April 29, 2019

Summit Planned to Discuss Florida Plans for US Space Command (Source: Space Florida)
Governor DeSantis has directed Space Florida to capture the newly re-established US Space Command for Florida. To assure we incorporate all of Florida’s extensive capabilities in the offering to DOD and the White House we are hosting a state-wide Summit. Please bring to this event thoughts to address the following questions: What capabilities can your community/military installation bring to best advance the mission of the US Space Command in Florida? How could a US Space Command in Florida best support the mission of your community/military installation? (4/29)

Congress Increases Pressure Air Force Launch Procurement Plans (Source: Space News)
A debate between the secretary of the Air Force and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee on a planned launch procurement is escalating. Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), chairman of the committee, asked Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson last month to postpone the Launch Service Procurement, arguing the move to select two providers by 2020 is being rushed. Wilson responded last week by stating that any delay will prevent the Air Force from fulfilling a congressional mandate to end use of the Russian-built RD-180 engine that powers the Atlas 5.

Smith is said to be unsatisfied with Wilson's response and is weighing what steps to take next, according to a committee official. Some in industry are also concerned that the upcoming procurement will allow companies to offer an alternative launch vehicle as a backup if their primary vehicle is not ready by 2022, rather than recompeting the contract, a provision that would appear to favor United Launch Alliance over other contenders. (4/29)

NASA Seeks Crewed Lunar Lander Proposals (Source: Space News)
NASA has revised an upcoming call for proposals for a human-class lunar lander. In a procurement filing late Friday, NASA said it will seek proposals in the coming weeks for "a complete integrated lander" capable of carrying people to the lunar surface, and not just an ascent module as announced earlier this month. NASA earlier solicited proposals for studies of the lander's descent stage and transfer vehicle, and had originally planned to work on the ascent module in-house prior to Vice President Pence's speech last month accelerating the timeline for a lunar landing. That formal call for proposals, part of NASA's NextSTEP program, is now expected to be released by the end of May. (4/29)

Chinese Companies Test Reusable Launchers (Source: Space News)
Two Chinese companies recently tested technologies for reusable launch vehicles. New Chinese launch firm Space Transportation carried out a test April 22 in northwest China in cooperation with Xiamen University, launching a 3,700-kilogram technology demonstrator named Jiageng-1. The winged vehicle launched vertically and reached a peak altitude of 26.2 kilometers and speed of 4,600 kilometers per hour before landing. Linkspace followed up its March 27 low-altitude untethered launch and landing test of its RLV-T5 tech demonstrator with a second launch and recovery April 19. On that flight, the vehicle launched vertically and reached an altitude of 40 meters, twice as high as the first test, before making a powered vertical landing. (4/28)

Space Adventures Settled Lawsuit for Nixed Lunar Fly-Around (Source: Space News)
Space Adventures has reached a settlement in a suit brought by a would-be customer of  a proposed circumlunar mission. Harald McPike sued the company and its top executives in 2017, seeking a return of a $7 million deposit he paid in 2013 when he signed up for a flight around the moon on a Soyuz spacecraft the company was offering. McPike argued that Space Adventures did not have the approvals in place with Russian agencies and companies needed to perform the mission. McPike and Space Adventures reached a settlement in late March, shortly before the case was scheduled to go to trial in Virginia, but terms of the settlement were not disclosed. (4/29)

Group Seeks Independent Approach to Commercial Space Safety (Source: Space News)
A nonprofit organization is calling for the formation of an independent institute to oversee commercial space safety. In a report last month, the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS) said the proposed Space Safety Institute would bring together government and industry experts, with some government funding, to help the commercial spaceflight industry grow and gain public trust. An industry group, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, is already working on consensus safety standards with ASTM International, and believes the IAASS approach is unnecessary. (4/29)

China's Far-Side Moon Rover Wakes for Fifth Lunar Day (Source: Xinhua)
China's Chang'e-4 has started its fifth lunar day of operations. The lander and the Yutu-2 rover started operations over the weekend after hibernating through the two-week lunar night. Both the lander and rover are working well, Chinese officials said, although they provided few specifics about the upcoming activities during this latest phase of the mission. (4/29)

Architect Firm Expands to Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Rhodes+Brito)
Rhodes+Brito Architects, based in downtown Orlando, opened a branch office in Brevard County staffed with 25 employees to facilitate a major USAF contract the firm was awarded last year. The five-year Tactical Range Architectural and Engineering Services (TRACES) contract is specifically with the Air Force 45th Space Wing in support of requirements at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Patrick Air Force Base. The work involves renovations and remodeling of existing facilities, additions to existing building, new construction, engineering, and design-build services. Rhodes+Brito is already more than seven months into the contract and has received $5.5 million for task orders currently in design and construction since last summer. (4/28)

Portugal Just Launched a National Space Agency. Spaceport Soon? (Source: Space.com)
Portugal just became the latest country to establish a national space agency. The country made its plans official on March 18, when its Council of Ministers signed the charter at a formal ceremony at Ponta Delgada, Portugal — the capital city of the Azores archipelago, where the new space agency will be based. Located west of Portugal in the Atlantic Ocean, the Azores may soon host Portugal's first spaceport and new infrastructure for satellite tracking and monitoring. The agency's headquarters are being built on the Azores island of Santa Maria; named "Portugal Space," the new organization aims to start launching small satellites by 2021. (4/26)

Has the Apollo 10 Lunar Module Finally Been Found? (Source: Daily Mail)
A team of British astronomers believe they may have located the lunar module from NASA's Apollo 10 mission - fifty years after the crew released the probe into a perpetual orbit around the Sun. The lunar module is one of the greatest surviving relics of the moon landings and scientists want to devise a way to retrieve it as it orbits some 50,000ft above the lunar surface.

At the time of the mission in 1969, Tom Stafford, a member of the Apollo 10 crew radioed back to Houston from his own orbit around Moon that the crew had completely lost sight of the probe after they jettisoned it from their command module. 'We don't have any idea where he went. He just went boom and it disappeared right into the Sun,' Stafford said. At just four meters wide, it was always going to be a long shot but Nick Howes and his team have spent a number of years in a calculated hunt for the probe. They now believe that they may have found it and all they need is someone with the expertise to go and retrieve it.

All the other craft that were used during the Apollo missions were either fired into the Moon for seismology experiments or jettisoned to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. Snoopy, however, was used as practice run for the Apollo 11 lunar landing, which would take place two months after Apollo 10 in July 1969. Two of the three astronauts transferred into it as it drifted nine miles above the Moon's surface. The pair then moved back into the command module. The mission was deemed a success. Snoopy was fired off and left to drift in orbit around the sun forever with no realistic way to track it. (4/28)

FCC Approves SpaceX’s Plans to Fly Internet-Beaming Satellites in a Lower Orbit (Source: The Verge)
The Federal Communications Commission has approved SpaceX’s request to fly a large swath of its future internet-beaming satellites at a lower orbit than originally planned. The approval was a major regulatory hurdle the company needed to clear in order to start launching its first operational satellites from Florida next month.

In November, SpaceX sent a request to the FCC to partially revise plans for the company’s satellite internet constellation, known as Starlink. Under SpaceX’s original agreement with the commission, the company had permission to launch 4,425 Starlink satellites into orbits that ranged between 1,110 to 1,325 kilometers up. But then SpaceX decided it wanted to fly 1,584 of those satellites in different orbits, thanks to what it had learned from its first two test satellites, TinTin A and B. Instead of flying them at 1,150 kilometers, the company now wants to fly them much lower at 550 kilometers.

And now the FCC is on board. “This approval underscores the FCC’s confidence in SpaceX’s plans to deploy its next-generation satellite constellation and connect people around the world with reliable and affordable broadband service,” SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement. (4/27)

NASA Will Simulate an Asteroid Impact Scenario with Live Tweeting (Source: Mashable)
If an asteroid were ever to be come hurtling towards Earth, what would be the plan to stop it from impacting the planet? That's the question NASA and its partners, including the European Space Agency and the U.S.'s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), are gathering at the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference in early May to investigate.

During the five day conference, NASA and its partners plan to engage in a "tabletop exercise" that simulates what would happen if scientists and authorities were to learn of a near-Earth Object (NEO) impact scenario. "A tabletop exercise of a simulated emergency commonly used in disaster management planning to help inform involved players of important aspects of a possible disaster and identify issues for accomplishing a successful response," says NASA. (4/27)

A Dark Cloud on Commercial Crew’s Horizon (Source: Space Review)
More than a week ago, SpaceX suffered an anomaly during testing of the abort engines for its Crew Dragon spacecraft. Jeff Foust reports on the little information known about the incident and its implications for the commercial crew program. Click here. (4/29)
 
If the Saturn V Went Boom: The Effects of a Saturn V Launch Pad Explosion (Source: Space Review)
The giant Saturn V rocket sent humans to the Moon a half-century ago, but what would have happened had something gone wrong? In the first article in a series leading up to the Apollo 11 50th anniversary, Dwayne Day examines some of the worst-case scenarios studied by NASA. Click here. (4/29) 
 
Satellite Constellations and Radio Astronomy (Source: Space Review)
Companies are proposing a number of satellite constellations, some with thousands of spacecraft, intended to provide broadband communications. Adam Kimbrough notes that such systems also create new headaches for radio astronomers. Click here. (4/29)