March 17, 2021

Scientists Want to Build a Doomsday Vault on the Moon (Source: CNN)
Engineers want to build an underground lunar ark, filled with millions of seed, spore, sperm and egg samples from Earth's species, hidden in a network of tubes on the moon to provide a genetic backup for the planet in the event of a doomsday scenario. Scientists from the University of Arizona have proposed an ark, dubbed a "modern global insurance policy" for 6.7 million species from Earth, cryogenically preserved and hidden inside a series of caves and tunnels under the moon's surface.

They said the vault could protect the genetic materials in the event of "total annihilation of Earth" which would be triggered by a major drop in biodiversity -- but any move to build such a bunker is a long way off. Similar "doomsday vaults" exist on Earth: The Global Seed Vault, home to just under 1 million seed samples, is located on a remote island in Svalbard, an archipelago located between Norway and the North Pole. (3/16)

NASA Announces Lunar Delivery Challenge Winners (Source: NASA)
With the Artemis program, NASA will send the first woman and next man to the surface of the Moon, construct a lunar orbiting outpost, and establish a sustainable presence. This will require deliveries of supplies and equipment to the lunar surface, but how to unload the cargo once it arrives is an open question. NASA created the Lunar Delivery Challenge to seek ideas from the public for practical and cost-effective solutions to unload payloads onto the surface of the Moon.

The challenge received 224 entries before the submission period closed Jan. 19, 2021. The ideas came from various types of space enthusiasts who share a passion for human space exploration, and participants varied from student teams, to individuals from the private sector, to parent-child duos. NASA awarded $25,000 in total prizes to six teams, including one first place winner with a prize of $10,000; two second place winners with prizes of $4,500 each; and three third place winners with prizes of $2,000 each. Click here. (3/16)

From the Pandemic to Going Public: Space Startups Face Hiring Challenges (Source: Space News)
Isotropic's U.S. office is located in Maryland, amid office parks between Washington and Baltimore filled with aerospace and defense contractors. “We are competing for the best engineers from some of the biggest players out there,” he said, noting that the company is next door to a Northrop Grumman facility. “It’s a matter of attracting people that want to come and do something new.”

That challenge is magnified when you’re not able, or at least willing, to talk publicly about what you’re doing. In its first few years, small launch vehicle developer Astra kept a low profile, without a public website or other discussion. The company called itself “Stealth Space Company” in its online job listings. "We worked really hard to bring people in here,” Chris Kemp, co-founder and chief executive of Astra, said in an interview of those early hiring efforts. “But we literally had to bring people in here and show them the place.”

Private companies can still attract talent from publicly traded firms. Commercial imaging company Satellogic announced Feb. 11 it hired a former Maxar executive, Thomas VanMatre, as its vice president of global business development. He held a similar position at Maxar. Satellogic, which is just starting to build out its constellation of high-resolution imaging satellites, has an unusually global presence for a company of its size, with offices in the United States, Latin America, Israel and China, tapping local expertise in software, satellite manufacturing and business development. The company has more than 200 employees now, and he said he expects to hire 70 people in this quarter. (3/11)

SpaceX Bid on Launch of NASA Cubesat Mission (Source: Space News)
A NASA competition to launch a cluster of TROPICS cubesats attracted a bid from SpaceX, who appeared to offer a vehicle other than its current Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy. NASA awarded a contract for the launch to Astra Feb. 26, valued at $7.95 million. The agency said in the statement that it received five proposals last August for the mission. Besides Astra, two other small launch vehicle companies, Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit, submitted bids.

A fourth bid came from Momentus, which offers in-space transportation services for satellites launched on rideshare missions. The fifth bid came from SpaceX, which has a smallsat rideshare program, bundling groups of cubesats and other small satellites on Falcon 9 launches. However, the company did not appear to offer launch services with that vehicle. In its assessment of the bidders, NASA noted a weakness in SpaceX’s proposal because the company “did not clearly demonstrate progress toward the resolution of the environmental assessment which results in risk associated with obtaining an FAA launch license.

An intriguing possibility is that SpaceX instead offered its Starship vehicle under development. That vehicle has an FAA launch license today only for its current series of suborbital test flights. The FAA is also performing an environmental assessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas, site for orbital launches of that vehicle. (3/16)

Space Florida-Funded L3Harris 3D Printed Space Experiment Flies on ISS (Source: L3Harris)
In February 2021, an L3Harris-designed Radio Frequency (RF) circuit and an array of various 3D printed material samples launched into space, bound for the International Space Station (ISS). As part of an experiment to assess the viability of 3D printed materials for RF applications, the circuit will reside outside the Space Station, exposed to the extreme environment of space. The experiment will test the durability of 3D printed radio frequency circuits in space for potential use in future small satellites. Funding for the project is provided by Space Florida, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, and the L3Harris Innovation Office. (3/11)

Return of Pegasus: Air-Launch Rocket Selected for Responsive Launch Demo (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
The U.S. Space Force is planning for an airborne launch of a solid-fueled Pegasus rocket over the Pacific Ocean by early summer after quietly awarding Northrop Grumman a contract for the mission last year. The Pegasus rocket is an air-launched vehicle designed to drop from the belly of Northrop Grumman’s L-1011 carrier jet, then fire three solid-fueled rocket stages to place small satellites into orbit.

The TacRL-2 mission later this year will use a Pegasus rocket staged out of Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The mission is part of the Space Force’s “Tactically Responsive Launch” program. “That’ll be a great test for our team to hone the skill required to launch on demand and with agility,” Col. David Rickards said. “Said more plainly, we’ll be given a short window of just three weeks to generate, to deploy, and execute a real world launch." (3/17)

FAA Approves Plans for Pegasus Air-Launches From Virginia, Florida (Source: FAA)
After completing a comprehensive review, the FAA approved the renewal of two Launch Operator Licenses for Orbital Sciences, LLC, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman. The licenses are valid for five years and authorize the company to conduct flights of its Pegasus launch vehicle from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Orbital Sciences must still receive FAA authorization for specific launches. The Pegasus operates by being attached to a carrier aircraft and launched while airborne to deliver payloads to low earth orbit. (3/17)

Wormholes Across The Universe Are Fully Traversable, New Calculations Show (Source: Universe Today)
Wormholes are an old idea in general relativity. It's based on work by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen, who tried to figure out how elementary particles might behave in curved spacetime. Their idea treated particle-antiparticle pairs as two ends of a spacetime tube. This Einstein-Rosen Bridge would look like a black hole on one end, and an anti-black hole, or white hole, on the other end. The particle physics idea never panned out, but work inspired other researchers to study ER-bridges as a possible shortcut through space.

If wormholes were traversable, you could burrow through spacetime like a worm burrowing a hole through an apple. It didn't take long for theorists to discover this wouldn't work. Although wormholes are valid solutions to Einstein's equations, they collapse so quickly you'd never have time to go through them. Of course, impossibility never stops a persistent theoretician, and soon they figured out you could make a wormhole traversable by lining it with some kind of negative energy. But matter with negative mass/energy doesn't seem to exist. However, we know that Einstein's theory must break down at quantum scales. Presumably, there is some quantum theory of gravity that supplants general relativity.

One of these models is known as the Einstein-Dirac-Maxwell theory. It includes aspects of Einstein's theory of gravity, Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, and Dirac's theory of quantum particles. Recently a team found a wormhole solution to the Einstein-Dirac-Maxwell equations. What's more, the solution doesn't require any negative-energy states. In principle, that would allow you to travel through the wormhole without needing negative mass. The only catch is that you would need to be in a quantum state. So microscopic clumps of atoms could travel through this wormhole, but not people. (3/6)

Alan Stern: Building Back Better in Space (Source: The Hill)
Recent Democratic presidents have supported and initiated important, bold and sustainable robotic and commercial space efforts. But no Democrat since John F. Kennedy has set this nation onto a course that resulted in humans exploring new worlds. I am a scientist whose career has been organized around and benefited tremendously from robotic space exploration. Yet I can say with authority that no robotic space exploration mission has ever had such a powerful and pervasive impact as Kennedy sending Americans to explore another world.

Kennedy’s bold vision propelled science forward greatly. President Biden was first elected to the Senate during Apollo. To his credit, the president has already affirmed that his administration will continue NASA’s Artemis program to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon. Moreover, Biden has signaled his innate grasp of what Kennedy’s Apollo accomplished and how space exploration can inspire on a larger scale. But where will Biden take this nation in human space exploration? How can he brand his administration to be both as bold and effective in space as Kennedy’s administration was?

As with other Biden initiatives, like his Cancer Moonshot and green energy future, he can use space to inspire. In this daunting, pessimistic and divided time we may actually need space initiatives more today than even in the darkest days of the Cold War. Biden should craft our human space exploration to project bold U.S. global leadership by sending men and women to do more than just visit, but to establish bases on these new frontiers. In doing so, he would no doubt launch a powerful new wave of science and engineering careers to fuel the nation’s tech economy for decades to come. (3/15)

Space Force: Government Could Pay for Space Debris Cleanup When Services are Available (Source: Space News)
A Space Force general said the government would be interested in paying companies to clean up orbit debris, once such services are available. Gen. David Thompson, vice chief of space operations for the Space Force, said Tuesday the service would be willing to "pay by the ton" to remove orbital debris, which poses a risk to operational spacecraft and to safe operations in space. One company, Astroscale, is scheduled to launch a spacecraft this weekend to demonstrate orbital debris removal capabilities, but Thompson said he was not familiar with them. (3/17)

Arsenic and (Very) Old Life (Source: Air & Space)
Based on studies of Mono Lake in California, we already knew that microbes can metabolize arsenic. But that was generally thought to be a very special adaptation of bacteria to extreme conditions in an unusual soda lake. That view is now changing very quickly, following a 2019 study supporting the idea that the biological use of arsenic is not only intended to lessen its toxicity, but also to gain metabolic energy. The study showed that some microbes use arsenic for respiration in the open tropical ocean, in places where there is no available oxygen.

An earlier assertion that some microbes may prefer arsenic over phosphorous for growth and substitution in their DNA has largely been refuted. Nevertheless, it seems that using arsenic to gain critically needed energy is not only a way for life to gain a foothold in niche environments like Mono Lake, it may have been very important for early life on Earth. The same should hold true for life in any oxygen-depleted natural environment, including Mars. (1/29)

Satellite Operators Want Seat at the Table for Space Rules (Source: Space News)
Satellite operators want to participate in discussions about rules of behavior in space. David Bertolotti, director for institutional and international affairs at Eutelsat, said Tuesday that companies like his have "a lot to bring to the conversation on space security" because safe operations in space is vital to their businesses. Discussions about a potential agreement to codify norms of behavior in space need to address not just space-based threats, he said, but also the ground-based infrastructure that controls satellites. (3/17)

Aerojet Rocketdyne Not Concerned About Potential Artemis Changes (Source: Space News)
An Aerojet Rocketdyne executive said his company is not concerned about any potential changes to NASA's Artemis program. Aerojet CFO Dan Boehle said he did not expect any changes in the program, such as delaying a human return to the surface of the moon until later in the decade, to have a "material impact" on his company's work, which includes supplying RS-25 engines for the Space Launch System.

The growth of the RS-25 program has helped the company offset losses elsewhere, such as the end of AJ-60 solid rocket motor and RS-68 engine programs. Boehle said that, if its acquisition by Lockheed Martin is approved later this year, Aerojet remained committed to being a merchant supplier of propulsion systems to other companies, including those competing with Lockheed. (3/17)

Democrats Ask Biden to Cut Defense Spending (Source: Space News)
A group of congressional Democrats is asking the Biden administration to cut defense spending. The letter from 50 Democratic members of Congress Tuesday asked the White House to shift defense spending to areas ranging from global public health to diplomacy. How those cuts would be made isn't clear, but one analyst expected the Space Force would not be affected much, in part because it is a small fraction of overall defense spending. The administration is reportedly planning a fiscal year 2022 budget proposal for the Defense Department that would keep spending at the same level as 2021. (3/17)

Loft Orbital Picks Anywaves for Satellite Antennas (Source: Space News)
Loft Orbital is buying antennas from French company Anywaves, a sign of a growing network of European NewSpace companies. Anywaves said it sold two S-band antennas for a future Loft Orbital mission, a deal it called the beginning of a "long-term partnership" between the companies. Loft Orbital is developing spacecraft that can host payloads from a wide range of customers, and the company said the S-band antennas will be used by a customer developing an internet-of-things service. Loft Orbital, which established a European office last year in Toulouse, said the company was relieved to see a "vibrant community of small companies" it could do business with there, likening it to clusters of space startups in the United States. (3/17)

Floating Tea Leaves Helping Cosmonauts Find ISS Air Leak (Source: Sputnik)
Russian cosmonauts are once again reading the tea leaves to find an air leak on the International Space Station. Cosmonauts released tea leaves in one compartment of the station, watching as air patterns caused the leaves to drift toward a suspected crack in the hull. Cosmonauts used the same technique previously to identify air leaks, two of which they have since sealed. (3/17)

Spaceport America to Host Engine Testing for C6 Launch Systems (Source: Las Cruces Sun-News)
A Canadian company is ready to start engine testing at New Mexico's Spaceport America. A ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday marked the completion of a test stand at the spaceport that C6 Launch Systems will use to test engines that another company, Ursa Major Technologies, is developing. Ontario-based C6 Launch Systems plans to use those engines on a future small launch vehicle. That test stand, while paid for by C6, will be available later to other spaceport users. (3/17)

Asteroids Honor Astronauts (Source: NASA)
More than two dozen astronauts now have asteroids named after them. The International Astronomical Union approved the list of names of 27 people of people who have flown in space who are African American, Hispanic or Native American; that list includes one Cuban cosmonaut of African ancestry. Among those newly named asteroids are 92894 Bluford, after Guy Bluford, the first African American NASA astronaut to fly in space; 97508 Bolden, after former astronaut and NASA administrator Charles Bolden; and 117703 Ochoa, after Ellen Ochoa, the first Hispanic woman to go in space and a former Johnson Space Center director. (3/17)

Hydrated Minerals Trap Water in Mars Crust (Source: BBC)
A quest by scientists to follow the water on Mars may lead them underground. In a study published Tuesday, scientists said they believe much of the water that existed on the planet's surface early in its history is now trapped in hydrated minerals in the planet's crust, rather than lost to space. Scientists said the rate at which water is lost to space from the planet's atmosphere can't account for more than a small fraction of the water Mars once had. Research concluded that between 30% and 99% of that original water is locked up in minerals buried below the surface. (3/17)

This Golden Box Will Soon Make Oxygen on Mars (Source: Live Science)
Having safely landed on Mars on Feb. 18, NASA's newest rover, Perseverance, is just beginning its scientific exploration of the Red Planet. But sometime in the next few weeks, the car-size robot will also help pave the way for future humans to travel to our neighboring world with a small instrument known as the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE).

MOXIE, which will soon be pulling precious oxygen out of Mars' poisonous atmosphere, is gold-colored and about the size of a bread box. It sits tucked away inside Perseverance's chassis, where it will conduct the first demonstration on another planet of what's known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), meaning using local resources for exploration rather than bringing all the necessary materials from Earth. (3/17)

The Space Tourism Market Is Heating Up... But When Will It Happen? (Source: Forbes)
Virgin Galactic is shifting their executive team around to get ready for paid passengers. Blue Origin keeps quietly testing in the stratosphere above West Texas. Two new contests – Inspiration4 and #dearMoon – both promise the chance to win your spot on an out-of-this-worth adventure. A new space hotel is announced at least once per year. Oh, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX team keep drawing hundreds of thousands of eyeballs to livestreams documenting the steady march of progress for Starship – the craft that will eventually carry humans to Mars.

Space has never felt so close, yet so far away. After dedicating myself to the space tourism industry back in 2017, I’ve been patiently waiting for actual space tourism – like so many of you. But it’s not hard to understand if your patience is wearing thin, especially when each new announcement comes with an overly ambitious timeline that will inevitably let us down. “Companies should try to not overpromise. Hyping up unrealistic plans is a good way to create a cynical customer base,” said Laura Seward Forczyk. “Instead, companies should be honest with customers and emphasize their focus on flying when it's safe.”

There are obviously several benefits to committing to a specific year, increased public interest and media exposure being chief among them. However, publishing overly ambitious – one might even say unrealistic – launch timelines can end up hurting the mission in the long run. Just think back on how many space hotels should have been launched by this point. From the grand ambitious of space hotels to the cautious slow-moving Blue Origin, every space tourism timeline has slipped,” concludes Seward Forczyk. (3/15)