June 11, 2022

Methane Emissions Detected Over Offshore Platform in the Gulf of Mexico (Source: ESA)
A team of scientists have used satellite data to detect methane plumes from an offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the first time that individual methane plumes from offshore platforms are mapped from space.

Methane is the second most abundant anthropogenic greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide yet is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, within a 100-year time period. The mitigation of methane emissions from fossil fuel extraction, processing and transport is one of the most effective ways to slow global warming.

Satellite-based methods have proved instrumental for the detection and quantification of these type of emissions. However, despite the rapid development of satellite-based methane plume detection methods over land, there is still an important observational gap regarding emissions coming from offshore oil and gas operations – which accounts for roughly 30% of global production. (6/9)

China Releases Most Detailed Geological Map of the Moon to Date (Source: Physics World)
Scientists in China have released a new geologic map of the Moon that is the most detailed yet. Created by a team led by the Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the image was made using data from China’s suite of Chang’e lunar exploration missions as well as information from other international organizations.

The map is to a scale of 1:2500000 and includes 12,341 impact craters, 81 impact basins, 17 rock types and 14 types of structures. The colors on the image represent different periods on the lunar geologic timescale and the map also includes the locations of the Chang’e and Apollo landing sites. In 2020 the United States Geological Survey Astrogeology Science Center released a lunar map with a scale of 1:5000000. It took into account information from six Apollo-era regional maps along with more recent data from lunar satellite missions. (6/9)

'Software Update' Delays Rocket Lab's Moon Mission (Source: Stuff)
Rocket Lab’s Moon mission has been delayed for a third time, this time without a new launch date being provided by the company. Rocket Lab has been expecting to launch a satellite into a lunar orbit for NASA during a launch window that opened on May 31 and which closes on June 22. But the launch was pushed back from May 31 to last Monday, and then to this coming Monday without explanation.

NASA said in a brief statement overnight on Thursday that Rocket Lab was no longer targeting a June 13 launch and a revised schedule “will be provided as soon as possible.” In an apparent explanation for the delay, it said the mission’s flight software was being updated. Rocket Lab spokeswoman Morgan Bailey said it was “undertaking a final flight software update in preparation for the mission.” (6/10)

Northrop Grumman Completes Manufacturing Artemis III SLS Booster Motors (Source: NASA)
The 10 Space Launch System (SLS) rocket motor segments that will help launch the Artemis III crew on their mission to land on the Moon are complete. Teams finished manufacturing the segments for the mission on May 18, 2022. Each of the twin solid rocket boosters is made up of five motor segments that will be stacked with the rest of the booster parts before flight. The twin boosters supply 7.2 million pounds of thrust - more than 75 percent of total thrust for the first two minutes of flight.

Each SLS solid rocket booster has three major assemblies: forward skirt, motor, and aft skirt. The motor segments will be stored at Northrop Grumman’s Promontory, Utah, facility until they are transported  to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where they will be integrated with the booster’s forward and aft assemblies and avionics, then stacked on the mobile launcher in the Vehicle Assembly Building for flight. (6/8)

Engineers Power Up Crew Module for First Artemis Mission with Astronauts (Source: NASA)
The Orion crew module for Artemis II was powered on for the first time May 27 inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This capsule will carry astronauts on a trip around the Moon during the first crewed Artemis mission and helps set the stage for future lunar landing missions through Artemis.

With initial power-on complete, the crew module will undergo a three-part test over several months which includes applying power to each of the eight power and data units that help provide communication between Orion’s flight computers to its components. In addition, teams will begin installing the forward bay cover, which protect the top part of the crew module as the capsule blazes back through Earth’s atmosphere at speeds of up to 25,000 mph at the end of its mission. (6/10)

Gilat Receives Over $8 Million Follow-On Order for Support of Low Earth Orbit Constellation (Source: Gilat)
Gilat Satellite Networks has received an over $8 million dollar follow-on order for support of gateways of a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation. Gilat’s subsidiary, Wavestream, was chosen as the sole provider to supply Gateway Solid State Power Amplifiers (SSPAs) to a leading satellite operator to support the LEO constellation gateways. The order is above and beyond last year’s previously announced $50 million contract, which is currently being delivered. (6/6)

AstroAccess Ambassadors Complete Two New Zero-G Flights, Applications for November 2022 Flight Closing on June 17! (Source: AstroAccess)
Mission: AstroAccess is proud to announce a new partnership with the Aurelia Institute, an innovative non-profit dedicated to building humanity’s future in space. On May 22, 2022, Aurelia conducted the Horizon 2022 Zero Gravity flight. Aurelia worked with our long-time partner the Zero Gravity Corporation to make this first Zero-G mission of the Aurelia Gateway Program possible. AstroAccess Ambassadors Apurva Varia, Dr. Mona Minkara, Viktoria Modesta, Centra (“Ce-Ce”) Mazyck, along with AstroAccess interpreter Justin Baldi, were part of the twenty-five member team of fliers that experienced twenty parabolas of reduced gravity, including two Martian, two Lunar, and sixteen zero gravity intervals. (6/8)

Is the FAA to Blame for Starship Delays? (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.c0m)
Starship is getting closer and closer to its first orbital test flight but is the FAA solely the reason for the delays? We break down the challenges SpaceX has been having preparing for this monumental flight. Click here. (6/6)

The Alien Hunter’s Playbook Is Getting a Cutting-Edge Rewrite (Source: Daily Beast)
We’ve been searching for aliens in a serious way for 60 years now. That search is quickly expanding. And it’s compelling scientists to define, a lot more clearly, what evidence of an alien civilization would even look like. The definition just a got a lot broader, thanks to a study posted May 31 that lists a bunch of new “technosignatures”—things in space that could signify the existence of alien technology and thus a whole civilization, either living or extinct.

Pollution from alien farms and factories. Giant inhabitable structures containing entire stars. Explosive bursts of radiation from the engines of high-tech spacecraft belonging to some other sentient species. Those are just some of the signatures on the new list, compiled by a team led by Jacob Haqq-Misra, an astrobiologist with the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in Seattle.

The new study, which has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in the science journal Acta Astronautica, reads like an outline for the first act of a science-fiction film, where daring explorers glimpse fleeting evidence that humanity isn’t alone in the cosmos. But the study isn’t fiction. Synthesizing the input of dozens of researchers across disciplines, it’s serious science–and it could help to guide multi-billion-dollar telescope surveys and space-probe missions for decades to come. (6/10)

Asteroid Samples Contain 'Clues to Origin of Life' (Source: Space Daily)
Asteroid dust collected by a Japanese space probe contains organic material that shows some of the building blocks of life on Earth may have been formed in space, scientists said Friday. Pristine material from the asteroid Ryugu was brought back to Earth in 2020 after a six-year mission to the celestial body around 300 million kilometers away.

But scientists are only just beginning to discover its secrets in the first studies on small portions of the 5.4 grams (0.2 ounces) of dust and dark, tiny rocks. In one paper published Friday, a group of researchers said they had discovered "amino acids and other organic matter that could give clues to the origin of life on Earth." "The discovery of protein-forming amino acids is important, because Ryugu has not been exposed to the Earth's biosphere, like meteorites, and as such their detection proves that at least some of the building blocks of life on Earth could have been formed in space environments," the study said.

The team said they found 23 different types of amino acid while examining the sample collected by Japan's Hayabusa-2 probe in 2019. "The Ryugu sample has the most primitive characteristics of any natural sample available to mankind, including meteorites," the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said in a statement. It is believed that part of the material was created about five million years after the birth of the solar system and has not been heated above 100 degrees Celsius (210 degrees Fahrenheit). (6/10)

SpaceX Building Airline-Type Flight Ops For Launch (Source: Aviation Week)
When SpaceX debuted the Block 5 version of its Falcon 9 rocket in 2018, it expected to fly the reusable boosters 10 times before taking them out of service for major refurbishment. But last summer, the company quietly moved the goalpost. “We got to 10 [flights] and the vehicles were still looking really good, so we started the effort to qualify for 15,” Jon Edwards, SpaceX vice president of Falcon launch vehicles and Falcon engineering, told Aviation Week during a series of interviews with top company managers.

Meanwhile, the time between Falcon 9 launches continues to shrink, with SpaceX now aiming to fly from one of its three launch sites at least once every five days. On April 29, the company launched a booster that had landed just 21 days earlier, besting its previous turnaround record by six days. This month, the Falcon fleet leader will attempt a 13th flight.

“Our goal is to be able to launch at a five-day rate or faster,” Morris says. “To do that, we look at every piece of the process flow—booster maintenance, the launchpad, recovery team, fairings—and look how to optimize and speed that up. We have this approach where we iteratively improve each process and shrink the time from launch to launch. That’s how we’ve been able to do this.” (6/10)

Boeing Touts $2.7 Billion Annual Economic Impact in Alabama (Source: AL.com)
Boeing announced Tuesday that it contributes more than $2.7 billion annually to Alabama’s economic growth, citing a study the company commissioned. That includes more than 9,000 direct and indirect jobs across the state. Boeing’s Alabama presence is primarily in Huntsville. In 2021, Boeing’s economic output was $2.731 billion of which $663.2 million represents earnings for 9,402 direct and indirect jobs.

That year, earnings generated $61.5 million in tax revenue, including $35 million in state and $26.5 million in local taxes. The state’s revenues comprised $21.8 million individual income tax, $11.4 million sales tax, and $1.8 million property tax. Local county and municipality revenues came from $14.2 million sales tax and about $12.3 million property tax. The company also made in-state, non-payroll purchases and expenditures of $979.1 million bringing the company’s total in-state expenditure to approximately $1.3 billion. (6/7)

Space Force Collaborates with Norway on Polar Communications Satellites (Source: Space News)
The Space Force has delivered the first of two military communications payloads that will launch on Norwegian satellites next year. The $1.3 billion Enhanced Polar Systems-Recapitalization (EPS-R) payloads, developed by Northrop Grumman, will fly to highly elliptical orbits on two Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission satellites by Space Norway scheduled to lift off next year on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base. The EPS-R payloads will provide secure communications services for U.S. forces operating in the north polar region. (6/10)

NASA UAP Study Embraces High Risk, High Impact Approach (Source: Space News)
NASA says it is embracing "high-risk, high-impact" research with a new study to examine unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). NASA announced the study Thursday, saying the agency will examine what data is available about UAPs and what data is needed to fill gaps, but not attempt to determine what can explain sightings of UAPs. The study will start this fall and last about nine months, with a budget not expected to exceed $100,000. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, said the study is an example of risky research with potentially high payoffs that NASA should be doing more of. (6/10)

Stratolaunch Test Cut Short at Mojave Spaceport (Source: GeekWire)
Stratolaunch cut short the latest test flight of its giant aircraft Thursday. The flight, slated to last as long as three and a half hours, ended less than 90 minutes after takeoff from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The company said that it "encountered a test result that made it clear we would not achieve all objectives for this flight" but did not elaborate on the specific problem. The flight was the sixth for the plane, originally built to be a air-launch platform but now planned to support hypersonics research. (6/10)

More Cryptonauts To Be Announced (Source: Parabolic Arc)
MoonDAO is set to announce the winners of trips to space on Saturday. The company is running a contest in which winners mint a non-fungible token (NFT) that essentially serves as a ticket in a lottery. MoonDAO said it has purchased several tickets from Blue Origin for a suborbital flight aboard New Shepard.

MoonDAO is not alone in running contests for space trips using cryptocurrency. A 28-year old civil production engineer from Brazil named Victor Correa Hespanha claimed the title of the world’s first cryptonaut when he flew to space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle last Saturday. To reach space, Hespanha bought a non-fungible token (NFT) for a contest run by the Crypto Space Agency. The Space Coin Project has launched a similar project to launch cryptonauts into space. (6/10)

India Transfers ISRO Satellites to Commercial Arm (Source: CNBC-TV18)
The Indian government is transferring 10 communications satellites from the space agency ISRO to its commercial arm, NewSpace India. The transfer, announced this week, will allow NewSpace India to adjust pricing for transponders on those satellites to match market demand. It is part of a broader privatization effort for India's space program as the government seeks to make greater use of commercial capabilities. (6/10)

Canada Lacks National Space Strategy (Source: SpaceQ)
A new report argues that Canada is lacking a national space policy and strategy. The white paper by the Canadian Global Affairs Institute says that space is out of sight and out of mind for both the general public and policymakers, who have not developed an overarching national space policy and related documents. The Canadian equivalent of the National Space Council, the Space Advisory Board, has been dormant for three years. The report also cautioned that Canada is dependent on allies for much of its critical space capabilities. (6/10)

NASA Student Business Competition Gets Boost by White House Initiative (Source: Parabolic Arc)
NASA’s Minority University Education and Research Program (MUREP) Innovation and Tech Transfer Idea Competition (MITTIC), a Shark Tank-style competition for students at minority-serving institutions, is officially included in the 2022 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU) Scholar Recognition Program. The program is part of a White House initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity.

MITTIC is a customized, condensed version of NASA’s MUREP idea competition, which began with a 2021 scholar cohort. The competition, referred to as Mini MITTIC, challenges teams of HBCU scholars to develop selected NASA ideas for potential uses in the commercial space industry. NASA has participated in the White House initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity since inception of student programming in 2014. However, Mini MITTIC establishes a formal program that includes NASA in the offerings provided to scholars. (6/10)

Efforts Continue to Fully Deploy Lucy Solar Array (Source: Space News)
Leaders of NASA’s Lucy asteroid mission are increasingly confident that the mission can continue as planned even if ongoing efforts to fully deploy and latch a solar array don’t succeed. Engineers have been studying for months one of two circular solar arrays that did not fully deploy and latch into place after the spacecraft’s launch in October 2021. They concluded that a lanyard used to pull open the solar array lost tension during the deployment process, causing the lanyard to wrap around the motor shaft.

On May 9, controllers issued commands to run both the primary and backup motors for the solar array deployment process simultaneously, hoping that a harder pull would be sufficient to restore tension in the lanyard and continue deployment of the array. The spacecraft similarly ran both motors three times since then. That tensioning is a positive sign even though the array has not latched into place. “It makes it likely that, even if we don’t get the thing latched, we’ll be able to fly the mission as-is,” he said, noting the array, in its current configuration, is generating more than 90% of its planned power. (6/10)