May 2, 2019

Bridenstine: Surge Funding for Lunar Landing Less Than Reported (Source: Space News)
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told senators Wednesday that the agency will need a "surge" of funding to achieve a human lunar landing in 2024, but not as much as rumored. Testifying before a Senate appropriations subcommittee, Bridenstine said NASA was still working with the National Space Council and OMB on a revised budget request with additional funding to meet the goal of landing humans on the moon in 2024. However, he said reports that NASA was seeking an additional $8 billion a year for five years were inaccurate as NASA was seeking "nowhere close to that amount." Bridenstine also defended NASA's approach of working "side by side" with SpaceX in the investigation of the Crew Dragon test anomaly last month rather than conduct its own independent investigation. (5/1)

Space Force Information Needed by Congress to Complete Spending Bill (Source: Space News)
The Space Force itself, though, was a subject of controversy at a House hearing. House appropriators told Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan that they need more information about the long-term cost of the overall reorganization that includes the Space Force, Space Development Agency and U.S. Space Command. They said the lack of information will make it difficult to complete their spending bill before the 2020 fiscal year starts in October. Shanahan said he understood their concerns and said the Pentagon was considering a series of briefings for members and staffers to discuss the Space Force "in a less DoD-like vernacular." (5/1)

India Pushes Lunar Launch to July (Source: Hindustan Times)
India's space agency ISRO confirmed Wednesday that it has delayed the launch of its next lunar mission to July. ISRO said the Chandrayaan-2 mission is now scheduled for launch between July 9 and 16, which would allow the spacecraft to land on the moon Sept. 6. ISRO had previously planned to launch the mission in March or April, but missed that date because work on the spacecraft, which includes an orbiter and lander, took longer than expected. The July launch window is the next favorable opportunity to launch the mission, the agency said. (5/1)

Leahy Picked to Lead DARPA Office (Source: Space News)
A pioneer in the development of UAVs will be the next director of DARPA's Tactical Technology Office. Mike Leahy will succeed Fred Kennedy as the head of that office, which is involved in space initiatives like the Blackjack satellite constellation program and the DARPA Launch Challenge. Leahy was program manager of the joint Air Force/DARPA X-45A unmanned combat air vehicle in the late 1990s, and later was an executive at Northrop Grumman. (5/1)

After Continued Stage Crashes on Land Downrange, China Plans Sea-Based Launch of Long March 11 (Source: Xinhua)
China is moving ahead with plans to conduct a rocket launch at sea. A Long March 11, a small, solid-fuel rocket, will launch from a ship in the Yellow Sea in the middle of this year. The payload was not disclosed, but the rocket will be named CZ-11 WEY under an agreement between the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, China Space Foundation and a Chinese automobile producer. Launching from sea, Chinese officials said, avoids the problem of spent stages falling on land and could lower launch costs. (5/1)

U.S. Commerce Dept. to Sign Space Agreement with Luxembourg (Source: RTL)
The United States will sign a space cooperation agreement with Luxembourg next week. The agreement, to be signed May 10 by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross during a visit to Luxembourg, will cover areas of cooperation in commercial space and space exploration. Specific provisions of the agreement, though, have not been announced by either government. (5/1)

Amateur Apollo 17 Historian Joins NASA (Source: CTV)
An amateur historian who documented the Apollo 17 mission online got a job with NASA. Ben Feist spent six years developing a website devoted to the Apollo 17 mission, working to improve the documentation of the last Apollo mission to land on the moon. The website, a side project of his while working at an advertising agency in Toronto, attracted the attention of NASA. The agency asked him to work on other projects to better organize spaceflight data, and later hired him on a full-time basis. "It was really remarkable," he said in a recent interview. (5/1)

Robotics Work Successful, Station Returned to Full Power (Source: NASA)
This morning, Robotics Ground Controllers in Mission Control Houston successfully completed an operation to remove a failed Main Bus Switching Unit-3 and replace it with a spare. The MBSU in question had failed on April 29 and reduced the station’s power supply by about 25%. There were no immediate concerns for the crew or the station. The crew had installed a series of jumpers in Node 1 following the failure to reroute power to experiments and hardware and ensure limited impact to continued station operations. Since the successful replacement, the MBSU was powered up and checked out successfully with all station systems back to nominal power configuration, including redundant power to the Canadarm2 robotic arm.

The completion of the robotics work marks the second time an MBSU was swapped out by means other than a spacewalk. The International Space Station continues to be a critical test bed where NASA is pioneering new methods to explore space, from complex robotic work to refueling spacecraft in flight and developing new robotic systems to assist astronauts on the frontier of space. Technologies like these will be vital as NASA looks to return astronauts to the Moon by 2024. (5/2)

Blue Origin Succeeds With Another New Shepard Launch and Recovery, Carrying NASA Experiments (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
For the second time in 2019, Blue Origin on May 2 flew its suborbital New Shepard rocket with dozens of experiments, many for NASA’s Flight Opportunities program. Dubbed NS-11, the uncrewed flight was the 11th for a New Shepard rocket and the fifth for the third booster serial number. From its western Texas  launch site, the mission flew 38 payloads above 62-mile (100-kilometer) boundary of space, including nine through NASA’s Flight Opportunities program. (5/2)

Congress Members Were Not Phased by Lack of NASA Budget for Moon 2024 Plan (Source: Houston Chronicle)
NASA's Jim Bridenstine arrived Wednesday at a Congressional budget hearing with his usual diet Mountain Dew in hand, but no budget proposal. The proposal he had promised Congress -- which would take into account a new directive from the Trump administration to put humans on the moon in 2024 instead of 2028-- still was not ready. And he couldn't provide lawmakers an estimate for how much money would be needed.

"We are not in a position to say what that number is or where the administration wants that money to come from," Bridenstine told the Senate Appropriations Committee's subcommittee for commerce, justice, science and related agencies. But Congress members seemed not to be phased by the agency's lack of progress, focusing instead on topics such as their distaste for proposed cuts to the agency's education office.

Bridenstine told members that NASA has sent preliminary funding numbers to the Office of Management and Budget, as well as the National Space Council, for review. The agency, he added, is working to develop a unified position. Though the money situation isn't firmed up, Bridenstine has shared details in recent weeks about how NASA would get to the moon four years early. (5/1)

Airbus and Orbital Insight Launch Earth Monitor to Provide Geopolitical and Economic Insights (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Airbus Defence and Space and Orbital Insight have expanded upon their partnership agreement to create Earth Monitor, a powerful change analysis and insights service which provides situation awareness over archived or newly tasked areas of interest.

Earth Monitor, available through Airbus’ OneAtlas Platform, leverages Orbital Insight’s machine learning and computer vision expertise through powerful algorithms that detect changes in infrastructure and land use in near real-time, as well as identify and count cars, trucks and soon, aircraft. This advanced service fuses Airbus’ reactive tasking capabilities and premium archive imagery from the Living Library to offer access to advanced statistical analyses, trends and detection maps.

“Earth Monitor is the result of a fruitful collaboration with Orbital Insight and is at the cornerstone of our analytics strategy as a key building component of our growing portfolio” said Francois Lombard, Head of the Intelligence Business within Airbus Defence and Space. “Thanks to Earth Monitor, our customers will be able to draw precise, timely and meaningful conclusions, allowing them to gain time and allocate resources to where it matters most.” (428)

NASA Broadens Pre-solitication Notice to Include Full Lunar Landing Systems (Source: Parabolic Arc)
NASA has broadened the scope of a pre-soliticitation notice seeking industry input on ascent stages for returning astronauts to the moon to include complete integrated landing systems. “This amendment to pre-solicitation notice NNH19ZCQ001K_APP-H replaces the original version that was posted April 8, 2019, and broadens the scope from the Human Landing System’s (HLS) Ascent Element to a complete integrated lander that incorporates multiple elements such as a Descent Element, Ascent Element, and Transfer Vehicle. The HLS Refueling and Surface Suit Elements are not included in this solicitation,” the revised notice stated. (4/28)

UK Delivers World’s Most Accurate Weather Satellite Instrument (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Collaboration between the UK and France has developed a sophisticated forecasting instrument that will set new standards of accuracy in short term weather prediction. Using high-performance infrared detectors made in Southampton, the new device will improve short-range weather forecasts by monitoring atmospheric instability and cloud structure. It will also analyse the content of the Earth’s atmosphere, detecting and tracking pollutants around the globe. (4/28)

NASA’s New Carbon Observatory is Set for Launch Despite Trump’s Efforts to Ax It (Source: Miami Herald)
A NASA instrument designed to track carbon in Earth's atmosphere is headed to the International Space Station next week, and the president isn't happy about it. President Donald Trump slashed funding for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 and four other Earth science missions in his proposed spending plan for the 2018 fiscal year, citing "budget constraints" and "higher priorities within Science." His budget for fiscal year 2019 tried to defund them again.

In both cases, Congress decided to keep the OCO-3 mission going anyway. Now it is set to launch as soon as Tuesday. OCO-3 was built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, Calif., for less than $100 million, using parts left over from its predecessor, OCO-2. Once the carbon observatory gets to the ISS, a robotic arm will mount it on the underside of the space station so it can keep a close eye on the carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. (4/29)

Nearly 3 Dozen Companies are Trying To Go To Space (Source: Axios)
Dozens of companies around the world are looking to tap into the market for launching small payloads into orbit. If they succeed, it could reshape the space industry. Historically, small satellites have hitched rides to space as secondary payloads on large rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon 9. But upstart rocket companies don’t think that small satellites, meant for beaming satellite internet to Earth, for example, should be forced to launch based on the readiness of a larger payload, like a communications satellite.

According to a survey released in 2018, there are 34 small launchers under development, but only a handful are starting to fly. They include Virgin Orbit, Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, Vector, and Stratolaunch. But launching small satellites using a small rocket may not actually be the best or cheapest way to get them to orbit. If a company doesn’t need its satellite in orbit on a specific schedule, it could save money by waiting to hitch a ride, according to industry analyst Carissa Christensen, CEO of Bryce Space and Technology.

“There will be a lot of small satellites, but a lot of them don’t need to ride in a taxi,” Christensen said. “A lot of them can take the bus.” And even with the potential for huge constellations of internet beaming satellites from SpaceX, Amazon, OneWeb and others, small launchers may not have enough business to sustain them, creating a rocket bubble. Still, some customers, such as governments, could be willing to pay a premium to make sure their wares make it to space on time and on a shorter timescale. The bottom line: The small launch industry could soon see a shakeup, with only a few small launchers remaining while others fold or merge. (4/30)

New Institute Eyes HOME in Deep Space (Source: UC Davis)
In a significant step toward human-crewed space missions to the moon or Mars, NASA has awarded a grant of up to $15 million over five years to a new research institute led by the University of California, Davis. The HOME (Habitats Optimized for Missions of Exploration) Space Technology Research Institute will develop enabling technology for spacecraft and deep-space bases of the future. HOME is led by Professor Stephen Robinson, chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC Davis and a former astronaut.

Designing deep-space habitats for human-exploration missions currently being proposed by NASA and the international spaceflight community requires fundamental research plus integration of emergent technologies in autonomous systems, failure-tolerant design, human-automation teaming, dense sensor populations, data science, machine learning, robotic maintenance and on-board manufacturing. (4/30)

How Will Space Transcend Rocket Science? (Source: Forbes)
Perhaps one of the more intriguing facts about today’s commercial space race and the innovations that continue to rapidly advance is that the revolution isn’t really about space technology at all. In fact, very few advances have been made in the last 30 years with regard to the knowledge and understanding of rocket science. As with many other revolutions in history, what we are witnessing comes mostly from the absence of a unified national vision, fundamental laws of economics and technology’s seeming manifest destiny for humanity.

For the better part of the last three decades, groundbreaking space technology innovation has been the exception rather than the rule. White House administrations have come and gone, with congressional endorsement or redirection of their requests more narrowly reflecting constituent interests and less broadly supporting a national vision. Over these years, plenty has been written extolling the benefits of spin-off technologies from NASA laboratory research, leaving any great leaps in space technology to be largely marginal since the advent of the reusable, but very expensive, space shuttle.

With the exception of Mars rovers and some brilliant scientific data collected by low-cost NASA science programs, most advances have been slightly faster or less expensive versions of the ‘60s and ‘70s innovations. This absence of unified purpose became an opportunity for some of our nation’s brightest, enabled by the profits from the tech boom and emboldened by childhood dreams of a bygone space era. Click here. (4/30)

NASA Ponies Up for Next-Gen Solar Sails (Source: Cosmos)
NASA is pumping funding into the development of a radical approach to solar sail construction – a new way of exploiting the radiation pressure of sunlight to generate spacecraft propulsion. Most theoretical designs for solar sails have relied on coating microscopically thin textiles – sometimes in arrays measured in square-kilometres – with reflective metallic surfaces. These coatings transfer the momentum of solar photons to the sails themselves, resulting in propulsion.

And while NASA plans to test this technology in its forthcoming Near-Earth Asteroid Scout mission – which will feature CubeSats fitted with 86-square-metre sails – it is also putting weight behind a second, alternative approach. The organisation has announced a tranche of funding to assist research led by Grover Swartzlander of the Rochester Institute of Technology, in the US, to develop what are known as diffractive solar sails. (5/1)

What It Takes to Fly Virgin Orbit’s Huge Plane (Source: The Verge)
Right now, hundreds of space startups are racing to develop newer, smaller rockets, in order to take advantage of the proliferation of smaller satellites within the aerospace industry. Many of these companies want to get to space the old-fashioned way, by making a rocket that takes off vertically from the ground. But one company has eyed another method for getting to space — by launching underneath the wing of a giant airplane.

This is the strategy of Virgin Orbit, the sibling company to Richard Branson’s space tourism venture Virgin Galactic. Virgin Orbit has developed a small rocket called LauncherOne that can put satellites the size of washing machines into orbit. And its launchpad resides at 35,000 feet. Virgin Orbit owns a Boeing 747 airplane, called Cosmic Girl, which carries LauncherOne up into the sky. From there, the rocket will drop from underneath Cosmic Girl’s left wing and then ignite, climbing the rest of the way to orbit. Click here. (4/30)

AFSPC Will Use Mega Constellations (Source: Breaking Defense)
Air Force Space Command’s vice commander says he is “highly confident” that large Low Earth Orbit constellations (known in DoD jargon as ‘proliferated LEO’) will be part of the future military space architecture. “We will be using proliferated LEO,” Lt. Gen. David Thompson told a New America Foundation conference today in response to my question. “It is simply a matter of for what missions.” He explained that DoD first has to understand “how close to truly operationally-capable” services can be provided by commercial firms. “We have to make smart bets.”

There has been considerable debate among national security space experts about whether the commercial constellations of relatively small satellites, which will be thousands of times larger than any that have flown, will pose significant risks as they deorbit and are replaced. The strain on military Space Situational Awareness (SSA), already having challenges spotting slow moving objects in Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO), raises questions about how effective they would be in monitoring a LEO environment congested by these mega-constellations. (4/30)

SpaceX’s Unnerving Silence on an Explosive Incident (Source: The Atlantic)
The smoke suggested an outcome more serious than an “anomaly”—like a full-blown explosion. But SpaceX wouldn’t say anything else. A day later, a grainy video, which looked like a recording of a screen, appeared on Twitter. The footage showed what appeared to be the SpaceX capsule, known as Dragon, on the test stand. For about 10 seconds, everything is still. And then, suddenly, there’s an explosion, and the whole thing is engulfed in flames. Off camera, people exclaim in shock and swear. (No one was near the capsule, so there were no injuries.)

More than a week after the explosion, SpaceX remains silent about the incident. At this moment, even an “anomaly” in its test capsule should rattle the engineers, astronauts, and administrators invested in Dragon’s success. SpaceX was well on its way to launching American astronauts into space, a historic first in U.S. spaceflight history. “Unless something goes wrong, I would think that we’ll be flying hopefully this year, this summer,” Elon Musk, the company’s founder and CEO, said last month.

It’s not known whether the capsule, itself a test version, is salvageable or completely lost. SpaceX has other capsules “in various stages of production and testing,” according to a spokesperson, but did not say how far along they are. In a rare moment of reticence, Musk has not yet publicly addressed the incident. It could be that the entrepreneur has enough on his plate; he spent the weekend of the spacecraft failure tweeting about Tesla, and last week reached an agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a legal standoff involving the electric-car company. (4/30)

Michigan Municipalities Adopt Spaceport Resolutions (Source: Iosco County News-Herald)
“They’re projecting this being a trillion-dollar business in years to come. This could bring huge, huge development to Oscoda Township if we were selected,” said Trustee William Palmer, of a potential spaceport operation being brought to the Oscoda-Wurtsmith Airport (OWA). Board of trustees members, during their April 22 meeting, adopted a resolution requesting that the state provide the necessary funding and support for securing Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) licensing and authorization for conducting spacecraft launch and landing operations at OWA.

With low population areas and immediate access into established Military Operating Airspace, the resolution reads that OWA provides an ideal location for conducting spaceport operations. It is further noted that, in order to fulfill FAA application requirements, funding is needed for performing initial site development evaluations and spaceport operations data. As reported last week, the Iosco County Board of Commissioners also showed their support for this when they adopted a resolution requesting funding from Governor Gretchen Whitmer. (4/30)