February 17, 2023

Astranis Wins Phase III SBIR (Source: Space Daily)
San Francisco-based geostationary communications satellite operator and manufacturer Astranis Space Technologies announced on February 14, that they won a U.S. Space Force contract worth up to $10 million to integrate the U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD) Protected Tactical Waveform (PTW) using Astranis satellite assets. The Phase III Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract consists of a $4.5 million award to implement the Protected Tactical Waveform using the existing Astranis Software-Defined Radio satellite payload and comes with a $6 million option for an on-orbit demonstration. PTW is a government waveform used by the military to transmit voice and data. (2/16)

Umbra to Provide Maxar Direct Access to SAR Constellation (Source: Space Daily)
Maxar Technologies has signed a contract for dedicated access to Umbra' Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery constellation, the companies announced February 14. SAR satellites are able to see past clouds, smoke, and complete darkness using the company's advanced resolution, licensed down to 13 centimeters. (2/15)

Astroscale Wins Funding for Exploration of Future Space-Based Space Domain Awareness Missions (Source: Space Daily)
Astroscale has won funding from the MOD Defence Science and Technology Laboratory funding to explore space-based space domain awareness (SB-SDA) mission concepts for launch in the 2030s. Astroscale Ltd. formed the winning consortium teaming with Raytheon NORSS and SJE Space Ltd for the project. The aim of the study is to advance knowledge of space-based space domain awareness (SB-SDA) through a comprehensive review of the current technologies and techniques that are used in SB-SDA missions and an analysis of how these will progress over the coming decades. (2/16)

Former NFL Football Player Revamps NASA Air Filter Invention (Source: Space Daily)
From grimy dirt and dangerous bacteria to tiny spores and pollen grains, air filters remove harmful particles from the air we breathe. But changing filters once they're soiled can prove time-consuming, costly, and complicated - especially in space. On spacecraft, air filter systems must be cleaned constantly. To get the job done easier, NASA invented a technology called the Multi-Stage Filtration System, designed to limit the number of replacement filters NASA needs to bring to space and reduce the time astronauts spend maintaining them.

Now, a former NFL Raiders player is using this long-lasting, automated technology to improve air filtration here on Earth. Aaron Wallace has licensed NASA's filtration system and launched a new startup named Onedrus, aimed at serving large institutions with hard-to-access filters in multiple buildings, like schools and universities. (2/16)

D-Orbit Signs Launch Contract with Patriot Infovention (Source: Space Daily)
On the final day of the Global Space and Technology Convention of Singapore, the space transportation and logistics company D-Orbit has announced the signing of a launch contract with Patriot Infovention, a Thai software company specializing in government assistance services, support and assistance, data management and cyber security. This satellite represents the first foray of Patriot Infovention in the space industry.

The contract covers the launch and deployment of LOGSATS (LOra Gateway Service and Aircraft Tracking Satellite), a 3U CubeSat manufactured by Patriot Infovention. The satellite will demonstrate both the first Thai space-based Internet-of-Things (IoT) communications systems and aviation monitoring system of Thailand. (2/17)

Japan's H3 Rocket Fails to Leave the Launch Pad (Source: Space Daily)
Another setback for Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Japan's H3 rocket was scheduled to lift off from Tanegashima Space Center, Japan at 10:37 a.m. Japan Standard Time on Feb. 17. It was supposed to launch Advanced Land Observing Satellite-3 (ALOS-3), also known as Daichi-3 into a Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO). ALOS-3 is an advanced, Earth observing satellite, to be used for cartography, regional observation, disaster monitoring, and resource surveying.

JAXA aborted H3 rocket's first-ever launch attempt at T-0. According to the commentators during the livestream of the launch provided by JAXA that the two LE-9 engines that power the vehicle's core stage ignited, however one of its two solid rocket boosters did not. The cause for the ignition failure is not yet clear and "it's expected that it will take longer to examine the situation," JAXA launch commentators said. (2/17)

Space Force Offers 'Dual Lane' Approach for Procuring New Round of Launch Contracts (Source: Space News)
The Space Force confirmed its plans for a "dual-lane approach" to its next launch competition. The Space Systems Command issued late Thursday two draft requests for proposals for National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3. "Lane 1" will offer multiple firm-fixed price indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts to all providers, who will not be required to meet all reference orbits. "Lane 2" will be similar to the existing NSSL Phase 2 contracts, picking two companies that can meet all NSSL orbits and unique mission capabilities. Space Systems Command will hold an industry day at the end of the month to discuss the draft procurements before releasing a final Phase 3 solicitation later this year. (2/17)

Biden Likely to Seek Space Force Budget Increase (Source: Space News)
The White House will likely seek another significant increase in the Space Force's budget for fiscal year 2024. Mike Tierney, the National Security Space Association's head of legislative affairs, said Thursday he expects "another substantial increase" in the service's budget when the Biden administration releases its proposed budget next month. In fiscal year 2023, the Pentagon requested $26.9 billion and Congress provided $28.5 billion. He said Congress will continue to support larger space budgets due to concerns about Russian and Chinese anti-satellite weapons and a realization that U.S. space systems are vulnerable. (2/17)

NASA Panel Concerned About Artemis Workforce and Safety Culture (Source: Space News)
A NASA safety panel says it has concerns about the workforce and safety culture associated with the Artemis lunar exploration effort. In its recent annual report, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel congratulated NASA for a successful Artemis 1 mission late last year. However, it said it was concerned about how NASA handled a problem during an earlier launch attempt when an "inadvertent overpressurization" caused a leak in a hydrogen line that scrubbed the launch. The panel called that incident an "important — but missed — opportunity" to demonstrate proper safety behaviors, but didn't elaborate on specific concerns. It also said it was worried that many people who worked on Artemis 1 will retire before Artemis 2. (2/17)

New GPS Satellite Delivered to Space Force (Source: Space News)
The Space Force has accepted delivery of the tenth GPS 3 satellite. Space Systems Command said Thursday that the satellite is now "available for launch," although it and three others remain in storage by the manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, awaiting launch opportunities. The satellite was the last in the initial series of 10 GPS 3 satellites that Lockheed Martin won a contract to build in 2008. The company has since won contracts to build up to 22 more advanced versions, called GPS 3F. (2/17)

Space Tug Failed After Transporter-6 Deployment (Source: Space News)
Launcher says its first orbital transfer vehicle failed shortly after deployment on a rideshare mission last month. The startup said Thursday its Orbiter SN1 vehicle was not able to get into the proper orientation after deployment on the SpaceX Transporter-6 rideshare mission to generate power from its solar array, which it blamed on a problem with the spacecraft's GPS antenna system. Orbiter SN1 carried satellites and hosted payloads for eight customers, and the company said the problem kept the vehicle from deploying the satellites it carried. Launcher says it is upgrading Orbiter to correct that problem and plans to fly the vehicle again on two more Transporter missions later this year. (2/17)

Iridium Reports Profit (Source: Iridium)
Iridium reported a profit in 2022 and projects continued revenue growth in 2023. The company announced Thursday net income of $8.7 million in 2022, compared to a net loss of $9.3 million in 2021. Iridium credited the improvement on higher revenue from services and equipment sales. The company projects that revenue from services, $534.7 million in 2022, will grow by 9-11% in 2023. (2/17)

Intuitive Machines Shares Soar After SPAC (Source: Bloomberg)
Shares in Intuitive Machines have skyrocketed after completing its SPAC merger earlier this week. Shares in the commercial lunar lander developer have soared 330% since it started trading Tuesday, including a jump of more than 250% Thursday that triggered at least seven halts to trading. The company made no announcements about the business that would explain the increase, raising doubts about its longer-term prospects. Intuitive Machines has the best performance so far of any company that has gone public this year through the SPAC process. (2/17)

ESA Considers Asteroid Hunting Space Telescope (Source: ESA)
ESA is studying a space telescope mission to look for near Earth asteroids. The proposed NEOMIR mission would operate at the Earth-sun L-1 Lagrange point to look for asteroids coming towards Earth from the direction of the sun, which are hard to detect from the ground. It would complement NASA's NEO Surveyor mission, which will conduct a broader survey of near Earth asteroids. ESA conducted an initial study of NEOMIR in 2021 and, if chosen for development, could launch NEOMIR around 2030. (2/17)

Meteorite Booms Over Texas (Source: San Antonio Express-News)
NASA confirmed that a fireball seen and heard across South Texas on Wednesday was a meteor. NASA said the meteor was likely an asteroid about 60 centimeters across and weighing nearly half a ton. The meteor created a large boom that startled residents of McAllen, Texas, prompting calls to local police. The meteor caused no damage, although some small meteorites likely reached the ground. (2/17)

SLS Allows a New Leap in Opportunities for the Exploration and Utilization of Space (Source: Space News)
The United States has created a major leap forward in space leadership with the inaugural flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) carrying Artemis 1 to the Moon. Although the development of the SLS was driven by launch needs for human exploration of the Moon and Mars, it provides a much greater level of capability for the broader spacefaring community. Numerous human exploration architectures for going to the Moon and then onto Mars have defined the scale of operations, mission requirements, and the necessary mission infrastructure for which the SLS was designed to accomplish.

SLS’s capability can be used for large heavy payloads, or multiple payloads to different destinations, very large foldable telescopes, or carry the additional stages to boost payloads at much higher velocities so necessary to leave the solar system and better explore the region between the stars within a researcher’s lifetime. Science missions to the outer planets of the solar system and beyond can benefit from the increased mass for more capable missions and/or increased velocity to reduce mission duration to a more acceptable time. (2/16)

Boeing Gifts $1 Million to STEM NOLA Innovation Hub (Source: Flying)
The Boeing Company announced that it would invest $1 million in the New Orleans-based educational program STEM NOLA, “to support the construction of the organization’s state-of-the-art STEM Innovation Hub.” The investment will help fund a 40,000-square-foot building that will become the STEM NOLA organization’s Innovation Hub, and will include classrooms, meeting spaces and laboratories to give kids hands-on exposure to science and technology-based career paths. Boeing employs approximately 1,100 people in the state of Louisiana. (2/15)

Global Spaceport Alliance Meets in Orlando (Source: SPACErePORT)
The Global Spaceport Alliance (GSA) is the voice of the emerging global spaceport community. As the recognized and official organization for spaceports and the spaceport eco-systems worldwide, we provide members with the information, data, research and networking needed for the successful planning, funding, and operation of spaceports around the world. The group's 8th annual summit is planned in Orlando on Feb. 20, to coincide with the SpaceCom/49th Space Congress event. (2/16)

Packing Aerogel With Uranium Could Give Us The Space Engine We've Been Looking For (Source: Science Alert)
Novel propulsion ideas for moving around space seem like they're a dime a dozen recently. Besides the typical argument between solar sails and chemical propulsion lies a potential third way – a nuclear rocket engine. NASA's Institute of Advanced Concepts has provided a grant to a company called Positron Dynamics for the development of a novel type of nuclear fission fragment rocket engine (FFRE). It could strike the balance between the horsepower of chemical engines and the longevity of solar sails.

FFREs are not a new concept in themselves, but many have massive technical hurdles to overcome before they can be considered useful. Their advantages, such as high specific impulse and extremely high power density, are offset by their disadvantages, such as requiring a complicated form of plasma levitation. Positron Dynamics hopes to tip that balance by utilizing two separate breakthroughs derived from other areas of research. The first novel approach would be to put the fissile material in an ultralight aerogel. The second would be implementing a superconducting magnet to contain those fission particles.

FREs essentially utilize the same nuclear process that powers energy-generating nuclear plants on Earth. However, instead of generating only electricity, they also generate thrust. However, it's not practical to send a whole bar of uranium fuel, such as that used in fission reactors here on Earth, up into space. Embedding the fuel itself into one of the lightest known human substances solves that problem. Embedding fuel particles for the fission reaction in aerogels would be a convenient way to hold the fuel together while still allowing the overall structure to be light enough to be lifted into orbit. (2/15)

Bennett Urges Biden Administration to Keep Space Command in Colorado (Source: Sen. Michael Bennett)
Today, on the Senate floor, Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet urged the Biden Administration to keep Space Command in Colorado. For years, Bennet has repeatedly expressed his concerns to President Biden and other administration officials about the flawed, political decision made in the waning days of the Trump Administration to move Space Command from Colorado to Alabama. (2/15)

Solstar Space Awarded Phase I STTR (Source: Solstar)
Solstar Space was awarded a Phase I STTR contract by the Department of Air Force (DAF) to evaluate the company's Slayton Space Communicator for high-speed data communications. Solstar Space is developing a flight-proven modular device for spacecraft integration capable of providing satellite operators near real-time command and control through a 24/7 high bandwidth downlink and uplink data relay known as the Slayton Space Communicator. (2/15)

As Competition Grows, Space Florida Has a Plan to Bolster State's Private Aerospace Industry (Source: WMFE)
Space Florida, the state agency responsible for developing Florida’s private space industry, said competition across the country is fierce. "We have new ideas, developing on governance, access to capital, workforce and research. But so too does everybody else on the planet who's trying to get a role in space,” said Space Florida's Dale Ketcham.

"Florida is where it is because we're not afraid to seize the advantages that lay before us," he told the committee. "That's a precedent we've set for a generation now. But we have to continue to innovate and improvise, and compete most importantly."

State aerospace leaders are asking the legislature to continue to invest in efforts that grow Florida’s space industry, like an investment in developing a high-tech workforce to support aerospace companies. Partnerships with research institutions like the University of Central Florida can also give the state a leg up in the competition. (2/15)

As a New Space Age Dawns, the Artemis Accords Should Take Center Stage (Source: National Interest)
The liftoff of Artemis 1 last November launched a new era in space, as the United States prepares to send humans beyond low-Earth orbit and back to the Moon for the first time in half a century. The Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule finally made their debut after $23 billion and eleven years of development.

Back on Earth, another element that will define this new era in human exploration of the cosmos has also begun taking shape. The Artemis Accords are a set of shared, non-binding principles that aim to govern “responsible, peaceful, and sustainable” exploration of space, taking the form of bilateral agreements between the United States and twenty-two signatory countries. This new international space club saw nine nations sign on last year. As we finally enter the Artemis Era, the Accords must play a more prominent role in U.S. space geopolitics and public diplomacy. Click here. (2/15)

Hong Kong Digital Art Platform to Have NFT Works Sent to the Moon, Part of Lunar Gallery (Source: South China Morning Post)
The three Latin American founders of Hong Kong-based digital art platform Minte Art have long believed in “art without borders”, but what began as an effort to bridge cultural divides has turned into a project that will soon land the work of two of its artists on the moon as part of the first non-fungible token (NFT) lunar museum.

Artists Guille Blancarte and Carlos Segovia Alanis, both based in Mexico and represented by Minte in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district, are among 222 artists selected to join the Lunaprise Moon Museum, which came after winning BitBasel’s Art for Impact Challenge at Miami Art Week in December. (2/16)

‘Out of Control’: DoD Reviews Use of Super-Secret SAP Classification, for Space Programs and Beyond (Source: Breaking Defense)
Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks is leading a review of how the Defense Department uses tightly restricted Special Access Program (SAP) classification not just for space programs, but across the department, according to DoD space policy guru John Plumb. “Inside the department, the deputy secretary has directed kind of a SAP reform effort, and that is hopefully coming to some conclusion soon. I can’t say too much about any of that, obviously, but that’s across all domains,” he told the Mitchell Institute today.

Concerns about US government over-classification of all things related to space — and especially the overuse of SAPs that compartmentalize access to information about individual programs to only a few officials — have reached a crescendo over the past year. A who’s-who list of top brass, members of Congress, industry leaders and Pentagon watchdogs for many years have been arguing that over-classification is harming the ability to convey the growing space threats from adversaries to lawmakers, the public and allied/partner nations, and hampered cooperation with industry and foreign partners to mitigate those threats.

Further, many senior military space leaders, such as former Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chair John Hyten, have vociferously argued that it is impossible to deter the hostile use of space with invisible weapons. Plumb, for his part, has been focused in particular on mitigating over-classification in order to enable the Pentagon to better make use of the “asymmetric advantage” provided by US allies with space capabilities. (2/14)

India to Launch Space Tourism (Source: Business World)
Union Minister of State, Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Jitendra Singh notified that the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is in the process of launching space tourism. Singh took questions regarding ISRO plans for space tourism and the details of the Budget allocated for the purpose highlighted, the objective of India’s maiden human spaceflight program, ‘Gaganyaan’, a demonstration of human spaceflight capability to low earth orbit (LEO), which is a precursor to the future space tourism program.

The minister further revealed, ISRO has carried out a few feasibility studies for a sub-orbital space tourism mission and announced that activities toward space tourism would be firmed up after a successful accomplishment of the ‘Gaganyaan’ mission. (2/15)