December 21, 2020

Swamp Watch: Trump Pressures Pentagon to Split NSA and Cyber Command (Source: CNN)
The Trump administration is pushing to make major adjustments to the Pentagon organizations charged with cybersecurity and signals intelligence, according to a US defense official. The proposal would split the command of US Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, two organizations currently being led by the same four-star military officer. The official said that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller are required by law to certify that certain requirements have been met before the split can happen.

A US official confirmed that Milley received the proposal from the Defense Department very late this week. A spokesperson for Milley said the general "has not reviewed nor endorsed any proposal to split CYBERCOM and NSA." The defense official told CNN that the feeling within both organizations is that the current effort is being "rushed" and that doing this "rapidly or without a great deal of forethought would be unwise." (12/20)

Rocks from Other Worlds Now Virtually Available (Source: NASA)
NASA’s astromaterials sample collections, which include a library of Apollo lunar and Antarctic meteorite samples, are now offered online through a new virtual exploration tool for scientific researchers and the public. The Astromaterials 3D Explorer site offers an unprecedented research tool to engage the public in a new way to explore the significance of NASA’s space rock collections.

Virtually sharing the Apollo samples, which were collected around 50 years ago, is particularly timely as NASA is preparing to send a new group of astronauts to the Moon with the Artemis lunar exploration program. The agency’s return to the Moon will see robots and humans exploring more of the Moon – and collecting more samples than ever before. (12/15)

NASA Moves Mars Sample Return Program into Next Phase of Development (Source: Space News)
NASA is moving ahead with work on a pair of Mars sample return missions, although some in the planetary science community worry how the cost of that effort will affect other projects.

NASA announced Dec. 17 that it approved moving the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program into Phase A of development, working on initial designs of the missions and key technologies. Those missions include a sample return lander, whose development will be led by NASA with a rover provided by the European Space Agency, and an ESA-led orbiter with a sample collection system provided by NASA.

Under current plans, both the lander and orbiter would launch in 2026. The lander would touch down near the landing site of the Mars 2020 mission, with the fetch rover collecting samples cached by that mission. The Mars 2020 rover, Perseverance, may also deliver samples to the lander. Those samples would be placed in a container on a small rocket on the lander, launching them into orbit around Mars. The orbiter would then collect the sample container and return it to Earth in 2031. (12/19)

Unexpected Discovery of Star Cluster With Extreme Composition on Outskirts of the Nearby Andromeda Galaxy (Source: SciTech Daily)
On the outskirts of the nearby Andromeda Galaxy, researchers have unexpectedly discovered a globular cluster (GC) — a massive congregation of relic stars — with a very low abundance of chemical elements heavier than hydrogen and helium (known as its metallicity). The GC, designated RBC EXT8, has 800 times lower abundance of these elements than the Sun, below a previously-observed limit, challenging the notion that massive GCs could not have formed at such low metallicities. (12/19)

Senate Passes NASA Authorization Bill (Source: Space News)
The Senate passed a NASA authorization bill Friday in a largely symbolic move. The Senate passed by unanimous consent a revised version of a NASA authorization bill approved by the Senate Commerce Committee more than a year ago. The bill supports the Artemis program, including NASA's approach for developing lunar landers, and extends the authorization of ISS operations to 2030. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), lead sponsor of the bill, acknowledged in a speech that the bill won't be passed by the House this year, but hoped the bill could serve as a starting point for a bill in the new Congress that could pass next year. (12/19)

Russia’s Space Chief Cannot Seem to Get “Gentle” SpaceX Out of His Mind (Source: Ars Technica)
As he shared photos and video of Soyuz booster recovery operations on Twitter and Facebook, the chief of Russia's space program, Dmitry Rogozin, could not help but take what he perceived to be a swipe at SpaceX. In his comments, Rogozin referenced Boca Chica, where SpaceX is building a prototype of its Starship Mars rocket, and wondered whether SpaceX would be capable of working in as harsh conditions as his hardy Russian experts.

"This is not Boca Chica. This is Yakutia, and in winter. The team in the area of the fall of the second stage of the One Web mission was deployed two days before yesterday's launch. Temperature - minus 52°," Rogozin wrote on Facebook. "I wonder if gentle SpaceX is able to work in such conditions?"

The irony, as noted by some users in response to Rogozin, is that "gentle" SpaceX engineers do not need to brave inclement weather to recover their rocket stages. They have built a smarter rocket. SpaceX designed the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage to return to land or set itself down on an autonomous drone ship for future reuse. And its second stage can be commanded to reenter the atmosphere and burn up. (12/21)

Wiseman to Lead NASA Astronaut Office (Source: CollectSpace)
NASA has selected Reid Wiseman as its new chief astronaut. Wiseman joined the astronaut corps in 2009 and flew a long-duration mission on the ISS in 2014. Wiseman will oversee the 46 currently active U.S. astronauts and coordinate activities with 18 additional astronauts from Canada, Europe and Japan. He succeeds Pat Forrester, who NASA said taking an extended leave of absence to pursue a personal opportunity outside the agency. (12/21)

Did Russia's Robot Create the ISS Air Leak? (Source: Sputnik)
Russian officials have identified a new suspected cause for an air leak on the ISS: FEDOR the robot. One Russian expert said that FEDOR, while being unloaded from and then being placed back into a Soyuz spacecraft, could have created a small fissure in the Zvezda module. The ISS has been experiencing a small air leak since September 2019, around the time FEDOR was flown to the station. The developer of FEDOR denied that the humanoid robot could be responsible, saying that FEDOR was designed to fit through Soyuz and other ISS hatches and that the process for transferring the robot had been carefully rehearsed. (12/21)

ThermaSat Offers Steam for Cubesat Propulsion (Source: Space Daily)
The ThermaSat propellant is plain water. But unlike in a traditional steam engine, there's no boiler. Rather, the water is flashed into superheated steam in the instant before expanding out of the nozzle. Even better, the self-sufficient, plug-n-play ThermaSat requires no power from the satellite; nor are there bulky, protruding reflectors to obstruct the mission objectives. (In the image, shown above, the extended solar panels are there solely for powering the satellite payload).

While simple and reliable (with only two moving parts) and smaller than a loaf of Wonder Bread, the ThermaSat delivers enough total impulse (1,800 Ns with 1kg/2.2 lbs. of water) to maintain a CubeSat in a Low Earth Orbit altitude of 375 km (233 miles) for more than five years. This represents a huge potential savings in satellite replacement. (12/21)

Exotrail Secures French Government Support to Develop Propulsion Technologies for Small GEO Satellites (Source: Space Daily)
The French Armament General Directorate, through the Defence Innovation Agency, is supporting Exotrail to develop technologies allowing small satellites to operate in geostationary orbit. Under the RAPID program, a funding framework operated by the Defence Innovation Agency, Exotrail will mature its technologies and extend their product portfolio to provide thrust vectoring and cold gas propulsion capabilities for customers.

With this program called PROXIMA, Exotrail will develop thrust vectoring and cold gas propulsion using unique in-house expertise and capabilities. These new features, together with the existing electric propulsion systems ExoMG, will allow Exotrail to offer the market a complete and coherent hardware system to maintain and control the orbit and the attitude of a spacecraft in geostationary orbit. (12/17)

ESA and CNES Sign Contract to Maintain and Modernize Kourou Spaceport (Source: Space Daily)
ESA will contribute to the maintenance, operations and modernisation of Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana over the period 2020-24. At the ESA Council meeting on 16 December, a contract for the 'Maintenance of the Guiana Space Center launch range in operational condition for the period 2020-24, including core launch range renewal activities' was signed by Jan Worner, ESA Director General and Jean-Yves Le Gall, President of CNES, France's space agency.

The launch range comprises the facilities and services inside and outside the Spaceport that are necessary to a launch campaign, including range safety and security. Europe launches three types of rockets: Ariane 5, Vega and Soyuz. The upcoming arrival of Ariane 6 and Vega-C to Europe's Spaceport is an opportunity to reorganise and renew the launch range to best adapt it to new mission requirements, enhancing facilities and improving availability of services. (12/17)

Nanoracks’ Airlock Attached to the International Space Station (Source: Houston Chronicle)
After an hourslong operation, it became official: The first commercially owned and operated airlock, produced by an aerospace company based here, was attached to the International Space Station. The few engineers who remained late Saturday in the Nanoracks building, including the bunch who were in a control room in contact with NASA’s mission control, celebrated with a tradition that started in Italy, where the team built the Bishop Airlock, to mark milestones in the journey that started in earnest about six years ago with an idea — a toast with chilled Limoncello.

The number of airlocks on the station reached four with its addition. Two for astronauts and two for projects, Howe said. Nanoracks’ airlock is believed to be five times larger than the other airlock like it. “It’s more than just a door,” he explained as the installation began, with the space station’s robotic arm extracting the lock out of the trunk of SpaceX Dragon after 5 p.m.“It’s an elaborate door.” (12/19)

Lockheed Martin to Acquire Aerojet Rocketdyne (Source: Lockheed Martin)
Lockheed Martin has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Aerojet Rocketdyne for $56 per share in cash, which is expected to be reduced to $51 per share after the payment of a pre-closing special dividend. This represents a post-dividend equity value of $4.6 billion and a total transaction value of $4.4 billion. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2021 and is subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

With 2019 revenue of approximately $2 billion, nearly 5,000 employees, and 15 primary operations sites across the US, Aerojet Rocketdyne is a world-recognized aerospace and defense rocket engine manufacturer. Aerojet Rocketdyne has deep customer relationships and significant demand for its innovative technologies. Aerojet Rocketdyne's propulsion systems are already a key component of Lockheed Martin's supply chain and several advanced systems across its Aeronautics, Missiles and Fire Control and Space business areas. (12/20)

Biden Space Advisers Urge Cooperation with China (Source: Politico)
Top advisers to Joe Biden have argued that it's important to cooperate with China on space exploration, even as the incoming administration treats Beijing as its top economic and military competitor in virtually every other realm. They assert that despite China's pattern of stealing American technology and diverting it for military purposes, a limited space partnership between Washington and Beijing could reduce tensions and the likelihood of a destabilizing space race.

The move would be akin to the cooperation between the U.S. and Russia's civilian space programs during the height of the Cold War. The debate gained more urgency recently after China became just the third nation to retrieve samples from the moon, the latest in a series of major achievements for its ambitious space program. (12/20)

The Universe Is Expanding Faster Than Expected (Source: WIRED)
The data comes from the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, which has spent the past six years stargazing from a perch 1 million miles high. The telescope has measured the “parallaxes” of 1.3 billion stars—tiny shifts in the stars’ apparent positions in the sky that reveal their distances. “The Gaia parallaxes are by far the most accurate and precise distance determinations ever,” said Jo Bovy, an astrophysicist at the University of Toronto.

Best of all for cosmologists, Gaia’s new catalogue includes the special stars whose distances serve as yardsticks for measuring all farther cosmological distances. Because of this, the new data has swiftly sharpened the biggest conundrum in modern cosmology: the unexpectedly fast expansion of the universe, known as the Hubble tension.

The tension is this: The cosmos’s known ingredients and governing equations predict that it should currently be expanding at a rate of 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec—meaning we should see galaxies flying away from us 67 kilometers per second faster for each additional megaparsec of distance. Yet actual measurements consistently overshoot the mark. (12/20)

Scientists Looking for Aliens Investigate Radio Beam 'From Nearby Star' (Source: Guardian)
Astronomers behind the most extensive search yet for alien life are investigating an intriguing radio wave emission that appears to have come from the direction of Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the sun. The narrow beam of radio waves was picked up during 30 hours of observations by the Parkes telescope in Australia in April and May last year, the Guardian understands. Analysis of the beam has been under way for some time and scientists have yet to identify a terrestrial culprit such as ground-based equipment or a passing satellite.

The latest “signal” is likely to have a mundane explanation too, but the direction of the narrow beam, around 980MHz, and an apparent shift in its frequency said to be consistent with the movement of a planet have added to the tantalising nature of the finding. Scientists are now preparing a paper on the beam, named BLC1, for Breakthrough Listen, the project to search for evidence of life in space, the Guardian understands.

The beam that appears to have come from the direction of Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star 4.2 light years from Earth, has not been spotted since the initial observation, according to an individual in the astronomy community who requested anonymity because the work is ongoing. “It is the first serious candidate since the ‘Wow! signal’,” they said. (12/18)

'Stupendously Large' Black Holes Could Grow to Truly Monstrous Sizes (Source: Space.com)
How big might black holes get? A team of scientists now suggests black holes could reach what they call "stupendously large" sizes, each harboring the mass of 100 billion suns or more. Discovering such gargantuan black holes may shed light on the nature of a significant fraction of the mysterious dark matter that makes up four-fifths of the matter in the universe, the researchers said.

At the centers of most, if not all, galaxies are supermassive black holes with masses that are millions to billions of times that of Earth's sun. For instance, at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy lies Sagittarius A*, which is about 4.5 million solar masses in size. (12/18)

If We Don’t Want to Go the Way of the Dinosaur, It’s Time to Colonize the Moon (Source: Miami Jerald)
Gene Shoemaker, a planetary geologist, has said that the next time a really big asteroid or comet crashes into Earth could cause an explosion equivalent to all the world’s nuclear weapons going off at the same time. It could cause mass extermination. Ask any dinosaur what that’s like. It is therefore imperative that we adopt a dual strategy for survival: start an active planetary defense system that can spot potential impactors close-in and divert or destroy them; and establish colonies on other worlds, starting with the moon to spread out rather than die.

It is therefore time to reinvigorate the space program — on an international basis with the Cold War long over — that will finally bring diverse Earthlings together in a fundamentally vital endeavor and ensure their survival, cultural and economic growth, and spiritual ascendance. We should be sending successive international crews to the moon to establish a base that would grow into the self-contained colony that Arthur C. Clarke envisioned. (12/14)

Defense, Biomedicine Sectors Make San Antonio Ideal for Space Command (Source: San Antonio Report)
Recently, the United States Air Force selected San Antonio as one of six finalist communities uniquely equipped to become the permanent headquarters of the U.S. Space Command, which conducts operations in, from, and to space to defend the nation’s vital interests. We could not agree more with the Air Force’s assessment of our exceptional city.

Modern defense requires integration across military branches, commands, industry, and academia, and San Antonio’s already deeply collaborative ecosystem works in support of the Department of Defense’s mission. Our economy is driven by robust defense, biomedicine, and aerospace sectors, and our rich history includes 140 years of U.S. military presence, represented today by 80,000 active-duty personnel. San Antonio’s research community specializes in information security, aerospace, bioscience, and technology, all while training the highest quality workforce to fill in-demand technology careers. (12/19)

Kansas, FAA Agree To Establish Supersonic Test Corridor (Source: AIN)
The Kansas Department of Transportation signed an agreement with the FAA to establish a Kansas Supersonic Transportation Corridor (SSTC) that would be used for testing aircraft up to Mach 3. The agreement would provide a critical testing site for the emerging group of supersonic aircraft as civil supersonic flight remains banned over land. Flight testing for models such as Aerion’s AS2 and Boom’s Overture is expected this decade, while NASA noise trials with the Lockheed Martin X-59 demonstrator are anticipated by 2024.

“This year marks 73 years since Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, and with this supersonic flight corridor Kansas will have a unique role in the next generation of supersonic transportation,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) in the announcement of the agreement. The 770-nm corridor, designed as a bi-directional “racetrack,” runs from slightly west and south of Garden City, Kansas to nearly Pittsburg in the east at altitudes above FL390. It runs right over Wichita. (12/18)