July 30, 2020

Sunglider UAS Flies From Spaceport America (Source: AeroVironment)
HAPSMobile Inc. and AeroVironment announced the fourth successful test flight of the “Sunglider” solar-powered high-altitude platform system (HAPS). The flight took place on July 23, 2020 (PT) at Spaceport America (“SpA”) in New Mexico. With all basic aircraft tests for the unmanned aircraft system (UAS) now complete, HAPSMobile will proceed with preparations for stratospheric test flights. (7/29)

Second Heavy-Lift Angara Prepped for Transport to Launch Site (Source: RIA Novosti)
The second launch vehicle of the heavy class "Angara-A5" is planned to be sent to the Plesetsk cosmodrome in the first half of August, a source in the rocket and space industry told RIA Novosti. "The dispatch of a train with blocks of the Angara-A5 rocket from the Khrunichev Center to Plesetsk is scheduled for the first half of August," the agency's source said. According to him, the preparation of the rocket at the cosmodrome will begin in the second half of August with the expectation of launching in November. (7/30)

Florida Governor Holds Roundtable with Aerospace Industry Leaders (Source: Florida Channel)
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis met after the Mars 2020 launch several of the state's aerospace industry leaders to discuss their programs and priorities, and the state's continued support to the space industry's growth and continued development. Space Florida, NASA, OneWeb, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, and others participated. Click here for a videorecording of the event. (7/30)

Governor Signs Bill Giving Space Florida Expanded Financing Powers (Sources: Gov. DeSantis, Space Coast Daily)
House Bill 717, passed by the Florida Legislature earlier this year, streamlines the bonding process for Space Florida, and encourages a more competitive marketplace within the space industry. The bill gives Space Florida the authority to apply bonding processes that are used by other government entities, which are more well-known within the bonding community. HB 717 also makes it clear that state appropriations may not be used as a source of revenue and that revenue bonds may not be secured by the full faith and credit of Space Florida. (7/30)

Mars Mission Expense Brought Cancelation of Other Exploration (Source: Quartz)
The Perseverance rover, originally sold as a money-saver that would copy the previous Curiosity rover, will cost more than its predecessor, which itself was more than $1 billion over-budget. Those overages, and plans for a new Mars mission to return samples collected by Perseverance to the Earth, have led to the termination of a generation of other deep space programs, which might have sailed a boat on a moon of Saturn, plunged into the oceans of Europa, or flown an airship in the atmosphere of Venus. (7/30)

Senate Rejects Trump Nominee for Senior DoD Policy Post (Source: Wall Street Journal)
A U.S. Senate committee on Thursday canceled a confirmation hearing for the Pentagon’s top policy job of a former Army one-star general widely criticized for spouting conspiracy theories, making inflammatory statements about Muslims and suggesting that a former CIA director should suffer sexual humiliation in prison. Retired Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, 60 years old, nominated by President Trump to be undersecretary of defense, was to face the Senate Armed Services Committee following a wave of criticism from retired officials. Tata did not have the votes, a senior GOP Senate aide confirms. "The administration should consider nominating people who are qualified," the aide said. (7/30)

White House Nominates Space Force Generals for Promotion (Source: Space News)
The White House has nominated four Space Force major generals for promotion to lieutenant general. Maj. Gens. Stephen Whiting, B. Chance Saltzman, William Liquori Jr. and Nina Armagno would be assigned to various leadership positions in the Space Force. Their nominations will be considered by the Senate Armed Services Committee. (7/30)

Mars 2020 Launches From Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Space News)
NASA's Mars 2020 mission is on its way after a successful launch at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. The Atlas 5 carrying Mars 2020 lifted off on schedule at 7:50 a.m. Eastern, releasing the spacecraft on a Mars-bound trajectory nearly an hour later. Mars 2020 will deliver the Perseverance rover on the Martian surface next February. That rover will collect samples of Martian rock for return to Earth by two later missions under development by NASA and ESA.

The $2.4 billion rover carries a wide range of other science instruments as well as Ingenuity, a small helicopter that will attempt to fly in the Martian atmosphere. Mars 2020 is the last of three Mars missions to launch this year, after the Hope orbiter by the UAE and China'a Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter and rover. (7/30)

Pandemic Relief Bill Includes $1.5 Billion for NASA (Source: Space News)
A pandemic relief bill introduced in the Senate this week would give NASA $1.5 billion. The bill, introduced Monday as part of a broader package of supplemental funding and other relief measures, includes the funding to compensate NASA for a provision in the CARES Act earlier this year that allowed the agency to continue paying contractors even when they could not work on site. NASA officials previously called that measure "tremendously helpful" in ensuring that those contractors will be able to resume on-site work in the future. NASA Deputy Administrator Jim Morhard said Wednesday that the $1.5 billion is a "good estimate" of the agency's costs caused by the pandemic, but that it's subject to change as the pandemic continues. (7/30)

Spain's Sateliot Picks Open Cosmos to Build Constellation Satellites (Source: Space News)
A Spanish smallsat constellation company has picked Open Cosmos to build its satellites. Open Cosmos is under contract to build two demonstration satellites for Sateliot, the first of which, a three-unit cubesat, is scheduled for launch later this year. Sateliot is planning a constellation of up to 100 satellites to connect sensors and devices from low-Earth orbit, but has so far raised only a small fraction of the funding needed for the full constellation. Open Cosmos anticipates receiving manufacturing orders in phases from Sateliot rather than a bulk order for 100 satellites. (7/30)

Latvia Joins ESA as Associate Member (Source: ESA)
Latvia is becoming an associate member of the European Space Agency. The country signed an agreement that will allow it to participate in some ESA programs and secure contracts for Latvian companies, and is a step below being a full member of the agency. Latvia has had a cooperation agreement with ESA since 2015. (7/30)

Mars Rover to Collect Samples for Later Missions to Return (Source: Space Daily)
On board the Perseverance rover are 43 containers the size of cigar tubes designed to hold rock and dirt samples. If all goes well, many of them will be back on Earth by 2031 as part of an international effort to study them for possible signs that life once existed on Mars. The plan to get them back involves several spacecraft, two rovers and the first attempt to launch a rocket from another planet. Perseverance, however, isn't equipped to send the samples back to Earth.

That will be up to two spacecraft NASA and the European Space Agency plan to launch around 2026 - the NASA-led sample retrieval lander and an ESA-led Earth return orbiter. The lander is to include a fetch rover to retrieve the samples and bring them back to the lander, from which a small rocket will launch them into Mars orbit. The orbiter then will retrieve the samples and fly back to Earth. NASA expects the samples to depart Mars in 2029 and return to Earth in 2031. The agency also plans to build a highly secure laboratory on Earth to house and study the samples. (7/30)

GAO: Most Of $17.8B In COVID-19 Deals Not Competitive, DoD Spent $3 Billion (Source: Law360)
Federal agencies have awarded more than $17.8 billion in contracts for critical items needed to address the COVID-19 pandemic, more than half of which were awarded without competition, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said. The bulk of contracts for those critical goods and services as of mid-June, around $11 billion worth, or 62% of the total dollar value, were for items to either treat patients or protect health care workers, such as ventilators, personal protective equipment and N95 respirators, according to the GAO's report.

"Contracts play a key role in federal emergency response efforts, and ... contracting during an emergency can present a unique set of challenges as officials can face a significant amount of pressure to provide critical goods and services as expeditiously and efficiently as possible," the GAO said. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was the biggest agency spender, having awarded $8.94 billion in COVID-19-related deals, followed by the U.S. Department of Defense at just under $3 billion in contracts, according to the report. (7/29)

Governance of Global Moon Exploration and Settlement (Source: Moon Village Association)
Humanity will soon be returning to the Moon through the individual and cooperative efforts of multiple space agencies and private companies around the world. This new era of lunar exploration will witness resource extraction, energy generation, habitat construction, and, in time, a growing permanent international human presence on our Moon with everything that human settlements bring.

The community of space lawyers and policymakers have responded to this new reality on multiple fronts and have produced a number of instruments including (i) the upcoming UNCOPUOS General exchange of Views on Potential Legal Models for Activities in Exploration, Exploitation, and Utilization of Space Resources, (ii) NASA’s Artemis Accords, (iii) The Hague Building Blocks for the Development of an International Framework on Space Resource Activities, and (iv) the Moon Village Principles regarding Best Practices for Sustainable Lunar Activity. Click here. (7/30)

China Wants to Be First to Colonize the Moon and Mars (Source: Daily Beast)
China's Mars launch comes loaded with CCP officials’ desire for space colonization. One senior aerospace engineer and the head of China’s lunar exploration program, Ye Peijian, indicated two years ago that his country’s designs for space expedition mirror Beijing’s plan for the South China Sea—that is, the party seeks to occupy the moon and Mars at any cost. “The universe is an ocean, the moon is the Diaoyu Islands, Mars is Huangyan Island,” Ye said at the CCP’s annual plenary session in Beijing two years ago.

“If we do not go there now even though we can, then we will be blamed by our descendants,” Ye also said. “If others go there, then they will take over, and you will not be able to go even if you want to. This is reason enough.” The message was clear then: it’s a zero-sum game. The party’s officials see space as a place to be conquered, so they are compelled to stake a claim—fast. China has designs to become an astral superpower.

Details about state funding for space missions are opaque, but in 2018, Beijing earmarked at least $8 billion for the China National Space Administration, second only to the U.S. That amount has almost certainly increased every year since then, with Beijing hastening efforts to establish a permanent presence in space. China already has rovers on the moon. It will likely launch the core module of a space station to low Earth orbit next year. It is laying the groundwork for a crewed lunar mission in the 2030s, with plans to build a base near the lunar south pole. And Mars? If we take Ye’s words at face value, then the plan is to seize, annex, and build on top of it. (7/29)

Satellite Broadband Revenues Impacted by Pandemic (Source: Euroconsult)
Satellite broadband revenues will take at least two years to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report from Euroconsult. The research firm doesn’t expect satellite connectivity revenue to grow again until 2022, citing slowdowns in bandwidth consumption by cruise ships, commercial airlines, and the energy sector. Euroconsult ultimately expects the satellite broadband sector to grow, matching its 2014 peak of $12 billion in revenues in 2024, and climbing to $18.7 billion in annual revenue by 2029. (7/29)

ASAP to Keep Eye on NASA's Safety Review of Commercial Suborbital Flights (Source: Space Policy Online)
NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) will be keeping on eye on how NASA goes about its safety review of commercial suborbital vehicles before putting agency personnel onboard. NASA revealed last month that it plans to fly astronauts and other employees on systems like Blue Origin’s New Shepard or Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo.

On June 23, NASA announced creation of a Suborbital Crew (SubC) office within its Commercial Crew Program to “perform a system qualification, or safety assessment, to enable NASA astronauts, principal investigators and other NASA personnel” to fly on suborbital missions. NASA already has flown payloads on such flights. Now scientists would be able to accompany their experiments. The flights could also be used for astronaut training. During its meeting last week, ASAP member Don McErlean said NASA needs to examine the safety of these services before putting its personnel onboard. (7/28)

NASA Deploying Microphone On Next Mars Rover (Source: WMFE)
NASA’s new Martian rover launches from Cape Canaveral Thursday carrying something pretty unusual for a spacecraft — a microphone. The microphone will allow us to listen to the red planet. It will help scientists see what Mars is made of and search for signs of life. When the Mars Perseverance rover lands on Mars next February, it will unpack a suite of scientific experiments to help uncover ancient signs of life on the red planet — high tech cameras, spectrometers, sensors and a microphone.

Microphones on spacecraft are quite rare because there’s not much to hear in space. For soundwaves to travel you need an atmosphere. Still, spacecraft microphones have been used before. The Huygens space probe captured sound while descending through the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon, Titan. NASA InSight Mars lander also caught a snippet of sound without an onboard microphone — capturing wind vibrations from two of its sensors. The observation was a surprise to mission managers. Engineers converted the vibrations into sound, speeding it up and shifting the frequency for our ears to hear it. (7/29)

NASA Selects Altius Space Machines for Small Business Awards (Source: Parabolic Arc)
NASA has selected Altius Space Machines for two small business awards to develop interfaces that can be used by robots for assembly and maintaining structures in space. The space agency made the awards under the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) and Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programs. Each phase I award is worth $125,000.

Under the STTR award, Altius will work with Virginia Tech to develop an universal interface that can be used for assembly in space. The ESCHER interface is part of a larger concept working to enable swarms of robots to autonomously perform difficult construction tasks while minimizing the cost and complexity of doing so,” the proposal summary said. (7/29)