March 19, 2021

Top Trump Enabler In House To Announce Alabama Senate Bid (Sources: TPM, Vanity Fair)
Huntsville's Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), who helped lead the crusade by Republican lawmakers to steal the 2020 election on ex-President Donald Trump’s behalf that eventually led to the Capitol insurrection in January, is reportedly poised to launch a campaign for the Senate next week. Brooks is expected to announce the bid during his rally with former Trump adviser Stephen Miller on Monday. On Wednesday, the congressman posted a flyer for a “campaign rally” that promised “an exciting announcement” without specifying what the campaign was about.

Republican sources say that’s when Brooks will reveal that he will run for Sen. Richard Shelby’s (R-AL) seat after the senator announced that he would not seek reelection in 2022. The Alabama Republican was one of the most aggressive boosters of Trump’s “Big Lie” that falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election, which Trump decisively lost to now-President Joe Biden, was plagued with voter fraud and therefore illegitimate. The congressman once told Laura Ingraham that Democrats were waging a “war on whites” and declared that he would do everything to stop undocumented immigrants “short of shooting them.” (3/18)

HASC Republican Wants Increase in Space Force Budget (Source: Space News)
The top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee says the Biden administration needs to increase investments in the Space Force. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) said Thursday that his "biggest concern" is that the administration will seek to reduce defense spending, particularly given calls to do so from progressive Democrats. Rogers said the Space Force needs more "resources and authorities" to modernize and invest in next-generation technologies. Some of those authorities have to be provided by Congress to allow the Space Force to accelerate acquisitions. (3/19)

AFRL Opening Space Environment Lab in New Mexico (Source: Space News)
The Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) will open a new facility later this year devoted to space environment research. The lab said Thursday the Skywave Technology Laboratory will be a 3,500-square-foot, $3.5 million facility located in a remote area of Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. The lab will work on experiments to help measure and predict the space environment, and will provide enough room for tests of large antennas or distributed arrays of sensors. (3/19)
 
'Warfighter Council' Guides Capability Development for Space Development Agency (Source: Space Daily)
As the Space Development Agency builds out the National Defense Space Architecture, it looks to a biannual "warfighter council" to provide guidance about what is actually important to those who will use the systems, the agency's director said. "We want to make sure that we address our customers," Derek Tournear said. "The customers, in this case, are the combatant commanders." The warfighter council meets twice a year to ensure the agency is aligned with upcoming exercises that will provide SDA a chance to demonstrate its capabilities, he said. "And then, most importantly ... to make sure that everyone is aligned with what is included in our minimum viable product for the next tranche," Tournear said. (3/17)

Bridenstine Endorses Nelson (Source: Ars Technica)
Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has endorsed Bill Nelson to become the agency's next administrator. "Bill Nelson is an excellent pick for NASA Administrator. He has the political clout to work with President Biden's Office of Management and Budget, National Security Council, Office of Science and Technology Policy, and bipartisan Members of the House and Senate. He has the diplomatic skills to lead an international coalition sustainably to the Moon and Mars...The Senate should confirm Bill Nelson without delay." (3/19)

AIA Voices Support for Nelson to Helm NASA (Source: AIA)
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL, is reportedly President Joe Biden's pick to lead NASA, a move supported by the Aerospace Industries Association. AIA's Mike French said Nelson's extensive experience and relationship with the president "will have a very real impact" when it comes to NASA's budget. (3/19)

How NASA Is Tapping Commercial Space Companies (Source: Aviation Week)
NASA is partnering with the ever-growing commercial space industry in new ways to execute its missions—from building out the International Space Station to delivering cargo and crew there—and its plan to put humans on the lunar surface. Click here for a slideshow. (3/19)

Canada's MDA Plans IPO (Source: Globe and Mail)
Canadian space technology company MDA is planning to file for an initial public offering (IPO) of stock. MDA's principal shareholder, Northern Private Capital, is in discussions with several banks to underwrite the IPO, and investor presentations are scheduled to begin as soon as next week. Northern Private Capital acquired MDA from Maxar in a deal announced in late 2019, and expects to use the proceeds from the IPO to pay down debt and support new projects. MDA would list on the Toronto Stock Exchange. (3/19)

China's Lunar Orbiter Arrives at L-1 for Extended Mission (Source: Space News)
The orbiter from China's Chang'e-5 lunar sample return mission has arrived at a Lagrange point for its extended mission. The orbiter arrived at the Earth-sun L-1 point, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth in the direction of the sun, earlier this week, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. announced Friday. That Lagrange point is used by several spacecraft to observe the sun. The spacecraft will carry out a range of tests and solar observations as possible future destinations for extended activities are being considered. The orbiter flew by Earth in December as it released a return capsule containing about 1.7 kilograms of lunar material collected by the mission's lander. (3/19)

UK's Evona Plans US Office to Support Space Workforce Recruiting (Source: Space News)
Evona, a U.K. space industry recruiting startup, is preparing to establish a U.S. office as part of a global push. The company, established in 2018 to recruit workers for entrepreneurial space companies, has seen its revenue grow sixfold in the last year. Evona helps companies identify and recruit workers with varied talents from radio-frequency, mechanical and systems engineering to welding and fabricating. (3/19)

Kraken Not Kuiper (Source: GeekWire)
Amazon says it is not the customer for the "Project Kraken" satellite factory proposed in Florida. Amazon had been a leading candidate as the company seeking to build a factory on the grounds of the Kennedy Space Center to produce satellites, given it is pursuing the Project Kuiper satellite broadband megaconstellation. However, despite the similarity in names — as well as the fact that Seattle, Amazon's home city, has a hockey team called the Kraken — the company denied it is involved in that initiative. Space Florida, which announced the project with that code name earlier this week, has not disclosed what company it is working with. (3/19)

Australia Launch Startups Complain of High Regulatory Fees (Source: Cosmos)
Australian launch startups are criticizing the high fees the government is proposing to charge them for overseeing launches. Under the proposed regulations, the government would charge tens of thousands of dollars for launch permits, as well as seek reimbursement for any outside experts it has to hire to assess applications. Several Australian companies working on small launch vehicles or commercial launch sites warn that the fees, which could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a launch, would damage their competitiveness in the global market. Other countries assess nominal or no fees for launch licenses. (3/19)

Proposed Canadian Spaceport Given More Time to Begin Construction (Source: Canadian Press)
A Canadian provincial government agency has extended the deadline for the start of construction of a spaceport. The Nova Scotia Environment Department said this week that it was giving Maritime Launch Services 18 additional months to start construction of a launch site near the town of Canso, pushing back a deadline from this June to December 2022. The company has been working to establish a launch site there for Cyclone-4 rockets from Ukraine, but said that work has been delayed by the pandemic. (3/19)

Capella Vies for Leadership in High Resolution SAR Imagery (Source: CNBC)
Satellite imagery specialist Capella Space on Thursday released the first images captured by its two latest spacecraft launched in January. The firm is trying to tap part of an Earth intelligence market it estimates is worth about $60 billion. Capella's business is based on combining a special type of imagery with a small, inexpensive spacecraft. The company is building a network of satellites that can capture images of places on Earth multiple times a day. San Francisco-based Capella has raised about $100 million since 2016 and has around 100 employees. The company has three satellites in orbit and plans to launch four more by year-end. Capella is not alone in the radar imagery market. Finnish start-up Iceye is also working on a network of satellites, with 10 launched to orbit. (3/18)

Test Time for Optical Comms (Source: Aerospace America)
Fiber might not have reached your neighborhood, but anyone who does business in space will need a wireless version in the cosmic neighborhood, and soon. After decades of experimentation, 2021 could become the long-sought pivotal year for optical communications in space, notwithstanding an early setback. “Optical is really good at building a point-to-point, high-bandwidth connection,” says Stephen Forbes, DARPA Blackjack program manager. “That’s where I see the immediate sweet spot for optical, connecting nodes that need to share a lot of data, whether that is from satellite to ground or from ground to ground through a satellite.”

If these broadband rates were once viewed as a mere convenience, they could soon become a must-have, and for more than military and intelligence applications. Miniaturized electronics and falling launch prices for small spacecraft are boosting the numbers of satellites in low-Earth orbit and making factories and mining operations suddenly seem feasible in some opinions. (3/18)

Don’t Want to Share Your Satellite Details? That Should Cost You (Source: Aerospace America)
We would all benefit from establishing orbital timetables that would predict the locations of specific satellites at specific times in the future, not unlike a European train schedule. These timetables would help everyone plan their satellite movements in a shared environment and aid in creating norms of behavior underscoring safety and sustainability. We could predict and take steps to avoid collisions well into the future.

For those operators willing to share their satellites’ details, adding their spacecraft to the timetables would be relatively straightforward. We would consider a satellite’s size and shape and the characteristics of its materials, which together with the natural effects of radiation, particle interaction and electromagnetism determine how the spacecraft will actually move. The results would be highly accurate predictions. The trains would run on time.

Unfortunately, adequate transparency is the missing ingredient in my proposal to create railroad-like timetables for satellites. Many satellite owners and operators closely hold detailed information about their spacecraft, including specific physical characteristics, functions and operational details. So, we can’t at the moment fully predict where their satellites will be, and therefore we can’t include them in the proposed timetables unless something is done. Simply put, these operators should be required to compensate for their withholding of information by performing correction maneuvers to keep their satellites on gravity-only trajectories. (11/2020)

Galileo Will Help Lunar Pathfinder Navigate Around Moon (Source: Space Daily)
ESA's Lunar Pathfinder mission to the Moon will carry an advanced satellite navigation receiver, in order to perform the first ever satnav positioning fix in lunar orbit. This experimental payload marks a preliminary step in an ambitious ESA plan to expand reliable satnav coverage - as well as communication links - to explorers around and ultimately on the Moon during this decade.

Due for launch by the end of 2023 into lunar orbit, the public-private Lunar Pathfinder comsat will offer commercial data relay services to lunar missions - while also stretching the operational limits of satnav signals. Navigation satellites like Europe's Galileo constellation are intended to deliver positioning, navigation and timing services to our planet, so most of the energy of their navigation antennas radiates directly towards the Earth disc, blocking its use for users further away in space.

"But this is not the whole story," explains Javier Ventura-Traveset, leading ESA's Galileo Navigation Science Office and coordinating ESA lunar navigation activities. "Navigation signal patterns also radiate sideways, like light from a flashlight, and past testing shows these antenna 'side lobes' can be employed for positioning, provided adequate receivers are implemented." (3/19)

NASA, SpaceX Sign Joint Spaceflight Safety (Collision Avoidance) Agreement (Source: Space Daily)
NASA and SpaceX have signed a joint agreement to formalize both parties' strong interest in the sharing of information to maintain and improve space safety. This agreement enables a deeper level of coordination, cooperation, and data sharing, and defines the arrangement, responsibilities, and procedures for flight safety coordination. The focus of the agreement is on conjunction avoidance and launch collision avoidance between NASA spacecraft and the large constellation of SpaceX Starlink satellites, as well as related rideshare missions. (3/19)

How a Metal with a Memory Will Shape Our Future on Mars (Source: The Verge)
A rover on the Moon has metal wheels that can flex around rocky obstacles, then reshape back to their original form. On Earth, surgeons install tiny mesh tubes that can dilate a heart patient’s blood vessels all on their own, without mechanical inputs or any wires to help. These shape-shifting capabilities are all thanks to a bizarre kind of metal called nitinol, a so-called shape-metal alloy that can be trained to remember its own shape. The decades-old material has become increasingly common in a wide range of everyday applications.

In the next decade, the metal will face its most challenging application yet: a sample return mission on Mars. Nitinol, made of nickel and titanium, works its magic through heat. To “train” a paper clip made of nitinol, for example, you heat it at 500 degrees Celsius in its desired shape, then splash it in cold water. Bend it out of shape, then return the same heat source, and the metal will eerily slink back into its original form. Engineers at Glenn Research Center explain how nitinol will play a role in a mission to retrieve humanity’s first cache of pristine Martian soil samples — the second leg of a Mars mission campaign led by NASA and ESA. Click here. (3/17)

NASA's Last Rocket (Source: New York Times)
Far from being a bold statement about the future of human spaceflight, the Space Launch System rocket represents something else: the past, and the end. This is the last class of rocket that NASA is ever likely to build. Seeing it launch, though, will actually mean something. While NASA has long desired to return astronauts to deep space, it could not. The agency lacked a vehicle designed, tested and validated as safe to lift humans more than a couple of hundred miles from the ground. If this week’s test succeeds and the rocket later flies, the United States will be able to say that it does.

Members of Congress had no particular design in mind, but they demanded that NASA rummage through crates of old space shuttle parts whenever possible to build this thing, and required that it launch by 2016. Mandated to build the big rocket, NASA cobbled together exploration programs that would use it. First, it was an asteroid rocket. Then a Mars rocket. Now, it is an Artemis moon rocket. In any event, the Space Launch System is billions of dollars over budget and five years beyond its compulsory launch date. (3/18)

NASA Successfully Fires Up Moon Rocket During ‘Green Run’ Do-Over Test (Source: Click Orlando)
NASA repeated another test fire of the Space Launch System rocket in Mississippi Thursday after a previous attempt did not last as long as planned but this time the test exceeded expectations. The eight-minute hot fire, known as the “green run” test of the SLS core stage is the last step before the hardware can be sent down to Kennedy Space Center to launch the Orion spacecraft on the first flight known as the Artemis-1 mission. The SLS core stage booster, built by Boeing, contains the liquid hydrogen tank and liquid oxygen tank, along with four RS-25 engines as well as the computers that serve as the “brains” of the rocket. (3/18)

Space Stocks Maxar and Virgin Galactic are Positioned to Surge (Source: CNBC)
Truist began coverage of both Maxar Technologies and Virgin Galactic with buy ratings on Tuesday, calling the former “well positioned” and the latter “uniquely positioned” in the growing space industry. Amid a broader market selloff, shares of Maxar and Virgin Galactic slipped Wednesday morning from their previous closing prices of $43.98 and $32.51, respectively. Maxar has gained more than 12% to begin the year and is up nearly 360% in the last 12 months. Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic is up about 35% to begin the year and has more than doubled in the last year. (3/17)

Moscow Ready to Join Turkey’s Space Initiatives: Roscosmos Head (Source: Daily Sabah)
The chairperson of Russia's Federal Space Agency Roscosmos, Dmitriy Rogozin, said Wednesday that Turkey has all the necessary political and economic leverage to carry out its National Space Program and that Moscow is ready and willing to evaluate all opportunities to participate in initiatives regarding the program. Rogozin was speaking on Turkey's National Space Program and the potential cooperation in the space and defense industry in an interview with Anadolu Agency (AA). (3/17)

Costa Rica Will Host the Most Advanced Space Radar on the Planet (Source: Costa Rica News)
The US company LeoLabs Inc. will inaugurate the “most advanced special radar on the planet” in Costa Rica this April, as published by the Costa Rican astronaut Franklin Chang, on March 10th, through his social networks. Chang – the Costa Rican project manager through his company Ad Astra – assured that the radar, located in Guanacaste, will catapult the country “to the front and center of the space age with unimaginable opportunities for our young people and for future generations, in new industries. and skills of immense value to our economy.” (3/17)

Houston Dairymaids Sends Cheese Into Space for NASA Astronauts (Source: Houston Chronicle)
When Lindsey Schechter, owner of local cheese shop Houston Dairymaids, received an email from NASA asking for cheese, she thought it was a joke. But the aeronautics agency was serious. It was seeking cheese to send to space, per a special request made by astronaut Shannon Walker, who is currently on a 210-day stay in the International Space Station. "It was really exciting for us," said Schechter. "We were thrilled to know that Shannon is such a cheese lover."

Little did Schechter know, Walker is a regular shopper at Dairymaids. Schechter sent some OG Kristal, an aged Belgian gouda, at the end of 2020. NASA reached out to her again in February saying the crew loved it and wanted some more, but Dairymaids no longer had it in stock. (3/17)

Pixxel to Launch World's Highest Resolution Hyperspectral Smallsat Constellation (Source: Space Daily)
Pixxel, an emerging leader in cutting edge earth-imaging technology, announced the close of a $7.3M seed round with new capital from Omnivore VC, Techstars, and others, who are joining alongside Lightspeed Ventures, Blume, growX, Ryan Johnson, former President at Planet Labs, and additional industry leaders. Additionally, for the first time today, Pixxel came out of stealth and publicly announced its mission to build the world's highest resolution hyperspectral satellite constellation. The company's first hyperspectral satellite will launch within the next few months. (3/18)

Umbra Licensed to Provide Super-High Resolution SAR Satellite Imagery (Source: Space Daily)
Umbra, a geospatial intelligence data provider, was granted a license from the FCC to operate its Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite with 1,200 MHz of bandwidth. This bandwidth allocation will allow them to generate images with as low as 15-centimeter (6 inch) ground sampling distance (GSD). At this resolution, Umbra's satellites will be able to detect items as small as a soda can from space. Umbra is the first commercial satellite provider in U.S. history to receive a license enabling this level of capability from space.

Umbra was granted a license from NOAA in 2018. Recent developments will permit Umbra's customers to access spaceborne imagery with 25 x 25-centimeter (10 inch) ground plane resolution. Even better resolution will be available to some customers. Umbra anticipates being the sole commercial provider of these high-resolution radar products in the United States and will be selling imagery commercially to customers based in the United States and to allies abroad. Umbra is expanding its team of employees to more than 50 this year, and has new job openings in engineering, product, software, operations, and marketing in both Santa Barbara, CA as well as its new Austin, TX facility. (3/18)

Astronauts in Crewed Missions to Mars Could Misread Vital Emotional Cues (Source: Space Daily)
Living for nearly 2 months in simulated weightlessness has a modest but widespread negative effect on cognitive performance that may not be counteracted by short periods of artificial gravity, finds a new study published in Frontiers in Physiology. While cognitive speed on most tests initially declined but then remained unchanged over time in simulated microgravity, emotion recognition speed continued to worsen. In testing, research participants were more likely to identify facial expressions as angry and less likely as happy or neutral.

"Astronauts on long space missions, very much like our research participants, will spend extended durations in microgravity, confined to a small space with few other astronauts," reports Mathias Basner, professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. "The astronauts' ability to correctly 'read' each other's emotional expressions will be of paramount importance for effective teamwork and mission success. Our findings suggest that their ability to do this may be impaired over time." (3/18)

Ten Years of Safer Skies with Europe’s Other Satnav System (Source: ESA)
With 26 satellites in orbit and more than two billion receivers in use, Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system has made a massive impact. But our continent has another satnav system that has been providing safety-of-life services for ten years now – chances are that you’ve benefited from it without noticing.

Its name is EGNOS, the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service. Transmitting signals from a duo of satellite transponders in geostationary orbit, EGNOS gives additional precision to US GPS signals – delivering an average precision of 1.5 meters over European territory, a tenfold improvement over un-augmented signals in the worst-case – and also confirmation of their ‘integrity’ – or reliability – through additional messaging identifying any residual errors.

While its Open Service has been in general operation since 2009, EGNOS began its EU-guaranteed safety-of-life service in March 2011. ESA designed EGNOS as the European equivalent of the US WAAS, Wide Area Augmentation System, working closely with the European air traffic management agency Eurocontrol, passing it to the European GNSS Agency, GSA, to run operationally. (3/17)