February 12, 2021

Documentary Film Planned for Commercial Crew Spaceflight (Source: Time)
An upcoming commercial spaceflight will be the subject of a documentary. Time Studios and marketing firm Known acquired the documentary rights to Inspiration4, the commercial Crew Dragon mission announced last week by billionaire Jared Isaacman. The documentary will follow Isaacman and his three crewmates on the mission, scheduled to launch late this year, and be a "definitive chronicle of the history of space exploration." Inspiration4 is offering two of the three open seats to the public through contests. One contest, which sells raffle tickets to support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, seeks to raise at least $100 million this month, but as of early Friday has raised less than $10 million. (2/12)
 
Astronomers Find Most Distant Solar System Object (Source: Space.com)
Astronomers have discovered the most distant object yet known in the solar system. The object, officially designated 2018 AG37 but nicknamed "Farfarout," was discovered in 2018 using the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. More recent observations enabled researchers to confirm the object's size and orbit. Farfarout is 19.8 billion kilometers, or 132 astronomical units (AU), from the sun currently, in an orbit that takes it as far as 175 AU but as close as 27 AU. Astronomers estimate that Farfarout is about 400 kilometers across. (2/12)

China Enters Mars Orbit (Source: Space News)
China's Tianwen-1 spacecraft went into orbit around Mars early Wednesday. The spacecraft fired its main engine for about 15 minutes shortly before 7 a.m. Eastern, inserting the spacecraft into an orbit of 400 by 180,000 kilometers around the planet. Tianwen-1 will gradually lower its orbit to allow for observations of Mars. It will also begin preparations for the entry, descent and landing attempt of a 240-kilogram solar-powered rover, expected to take place in May. (2/10)

Ball Wins GLIDE Satellite Contract From NASA (Source: Denver Business Journal)
Ball Aerospace won a NASA contract for a space science mission. Ball won the contract Tuesday to build the Global Lyman-alpha Imager of the Dynamic Exosphere, or GLIDE, satellite that will launch in 2025. The $75 million mission will observe the uppermost region of the Earth's atmosphere, the exosphere, studying how it responds to solar activity. (2/10)
 
Blue Origin Testing Lunar Lander in Huntsville (Source: GeekWire)
Blue Origin has built a test version of the lower stage of its lunar lander. The company built the pathfinder version of the descent element of the lunar lander at its Huntsville, Alabama, factory for testing of its basic design. The descent element is intended to be part of the crewed lander it is developing for NASA's Human Landing System program, but could also be used as a stand-alone cargo lander. Blue Origin says that descent element could fly a cargo mission as a test a year ahead of the first crewed mission. (2/10)
 
Turkey Plans Lunar Mission (Source: AP)
The Turkish government has unveiled ambitious plans for its space program. The 10-year effort, announced Tuesday by the country's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, includes a mission to make "first contact" with the moon in 2023. Turkey also wants to fly its own astronauts, likely through buying seats on Soyuz spacecraft, and develop a spaceport. (2/10)
 
Virgin Galactic Establishes Advisory Board (Source: Virgin Galactic)
Virgin Galactic has established a board of advisers. The Space Advisory Board, announced Tuesday, includes former astronauts Chris Hadfield and Sandy Magnus, along with David Whelan, chief scientist of Cubic Corporation and formerly with Boeing and DARPA. The board will be chaired by George Whitesides, Virgin's chief space officer and former CEO, to get input on technical and operational best practices as the company moves into commercial operations of its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle later this year. (2/10)

Swarm Constellation Starts IOT Service (Source: Space News)
Swarm has started commercial service of its internet-of-things satellite constellation. The company said Tuesday it is now offering low-cost connectivity at very low data rates to support IoT applications. Swarm now has 81 of its small SpaceBee satellites in orbit and expects that constellation to reach 150 satellites by the end of the year. (2/10)

Redwire to Fly New Tech to ISS (Source: Redwire)
Redwire will launch its sixth manufacturing facility to the ISS on Northrop Grumman’s 15th commercial resupply mission (NG-15). The Industrial Crystallization Facility is a commercial in-space manufacturing facility designed to demonstrate microgravity-enhanced techniques for growing inorganic KDP crystals that are commonly used in high-energy laser systems. On Earth, certain KDP crystals are used in high-power, large laser systems. These crystals are often subject to laser-induced damage which limits the output of the system. This damage is often caused by impurities created during the crystal growth process.

ICF will employ specific crystal growth techniques in microgravity that could minimize these gravity-induced defects and yield improved crystals for these types of applications. NG-15 is set to launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia no earlier than Saturday, February 20 at 12:36 p.m. EDT. (2/10)

Space Startups Awash in Cash, and Options (Source: Space News)
Companies in the space industry should have plenty of options this year to raise money or seek exits. Panelists at the SmallSat Symposium said Tuesday that this is the best time ever for startups to raise capital from private equity firms and public markets, as well as gain support from government agencies. There has been a growing trend of private equity acquisitions of space companies that is expected to continue this year, along with companies going public through mergers with special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. (2/10)

Northrop Chief Anticipates More Large-Contractor Consolidation Amid Growth in New Entrants (Source: Air Force Magazine)
Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden sees even more consolidation among top-tier defense contractors in the next 20 years, but the reduction in traditional firms will likely be offset by a surge in new entrants, particularly in the cyber and space domains, she said on Feb. 9. Speaking during a Center for Strategic and International Studies virtual event, Warden says she sees more industry teaming and government-industry partnerships to “evolve technologies more rapidly” over the next 10 to 20 years. (2/9)

Eutelsat to Provide Navigation Overlay (Source: Space News)
Eutelsat won a contract to provide a navigation overlay service. The $121 million contract covers the hosting of a European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) payload on Eutelsat's Hotbird 13G communications satellite, scheduled for launch in 2022. EGNOS broadcasts signals designed to improve the accuracy of existing satellite navigation services for safety-critical applications, such as aviation. Another EGNOS payload is on the Eutelsat 5 West B satellite launched in 2019. (2/10)

GMV Boosts EU Presence With New Brussels Office (Source: GMV)
The technology multinational GMV, boasting a strong EU footprint and established companies in seven member states, has now become the sixth biggest space employer among the large industrial groups. To match this growth, the company has announced the establishment of a permanent Brussels office to reinforce the dialog with the EU and to enable a continuous and constructive communication with the various institutions and stakeholders, doing so with the aim of shaping and implementing the EU agenda, and addressing the important challenges and opportunities of GMV’s main business activities today: Space, Defence, IT and Transportation. (2/8)

More Florida Polar-Orbit Rideshare Launches Planned as SpaceX Undercuts Small Launcher Prices (Source: Space News)
SpaceX is seeing strong demand for its dedicated smallsat rideshare missions, a program that is putting pricing pressure on small launch vehicle developers. A SpaceX official said the company has two more dedicated rideshare missions scheduled this year after its Falcon 9 Transporter-1 launch Jan. 24 that placed a world-record 143 satellites into orbit. Like Transporter-1, the upcoming dedicated rideshare missions will go to sun-synchronous orbit (SSO). That’s driven by customer demand for that class of orbits, McLachlan said.

SpaceX also offers rideshare services to mid-inclination orbits by flying satellites as secondary payloads on Starlink launches. While rideshare launches of smallsats on larger launch vehicles are not new, the scale of SpaceX’s effort, and its prices, have attracted widespread interest. That program is also seen as a major competitor for the growing number of small launch vehicle developers that can’t match the per-kilogram price SpaceX quotes for its rideshare customers. Those companies are instead focusing on their ability to meet specific customer requirements not possible on rideshare missions, such as schedule and orbit. (2/9)

How Mars Became the Prize for the New Space Race (Source: Space Daily)
Looking at its achievements over the past decade, nobody would doubt China is aiming to win the new space race. Not only has it been the only country to land on the Moon in about 40 years, and the first to soft land on its far side, it has also planted a flag on lunar soil and brought samples back to Earth. The race between several nations and private companies, however, is far from over. China is now approaching Mars with its Tianwen-1 mission, due to arrive on February 10. A successful insertion into orbit - the rover won't land until May - will mark another crucial milestone for more than one reason.

Mars may be close to Earth, but it is a challenging target. Nothing demonstrates this better than the figures. Out of 49 missions up to December 2020, only about 20 have been successful. Not all these failures were attempts by newbies or early endeavours. In 2016, The European Space Agency's Schiaparelli Mars Explorer crashed on the surface. Also, ongoing technical issues have forced ESA and its Russian partner Roscosmos to postpone its next mission, ExoMars, until 2022. (2/5)

Firefly Aerospace and Exolaunch Announce Launch Services Agreement (Source: Firefly)
Firefly Aerospace, Inc., a leading provider of economical and dependable launch vehicles, spacecraft, and in-space services, today announced a Launch Services Agreement with Exolaunch GmbH, a leading provider of launch services, mission management and separation systems, to integrate and launch multi-satellite clusters aboard Firefly’s Alpha launch vehicle beginning in 2022.

Just weeks away from the maiden launch of its Alpha rocket, Firefly plans to swiftly accelerate the frequency of Alpha flights through collaborative partnerships, including this strategic partnership with Exolaunch, a German small-satellite integrator known for its substantial flight heritage, flight-proven deployment technologies and high reliability. Exolaunch has previously launched 140 small satellites for its customers and continues to see increasing demand for its launch and integration services across the global launch and small satellite market. (2/10)

Is It a Planet? Astronomers Spy Promising Potential World around Alpha Centauri (Source: Scientific American)
For the first time ever, astronomers may have glimpsed light from a world in a life-friendly orbit around another star. The planet candidate remains unverified and formally unnamed, little more than a small clump of pixels on a computer screen, a potential signal surfacing from a sea of background noise. If proved genuine, the newly reported find would in most respects not be particularly remarkable: a “warm Neptune” estimated to be five to seven times larger than Earth, the sort of world that galactic census-takers such as NASA’s Kepler and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite missions have revealed to be common throughout the Milky Way.

But even though it would be shrouded in gas and essentially bereft of any surface to stand on, its distance from its star would place it in the so-called “habitable zone” where liquid water could exist. No other planet has been directly seen in this starlight-drenched region around any other star, because of the associated glare. And this world’s celestial coordinates would be straight out of astronomers’ wildest dreams—it would orbit a near-twin of the sun called Alpha Centauri A, which also happens to be a member of a triple-star system that, at just shy of 4.5 light-years away, is the closest one to our own. (2/10)

Teaching an Old Spacecraft New Tricks to Continue Exploring the Moon (Source: NASA)
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has far exceeded its planned mission duration, revealing that the Moon holds surprises: ice deposits that could be used to support future lunar exploration, the coldest places in the solar system in permanently shadowed regions at the lunar poles, and that it is an active world that is shrinking, generating moonquakes and changing in front of our eyes. LRO has mapped the surface in exquisite detail, returning millions of images of a starkly beautiful lunar landscape and paving the way for future human missions under NASA’s Artemis program.

In the Spring of 2018, LRO’s Miniature Inertial Measurement Unit (MIMU), a critical sensor used to help point the spacecraft’s instruments, was powered off to preserve its remaining life after exhibiting signs of decline due to natural aging in the harsh environment of space. The MIMU is like a speedometer. It measures LRO’s speed of rotation. Without it, LRO was forced to rely only on data from star trackers - video cameras with image processing software that infers orientation based on star maps - to point and reorient the spacecraft. “This limited the ability to reorient (slew) the spacecraft for science purposes,” said Julie Halverson. (2/11)

Repaired DARPA Satellites Get Second Chance with Next SpaceX Rideshare Launch (Source: Space News)
Two DARPA satellites damaged during preparations for a SpaceX rideshare launch last month will launch this summer. Derek Tournear, director of the Defense Department's Space Development Agency (SDA), said at the SmallSat Symposium Thursday that the Mandrake 2 satellites, designed to test optical crosslinks, are bring repaired and will now launch on SpaceX's Transporter-2 rideshare mission this summer. The satellites, made in just nine months by Astro Digital with optical links from SA Photonics, are part of DARPA's Blackjack program that seeks to demonstrate technologies on LEO satellites for military applications. Also expected to ride to space on Transporter-2 is an SDA optical crosslink demonstration with two satellites made by General Atomics, Tournear said. (2/12)

Lynk Plans Connectivity Test with Cygnus (Source: Space News)
A startup seeking to offer cellular connectivity from space plans to start testing its first satellite soon. At the SmallSat Symposium Thursday, an executive with Lynk said the company will begin a test campaign with its first small satellite "shortly" after previously conducting tests using payloads on Cygnus cargo spacecraft. Those earlier tests demonstrated it could transmit text messages to cellphones, and do so without interfering with terrestrial cellular networks. The company hopes to begin limited commercial service next year. (2/12)

HP and Microsoft Sending Computer to ISS to Support Research (Source: Space News)
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is collaborating with Microsoft on a computer system going to the International Space Station later this month. The Spaceborne Computer-2 system will launch on a Cygnus cargo mission Feb. 20 and be available to support research projects on the station. The computer will make use of Microsoft's Azure cloud service through both NASA and commercial ground stations. The computer is designed to reduce the amount of data that needs to be transmitted back to Earth and support advanced computing applications on the station. (2/12)

Virgin Galactic Delays SpaceShipTwo Test Flight (Sources: Virgin Galactic, CNBC)
Virgin Galactic is delaying a SpaceShipTwo test flight that had been scheduled for this weekend. The company announced early Friday that it decided to "allow more time for technical checks" of the suborbital spaceplane, and did not set a new date for the test flight. The powered test flight to the edge of space, with two pilots on board, was planned for this weekend, with FAA temporary flight restrictions posted Thursday. After the FAA notice, the company's stock climbed, closing up 13%, but is down in premarket trading this morning. (2/12)

Axiom May Help NASA Secure Soyuz Seat for ISS Astronaut (Source: The Verge)
Axiom Space may help NASA secure a seat on April's Soyuz mission. NASA said earlier this week it was seeking to obtain a seat on that April launch as insurance in the event of any delays or other issues with SpaceX's next commercial crew flight, and would do so through an "in-kind" deal rather than a cash payment. It's unclear what role Axiom would play in getting the seat. The company declined to comment on reports it's involved in that effort, and NASA said while a U.S. company contacted the agency on a way to obtain that seat, details remain "procurement sensitive." (2/12)