April 15, 2022

U.S. Intelligence-Gathering Payloads Awaiting California Launch on SpaceX Rocket (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from California’s Central Coast just before sunrise Saturday, boosting a classified cargo into orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office on what is widely believed to be a naval reconnaissance mission. The Falcon 9 rocket is set to take off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, a military base on the Pacific coastline northwest of Los Angeles, at 6:27 a.m. PDT Saturday. SpaceX announced late Thursday the launch was being delayed to no earlier than Saturday, allowing time to “complete pre-launch checkouts and data reviews.” (4/14)

Alabama Congressional Reps Defend Space Command HQ Decision (Source: WHNT)
Two Alabama congressmembers are reaching across the aisle to back the decision to make Huntsville the permanent home of U.S. Space Command. U.S. Representatives Robert Aderholt (R-AL) and Terri Sewell (D-AL) released a joint statement supporting the selection. “There is no better place for our nation’s Space Command headquarters than the Rocket City,” the statement read. “Huntsville is the world’s premier hub for space exploration and innovation, and we resoundingly support the 2021 decision to locate it there.”

“We stand by the Air Force’s decision that Huntsville is the best and only home for U.S. Space Command,” the statement continued. “We look forward to reviewing the Government Accountability Office’s report and remain confident that an objective analysis of the facts will yield the same conclusion.” (4/14)

Is Space Command Still Coming to Alabama? Top General Needs to Know (Source: WHNT)
A top general told Congress he needs a final decision “sooner rather than later” on whether or not the headquarters of Space Command will move to Alabama. Space Command leader Gen. James Dickinson told Congress, “Once I have a decision, I can do the appropriate planning and make sure I’ve got the right types of people in the organization.” (4/4)

NASA Lends Pegasus Barge to ULA to Help Boeing as Starliner Launch Date Announced (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
United Launch Alliance hitched a ride from NASA in order to gear up for the flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, which now has a target liftoff date in May. To get the first stage of an Atlas V rocket to the Cape Canaveral Spaceport, ULA needed to borrow NASA’s Pegasus barge, which last year transported the core stage of the new Space Launch System to Kennedy Space Center and serviced the space shuttle program in years past. ULA’s normal go-to barge, the R/S RocketShip, was stuck in dry dock as its normal route was blocked with river locks closed for maintenance. (4/14)

Boeing Will Reattempt its Starliner Launch on May 19 (Source: Houston Chronicle)
Boeing is now planning to launch its CST-100 Starliner spacecraft on May 19. The test flight, which would be the company's second uncrewed mission, was previously planned for Aug. 3, 2021. But corroded valves prevented the company from launching and forced Boeing to swap out hardware before scheduling another launch attempt to the ISS. Next month, Boeing will launch its Starliner spacecraft atop a ULA Atlas V rocket. They will lift off from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport in Florida. (4/14)

Down, Up, Uown: 3 SpaceX Crew Dragons Making 2 Landings, 1 Launch in 2 Weeks (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
The ISS is turning into a bit of a drive-thru with the goings and coming on three SpaceX Crew Dragons in the next two weeks. First up is the return of the four Axiom Space crewmates on Crew Dragon Endeavour slated no earlier than April 20. NASA announced Friday the group’s time on the ISS was being extended by a couple of days, departing Tuesday and targeting a 7:19 a.m. splashdown Wednesday off the coast of Florida. The exact date and time will be dependent on weather at the recovery sites.

Their departure from the ISS will make room for the planned launch at 5:26 a.m. Saturday, April 23 of the Crew-4 mission, which is flying up on a new SpaceX Crew Dragon named Freedom. A flight readiness review is slated for Friday, but potential launch windows are available on April 24 and 25 as well. With their arrival for a six-month stay, that will allow the return of Crew-3 — NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron along with ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer of Germany. The quartet will climb back aboard Crew Dragon Endurance that flew up to the ISS last November. It’s slated to return about five days after Crew-4’s arrival. (4/15)

Domain Awareness is Top Priority for Space Command (Source: Space News)
U.S. Space Command says space domain awareness is its No. 1 need. At a Senate hearing last month, Gen. James Dickinson, head of the command, said the military needed to better understand operations in Earth orbit as well as the intent of those activities, citing as examples Chinese spacecraft that have demonstrated proximity operations and even moving a satellite out of the GEO belt. There are growing government and commercial capabilities to monitor activities in orbit, but one general warned there are still "a lot of gaps" to fill. (4/15)

Capella Automates SAR Satellite Tasking (Source: Space News)
Capella Space unveiled three products Thursday that automate tasking of the company's constellation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites. The new products allow customers to select regions they want to monitor to track ships and monitor changes using Capella SAR imagery, in some cases in combination with data from Europe's Sentinel-1 SAR satellites. The new products automatically task satellites to capture images of selected areas. (4/15)

CAPSTONE Cubesats Ready for Lunar Mission (Source: Space News)
A lunar cubesat mission is ready for launch next month. The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) spacecraft is scheduled to launch as soon as May 3 on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket to go into a near-rectilinear halo orbit around the moon. CAPSTONE will test operations in that orbit, which will be used by later Artemis missions, and demonstrate an autonomous navigation technology. Advanced Space, the Colorado company that built CAPSTONE for NASA, opened its mission operations center for the spacecraft earlier this month. (4/15)

VP Harris to Visit California Spaceport (Source: Santa Barnara Edhat)
Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Vandenberg Space Force Base next week. Harris will visit Vandenberg Monday to meet with Space Force and Space Command personnel there. Harris, who chairs the National Space Council, will also give remarks, but the White House did not state what she will discuss. (4/15)

Russia Looks to China for Space Cooperation, But China Halts Discussions (Source: TASS)
Russia's hopes of cooperating more closely with China in space, as its ties to the West are cut, may be facing obstacles. The president of the Russian Academy of Sciences said Thursday that its Chinese partners have put on hold discussions of cooperative projects. He didn't give a reason for the freeze in discussions, but noted it had taken place over the last month, after Russia started its invasion of Ukraine. The discussions cover a wide range of science topics, but Russia previously had counted on cooperating with China on long-term lunar exploration projects. (4/15)

How Russia’s War with Ukraine Jams NASA (Source: Space News)
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may bring the ISS program to an abrupt end. The problem is not that an extended military conflict will disrupt ISS operations. Rather, with arguments about international cooperation taken off the table, NASA must address a fundamental question it has always struggled to answer: why do we have an Earth-orbiting space station in the first place?

The station’s value as a demonstration of international collaboration is in ruins after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its looming confrontation with NATO. It is an open question whether Russia’s aerospace industry can continue sending cosmonauts to the ISS given western sanctions. American and Russian flight controllers have also learned to stay out of each other’s way, as negotiating even the simplest issues often generates protracted conflict. For example, even after a decade of discussion, engineers continued to disagree over the proper response to station depressurization.

Regardless of how events in Ukraine play out, NASA is facing the end of its central rationale for the International Space Station. After two decades, the ISS partners have learned a great deal about operating a space station and keeping astronauts healthy. But none of the station’s experiments have produced transformational discoveries, technologies, or products. (4/14)

US Military Confirms an Interstellar Meteor Collided with Earth (Source: CNN)
One meteor traveled quite a long way from home to visit Earth. Researchers discovered the first known interstellar meteor to ever hit Earth, according to a recently released United States Space Command document. An interstellar meteor is a space rock that originates from outside our solar system -- a rare occurrence. This one is known as CNEOS 2014-01-08, and it crash-landed along the northeast coast of Papua New Guinea on January 8, 2014. (4/14)

SLS Countdown Rehearsal Halted Again, for Hydrogen Leak (Source: Space News)
Controllers were just starting to fill the liquid hydrogen tank on the SLS core stage when they found a leak in an umbilical between the rocket and a service mast on the mobile launch platform. They halted fueling of the stage with the liquid hydrogen tank only 5% full and the liquid oxygen tank about 50% full, and scrubbed the test later in the afternoon. Earlier in the day, controllers dealt with problems with the supply of nitrogen gas used to support operations as well as a temperature limit that was exceeded when loading liquid oxygen. NASA will hold a briefing this afternoon to provide an update on the status of SLS wet dress rehearsal activities. (4/15)

Chinese Station Crew Returns to Earth (Source: Space News)
The record-breaking crew of China's space station will return to Earth tonight. Airspace closure notices indicate that Shenzhou-13 will return to Earth, near Dongfeng in the Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia, between 9:35 and 10:05 p.m. Eastern following its departure from the Tianhe module of the station. The crew of Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu set a record for the longest Chinese human spaceflight at six months, double the previous record. A new crew is expected to launch on Shenzhou-14 in June. (4/15)

Chinese Shiyan-10 Satellite Reappears in New Molniya Orbit Months After Launch Anomaly (Source: Space News)
A classified Chinese satellite has been tracked operating in a specialized orbit, six months after an anomaly during launch appeared to leave it stranded in an initial transfer orbit. Shiyan-10 is now in a “Molniya” orbit according to tracking data from the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron (SPCS). The satellite is in a highly elliptical 1,880 by 38,881 kilometer altitude orbit with an inclination of 63.6 degrees. This indicates that the spacecraft has made a big alteration to its earlier orbital inclination to serve a specific set of tasks over the northern hemisphere. (4/15)

Avanti Reduces Debt (Source: Space News)
Satellite operator Avanti says it has cut its debt by two-thirds. The British company said it reduced its debt from $810 million to $260 million after investors agreed to swap debt for equity. Hedge fund Solus Alternative Asset Management and new investor HPS Investment Partners are now Avanti's largest shareholders. With less debt, the company hopes to finally resolve long-running financial issues that, in 2018, saw Avanti swap another chunk of debt for equity. The company operates five satellites with Ka-band payloads serving Europe, the Middle East and Africa. (4/15)

Astranis Offers Satellite Leasing to DoD (Source: Space News)
Astranis sees an opportunity to break into the defense market as the military considers diversifying its communications architecture. The manufacturer of small GEO communications satellites plans to offer the military options to lease small satellites that could be directed to boost capacity in needed areas. Those satellites could also provide more resiliency in a conflict. The company last summer hired Scott Jacobs, former national security sales director at Blue Origin, to lead its federal sales, including defense and civilian space. (4/15)
 
Kepler Proves Inter-Satellite Links (Source: Space News)
Kepler Communications has successfully tested inter-satellite links for its planned Aether data-relay constellation. Two of the four satellites SpaceX launched in January to support Kepler's current business, which provides low-data-rate services to devices out of range of terrestrial networks, are equipped with a new S-band terminal for the upcoming system. The two satellites exchanged data using those terminals shortly after launch. Future Aether satellites will be an "order of magnitude" bigger than current Kepler cubesats to accommodate greater power requirements. The company hasn't disclosed detailed launch plans but says the $60 million it raised late June will fund satellite it plans to deploy through 2023. (4/15)

Georgia County Rejects Voters’ Will on Spaceport but Union Carbide Hesitates on Land Sale Deal (Source: The Current)
Camden County bills itself as having “Leadership that Listens.” But it’s not listening to its voters. On Tuesday, the County Commission unanimously agreed to move forward with its purchase of a property for its planned spaceport, despite the results of a March 8 referendum in which voters rejected the purchase. However, the owner of the 4,000-acre marsh-front industrial property, Union Carbide, issued a statement Thursday indicating it’s hesitant to move forward because of the referendum and associated litigation. (4/14)

NASA Releases Equity Action Plan to Make Space More Accessible to All (Source: NASA)
In support of the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to advance racial equity in the federal government, NASA has released its first-ever Equity Action Plan. The plan establishes key focus areas that will allow the agency to track progress toward improved diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility both internally and externally to NASA.

“At NASA, all of our missions depend on our steadfast commitment to equal opportunity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “The Equity Action plan deepens our commitment to further identify and remove the barriers that limit opportunity in underserved and underrepresented communities. This framework anchors fairness as a core component in every NASA mission to make the work we do in space and beyond more accessible to all."

The four focus areas the plan addresses are: Increasing integration and utilization of contractors and businesses from underserved communities and expanding equity in NASA’s procurement process; Enhancing grants and cooperative agreements to advance opportunities, access, and representation for underserved communities; Leveraging Earth Science and socioeconomic data to help mitigate environmental challenges in underserved communities; and Advancing external civil rights compliance and expanding access to limited English proficient populations within underserved communities. (4/14)

Florida’s Space Coast Named 2022 ‘Great American Defense Community’ (Source: Space Coast EDC)
Florida’s Space Coast, home to Patrick Space Force Base and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, is one of five communities across the country named to the 2022 Class of Great American Defense Communities. The Association of Defense Communities (ADC) announced the five selected communities in conjunction with USAA, the program’s official sponsor at the Defense Communities National Summit earlier this month. The 2022 class also includes West Valley Partners, Ariz., Tullahoma, Tenn., Antelope Valley, Calif., and Northern Virginia.

“Our military needs America’s defense communities to support them,” ADC President Bob Ross said. “We selected Florida’s Space Coast because they are a region that consistently goes above and beyond to support service members, veterans, and military families living in their community.” The Great American Defense Communities program was launched by ADC in 2016 to recognize and celebrate the communities and regions that support military installations for their exceptional commitment to improving the lives of service members, veterans and their families. (4/6)

SpaceX Rapidly Constructing Starship’s First Florida Launch Pad and Tower (Source: Teslarati)
After restarting work on the project a few months ago, SpaceX appears to have gotten back up to speed and begun to make rapid progress on the construction of Starship’s first Florida launch pad and tower. Located at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Launch Complex 39A facilities, SpaceX has intended to construct a Starship launch site there for several years. A serious attempt was made in late 2019 but SpaceX soon abandoned the effort and redirected its energy towards Starship prototyping and a much different launch pad design.

Two years later, SpaceX’s second attempt shares only a little in common with the first. Both are to be located within the eastern half of Pad 39A’s shield-like footprint, although the specific location of the tower and launch mount has been modified. If this attempt comes to fruition, Starship’s first East Coast launch facilities will still sit just a few hundred feet away from the only SpaceX pad capable of launching Crew Dragon, Cargo Dragon, or Falcon Heavy.

Instead of continuing with an older launch pad design, Starship’s 39A facilities will likely be close to a direct copy of Starbase’s first orbital launch site (OLS), which SpaceX began constructing in earnest in late 2020. It’s safe to assume that some lessons have been learned from Starbase OLS construction and that some modifications will be made to the Florida pad’s design, but no obvious changes are thus far visible. (4/13)

Reach Space with No Rockets? NASA Agrees to Test Flight with New Launch System (Source: KING)
NASA has reached a partnership with a company to test launch a payload to suborbital space at high speed from a centrifuge-like device that requires no rocket propulsion. The ultimate goal: to establish a new way, cheaper way to send payloads into orbit. SpinLaunch announced Monday it will work with NASA to launch a payload using its Suborbital Accelerator Launch System based in New Mexico. That test launch is expected to come this year.

The device is a round steel vacuum chamber, 300-feet in diameter, attached to a launch tube. A carbon-fiber arm holds the payload, circling inside the accelerator and reaching speeds up to 5,000 mph. The launch vehicle and payloads of up to 440 pounds are then released through the launch tube. If successful, the launch vehicle will reach beyond the stratosphere before small rockets will be used to place the payload in its final orbit. By using this method, "over 70 percent of the fuel and structures that make up a typical rocket can be eliminated," SpinLaunch said. Here's a video of how the full-scale system is supposed to work. (4/13)

Satellites Improve National Reporting of Greenhouse Gases (Source: ESA)
With the climate crisis continuing to tighten its grip, nations around the world are making efforts to reduce emissions of climate warming gases. To track action, countries report their greenhouse gas emissions to the UNFCCC – the body responsible for driving global action to combat climate change. While accurate and consistent reporting is crucial, very few countries exploit Earth observation satellite data to check and improve their estimates. Scientists have now devised new ways of comparing national greenhouse gas inventories with independent measurements taken from space. (4/14)

ASTERRA Provides Analytics for Measuring Soil Moisture with Satellites (Source: ASTERRA)
ASTERRA has helped governments at the city, county, state, and federal levels understand and embrace innovative technologies to monitor infrastructure. ASTERRA is the single largest purchaser of data from the JAXA ALOS-2 satellite and both SAOCOM-1A and SAOCOM-1B satellites. ASTERRA’s solutions can simultaneously analyze up to 1,300 sq miles of underground soil moisture conditions. The technology is innovative in how it provides intelligence on areas of concern and potential failure locations, mitigating damage and improving safety.

ASTERRA’s MasterPlan, Recover, and EarthWorks products use polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) from space-based satellites to observe soil moisture content beneath the surface on Earth. After processing the PolSAR with ASTERRA-patented analytics, it provides insights measuring relative soil moisture content. This technology is used in a growing number of applications, including identifying water leaks below the surface and maintaining infrastructure, including transportation, mines, and dams. (4/14)

STARBASE Central Florida Holds Ribbon Cutting; Graduates First Class (Source: Team Orlando)
The STARBASE Central Florida officially celebrated its opening at a ribbon cutting in the University of Central Florida Partnership III Building, on the evening of its first graduation of 61 inaugural students. STARBASE Central Florida specializes in introducing students to the world of modeling, simulation, and training (MS&T) – perfectly at home in Orlando, the epicenter for MS&T. It focuses on workforce development through partnerships with industry, government, and academia. It is a part of the national STARBASE Department of Defense youth program that provides 25 hours of STEM education over five weeks for 5th graders from underserved communities. (4/14)