October 15, 2019

Greenland's Melting Ice May Affect Everyone's Future (Source: National Geographic)
Greenland is currently the biggest contributor to global sea level rise. By 2100, will its ice sheet’s melt add inches to the world’s oceans—or will it add much more? That’s a trillion-dollar question. Nearly 70 percent of Earth’s population lives within 100 miles of a coast, and vast amounts of infrastructure—from airports to ports to cities to roads to Internet cables—sits in zones that could flood within decades. Small, low-lying island nations, city planners, insurance adjustors, homeowners—everyone is clamoring for the most accurate estimates of how much extra water they’ll need to prepare for.

And for that, says Willis, they need to know what happens here, where ocean meets ice. “This is where it all happens,” he says. The flooding of the future is being defined here and now, in the glittering sea below. Today, the Greenland ice sheet is losing mass about six times faster than it was just a few decades ago, whatever tenuous balance that existed before long since upended. Between 2005 and 2016, melt from the ice sheet was the single largest contributor to sea level rise worldwide, though Antarctica may overtake it soon.

Within the past 50 years, the ice sheet has already shed enough to add about half an inch of water to the world’s oceans, and that number is increasing precipitously as the planet heats. During this summer’s extreme heat wave that parked over Greenland for a week and turned over half its surface ice to slush, meltwater equivalent to over 4 million swimming pools sloughed into the ocean in a single day. Over the month of July, enough melt poured into the ocean to bump sea levels up by an easily measurable half a millimeter. (10/15)

Scientists Want to Make a 3D Map of the Entire World Before Climate Change Ruins It (Source: LiveScience)
Earth is changing faster than anyone can comprehend. Every day, more forests burn, more glaciers melt and more evidence of the world's ancient cultures slips away. Change of some kind is, of course, inevitable — but it is happening more quickly and more severely because of the effects of human-caused climate change. And that has some scientists worried: The quicker Earth changes,the less time there is to learn from its past and understand its mysteries.

Recently, two researchers proposed a way to preserve a record of our planet in its present state: use lasers to create a high-resolution, 3D map of the entire world. It's now the mission of a new nonprofit project called The Earth Archive, which is spearheaded by archaeologist Chris Fisher and geographer Steve Leisz. The answer, Fisher said, is light detection and ranging, or lidar — a method of remote scanning that uses aircraft to shower a landscape with a dense net of laser beams. (10/15)

Former NASA Scientist Says They Found Life on Mars in the 1970s (Source: CNN)
We may have already discovered the essence of life on Mars 40 years ago, according to a former NASA scientist. Gilbert V. Levin, who was principal investigator on a NASA experiment that sent Viking landers to Mars in 1976, published an article in the Scientific American journal last Thursday, arguing the experiment's positive results were proof of life on the red planet.

The experiment, called Labeled Release (LR), was designed to test Martian soil for organic matter. "It seemed we had answered that ultimate question," Levin wrote in the article. In the experiment, the Viking probes placed nutrients in Mars soil samples -- if life were present, it would consume the food and leave gaseous traces of its metabolism, which radioactive monitors would then detect.

To make sure it was a biological reaction, the test was repeated after cooking the soil, which would prove lethal to known life. If there was a measurable reaction in the first and not the second sample, that would suggest biological forces at work -- and that's exactly what happened, according to Levin. However, other experiments failed to find any organic material and NASA couldn't duplicate the results in their laboratory -- so they dismissed the positive result as false positives, some unknown chemical reaction rather than proof of extraterrestrial life. (10/15)

Craig Technologies Part of Peraton Team for NASA SENSE Contract (Source: Craig Technologies)
Craig Technologies is part of the winning team for NASA's Space Exploration Networks Services Evolutions (SENSE) contract as a subcontractor to Peraton. SENSE is a follow-on to the Space Communications Network Services (SCNS) contract, also led by Peraton in which Craig joined the team in 2017 in support of the Exploration and Space Communications Projects Division (ESC) at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). (10/15)

The Mystery of Moon Water (Source: The Atlantic)
Ten years ago, a rocket slammed into the moon. The impact sent a plume of lunar material from the moon’s south pole flying out into space. For a few minutes, the spacecraft that had unleashed the rocket coasted through the mist, its instruments absorbing as much data as they could. Amid the molecules of methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, and other compounds, the spacecraft detected something wonderfully familiar: water.

Not liquid water, but grains of water ice. The discovery helped reshape our understanding of Earth’s satellite. Though scientists had long believed that the moon was quite dry, they had begun to harbor suspicions that water might lurk somewhere in its shadowy regions. The excavated material showed them they were right to wonder. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to suggest there was a lot more.

This is where NASA wants to go next, to craters along the moon’s south pole untouched by sunlight. Jim Bridenstine, the agency’s administrator, brings up water ice almost every time he talks about the Artemis program, the Trump administration’s effort to return astronauts to the moon in the next five years. The hope is that future spacefarers could mine the ice as a resource for their moon bases. “We know that there’s hundreds of millions of tons of water ice on the surface of the moon,” Bridenstine says. Sometimes he says there’s hundreds of billions of tons. But Bridenstine doesn’t know that—not for sure. No one does. Click here. (10/15)

SpaceX Submits Paperwork for 30,000 More Starlink Satellites (Source: Space News)
SpaceX has asked the International Telecommunication Union to arrange spectrum for 30,000 additional Starlink satellites. SpaceX, which is already planning the world’s largest low-Earth-orbit broadband constellation by far, filed paperwork in recent weeks for up to 30,000 additional Starlink satellites on top of the 12,000 already approved by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

SpaceX’s ITU filings contain details about frequency usage, proposed orbital altitudes, and the number of satellites it desires. The filings do not say when SpaceX hopes to launch the satellites, or other details such as spacecraft throughput and deorbit timelines. ITU filings are an early step in deploying a satellite system, and are often made years before a company plans to build launch spacecraft. SpaceX will be required to disclose more details about its constellation when applying with the FCC for access to the U.S. market to offer broadband services, like it did with the 12,000-satellite constellation it began launching in May. (10/15)

Space Force Discussions at White House Amid Political Uncertainty (Source: Space News)
Pentagon officials will attend a White House meeting today to discuss planning to establish a Space Force amid political uncertainty. The meeting, according to a White House source, is intended to be a "routine" update on preparations to set up the separate military branch. Preparations to create a space service under the Air Force continue despite an uncertain political climate and no assurances from Congress that it will enact a Space Force in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act as the sixth branch of the armed forces. One concern is that Congress might pass only an "abbreviated" version of the act that doesn't give Pentagon the full authorization it wants to create the Space Force. (10/15)

China's Next Heavy-Lift LM-5 Launch Planned Before Year-End (Source: Space News)
China is making preparations for the return to flight of its Long March 5 rocket around the end of this year. Two cargo transport ships left port on the Yangtze River late last week for the northern city of Tianjin. They are expected to collect components of a third Long March 5 heavy-lift launch vehicle, which has been grounded since a 2017 launch failure. That schedule would allow for a launch in late December of the Shijian-20 experimental communications satellite. Bringing the Long March 5 back into service is critical for many Chinese missions, including the Chang'e-5 lunar sample return mission, a Mars orbiter and lander, and a space station. (10/15)

LeoLabs Activates New Zealand Orbital Debris Tracking Station (Source: Space News)
LeoLabs has brought into service a third radar for tracking objects in orbit. The company said its Kiwi Space Radar in New Zealand has started initial operations, joining the company's two existing radars in the U.S. The new radar operates at a higher frequency, allowing it to track smaller objects in low Earth orbit. LeoLabs expects the radar to be able to detect up to 250,000 additional objects as small as two centimeters across. LeoLabs expects to add three more radar sites by the early 2020s. (10/15)

Army Wants GPS Alternatives (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Army is looking for ways to become less dependent on GPS. Gen. John Murray, commander of Army Futures Command, said at a conference Monday that the increasing use of jammers has led the service to look at alternative position, navigation and timing technologies. While continuing to use GPS and support efforts by the Air Force to develop more jam-resistant GPS signals, Murray said the Army intends to invest in technologies to reduce its reliance on GPS, and will train troops in electronic warfare tactics. (10/15)

Nield Recommends National Spaceport Policy (Source: Space News)
A former FAA official says the U.S. government should develop a national policy supporting spaceports. At a conference last week, George Nield, the former associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the FAA, rejected claims that there is a glut of spaceports, arguing that such facilities should be seen as not just launch and landing sites but also economic, research and educational hubs. A national policy, such as a space policy directive, could enable regulatory changes and increased infrastructure investment needed to support spaceport development. (10/15)