November 13, 2019

Russia's Space Agency in Talks on Sending Turkish, Egyptian, Saudi Astronauts Into Space (Source: TASS)
Roscosmos is in talks with Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia hashing over the possibility of sending their astronauts into space, Dmitry Rogozin, director of Russia’s state space corporation, told an international forum dubbed "Baikonur is the cradle of world cosmonautics" on Tuesday. "Earlier, it was believed that with the advent of American spacecraft, there would be no need for Soyuz spacecraft anymore, but this turned out to be exactly the opposite."

"And now we see that the Energia corporation, Roscosmos and our Kazakh colleagues have received new requests and seen a new interest from countries seeking to get their first experience on a spaceflight from Baikonur," Rogozin said. "At the moment, we are in talks with other potential participants on this project. These are Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and many other countries." (11/12)

Russia Plans to Launch About 30 Next-Generation Navigation Satellites (Source: Sputnik)
The Russian satellite grouping has 23 operational satellites, with two in maintenance, one spare and one in a flight test phase. The satellites circle the Earth at an altitude of about 11,000 miles and ensure complete coverage of the surface and global signal availability. Russia is planning to launch about 30 global navigation satellites which will be added to its aging navigation satellite constellation, according to revealed documents. According to the documents, 20 carrier rockets will be used to launch 28 satellites in 2021-2030. (11/12)

Russia Plans to Have 20 Remote Sensing Satellites by 2022 (Source: TASS)
Russia plans to start creating a national remote satellite sensing center next year and, by 2022, the country is expected to have about 20 remote sensing satellites on the orbit, said Valery Zaichko, the deputy director of the navigational space systems department of Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos. "By 2025, even starting from 2022, we plan to have about 15-20 spacecraft as part of Russia’s orbital group, including for hydrometeorological and radar survey, Zaichko said on Monday, during a conference, headlined ‘Modern challenges for remote sensing of the Earth from space.’

The official said that Russia’s current remote sensing orbital group has 11 satellites, mostly of the Kanopus family. An Elektro-L satellite will be launched by the end of the year. Three more satellites, including Resurs-P and Meteor satellites, are to be put into the orbit by 2020. In the same year, Russia will start creating a space system headlined Arktika (Arctic). (11/12)

Kremlin: $169 Million Stolen Out of $1.4 Billion Allocated for Vostochny Spaceport Construction (Source: TASS)
A total of 11 billion rubles (about $169 million) were stolen during the construction of the Vostochny spaceport in the Russian Far East and only 3.5 billion rubles ($53.8 million) were returned to the state coffers, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday. The Kremlin spokesman thus commented on a statement by President Vladimir Putin who said at a government meeting on Monday that dozens of criminal cases and jailings had failed to put things in order at the Vostochny spaceport’s construction site. (11/11)

Indonesia to Build the Nation's First Spaceport in Papua (Source: Jakarta Post)
Indonesia plans to construct its first spaceport in Biak, Papua, to serve as the location of the country’s rocket test launches, the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) has confirmed. “We will build [the spaceport] just like LAPAN’s rocket launch site we have in South Garut [West Java]. However, it will be bigger so that it can be used for larger rocket test launches,” LAPAN flight and aerospace study center head Robertus Heru Trijahyanto said.

Biak was chosen as the place to build the new spaceport because the regency’s vast area was deemed ideal to support LAPAN’s plan to do a larger rocket test launch in 2024, he said. Citing the Karman line ─ the imaginary line marking where space begins ─ Heru said the space border was 100 kilometers above Earth's surface. LAPAN, however, plans to test launch a rocket that could go up to 300 km above Earth. (11/12)

SpaceX Says Upgraded Starlink Satellites Have Better Bandwidth, Beams, and More (Source: Teslarati)
SpaceX successfully launched its second batch of 60 Starlink satellites, featuring a variety of upgrades as part of the move from v0.9 to v1.0 spacecraft. During SpaceX’s launch webcast, the hosts revealed a number of intriguing new details about those upgrades, shedding a bit more light on what exactly has changed. SpaceX said the v1.0 satellites have 4 times the individual bandwidth of the v0.9 spacecraft.  

SpaceX launched its first dedicated Starlink mission in May 2019, placing 60 “v0.9” satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) in what was essentially a beta test at an unprecedented scale. At the time, SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk disseminated a substantial amount of information, essentially taking the veil off of (part of) the company’s Starlink satellite program. In terms of the basics, Starlink v0.9 satellites were said to weigh approximately ~225 kg (500 lb) apiece, although the final mass – said to be the heaviest payload SpaceX had ever launched – suggested that that figure excluded the mass of krypton propellant.

All told, Musk said that the payload weighed ~18.5 tons but never clarified whether that was in imperial or metric units, leaving a potential range of 16,700-18,500 kilograms (36,800-40,800 pounds). In general, Musk was quite confident that SpaceX’s custom-built phased array antennas were effectively the best in the world even in their v0.9 beta-test iteration. Additionally, he noted that inter-satellite optical (i.e. laser) links would have to wait a generation or two before becoming part of the operational constellation. (11/12)

Blue Origin’s Alabama Rocket Engine Plant Shaping Up, and It’s Big (Source: AL.com)
A new aerial photograph shows the size of the new rocket engine plant Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin is building in Alabama. All 400,000 square feet of the new $200 million plant appear to be roofed in and ready for interior development. The plant will build Blue Origin’s new BE-4 engine for the company’s own rockets and rockets made by nearby United Launch Alliance in Decatur, Ala. ULA supplies rockets mostly for national security launches. The new Alabama plant will employ about 350 people and will also produce Blue Origin’s smaller BE-3 engine.

Bezos has always been interested in space, he told a group of reporters visiting his rocket plant near Seattle in 2016. He has degrees in computer science and electrical engineering from Princeton and said he has been fascinated with space “since I was five years old.” Bezos told reporters then that considers himself “incredibly fortunate” to do that. He “won a lottery called Amazon,” Bezos said, and now “can fulfill my childhood dream.” The rocket plant is not the only connection Blue Origin has to Huntsville. The company is working to retrofit an original Saturn V engine test stand at the Marshall Space Flight Center to test its engines including the ones built in Huntsville. (11/13)

Globalstar and Nokia to Offer African Phone Service (Source: Globalstar)
U.S. satellite operator Globalstar and Nokia have teamed up to provide communications solutions in Africa. The two companies collaborated on a product that links Nokia’s Digital Automation Cloud platform using Globalstar’s S-band spectrum for terrestrial LTE services. Globalstar has market access to use its S-band spectrum for terrestrial networks in South Africa, Mozambique, Gabon, Botswana, and Rwanda. Nokia has become a value-added reseller for Globalstar through their partnership. (11/13)

EU Must Boost Spending in Space or be Squeezed Out (Source: AFP)
The EU needs to boost space funding and improve its strategy to compete with military superpowers and smaller upstarts, a panel of experts told MEPs on Tuesday. The experts, including from the UN and the European Commission, said an estimated 60 percent of the world's economy depends directly or indirectly on "space tools" like satellite imaging, tracking and internet connectivity.

The EU faces competition not only from established players like the US, but also from emerging competitors like China, India, Iran and Singapore. The experts highlighted the increasing willingness of major powers to move the military to the centre of their space strategy. Although the experts said the EU was taking its first timid steps towards a common defence structure, the bloc's funding was dwarfed by the US. (11/13)

Senators Introduce NASA Authorization Bill (Source: Space Daily)
U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz, R-TX, chairman of the Subcommittee on Aviation and Space, along with ranking member Kyrsten Sinema, D-AZ, and Sens. Roger Wicker, R-MS, and Maria Cantwell, D-WA, chairman and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, introduced the NASA Authorization Act of 2019. This bill expands and improves upon the bipartisan legislation Sen. Cruz introduced in December 2018 and provides NASA the clear direction needed to advance our nation's space initiatives and investments and assert the United States' global leadership in the final frontier. (11/13)

Northrop Grumman Expands Arizona Campus for Missile Defense Work (Source: Phoenix Business Journal)
Northrop Grumman Corp. has opened its expanded Chandler campus as the home for its aerospace launch vehicle business. The 633,000-square-foot campus supports national defense and aerospace projects, including the U.S. missile defense program and satellite launches for the U.S. Air Force, NASA and commercial customers. The bulk of the company’s launch vehicle design, development, manufacturing and testing occurs on this campus.

In September, the Chandler facility started work on a new $1.1 billion contract for missile targets for the U.S. Department of Defense's Missile Defense Agency. Blake Larson, Northrop Grumman's president of Innovation Systems, said the company has a heritage in the state that spans more than three decades, with business continuing to grow rapidly in Arizona. The 47-acre Chandler campus will house more than 2,500 employees. Orbital ATK announced the expansion of its launch vehicles operations with a new Chandler campus in March 2018. The business in Chandler began in the 1980s. (11/13)

BlackSky Secures $50 Million Financing From Intelsat (Source: Space News)
Geospatial data provider BlackSky announced Nov. 12 it has secured a $50 million loan from global communications satellite operator Intelsat. The senior secured loan will finance BlackSky’s infrastructure and product development for commercial and government customers. In addition to the financing deal, O’Toole said, BlackSky and Intelsat are establishing a commercial partnership to jointly develop data and imagery products to be distributed via Intelsat’s communications services. (11/12)

Chinese Rockets Launch Small Satellites (Sources: NasaSpaceFlight.com, Xinhua)
One Chinese rocket launched an imaging smallsat Tuesday night. The Kuaizhou-1A rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 10:40 p.m. Eastern and placed a Jilin-1 satellite into orbit. The satellite is part of a constellation intended to provide data for natural resources and disaster management. The satellite, the 14th in the overall constellation, will produce high-resolution color and multispectral imagery.

Hours later, a second Chinese rocket launched a group of smallsats. The Long March 6 rocket launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 1:35 a.m. Eastern Wednesday carrying five Ningxia-1 satellites. The satellites are part of a remote sensing system being developed by a Chinese company, Ningxia Jingui Information Technology Co., Ltd. (11/13)

Continuing Budget Resolution Threatens NASA and Military Space Projects (Source: Space News)
An extended delay in a final 2020 spending bill could be "debilitating" for military space programs, a Pentagon official warns. Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, said the funding stalemate is setting back critical space programs that the Air Force included in its fiscal year 2020 budget request, many of which he said are classified. The Air Force, like the rest of the government, is funded under a continuing resolution (CR) set to expire next Friday, although another, one-month CR is expected. An extended CR would also delay plans to establish a Space Force.

An extended CR could also hurt NASA's ability to get humans back to the moon by 2024. An agency official said Tuesday that NASA is starting to review proposals submitted last week for human-rated lunar landers, with the goal of awarding initial contracts in January. That schedule, though, could be pushed back if a final 2020 spending bill isn't in place by then. NASA sought $1 billion for lunar lander work in a budget amendment in May, but the House provided no funding for it in its spending bill while the Senate provided less than $750 million. (11/13)

OneWeb Seeks Dismissal of Intelsat Lawsuit (Source: Space News)
OneWeb and its largest investor, SoftBank, are seeking to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Intelsat. That suit, filed in a New York court in September, argued that OneWeb and SoftBank breached contracts, committed fraud and conspired to steal confidential and proprietary information. OneWeb terminated a deal with Intelsat where Intelsat would have exclusive rights to OneWeb's capacity in four industry sectors. OneWeb and SoftBank say the suit should be dismissed since a finalized purchase agreement and a service-level agreement was never reached. (11/13)

Study: 12-Satellite Imagery Constellation Could Deploy for $300 Million (Source: Space News)
A new study concludes that a high-resolution imagery constellation is less expensive than ever. The study, announced Wednesday at the NewSpace Europe conference in Luxembourg, concluded a 12-satellite constellation, producing imagery at a resolution of one meter, can be deployed for $300 million. The study by RRE Ventures and PJT Partners, a New York investment bank, concluded there is still strong demand for Earth imagery despite a proliferation of satellite systems because of a desire for fast revisit times. (11/13)

Virgin Galactic Announces Third Quarter Results (Source: Virgin Galactic)
Third quarter results for VG reflect the three months ended September 30, 2019, prior to the closing on October 25, 2019 of the recent business combination (the “Business Combination”) between VG’s predecessor, VGH, LLC, and Social Capital Hedosophia, a public investment vehicle. The Business Combination provided net proceeds to VG of over $430 million, which VG intends to use to fund its operations. Pre-transaction owners of VGH, LLC retained over 58% ownership of VG following the Business Combination.

Recent business highlights include the transition of approximately 60% of Virgin Galactic operations personnel from the headquarters in Mojave to Spaceport America, located in New Mexico. The company achieved several operational milestones at Spaceport America, including the relocation of mothership VMS Eve, completing installation of the ground infrastructure, ground tests of all systems to ensure they are flight-ready and unveiling the operational hubs of Spaceport America as open and operational. (11/12)