January 7, 2021

China to Accelerate Launch Activity in 2021 (Source: Space Daily)
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, the country's leading space contractor, says it plans to launch more than 40 missions this year, including some for the nation's space station program. The company said the most important missions in 2021 will be sending the space station's major components, cargo craft and astronauts to assemble the multimodule station. It said that if everything goes according to plan, 2021 will be its busiest year in terms of launch activity.

CASC sources said all of the 40-odd planned missions will be carried out by the conglomerate's Long March-series rockets, the nation's backbone rocket fleet, and do not include those to be made by the company's newly developed Smart Dragon solid-propellant rockets. That means the number of missions launched by the company this year will be even bigger. (1/6)

Space Economy Hits $385B in 2020, with Commercial Revenues Over $310B (Source: Space Daily)
In its latest research product "The Space Economy Report 2020", Euroconsult estimates that the consolidated space economy, including both government space investments, as well as commercial space, totaled $385 billion in 2020, a record amount. Commercial revenues of $315 billion in 2020 were down 2% from 2019's $319 billion evaluation, due partially to the Covid-19 pandemic affecting certain commercial markets - in particular satellite communication sub-segments focused on high mobility such as, aero, maritime, offshore oil and gas, though other factors, such as video-related revenues continuing their pre-Covid downward trend contributed to the decrease.

Added to these commercial revenues are the $70 billion invested by government space budgets in 2020 (excluding government expenditures on commercial services, counted as commercial revenues), a 10% increase over 2019 government spending. There was no visible impact in 2020 on government space investments as budgets were voted before the pandemic, though the sustainability of these high government space investments post-Covid remains to be seen. (1/6)

NASA Space Telescope SPHEREx Moving Ahead (Source: Space Daily)
NASA's upcoming space telescope, the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, or SPHEREx, is one step closer to launch. The mission has officially entered Phase C, in NASA lingo. That means the agency has approved preliminary design plans for the observatory, and work can begin on creating a final, detailed design, as well as on building the hardware and software.

Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, SPHEREx is scheduled to launch no earlier than June 2024 and no later than April 2025. Its instruments will detect near-infrared light, or wavelengths several times longer than the light visible to the human eye. During its two-year mission, it will map the entire sky four times, creating a massive database of stars, galaxies, nebulas (clouds of gas and dust in space), and many other celestial objects. (1/6)

Astronomers Agree: Universe is Nearly 14 Billion Years Old (Source: Space Daily)
From a mountain high in Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers with the National Science Foundation's Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) have taken a fresh look at the oldest light in the universe. Their new observations plus a bit of cosmic geometry suggest that the universe is 13.77 billion years old, give or take 40 million years.

The new estimate matches the one provided by the standard model of the universe and measurements of the same light made by the Planck satellite. This adds a fresh twist to an ongoing debate in the astrophysics community, says Simone Aiola, first author of one of the new papers on the findings in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. (1/6)

Dynetics Achieves Critical NASA Milestone, Delivers Key Data on Lunar Lander Program (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Dynetics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Leidos, has submitted its proposal for Option A of the Human Landing System (HLS) for NASA’s Artemis Program. The Dynetics team has also completed the HLS Continuation Review, a critical milestone during the 10-month base period, which NASA will use to assess progress on HLS hardware development and program plans.

At the Continuation Review, Dynetics provided details to NASA on its early design efforts, mission plans, and its hardware and software build as well as test activities that demonstrate tangible, robust advancement towards NASA’s mission objectives.

Dynetics is currently performing tests of its main engines simultaneously at its propulsion test site and at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), both in Huntsville, Ala. This collaboration uses Dynetics’ and NASA’s expertise in oxygen/methane propulsion at their facilities. These tests provide data on the performance and stability of the engines to improve final designs before qualification. (1/6)

Maybe 'Dark Matter' Doesn't Exist After All, New Research Suggests (Source: NBC)
Dark matter, according to mathematical models, makes up three-quarters of all the matter in the universe. But it’s never been seen or fully explained. And while dark matter has become the prevailing theory to explain one of the bigger mysteries of the universe, some scientists have looked for alternative explanations for why galaxies act the way they do.

Now, an international team of scientists says it has found new evidence that perhaps dark matter doesn’t really exist after all. In research published in November in the Astrophysical Journal, the scientists report tiny discrepancies in the orbital speeds of distant stars that they think reveals a faint gravitational effect – and one that could put an end to the prevailing ideas of dark matter. The study suggests an incomplete scientific understanding of gravity is behind what appears to be the gravitational strength of galaxies and galaxy clusters, rather than vast clouds of dark matter. (1/6)

Last Year Reusable Rockets Entered the Mainstream, and There’s No Going Back (Source: Ars Technica)
The notion of reusing rockets finally went mainstream in 2020. As the year progressed, it became clear that SpaceX launch customers have gotten a lot more comfortable with flying on used, or "flight-proven," first stages of the Falcon 9 rocket. One commercial customer, Sirius, launched its XM-7 satellite on the seventh flight of a Falcon 9 booster in December. Also, the first national security payload flew on a reused booster last month when the US National Reconnaissance Office launched its NROL-108 mission on the fifth flight of a Falcon 9 first stage.

NASA, too, agreed to fly future crewed missions to the International Space Station—beginning with the Crew-2 spaceflight in the spring of 2021—on used Falcon 9 rockets. And the US Space Force said it would launch its GPS III satellites on used boosters in the future as well. These are among the highest-value missions the United States has. Another important step came when a second US launch company, Rocket Lab, began to demonstrate rocket reuse. The company experimented throughout 2020 on ways to protect the return of its Electron first stage during reentry into Earth's atmosphere. Then, it recovered an Electron stage for the first time in November.

"When we look back on 2020, we will say this year was a watershed moment," said Randy Kendall, vice president of launch and enterprise operations for The Aerospace Corporation, in an interview. "Commercial, civil, and national security missions have all signaled their intent to fly their most precious payloads on previously flown rockets." (1/6)

Arecibo is Dead. Should We Build its Replacement on the Moon? (Source: Astronomy)
When the 60-year-old Arecibo Observatory collapsed in 2020, the crash didn’t just take down one of the world's preeminent radio telescopes, it also dealt a massive blow to the future of radio astronomy. Arecibo may have been old, but it also had unique capabilities that made it ideal for studying things like gravitational waves, as well as mapping the surfaces of asteroids as they slip by Earth.

Now, radio astronomers around the world are debating what comes next. Should Arecibo be rebuilt anew? If so, where would the money come from? Those questions don’t have easy answers, but the discussions are happening. Preliminary plans for another revolutionary radio telescope continue to inch forward every day. And interestingly, these talks have led NASA to reconsider a bold idea that was first dreamed up a half-century ago: building a behemoth radio telescope on the farside of the Moon.

Arecibo’s design benefited from being built in a natural sinkhole in Puerto Rico. Similarly, astronomers could use existing lunar craters to build a radio telescope on the Moon for (relatively) cheap; impacting space rocks have already done the digging for them. And unlike Earth, the Moon has no weather or wind to accelerate erosion. Even the pull of gravity itself is weaker on the lunar surface. (1/7)

DARPA Satellites Damaged During Falcon-9 Integration (Source: Space News)
Two DARPA satellites were damaged while being prepared for launch on a Falcon 9 later this month. The satellites, called Mandrake 1 and 2, were being installed Monday on a payload adapter when the payload separation system was accidentally released, causing unspecified damage. The spacecraft are technology demonstration satellites for DARPA's Blackjack program. DARPA said it is evaluating its next steps in cooperation with SpaceX. The satellites were to be part of a Falcon 9 dedicated rideshare mission called Transporter-1 scheduled for launch Jan. 14. (1/7)

Space Force Wants Better Space Situational Awareness (Source: Space News)
A Space Force general says the service needs better tools to distinguish between weapons and benign objects in orbit. Maj. Gen. Leah Lauderback, U.S. Space Force director of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, said Wednesday that a major challenge for national security space is the ability to characterize threats to satellites, mentioning satellites with robotic arms as one of several Chinese capabilities the Space Force worries about. She said the Space Force needs improved sensors and "persistence on orbit" in order to identify potential threats. (1/7)

Dynetics Completes NASA Review of Lunar Lander Concept (Source: Dynetics)
Dynetics said Wednesday it performed a review with NASA of its lunar lander concept. The company announced it completed a "continuation review" with NASA as part of its Human Landing System (HLS) contract awarded last April. At that review, the company provided more information about the lander design and test activities. Dynetics confirmed it also submitted a proposal for Option A of the HLS program, which will fund full-scale development of a lander for missions starting as soon as 2024. NASA is expected to make decisions on Option A awards in the next few months. (1/7)

Virgin Galactic Completes Investigation of Aborted December Flight Above Spaceport America (Source: Virgin Galactic)
Virgin Galactic said it completed an investigation into an aborted SpaceShipTwo flight last month. In a pair of tweets early Thursday, Virgin said it carried out post-flight inspections and a root cause analysis of the abort during the Dec. 12 flight, when an onboard computer lost connection around the time the suborbital spaceplane ignited its hybrid rocket engine. Virgin didn't disclose details of that investigation, but said that corrective actions are underway and, once completed, it will announce a date for the next flight. (1/7)