February 24, 2023

Luxembourg Taps Into SES's O3b mPOWER for Defense and Disaster Recovery (Source: Space Daily)
uxembourg has selected SES's O3b mPOWER system to serve as the resilient satcom infrastructure for defense, security, and disaster recovery in the country and beyond. The MEO Global Services program, valued at 195 million euro over 10 years, will enable the acquisition and operation of O3b mPOWER services, pending approval by the Luxembourg parliament. The program will be executed in collaboration with the United States and the NATO Support and Procurement Agency, which seeks to commercially contract satellite communications capabilities.

The O3b mPOWER system that SES is developing brings unprecedented levels of flexibility and unique security features that enable governments to operate sovereign gateways and networks globally. It can also be easily integrated into existing governments' satcom capabilities, permitting multi-orbit resiliency to NATO and allies' systems and elevating them to the next level of performance and security. (2/24)

Ryugu Asteroid Sample Reveals Organic-Rich Composition, First Analysis Shows (Source: Space Daily)
Asteroid Ryugu has a rich complement of organic molecules, according to a NASA and international team's initial analysis of a sample from the asteroid's surface delivered to Earth by Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft. The discovery adds support to the idea that organic material from space contributed to the inventory of chemical components necessary for life.

Organic molecules are the building blocks of all known forms of terrestrial life and consist of a wide variety of compounds made of carbon combined with hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and other atoms. However, organic molecules can also be made by chemical reactions that don't involve life, supporting the hypothesis that chemical reactions in asteroids can make some of life's ingredients. The science of prebiotic chemistry attempts to discover the compounds and reactions that could have given rise to life, and among the prebiotic organics found in the sample were several kinds of amino acids. (2/24)

Saltzman: Space Force Must ‘Build New Infrastructure’ to Underpin Future Training (Source: Defense Scoop)
Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman continues to lead a staunch campaign to enable an ultramodern operational test and training environment for Space Force guardians that’s more digital and tailored to the service’s needs. “We’ve got to train. We’ve got to have the ranges. We’ve got to develop our tactics and test them, and simulate them. And that means that I’ve got to build new infrastructure to provide our guardians the kinds of simulators they need and the kinds of virtual environments to test their concepts, so that we can see if it’s going to work in a contested environment” Saltzman said.

Editor's Note: Locating the Space Force's STARCOM training organization in Central Florida would provide the service with direct access to the vibrant simulation and training enterprise near the campus of UCF. Multiple other DoD training organizations are located there, along with a plethora of companies and academic organizations specializing in synthetic training environments. (2/23)

White House Nears Plan to Assign Regulatory Authorities for ‘New’ Space Activities (Source: Breaking Defense)
The National Space Council is expected to soon release a plan parsing out regulatory authorities for non-traditional space activities among federal agencies — such as on-orbit servicing, a capability that the Pentagon is hoping commercial industry can bring to the Space Force’s table — according to a senior Commerce Department official. “They’re pretty close to wrapping it up,” Richard DalBello, head of the Office of Space Commerce, said on Wednesday. However, he wouldn’t be drawn on what that agreement might entail or on a more precise date for any announcement. (2/23)

China's Galactic Energy to Launch Rockets From the Sea (Source: Space Daily)
Galactic Energy, a private space company based in Beijing, plans to make its first sea-based launch this summer, which could be the first by a private Chinese firm if successful. According to Xia Dongkun, a vice-president at Galactic Energy, the company has scheduled the launch of one of its Ceres 1 rockets in the Yellow Sea off the coast of Shandong province, sometime between June and August. The rocket will carry five to six small satellites into a low-Earth orbit.

While China has performed five sea-based launches, using the Long March 11 rocket and the Smart Dragon 3, both products of the State-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, none have been by a private company. Xia said that sea-based launches offered an alternative to land-based facilities, which were already occupied with government-backed programs, and would allow for more launches per year. Safety and efficiency were also important considerations, with the lower risk to densely populated areas along the rocket's trajectory and the ability to launch near the equator, increasing carrying capacity and lowering launch costs. (2/24)

Puerto Rico Advances Plan for Spaceport Development (Source: NimB)
The Puerto Rico Ports Authority has issued a request for proposals (RFP) seeking candidates to handle the leasing, development, construction, operation, marketing and maintenance of a spaceport at José Aponte de la Torre (JAT) airport in Ceiba. It is expected that between the summer and September 2024, the FAA will grant the government of Puerto Rico the spaceport license. The developer — which would operate the Spaceport for several years, depending on the negotiation — would design and build the infrastructure needed for horizontal launches at JAT, using private capital, equity and investment.

In June 2022 a contract was filed with Florida-based RS&H to conduct a feasibility study to establish a commercial spaceport at the José Aponte de la Torre Airport, in the former Roosevelt Roads naval base in Ceiba. (2/24)

OffWorld Europe Makes Its Debut in Luxembourg Developing Space Mining Robots (Source: BusinessWire)
OffWorld is the global pioneer in AI-powered industrial Swarm Robotic Mining systems on Earth and the company is now expanding to take on space. The newly established OffWorld Europe is being run by Managing Director, Kyle Acierno, former CEO of ispace U.S. Kyle is an international expert in commercial space and a specialist in lunar exploration. OffWorld Europe will begin its first program on a multi-year program that focuses on developing and deploying modules for the extraction and storage of oxygen and hydrogen from volatiles and water deposits at the lunar surface. This will include mating modules to OffWorld’s robotic technologies for cohesive lunar deployment. (2/23)

You Can Apply to Ride to Space Attached to a Helium Balloon for $180,000 (Source: Business Insider)
Iwaya Giken, a Japanese startup, unveiled its commercial spacecraft expected to launch this year. It claims the capsule can rise up to 15 miles in the sky with a helium balloon, offering views of space and earth. Flights start at $180,000, but CEO Keisuke Iwaya wants to reduce the price to tens and thousands. (2/23)

SpaceX Polaris Dawn Mission Readies for Summer Launch (Source: Space News)
A SpaceX private astronaut mission is now scheduled for launch this summer. Speaking at the SpaceCom conference Thursday, Jared Isaacman, the billionaire backer of the Polaris program of crewed missions, said the Polaris Dawn mission is scheduled to launch sometime this summer. The five-day Crew Dragon flight will include the first spacewalk on a commercial mission using a spacesuit SpaceX is developing. The mission will also briefly go to an apogee of about 1,400 kilometers, the highest for a crewed mission since the last Apollo lunar mission, and also test Starlink communications. (2/24)

Approval Expected for First Gateway Launch (Source: Space News)
NASA expects to give the go-ahead later this year to start work on the first Gateway logistics mission. NASA awarded SpaceX a Gateway Logistics Services contract in 2020 to transport cargo to and from the lunar Gateway. However, it delayed the start of work on the first such mission while evaluating the overall Artemis program. A NASA official said this week that the agency expected to give the authorization to proceed on that first mission later this year so it will be ready in time to deliver cargo to support Artemis 4, scheduled for 2027. SpaceX is developing Dragon XL for Gateway missions, but NASA says it is open to later switching to Starship. (2/24)

Environmental Opposition to Power Plant Development at Kourou Spaceport (Source: Mongabay)
Environmentalists are opposed to a proposal to clear rainforest to build a biomass power plant to serve the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. France requested an exemption to a European Union renewable energy directive to allow it to clear 13,000 acres of rainforest and grow biomass crops on the land that would be used for two power plants serving Kourou. Environmental groups say they're opposed to the plan not only for the deforestation it would cause but also because the biomass would produce more carbon emissions than coal. (2/24)

China's Megaconstellation Would Include ~13,000 Satellites (Source: Space News)
Details are slowly emerging about China's proposed broadband megaconstellation. Guowang would have nearly 13,000 satellites, based on ITU filings, superseding two earlier and much smaller LEO communications constellations named Hongyan and Hongyun. China's emerging commercial space firms will likely have a large role in the project, both in manufacturing satellites and launching them to orbit. Chinese private launch service providers have begun noting the Guowang national satellite internet project as a potential source of revenue in news releases. (2/24)

ULA's First Vulcan Launch Aims for Star Wars Day (May 4) (Source: Space News)
United Launch Alliance has scheduled the first launch of its Vulcan Centaur rocket for no earlier than May 4 (also known as Star Wars Day). ULA CEO Tory Bruno announced the new launch date in a call with reporters late Thursday to provide an update on preparations for the mission. That date is based on planned testing of the rocket, including a wet dress rehearsal and static-fire test, as well as qualification testing of the BE-4 engine used on the rocket's first stage.

Bruno said those qualification tests turned up an issue with one engine that had slightly higher performance than expected from its main oxygen pump, but an investigation found it to be only unit-to-unit variation. The launch date is also driven by the requirements of the primary payload, Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander, which has a window of only a few days each month. With a date set for the Vulcan launch, Bruno said it can now assess its effects on other ULA missions, such as the Atlas 5 launch of Boeing's Starliner crew capsule scheduled for April. (2/24)

China Launches Commsat (Sources: Space News, Xinhua)
China launched a communications satellite Thursday after a hiatus of more than a month. The Long March 3B rocket lifted off at 6:49 a.m. Eastern from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center and placed the ChinaSat-26 spacecraft into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. The satellite will mainly provide Ka-band broadband access in China and surrounding areas from 125 degrees east in GEO. The launch was the first by a Chinese rocket in 39 days after a break for the Chinese New Year. That was followed by a Long March 2C launch at 11:01 p.m. Eastern Thursday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The rocket placed into orbit what Chinese media described only as a new remote sensing satellite. (2/24)

Uncrewed Soyuz Launches to ISS (Source: CBS)
An uncrewed Soyuz spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station after a launch Thursday night. The Soyuz-2.1a rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 7:24 p.m. Eastern and put the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft into orbit nine minutes later. The spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the station at 8:01 p.m. Eastern Saturday. It will replace Soyuz MS-22, which suffered a coolant leak in December from what Russian officials say was a micrometeoroid impact. Soyuz MS-22 will undock without a crew and return to Earth in March. (2/24)

Rivada: Constellation Plan is Funded with Launch Commitments (Source: Space News)
Rivada Space Networks says it has both the launches and funding needed to deploy a constellation by a mid-2026 regulatory deadline. Rivada signed a $2.4 billion contract this week with Terran Orbital to build 300 satellites for that constellation. Rivada CEO Declan Ganley said the company has "funding commitments" from existing shareholders and new investors to fund that contract as well as launches of the spacecraft. He declined to provide more details on the launch plan or name the investors backing its space-based communications project, except to say they are not government organizations. Rivada must launch the satellites by mid-2026 to meet an ITU deadline. (2/24)

Ligado and Omnispace to Pool Satellite Spectrum (Source: Space News)
Ligado Networks and Omnispace announced plans Thursday to pool their satellite spectrum. Their partnership would combine parts of Ligado's L-band spectrum in the U.S. and Canada with the S-band spectrum Omnispace has across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia Pacific to expand their international capabilities. The partnership would support work on multi-orbit, multi-band solutions for direct-to-device satellite communications. (2/24)

Samsung 5G Modem Will Enable Direct-to-Satellite Links (Source: Space News)
Samsung has developed technology to enable satellite communications for smartphones. The company announced Thursday a new standardized 5G non-terrestrial network modem that enables direct smartphone-satellite communications that it will incorporate into its Exynos chip for its Galaxy line of smartphones. Samsung is the latest smartphone maker jumping on the direct-to-cell bandwagon after Apple and China's Huawei. (2/24)

The Next Space Frontier: Your Backyard (Source: Space News)
Until recently, most space-related activities revolved near NASA centers such as the ones in Florida, Texas, and California. There are thousands of space companies across the entire space value chain in the United States. Thriving commercial space activity is now easily observed across the country. There are exciting space startups in states such as Arizona, Hawaii, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Utah, and the list continues. Several factors explain the recent phenomenon; below are our two cents on the matter, having seen hundreds of pitch decks recently and through our experience talking to founders, fellow investors, government officials, and other stakeholders.

Space startups are clustering around areas with abundant specialized human capital. In certain cases, the space-business-ready human capital comes from a pool of professionals formed at SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other space companies. Colorado has seen a surge in the number of startups thanks to its established space ecosystem. Arizona and Washington State are up-and-coming space hubs near large research universities. In New England, graduates from MIT and other world-class academic institutions support a regional commercial space push. Austin, a hotbed for tech talent, has attracted companies like Firefly. (2/23)

Amazon Gets a Green Light to Launch 3,000-Satellite Kuiper Constellation (Source: Space.com)
Amazon has received the go-ahead to construct a constellation of 3,236 satellites after gaining approval for an updated orbital debris mitigation plan. The FCC approved Amazon's Project Kuiper plan in an authorization adopted and released on Feb. 8. Amazon previously received conditional approval from the FCC for its Project Kuiper plan back in 2020. The company has now satisfied conditions including a plan to address issues of collision risk, post-mission disposal reliability, completion of satellite design, and orbital separation. (2/23)

NASA to Launch Israel's First Space Telescope (Source: Space Daily)
NASA will launch Israel's first space telescope mission, the Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite (ULTRASAT). ULTRASAT, an ultraviolet observatory with a large field of view, will investigate the secrets of short-duration events in the universe, such as supernova explosions and mergers of neutron stars. Led by the Israel Space Agency and Weizmann Institute of Science, ULTRASAT is planned for launch into geostationary orbit around Earth in early 2026. In addition to providing the launch service, NASA will also participate in the mission's science program. (2/22)

Water Rich Asteroids Came From Far Outside the Asteroid Belt (Source: Space Daily)
Where did the water that makes up Earth's oceans come from? This question has not yet been definitively answered. When Earth was formed, 4.5 billion years ago, it received a quantity of volatile substances from the primordial solar nebula, which were outgassed from the interior of the young planet during the solidification of an early magma ocean and through active volcanism. An initial atmosphere developed from these gases, from which rain fell, and the first oceans were formed.

But water also came to Earth from far beyond - from icy comets and probably also to a considerable extent from asteroids with a high ice content. New infrared measurements performed using a telescope on Hawaii have now led to the identification of a previously unknown class of asteroids. Researchers from the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) are part of an international team that was able to identify these planetesimals using infrared spectroscopy. They are now located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

These asteroids are rich in water - similar to the dwarf planet Ceres, which is also located in this region of the Solar System. "Our computational models show that these asteroids must have arrived in the main asteroid belt through complex dynamic processes, shortly after their formation in the outer regions of the Solar System," explains Wladimir Neumann, a geoscientist at the Technical University of Berlin and the DLR Institute of Planetary Research, who is involved in the scientific study published today in the journal Nature Astronomy. (2/23)

CARMENES Project Boosts the Number of Known Planets in the Solar Neighborhood (Source: Space Daily)
The CARMENES program, led by a consortium of Spanish and German research institutions, in which the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) is a partner, has released 20,000 observations of more than 300 stars. These measurements led to the discovery of 59 planets, with a dozen being potentially habitable. This spectroscopic data set was obtained at the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain and is now publicly available.

The CARMENES instrument employed in this survey has proven to be a success. It will continue to provide information on planets around small cool stars until at least the end of 2023. The CARMENES project has just published data from about 20,000 observations taken between 2016 and 2020 for a sample of 362 nearby cool stars. (2/23)

NASA’s $3.5 Billion Plan to Redesign its Aging Spacesuits (Source: CNBC)
NASA has been using the current spacesuits on the ISS for decades and they are showing their age. “These are suits that were originally designed for the space shuttle program. Due to the lack of funding, NASA kept working on them, kept repairing them and maintaining them for all these many years. But really, these are suits that are at the end of their useful life,” says Pablo De León, director of the Human Spaceflight Laboratory at the University of North Dakota.

NASA has had issues not only with finding the proper sizes to fit its increasingly diverse astronaut corps, but also with degradation of some suit components. Now the agency is turning to two commercial companies: Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace, a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, to build and maintain its new generation of spacesuits. Under the Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services Contract, or xEVAS, NASA is providing Collins and Axiom, along with a number of their industry partners, with up to $3.5 billion through 2034.

Axiom won the first $228.5 million contract to design the suits that will be used during NASA’s Artemis moon missions and Collins won the second $97.2 million contract to design and develop a new generation of suits for the International Space Station. Since NASA is purchasing its suits from Collins and Axion as a service, the vendors are free to make additional suits for non-NASA customers as well. (2/22)

Space Force Envisions ‘Freight Trains’ to Space, ‘Walmarts on Orbit’ (Source: Breaking Defense)
The Space Force envisions a future where rockets are launched, both to orbit and from one place on Earth to another, almost as frequently as trains carrying cargo leave their stations, according to the service’s lead for space launch acquisition. “We really want to get after that freight train to space. We really want to get to that point where we’re constantly launching,” Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, program executive officer at Space Systems Command (SSC) for Assured Access to Space, said Tuesday. “We can’t do that today, but we want to get to that point.”

That vision is at the heart of SSC’s goal in sponsoring the first-ever Space Mobility ’23 conference — with a mix of industry and Defense Department and other government officials, including representatives of regulatory agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Commerce. Command leaders aim to help forward thinking about how to get from here to there. SSC’s long-range plans include not just rapid turn-around, or “tactically responsive space” to get things to orbit within hours after identifying a need, but also capabilities like high-speed suborbital point-to-point cargo delivery, and on-orbit refueling, repair and manufacturing, Purdy explained.

The Space Force’s vision for the future of on-orbit activities from low Earth orbit all the way out to the Moon and beyond is reminiscent of the 1960s cartoon, “The Jetsons” — with robots and people doing everything from re-fueling and repairing satellites to factories cranking out spacecraft parts to orbit-based data crunching centers. “I see Walmarts on orbit” full of cargo, said Col. Meredith Beg, SSC’s deputy director of Operations, Servicing & Maneuver, a new(ish) position set up last August. “I see Triple A on orbit … Ubers on orbit… full-up service stations on orbit” that might even have Guardians on board to fix up ailing spacecraft, she added. (2/22)

Space Force Issues Grant to Explore Electronics Manufacturing in Zero Gravity (Source: Electronic Design)
The U.S. Space Force has begun issuing grants to startups for developing technologies that will support long-range, multi-year space missions, including one to study the feasibility of electronics manufacturing technologies in micro-gravity. A grant to BotFactory and its partner Cornell University is to develop the ability to manufacture electronic components and circuit boards in space on demand in micro-gravity environments. (2/22)

Space Force May Hire Companies to Service Orbiting Satellites (Source: C4ISRnet)
The U.S. Space Force is developing a plan for a satellite refueling and servicing capability that takes advantage of technology being developed by commercial space companies, according to the head of the service’s mobility enterprise. The newest military service has been closely watching as companies test concepts for refueling and repairing satellites on orbit but hasn’t yet established acquisition programs or operational units to leverage that work. (2/22)