January 15, 2021

Momentus Selects Redwire to Develop Robotics Systems for Reusable In-Space Transportation Vehicle (Source: Redwire)
Redwire, a new leader in mission critical space solutions and high reliability components for the next generation space economy, has been selected by Momentus, a commercial space company offering in-space infrastructure services, to develop robotics systems for their next generation Vigoride in-space transportation vehicle. The multi-phase contract will include a system architecture study and delivery of a flight-qualified robotics system that will operate on a flight demonstration in 2022. (1/14)

OneWeb Raises $400 Million From SoftBank and Hughes Post-Bankruptcy (Source: Space News)
OneWeb has raised $400 million in funding from SoftBank and Hughes Network Systems. OneWeb announced the round Friday, bringing the total it raised since filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year to $1.4 billion. SoftBank was a leading shareholder in OneWeb before bankruptcy, and as a result of this funding round gained a seat on the company's board. Hughes announced last year it would invest $50 million in OneWeb. While OneWeb said the round "positions the company to be fully funded," it still needs to raise about $1 billion more, based on previous statements from the company's leaders. (1/15)

South Korea's Hanwha Takes Stake in Satrec (Source: Space News)
Hanwha Aerospace, South Korea's largest defense company, is taking a 30% stake in satellite manufacturer Satrec Initiative for $100 million. Satrec Initiative builds Earth observation satellites and ground systems independently and with partners such as the UAE's Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center. Once the deal is completed, Satrec Initiative will be managed independently but will have access to additional resources including Hanwha Aerospace's radar and infrared technologies. (1/15)

Developing Innovative Food Production Technologies with the Deep Space Food Challenge (Source: CSA)
The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) announced the Deep Space Food Challenge in Canada, a competition to develop innovative ways of producing food for astronauts on space missions to the Moon and Mars, while expanding opportunities for food production on Earth.

Ensuring that astronauts have nutritious food is a critical component of all human space exploration missions. It will be even more important for future long-duration missions to deep space. Crews will not be able to carry all their food, so they will have to produce food in space to meet their nutritional needs. Some of the challenges of producing food in space are the same as those of growing food in harsh environments on Earth, including remote northern communities. (1/12)

Domestic Sourcing is a Problem for Military Space (Source: Space News)
Military space systems rely on components that are no longer manufactured domestically, the Pentagon warned. In a report to Congress on the military industrial base published Thursday, the Defense Department said that space remains a "niche market" and that many systems rely on dated technology and practices, as well as fragile or foreign sources. The report cites particular concerns about gyroscopes, space-qualified solar cells and traveling wave tube amplifiers. (1/15)

China Makes Progress in Developing Engine for Heavy-Lift Rocket (Source: Xinhua)
China's main space contractor has announced progress on a rocket engine for its future heavy-lift rocket. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) said this week that it had made progress on an engine that will be used in the second stage of the Long March 9 heavy-lift rocket, expected to make its first launch in 2030. The engine is an upgraded version of the YF-77 engine used on the Long March 5, with greater thrust and efficiency. (1/15)

Orion Team Delivers Capsule to NASA at KSC for Launch Preps (Source: Lockheed Martin)
The Orion spacecraft that will fly on the Artemis 1 mission has been handed over to teams at the Kennedy Space Center for final launch preparations. Lockheed Martin said Thursday it formally completed assembly and testing of the spacecraft and transferred it to NASA's Exploration Ground Systems program, which will be responsible for fueling the spacecraft and installing it on the SLS. NASA will soon move the spacecraft out of the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at KSC to other facilities there for that launch processing work. (1/15)

NASA Still Aiming for 2021 Artemis-1 Launch (Source: Space Policy Online)
NASA is still aiming for the first launch of the Space Launch System this year if Saturday’s “hot fire” test goes as planned. The first SLS core stage, fitted with its four RS-25 engines, is on a test stand in Mississippi waiting for that last of eight Green Run tests where all four engines will fire simultaneously for 485 seconds. Congress directed NASA to build SLS in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act after the Obama Administration cancelled the Ares V rocket that was part of the George W. Bush Administration’s Constellation program to achieve that goal.

In 2014, NASA committed to the first SLS launch in November 2018. That slipped to December 2019-June 2020, then to mid-late 2021. Most recently, NASA has been saying November 2021, but that was premised on completing the Green Run tests and shipping the core stage to Kennedy Space Center in mid-January 2021. (1/12)

Time to Tidy Up Space (Source: The Economist)
Everybody’s business, an old saw has it, is nobody’s business. And that is a good description of the business of keeping outer space clean and tidy. Yet the part of space nearest Earth, known technically as low-Earth orbit, is getting cluttered. Some of the objects up there are working satellites. Some are satellites that have stopped working. Some are stages of the rockets which put those satellites into orbit. And a lot are debris left over from explosions and collisions between larger objects.

The risk of such collisions is increasing, for two reasons. First, the number of satellites being launched is rising. Second, collisions themselves beget collisions. The fragments they create add to the number of orbiting objects. At the moment, more than 20,000 such objects are being tracked, but there may be as many as 1m bigger than 1cm across. (1/14)

Arecibo Replacement Proposals Incoming (Source: Science)
Scientists are developing proposals for replacing the main radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory. After the telescope's observing platform collapsed last month, observatory officials and outside researchers brainstormed potential concepts for rebuilding or replacing it. One proposal would be to replace the 305-meter main dish with a platform holding more than 1,000 individual dishes, each nine meters across. That next-generation system would be nearly twice as sensitive as the original Arecibo, and have a planetary radar transmitter four times as powerful. How much that telescope would cost, and how it would be funded, are uncertain. (1/15)

A Rocky Planet Around One Of Our Galaxy’s Oldest Stars (Source: Keck Observatory)
Astronomers at the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (IfA) using the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea have discovered a rocky planet with a different kind of view. The planet orbits the star TESS Object of Interest (TOI) 561, named for the ongoing NASA TESS planet hunting mission. TOI-561 belongs to a rare population of stars called the galactic thick disk. Thick disk stars are chemically distinct, with fewer trace heavy elements (and especially less iron) than typical stars of the Milky Way, suggesting they formed early, approximately 10 billion years ago. (1/11)

Space Company's Plans for Arizona and Beyond Could Cost Billions (Source: Albuquerque Business First)
In March, Albuquerque Chief Operations Officer Lawrence Rael and Director of Aviation Nyika Allen took a trip in an attempt to land a deal potentially worth billions of dollars. The two made a presentation to the executive board of Theia Group, a space startup that plans to surveil the planet using satellites. The company was looking to expand, and city officials wanted to indicate their interest. Weeks after the meeting, Theia Group signed a letter of intent to lease the city's Aviation Center of Excellence, which sits adjacent to the Albuquerque International Sunport.

As part of the LOI, the company agreed to pay the city $125,000 to reserve the property for six to nine months. In November, the city's Environmental Planning Commission approved plans for the project, called the Orion Center. The development, operated by Theia subsidiary Group Orion, would occupy about 120 acres near the Sunport and Kirtland Air Force Base. Project plans call for 1,000 jobs, according to Theia Group Vice President of Administration James Reid Gorman, and "one of the largest construction projects in the United States."

The project is estimated to cost $8 billion to $10 billion to construct throughout the next decade — more than 36 times as much as the Spaceport America facility where Virgin Galactic is housed — according to a research report from Colliers International, an international commercial real estate firm with a presence in New Mexico. Colliers declined to disclose the source of the estimate, but deemed the source "credible enough to write about" in the report, according to Sarah Baiett, director of marketing and research for Colliers in Albuquerque. (1/15)