September 22, 2020

Where Will Artemis 3 Land? And When? (Source: Space Review)
Last week, NASA officials appeared to suggest they were considering alternatives to the south pole of the Moon as the Artemis 3 landing site. Jeff Foust reports that while the agency now says that was a misunderstanding, it’s still facing a challenge to keep the mission funded and on schedule. Click here. (9/21)
 
Why the Detection of Phosphine in the Clouds of Venus is a Big Deal (Source: Space Review)
Last week, scientists announced they had detected phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus, a finding that could be evidence of life there. Paul Byrne explains why the discovery can be a catalyst for a new round of exploration of the planet. Click here. (9/21)
 
Venus: Science and Politics (Source: Space Review)
Even the discovery of a potential biosignature in the atmosphere of Venus cannot escape geopolitics. Ajey Lele discusses a claim made after the discovery by the head of Roscosmos that Venus is a “Russian planet.” Click here. (9/21)

Lander Simulation Testing Helps Advance NASA Navigation Spinoff (Source: NASA)
A navigation doppler lidar (NDL) technology originally developed by NASA was demonstrated on a flight test on Sept. 10 with support from the Flight Opportunities program, part of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate. With roots at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, the technology was licensed in 2016 by Psionic for both terrestrial and space applications, and both the company and Langley continue to evolve and advance the innovation for upcoming lunar missions.

On the recent flight in Mojave, California, Masten Space Systems flew Psionic's NDL payload on a vertical takeoff vertical landing (VTVL) system called Xodiac, which simulates some of the maneuvers of a lunar lander. Designed for precision landing in a very tightly defined area – often called the landing ellipse – the NDL transmits laser beams to the ground that bounce back to a sensor, providing information about the lander's velocity and distance relative to the ground. (9/16)

Next New Shepard Launch Will Test Key Technologies with NASA for Returning to the Moon (Source: Blue Origin)
Blue Origin’s latest New Shepard mission (NS-13), with liftoff targeted for Sep. 24 in Texas, will be the 7th consecutive flight for this particular vehicle (a record), demonstrating its operational reusability. New Shepard will fly 12 commercial payloads to space and back on this mission, including the Deorbit, Descent, and Landing Sensor Demonstration with NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate under a Tipping Point partnership.

This is the first payload to fly mounted on the exterior of a New Shepard booster rather than inside the capsule, opening the door to a wide range of future high-altitude sensing, sampling, and exposure payloads. (9/22)

NGA Sees Expanding Demand for Commercial Data (Source: Space News)
The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) expects its demand for commercial geospatial data will continue to grow. In an interview, David Gauthier, director of NGA's commercial and business operations group, said the agency's interest is moving beyond traditional imagery into emerging fields like hyperspectral and synthetic aperture radar data, as well as analytics services. While the NGA seeks to become a bigger customer for companies providing the data, Gauthier said he doesn't want the government to become those companies' only customer. (9/22)

This Satellite Tow Truck Could Be the Start of a Multibillion-Dollar Business (Source: Air & Space)
The vast majority of satellites are decommissioned primarily because they have run out of fuel,” Joe Anderson says. Others in the graveyard orbit may have experienced technical hiccups. Satellites suffer component failures, such as decayed batteries and computers, or malfunctions in propulsion and attitude-control systems. The decision to retire a satellite versus fixing or refueling it is a straightforward calculation that measures future revenue against the servicing cost. Satellites can generate millions of dollars per year in revenue, " so, if you could extend the life of those spacecraft for just a few years at a cost that’s significantly less than their revenue over that period, it’s a win-win for both the servicer and the client.”

Northrop Grumman’s MEV-1 was sent to extend a life. The first robotic spacecraft designed to rescue ailing satellites, it was assigned to dock with IS-901—a feat never before attempted between two uncrewed commercial spacecraft—and then function “as a jet pack,” as Anderson puts it. Fueled with xenon gas, MEV-1 will use its electric-propulsion thrusters to tow IS-901 back to geo orbit, then haul it halfway around the world to a new position over the Atlantic Ocean, where it will take over for another aging Intelsat spacecraft.

Industry analysts at Northern Sky Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts last year projected revenues for the in-orbit satellite servicing market would reach $4.5 billion by 2028. They predicted growth in salvage operations, defunct satellite disposals, robotic repairs and inspections, orbital relocations, and refueling services. Their projections are bullish considering that today most satellites still are helpless when something goes awry. Northrop Grumman is hoping to change that. (9/22)

BlackSky Has Six Sats in Orbit, Plans 24 (Source: Space News)
BlackSky is seeing growing demand for its imagery and geospatial analytics services after the launch of its latest satellites. Two satellites launched on a SpaceX rideshare mission last month were returning images just 58 hours after launch. The company has six satellites in orbit and plans to grow its constellation to 24 satellites in the next two years. BlackSky markets its services to corporations and governments around the world, but is particularly focused on the U.S. military and intelligence markets. (9/22)

Rocket Lab's Next Launch to Carry Imaging Satellites (Source: Rocket Lab)
Rocket Lab will launch imaging satellites for Canon and Planet on its next Electron mission. The company said Monday its "In Focus" launch, scheduled for October from its New Zealand launch site, will carry an imaging satellite developed by Canon Electronics and nine Dove imaging cubesats for Planet. Both Canon and Planet were customers of an Electron launch that failed in July. (9/22)

Month Delay for Arianespace Launch of UAE Satellite (Source: TASS)
A Soyuz launch of a United Arab Emirates satellite has slipped a month. The Soyuz launch of the FalconEye 2 satellite from French Guiana, which was scheduled for October, has been delayed to November, an industry source told Russian media. The reason for the delay was described as only a "request from a commercial partner." The first FalconEye reconnaissance satellite was lost in a Vega launch failure last year. (9/22)

Germany Opens Military Space Center (Source: AP)
The German military has opened a new space operations center. The Air and Space Operations Center will monitor German satellites and look for any threats to them from orbital debris or other satellites. The center opened with a staff of 50 that is expected to triple over the next decade. (9/22)

NASA Needs $28 Billion Over Five YEars for Artemis Phase 1 (Source: Space News)
NASA needs $28 billion over the next five years to return humans to the moon by 2024. The agency released a report Monday outlining its lunar exploration plans, including a table summarizing the funding needed solely for "Phase 1" of the Artemis program, culminating in the Artemis 3 lunar landing mission in 2024. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, in a call with reporters, pushed in particular for full funding of the Human Landing System (HLS) lunar lander program, which received only about a fifth of the $3.2 billion NASA requested for it in a House spending bill for fiscal year 2021.

Bridenstine said he remained optimistic that Congress will provide full funding for HLS in a final 2021 spending bill, but warned that if that funding does not materialize by March it will be "increasingly more difficult" to stay on schedule for a 2024 landing. Bridenstine also used the call to state that the south polar region of the moon remains the landing site for Artemis 3, after Bridenstine hinted last week that the mission could land elsewhere on the moon instead. (9/22)

Limited Window for Space Force to Define Itself (Source: Space News)
The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the Space Force has a limited window to "define their future" before Congress steps in. Gen. John Hyten noted in a speech Monday that Congress asked the new service, and its parent service, the Air Force, to address specific questions about how the new service should be organized, how it should acquire equipment and how it should integrate members of other branches. If those questions aren't answered soon, Hyten said, the Space Force will lose some of its latitude to shape its own future and open the door for Congress to set the direction. Hyten did not mention specific areas where the Space Force may have taken too long to make decisions. (9/22)

Azure Orbital Launches Microsoft Into a Cloud Computing Space Race with Amazon (Source: GeekWire)
Microsoft is taking the wraps off Azure Orbital, a cloud-based satellite data processing platform that competes with Amazon Web Services’ Ground Station offering. The launch of Azure Orbital, timed for this week’s Microsoft Ignite conference for developers, can be taken as another sign that the final frontier is the next frontier for cloud computing.

“Essentially, we’re building a ‘ground station as a service,’ ” Mark Russinovich, chief technology officer at Microsoft Azure, told GeekWire in advance of today’s unveiling. “Satellites are becoming more and more important for a variety of reasons,” he said. “When it comes to cloud and data processing, obviously the cloud is a key part of any solution that goes into leveraging satellites, whether it’s imaging for weather, or natural disasters or ground communications.”

Like AWS Ground Station, Azure Orbital makes it possible for satellite operators to control their spacecraft via the cloud, or integrate satellite data with cloud-based storage and processing. “We’ve got lots of customers in the public domain and government, in the private sector even, that are leveraging satellite imagery for various uses — and that want to leverage cloud services on top of that, as well as the IoT aspect,” Russinovich said. To cite one example, oil-rig operators could monitor their equipment remotely via satellites and the cloud. “We’ve got customers like that,” Russinovich said. (9/22)

OneWeb Moving Forward With Fewer Launches (Source: Space News)
OneWeb has revised its launch contract with Arianespace with three fewer launches than originally planned. The revised contract, announced Monday, includes 16 Soyuz launches that will each carry 34 to 36 satellites. The revised contract canceled two Soyuz launches and removed OneWeb as the customer for the inaugural Ariane 6 launch. Those Soyuz launches are set to resume in December from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East. The revised contract is subject to approval of OneWeb's restructuring plan led by the British government and Bharti Global. (9/22)

L3Harris to Upgrade and Expand Space Force's Space Tracking System (Source: Space News)
L3Harris has won a Space Force contract to upgrade and expand a network of space tracking telescopes. The $119 million contract covers work on the Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance System (GEODSS) that tracks objects in geostationary orbits. The work funds upgrades to existing GEODSS sensors and the design of new ground-based optical sensors at European and Pacific sites. The contract will be worth $218 million if all options are exercised to build two new sites in Spain and Australia. (9/22)

ESA Spacecraft to Study Polar Ice and Snow (Source: ESA)
ESA announced contracts Monday for a mission to study polar ice and snow. The Copernicus Polar Ice and Snow Topography Altimeter, or CRISTAL, spacecraft will be built by Airbus Defence and Space, while Thales Alenia Space will build its main instrument, the Interferometric Radar Altimeter for Ice and Snow. The total value of the contracts is $352 million, with CRISTAL set to launch in 2027. The mission will measure the thickness of sea ice and depth of overlying snow in the polar regions, as well as the elevations of the ice sheets. (9/22)

Rocket Mogul Is Preparing to Launch a Union of U.S. and Soviet Technology (Source: Bloomberg)
Max Polyakov is someone the emerging commercial spaceflight industry needs to take seriously. To date, he’s put $150 million of his own money into rocketry, more than anyone besides Elon Musk, with SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos, with Blue Origin. Polyakov’s company, Firefly Aerospace Inc., runs a vast engine test site about a half-mile from the beer barn. From offices in nearby Cedar Park, Firefly executives have put the company in the mix for a series of contracts to launch satellites into orbit for NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, and a string of commercial satellite companies.

In a move that would have been unthinkable in Polyakov’s formative years, during the twilight of the Cold War, he’s shifted some of Firefly’s engineering research and development to Ukraine, once the heart of the Soviet Union’s rocket program. This two-step is a big part of his pitch for Firefly—marrying the best of the former Eastern Bloc’s aerospace space talent with the latest American intellectual property, which he promises will be duly protected from foreign interests. (Polyakov spends most of his time in Silicon Valley.) The company’s 300-employee staff is working to launch Alpha, its first rocket, into low Earth orbit later this year from a pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California.

Ukraine may be an ally of the U.S., but the country remains rife with organized crime and whispers of espionage. Even some of Firefly’s own staffers have voiced concerns about how far they can trust Polyakov’s promises to protect American IP. Not helping matters is the provenance of Polyakov’s wealth. His ventures over the years have included dating sites long dogged by allegations of scamminess, another reason to be skeptical when contracting his space company to build what is essentially a missile. Click here. (9/22)