June 19, 2022

Pentagon Explores Using SpaceX for Rocket-Deployed Quick-Reaction Force (Source: The Intercept)
DoD envisions a future in which Elon Musk’s rockets might someday deploy a “quick reaction force” to thwart a future Benghazi-style attack, according to documents obtained by The Intercept via Freedom of Information Act request.

In October 2020, U.S. Transportation Command, or USTRANSCOM, the Pentagon office tasked with shuttling cargo to keep the American global military presence humming, announced that it was partnering with Musk’s SpaceX rocketry company to determine the feasibility of quickly blasting supplies into space and back to Earth rather than flying them through the air. (6/19)

SpaceX Launches Three Rockets in 36 Hours (Source: UPI)
SpaceX launched three missions in just over 36 hours, including two from Florida's Space Coast with most recent a two-stage Falcon 9 early Sunday. The third rocket lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport at 12:27 a.m. carrying a communications satellite for Globalstar. Earlier, the company launched 53 Starlink internet satellites at 12:09 p.m. (eastern) from Florida and then sent into space a radar satellite for the German military from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 7:19 a.m. Saturday (pacific). (6/19)

SpaceX to Its Employees: Elon Musk Is Untouchable (Source: The Street)
Some of his greatest hits, so to speak, include describing President Joe Biden as "damp sock puppet in human form," and calling Senator Elizabeth Warren "Senator Karen" in another Twitter dust-up. Musk, who has bid to acquire Twitter, but threatened to bail on the deal, posted the poo pile after Parag Agrawal, the microblogging site's CEO, offered a lengthy description of the company's efforts to remove bots and spam.

And then there was the time he tweeted a photograph of Adolph Hitler with the statement "Stop comparing me to Justin Trudeau. I had a budget." And then in 2018 Musk called British diver Vernon Unsworth, who was a diver in the Thai cave rescue operation to save a group of stranded boys, a pedophile. And then there was the tweet that launched a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission where Musk said "am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured."

All right, so there seems to be a pattern here--and we haven't even mentioned the unflattering image he tweeted of Microsoft  founder Bill Gates side-by-side with a pregnant man or his plan to reverse Twitter's ban of former President Donald Trump. What's worse, "is that Musk seems only to continually overcommit himself and does not have the time or energy to devote to stabilize SpaceX's culture." (6/18)

Spaceport America Looking More and More Like a Mirage (Source: Albuquerque Journal)
Back in May, Virgin Galactic announced another delay, to the disappointment of Michelle Lujan Grisham and her predecessors. It was less than a year ago that Spaceport was the scene of high fives and happy dances celebrating the awesome wonderfulness of – what exactly? A replication of what NASA accomplished six decades ago? Almost 20 years and a quarter of a billion dollars after the “breakthrough” concept/scam was first proposed we have, what, the world’s most expensive roller coaster?

Politicians in Santa Fe promised this was New Mexico’s foot in the door for a whole new wonderful industry, space travel. However just like the junked state supercomputer and the revived Rail Runner, what is delivered is significantly less than what was promised.

What really happened in the skies over New Mexico? Was it true space travel? Will it ever develop into space travel? These were the hard questions never asked, let alone answered. To have anything other than a simple joyride, a spacecraft must get to orbit, and a useable orbit at that. One of the little-known realities is that in orbital mechanics, it isn’t how high you get, it is how fast you go. Sadly, Virgin Galactic falls way short of both. (6/19)

Roscosmos Offers to Take Control of Sea Launch (Source: Roscosmos)
Director General of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin today touched on the topic of Sea Launch, whose assets are now controlled by S7. The complex is in satisfactory condition, but it will take tens of billions of rubles to prepare it for the Soyuz 5 rocket. S7 Space did not have that kind of money.

Roskosmos proposed to transfer it to the state so that the State Corporation would later find an opportunity to restore it. S7 still has no solution on this issue. “We would like to help a private company [S7 Space] create their own business, but their dreams were shattered by everyday life. We hope that they will come to us for negotiations.” (6/18)

Potentially Alive 830-Million-Year-Old Organisms Found Trapped in Ancient Rock (Source: Science Alert)
An incredible discovery has just revealed a potential new source for understanding life on ancient Earth. A team of geologists has just discovered tiny remnants of prokaryotic and algal life – trapped inside crystals of halite dating back to 830 million years ago.

This absolutely has implications for Mars, where deposits can be found that have similar compositions to the Browne Formation, the researchers said. Their research shows how such organisms can be identified without destroying or disrupting the samples, which could give us a new set of tools for identifying them – and better understanding Earth's own history, too. (5/16)

NASA, ESA Discuss Sending First European to Moon (Source: Space Daily)
The European Space Agency and NASA on Wednesday talked up the prospect of putting the first European on the Moon, as they signed a deal strengthening collaboration for future lunar exploration. The space agencies had already agreed that three European astronauts would fly on the Orion spacecraft to NASA's Gateway, a space station that will orbit the Moon as part of the Artemis program.

Now it seems one of those astronauts will go a step further. "We look forward to having an ESA astronaut join us on the surface of the Moon and continuing to build on our longstanding, critical partnership," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said after attending an ESA council meeting in the Netherlands. (6/15)

Hundreds of SpaceX Employees Signed Letter Denouncing Elon Musk’s Behavior (Source: The Verge)
It took less than a day and a half for more than 400 SpaceX employees to sign onto an open letter criticizing CEO Elon Musk after it was posted and shared by some of their co-workers in an internal chat. Just 32 hours after it was shared, the internal landing page for the document was taken offline, around the same time that a group of employees was fired for their involvement in crafting and sharing the letter, a move that may have been a violation of labor law.

While the document ultimately got 404 signatures, many more people reached out to those who shared the letter on Signal, in person, and through Teams, saying they would sign if they could afford to get fired at the moment, according to a person involved. In 2017, another Musk company, Tesla, fired an employee for distributing pamphlets encouraging employees to unionize. (6/17)

Roscosmos Plans to Launch Satellite for Angola in September (Source: TASS)
Launch of the Angosat-2 satellite for Angola is planned for the the first third of September. Russian and Angola agreed to build the Angosat-2 satellite to replace the lost Angosat-1 satellite, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on December 26, 2017. Communication with the satellite was lost the next day. The new satellite will be designed and built by Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems. (6/6)

Relativity Space's First 3D-Printed Rocket Stage Arrives in Florida Ahead of Launch (Source: Florida Today)
The 3D-printed booster for Relativity Space's first Terran 1 rocket arrived in Florida over the weekend, marking a critical milestone for the company still targeting this year for its first launch. On Monday, more than a dozen technicians carefully monitored the nearly imperceptible movement of the rocket's first stage from an extended semitrailer onto mounting hardware in a hangar at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. The 80-foot first stage arrived from the company's Long Beach, California, headquarters just a day before on Sunday. (6/7)

IPO of SpaceX’s Starlink Satellite Internet Business is Still 3 or 4 Years Away (Source: CNBC)
Elon Musk last week told SpaceX employees the company isn’t likely to take its Starlink satellite internet business public until 2025 or later, CNBC has learned. The latest timeline signals another IPO delay and comes despite repeated questions from a variety of investors over the years about owning a piece of SpaceX. Musk emphasized, as he has previously, that the Starlink business needs to be “in a smooth sailing situation” with “good predictability” before it goes public. (6/7)

Study Assesses the Use of Several C-Band Sub-Frequencies by Satellite Networks (Source: Euroconsult)
Euroconsult has warned that future satellite capacity for global communication and television services could become more restricted by the end of the decade. A new report has explored the current and future supply and use of the extended C-Band, the planned C-Band and the 7025-7075 Mhz Band for satellite services.

It has considered for each band the uplink and downlink frequencies, including the frequency bands 3400-3700 and 6425-6725 MHz (‘extended C-band’), 4500-4800 and 6725-7025 MHz (‘planned C-band’) and 7025-7075 MHz. The independent study focused specifically on satellite communication and television services for member countries of the Arab Spectrum Management Group (ASMG), the African Telecommunication Union (ATU), the European Conference of Posts and Telecommunications (CEPT) and Russia.

Of the 54 satellites identified as having coverage over those geographies, 51 satellites have payloads in the extended C-band of which less than half (21) of the satellites currently include a downlink and uplink capability in extended C-band, while the other 28 satellites use extended C-band only for downlink. For the remaining two satellites, the uplink frequency band was not possible to be identified. Only three satellites in the meantime currently make use of the planned C-band. (6/7)

NanoAvionics and Gama to Set Sails in Space (Source: Space Daily)
Gama, a French space startup, has contracted mission integrator NanoAvionics for a demonstration of Gama's solar sails propulsion system in low Earth orbit (LEO). Under the mission agreement, NanoAvionics will provide its 6U nanosatellite bus, payload integration services, a satellite testing campaign, launch services and satellite operations. The launch of the "Alpha" nanosatellite is scheduled for the second half of this year.

Gama's range of solar sails are aimed at commercial companies and research organisations looking for a cost-effective and less complex setup and propulsion system to explore deep space through small satellites. Using nano- or microsatellites propelled through space by solar sails would allow them to travel greater distances without requiring large amount of stored fuel. (5/26)

UK Takes the Lead in Exoplanet Mission with £30 Million Investment (Source: Gov.UK)
The UK Government will invest £30 million to secure the UK’s leading role in developing a space telescope to explore exoplanets. Science Minister George Freeman said: "This is an incredibly important commitment for UK space science and technology, marking a major milestone for the National Space Strategy and boosting our ambitions to grow our £16.5 billion commercial space sector."

"By investing £30 million and taking the helm of the entire Ariel consortium – the first time in a decade that we have secured leadership for a mission of this magnitude – we are putting the UK at the heart of international space research, providing new opportunities for space businesses and academics across the country." (6/18)

Space ‘Underpins All Instruments of National Power,’ Raymond Says (Source: Air Force Magazine)
Calling space the “critical doorway to war” for all the other armed forces, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond said: “Whether you’re in the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines, all of your force structure assumes that you have access to space." ... “And if we don’t have access to space, we don’t have enough ships, airplanes, tanks, Airmen, soldiers, sailors, Marines, to do what our nation is asking you to do.” (6/17)

Inside Space Force Boot Camp (Source: CNN)
The US Space Force has hit a critical milestone: dedicated basic training for its early recruits. As dawn breaks on Day 38 of basic training at Joint Base San Antonio, a bugle playing reveille blasts over the loudspeakers as a sergeant can be heard screaming, “Are you prepared to join the world’s greatest space force? Then hurry up! Let’s go, let’s go.” Click here. (6/17)

NASA Insists All Is Well as the Webb Telescope's Mirror Gets Dinged (Source: TIME)
In some ways, the last place you’d want to put the James Webb Space Telescope is, well, in space. If you owned a $10 billion car, you wouldn’t leave it out in a hail storm, and while there’s no hail in space, there are plenty of micrometeoroids—high speed debris no bigger than a dust grain but moving so fast they can pack a true destructive wallop. Every day, millions of such fragments rain down on Earth, but they incinerate in the atmosphere long before they reach the ground.

The Webb, parked in a spot in space 1.6 million km (1 million mi.) from Earth, has no such protection. And as NASA and others have reported in the past week, its mirror—the heart of the space telescope—has already been dinged five times by tiny space flecks, the most recent of which has done real, but correctable, damage. (6/17)

Behold the Magnetar, Nature’s Ultimate Superweapon (Source: Ars Technica)
If you think black holes are the scariest things in the Universe, I have something to share with you. There are balls of dead matter no bigger than a city yet shining a hundred times brighter than the Sun that send out flares of X-rays visible across the galaxy. Their interiors are made of superfluid subatomic particles, and they have cores of exotic and unknown states of matter. Their lifetime is only a few thousand years. And here's the best part: They have the strongest magnetic fields ever observed, so strong they can melt you—literally dissociate you down to the atomic level—from a thousand kilometers away. (6/17)

Wildfire Shuts Down Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona (Source: Space.com)
A fast-burning wildfire shut down all operations at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, home to one of the largest collections of astronomical instruments in the U.S. The National Science Foundation, which runs the observatory, made the announcement Thursday as the Contreras Fire approached observatory buildings. (6/17)

Speedcast Plotting Major Satellite Capacity Expansion (Source: Space News) 
Remote communications provider Speedcast is preparing to buy another sizable chunk of satellite capacity as demand soars beyond pre-pandemic levels. Speedcast added 13 gigabits per second (Gbps) of capacity from satellite operators to its international network in late May, giving it a record 30 Gbps of bandwidth to primarily serve cruise and energy markets. (6/17)

Impulse Space Raises an Additional $10 Million for Orbital Transfer Vehicles (Source: Space News)
In-space transportation company Impulse Space, which raised $20 million in a seed round earlier this year, announced June 17 it raised another $10 million to help accelerate work on orbital transfer vehicles. Impulse Space said it raised $10 million from venture fund Lux Capital, which invests in “frontier technologies” like space. The company announced a $20 million seed round March 30 led by Founders Fund. (6/17)

VP Hosts NASA for Family STEM Event, Disney Pixar’s Lightyear Viewing (Source: NASA)
Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff hosted an evening of NASA STEM activities Friday at the Naval Observatory for military families and local students and their families, which included a special screening of Disney Pixar’s Lightyear. NASA provided three hands-on STEM activities to inspire students from 4th to 8th grade to engage with the science, technology, engineering and math behind NASA’s missions. (6/17)