September 3, 2020

SpaceX Launches Another Batch of Starlink Satellites, Recovers Booster (Source: SPACErePORT)
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport carrying their 12th batch of Starlink low earth orbit broadband internet satellites. The Falcon 9 booster landed successfully on a droneship downrange. This was it’s second launch and landing, after supporting a recent GPS satellite mission for DoD. (9/3)

FAA Grants Rocket Lab License for Virginia Launches (Source: Rocket Lab)
The FAA has a granted a five-year launch operator license to Rocket Lab for Electron missions from Virginia's Wallops Island spaceport. This is a major step toward the first Electron launches from U.S. soil. Simplified licensing enables streamlined access to space for U.S. government small sats. Across our 3 launch pads, Rocket Lab can support up to 130 launch opportunities every year. (9/3)

Made In Space and Momentus Collaborate on Satellite Tug (Source: Space News)
Made In Space and Momentus will collaborate on a satellite tug. Made In Space Europe, a Redwire subsidiary, will provide a robotic arm for a Momentus Vigoride transfer vehicle. That arm will allow the Vigoride tug to grapple a satellite and then move it to a new orbit. That would allow Vigoride to transport satellites not attached to the tug at the time of launch. The first Vigoride tug equipped with a robotic arm is scheduled for launch in 2022. (9/3)

Artemis Lunar Efforts Can Support Future Mars Missions (Source: Space News)
A new report says that NASA's Artemis lunar program can help support future human Mars missions. The report, released this week during the Humans to Mars Summit, is based on a workshop last fall that studied how Artemis and the International Space Station can support Mars exploration. The study concluded that a "substantial" number of requirements for a Mars mission will benefit from ISS and Artemis activities, but recommended some changes, such as long-duration crewed missions on the lunar Gateway to simulate a flight to Mars. The report also found that searching for lunar water ice that can serve as resources for human missions there has applicability for sustainable Mars exploration. (9/3)

NASA Still Seeking Leak Source on ISS (Source: Business Insider)
NASA is still tracking down the source of a small leak on the ISS. The three-person ISS crew spent a long weekend in one module of the Russian segment last month, sealing off the other modules to determine which one was the source of a small but persistent air leak first detected last year. A NASA spokesperson said the analysis of the data collected in that test is taking longer than expected, but that the review should be completed in the coming days. The leak does not pose a risk to the ISS crew. (9/3)

New Gravitational Wave From Big Black Hole Merger (Source: Science)
Gravitational wave observatories have detected the largest black hole merger yet seen. The LIGO and Virgo observatories announced Thursday they detected the signature of a merger last May of two black holes, weighing 66 and 85 times the mass of the sun, creating a black hole with a mass of 142 solar masses; the difference in mass represents matter turned into gravitational waves by the collision. The discovery is the most definitive evidence yet of the existence of "intermediate" black holes larger than stellar-mass black holes but far smaller than the supermassive black holes found in the center of galaxies. (9/3)

Vega Launches 53 Satellites (Source: Space News)
Arianespace's Vega rocket returned to flight Wednesday night, successfully placing dozens of smallsats into orbit. The Vega lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana, at 9:51 p.m. Eastern. The rocket deployed its payload of 53 small satellites over the next two hours. The launch, the first since a failed Vega launch in July 2019, ends a long string of delays stemming from payload logistical challenges, technical issues, the coronavirus pandemic and surprisingly persistent poor weather. The Small Spacecraft Mission Service dedicated rideshare mission included 26 Dove cubesats for Planet, 12 SpaceBee satellites for Swarm and satellites for other customers ranging from cubesats to a 138-kilogram smallsat. (9/3)

NASA and Northrop Grumman Test SLS Booster in Utah (Source: Space News)
NASA and Northrop Grumman successfully tested a Space Launch System booster Wednesday. The five-segment Flight Support Booster 1 performed a static-fire test lasting a little more than two minutes at a Northrop test site in Utah. The test was designed to evaluate potential improvements that would be incorporated into future boosters for missions after the third SLS flight, primarily a change in the production of the solid propellant used in the rocket. Northrop emphasized the synergies between its work on SLS and other company launch vehicle programs, including the OmegA rocket, but declined to comment on the status of the OmegA after losing an Air Force launch competition last month. (9/3)

AFRL Research Focuses on Very-LEO and Cislunar (Source: Space News)
The Air Force Research Lab will pursue two new space experiments involving very low Earth orbit and cislunar space. The lab said Wednesday that one experiment, called Precise, will study the physics of very low Earth orbit, or VLEO, at altitudes of 90 to 600 kilometers above Earth. The experiment will examine the ionosphere and how gases impact radio propagation used for communications and navigation. The second project, CHPS, will focus on space domain awareness beyond GEO all the way out to the moon, testing sensors to track objects in cislunar space. (9/3)

MonacoSat Plans Second GEO Satellite (Source: Space News)
New satellite operator MonacoSat is planning a second GEO satellite. A company executive said this week that MonacoSat will order its second GEO satellite by the end of the year, but did not disclose when the satellite would launch or what markets it would serve. MonacoSat's first satellite, TurkmenAlem-52E/MonacoSat, launched in 2015 and provides Ku-band coverage over Europe, the Middle East, Northern Africa and Central Asia for television broadcasting and internet connectivity services. It was financed by the government of Turkmenistan and uses an orbital slot assigned to the government of Monaco. (9/3)