April 5, 2023

Virgin Orbit COO Criticizes Leadership's Road to Bankruptcy (Source: CNBC)
A departing Virgin Orbit executive sharply criticized company leadership for taking the company into bankruptcy. In an email to employees, Tony Gingiss, who had been chief operating officer of Virgin Orbit, apologized that he was "not able to convince our leader and board to take a different path to give us more time to figure things out." That and other comments appears to take aim at CEO Dan Hart, with Gingiss telling employees they did not "have the leadership or opportunity to demonstrate to the world what you can fully do." Virgin Orbit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Tuesday. (4/5)

SpaceX May Launch Starship Orbital Test Mission on Monday (Source: Reuters)
There is growing evidence that SpaceX may be preparing for a Starship launch as soon as Monday. An FAA document known as the Operations Plans Advisory lists the Starship/Super Heavy launch from Boca Chica, Texas, as scheduled for Monday, with backup opportunities Tuesday and Wednesday. SpaceX has not publicly commented on its plans, and the company is still awaiting a launch license. The FAA said that even though the launch is listed on its planning document, it has not yet made a formal determination on SpaceX's launch license application. (4/5)

UK's Shetland Spaceport Seeks License by Summer (Source: Shetland News)
A spaceport in the Shetland Islands is hoping to get a license from the U.K. government by this summer. The head of SaxaVord Spaceport, Frank Strang, said he expected to get licenses from the Civil Aviation Authority, which licenses commercial launches and spaceports in the U.K., by the summer as construction of launch facilities on the island of Unst continues. SaxaVord hopes to host its first launches before the end of the year but cautioned that schedules by launch companies are moving "slightly to the right." (4/5)

Ingenuity Mars Probe Readies for 50th Flight (Source: NASA)
The Ingenuity Mars helicopter is about to take its 50th flight. The helicopter performed its 49th flight on Sunday, setting records for top speed, 6.5 meters per second, and maximum altitude, 16 meters, as it flew 282 meters across the Martian surface. The helicopter, originally intended to make no more than five flights as a technology demonstration, is scheduled to make flight number 50 as soon as today. (4/5)

Apple Executive to Lead DoD's DIU (Source: Space News)
An Apple executive will lead a Defense Department organization that has backed several space projects. The Pentagon announced Tuesday that Doug Beck will be the next director of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), based in Silicon Valley. Beck is a vice president of Apple who has been at the company since 2009 in several capacities, and is also a captain in the U.S. Navy Reserve. In recent years DIU has invested in several space projects, including satellite communications, space logistics and servicing, cislunar space operations, geospatial imaging and other technologies. As part of a reorganization, DIU will report directly to the secretary of defense rather than the undersecretary of defense. (4/5)

Arabsat Thruster Malfunctions in Orbit (Source: Space News)
A thruster problem caused a recent outage on an Arabsat GEO communications satellite. The communications payload on the Badr-6 satellite was shut off for several hours Feb. 6 to conserve power and fuel when a thruster malfunctioned. Engineers restored full operation of the satellite and customers felt minimal effects as they were shifted to other Arabsat satellites in the same location. Badr-6, also known as Arabsat 4AR, has 24 C-band and 20 Ku-band transponders and is nearing the end of its planned 15-year life. SpaceX is slated to launch Badr-8 in May on a Falcon 9 to replace and expand Arabsat's C-band and Ku-band capacity in that GEO slot at 26 degrees east. (4/5)

Apex to Launch Aries Satellite on Transporter-10 Rideshare Mission (Source: Space News)
Smallsat manufacturer Apex will launch its first satellite next year. The company announced Tuesday that its first Aries satellite will fly on SpaceX's Transporter-10 rideshare mission no earlier than January. The 200-kilogram satellite will test spacecraft systems and carry payloads for several customers. Apex raised $10 million last fall to start work on efforts to mass-manufacture small satellites for commercial and government customers, with a goal of producing up to 100 satellites a year by 2026. (4/5)

Space Safety Coalition Releases "Rules of the Road" for Avoiding Orbital Collisions (Source: Space News)
More than two dozen organizations have endorsed updated space safety guidelines that include "rules of the road" for avoiding collisions. The document by the Space Safety Coalition, released Tuesday, outlines how different classes of space objects should handle collision avoidance maneuvers based on how maneuverable they are. The document also updates other best practices, including improved cybersecurity and post-mission disposal guidelines. Twenty-seven organizations have endorsed the new document, notably GEO satellite operators Inmarsat, Intelsat and SES as well as LEO operators Iridium and Planet. (4/5)

Hansen Will Be the First Canadian to Encircle the Moon (Source: CTV)
A square-jawed fighter pilot from southwestern Ontario donned the mantle of Canada's newest space hero Monday as his country joined the United States in a bid to usher in a new era of daring global adventures beyond the moon and the stars. Col. Jeremy Hansen, a CF-18 pilot from London, Ont., emerged from a crowd of cheering fellow astronauts, a Maple Leaf patch on the shoulder of his flight suit, to officially join the crew of four that will helm Artemis II, the first trip to lunar space in 52 years. (4/3)

NASA Hires First 'Diversity Ambassador' for the 'Benefit of All Humanity' (Source: Fox News)
NASA announced that it would be hiring two "diversity champions" for the space agency, in another example of high profile diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) proponents taking top spots at government agencies. The announcement, first made on March 27, named Steve Shih as "the agency's first Diversity Ambassador" and chose Elaine Ho as the next associate administrator for the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity at the organization’s headquarters. (4/3)

Not Your Grandfather’s Moon Mission (Source: The Atlantic)
Apollo 8 laid the foundation for countless historic moments in American space exploration. The harrowing yet triumphant moon landing, during Apollo 11 in 1969, couldn’t have happened without it. Neither could the first steps on the lunar surface, or the time that astronauts drove a moon buggy across the gray landscape, or the delightful incident in which a geologist threw his hammer as hard as he could off into the distance, just to see how far it would go.

Artemis 2 will likely pave the way for similarly grand photo ops and goofy stunts. And it has already set a precedent that never materialized during the previous era of exploration. All 24 people who have flown to the moon so far were white and male. Koch will be the first woman, and Glover the first person of color, to make the trip.

It is a stark contrast to how NASA handled things back in the day. In 1962, Ed Dwight, a Black Air Force pilot, was in the running to become an astronaut; the military recommended him, but NASA didn’t accept him into the corps, and never gave an explanation. In the same decade, a NASA doctor gave a group of women the same physical and psychological evaluations that he had developed for the agency’s real astronaut corps, and although some women outperformed the men on the tests, the effort was scrapped. (4/3)

Inland Northwest Girl Scouts Put Engineering Skills to the Test in Rocketry Competition (Source: KHQ.com)
An all-girls team dubbed the Artemis Aces is vying for its place in the American Rocketry Challenge for the second year in a row. "I want to be a pilot, so not quite rockets but still things flying in the sky," says team member Natalie Olinger. (4/2)

KSC Ground Systems Teams Ready to Work With Artemis II Crew (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
NASA Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) have been preparing and planning for the Artemis II launch at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida and are looking forward to working closely with the four astronauts who will be the first to fly to the Moon in over 50 years. Integration Console engineers for the Artemis launch team hope to work with the flight crew as much as possible to help make the eventual launch day for Artemis II go smoothly.

As the launch nears, the crew will spend time inside their Orion spacecraft, getting familiar with their home away from home and evaluating the countdown schedule for getting strapped in Orion after their Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s propellants are loaded for flight. The most recent forecasts project most of the Artemis II flight hardware to arrive at KSC by the end of 2023, with stacking operations beginning in the Vehicle Assembly Building on Mobile Launcher-1 in the first quarter of 2024.

The crew will probably make multiple visits to KSC between now and then, but they will also play an integral role in the pre-launch processing for Artemis II next year ahead of a launch that is forecast to be no earlier than late November 2024. Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin will formally hand over the Artemis II spacecraft to EGS next year in the Armstrong Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building at KSC. EGS will also begin some outfitting of the crew cabin at that time, and the crew could play a role at that stage of launch preparations. (4/4)