March 18, 2021

L3Harris Sees Opportunities in Pentagon’s Growing Responsive Space Business (Source: C4ISRnet)
As DoD puts more resources into responsive space architectures, L3Harris feels well positioned to compete for and win space system contracts. The concept of responsive space architectures differentiates itself from the exquisite satellite systems DoD has traditionally invested in. “The current space architecture is largely based on high performance — or exquisite — systems. These systems are costly and take a decade or more to develop and put into service,” said President of Space and Airborne Systems Ed Zoiss.

“But this architecture is fragile, with a few high-value targets for our adversaries to attack,” he continued. “What’s needed is a new architecture: One that can keep pace with the ever-evolving threats, one that can be put into service rapidly, and one that is a magnitude less costly. That architecture is what we call responsive space.”

Exquisite systems are generally made up of a handful of satellites in geosynchronous orbit, while responsive space approaches look to take advantage of proliferated constellations made up of dozens or even hundreds of satellites in low Earth orbit. L3Harris has played a role in the development of exquisite systems, contributing payloads for weather, GPS and other satellites for the military. (3/17)

Iridium: A 30-Year Overnight Success (Source: Quartz)
More than a decade before today’s surge of space SPACs, one satellite company proved that a merger with a blank check company can indeed succeed. That firm is Iridium, the satellite telecom valued at more than $5 billion. In 2020, its revenue grew to a record $583 million, and the company announced its first stock buyback plan. It’s been a lot of work to get there—and the circumstances might provide a word of warning to investors in today’s blank-check space acquisitions. Iridium emerged from its turn-of-the-century bankruptcy as a private company, after the tech bubble popped and investors soured on satellite businesses.

“It was a little bit different from some of the more aggressive SPACs being done today,” Bok says—and not only because today’s blank-check companies can see their prices rise 50% or more above the pro forma $10 share price when they announce their acquisition targets. Iridium, he notes, “had real cash flow, it had real revenue, it was an operating business. Where it was somewhat like the more speculative ones today was that it did have a huge need for capital and some degree of technological risk to put a new fleet of satellites in the sky.” (3/18)

Small, Cheap Spy Satellites Mean There’s No Hiding Place (Source: The Economist)
In the middle of last year, Ecuadorians watched with concern as 340 foreign boats, most of them Chinese, fished just outside the Exclusive Economic Zone around their country’s westernmost province, the Galapagos Islands. The law of the sea requires such vessels to carry gps-based automatic identification systems (AIS) that broadcast where they are, and to keep those systems switched on. Some boats, however, failed to comply. There were more than 550 instances of vessels not transmitting their locations for over a day. This regular radio silence stoked fears that the boats concerned were sneaking into Ecuador’s waters to plunder its fish.

Both local officials and China’s ambassador to Ecuador denied this, and said all the boats were sticking to the rules. In October, however, HawkEye 360, a satellite operator based in Virginia, announced it had detected vessels inside Ecuador’s Zone on 14 occasions when the boats in question were not transmitting AIS. HawkEye’s satellites could pinpoint these renegades by listening for faint signals emanating from their navigation radars and radio communications. (3/18)

Space Florida Going After $300 Million Satellite Factory (Source: Florida Politics)
An undisclosed space company code-named Kraken is looking at Space Florida’s properties to build a $300 million spacecraft factory that could create 2,000 mostly high-wage jobs in Brevard County. Space Florida’s board of directors gave approval Wednesday to staff to negotiate with the company to have a satellite factory located near the agency’s launch sites on Cape Canaveral. Those negotiations could involve creative financing, lease deals, and possibly matching-fund grants from the Florida Department of Transportation.

Space Florida President Frank DiBello told the board Space Florida has competition for the factory from other states. The deal they’ll pursue likely is similar to those that brought other space manufacturing and launch facilities to the Cape from Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, OneWeb, and other rocket, satellite, and component supplier companies, under former code names such as “Project Panther,” “Project Sabal,” “Project Odyssey” and “Project ICE.”

Project Kraken was described as among the most important to Space Florida’s longterm strategy. The numbers given Wednesday suggest it certainly would be among the biggest deals. Howard Haug said the company was intending to invest as much as $300 million and create “at least” 2,100 jobs by 2025, with average wages of $84,000 plus benefits. (3/17)

Biden to Tap Former Senator Bill Nelson as NASA Chief (Source: The Verge)
President Biden has tapped former Democratic Senator Bill Nelson for NASA administrator, according to three people familiar with the decision. Nelson, a politically experienced ally of the administration, would steer the space agency as it races to return humans to the Moon, bolsters its climate research and expands its reliance on a flourishing commercial space industry.

A former congressman and three-term US senator from Florida, Nelson would succeed former president Trump’s NASA chief Jim Bridenstine, whose past experience in Congress proved key in rallying support for the Artemis program, an ambitious campaign to use the Moon as a stepping stone for future astronaut missions to Mars. Biden’s decision comes nearly two months after he took office and as the White House remains largely silent on rolling out any space policy agenda.

Nelson represented Florida’s Space Coast as a state legislator in the 1970s and championed NASA through his time in Congress. He became the second sitting member of Congress to fly to space in 1986 as a payload specialist aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. A moderate Democrat, Nelson served three terms in the Senate until losing his bid for reelection in 2018 to former Florida Governor Rick Scott. (3/18)

Your Flight to Mars Will Start in Texas. SpaceX Has the Ticket (Source: Houston Chronicle)
This state, especially Houston, is NASA country. The astronauts live here, and for decades have trained for Moon missions, space shuttle flights and stays aboard the International Space Station at Johnson Space Center. The iconic Mission Control rooms in Houston oversee all of NASA’s human spaceflights.

Texans might be forgiven for assuming this is how it will always be, but that may not prove true. In recent years, perhaps due to a lessening of political power, Johnson Space Center has ceded key influence to other NASA centers. The commercial crew program, which is responsible for getting humans to the International Space Station, is now managed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. And the program to develop a lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis Program is not being led by Houston, but rather Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

The state’s fading political influence in spaceflight and the rise of commercial spaceflight suggest that if Texas is to maintain a key role this century, it may have to embrace entrepreneurs such as Musk as well as Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin has a suborbital launch site in West Texas, near Van Horn. In fact, it now seems plausible that human missions to Mars might launch not from Florida, but Texas; and not on a NASA rocket, but one built by SpaceX. Click here. (3/18)

UK Eyes In-Orbit Servicing Leadership (Source: Space News)
Astroscale expects to start performing its first end-to-end test of key technologies for in-orbit debris removal around the end of May, assuming a successful launch this month of the Tokyo-based startup’s ELSA-d demonstration mission. The ELSA-d spacecraft will be controlled from the U.K., where Astroscale has built what it touts as the first mission control center dedicated to in-orbit servicing.

The U.K. government provided a £4.2 million ($5.9 million) grant through its U.K. Research and Innovation (UKRI) public body to develop the National In-Orbit Servicing Control Center located at the Satellite Applications Catapult in Oxfordshire, as the country looks to become a leader in the emerging market for orbital debris removal and other in-space services. U.K. Science Minister Amanda Solloway said the country is already “Europe’s largest investor in helping with space clean-up,” having invested a total €95.5 million in ESA’s Space Safety program.

That funding includes €12 million for the Active Debris Removal and In-Orbit Servicing (ADRIOS) initiative, a separate servicing  demonstration program the European Space Agency announced in 2019, as well as €70 million for space weather observation and forecasting. With funding from ADRIOS, Swiss startup ClearSpace plans to launch a spacecraft in 2025 that will remove a Vega rocket upper stage left in orbit in 2013. (3/18)

Artemis Schedule Update Coming Soon (Source: Space News)
NASA expects to update the schedule for the launch of Artemis 1 within a few weeks of today's Green Run static-fire test, if all goes well. The SLS core stage will fire its engines for up to eight minutes in the test, scheduled for 3-5 p.m. Eastern this afternoon at the Stennis Space Center. In an interview Wednesday, NASA Acting Administrator Steve Jurczyk said that if the test goes well, NASA should know in a few weeks if Artemis 1 can stay on schedule for a launch in November or if it will slip a month or two.

He confirmed NASA is studying ways to reduce SLS costs, with an interim report expected by this summer. NASA is also working to respond to a request by Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) for the analysis that led NASA to conclude that the Europa Clipper mission is incompatible with SLS. Despite the decision to seek a commercial launch of Europa Clipper, Jurczyk said NASA was continuing to work on a cargo version of SLS. (3/18)

Regulations Considered to Address Remote Sensing Privacy Issues (Source: Space News)
The chair of the House space subcommittee said more regulations may be needed for commercial remote sensing to protect privacy. At a webinar Wednesday, Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) said the combination of growing imaging capabilities of commercial satellites and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning "becomes pretty scary pretty fast." He suggested the issue may require international discussions "at the arms control level" since regulations at the national level alone may be insufficient. He added, though, that he didn't expect much in the way of legislation on the topic from Congress "anytime soon." (3/18)

Russia Expected to Decide This Year on New Space Station (Source: TASS)
The head of Roscosmos expects the Russian government to decide this year whether to build a new national space station. Dmitry Rogozin said Roscosmos was interested in the long term with having its own space station, arguing it would have more control of it than it currently has with the International Space Station. A "fundamental decision" on that new station is expected by the end of the year. He described negotiations with NASA on the future of the ISS as "shallow" but said more technical discussions were scheduled around the April 9 launch of the next Soyuz mission. (3/18)

JWST Progressing Toward October Launch (Source: Space News)
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is making progress toward a launch this October. At an advisory committee meeting this week, NASA said engineers have closed out, or are in the process of closing out, most of the remaining technical issues identified in recent months. One new issue is the repair of two communications units on the spacecraft, which will take up at least some of the remaining schedule margin. Another NASA astronomy mission, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, will see its mid-2020s launch delayed by several months because of COVID-related impacts, but development of that mission is otherwise proceeding smoothly. (3/18)

UK Halts Funding for Follow-On Space Data Work (Source: BBC)
The British government is halting funding of foreign aid projects that made use of space data. Ten projects backed by the U.K. Space Agency's International Partnership Program last year for initial "discovery" funding have been informed that they will not receive the next phase of funding they had expected. The projects used space data on efforts ranging from tracking human trafficking to studying invasive species. The cuts are part of a broader initiative by the British government to reduce foreign aid temporarily because of the financial pressures caused by the pandemic. The program cost about $28 million a year. (3/18)

Mars InSight Lander Provides Insights on Mars Core (Source: Nature)
NASA's Mars InSight lander has provided scientists with their most detailed look to date inside the planet. Scientists speaking at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference this week said their analysis of seismic data collected by the lander showed the planet's core is between 1,810 and 1,860 kilometers in radius, somewhat larger than earlier estimates. The lander's seismometer has detected about 500 quakes, including nearly 50 strong enough to help scientists probe the planet's interior. (3/18)

Italy’s Extra Aircraft Carrier Could Become A Floating Spaceport (Source: Forbes)
Italy is about to have an extra aircraft carrier. Never one to waste a useful old ship, the Italian military is considering modifying the vessel to function as a floating launch pad for space rockets. It wouldn’t be the first time Italy has paired up old ships and new rockets. The Italian navy commissioned the aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi back in 1985. She’s the oldest of the fleet’s two flattops. The newer Cavour commissioned in 2008.

The 800-foot-long Garibaldi embarks Harrier jump jets and helicopters. Officials are considering adapting the vessel to launch the rockets that deliver the military’s satellites into orbit. It’s not a crazy idea. Ideally, you launch a rocket from the equator in order to take greatest advantage of the Earth’s rotation. Launching in the direction of the spin adds the planet’s velocity to the rocket’s own velocity. (3/17)

The Not-So-Secret Value of Sharing Commercial Geospatial and Oopen-Source Information (Source: The Hill)
Two years ago, reports surfaced that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was detaining hundreds of thousands of China’s Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in so-called “re-education” camps. Chinese authorities initially denied the existence of these camps until human rights organizations and media sources provided indisputable evidence that they do exist. Discovering human rights abuses such as this would be nearly impossible without access to commercial geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) provided by satellite imagery that established visual evidence of the camps.

Beyond the discovery of the camps, GEOINT also provided the ability to track developments at the camps by comparing images taken over time. Commercial GEOINT is unclassified and exists in the public domain. The information is accessible to commercial customers, the public and nongovernmental organizations. It is available to the federal government for purchase. If these images were captured by U.S. space assets and analyzed by the Intelligence Community (IC), it is unlikely that the public would ever see them or reap the benefits of the accompanying analysis.

It is equally unlikely that departments and agencies not well plugged into the IC could make meaningful use of this imagery. But imagine if the IC fully harnessed, analyzed and fused information and imagery from not just classified sources but also nonclassified sources. (3/17)

SpaceX Boosters Line Up at Port Canaveral After Back-to-Back Launches (Source: Teslarati)
For the first time ever, two SpaceX Falcon 9 boosters – fresh off of two successful Starlink launches and landings – have met back at Port Canaveral, creating the first rocket ‘traffic jam’ of its kind.

On March 11th, Falcon 9 booster B1058 stuck its sixth launch and landing after supporting SpaceX’s sixth dedicated Starlink launch (Starlink-20) this year. 74 hours later, a separate Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from SpaceX’s second East Coast launch pad, successfully sending another batch of 60 Starlink satellites (Starlink-21) on their way to orbit. For its role in the mission, booster B1051 became the first Falcon first stage to launch and land nine times – just one shy of a ten-flight rocket reusability goal SpaceX has been chasing for years.

Now, aside from setting the new standard for Falcon reusability, placing 120 satellites into orbit in three days, and breaking SpaceX’s record for the shortest turnaround between two East Coast launches, the back-to-back Starlink launches have left both Falcon 9 boosters in the right place and right time to cross paths as they prepare for future flights. (3/17)