April 20, 2019

NASA is Working on a Camera That Could Save Humanity From Extinction (Source: Quartz)
Astronomers tend to be patient people. When it comes to stars, much of what they examine happened millions of years ago, and when it comes to space probes, even pre-launch prep can take a decade or more. But they are getting impatient about launching an infrared space telescope called NEOCam. It has a very specific mission: Spotting near-Earth objects—astronomical bodies, most commonly asteroids, whose orbits around the sun could pass close to Earth and potentially collide with our planet, some of which could damage or destroy civilization itself. (4/19)

Ground Station Startup Leaf Space Plans Capital Raise (Source: Space News)
Italian startup Leaf Space wants to triple the number of ground station locations it has by late next year, citing customer demand for providing communications services to small satellites. Founded in 2014, Milan, Italy-based Leaf Space operates a total of four ground stations in Italy, Spain, Ireland and Lithuania. The uptake of services using those stations has the company preparing to seek funding for another eight locations, including some in the United States and at least one near the equator, Giovanni Pandolfi, Leaf Space’s chief technology officer, said. (4/19)

Boeing Receives $605 Million Air Force Contract for WGS-11 Communications Satellite (Source: Space News)
Boeing received a $605 million contract for the production of the Air Force’s 11th Wideband Global Satellite Communication satellite that Congress funded more than a year ago. The WGS constellation provides broadband communications to the U.S. military and allies. The deal announced on Friday is a modification to an existing WGS Block II follow-on agreement that brings the total value of Boeing’s WGS contracts to nearly $2.5 billion. Boeing has been the prime contractor since 2001. The first satellite was launched in 2007. (4/19)

Blue Origin will expand HQ and R&D in Kent (Source: I Love Kent)
Blue Origin is “going vertical” with its new headquarters and research and development facility in Kent Washington, as they are expanding their world-class team, and will be building a new 250,000-square-foot facility that will support their new growth. This means more rocket building, more hiring of rocket scientists, and a continued connection to space for the home of the original Lunar Rovers – Kent! (4/19)

Virgin Galactic Expects Rapid Conclusion of SpaceShipTwo Test Flights After Downtime (Source: Space News)
Virgin Galactic’s chief pilot believes the company will be able to go through the remainder of its SpaceShipTwo test program fairly quickly once test flights of the suborbital spaceplane resume. In an interview during the 35th Space Symposium here April 9, Dave Mackay said the SpaceShipTwo vehicle called VSS Unity, which he piloted to the edge of space on a test flight Feb. 22, is currently undergoing work that includes outfitting the interior with the cabin the company plans to use on commercial flights that will carry space tourists. (4/19)

Methane-Filled Lakes on Titan are “Surprisingly Deep” (Source: Universe Today)
The Cassini mission to Saturn and its moons wrapped up in 2017, when the spacecraft was sent plunging into the gas giant to meet its end. But there’s still a lot of data from the mission to keep scientists busy. A team of scientists working with Cassini data have made a surprising discovery: Titan’s methane-filled lakes are much deeper, and weirder, than expected. Titan is an unusual world. It’s the only body, other than Earth, that has liquid on its surface. Scientists suspect that some of the Solar System’s other moons, like Enceladus and Europa, have liquid oceans. But those oceans are subsurface water oceans. Only Titan has lakes of liquid hydrocarbons. (4/18)

Physicists Closer to Solving Mystery of Weird Glowing Ring Around Milky Way's Black Hole (Source: Live Science)
Astronomers watched a high-speed gas cloud slam into the matter getting sucked toward Sagittarius A* — the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way — and then zip away into space. Now, careful observations have revealed just how much the gas cloud, which astronomers named G2, slowed after the collision.

That measurement tells scientists something important: the density of the hot matter surrounding Sagittarius A*, which is the nearest known supermassive black hole to Earth. SagittariusA* (SagA*) is quiescent, meaning it's not gobbling up a huge disk of matter and firing off jets. But there's still something hot and glowing surrounding it that physicists don't understand very well. The collision with G2 is offering astronomers one of their best clues yet as to what that glowing ring is made of.

"There was this drag force. The thing [G2] became slower," said Stefan Gillessen, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. G2’s deceleration proved that there was something substantial in the immediate vicinity of the black hole for G2 to crash through, Gillessen said. Physicists detected that slowing-down using data from the GRAVITY collaboration at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. (4/18)

SpaceX Delays ISS Resupply Launch (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
The launch date for a SpaceX mission to carry cargo to the International Space Station has been pushed back. A Falcon 9 rocket plans to launch a Dragon capsule carrying supplies, experiments and other materials to the space laboratory at 4:22 a.m. on April 30. The mission had previously been scheduled to send the rocket up on April 26. NASA used its Twitter account to announce the change of plans for the launch, which will take off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This will be the 17th time SpaceX has launched a cargo mission to the space station. (4/19)

Latest Lost Satellite is Now Space Junk That Could Put Other Spacecraft at Risk (Source: The Verge)
Intelsat announced that one of its communications satellites is now completely lost in orbit above Earth, rendering the vehicle an unmovable piece of space debris. Intelsat says that something damaged the satellite, causing its onboard propellant to leak out into space. Now, without the ability to maneuver and communicate, the satellite could pose a potential threat to other vehicles in the same orbit.

For Intelsat, the most obvious consequence of the loss is a financial one. Built by Boeing, the satellite, called Intelsat 29e, cost between $400 and $450 million and was supposed to operate up to 15 years in space. But now its lifetime has been cut short after just three years in orbit, preventing Intelsat from receiving any planned revenue from the spacecraft’s communications coverage over North and South America.

But the now-dead satellite is also a liability for other satellites that are on a similar trajectory. The spacecraft’s orbit is a high one above Earth known as geostationary orbit, or GEO — a path above the equator where satellites match the eastward rotation of the planet. That means they essentially “hover” over the same patch of the Earth at all times. It’s a popular spot to deposit communications and surveillance satellites because they just sit in one location of the sky for years. (4/19)

Techstars and Starburst Unveil Space Startup Accelerator (Source: Space News)
Starburst Aerospace and Techstars announced plans Feb. 12 to begin accepting applications for a new space-focused accelerator based in Los Angeles and backed by the U.S. Air Force, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lockheed Martin, Maxar Technologies, SAIC and Israel Aerospace Industries North America.

The Techstars Starburst Space Accelerator is scheduled to review applications and announce the selection in May of ten companies to participate in the three-month program. Each participant will receive a $120,000 investment and the opportunity to work with mentors who have space technology experience as well as executive mentors to help them prepare business plans and strategies, said Matt Kozlov, managing director of the Techstars Starburst Space Accelerator. (2/12)

Former NASA Deputy Administrator Garver Joins Earthrise Alliance (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Lori Garver, former NASA Deputy Administrator, has teamed with leading environmental and space scientists to form Earthrise Alliance, a philanthropic initiative established to fully utilize Earth science data to combat climate change. Earthrise funds fellowships and awards grants to partner organizations that engage and activate educators, journalists, voters and decision makers. In addition, Earthrise provides partners with meaningful content, tools and applications derived from satellite data to inform the actions of these target communities.

Stressing the importance of their mission, Garver reflects that “in the 50 years since the first Earthrise photo was taken by Apollo 8 astronauts, our planet has literally changed before our eyes. Investment in space activities have driven scientific and technological advances that have transformed our understanding of Earth’s changing climate. Earthrise was created to translate this knowledge into meaningful action and to inform critical decision making that supports and sustains humanity on planet Earth.” (4/18)

A Mars Colony Could Be Humanity's First Shot at a Ground-Up, Pure Economy (Source: Inverse)
A city on Mars could provide the first-ever truly blank slate to organize a new kind of economy. While attempts to re-organize the means of production are as old as humankind itself, these experiments have always been limited to some extent by the economic systems that came before. People can only change so much so fast. Space exploration, and the establishment of new colonies, may be humanity’s first shot at creating an economy from the ground up. Its first settlers could opt for pure socialism — where all ownership was shared — just as easily as they could establish a city that enshrines property rights so much there are no other laws at all.

The dusty red surface, in other words, will provide us with what could be the first history-free moment to start anew. “To an economist, this is perhaps the most exciting thing about space settlement!” Matt Weinzierl, a professor at Harvard Business School who has written about the economics of space, tells Inverse. With Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk possibly on the verge of opening up space to society, a prospect that has venture capitalists excited, this developing area of research has started to grapple with how economics may shift as humans explore beyond Earth. Click here. (4/20)

Pepsi's Obsession With Outer Space Has Spanned Decades (Source: The Atlantic)
Think about the dreaminess of twilight, when the sun has slipped below the horizon, and the darkening sky is streaked with dusky purples and blues. There, among the emerging stars and the silvery moon, lustrous as a pearl, you see it—an ad for a soda company. This was the future envisioned by PepsiCo, specifically the corporation’s division in Russia. According to a recent story by Futurism’s Jon Christian, the branch planned to launch an “orbital billboard,” a cluster of small satellites flying in formation, like migratory birds that want to sell you something.

The ad would orbit more than 250 miles above Earth, at about the same altitude as the International Space Station. In the early morning and evening, little sails on the satellites, made of reflective Mylar, would catch the light of the sun and become visible to the ground. The artificial constellation, blinking a logo, would promote Adrenaline Rush, a PepsiCo Russia energy drink aimed at gamers.

A Russian company has already tested a prototype using a helium balloon that carried one of its reflectors into the stratosphere, a layer of Earth’s atmosphere far below the edge of space, Futurism reported. But that’s apparently as far as this effort is going to get; this week, a PepsiCo spokesperson in the United States shot down the idea, saying there had been a miscommunication between Russian and American PepsiCo employees, perhaps because of a “language issue.” (4/19)

Last-Ditch Ways to Reverst the Climate Trend (Source: Business Insider)
Geoengineering is a term that refers to technology that can alter Earth's natural cycles to cool down the planet. It's being increasingly discussed as a potential way to address climate change. Putting mirrors in space, capturing carbon dioxide, and seeding clouds with particles are all ways of manipulating weather or the atmosphere. But some scientists and politicians think geoengineering could damage the planet or lead to war. Here are 11 strategies researchers have put forth to hack the planet and combat climate change. Click here. (4/20)

Alien 'Megastructures' May Hold Key to Making Contact with Extraterrestrials (Source: NBC)
If you’re trying to come up with the best game plan for proving the existence of extraterrestrials, you’ve got plenty of options. Naturally, you want a strategy with a high chance of success, simply in the interests of time, money and a shot at the Nobel Prize. For nearly 70 years the scheme favored by most scientists has been to look for signals — radio transmissions. That’s the classic approach of SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), and frankly, it makes sense. Radio can easily traverse light-years, and the technology for detecting it is well known and highly sensitive.

But is looking for signals really the best plan? Is it possible that we’re making the wrong bet? There’s an attractive alternative: searching for physical artifacts — alien structures. We’re not talking about crop circles or other odd phenomena here on Earth. We’re talking about massive engineering works that an advanced society has constructed somewhere in space. Why search for artifacts? Because it eliminates the requirement that the aliens have chosen to get in touch — to transmit radio signals our way. (4/20)

All-Woman Engineering Team Heads to NASA Mars Competition (Source: University of Colorado)
NASA has named a University of Colorado Boulder team a finalist in a competition to design a greenhouse for use on Mars. The annual NASA BIG Idea Challenge is set for April 23-24 in Virginia; it calls on student groups at universities across the country to develop solutions to vexing space problems. The 2019 contest is seeking innovative ideas for the design and operation of a Mars greenhouse. The students are putting the finishing touches on their entry before the final competition, where their written research and physical prototypes will be evaluated by a group of NASA experts.

Five universities advanced to the championship and CU Boulder is the only one sending an all-woman team. “It wasn’t intentional. In the beginning, I reached out to people I knew who would be good for the project, and one day we looked around the room and realized we were all women.” The team is also heavily interdisciplinary, drawing students with majors from across the college, including aerospace, computer science, architectural engineering, chemical and biological engineering, and mechanical engineering. (4/18)

Kivelson Succeeds Harrison as Chair of Space Studies Board (Source: Space Policy Online)
Margaret Kivelson is the new chair of the Space Studies Board (SSB) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.  She succeeds Fiona Harrison who stepped down in order to co-chair the ongoing Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics. Harrison was the first woman to chair SSB in its 61-year history. Now Kivelson is the second.

Margaret Kivelson standing next to the engineering model of the Galileo spacecraft at JPL’s museum. Credit: NASA website. Kivelson is Professor of Space Physics, Emerita at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a research professor at the University of Michigan. Her specialty is magnetospheric plasma physics of the Earth, Jupiter and Saturn. (4/19)

NASA Announces Upcoming ISS Crews, Which Won’t Fly Commercial (Source: Discover)
Ever since the space shuttle retired in 2011, NASA has been paying Russia for rides to the International Space Station. They’d hoped that dependency would finally end in 2019. But with its new lineup of flights and launch dates released this week, the space agency acknowledged they’re not quite done needing Russia’s Soyuz rockets yet.

NASA will remain dependent on Russia for the next round of space station rotations. Thanks to delays in commercial launches by SpaceX and Boeing, which NASA has paid billions to ferry crews to ISS, the space agency is now settling on longer missions for their astronauts, who will continue to hitch rides on Soyuz rockets. In fact, the new long-term crew roster and launch dates for the next year does not list any flights on commercial launches.

NASA had planned to stop buying rides to the space station aboard Russian Soyuz flights by the end of 2019 and switch to buying seats from SpaceX and Boeing instead. But both companies have suffered delays and are still in the process of testing and being certified to fly humans. NASA’s solution, to avoid abandoning the ISS in the meantime, was to purchase two additional Soyuz seats to get them through the rest of 2019 and into early 2020, and stretch out the assignments of their crew. (4/19)

Why We Love Investing in Space (Source: Via Satellite)
The worse the pain in a sector, the more we get intrigued. Space was an area that was, and still is, a very difficult industry in which to successfully start and grow a data business. The recent emergence of small satellite technology was a key variable change that we believed would unlock the industry in new and exciting ways. No longer did a large expensive satellite need to stay up in geosynchronous orbit for 20 years with outdated technology. While small satellites offered a much shorter life, a company could launch them cheaper and more frequently, as well as continually upgrade these constellations in the sky whenever needed. We are seeing these important shifts clearly play out in the industry today. Click here. (4/19)

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