September 5, 2020

The Earth is Making the Moon Rust (Source: CNN)
The moon is getting rusty. Scientists had the same reaction you probably did when they reached this conclusion. It shouldn't be possible -- after all, there's no oxygen on the moon, one of the two essential elements to create rust, the other being water. But the evidence was there. India's lunar probe, Chandrayaan-1, orbited the moon in 2008, gathering data that has led to numerous discoveries over the years -- including the revelation that there are water molecules on its surface. The probe also carried an instrument built by NASA that could analyze the moon's mineral composition. (9/4)

Space Force Marks First Combat Support Deployment (Source: Coffee Or Die)
The Space Force, which is the US military’s first new branch in more than 70 years, falls under the purview of the Department of the Air Force — a relationship roughly analogous to that of the Marine Corps’ falling under the Department of the Navy. The Space Force’s personnel are currently spread out among some 175 different facilities worldwide. The Space Force marked a milestone on Sep. 1, when 20 enlisted and commissioned Air Force personnel transferred to the military branch while on a deployment at al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Coming from the Air Force’s 16th Expeditionary Space Control Flight and the 609th Air Operations Center, these personnel joined the Space Force during enlistment and oath of office ceremonies conducted while deployed in support of combat operations — a Space Force first. (9/4)

Joe Biden Will Lose the New Space Race (Source: Real Clear Politics)
For 30 years, the United States allowed its once dominant position in space to erode. A succession of political leaders from both parties have either ignored or actively worked against maintaining and expanding America’s hard-won place in space. Because of these short-sighted policies, the United States is engaged in a Second Space Race with China (which it is losing) and its critical satellite constellations could be vulnerable to a “Space Pearl Harbor” from either Russia or China.

Donald Trump changed this decline in our space capabilities. He was the only candidate in my lifetime who spoke meaningfully about the need to return astronauts to the moon and then go beyond to Mars. Trump wanted to create a new branch of the United States Armed Forces, the Space Force, to better protect America’s vulnerable satellites from attack. The president also called for “space dominance” to ensure that no other country — notably China — could challenge the United States in the critical strategic domain of space ever again.

Under Trump, the United States has a strategy for winning the Second Space Race and defending its critical satellite constellations from attack. What’s more, the Trump administration is making it easier for American innovators to reap the untapped rewards of developing space (there is, for example, a minimum $1 trillion industry in space mining waiting to be enjoyed by the country that captures this vital market first). (9/4)

White House Issues New Cybersecurity Policy for Space Systems (Source: C4ISRnet)
The National Space Council issued new cybersecurity principles to help defend America’s space systems Sept. 4. According to the White House, Space Policy Directive-5, or SPD-5, will foster practices within the government and commercial space operations to protect space systems from cyberthreats.

“From communications to weather monitoring, Americans rely on capabilities provided by space systems in everyday life. President [Donald] Trump’s directive ensures the U.S. Government promotes practices to protect American space systems and capabilities from cyber vulnerabilities and malicious threats,” Deputy Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary of the National Space Council Scott Pac said in a statement. (9/4)

NASA Women Rise to Historic Heights (Source: @Rocketwomen)
Did you know that for the first time in NASA’s history, women are in charge of three out of four science divisions at the agency. The Earth Science, Heliophysics and Planetary Science divisions now all have women at the helm. (9/5)

Virgin Galactic Stock Was Down 20% in August (Source: Motley Fool)
Shares of space-tourism company Virgin Galactic were down 20.3% in August, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. It was an eventful first half of the month. The company reported zero revenue for the second quarter of 2020, delayed its first flight, and raised cash via a public offering of its common stock. None of these things were good for Virgin Galactic's stock price. And the stock is now down almost 60% from 52-week highs as investor enthusiasm for this futuristic business has worn off. (9/4)

Space Travel Leads to New Motor skills, Blurred Vision (Source: Business Insider)
Imagine you could throw the perfect bullseye, but you'd have to wear glasses to do it. That's a trade-off some space travelers may unwittingly make when they venture off the planet. A study published Friday examined the brains of eight male Russian cosmonauts roughly seven months after they returned from lengthy missions to the International Space Station.

The researchers discovered minor changes in the cosmonauts' brains that suggested the men were more dexterous but had slightly weaker vision. "They actually acquired some kind of new motor skill, like riding a bike," said Steven Jillings. The researchers used a type of MRI to produce 3D images of the cosmonauts' brains. The scans showed an increased amount of tissue in the cerebellum: the part of the brain responsible for balance, coordination, and posture (shown in green in the video below). But the scans also showed that people living in space could wind up with trouble seeing up-close. Both of those changes could potentially be long-lasting. (9/4)

HAPS: A Satellite Operator’s Big Investment in the Stratosphere (Source: Via Satellite)
“Balloons are the future of connectivity.” What sounds like a line torn straight out of a Thomas Pynchon steampunk novel is actually the core mission statement of Loon, the Google/Alphabet subsidiary that wants to loft a fleet of balloons into the stratosphere to provide global broadband connectivity. An image posted to Loon’s website shows a transmitter covered in solar panels dangling from a translucent hot air balloon.

This is one example of what is technically referred to as a High-Altitude Platform Station, or HAPS, and a visual representation of what the future of connectivity, and even the future of commercial satellite service could look like. “Terrestrial, stratospheric, and satellite technologies are all suited to different parts of the globe and use cases. Loon believes the problem of connectivity will be solved with an all-of-the-above approach,” says Dr. Brian Barritt, technical lead at Loon and a senior software engineer for Google. “We’re proud to be adding a new layer to the connectivity ecosystem.” (9/4)

With DUST-2 Launch, NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program is Back on the Range in New Mexico (Source: NASA)
NASA is preparing for the first launch of a sounding rocket since the coronavirus pandemic began in the United States. The DUST-2 mission, which is short for the Determining Unknown yet Significant Traits-2, will carry a miniature laboratory into space, simulating how tiny grains of space dust – the raw materials of stars, planets and solar systems – form and grow. The launch window opens at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on September 8, 2020.

DUST-2, a collaboration between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, follows up on the DUST mission launched in October 2019. Like its predecessor, DUST-2 will fly on a sounding rocket, a suborbital rocket that makes a brief trip into space before falling back to Earth. Sounding rockets provide cost-effective access to space and remain one of the most efficient ways to achieve near-zero gravity, a critical requirement for the mission. DUST-2’s goal is to study how individual atoms, shed by dying stars and supernovae, stick together. When they do, they form dust grains – some of the basic building blocks of our universe. (9/4)

Rocket Scientist Tory Bruno's Vision of the Future (Source: Axios)
United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno believes humanity's push to explore the solar system could one day reduce poverty on Earth. ULA is the workhorse of the space industry, with a high rate of success for the rockets it flies and big government and commercial contracts. It is well-positioned to one day act as the ride for companies and nations hoping to push farther into deep space.

While Bruno's presence in the space industry may not be as flashy as other leaders like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, he is an influential figure who will help shape the coming decades of space exploration. Humanity's future in space will hinge on exploring and mining the Moon and possibly other bodies for resources like water, according to Bruno. "At first, it will help us to alleviate poverty here on Earth, but it will also be a great democratization of space where ordinary people are living and working in this cislunar economic region I envision. ... My personal role in all of this is to help make this practical through the transportation system," Bruno told me. Click here. (9/1)

Leland Melvin's Brush With Institutional Racism (Source: TIME)
Leland Melvin had no idea he'd grow up to be an astronaut when a police officer stopped him while on a date in high school in the early 1980s. The officer certainly didn't know that the Black high schooler would be somebody special either. All he knew was that he didn't like what he saw—not that there was anything to see: Melvin and his date weren't speeding, they weren't swerving, they weren't drinking.

"I was in a car with my girlfriend and a police officer rolled up on us," Melvin—who would grow up to fly on two space shuttle missions, in 2008 and 2009—recalled at a virtual Humans to Mars Summit on August 31. "He took her out of the car and told her that I was raping her because he wanted me to go to jail. And you know, when Black men get into the prison system, that they really never get out and have a second chance. I was going to college on scholarship and wanted to be a chemistry major."

The incident left Melvin with a fear of police encounters that continues to this day. "I've been on this rocket with millions of pounds of thrust and not once was I afraid of going to space," he said at the summit. "It's when I've been stopped by police officers." It is in keeping with America's duality that the same nation that causes some citizens to live in such mortal fear can also make it possible for some members of oppressed groups to thrive in so rare and sensational a realm as space. And as the rest of America reckons with institutional racism, NASA too has examined its own racial history. (9/4)

A Planet Made of Data (Source: TIME)
There are many advantages to thought experiments: they're fun, they're easy, and you get to imagine all sorts of outrageous scenarios that don't ever have to come true. But sometimes thought experiments can brush up against the real, as they do in a piece in Space.com citing the theories of physicist Melvin Vopson of the University of Portsmouth in England, who conjectures that, by the 23rd century, half of all the atoms that make up planet earth could be repurposed as digital data.

Here's his thinking: Human beings have currently amassed about 100 billion billion bits of data. At the current rate, within 350 years, the total number of bits will exceed the hundred trillion trillion trillion trillion atoms that make up the Earth. But no problem, right? Data is formless, after all. Wrong. In 1961, the German-American physicist Rolf Landauer observed that, because erasing a bit produces a tiny amount of heat, and because heat is energy and, as Einstein showed, energy and mass are interchangeable, data is actually a form of matter.

So far that shouldn't concern us. The current amount of data the world generates each year, according to Vopson, is equivalent to the mass of an E. coli bacterium. But at current growth rates, by 2245 that little bacterial equivalent would be big enough to encompass half of all of the matter that makes up the planet. Practically speaking, that would take the form of silicon and other hardware to store the data, along with energy-generating systems to power it all. One answer, Vopson suggests, is storing data in formless media that require no matter, like holograms. (9/4)