September 28, 2020

How SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and Others Compete in the Growing Space Tourism Market (Source: CNBC)
There’s an emerging industry thought to be only science fiction not too long ago that’s close to becoming a reality: space tourism. And a handful of companies – including one publicly traded name – are competing neck and neck to be leaders in the emerging market. But what space tourism entails, and how much it costs per person, varies greatly depending on a company’s technological capabilities.  For example, both Virgin Galactic and SpaceX expect to fly private paying passengers to space next year.

But, while passengers flying with both companies would go to space by the Federal Aviation Administration’s definition, a Virgin Galactic passenger spends about 0.04% as much time in space as on a SpaceX trip, while a ride with Elon Musk’s company is expected to cost roughly 200 times as much. Whether a passenger reaches suborbital and orbital space is the major difference in the destinations of the human spaceflight offerings in development. Because of that difference, there are notable distinctions in the cost, experience and even risk of what it means to be a space tourist.

UBS in a report last year estimated that space tourism, with both suborbital and orbital together, has a potential market value of $3 billion by 2030. More recently, space industry consultancy Northern Sky Research broke out its expectations for suborbital versus orbital tourism. By 2028, NSR expects suborbital will be a $2.8 billion market, with $10.4 billion in total revenue over the next decade, while orbital will be a $610 million market, with $3.6 billion in total revenue over the next decade. (9/26)

SMC Saves $53M Reusing SpaceX Boosters For GPS III (Source: Breaking Defense)
In advance of SpaceX’s planned launch of the fourth GPS III satellite on Tuesday, Space Force officials today revealed that the launch of the fifth bird next July for the first time will rely on a used Falcon 9 booster. A contract modification signed at the beginning of this month with SpaceX allows for reuse of boosters for both GPS-SV05 and -SV06, Walt Lauderdale, SMC’s Falcon Systems and Operations Division chief, told reporters today. The changes, wrung out in a package deal across SpaceX’s four launch contracts for GPS III, is saving the Space Force a cool $52.7 million. (9/25)

Tom Cruise Could Head to Space From Cape Canaveral in October 2021 (Source: WESH)
Signs are increasing that one of Hollywood’s biggest stars is blasting off to orbit from a Central Florida spaceport. Tom Cruise could be climbing aboard a SpaceX rocket in about a year. A pair of NASA astronauts were the first to tread the made-for-Hollywood walkway leading to the SpaceX Dragon ship. Now that a profit-making, privately owned space transportation service is established, it’s open to whomever can pay the fare. It seems that first person is Tom Cruise. (9/25)

Why Can’t NASA Find the Source of the ISS Air Leak? (Source: BGR)
Remember back in August when the astronauts aboard the ISS were confined to the Russian segment of the spacecraft because it was leaking air? The idea was to monitor the pressures in the sealed modules so that NASA could isolate the problem. A week after that took place, NASA was seemingly no closer to finding the source of the leak. Now, over a month later, NASA is still trying to find which part of the space station is leaking air into space. It’s not a big leak, so it’s not an emergency, but it sure would be nice to know where the hole is so that it can be repaired.

NASA has seemingly narrowed down the possible locations of the leak. Since the leak wasn’t discovered during the isolation periods where the crew was confined to certain areas so that the other areas could be monitored, it’s likely that the leak is in one of the areas where the crew was taking refuge. At least that’s the theory. In August, the crew spent a weekend on the Russian side of the spacecraft, sealed up in the Zvezda Service Module while the rest of the space station was monitored for above-average air leakage. It’s possible, then, that the module they were staying in is indeed the one where the leak is present, though NASA still doesn’t know for sure.

The issue right now is that the space station still has to be a functioning laboratory. Shutting things down and isolating the crew to find the leak is something that has to be planned well in advance, as various experiments are always underway and preparations have to be made. Unfortunately, it’s not a simple matter of telling the crew to hole up in one section of the ship for a few days. Complicating matters is the fact that the Russian modules that may have the leak include the life support systems for that side of the spacecraft as well as the ports where supply missions and crew transfers take place. (9/25)

Are Some Black Holes Wormholes in Disguise? Gamma-Ray Blasts May Shed Clues (Source: Space.com)
Unusual flashes of gamma rays could reveal that what appear to be giant black holes are actually huge wormholes, a new study finds. Wormholes are tunnels in space-time that can theoretically allow travel anywhere in space and time, or even into another universe. Einstein's theory of general relativity suggests wormholes are possible, although whether they really exist is another matter.

In many ways, wormholes resemble black holes. Both kinds of objects are extremely dense and possess extraordinarily strong gravitational pulls for bodies their size. The main difference is that no object can theoretically come back out after crossing a black hole's event horizon — the threshold where the speed needed to escape the black hole's gravitational pull exceeds the speed of light — whereas any body entering a wormhole could theoretically reverse course.

Assuming wormholes might exist, researchers investigated ways that one might distinguish a wormhole from a black hole. They focused on supermassive black holes which are thought to dwell at the hearts of most, if not all, galaxies. Anything entering one mouth of a wormhole would exit out its other mouth. The scientists reasoned that meant that matter entering one mouth of a wormhole could potentially slam into matter entering the other mouth of the wormhole at the same time, a kind of event that would never happen with a black hole. (9/24)

Can Space Diplomacy Bring Order to the Final Frontier? (Source: BBC)
It might seem there are enough problems down here on earth to be getting on with. But what happens up there, where the atmosphere thins and the vacuum of space begins, affects you and me. That's because the thousands of satellites that orbit the earth shape our lives. Any disruption to those satellites - through conflict or misunderstanding - could have a devastating impact on millions of people. And that's why British diplomats are trying to see if new international rules can be agreed to keep the peace in the heavens above.

You might not realise but you have probably used space today. When you made a mobile phone call, a satellite may well have been used to route your call. When you went to an ATM and withdrew some cash, the time of the transaction was recorded using a satellite-based clock. And when you ordered a delivery online, the courier found your home using a satellite map. Maybe you get your internet or television via satellite. The list goes on.

But if all this was disrupted by conflict in space, much of the international system and economy could grind to a halt. And there are fears this could become a reality because of growing congestion and tension in space. There are more satellites and debris floating round than ever before. The problem is much international law as it relates to space is limited and out of date: Cold War rules ban nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles but not much more. These days satellites can also be threatened by electronic jamming, cyber-attacks and lasers. There is a divide between countries who want treaty-guaranteed laws that ban specific weapons and those who prefer generalised rules and norms that guide behavior. (9/26)

Celestial Property Rights: How We Can Achieve a New, Commerce-Fueled Space Age (Source: Space News)
The United States is on the verge of a new space age. Despite civil unrest and the continuing pandemic, the future for space exploration and development looks bright. Provided we successfully navigate the legal and economic challenges, the benefits for humanity can be enormous. Yet there are significant difficulties. One of the largest hurdles is coming up with a set of legal rules for governing behavior in outer space. Especially as investors consider lucrative celestial activities like asteroid mining, we need to answer the question: who owns what in space?

The issue of celestial property rights is tricky. The foundational document in public international space law, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, is silent on the question of property rights. Ratified by the spacefaring nations at the height of the Cold War, it makes sense that the treaty envisioned nation-states as the primary agents in space, which partly explains its omission of property rights. The closest it comes is Article II. The Article reads: “Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” (9/26)

NASA Awards KSC Civil Engineering Contract (Source: NASA)
NASA has selected AECOM Technical Services of Orlando, Florida; Infrastructure Solution Service of Viera, Florida; and Jones Edmunds & Associates Inc. of Titusville, Florida; to provide architecture-engineer services for civil engineering infrastructure, equipment, and facilities at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and other locations throughout the agency.

The Architect-Engineer Services for the Design and Other Professional Services Necessary to Rehabilitate, Modernize, and Develop New or Existing Civil Infrastructure and Facilities is a firm-fixed price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract and has a maximum potential value of $150 million. The performance period begins Friday, Sept. 25, and will last five years. (9/25)

NASA's Impact on Economy Is No Secret to Space Coast (Source: Spectrum News)
NASA generated more than $64 billion of economic impact and $7 billion in tax revenue at the federal, state, and local levels in 2019, according to the space agency. In Florida, NASA employs 33,000 workers and makes a $5.9 billion impact on the Space Coast, according to Space Florida’s Dale Ketcham. Planned missions to return to the moon and to go to Mars for the first time are responsible for a lot of that impact, he said.

That is a far cry from nearly a decade ago, when the Space Shuttle program ended, and with it, the careers of thousands of NASA and contract employees. The commercial space program is soaring today, bringing in more launches — and jobs — than ever. "Most of the country, and even the world, would like to be in the position we are in at the Cape right now," Ketcham said. But local businesses have been affected with every rise and fall in NASA's history. (9/25)

Starlink's Network Faces Significant Limitations, Analysts Find (Source: Light Reading)
Starlink, the satellite Internet provider from Elon Musk's SpaceX, will be able to support just 485,000 simultaneous users at 100Mbit/s across the entire US, according to one firm's new estimates. And that kind of performance won't even be available until the end of 2026, when Starlink floods Earth's skies with up to 12,000 satellites.

According to the new estimates from the financial analysts at Cowen, those figures mean that Starlink won't pose much of a threat to established Internet service providers like Verizon and Comcast. The firm notes that Starlink itself has told the FCC that "each satellite in the SpaceX system provides aggregate downlink capacity to users ranging from 17 to 23Gbit/s."

"Thus, assuming 100% efficiency (not realistic, but we are simply providing context as a high book-end), and assuming 20Gbit/s per satellite implies that each satellite can handle 200 simultaneous streams at 100Mbit/s," the analysts wrote. In crunching the number of satellites that would be covering the US at any one time, the analysts conclude that Starlink can serve 485,000 simultaneous data streams in the US with 100Mbit/s speeds if all 12,000 Starlink satellites are operational. (9/23)

The Air Force Struggles With Diversity. Can The Space Force Do Any Better? (Source: NPR)
The newest branch of the military just promoted its first female three-star general. The U.S. Space Force also recently appointed the nation's first all-women space operations team. Top Space Force leaders say gender and racial diversity is a core part of the mission, but as Colorado Public Radio's Dan Boyce reports, some female veterans are skeptical. Click here. (9/25)

NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for IMAP Mission to SpaceX (Source: NASA)
NASA has selected SpaceX to provide launch services for the agency’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission, which includes four secondary payloads. IMAP will help researchers better understand the boundary of the heliosphere, a magnetic barrier surrounding our solar system. This region is where the constant flow of particles from our Sun, called the solar wind, collides with winds from other stars. This collision limits the amount of harmful cosmic radiation entering the heliosphere.

IMAP will collect and map neutral particles that make it through, as well as investigate the fundamental processes of how particles are accelerated in space, from its vantage point orbiting the Sun at the Lagrange 1 point directly between the Sun and Earth. The total cost for NASA to launch IMAP and the secondary payloads is approximately $109.4 million, which includes the launch service and other mission related costs. (9/25)

Cosmonauts Not Ready to Try Russia's Virus Vaccine (Source: Space Daily)
Russian cosmonauts set to blast off for the International Space Station said on Thursday it was too early to get a coronavirus vaccine touted by President Vladimir Putin. "I'd personally say that I would not get vaccinated because I tread very carefully on this issue," said Sergei Ryzhikov, the 46-year-old leader of the next expedition to the ISS in October. He and other cosmonauts wore face masks at the Star City training center outside Moscow during an online news conference. (9/24)

US Probe to Touch Down on Asteroid Bennu on October 20 (Source: Space Daily)
After a four-year journey, NASA's robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx will descend to asteroid Bennu's boulder-strewn surface on October 20, touching down for a few seconds to collect rock and dust samples, the agency said Thursday. Scientists hope the mission will help deepen our understanding of how planets formed and life began and provide insight on asteroids that could impact Earth. (9/24)

NASA Administrator Signs Declaration of Intent with Italy on Artemis Cooperation (Source: NASA)
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, representing the United States government, signed a joint statement of intent with Italian Undersecretary to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers Riccardo Fraccaro, representing the Italian government, articulating strong mutual interest between the two countries in pursuing Italian contributions to lunar exploration activities as part of NASA’s Artemis Program. (9/25)

Dragonfly Launch Moved to 2027 (Source: NASA)
Dragonfly is a NASA mission that delivers a rotorcraft to Saturn’s moon Titan to advance our search for the building blocks of life. While Dragonfly was originally scheduled to launch in 2026, NASA has requested the Dragonfly team pursue their alternative launch readiness date in 2027. No changes will be needed to the mission architecture to accommodate this new date, and launching at a later date will not affect Dragonfly’s science return or capabilities once at Titan. (9/25)