November 22, 2020

Can Private Investment in the Space Sector Help the Indian Military? (Source: ORF)
The announcement of a new set of space policy guidelines by the Department of Space (DoS) and ISRO under the Modi government is indeed refreshing, and it promises to make the Indian space sector very dynamic. There are a slew of measures that are likely to be implemented as part of the newly released space policy guidelines. It allows foreign companies to set-up facilities in India and enables Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the space sector. FDI is one of the most important features of these changes in investment rules under the new space policy.

Joint ventures between foreign companies and Indian entities will allow new facilities to be established. These Joint Ventures (Jvs) could include collaborative development of satellites. Even in the absence of any external collaboration, Indian start-ups and companies can and will be an integral part of developing space technology and infrastructure and commercialization.

Beyond these beneficial and welcome measures, one of the most important areas where opportunities exist under the new investment rules from the Indian private sector are the Indian armed services. China and the USA are at the forefront of exploiting commercial space to service the needs of the military. The Indian armed services as well as the private sector will need to work jointly and follow a similar course. (11/21)

Israeli Space Tourist: Not an Arms Dealer and Not Israeli? (Source: Haaretz)
Eytan Stibbe, who was celebrated last week as “the second Israeli astronaut,” even if it turned out he was really “the first Israeli space tourist.” He was also called out for being an arms dealer. Stibbe’s representatives demanded that Haaretz remove any assertion that their client had taken part in arms trading in Angola through his former company, LR Group.

The consultants wrote that if Haaretz refused to edit the articles in line with their demands, Stibbe would consider launching legal proceedings against the newspaper in Europe. What do an Israeli citizen and an Israeli newspaper have to do with a European court? Stibbe’s representatives wrote that their client is a British resident and thus is entitled to pursue legal proceedings against the newspaper in the U.K. So, will the “second Israeli astronaut” actually be the “first British resident in space”? (11/22)

Why Space Tourism From Dubai Could Be a Reality by 2023 (Source: Arabian Business)
Tourist flights into outer space could be departing from Dubai by the end of 2023, according to the CEO of EOS-X Space. And Kemel Kharbachi, who has already had initial discussions with Dubai Tourism, told Arabian Business ambitious plans for the emirate include a 80 – 100 million Euros site to launch commercial operations as well as making the city the company’s global space hub.

He said: “This is the democratisation of space travel. In the next decade it will be more affordable and we will be there for that.” The Spanish start-up faces strong competition from the likes of UAE-backed Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX, who are all looking to break into space tourism. However, instead of using rockets, EOS-X Space is promising to take people up in a pressurised capsule, capable of carrying five passengers and one crew member, propelled by a helium balloon, which will rise to an altitude of 40km. (11/22)

The Indonesian Meteorite Which Didn't Sell for $1.8m (Source: BBC)
The story made headlines around the world - a meteorite crashes through the roof of an Indonesian villager's home and turns out be worth millions, changing his life forever. It was suggested that the find was worth $1.8m (£1.36m), making the man an overnight millionaire - and if he wasn't, they debated whether he'd been short-changed selling it to US buyers. But neither of those things is true. The meteorite is not worth millions, and no-one has been ripped off.

"I immediately noticed its distinctive jet black interior and a thin light brown, pock marked exterior, which was created when it was travelling through the atmosphere. "It also had a very unique smell which is hard to explain in words." Once the buyer in the US agreed with Josua on a price, the meteorite was sold, with Jared as the intermediary. Both sides stress that the undisclosed amount was fair and that no-one got cheated in the deal. It was, however, nowhere near the figure that began popping up in headlines across the world - not even close. (11/22)

SpaceX Prepares for Sunday Night Starlink Launch From Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Florida Today)
SpaceX is set to send its 16th batch of Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Air Force station on Florida's Space Coast Sunday night. The 45th Space Wing forecasts weather is 70% "go" for the 9:56 p.m. launch, although high winds at liftoff could be an issue. This latest batch of 60 satellites brings the total number launched by SpaceX to nearly a thousand. Ultimately the satellite constellation will provide high-speed broadband internet to rural areas. (11/21)

Congressman Bill Posey Calls on Department of Justice to Investigate 2020 Election Fraud (Source: Space Coast Daily)
Space Coast Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL) called Friday for a federal investigation related to software used by a number of states in the 2020 election — a move that attempts to cast doubt on Joe Biden's narrow victory over Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 presidential election. Posey and others called out election software used by Dominion Voting Systems.

Their letter said Dominion "has corporate origins that can be traced back to Smartmatic Corp." That newspaper's report further claims that Smartmatic has connections with the disputed presidential elections in Venezuela and the government of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell recently attempted to link Dominion and Smartmatic, despite the fact that the two companies have no active partnership or ownership deal.

Since the election, Posey also has co-signed two previous letters to the attorney general and one to the U.S. Postal Service's chief postal inspector, raising various questions about election software and hardware, transparency in ballot-counting and mail-in ballot fraud. Dominion's equipment is used for voting and vote tabulation in more than 30 states, including battlegrounds like Georgia and Michigan. Smartmatic provided technology and software only to Los Angeles County in the 2020 election. (11/20)

SpaceX Launches US-European Mission to Monitor Oceans, Lands Booster at California Spaceport (Source: Space Daily)
A joint U.S.-European satellite built to monitor global sea levels lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California Saturday. The rocket's first stage landed successfully near the launch pad for future use.

About the size of a small pickup truck, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich will extend a nearly 30-year continuous dataset on sea level collected by an ongoing collaboration of U.S. and European satellites while enhancing weather forecasts and providing detailed information on large-scale ocean currents to support ship navigation near coastlines. (11/21)

New UK Space Command Set to Follow US with a Formal Space Domain Agency (Source: Space Daily)
The UK's newly announced Space Command is likely to pick up a number of projects already begun with its creation in mind and to partner closely with the US Space Force as part of a larger military confrontation with Russia and China in space. On Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the creation of the British Space Command as part of the commonwealth's biggest defense expansion since the end of the Cold War. (11/20)

NASA's Using Augmented Reality to Transform Air Traffic Management (Source: Space Daily)
If you're an avid smartphone user, you've probably encountered augmented reality before. Whether it's a filter to give yourself cat ears and whiskers, or collecting creatures that appear in the real world through a videogame, these technologies that create digital overlays on top of the physical world are increasingly becoming a part of our lives.

NASA is using the same technologies to make useful information about all kinds of vehicles in our skies, like drones, more widely available to those who need it. Whether for emergency response, managing air traffic, or local governance, visualizing complex data through augmented reality makes it easier for people on the ground to be aware of the operations of the uncrewed vehicles that will increasingly populate our skies. (11/13)

Avio CEO Promises Rapid Return to Flight for Vega (Source: Space News)
The head of Italian rocket manufacturer Avio assured customers Nov. 19 that the company was working hard to return Vega to service following the rocket’s second failure in its last three launches. Avio CEO Giulio Ranzo said that in initial investigation into Vega’s Nov. 16 launch failure had identified an issue with the integration of the electromechanical actuation system of the fourth stage nozzle.

Arianespace, which markets and operates the Vega rocket, said earlier this week that telemetry and production documentation point to the incorrect installation of cables in the rocket’s thrust vector control system. Ranzo assured customers and investors that Vega would be returned to service rapidly. Vega flight VV17 was carrying two European research satellites when it failed eight minutes after lifting off from French Guiana.

The 750-kilogram SEOSAT-Ingenio, billed as Spain’s first Earth observation satellite, was built by Airbus Defence and Space to provide wide-field imagery for civil applications. The 175-kilogram TARANIS, or Tool for the Analysis of RAdiation from lightNIng and Sprites, was built by the French space agency CNES to study electromagnetic phenomena in the upper atmosphere created by thunderstorms. (11/20)

China to Launch Lander to Collect Moonrocks (Source: Daily Beast)
China announced a plan to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon this week to collect lunar rocks, marking the first such attempt to retrieve samples from the surface of the moon since the 1970s. The Chinese Chang’e-5 probe, named after a Chinese goddess, will be a test for Chinese technology, according to CNN. If successful, China will become only the third country after the U.S. and former Soviet Union to collect lunar samples. The U.S. Apollo program brought back 842 pounds of rocks and soil. (11/22)

Arizona's Old Pueblo Gets New Rocket Firm as New Space Industry Develops (Source: Tucson.com)
When Vector Launch abruptly halted its micro-satellite launch operations and filed for bankruptcy in December 2019, it looked like Tucson had lost its only company dedicated to building rockets and launching small sats as part of the “New Space” industry. Now the Old Pueblo has two, as Vector’s new owners recently announced a restart of operations in Tucson, and Vector’s former CEO has co-founded a new small-rocket space transportation company here.

Last week, the investors who bought Vector’s rocket-launching assets in a bankruptcy auction said the company will restart operations in the company’s former quarters near downtown. Meanwhile, Jim Cantrell, co-founder of Vector in 2016, decided to stick around Tucson and has quietly started up Phantom Space, a new company planning to provide micro-satellite launch services.

And there’s more to come, including another local startup looking to launch its first ground-imaging satellite in mid-2021. “There are half a dozen cities in the country that are approaching a critical mass of people who know how to run satellites, who know how to run rockets and those kinds of things, and Tucson is one of them,” said Stephen Fleming. (11/22)