September 2, 2020

L3Harris Technologies Selected to Build Space Antenna for Mobile Telecom Satellite (Source: Space Daily)
The reflector antenna for the Thuraya 4-NGS satellite will be manufactured and tested at L3Harris facilities on Florida's Space Coast. The geostationary satellite, owned and operated by Yahsat/Thuraya, will carry an L-band payload that will enable high-speed services for all customer segments, including defense, government and enterprise throughout multiple continents. The satellite, equipped with L3Harris technology, is scheduled for operation in 2024.

Since the company began space reflector antenna operations nearly 50 years ago, L3Harris has designed and built large-aperture reflectors and deployable mesh reflector-feed antenna systems ranging from one meter to the world's largest commercially available 22-meter reflector. L3Harris has nearly 100 reflectors on orbit. The reflector antenna for the Thuraya 4-NGS satellite will be manufactured and tested at L3Harris facilities in Palm Bay, Florida. (9/2)

Vega Launch Delayed by Pacific Typhoon (Source: Spaceflight Now)
A Vega launch has been delayed again, this time because of weather thousands of kilometers from the launch site. Arianespace postponed the Vega launch, which had been scheduled for Tuesday night, citing an approaching typhoon at a ground station in South Korea needed to support the mission. Arianespace did not immediately announce a new date for the launch, which will place 53 smallsats into orbit. The mission, originally scheduled for last year, has been delayed by the failure of the previous Vega launch in July 2019, the closure of the French Guiana launch site in March because of the pandemic, and extended poor weather at the launch site this summer. (9/2)

Space Force to Add 2,400 Members (Source: Space News)
The Space Force will formally add 2,400 members to its ranks later this month. The service is planning a virtual swearing-in ceremony for personnel transferring from the Air Force Sept. 15 during the Air Force Association's Virtual Air, Space and Cyber Conference. The 2,400 space operators who volunteered to transfer to the Space Force are spread across 175 locations around the world, and were chosen from more than 8,500 who applied for the opportunity to transfer. Only airmen in the space operations and space systems operations career fields were selected. (9/2)

NASA and DOE Seek Lunar Power System Proposals (Source: Space News)
NASA and the Department of Energy will soon seek proposals for a fission power system for lunar missions. The agencies plan to issue a request for proposals by early October for the Fission Surface Power program, selecting several companies for preliminary design work before choosing one in 2022 to develop the power system. The goal of the project is to develop a fission reactor that can generate at least 10 kilowatts, enabling long-term lunar exploration plans and eventual Mars missions. The effort builds upon the Kilopower project by NASA and DOE that tested a small version of that reactor at the Nevada Test Site in 2018. (9/2)

NASA Seeks New Flight Directors (Source: NASA)
NASA is looking for applicants for a new class of flight directors. The agency announced Tuesday it will accept applications this month for flight directors to serve in Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center, supporting the International Space Station and future human missions. Flight directors typically previously worked by flight controllers in Mission Control, although that is not a formal prerequisite. (9/2)

Pentagon Report: China Amassing Arsenal of Anti-Satellite Weapons (Source: Space News)
China is progressing with the development of missiles and electronic weapons that could target satellites in low and high orbits, the Pentagon says in a new report released Sep. 1. China already has operational ground-based missiles that can hit satellites in low-Earth orbit and “probably intends to pursue additional ASAT weapons capable of destroying satellites up to geosynchronous Earth orbit,” says the Defense Department’s annual report to Congress on China’s military capabilities.

DoD has been required by law to submit this report since 2000. The Pentagon says Chinese military strategists regard the ability to use space-based systems and to deny them to adversaries as central to modern warfare. China for years has continued to “strengthen its military space capabilities despite its public stance against the militarization of space,” the report says. (9/1)

Esper Staffer Becomes Top DOD Space Policy Official (Source: Air Force Magazine)
Justin T. Johnson, a senior staffer to Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, has taken over as the Pentagon’s top space policy official, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Uriah L. Orland told Air Force Magazine. Johnson is now acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy, after his predecessor Stephen L. Kitay left for the private sector Aug. 21. DOD has not said publicly whether Johnson will permanently hold the position.

Kitay departed after three years as the Pentagon’s space policy boss. The handoff comes as the Pentagon further stands up its Space Force, juggles multiple space-focused development offices, and crafts strategy and policy to establish a broader military presence in space and protect U.S. assets like satellites. Johnson will have a say in which military resources should move from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force into the Space Force in the coming years.

Johnson most recently served as Esper’s deputy chief of staff, where he offered advice on issues like the military budget, reform, and management. Before that, he was the deputy secretary of defense’s top space adviser and ran the Space Working Group that drafted a proposal to create the new Space Force, according to his official biography. (8/31)

Lockheed Martin Enlists Tyvak and Telesat for Space Development Agency Contract (Source: Space News)
Lockheed Martin will build 10 satellites for the Pentagon’s Space Development Agency using small buses from Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. The company also has enlisted Canadian satellite operator Telesat to provide technical advice. Lockheed Martin and York Space Systems were selected by the SDA to each produce 10 satellites that will be part of a mesh network in low Earth orbit known as Transport Layer Tranche 0. The satellites will be about 150 to 200 kilograms and will use Tyvak’s Mavericks platform. (9/1)

SpaceX’s Starship Rocket Will Launch ‘Hundreds of Missions’ Before Flying People (Source: CNBC)
SpaceX is developing its next-generation Starship rocket to one day launch dozens of people to space, but CEO Elon Musk emphasized that the rocket has many milestones to go before it can take passengers. “We’ve got to first make the thing work; automatically deliver satellites and do hundreds of missions with satellites before we put people on board,” Musk said, speaking Monday at the virtual “Humans to Mars” conference.

Starship represents the company’s top priority, as Musk wants to build a fully reusable rocket system that can launch cargo or as many as 100 people at a time. While SpaceX’s current Falcon fleet of rockets is partially reusable, as the company can land and reuse the rocket’s boosters, Musk hopes Starship transforms space travel into something more akin to commercial air travel. The rocket’s enormous size would also make it capable of launching several times as much cargo at once — for comparison, while SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets can send as many as 60 Starlink satellites at a time, SpaceX says Starship will be able to launch 400 Starlink satellites at a time. (9/1)

New US Space Force Technology Beats Satellite Jamming Attempts in Recent Test (Source: Sputnik)
The US Space Force announced on Monday it had completed its first test of a new anti-jamming system that would help the Pentagon's satellite network operate while its signals are under attack. At Los Angeles Air Force Base in California in June, the Space Force's Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) successfully implemented a new anti-jamming capability on the Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) called Mitigation and Anti-Jam Enhancement (MAJE), according to a recent news release.

MAJE involves upgrades to both software and hardware in the Army's Global SATCOM Configuration Control Element, C4ISRNET noted. During the test, MAJE was able to detect and suppress efforts to jam signals coming to and from US communications satellites. Jamming involves broadcasting signals at the receiving dish on the same wavelength as those an adversary is trying to send, effectively bombarding it with so much noise that discerning the original transmission becomes impossible. (8/31)

Vega Still Trying to Return to Flight with Rideshare Mission (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
After a lengthy grounding following a failed launch in July 2019, the closure of the Guiana Space Centre due to the novel coronavirus outbreak, and a further postponement because of high-altitude winds, Arianespace’s small-lift Vega rocket was set for another launch attempt for its Return To Flight (RTF) mission on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. However, it was postponed again due to the storm track of Typhoon Maysak over South Korea, where the Jeju telemetry station is located.

The flight will see 53 satellites deployed for 21 customers hailing from 13 countries around the world, launching from the Vega Launch Complex (SLV) at the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. This mission, also known as Vega VV16, will mark the 16th flight of the Vega launch vehicle to date, the sixth launch for Arianespace in 2020, and the 256th total launch for Arianespace since the multinational company’s foundation in 1980. (9/1)

A New Tool to Detect Alien Biochemistry (Source: Air & Space)
Alberto Fairén and his colleagues from the Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid, Spain, have developed a new tool to detect life on other planets called CMOLD (Complex Molecules Detector), which they outline in a new paper in the journal Astobiology. In so doing, they’ve tackled one of the major scientific challenges in planetary exploration: how to identify life on an alien planet using only a robotic lander mission.

Nearly all previous life detection instruments have looked for volatile organic compounds using a gas chromatograph–mass spectrometer, or GC-MS. The Viking landers of the 1970s, the Curiosity rover now on Mars, and the upcoming European ExoMars mission all carry these devices, which heat up samples to separate their constituent elements and identify them by their spectral signals.

CMOLD does things a little differently. It extracts organic molecules in a liquid suspension and applies three powerful analytical techniques: (1) a microscope to look for microscale visual evidence of life; (2) a Raman spectrometer to detect atomic composition and organic molecules; and (3) a biomarker detector containing antibodies and short DNA and RNA molecules that bind to life-related compounds. (9/1)

NASA Space Technology Faces Potential Budget Pressure (Source: Space News)
Uncertain overall funding and congressional direction to increase funding on specific projects could create pressure on NASA’s space technology program, an agency official warned Sept. 1. Speaking at a meeting of the Technology, Innovation and Engineering Committee of the NASA Advisory Council, Jim Reuter, associate administrator for space technology at NASA, said his directorate was preparing for two different budget scenarios for fiscal year 2021, which begins Oct. 1. One is that the directorate receives the $1.58 billion included in the agency’s budget request published in February.

The other scenario is that space technology receives $1.1 billion, the funding it received in fiscal year 2020. That would be the case if Congress passes a yearlong continuing resolution, funding NASA and other agencies at 2020 levels for fiscal year 2021, or if the space technology section of the House version of a 2021 spending bill, which kept the program at $1.1 billion, becomes law. (9/1)

Biden Defense Policy Backs More Diplomacy, Less Spending (Source: Law360)
The U.S. could see a reduced defense budget and an increased emphasis on diplomacy over military power if Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden wins the election in November. Here, Law360 explores what the defense industry can expect from a Biden administration. (9/2)