April 6, 2023

New Measurement Could Change Our Understanding of the Universe (Source: Space Daily)
The Universe is expanding - but how fast exactly? The answer appears to depend on whether you estimate the cosmic expansion rate - referred to as the Hubble's constant, or H0 - based on the echo of the Big Bang (the cosmic microwave background, or CMB) or you measure H0 directly based on today's stars and galaxies. This problem, known as the Hubble tension, has puzzled astrophysicists and cosmologists around the world.

A study carried out by the Stellar Standard Candles and Distances research group, lead by Richard Anderson at EPFL's Institute of Physics, adds a new piece to the puzzle. Their research, published in Astronomy and Astrophysics, achieved the most accurate calibration of Cepheid stars - a type of variable star whose luminosity fluctuates over a defined period - for distance measurements to date based on data collected by ESA's Gaia mission. This new calibration further amplifies the Hubble tension. (4/6)

New Interactive Mosaic Uses NASA Imagery to Show Mars in Vivid Detail (Source: Space Daily)
Both scientists and the public can navigate a new global image of the Red Planet that was made at Caltech using data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Cliffsides, impact craters, and dust devil tracks are captured in mesmerizing detail in a new mosaic of the Red Planet composed of 110,000 images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Taken by the veteran spacecraft's black-and-white Context Camera, or CTX, the images cover nearly 270 square feet (25 square meters) of surface per pixel. That makes the Global CTX Mosaic of Mars the highest-resolution global image of the Red Planet ever created. If it were printed out, this 5.7 trillion pixel (or 5.7 terapixel) mosaic would be large enough to cover the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California. Click here. (4/6)

Deloitte Announces Formal Space Practice for Rapidly Growing Space Industry (Source: Space Daily)
Deloitte has launched a new division, Deloitte Space, to help organizations achieve their space ambitions. With over 15 years of experience advising clients on space-related initiatives, the new division will provide access to a global network of advisors, technologists, and scientists dedicated to helping businesses and governments connect the unconnected and embrace the infinite opportunities that space has to offer.

Deloitte's space-related offerings span multiple areas and are dedicated to advising organizations, whether those organizations view space as a mission, their business of today or a future growth opportunity. The company also plans to invest in enhancing existing capabilities and developing new capabilities to assist companies in the business of space to redefine what and how they operate in space and unlock more possibilities.

One of Deloitte's marquee space initiatives is GRAVITY Challenge, a global technology innovation program launched in 2019. The program connects startups, entrepreneurs, and universities with businesses and governments to solve real-world business challenges using space-enabled data, technologies, and capabilities. (4/6)

D-Orbit Signs Contract with ESA for IRIDE Satellite Observation Program (Source: Space Daily)
Space logistics and orbital transportation company D-Orbit signed a 26-million euro contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) for IRIDE, a space-based observation program initiated by the Italian government that will leverage national competencies and responsibility with the support of the European Space Agency (ESA), which will manage the project, and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) under the framework of Italy's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR).

According to the contract, D-Orbit will provide one SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellite and will manage its flight operations segment on behalf of the end user; the deal also includes an option for an additional SAR satellite, worth euro 24 million. The SAR sensor will be implemented by MetaSensing, an Italian company specializing in advanced radar technologies. (4/6)

Planet Joins Ursa Space's Virtual Constellation and Partner Network (Source: Space Daily)
Ursa Space Systems, a global satellite intelligence infrastructure provider, has announced that Planet Labs PBC (NYSE: PL), a leading provider of daily data and insights about Earth, will join its Virtual Constellation and Partner Network. The addition of Planet provides Ursa Space customers with access to daily satellite data that unlocks solutions to some of the most pressing challenges facing the government and commercial sectors. The wide-ranging use cases can be found across multiple industries, including agriculture, defense and intelligence, emergency response, energy and infrastructure and forestry, among others. (4/6)

SDA's Mega-Constellations Preempt Direct Attack (Source: Air & Space Forces Magazine)
US Space Development Agency Director Derek Tournear says the approach of satellite proliferation has made the US safe from the risk of direct physical attacks on its satellites. "It will cost more to shoot down a single satellite than it will cost to build that single satellite. We just completely changed that value equation," he said. (4/5)

Space Force Plans Late FY24 Award for ‘Digital Bloodhound’ to Sniff Out Cyber Attacks (Source: Breaking Defense)
The Space Force’s primary acquisition command today is wrapping up industry meetings with for its Digital Bloodhound program to improve detection of cyber threats, with a contract award expected late this year. Digital Bloodhound, which is focused on cyber attacks against ground facilities such as satellite command and control stations, falls under the Space Force’s Defense Cyber Operations–Space (DCO-S) program. The service is seeking $76 million in its fiscal 2024 budget request for the program, up from $28 million in FY23. In addition, the Space Force has asked for an additional $43 million in its FY24 “unfunded priorities” list to top up the DCO-S effort. (4/5)

Space Force Embraces Unconventional Ways to Attract and Retain Talent (Source: Space News)
A cybersecurity expert from the private sector was recently commissioned into the U.S. Space Force as a lieutenant colonel even though he never attended a military service academy or completed ROTC in college. This is an example of “innovative recruitment practices” the Space Force is implementing to attract needed talent, Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations, said in a speech April 5 at the Mitchell Institute Spacepower Security Forum.

As the smallest branch of the U.S. military with a high demand for technical expertise, the Space Force has embraced unconventional ways to attract and retain people in key career fields, Saltzman said. The Space Force last year introduced the “constructive service credit program” that allows experienced professionals in the fields of cybersecurity and intelligence to directly commission into the Space Force at ranks appropriate to their years of experience, he explained. (4/5)

Loft Orbital Orders 15 More Satellites From Airbus (Source: Space News)
Loft Orbital has ordered an additional 15 satellite buses from Airbus OneWeb Satellites. Loft announced the order Thursday after ordering more than 15 buses from that supplier in early 2022. The bus, called Longbow, is based on the model used for the OneWeb constellation but with upgrades needed to support Earth observation missions and have a longer lifetime. Loft said it ordered the new satellites after selling out the original order, and said it will continue to work with other satellite manufacturers, such as LeoStella and Raytheon. Loft offers an "abstraction layer" for customers, handling all the technical details of the space and ground segment so that customers can focus on their payloads. (4/6)

SDA's First Tranche 0 Satellites Working Well (Source: Space News)
The first set of satellites launched by the Space Force's Space Development Agency (SDA) are working well. Derek Tournear said SDA was in contact with all 10 Tranche 0 satellites launched Sunday. Those satellites launched 27 months after being ordered, which he described as "extremely fast" for military space projects. The other 18 Tranche 0 satellites will launch in June, followed by 161 Tranche 1 satellites for missile tracking and communications that will be delivered over the next 18 months. SDA is preparing to issue a solicitation for the next contracts for Tranche 2 satellites, with 216 satellites projected for the Tranche 2 Transport Layer and roughly 54 for the Tracking Layer to provide global coverage. (4/6)

China Invites Venezuela to Lunar Station Project (Source: Space News)
China has invited Venezuela to join its lunar research station project as the country works to gain partners for the endeavor. Venezuela would be the first country to join China and Russia in the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) to be built starting in the early 2030s. The two countries could sign a memorandum of understanding for cooperation on ILRS as soon as China's national space day later this month. Venezuela's participation is not surprising since the two countries have been working together in space in the past, such as China building and launching Venezuelan satellites, but one analyst noted that since the two countries have sharply different capabilities any cooperation is "largely symbolic." (4/6)

Soyuz Moved to Different ISS Docking Port (Source: NASA)
A Soyuz spacecraft moved from one International Space Station docking port to another early this morning. The Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft, with Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin and American astronaut Frank Rubio on board, undocked from the station's Poisk module at 4:45 a.m. Eastern and maneuvered to the Prichal module, docking there at 5:22 a.m. Eastern. The port relocation frees up the Poisk module airlock for a series of spacewalks starting later this month as well as a future Progress cargo spacecraft. (4/6)

Planetary Society Lobbies for Venus Mission Funding (Source: Planetary Society)
The Planetary Society is lobbying Congress to restore funding for a NASA Venus mission. The advocacy group published a letter Wednesday signed by the American Geophysical Union and three universities asking Congress to provide funding for the VERITAS mission to enable a launch no later than November 2029. The VERITAS orbiter was scheduled to launch by 2028 but was delayed by NASA to at least 2031 because of problems with another mission, Psyche, and resources it and other missions in development at JPL need.

The organizations argue in the letter that with an indefinite delay in VERITAS, the United States "will miss an extraordinary opportunity to lead the vanguard of scientific exploration of Venus" as other nations work on missions there in the coming decade. (4/6)

Republicans in Congress Concerned About NASA HQ Employees Working From Home (Source: House Science Committee)
Members of the House Science Committee are asking NASA why the agency is continuing to allow telework. In a letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, three Republican members of the committee, including chairman Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK), noted that only 31% of NASA Headquarters employees were working on-site as of January. The members said they were concerned that a lack of in-person communications could contribute to problems with missions, as was the case with the Psyche mission at JPL. (4/6)

Alabama: A Bad Idea (Source: Colorado Springs Indy)
Right now, U.S. Space Command is headquartered here in the Springs. It makes sense: As Matthew Jenkins notes in The Space Review, eight of Space Force’s nine space deltas are located in Colorado, and the National Reconnaissance Office has a complex at Buckley Air Force Base near Denver, from which they operate the intelligence community’s space assets. But in the dying days of his presidency, Donald Trump decided U.S. Space Command would move to Huntsville, Alabama.

The decision wasn’t his to make, and Colorado’s congressional leaders have been fighting ever since to keep Space Command here, along with 1,400 jobs and vital continuity in space operations and defense. The decision is still up in the air, but the Government Accountability Office came out and said last June that the decision to move was driven by a disorganized and unclear process, and expressed concerns about “significant shortfalls in its transparency and credibility,” as well as the “appearance of bias” in the decision.

Sen. Michael Bennet has been urging the Biden administration to reconsider the move. “We cannot let China or Russia set the rules of the road for space in the 21st century,” Bennet said on Twitter Feb. 15. “America has to lead, and we don’t have time to waste.” Keeping the headquarters in Colorado will allow Space Command to reach full operational capacity sooner amid rising tensions with competitors, he argues. (4/9)

Huntsville Attorney Named as Congressional Space Advisor (Source: WHNT)
A Huntsville attorney will now be advising members of Congress on aerospace and science goals for the future. Congressmen Robert Aderholt and Dale Strong named Huntsville Attorney Mark McDaniel as their Aerospace and Science Advisor. In the announcement, Aderholt said that McDaniel “understands space and space exploration just about as much as anyone can without being a NASA scientist.” (4/4)

White House Taps DoD, State to Ensure US Access to Low Earth Orbit (Source: Breaking Defense)
The White House body for coordinating science policy has put the Pentagon, along with the State Department, in charge of “prioritizing sustainable access” to low Earth orbit (LEO) for scientific research — part of a new interagency strategy for supporting government-wide research activities in the lowest band of space, including for national security.

This effort includes promoting interagency efforts and international cooperation on preventing space debris and developing novel technologies designed to extend the on-orbit lifetime of satellites and spacecraft, as well as supporting innovative launch capabilities. While the Defense Department for several years has been expressing interest in commercial development of new LEO-based capabilities such as orbiting “trash trucks” to clean up dangerous space junk, “Walmarts” in space” and on-orbit satellite re-fueling, up to now no agency had been assigned to spearhead such research. (4/3)

LeoLabs and ClearSpace Partner to Advance a Safer, More Sustainable Space Environment (Source: Space Daily)
LeoLabs, the world's leading commercial provider of low Earth orbit (LEO) Space Situational Awareness and Space Traffic Management services, has announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with ClearSpace, the Swiss-based, in-orbit satellite servicing company. The MOU recognizes the two companies' shared vision of a safe and sustainable space ecosystem and their mutual efforts in making this vision a reality.

This strategic partnership comes at a time when both companies are finding commercial and non-commercial success. In 2022, for example, LeoLabs received a contract to help support the development of a US, civil-led STM prototype from the US Department of Commerce, and ClearSpace received a Phase B demo contract from the UK Space Agency to demonstrate its active debris removal technology. (4/4)

Artemis II Launch Could Draw Hundreds of Thousands of Visitors to Florida's Space Coast (Source: WESH)
There has not been a rocket launch from the Cape carrying humans toward the moon in over 50 years. And next year, that will all change with Artemis II. The Space Coast is already gearing up for the huge number of visitors who will travel to see the four astronauts blast off. And the global excitement of that historic event is bound to bring in visitors by the hundreds of thousands.

“When you think about crewed launches and then attendance that we have seen in the past couple of years, I certainly think this can top any of the numbers we have seen in the past. I think we saw a high of 200,000,” Space Coast Office of Tourism Executive Director Peter Cranis said. (4/5)

Space ISAC Stands Up Operational Watch Center to Keep Pace with Proliferating Threats to Space Systems (Source: Space Daily)
Space ISAC, its founding board of directors and executive director launched Space ISAC's Operational Watch Center and its initial operational capability today. This is a crucial milestone for Space ISAC, whose executive, operational, and administrative functions are operated by the National Cybersecurity Center (NCC), and the global space industry, as they address the growing threats and vulnerabilities faced by this sector, which now serves billions of people worldwide.

Space ISAC's Operational Watch Center is supported by a dedicated team of 10 in-person analysts with additional virtual support enabled by a secure cloud architecture. "Protecting space systems as critical infrastructure is incredibly rewarding," said Hector Falcon, Cyber and Space Intelligence Integrator at Space ISAC. "Given that all 16 critical infrastructure sectors use these assets, we are defending not just an array of touchpoints but our livelihood. The analysts monitor data feeds and visualizations, detecting anomalies and correlating this information with other sources to produce comprehensive reports for our members." (4/4)

Webb Telescope Discovers Oldest Galaxies Ever Observed (Source: Phys.org)
The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered the four most distant galaxies ever observed, one of which formed just 320 million years after the Big Bang when the universe was still in its infancy. The galaxies date from 300 to 500 million years after the Big Bang more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was just two percent of its current age. That means the galaxies are from what is called "the epoch of reionisation," a period when the first stars are believed to have emerged. The epoch came directly after the cosmic dark ages brought about by the Big Bang. (4/4)

How Power is Blazing a Trail for America’s Space Effort — and for Nuclear Startups (Source: GeekWire)
As more and more hardware goes into Earth orbit, and eventually to the moon and Mars, where will the power to run all those machines come from? That’s one of the questions under consideration at a State of the Space Industrial Base workshop that’s being conducted this week at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

Input from the workshop will be combined with insights gained at two other workshops in Florida and New Mexico to help the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit produce its annual report about the space industry’s potential contributions to sustaining America’s leadership on the final frontier.

“There’s so much going on, at both big companies and small companies, and we figure that it’s about time that the government actually comes to you,” Steve “Bucky” Butow, director of DIU’s space portfolio, told more than 60 attendees during Tuesday’s opening session.

How Virgin Orbit’s Bankruptcy Will Impact Spaceport Cornwall and the Future of UK Space Launches (Source: iNews UK)
Many experts were impressed by Virgin Orbit's technology – which had already successfully completed four launches in the US. The Cornwall embarrassment, they say, was largely down to misfortune. From a business perspective, however, Virgin Orbit may have been financially doomed from the start – racking up giant bills despite equally huge uncertainty over whether there would ever be enough customers, paying sufficient money for its services, to reach profit.

They argue the company’s implosion is a “cautionary tale” that may set alarm bells ringing at Virgin Galactic, could be hugely damaging for Spaceport Cornwall’s future, and suggests the UK needs a new strategy if it’s to become a player in the commercial rocket market. “There was a belief that the US or UK governments would say, ‘This is an essential capability and we’re willing to invest $100m a year to have this capability on standby.’ That just didn’t happen.”

The team at Spaceport Cornwall say they are “saddened” about Virgin Orbit but insist its bankruptcy has “no direct impact to the team or project” in Newquay. “Spaceport Cornwall continues to operate,” Quinn saysi, pledging to “grow the space cluster in Cornwall.” She says the venture is “working directly with other launch operators worldwide” to meet their “current and future needs”. These potential partners include Sierra Space, the US manufacturer behind a new spaceplane intended to resupply the International Space Station. This craft, Dream Chaser, will be able to land horizontally, but significantly still needs to be launched vertically. (4/5)

UK Space Industry 'Thriving' Despite Virgin Orbit Bankruptcy (Source: The National)
Aside from Spaceport Cornwall, where Virgin Orbit's UK operations were based, there is also "significant activity" under way in Scotland, with two new spaceports, at SaxaVord and Sutherland, expecting satellite launches in 2024. Mr Gardner added that Spaceport Cornwall is in talks with other satellite-launching companies, who employ the same air-launched technology as Virgin Orbit and that more space-related technology firms are keen to move to the spaceport. (4/5)

Sultan Al Neyadi Tells of Joy After Receiving NASA Golden Astronaut Pin (Source: The National)
Emirati astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi has told of his pride over receiving the Nasa seal of approval for his exploits in space. Dr Al Neyadi was presented with the space agency's golden astronaut pin by his crewmates on board the International Space Station. The former IT professional from Al Ain has already spent more than one month on board the floating laboratory. (4/4)

Researchers Devise New Membrane Mirrors for Large Space-Based Telescopes (Source: Optica)
Researchers have developed a new way to produce and shape large, high-quality mirrors that are much thinner than the primary mirrors previously used for telescopes deployed in space. The resulting mirrors are flexible enough to be rolled up and stored compactly inside a launch vehicle. (4/4)

ESA - JUICE Testing Down to the Wire (Source: ESA)
Preparing the Juice mission to Jupiter has involved testing for all kinds of contingencies, down to the smallest of scales. This microscopic view shows surface damage to a tiny silver interconnector after being exposed to erosive atomic oxygen known to be found surrounding Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.

Due to launch on 13 April to begin an eight-year journey to the largest planet in the Solar System, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, will spend three and a half years in the Jupiter system, and in the final phase of its exploration will go into orbit around the largest Jovian moon, Ganymede. (4/5)

Yahsat Takes Significant LEO Step Investing in Astrocast (Source; Via Satellite)
Thuraya has taken the significant step of investing in a Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation for the first time. The company, which is owned by Yahsat, concluded a new investment agreement with Astrocast, a LEO and IoT network operator. The two companies announced the deal April 3. The transaction will be in the form of a convertible loan valued at $17.5 million and marks Thuraya’s first investment in a LEO satellite constellation. As part of the agreement, both parties will also look to extend a technical cooperation agreement for another four years that began between Astrocast and Thuraya in 2019. (4/4)

Dawn Flies Rocket-Powered Spaceplane (Source: Space News)
Dawn Aerospace completed its first series of rocket-powered flights last week. Mk-II Aurora, a scaled down version of the spaceplane Dawn is developing for commercial operations, took to the skies March 29, 30 and 31 from New Zealand’s Gentanner Aerodrome. The initial test campaign validated key flight systems and demonstrated the benefit of rapid reusability, Dawn CEO Stefan Powell said. (4/5)