May 1, 2019

How the FAA's Changing Space Launch Roles Will Benefit Florida (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Two weeks ago, the FAA proposed a new rule for the licensing of commercial space launch and reentry. For Florida, with its burgeoning aerospace sector — accounting for 130,000 jobs and $19 billion in revenue — and multiple launch sites, the new rule is just the kind of regulatory tweak needed for the state’s ambitious plans to grow its local launch industry. The new rule would eliminate unnecessary regulations and enhance flexibility through revision and rollback of the regulatory and licensing process. The FAA believes these adjustments will have a number of cost-cutting, efficiency-increasing benefits for industry.

Specifically, these changes will increase the number of launches that sites can facilitate, allow operators the ability to launch from multiple sites without filing for a new license for each site, and would combine procedures required for reusable and expendable vehicles. Above all else, the rule could diminish uncertainty for taxpayers in Florida. Through its government-funded space lobbying arm, Space Florida, the state House of Representatives has proposed $12.5 million in additional funding for the space industry in 2020. This investment from Space Florida is an addition to the more than $500 million that the organization and its predecessors have invested in space since 2000.

The proposed rule will also streamline launch regulations, which will ensure state-level government investment in the industry is not going to waste. The new rule is also likely to attract new space business to Florida, fulfilling a goal the state has been working tirelessly on in recent years. In 2018, Space Florida approved measures to invest in the growing space industry through two projects: Project Pine and Project Forge. Project Pine invested $1 million to update the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), which has long been providing launch services for NASA. Click here. (5/1)

Chinese Reusable Rocket Test Launches Hypersonic Waverider (Source: Aviation Week)
The first test flight of a privately developed Chinese reusable space launcher hurled an experimental hypersonic waverider vehicle to a speed faster than 4,300 kph (2,800 mph) on April 23, the company behind the rocket program says. Xiamen University and the company, Space Transportation, undertook development of the launcher and waverider combination called Jiageng 1. (5/1)

NASA Instrument to More Accurately Measure Ozone Discovered by "Accident" (Source: Space Daily)
NASA research scientist Tom Hanisco set out to build an instrument capable of measuring a short-lived chemical that cleanses the atmosphere of methane - a potent greenhouse gas - but found instead that his discovery outshined the best commercial instruments at measuring ambient levels of ozone. His serendipitous discovery has led to the filing of a patent application for an instrument he calls the Rapid Ozone Experiment, or ROZE, and a berth aboard a NASA research aircraft, which will be carrying out a wildfire-related field campaign this summer.  (5/1)

Scientists Find ‘Alien’ Grain of Dust in Antarctica That Could Challenge Our Understanding of the Solar System (Source: The Independent)
A tiny, "alien" grain of dust that was created as a long-gone star died has been found by scientists. The tiny speck of stardust was found inside of a chondritic meteorite in Antarctica, having originally been hurled into space by an exploding star that died even before our own sun existed.

Little pieces of grain like the new discovery are thought to help create the early mix of materials that helped form the sun and our planets – and, eventually, life. But they are rarely seen, because it is so difficult for them to survive the chaos of the beginning of a solar system. Now scientists hope the small and lucky grain could offer an insight into the conditions that helped form everything that surrounds us.

"As actual dust from stars, such presolar grains give us insight into the building blocks from which our solar system formed," said Pierre Haenecour, lead author of the new paper published in Nature. "They also provide us with a direct snapshot of the conditions in a star at the time when this grain was formed." (4/30)

Weird Black Hole Is Shooting Out Wobbly Jets Because It's Dragging Spacetime (Source: Science Alert)
Some 7,800 light-years away, in the constellation of Cygnus, lies a most peculiar black hole. It's called V404 Cygni, and in 2015, telescopes around the world stared in wonder as it woke from dormancy to devour material from a star over the course of a week. That one event provided such a wealth of information that astronomers are still analyzing it. And they have just discovered an amazing occurrence: relativistic jets wobbling so fast their change in direction can be seen in mere minutes.

And, as they do so, they puff out high-speed clouds of plasma. V404 Cygni is a binary microquasar system consisting of a black hole about nine times the mass of the Sun and a companion star, an early red giant slightly smaller than the Sun. The black hole is slowly devouring the red giant; the material siphoned away from the star is orbiting the black hole in the form of an accretion disc, a bit like water circling a drain. The closest regions of the disc are incredibly dense and hot, and extremely radiant; and, as the black hole feeds, it shoots out powerful jets of plasma, presumably from its poles.

Scientists don't know the precise mechanism behind jet production. They think material from the innermost rim of the accretion disc is funnelled along the black hole's magnetic field lines, which act as a synchrotron to accelerate the particles before launching them at tremendous velocities. But V404 Cygni's wobbly jets, shooting out in different directions at different times, on such rapidly changing timescales, and at velocities up to 60 percent of the speed of light, are in a class of their own. (4/29)

Colorado Rep. Pushes Springs for US Space Command (Source: Space News)
Rep. Doug Lamborn says Colorado Springs is the only serious option for U.S. Space Command. Between Peterson Air Force Base, Schriever Air Force Base, and Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, Colorado Springs is home to the Joint Force Space Component Command and Air Force Space Command. The National Space Defense Center will soon be joined on Schriever by the next-generation command and control center when the Combined Space Operations Facility begins construction next fiscal year. (4/30)

Romania Joins U.S.-Led Space Situational Awareness Pact (Soruce: Space News)
U.S. Strategic Command signed its 100th space situational awareness agreement with the Romanian Space Agency on April 25. Romania becomes the 20th nation joining Australia, Japan, Italy, Canada, France, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Germany, Israel, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Brazil, the Netherlands, Thailand, New Zealand and Poland; two intergovernmental organizations, the European Space Agency and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites. (4/30)

AFSPC Completes Space War Game Exercise (Source: Space News)
Air Force Space Command last week completed its sixth Space Flag19-2 exercise at the Boeing Virtual Warfare Center in Washington.  Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein met with Space Flag participants. “This is a great opportunity to get inside the minds of these airmen, to see what they’re thinking about with regard to operating in today’s space domain.” (4/30)

NASA [and Orbital Sciences Corp.] Was Sold Faulty Aluminum in 19-Year Scam (Source: CNET)
NASA on Tuesday revealed that a pair of failed missions were caused by a 19-year aluminum scam. The space agency previously said the 2009 Orbiting Carbon Observatory and 2011 Glory missions malfunctioned when the Taurus XL rockets' protective nose cones failed to separate on command. However, a joint investigation involving NASA and the Justice Department revealed that the problem was caused by aluminum extrusion maker Sapa Profiles, which falsified critical tests over 19 years.

Employees at the company's Portland, Oregon, facilities tweaked failing tests so materials appeared to pass from 1996 to 2015, according to the Justice Department. "They then provided the false test results to hundreds of customers across the country, all to increase corporate profits and obtain production-based bonuses," wrote G. Zachary Terwilliger, US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.  

Sapa, which has since changed its name to Hydro Extrusion Portland, agreed to pay $46 million to the US government and other commercial customers -- which doesn't even come close to the $700 million NASA lost as a result of Taurus XL failures. The company is also excluded from contracting with the federal government. (5/1)

NASA Chief Calls for Global Effort to Study Asteroid Threat (Source: Space Daily)
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has called for more global participation in efforts to deflect asteroids that could collide with Earth. Bridenstine spoke to the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference in Washington, D.C., on Monday morning in an event that was streamed live online. The conference was organized by the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety. "We have to use our systems our capabilities to ultimately get more data and we have to do it faster," Bridenstine said. "We need more partners from all over the world." (4/29)

Photobioreactor: Oxygen and a Source of Nutrition for Astronauts (Source: Space Daily)
Airbus is bringing another experimental system to the International Space Station (ISS) in the form of the photobioreactor (PBR). The PBR, developed by the University of Stuttgart and built by Airbus on behalf of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), is designed to convert part of the CO2 extracted by the 'LSR' Life Support Rack on board the ISS into oxygen and biomass, which could help to save valuable resources during future long-term missions into space.

Future human research missions are expected to take astronauts to the Moon and Mars. A deciding factor for the success of these missions will be keeping the resources carried to a minimum. As it is both difficult and expensive to send new supplies from Earth, the greatest possible closure of the respective resource cycles for water, oxygen and food is of vital importance. Most waste water is already reprocessed into fresh water on the ISS. (4/29)

SpaceX's First Batch of Starlink Satellites Already in Florida for Launch Debut (Source: Teslarati)
According to an official statement, SpaceX’s satellite mass production is “well underway” and the first batch of operational Starlink satellites are already in Florida for their May 2019 launch debut. Simultaneously, the FCC has granted SpaceX’s request to modify the deployment of its first 1584 Starlink satellites, permitting the company to lower their orbit from approximately 1150 km to 550 km (715 mi to 340 mi). A lower insertion orbit should improve Falcon 9’s maximum Starlink payload, while the lower operational orbit will help to further minimize any risk posed by orbital debris that could be generated by failed SpaceX satellites.

Above all else, SpaceX’s confirmation that the first batch of Starlink satellites are already in Florida drives home the reality that the company’s internet satellite constellation is about to become very real. Said constellation has long been the subject of endless skepticism and criticism, dominated by a general atmosphere of dismissal. There is no doubt that Starlink, as proposed, is an extraordinarily ambitious program that will cost billions of dollars to even begin to realize. SpaceX will have to find ways to affordably manufacture and launch ~11,900 satellites – together weighing something like 500 metric tons (1.1 million lbs) – in as few as nine years, start to finish. (4/30)

Women in Space: Enhancing Capability Through Diversity (Source: AFSPC)
As Lt. Gen. John Thompson, Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center commander, sat with six of his most senior space program managers during a media panel at the 35th Space Symposium, he noted how similar they were in age, race and gender and expressed his desire to have more diverse representation amongst space professionals. Thompson isn’t the only one who sees the value of diversity in space-related jobs.

The 35th Space Symposium featured its third Women’s Global Gathering in Colorado Springs that included Brig. Gen. Deanna Burt, Air Force Space Command director of operations and communications, Ms. Krista Paquin, former NASA deputy associate administrator, and Dr. Michelle Parker, vice president and chief engineer for space and launch at Boeing Defense Space and Security, April 11, 2019. (4/23)

Minuteman III Launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base (Source: KCOY)
An unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile was successfully launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base early Wednesday morning. According to Vandenberg Air Force Base, the unarmed rocket took off at 2:42 a.m. as part of an operational test.  Col. Kris Barcomb, 30th Operations Group commander, was the launch decision authority. (5/1)

The Crew Dragon Mishap and the History of Testing Spacecraft (Source: WMFE)
Earlier this month, SpaceX was testing the engines on its Crew Dragon- the capsule designed to carry astronauts into orbit- when something went wrong. The mishap sent a plume of smoke billowing over Cape Canaveral, and speculation about the commercial crew program swirling. So what’s changed in five decades of testing spacecraft, and what does this anomaly mean for NASA’s partnership with SpaceX and Boeing? For more we’re joined by 90.7’s space reporter Brendan Byrne and UCF associate professor of history Amy Foster. Click here. (4/30)

Florida Venture Forum Selects 20 Presenting Companies for the 2019 Florida Early Stage Capital Conference (Source: Space Florida)
The Florida Venture Forum has selected 20 companies to present at its 12th annual Florida Early Stage Capital Conference, being held in Orlando on May 9-10.  The conference also will feature the 9th annual 2019 Statewide Collegiate Startup Competition, attracting the “best of the best” competitors, representing Florida’s major colleges and universities. In addition to company presentations and other programming, the conference will feature a total of $100,000 in cash awards distributed between early stage and seed stage companies, provided by Space Florida. To date, past early stage presenters have attracted more than $100 million in funding. (4/30)

NASA Lunar Landing Plan Evolving, But Budget Uncertain (Source: Space News)
NASA is providing more details about how it thinks it can achieve a human lunar landing by 2024, but the budget remains uncertain. In a presentation Tuesday, NASA's Bill Gerstenmaier said he envisions astronauts going to the moon on Exploration Mission (EM) 3, after the uncrewed EM-1 test flight of the SLS and Orion in late 2020 or 2021 and the crewed EM-2 test in 2022. That approach will likely include a "minimal" lunar Gateway, as well as landing systems to be developed by industry in an upcoming procurement. He didn't give an estimated budget for carrying our that approach, and other officials said a revised budget request is still under development within the administration. (4/30)

Intelsat Satellite Failure Still Unexplained, Cuts Into Revenues (Source: Space News)
Intelsat says it's still trying to determine the cause of a failure of one of its first high-throughput communications satellites last month. The failure of Intelsat-29e in early April appears unrelated to propulsion issues with another satellite, Intelsat-33e, company officials said Tuesday, but they don't know what caused the satellite to suffer a fuel leak and then stop communicating. The loss of the uninsured satellite will cut Intelsat's revenues by $45–50 million for the year. The company now forecasts revenue of $2.0–2.06 billion for the year.  (4/30)

India Urged to Address Military Space Needs (Source: PTI)
An Indian general urged the country to revamp its space policy to take into account increasing threats. Lt. Gen. Taranjit Singh of the Indian Army said at a conference Tuesday that the country needs to respond to "threat perceptions" from China as well as from Pakistan, which he called a "proxy space power" of China. Singh said India needs to make greater use of advanced space technologies for military applications, including development of satellites that make use of encrypted quantum communications technologies. (4/30)

July Launch Will Be First of 2019 at New Russian Spaceport (Source: Space Daily)
The first launch of the year from Russia's Vostochny's Cosmodrome is scheduled for July. The July 5 of a Soyuz-2.1b rocket will place a Meteor-M weather satellite into orbit, Roscosmos announced. The new launch site in Russia's Far East region last hosted a launch in late December. (4/30)

Air Force Spaceplane Passes 600 Days in Orbit (Source: Space.com)
The Air Force's X-37B spaceplane has passed the 600-day mark in its latest mission. The vehicle was launched on its latest mission, designated OTV-5, in September 2017, and passed the 600-day mark early this week. The Air Force has not disclosed the mission of the spacecraft beyond some experiments it is carrying, or how long it will remain in orbit. The previous X-37B mission spent nearly two years in space. (4/30)

Ice Strip on Titan Puzzles Scientists (Source: New Scientist)
Scientists are puzzled by a belt of ice on the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Most of the surface of Titan is covered in organic materials, but scientists analyzing data from the Cassini mission turned up a formation of bare ice that is 6,300 kilometers long. One possibility is that the ice is not flat on the surface but instead exposed by erosion along cliff walls. (4/30)

New Zealand Space Stamps Include Star Dust (Source: Voxy)
A set of stamps in New Zealand honoring people involved in space science and exploration will contain a little something extra. The New Zealand Space Pioneers stamp set, released by the country's postal service to mark the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, honors people like William Pickering, the New Zealand native who served as director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The stamps, the postal service said, are "sprinkled with real star dust, collected from a meteorite found in Morocco." (4/30)

High Cost, Lack of Support Spell Trouble for 2024 Moon Landing Plan (Source: Ars Technica)
It was only a little more than one month ago that Vice President Mike Pence gave NASA a bold new direction—a goal of landing humans back on the Moon by 2024. Be urgent, he told the space agency. Work with purpose. We can, and must, do better as a nation in space, he said. But in the weeks since Pence's speech in Huntsville, Alabama, the reality of space policy has begun to settle in. For starters, it won't be cheap to return to the Moon. Moreover, elements of NASA's bureaucracy have already begun to resist the accelerated schedule and pressure the White House to hew to existing plans. And politically, the goal may well be a non-starter in a divided Congress.

For the last month, NASA has been working with the White House Office of Management and Budget to develop an amendment to President Trump's budget request for fiscal year 2020, which will seek additional funding for the accelerated Moon program. The amendment may come out this week, or it could be delayed further as wrangling continues. When it is released, the amendment will provide our first clear indication of how much bringing forward a lunar landing from NASA's originally planned date, 2028, to 2024 would cost.

It will be a lot of money, regardless. According to two Washington, DC-based sources, NASA has informed the White House that it will need as much as $8 billion a year, for the next five years, to speed development of the Space Launch System rocket, a Lunar Gateway, a lunar lander, new spacesuits, and related hardware for a 2024 landing. This is on top of the agency's existing annual budget of about $20 billion, which includes everything from the International Space Station to astrophysics research. (4/30)