September 21, 2020

ULA Steps Up Scrutiny of Supplier Ownership (Source: Janes.com)
United Launch Alliance (ULA) has expanded efforts to determine who owns its suppliers after finding out that one of them was Chinese-owned, according to the head of the US space company. ULA has hired an outside firm to “tunnel through” its supply chain every quarter to ensure none of its suppliers is owned by China, said Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO. To gain access to US intellectual property despite being a potential adversary, China uses shell companies and other methods to “infiltrate” US technology companies “without being detected”, Bruno explained. (9/21)

How Much Life Would Be Required to Create the Phosphine Signal on Venus? (Source: Universe Today)
Last week, an incredible announcement was made about the search for extraterrestrial life: Phosphine gas detected in the clouds of Venus – a potential indicator of life or “biosignature.” Now some gases might be a false positive for biosignatures because they can be created by other chemical processes on a planet like photochemical processes in the atmosphere or geological processes beneath the surface that create a given gas. For example, methane can also be a biosignature, and we’ve been hunting it down on Mars, but we know that methane can also be created geologically.

Finding phosphine in Venusian clouds is truly remarkable because we don’t presently know of any way to create phosphine abiotically or without life being a part of the equation. Question is – how much life?? Once a biosignature is discovered, a method to rule out false positives is to look at the concentration of the gases in question and see if a plausible amount of life could generate the gas. Phosphine gas in Venusian clouds was detected at concentrations of 20 ppb (parts per billion). If the required biomass to create this concentration of gas is high, then an otherwise unfamiliar abiotic process may still be at work. Because while Venus may have life, requiring high concentrations of life on a world generally thought to have zero surface habitability starts lowering your alien credibility.

Past studies have already looked at calculating required biomass to determine how plausible it is that a biosignature gas is in fact the by-product of living beings and not some other unknown abiotic process. If somebody were looking at our own planet from light years away, they would see that the concentration of oxygen in our atmosphere is ten orders of magnitude higher than it should be for chemical balance. That unbalancing is from life on Earth creating oxygen and adding it to the atmosphere. We know of no other abiotic process that could account for that degree of disequilibrium.  Another signal is the presence of a gas with no known source other than life. That’s where phosphine comes into play. Click here. (9/20)

How Algorithmic Darwinism is propelling Space Evolution (Source: Space Daily)
Designing a system of satellites is a mind-bogglingly complex game of tradeoffs. Mission planners must weigh objectives such as lifespan and coverage against constraints like cost and scheduling, all while contending with the physics of space. Add ever-changing threats and orbital congestion to the equation and the problem can become difficult beyond human comprehension.

The key to unraveling this complexity lies in a phenomenon observed by Charles Darwin in the Galapagos Islands nearly 200 years ago; species evolve by mastering multiple objectives: fending off predators, accessing food and withstanding harsh climates, to name a few. Over millions of years, natural selection determines the best combinations of genes for species to survive. (9/21)

OneWeb Resumes Satellite Production (Source: Sputnik)
OneWeb planned to launch up to 672 satellites into low Earth orbit with the vision to provide broadband internet access to the entire world's surface. The United Kingdom's communications company OneWeb, which had been bought out of bankruptcy by the British government and an Indian telecom provider, confirmed on Friday resuming satellite production. "Yes - satellite production is underway!" the company replied to a Twitter user.

In 2015, the company penned a contract with Roscosmos through European aerospace company Arianespace to carry out 21 launches to deliver all the satellites into space. In late March, OneWeb filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a New York state court after launching just 74 satellites. The UK government and Indian mobile network operator Bharti Global have since agreed to pay $1 billion to acquire OneWeb and fund the restart of its projects. (9/21)

DOD Approves $25 Million in Grants to Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program (Source: DoD)
The Department of Defense today announced the award of six (6) grants totaling $25 million under the Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program by the Office of Economic Adjustment. These awards follow a competitive selection process culminating in Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord’s designation of six Defense Manufacturing Communities on August 16, 2020, and for the Office of Economic Adjustment to invite grant applications to strengthen the national security innovation base.

The awards derive from Fiscal Year 2020 appropriated funding, and leverage an additional $12.6 million in non-Federal funding for a total investment of $37.6 million to enhance critical skills, research and development, and small business support in order to strengthen the national security innovation and manufacturing base. Programs in the Pennsylvania-West Virginia-Ohio region, Utah, California, Alabama, and Connecticut were funded. (9/21)

China Launches Ocean Monitoring Satellite (Source: Xinhua)
China launched an ocean-monitoring satellite early Monday. A Long March 4B rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 1:40 a.m. Eastern and successfully placed the Haiyang-2C spacecraft into orbit. The satellite is the third in a series of spacecraft designed to measure ocean surface conditions, such as wind, temperature and wave height. Unlike previous satellites in the series placed in sun-synchronous orbits, Haiyang-2C will operate from an orbit at an inclination of 66 degrees intended to provide more rapid revisit times of desired regions. (9/21)

Report Highlights Chinese 'Soft Power' in Space (Source: Space News)
A new report highlights the role China's space program plays in "soft power" and diplomacy. The report by the U.S. Air Force Air University's China Aerospace Studies Institute and the CNA nonprofit research center, released last week, says that the U.S. has primarily been concerned about military applications of Chinese space activities, such as anti-satellite weapons. However, the report argues a bigger concern will be China's diplomatic push to win over allies and challenge U.S. leadership in space. China attempts to portray itself as open and inclusive, and willing to cooperate with other countries, while depicting the U.S. as undermining outer space as a peaceful frontier. That is part of a broader effort of "reshaping the international system to better serve Chinese national interests," the report argued. (9/21)

NASA IG Sees 'Undue Risk' in Commercial Lunar Payload Program (Source: Space News)
NASA's inspector general criticized the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) for taking "undue risk." In an audit published last week, the inspector general said that CLPS was putting funding and NASA payloads at risk through NASA's approach to the program, which buys payload space on commercial lander missions. The report raised several issues, including a lack of common interfaces for payloads, failure to perform due diligence on CLPS companies that have suffered financial problems, and not developing quality assurance plans for CLPS missions. NASA accepted the report's recommendations to address those issues. (9/21)

Mars Smallsat Removed From NASA Psyche Mission Seeks New Ride (Source: Space News)
A NASA smallsat mission is looking for a new ride to Mars after getting bumped from its original launch. The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or EscaPADE, will place two smallsats into orbit around Mars to study how the planet's atmosphere interacts with the solar wind. It was to fly as a secondary payload on the launch of NASA's Psyche asteroid mission, being dropped off at Mars during a gravity-assist flyby. However, the agency said last week it removed EscaPADE from the launch after optimizing the trajectory of the mission to better suit Psyche, changes that adversely affected EscaPADE. NASA is slowing work on the smallsat mission as it looks to find a new launch opportunity for it. (9/21)

Telework Brings Cybersecurity Challenges to NASA (Source: Space News)
The shift to telework caused by the pandemic has added to NASA's cybersecurity challenges. At a House space subcommittee hearing Friday, agency officials said the number of phishing attacks on agency employees doubled since that vast majority of them started teleworking this spring. NASA's acting CIO, Jeff Seaton, said the agency's IT infrastructure has managed to handle the sharp increase in demands on it caused by the move to telework, but the agency is still working to address long-standing issues with both cybersecurity and overall IT governance. (9/21)

China Loses Access to Satellite Ground Station in Australia (Source: Reuters)
China will lose access to a ground station in Australia. Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) said it will not renew a contract to use a ground station in Western Australia that had supported Chinese customers since 2011. That ground station is next to one that is used by NASA and other U.S. customers. SSC cited "the complexity of the Chinese market, brought about by the overall geopolitical situation" for the decision not to renew the Chinese contract, but did not disclose when the current deal ends. (9/21)

India Plans Two November Launches (Source: Express News Service)
India is planning to resume launches in November with two missions. The Indian space agency ISRO is preparing for two launches of its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in November, which last launched in December 2019. The report didn't disclose the payloads for those launches, but one company, Kleos Space, previously said it will have four of its smallsats on one of those PSLV launches. India halted launches in March because of the pandemic but has returned much of its workforce to its main launch site despite a surge in COVID-19 cases in the country. (9/21)

General Atomics Delivers Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Concept to NASA (Source: Space Daily)
General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) has delivered a design concept of a Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) reactor to power future astronaut missions to Mars for a NASA-funded study. The study, managed by Analytical Mechanics Associates (AMA), explored a design space defined by key performance parameters as well as figures of merit. The GA-EMS design exceeded the key performance parameters and optimized the NTP reactor for manufacturability, the highest ranked figure of merit. "GA-EMS is uniquely positioned to develop and deliver a cost effective, safe NTP reactor system to progress future space missions," stated Scott Forney, president of GA-EMS. (9/21)

US Forces Need to Prevent Space-Launched Attacks on Military Assets (Source: Sputnik)
US Space and Cyber Forces must be able to disrupt adversaries' efforts disrupt to terrestrial forces through their own space forces, US Space Command Chief Architect Michael Dickey told the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) AscentX Conference on National Security Space. "[US space-based military assets must] be able to disrupt adversaries' attempts to disrupt terrestrial forces through their own space forces," Dickey told a panel at the conference on Thursday.

Space Development Agency Director Derek Tournear told the conference that the goal of the US Space Forces would be to establish US space dominance in what he called the "cis-lunar" environment between low earth orbit satellites at 200 miles above the Earth and high earth orbit geosynchorous satellites 22,000 miles above the earth. Tournear said US forces needed to deploy a "space situational awareness layer [in the] cislunar above geo-spatial (22,000 miles up) so that space force can prosecute that information." (9/18)

How Algorithmic Darwinism is Propellin Space Evolution (Source: Space Daily)
Designing a system of satellites is a mind-bogglingly complex game of tradeoffs. Mission planners must weigh objectives such as lifespan and coverage against constraints like cost and scheduling, all while contending with the physics of space. Add ever-changing threats and orbital congestion to the equation and the problem can become difficult beyond human comprehension.

The key to unraveling this complexity lies in a phenomenon observed by Charles Darwin in the Galapagos Islands nearly 200 years ago; species evolve by mastering multiple objectives: fending off predators, accessing food and withstanding harsh climates, to name a few. Over millions of years, natural selection determines the best combinations of genes for species to survive. (9/17)

Rosetta Spacecraft Detects Unexpected Ultraviolet Aurora at a Comet (Source: Phys.org)
Data from Southwest Research Institute-led instruments aboard ESA's Rosetta spacecraft have helped reveal auroral emissions in the far ultraviolet around a comet for the first time. At Earth, auroras are formed when charged particles from the Sun follow our planet's magnetic field lines to the north and south poles. There, solar particles strike atoms and molecules in Earth's atmosphere, creating shimmering curtains of colorful light in high-latitude skies.

Similar phenomena have been seen at various planets and moons in our solar system and even around a distant star. SwRI's instruments, the Alice far-ultraviolet (FUV) spectrograph and the Ion and Electron Sensor (IES), aided in detecting these novel phenomena at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P/C-G). (9/21)

New U.S. Space Force Deploys to Vast New Frontier: The Arabian Desert (Source: LA Times)
The newly formed U.S. Space Force is deploying troops to a vast new frontier — the Arabian Peninsula. The Space Force now has a squadron of 20 airmen stationed at Qatar’s Al-Udeid Air Base, the service’s first foreign deployment. The force, pushed by President Trump, represents the sixth branch of the U.S. military and the first new military service since the creation of the Air Force in 1947. It has provoked skepticism in Congress, a satire on Netflix and, with its uncannily similar logo, “Star Trek” jokes about intergalactic battles.

Future wars may be waged in outer space, but the Arabian Desert already saw what military experts dub the world’s first “space war”: the 1991 Desert Storm operation to drive Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Today, the U.S. faces new threats in the region from Iran’s missile program and efforts to jam, hack and blind satellites. “We’re starting to see other nations that are extremely aggressive in preparing to extend conflict into space,” Col. Todd Benson, director of Space Force troops at Al-Udeid, told the Associated Press. “We have to be able to compete and defend and protect all of our national interests.” (9/21)

Was There a Muslim Angle in ISRO Spy Case of 1994? (Source: The Siasat Daily)
It all began with the arrest of a Maldivian woman, Mariam Rashida, in October 1994, on the charges of overstaying her visa. This led to the surprise arrests of Nambi Narayanan, the ISRO scientist, his deputy and several other persons. Two ISRO scientists, including Nambi Narayanan, two Maldivian women and two businessmen from Bengaluru were arrested by Kerala Police on charges of selling drawings of ISRO rocket engines, and of transferring and passing on rocket technology to Pakistan.

Narayanan was abused with slurs and physically tortured at third degree level by the sleuths of the investigative departments. The IB and RAW sleuths only wanted a Muslim name from the director of the cryogenic project lab of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Nambi Narayanan to give him freedom of life. The innocent scientist said, he knew only two Muslims in the world. The investigating officers may have done the “Delhi police act”, but realized that these names do not fit in their story and wanted any other Muslim name that can be related to Pakistan.

“These bunch of goons who masqueraded as IB officials, wanted me to do anything against my motherland? After all, it was Vikram Sarabhai’s dreams and convictions that I followed to serve my country. I cannot let down Sarabhai, my father, my gurus and myself. I resolved to die if that was the way out of this mess. I wondered what Vikram Sarabhai would have done in these circumstances.” Nambi Narayanan recalls in his memoir. (9/21)

The Space Force's Relevance to the Green Agenda (Source: The Hill)
When most Americans think about Space Force, they probably imagine epic space battles or sprawling science fiction sagas. Policymakers who are more “in the know” likely think about the duties and functions that will preoccupy the U.S. military’s newest branch in the years ahead. But few, if any, pause to consider that the USSF has the potential to play in another arena as well: that of climate change. This is because, while most don’t know it, the Space Force is positioned to be among the most powerful organizations enabling and advancing a global green agenda.

After all, it is the USSF that operates the global positioning system (GPS), one of the world’s most powerful green technologies. Since its advent in the 1970s, GPS-enabled navigation has facilitated global sea, land and air transport and reduced global fuel expenditures by between 15 and 21 percent. That figure dwarfs the incremental gains now being sought by advocates of reduced carbon emissions and makes the USSF the operator of the world’s most powerful green technology. (9/20)