May 9, 2019

Amazon & SpaceX’s New Home Internet Services Will Reportedly Save Americans $30+ Billion Annually (Source: Cord Cutters)
This year we learned that Amazon was working on launching a home Internet service by launching satellites into low earth orbit. Recently SpaceX received FCC approval to do the same, offering their own home Internet service. Now, according to a study from BroadbandNow, these new services will drive down the cost of home Internet. This savings could add up to as much as $30 billion every year. This happens because markets with more than two Internet providers charge less for home Internet, according to BroadbandNow.

SpaceX just received approval from the FCC to launch 4,425 satellites into space to build a low earth orbit network to sell home Internet. Unlike current satellite Internet, these satellites will be in a far lower orbit and offer far faster speeds without the data caps current satellite systems use. Amazon is planning to launch 3,236 satellites to build a network, providing global high-speed Internet. Unlike current satellite Internet, these devices will be in a far lower orbit and offer faster speeds than current satellite systems. It could bring true wireless Internet options to Americans who currently have no real options. (5/8)

Why the Moon's South Pole May Be the Hottest Destination in Space (Source: National Geographic)
Issued on April 26, a cryptic tweet from Blue Origin—the private spaceflight company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos—suggests that the company could announce plans to send a spacecraft to the moon’s south pole during an invitation-only event to be held this afternoon. The tweet simply offers today’s date, paired with an image of explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship the Endurance, which was part of his troubled 1914 journey across Antarctica.

In addition, the company is advertising jobs in lunar lander design, has filed a request to trademark the term “Blue Moon”, and is co-sponsoring a moon race along the lines of the former Google Lunar Xprize. The company even prominently features the moon in its coat of arms. These clues, among others, suggest that Blue Origin could be aiming for Shackleton Crater, a 13-mile-wide splotch parked at the moon’s south pole. If these predictions bear out, Blue Origin will today join a fleet of space agencies and other private groups with their sights set on the lunar south pole.

Aside from the value of examining that giant basin up-close, the south pole boasts several crucial resources for those intending to establish a more permanent presence on the moon. Chief among them are water, in the form of ice, and sunlight, for solar power. For a long time, scientists suspected that the moon held onto some water, perhaps as a consequence of early volcanism or impactors from the outer solar system. But it wasn’t until relatively recently that they began to pinpoint just how much water might be there—and where to find it. (5/9)

Bezos And Elon Musk Want To Get To The Moon—They Just Disagree On How To Get There (Source: Forbes)
Blue Origin seems intent on sending both robotic and human missions to the lunar surface, possibly with a NASA contract in hand. If that’s the case, he won’t be alone. Aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin has already unveiled its lunar plans in partnership with NASA. And Elon Musk’s SpaceX has a plan for a lunar flyby mission, while NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstein suggested that the agency was open to using commercial heavy-lift rockets for its lunar crewed missions. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy could serve such a mission.

While SpaceX has adopted a high-profile view of its risky, iterative innovation strategy, Blue Origin’s development is nearly the exact opposite. The company motto is Gradatim Ferociter, a Latin phrase meaning Step By Step, Ferociously. In interviews, Bezos has quoted the old military maxim that “slow is smooth and smooth is fast,” and every time one of its resuable rockets has a successful launch and landing, a tortoise is painted on its side, a nod to Aesop’s moral that “slow and steady wins the race.”

Despite Bezos’ faith in a more slow-paced, perfectionist approach to development, it’s undeniable that SpaceX has seen more success - at least so far. Though Blue Origin has had 11 successful launches to date, it has yet to send any spacecraft to orbit, instead keeping its launches suborbital, like the Mercury spacecraft that its current system is inspired by. (5/8)

Musk and Bezos Wrangle to Build Rockets for US Air Force (Source: Quartz)
The US Air Force has, traditionally, done a terrible job of buying new rockets. Now, as lawmakers consider a total reorganization of the US military’s space operations, the Pentagon’s latest attempt to purchase new launch vehicles has become a hotly contested rivalry featuring the military-industrial complex and rocket billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Of course, there’s a Russia angle, too.

The battle could shape not just US national security but also the future of private space companies writ large—access to revenue from military launches bolster a rocket-maker’s offerings to a range of potential customers. Musk’s SpaceX revolutionized the space industry and became the world’s leading commercial launcher thanks, in part, to winning Pentagon business.

SpaceX’s success forced its primary competitors—longtime military contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman—to compete on price and innovation for the first time in years. Add in Bezos’s company Blue Origin, with its own Silicon Valley-inflected approach to space, and the US boasts perhaps the deepest industrial base for space-launch in world history. Click here. (5/8)

SpaceX’s Starhopper Gains Thruster Pods as Hop Test Preparations Ramp Up (Source: Teslarati)
Amid a flurry of new construction at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facilities, technicians have begun to install thruster pods on Starhopper in anticipation of the prototype’s first untethered flights. According to CEO Elon Musk, Starhopper’s “untethered hover tests” will begin with just one Raptor engine installed, potentially allowing hops to restart within the next few weeks. SpaceX is currently testing Raptor SN03 (and possibly SN02) a few hundred miles north in McGregor, Texas. Meanwhile, Starhopper itself needs a considerable amount of new hardware before it can begin Raptor-powered flight testing. (5/9)

Small Launcher Market Will Rely More on Commercial Demand (Source: Space News)
Commercial, not government, demand will drive the size of the small launch vehicle market. Companies developing small launchers expect that the industry will contract from the many dozens of vehicles under development to a handful that will survive in the long term. Government demand is likely only to support a couple launchers, they said, with commercial demand being a far larger factor in determining the number of vehicles that can be sustained. (5/9)

Could Quantum Mechanics Explain the Existence of Space-Time? (Source: Astronomy)
Verification of Einstein’s space-time revolution came a century ago, when an eclipse expedition confirmed his general theory’s prime prediction (a precise amount of bending of light passing near the edge of a massive body, in this case the Sun). But space-time remained mysterious. Since it was something rather than nothing, it was natural to wonder where it came from.

Now a new revolution is on the verge of answering that question, based on insights from the other great physics surprise of the last century: quantum mechanics. Today’s revolution offers the potential for yet another rewrite of space-time’s résumé, and may explain why quantum mechanics seems so weird. “Space-time and gravity must ultimately emerge from something else,” writes Brian Swingle. Otherwise it’s hard to see how Einstein’s gravity and the math of quantum mechanics can reconcile their longstanding incompatibility.

Einstein’s view of gravity as the manifestation of space-time geometry has been enormously successful. But so also has been quantum mechanics, which describes the machinations of matter and energy on the atomic scale with unerring accuracy. Attempts to find coherent math that accommodates quantum weirdness with geometric gravity, though, have met formidable technical and conceptual roadblocks. Click here. (5/7)

FAA Space Office Focusing on Airspace Integration for Rocket Launches (Source: SPACErePORT)
FAA space chief Wayne Monteith says integrating commercial launches/landings into the National Airspace System is a high priority. A new "space data integrator" (SDI) is being developed to help with airspace closures, reducing the amount of airspace required for closure and length of time for closures. This is expected to make spaceports and ranges more efficient, allowing more launches and landings while minimizing disruptions to/by aviation traffic. (5/8)

Space Robotics Market Worth Over $3.5B by 2025 (Source: Space Daily)
According to a new research report by the market research and strategy consulting firm, Global Market Insights, Inc, the Space Robotics Market worth over $3.5bn by 2025. The space robotics market is experiencing a rapid technical development owing to the integration of AI technologies into the systems developed for space exploration. Several companies are developing AI-based robots that provide enhanced mobility and manipulation benefits. (5/7)

Space Force Costs More Than Estimated (Source: Space News)
A new congressional report finds that establishing the Space Force will cost far more than the administration has estimated. The report Wednesday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said that the Space Force would create $1.3 billion a year in additional costs for the Defense Department, much more than the $500 million a year previously estimated by the Pentagon. Those costs grow to $1.9 billion a year when U.S. Space Command and the Space Development Agency are included.

CBO's numbers align closer to the $13 billion five-year cost estimate for a Space Force and a Space Command put forth by Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson in September in a memo that was dismissed by Space Force proponents. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan stood by his previous statements that the Space Force would cost no more than $2 billion over five years during a Senate appropriations hearing Wednesday. (5/9)

Crew Dragon Also Suffered a Parachute Problem (Source: Space News)
A test of the parachute system for SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft went awry last month. NASA said at a House space subcommittee hearing Wednesday that in a test in Nevada to demonstrate the "single out" capability of the four-parachute system, the remaining three chutes didn't open fully, causing a test sled to hit the ground faster than planned and damaging it. The cause of the failed test remains under investigation, including whether it was caused by a flaw in the parachute system or an issue with the test itself. Parachute design has been a key area of concern for the development of both SpaceX's and Boeing's commercial crew vehicles. (5/9)

NASA Turns to Russia For More Soyuz Seats as Commercial Crew Flights Slip (Source: TASS)
NASA and Roscosmos have finalized an agreement for two additional Soyuz seats for NASA astronauts. Sergei Krikalev of Roscosmos said that the two agencies have approved an extension to the existing agreement covering NASA access to Soyuz seats to the station but didn't discuss financial terms. NASA announced in February it was planning to procure two additional seats for missions in late 2019 and 2020, ensuring NASA would have access to the station through the fall of 2020 to provide additional schedule margin for commercial crew development. (5/9)

NASA Lunar Mission Budget Delayed (Source: Space News)
At the same hearing, NASA said the administration is still one to two weeks away from providing a revised budget proposal for the new lunar initiative. That budget amendment, intended to reflect the new goal of landing humans on the moon in 2024, was expected last month, but agency officials testified that NASA is still working with the White House, including the Office of Management and Budget, on the plan, and declined to discuss specific numbers. Many members of the committee expressed frustration with the delays, and warned against any plans that might take funding away from other NASA programs or other agencies, as well as the use of "creative bookkeeping," to pay for the new initiative. (5/9)

Lockheed Martin Readies Ground Stations for Amazon Web Service (Source: Space News)
Lockheed Martin plans to have an initial set of ground stations for its Verge network in place next year. The company plans to have a network of parabolic dish antennas spread across the continental U.S. in the next six to nine months, supporting Amazon Web Services' Ground Station service. The company plans to expand the network beyond the continental United States, but is evaluating whether to continue with inexpensive dish antennas or shift to more expensive, but also more capable electronically steered antennas that could reduce the number of antennas it needs to deploy. (5/9)

Boeing Develops Flat-Panel Antennas for Military Aircraft (Source: Space News)
Boeing has developed a flat-panel antenna to provide military aircraft with broadband satellite communications. The low-profile electronically steered antenna and a multi-channel terminal will be in production next year and the launch customer will be the Navy's future unmanned mid-air refueling tanker, the MQ-25, that Boeing is developing. Other aircraft that could use the antenna include the Navy's P-8 surveillance aircraft and the Air Force's KC-46 aerial refueling tanker. The Ka-band antenna could provide throughput of tens to hundreds of megabits per second, compared to the kilobit rates currently available to such aircraft. (5/9)

Algae 'Bioreactor' on Space Station Could Make Oxygen, Food for Astronauts (Source: Space.com)
Astronauts on the International Space Station will begin testing an innovative algae-powered bioreactor to assess its feasibility for future long-duration space missions. The algae-powered bioreactor, called the Photobioreactor, represents a major step toward creating a closed-loop life-support system, which could one day sustain astronauts without cargo resupply missions from Earth.

The Photobioreactor arrived at the space station Monday (May 6) on a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship. The experiment is designed to use algae to convert the carbon dioxide exhaled by astronauts on the space station into oxygen and edible biomass through photosynthesis. (5/8)

We Have Now Reached The Limits Of The Hubble Space Telescope (Source: Forbes)
The Hubble Space Telescope has provided humanity with our deepest views of the Universe ever. It has revealed fainter, younger, less-evolved, and more distant stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters than any other observatory. More than 29 years after its launch, Hubble is still the greatest tool we have for exploring the farthest reaches of the Universe. Wherever astrophysical objects emit starlight, no observatory is better equipped to study them than Hubble.

But there are limits to what any observatory can see, even Hubble. It's limited by the size of its mirror, the quality of its instruments, its temperature and wavelength range, and the most universal limiting factor inherent to any astronomical observation: time. Over the past few years, Hubble has released some of the greatest images humanity has ever seen. But it's unlikely to ever do better; it's reached its absolute limit. Click here. (5/9)

Gravitational Waves Could Be Leaving Some Weird Lasting Effects in Their Wake (Source: ScienceAlert)
The faint, flickering distortions of space-time we call gravitational waves are tricky to detect, and we've only managed to do so in recent years. But now scientists have calculated that these waves may leave more persistent traces of their passing - traces we may also be able to detect. Such traces are called 'persistent gravitational wave observables', and in a new paper, an international team of researchers has refined the mathematical framework for defining them. In the process, they give three examples of what these observables could be. Click here. (5/8)

Hilary Swank To Headline Netflix Space Drama Series ‘Away’ (Source: Deadline)
Two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank is set to star in and executive produce Netflix’s 10-episode drama series Away. It centers on Emma Green (Swank), an American astronaut who must leave her husband and teenage daughter behind to command an international space crew embarking upon a treacherous mission. It is a series about hope, humanity and how we need one another if we are to achieve impossible things. (5/8)

Senate Gives Ex-Im Full Board, Financing Powers (Source: Space News)
Kimberly Reed, Spencer Bachus III and Judith DelZoppo Pryor have been confirmed by the Senate as board members of the US Export-Import Bank. These confirmations provide a board quorum that will enable the bank to finance deals of more than $10 million. The aerospace industry in particular had sought to confirm the nominations so that the bank could again provide financing for the export of its industry’s products, including commercial satellites and launches.

Critics of Ex-Im have argued that it skewed the market in favor of large corporations, in particular Boeing and sales of its aircraft. “When Ex-Im financing was at its peak, Boeing received 70 percent of all Export-Import Bank loan guarantees and 40 percent of all Ex-Im dollars,” said Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) during debate about the nominations. The bank’s current authorization expires at the end of September, and its advocates are already gearing up for another congressional battle to reauthorize it. (5/8)

Export-Import Bank Set for Comeback Despite Conservative Critics (Source: Bloomberg)
The Senate moved to revive the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s ability to back large deals for the first time since 2015, despite objections from conservative Republicans who say it provides corporate welfare for wealthy companies like its largest customer, Boeing. Senators on Tuesday advanced the nominations of Kimberly A. Reed for president of the bank, and former Representative Spencer Bachus III and Judith DelZoppo Pryor to be members of the board of directors.

If they are confirmed in final votes scheduled for Wednesday, the bank would have the three-member quorum it needs to approve deals worth more than $10 million. The Ex-Im Bank says it has almost $40 billion in pending transactions awaiting consideration by the board that would support an estimated 230,000 jobs. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said moving the nominations forward will be a boon for U.S. companies. (5/7)

Zubrin Makes 'The Case for Space' (Source: USA Today)
When future generations look back on our time, it’s unlikely that they’ll think much about Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Attorney General Bill Barr or most of the the 22 candidates currently vying for the Democratic presidential nomination. After all, when we think about the the Age of Exploration, we think about, well, the exploration: Mariners like Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco da Gama, or John Cabot who boldly went where no European had gone before, knitting the entire globe into one network of commerce.

Likewise, future generations are more likely to look at the impact of farsighted tycoons like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson in getting us to go into outer space, beginning our own Age of (Space) Exploration. Because after a bit of a false start in the 1960s, things are really starting to, well, take off. It helps that these are commercial, not government spacecraft. We flew government rockets for decades and space flight actually got more expensive, not less. Such rockets were procured via “cost plus” contracting, where the government pays the contractor a modest profit margin on top of its “costs,” but this gives the company an incentive to boost the costs to get more payment.

As Zubrin, a longtime veteran of the aerospace industry, writes, “In the free enterprise world, manufacturers increase profit by cutting costs. In the cost-plus contractor world, manufacturers increase profit by increasing costs. No farmer or maker of widgets would ever staff up his or her operation with four administrative personnel for every field or factory worker. At major aerospace companies, this is done all the time.” The result is something that looks more like Dilbert than "The Right Stuff."  (5/7)

SpaceX Seeks Tight Restrictions for Managing Space Junk (Source: Bloomberg)
SpaceX is pushing the federal government to write strict regulations for managing space trash to keep the environment clean for future launches. Millions of pieces of space junk—like paint flecks, defunct satellites, and spent rocket boosters—orbit the Earth at tens of thousands of miles per hour, according to NASA. SpaceX, formally Space Exploration Technologies Corp., wants to ensure that debris, especially obsolete satellites, doesn’t interfere with its rocket launches or other space operations. (5/7)

NASA Astronauts to Discuss Return to Moon at Naval Aviation Symposium (Source: Pensacola News Journal)
Three NASA astronauts will discuss America's quest to return to the moon during a panel discussion Thursday afternoon as part of the National Naval Aviation Museum Foundation's 2019 Symposium. For more than 30 years, the annual Naval Aviation Symposium has explored topics of importance to the naval aviation community. The guest speaker at the 2019 symposium at Thursday night's reception will be retired U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Charlie Bolden, former NASA administrator. Earlier in the day, the museum will host a panel discussion on space exploration with three astronauts. (5/7)

Billions Being Invested in Burgeoning Space Tourism Industry (Source: Houston Chronicle)
Commercial space exploration is already attracting vast amounts of capital, according to space-analytics company Bryce Space and Technology, which reported that space startups received $3.2 billion in investment in 2018 and $22 billion since 2000. A portion of that money has bolstered the growing space-tourism industry.

The industry arguably took off in 2001, when Los Angeles businessman Dennis Tito became the first space tourist, paying $20 million to join a Russian cosmonaut crew on a Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station. Since then, six others have followed, paying to sojourn at the ISS. Outside the Space Station, which no longer accepts tourists, an industry providing people a suborbital taste of what it’s like to be in space has flourished. Zero Gravity Corp., for example, allows people to feel as though they’re floating in zero gravity by flying a modified Boeing 727 in a parabolic arc.

And a number of companies are gearing up to carry passengers to various heights above Earth’s surface, including a hot-air balloon that would provide a view of Earth’s curvature from 12 miles high, and Blue Origin’s passenger rocket, which would provide even more expansive views from 66 miles up — high enough for passengers to be considered astronauts. And last fall, Elon Musk announced that a passenger had booked a trip on a rocket aiming even higher: the moon. (5/8)

SpinLaunch to Set Up Shop at Spaceport America (Source: KRQE)
An innovative new space company is moving into Spaceport America. SpinLaunch broke ground Tuesday on a new test facility. The company is behind a system that spins quickly on the ground until it reaches hypersonic speed. It then shoots satellites into space. "What's happened is satellites have gone from being the size of a bus to be miniaturized down to be about the size of a coffee can or a small microwave oven, and with that, we're now going to be launching thousands and thousands of satellites into orbit," SpinLaunch CEO Jonathan Yaney said. The $7 million construction project is expected to add 30 new jobs to Spaceport America. The company expects flight testing to begin next spring. (5/8)

South Korea to Develop Lunar Landing Modules with NASA (Source: Chosun)
The Korea Astronomy and Science Institute and NASA have agreed to join hands to develop payloads for lunar landing vehicles, the Ministry of Science and ICT said. NASA hopes to launch nine lunar-landing modules starting in 2020 and Korean scientists will take part in the endeavor. Korea will develop three types of payload equipment analyzing terrain, geological features and magnetic fields on the moon. The equipment will be put to use as early as 2023. (5/8)

NetMotion Sends a Skype Connection Into the Stratosphere (Source: GeekWire)
What’s the best way to show off your mobile networking technology? How about demonstrating that the technology can seamlessly switch between WiFi, cellular and satellite data connectivity while it’s flying on a balloon up to a height of 85,000 feet? That’s the answer that Seattle-based NetMotion Software came up with when it sought to showcase its mobile video conferencing capabilities.

In January, NetMotion engineers lashed an Apple iPad and an array of webcams, networking equipment and GPS trackers to a flightworthy frame, and attached the frame to a weather balloon. They set up a Skype video connection to a Microsoft Surface Book sitting in the back of their car. Then they let the contraption fly, fly away from their launch site at Mountains Edge Regional Park in Las Vegas. (5/7)

Navy & Marines Grapple With Moving To Space Force (Source: Breaking Defense)
The brand-new Space Development Agency and — if Congress permits it — a future Space Force will draw on all four services, not just the Air Force. Eventually. For now, it seems likely that only 15,000 to 20,000 Air Force personnel will make up the Space Force for the next two or three years. That’s between half and two-thirds of the estimated 30,000 or more space personnel just in the Air Force. The Army has estimated how many people it would transfer to the new service  — about 500 — but the Navy and Marine Corps are still wrestling with how to separate space operations from intimately intertwined functions like cyber warfare.

Some of this confusion is a strategic choice on the part of the Pentagon. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has said the reform plan won’t initially draw from the Navy or Marines (both part of the Navy Department). We’ve even heard the Office of the Secretary of Defense is keeping its plans vague so the Navy and Marines won’t have a solid proposal to push back against with specific criticisms to save their budgets. And many in Congress are skeptical that creating a new armed service for space will create anything except for more bureaucracy. (5/7)

Venus Missions? Interstellar Probes? Here Are 18 Wild Space Tech Ideas NASA Is Looking At (Source: Space.com)
Lunar ice mining, smart spacesuits, "solar surfing" spacecraft and advanced exoplanet finders are a few of the early stage space technologies whose research NASA has chosen to help fund this year. Through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, the agency has offered funds to 18 project proposals. The projects are aimed to design and test technology concepts for potential future NASA missions. Click here. (5/6)

How Donald Trump Ruined a Space Art Project (Source: The Guradian)
Well, it should have been a 30-meter-long balloon made of plastic sheeting coated with shimmering titanium dioxide and inflated into a giant crystal shard that would orbit 350 miles above the Earth and be visible to all humanity, like a new star in the night sky. How lovely. What does it look like instead? All that stuff still packed into a box about the size of a brick. As we know the Orbital Reflector would have worked. It was designed by the American artist Trevor Paglen and the Nevada Museum of Art, along with some hired engineers. It was part of 10-year project costing $1.3m (£1m), which would have put the first “purely artistic” object into space.

Were there problems with the launch? No. It went up successfully, along with 64 other satellites, on one of Elon Musk’s Falcon 9 rockets on 3 December. The launch went well, and the mechanism worked as planned … what happened? Who messed up? Donald Trump. Oh, come on. Surely you can’t blame Trump for this one? Actually, it’s almost entirely his fault. You see, Paglen and the museum had to wait to deploy the reflector until the US Air Force had identified all the satellites it launched with, otherwise it might bump into them.

A scary thought. Unfortunately, on 22 December, much of the US government shut down, because Trump wouldn’t approve the budget unless he got money for his anti-Mexican wall. This delayed everything for weeks, and the reflector couldn’t take it. “The satellite’s electronics and hardware were designed to function during this waiting period, but were not hardened for long-term functionality in space,” a museum spokesperson told the art market website Artnet. Now they can no longer make contact with it. (5/7)