FAA Environmental Review to Allow
Texas Starship Orbital Launches After Changes (Source: Space
News)
An FAA environmental review has concluded that SpaceX can conduct
orbital launches of its Starship vehicle from its Texas test site, but
only after completing dozens of mitigations to reduce impacts on the
environment and the public. The FAA issued June 13, after nearly half a
year of delays, what is formally known as a mitigated Finding of No
Significant Impact (FONSI) for SpaceX’s proposal to perform orbital
launches of its Starship vehicle, atop its Super Heavy booster, from
Boca Chica, Texas.
The mitigated FONSI means that SpaceX is cleared, from an environmental
standpoint, to carry out those launches once it implements more than 75
measures to mitigate environmental effects. Among those mitigations is
changes in closures in the road that leads to both the SpaceX site,
called Starbase, as well as a public beach. SpaceX will provide more
advanced notice of closures for testing and launches. It will be
prohibited from closing access during 18 holidays and will be limited
to five weekend closures per year.
Closures will be limited to 500 hours a year for normal operations and
up to 300 more hours “to address anomalies.” The review is for up to
five orbital launches per year, as well as five suborbital launches and
ground tests. Other mitigations include changes in lighting at the
facility, monitoring of wildlife in the area by a “qualified biologist”
and use of shuttles to transport employees to and from Starbase to
limit traffic. In addition, SpaceX modified its proposal to eliminate
infrastructure such as a desalination plant and a power plant that the
company says it no longer needs to support launch operations. (6/13)
SpaceX Faces NASA Hurdle for Starship
Backup Launch Pad (Source: Reuters)
NASA wants Elon Musk's SpaceX to ensure its plan to launch its
next-generation Starship rocket from Florida would not put at risk
nearby launch infrastructure critical to the International Space
Station, a senior space agency official told Reuters. The new hurdle
further complicates and could potentially delay the launch plan for the
rocket, which faces an already protracted regulatory review of its
primary launch site in Texas.
Musk wants to show customers that Starship, which he sees as humanity's
path to Mars, can successfully reach orbit, a long-delayed pivotal
milestone in the rocket's development. SpaceX's proposals to address
NASA's concerns, which include a plan to be able to launch U.S.
astronauts from a different launchpad in Florida, could take months to
get agency approval. SpaceX last year accelerated construction of an
orbital Starship launchpad at its facilities on the Cape Canaveral
Spaceport.
SpaceX has already invested heavily in building a Starship pad some
hundreds of feet from pad 39A's launch tower. It has responded by
pitching NASA on a plan to outfit its other Florida pad - Launch
Complex 40, five miles away on Space Force property - with the means to
launch U.S. astronauts, according to a person familiar with the plans.
The company is also studying ways to "harden" 39A, or make the
launchpad more resilient to both an explosive Starship accident and the
immense forces emitted from a successful Starship liftoff, Lueders
said. (6/13)
NASA to Ask Industry for Enabling
Technologies for Future Near-Hypersonic Passenger Aircraft
(Source: Military Aerospace)
NASA announced plans Wednesday to kick off a new project to develop
enabling technologies for future near-hypersonic commercial passenger
aircraft that travel at speeds of nearly five times the speed of sound.
Officials at Glenn Research Center in Cleveland say they will issue a
formal solicitation in August for the NASA High-Speed Endoatmospheric
Commercial Vehicle Conceptual Design Study and Technology Roadmaps
Development project. (6/10)
Venus Aerospace Unveils Mach 9
Hypersonic Spaceplane Stargazer (Source: Space Daily)
Venus Aerospace, a startup developing hypersonic aircraft, introduced
the "Stargazer", the company's first conceptual vehicle design, at the
Up.Summit in Bentonville, Arkansas. The Venus Vehicle Engineering Team
has been working on this iteration since the company's founding in
2020. Backed by leading Venture Capitalists and with $1M in government
funding, Venus has since raised over $33M to build a Mach 9 hypersonic
drone and Mach 9 spaceplane, both capable of one-hour global travel.
(6/8)
Women in Space Analogues Demonstrate
More Sustainable Leadership (Source: Space Daily)
A new study based on Mars Desert Research Station commanders' reports
reveals differences in female and male leadership behaviour. Although
both genders are task-focused, women tend to be more positive. The
genders also differ in their approach toward their team - while men
focus on accomplishments, women emphasise mutual support. According to
the author of the study, Inga Popovaite, a sociologist at Kaunas
University of Technology (KTU) in Lithuania, the findings suggest that
women may be better suited for long-term space missions.
According to the researcher, as of 2021, only three women have served
as commanders in the International Space Station during two decades of
its operations. Although the space is becoming more diverse, little is
known about gender differences in leadership in isolated, confined, and
extreme environments. (6/10)
The Women at the Forefront of New
Zealand's Space Industry (Source: New Zealand Herald)
She was 26 and working as an engineer in the petroleum industry in
Western Australia in 2019. "Just looking up at the night sky at all the
planets and the stars [wondering] what's going on out there in the
universe, is pretty cool. "I had an epiphany one day that while they
need engineers in the petroleum industry, they also need them in the
space industry.
First, she looked up the local observatory and started volunteering
there. "I had my eye on what was happening overseas - all these awesome
impressive rocket launches going to space - but then I heard about
Rocket Lab back home doing impressive things. "It opened up my eyes to
see actually we can do this, Kiwis can work in the space sector. And I
started basically charting a bit of a path to get there." She's now a
project engineer for Rocket Lab - managing changes on the Electron
launch vehicle from its initial concept until it is flying to space.
(6/4)
Rocket Lab Selected by Ball Aerospace
to Power NASA's GLIDE Spacecraft (Source: Space Daily)
Rocket Lab has been selected by Ball Aerospace to manufacture the Solar
Array Panel (SAP) to power NASA's Global Lyman-Alpha Imager of Dynamic
Exosphere (GLIDE) mission spacecraft planned to launch in 2025. GLIDE
is a heliophysics mission intended to study variability in Earth's
atmosphere. The SAP will utilize SolAero by Rocket Lab's
high-efficiency, radiation-hardened, quadruple-junction Z4J solar
cells, laid down on carbon composite facesheet panels manufactured at
the company's facilities in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The GLIDE spacecraft will launch with another Rocket Lab-powered
spacecraft, also built by Ball Aerospace, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange
1 (SWFO-L1). SWFO-L1 is a heliophysics mission that will collect solar
wind data and coronal imagery to meet NOAA's operational requirements
to monitor and forecast solar storm activity. (6/10)
The Giant Black Hole at the Center of
Our Galaxy Isn’t All That Gentle (Source: Grid)
The first snapshot of the supermassive black hole at the center of the
Milky Way showed a placid “gentle giant,” but astronomers now say our
galaxy instead hides more of a sleeping monster. An international team
in May released the first images of the jumbo black hole, called
Sagittarius A*, some 4.1 million times heavier than the sun, in
simultaneous news conferences worldwide.
Astronomers lucked out to catch Sagittarius A* having a quiet decade,
it turns out. And Earth is lucky to be close enough to see it — but not
too close. The image showed a red-ringed darkness, a view of
superheated particles zipping around the stark “event horizon”
surrounding the black hole from which even light can’t escape. Peeks at
the black hole provide a check on Albert Einstein’s predictions of how
gravity bends both space and time at its most extreme, and offer
insight into how its encircling ring behaves at temperatures far higher
than anything seen anywhere else.
In reality, say astronomers, we are only here to see it because Earth
is far enough away from the Milky Way’s center to have not been fried
by one of the black hole’s violent past outbursts. (6/13)
Evolution Space to Launch Xenesis
Constellation (Source: Space News)
Launch startup Evolution Space signed a memorandum of understanding to
launch a small satellite constellation for optical communications
startup Xenesis. Under the agreement, Evolution Space will conduct 5
suborbital and 25 orbital launches for Xenesis starting in 2025 using
small launch vehicles Evolution Space is developing. The deal has a
potential value of $120 million if the agreement becomes a contract.
Evolution, originally called Sugarhouse Aerospace, was founded in Salt
Lake City in 2018. Since rebranding one year ago, the company has
assembled a staff of 10 people, which it plans to double within a year.
“We’re solid propulsion geeks. We build every piece of our rockets”
from the propulsion to starter pellets, Heller said. (6/10)
AST SpaceMobile's BlueWalker 3 Gets
Launch Window (Source: Space News)
SpaceX plans to launch the prototype for AST SpaceMobile’s
cellphone-compatible broadband constellation in the week of Aug. 15,
the Texas-based startup announced. The launch window announcement comes
days after AST SpaceMobile CEO and chair Abel Avellan revealed the
BlueWalker 3 satellite had successfully conducted end-to-end tests. “We
also got the satellite fueled for our planned summer launch,” Avellan
tweeted on Friday.
The 1,500-kilogram satellite has a 64-square-meter phased array antenna
that is designed to unfold in space to connect standard smartphones and
other devices at broadband speeds. The startup has an experimental
license for in-orbit Blue Walker 3 tests that will help it configure
ground equipment and software for significantly larger operational
satellites called BlueBird, which AST SpaceMobile expects to start
deploying next year. (6/13)
DoD Modifies Constellation Plan
(Source: Space News)
The Pentagon's Space Development Agency (SDA) is changing plans for a
series of experimental satellites. The SDA is looking to acquire as
many as 10 satellites to host military payloads for experiments in low
Earth orbit through a project called the NExT experimental testbed. It
replaces an earlier plan, called T1DES, for 18 satellites with
experimental payloads that would be integrated into the Transport Layer
Tranche 1 broadband constellation. (6/13)
GAO: CASIS Not Making Full Use of
Advisory Committee (Source: Space News)
The GAO found that the organization that runs the portion of the ISS
designated a national lab is not making full use of an advisory
committee. The report last week said that while CASIS established a
User Advisory Committee in 2020 in response to an independent review,
it was not seeking input from the committee on resource allocations or
providing enough information on payloads going to the station. NASA
said it would work with CASIS on those issues. (6/13)
Russia May Extend Cosmonaut Stay on
ISS to Accommodate Belarusian (Source: TASS)
A Russian cosmonaut may have to spend an extra six months on the ISS to
accommodate a flight by a Belarusian cosmonaut. One of the cosmonauts
on the Soyuz MS-23 mission launching next spring would have to stay on
the station to allow a Belarusian cosmonaut, yet to be selected, to go
to the station in the fall for a short stay and return on Soyuz MS-23.
A similar situation unfolded last year, when NASA's Mark Vande Hei and
Roscosmos' Pyotr Dubrov spent a year on the ISS to allow Roscosmos to
send up a filmmaker and actress for a short stay. (6/13)
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