans begin to explore beyond low Earth orbit. (4/15)

LIGO Is Up and Running Again and Already Spotted Two Possible Black Hole Mergers (Source: Space.com)
Within two weeks of beginning its third observation period, the LIGO project has spotted the gravitational-wave signatures of what could be another two black hole mergers. The first new detection came on Apr. 8, a week after a trio of supersensitive gravitational-wave instruments began new observations after being offline for about a year and a half, receiving technical upgrades.

The new observing run also marks the first time that three different detector facilities — two Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory outposts in Washington state and Louisiana, plus the Virgo detector in Italy — have been observing together for a sustained period. The scientists affiliated with LIGO and Virgo were able to pinpoint a swath of sky where the signal originated, near the constellation Cassiopeia. It also appears to be coming from about 5 billion light-years away. (4/15)

Stratolaunch Makes First Flight Amid Market Questions (Source: Space News)
The giant aircraft built by Stratolaunch to serve as an air-launch platform made its first flight April 13 amid questions about the future of the venture. The aircraft, the largest in the world by wingspan, took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The plane flew for two and a half hours before landing back in Mojave, reaching a top speed of 278 kilometers per hour and altitude of 4,570 meters.

The only vehicle Stratolaunch currently plans to launch from the aircraft is Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL, a small launch vehicle that has struggled in the commercial marketplace in recent years despite the surge in interest in small satellites. The only recent customer for the Pegasus is NASA, and problems with the rocket have delayed for months its latest mission for the agency, the ICON space science satellite.

Stratolaunch has argued in the past that the ability to carry as many as three Pegasus rockets on a single flight would make the system appealing to national security customers, offering the ability to deploy an entire constellation on a single aircraft flight. Military agencies, though, have been supporting other small launch vehicles, including another air-launch system, Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne, named as a qualifier in the DARPA Launch Challenge April 10 alongside Vector and a stealth-mode launch developer. (4/13)

UAE Names First ISS Astronaut (Source: The National)
The United Arab Emirates has named the astronaut who will fly to space later this year. The government of the UAE said Hazzaa Al Mansoori will fly to the ISS on a Soyuz mission in September for an eight-day mission, becoming the first Emirati in space. Sultan Al Neyadi will train as his backup. The two come from a pool of more than 4,000 people who submitted applications to join the country's new astronaut corps. (4/14)

Second Planet Possibly Detected at Proxima Centauri (Source: National Geographic)
Astronomers have found signs of a second planet orbiting the star nearest to our sun. At a conference Friday, astronomers said they detected evidence of a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, but emphasized that they had yet to confirm its existence. The planet, if it does exist, is six times the mass of the sun and takes more than five years to orbit the star, making it too cold to be habitable. The star, less than 4.3 light-years from the Earth, is already known to have a planet about 1.3 times the mass of the Earth in an closer orbit. (4/14)

After Buying Engility, SAIC Looks to Expand Space Presence (Source: Space News)
SAIC plans to increase its collaboration with startups to further grow its presence in the space sector. SAIC completed its $2.5 billion acquisition of Engility in January, adding to its portfolio of software-intensive space services. SAIC is working with around a dozen space startups through accelerators in Austin, Texas, and Colorado Springs, Colorado, to make their technology more available to U.S. government customers, and plans to select a site for a third such accelerator later this year. (4/15)

Air Force Remains Firm on Launch Services Procurement Schedule (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Air Force is rejecting calls to delay a launch vehicle procurement. Col. Robert Bongiovi, director of the Launch Systems Enterprise Directorate at the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, said the Phase 2 Launch Service Procurement is now scheduled for release later this month. That competition will lead to the selection of two providers, in a 60/40 split, to perform national security launches from 2022 to 2026. Blue Origin has argued that the procurement is premature since it and other companies are developing vehicles that won't be ready before 2021. Bongiovi said the final version of the procurement has been updated to address concerns from the launch companies expected to compete. (4/15)

Air Force Wants Allied Approach to Space Security (Source: Space News)
The Air Force says it needs to work more closely with allies on space security. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein hosted the first-ever conference of international air chiefs focused on space issues last week in Colorado Springs. The number one focus area, Goldfein said in a later interview, was space situational awareness, including sharing of data to aid in attribution of any attacks on space assets. The meeting also included what he called a "robust discussion" on norms of behavior in space. He said the proposed Space Force is an "80 percent solution" that can be refined over time. (4/15)

Lockheed Martin's Aggressive Vision for Lunar Landing (Source: Space News)
Lockheed Martin says it has a way to enable NASA to meet the goal of landing humans on the moon by 2024. In a presentation at the 35th Space Symposium last week, the company outlined its plan, which calls for the use of the SLS and Orion, a scaled-down version of the lunar Gateway and a two-stage lunar lander design. That approach would allow a crew of up to four people to land on the moon by the end of 2024, but the company said work on the landers would need to begin by early next year to maintain that schedule. The company declined to give a cost estimate of the new plan but acknowledged it would need additional resources beyond the current NASA budget profile to carry it out. (4/15)

Will NASA Get the Money It Needs for 2024 Lunar Landing? (Source: Houston Chronicle)
The plan to get humans to the moon four years earlier than expected is taking shape in NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine's mind, and he's pretty sure it's doable. First, the agency will launch two Orion spacecrafts -- one with human and one without -- around the moon on the back of the government's heavy-lift rocket by 2023. Then, the agency plans to enlist the help of a commercial company to rocket pieces of a space station into the moon's orbit by 2024. Finally, officials will shuffle the government's rocket manifest to use its last flight in 2024 to send humans to that moon station instead of a probe to Europa, Jupiter's moon.

And while all this is being done, NASA will be developing a human lunar lander to take astronauts from the moon station, called the Lunar Orbital-Platform Gateway, to the surface. That's a lot to do in five years. But more than anything, the problem is money. "We've had strong bipartisan support and we've had strong budget requests in the past," Bridenstine said. "But this is another level of support, so we'll find out."

This announcement was met with cynicism, especially since the president's most recent budget request called for a $500 million cut to the agency in the coming year. And that, of course, would not be enough. So, NASA is working up a budget that would allow for faster operations without sacrificing safety. Bridenstine said he will deliver that budget to Congress in late April or early May. Also at risk of jeopardizing the moon 2024 plan is the government's problem-plagued, heavy lift rocket. The Space Launch System rocket, being built by Boeing, was supposed to launch Orion in 2017. (4/13)

Lunar Rush Sows Confusion Among Gateway Partners (Source: Space News)
International partners, meanwhile, are uncertain about what role they will have in NASA's accelerated lunar landing plan. With many elements of the lunar Gateway likely to be delayed or not needed at all, partners who planned to participate in the Gateway are privately questioning how they can take part and how to sell the revised architecture to their governments. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a press conference last week he had met with partners and was aware of their concerns, but emphasized that international partnerships were still essential to NASA's long-term lunar exploration plans. (4/15)

SpaceX Plans Re-Flight of Fairings Recovered From Falcon Heavy Mission (Source: Space.com)
SpaceX says it will refly the payload fairing from last week's Falcon Heavy launch on an upcoming mission. The two halves of the payload fairing from Thursday's launch were recovered by two ships from the ocean downrange from the launch site. Elon Musk said the company plans to use the payload fairings on a launch later this year carrying satellites for SpaceX's Starlink broadband constellation. SpaceX has been working for years on efforts to catch payload fairings in a net extended above a ship, but in this case allowed the fairings to splash down before recovery. (4/15)

100 Teams Advance to US Finals in World's Largest Student Rocket Contests (Source: AIA)
The Team America Rocketry Challenge announced the teams competing at the National Finals on May 18 near Washington, D.C. This year, two teams tied for the 100th spot, so 101 teams will compete in the finals based on their qualification scores. The Team America Rocketry Challenge is the aerospace and defense industry’s flagship program designed to encourage students to pursue study and careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

The competition challenges middle and high school students to design, build, and fly a rocket that meets rigorous altitude and flight duration parameters through a series of certified, qualifying launches. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, this year’s rules require a rocket carrying three raw eggs, representing the Apollo astronauts, to reach 856 feet before returning the uncracked eggs to Earth – all within 43 to 46 seconds. This year, 830 teams representing 46 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands designed and built model rockets in hopes of qualifying for the National Finals.

The 100 finalists will compete for more than $100,000 in prizes, and the winner of the National Finals will represent the United States at the International Rocketry Challenge at the Paris International Air Show in June against teams from the United Kingdom, France, and Japan. After five straight international championships, the United States looks to continue its international winning streak. Editor's Note: Four teams from Florida are in the running, two from Western High School in Davie, and two from Plantantion High School in Plantation. (4/13)

SpaceX and Boeing Compete for Funding (Source: The Tartan)
In the past, NASA has paid Russia as much as $81.8 million for flying a single astronaut to the ISS, but Gerstenmaier has quoted a $58 million average seat price across all 12 missions for the commercial crew program. According to the GAO and an analysis by Ars Technica, NASA will be paying SpaceX $44.4 million per seat on its Dragon spacecraft, as opposed to $71.6 million per seat to Boeing on its Starliner. In all likelihood, Boeing is receiving the additional funding simply because it requested more. In fact, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said in 2018, “Knowing I could have bid more, after the fact, I sure wish I would have bid more.”

While SpaceX has experienced some technical challenges with Dragon and its Falcon 9 rocket, it has already flown a demonstration mission for NASA and is currently making progress on final testing that would allow its first mission to take place in late 2019. On the other hand, due to an anomaly during a test in 2018, Boeing will not be able to provide a demonstration to NASA until at least August, and the administration is not confident the company will adhere to this date. It is quite possible that SpaceX will transport a full crew of astronauts into space before Boeing even attempts a demonstration to NASA.

The commercial crew program shows how market competition can cut government costs and stimulate technological advancement. Perhaps more significantly, the space travel industry is undergoing rapid change, and behemoths like Boeing cannot remain complacent if they want to compete in the modern era. Editor's Note: I wouldn't agree that Boeing 'simply requested more money' for Starliner flights. Their costs are likely higher than SpaceX's, for the launch services using Atlas rockets and probably for other elements of the program. (4/14)