May 8, 2023

Ex-Russian Space Boss Questions US Moon Landing (Source: RT.com)
The former head of Russia's Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, has expressed doubt that the US Apollo 11 mission really landed on the Moon in 1969, saying he has yet to see conclusive proof. Rogozin said he began his personal quest for the truth "about ten years ago" when he was still working in the Russian government, and that he grew skeptical about whether the Americans had actually set foot on the Moon when he compared how exhausted Soviet cosmonauts looked upon returning from their flights, and how seemingly unaffected the Apollo 11 crew was by contrast. 

Rogozin said he sent requests for evidence to Roscosmos at the time. All he received in response was a book featuring Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov's account of how he talked to the American astronauts and how they told him they had been on the Moon. The former official wrote that he continued with his efforts when he was appointed head of Roscosmos in 2018. However, according to Rogozin, no evidence was presented to him. Instead, several unnamed academics angrily criticized him for undermining the "sacred cooperation with NASA," he claimed. (5/8)

Chinese Military Spaceplane Lands After 276 Days in Space (Source: Space News)
A Chinese spaceplane has landed after spending 276 days in orbit. The uncrewed spaceplane landed late Sunday, likely at the Lop Nur military base in Xinjiang. Chinese media confirmed the landing but provided few other details, like a specific landing time. The vehicle launched last August and released a small satellite that operated in close proximity to the spaceplane. The flight was the second for the vehicle after a four-day mission in 2020. (5/8)

Rocket Lab Launches TROPICS Satellites From New Zealand (Source: Space News)
Rocket Lab launched a pair of storm-monitoring cubesats for NASA late Sunday. The company's Electron rocket lifted off at 9 p.m. Eastern from its Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand and deployed the two TROPICS cubesats into orbit about 35 minutes later. That satellites are part of a constellation that will monitor the formation and development of tropical storms using microwave radiometers. A second pair of satellites will launch on another Electron in about two weeks. TROPICS was originally a six-satellite system, but the first two satellites were lost in an Astra Rocket 3.3 failure last June. (5/8)

Momentus Space Tug Raises Orbit (Source: Space News)
Momentus said a thruster on its Vigoride-5 tug has raised the spacecraft's orbit for the first time in a series of maneuvers. The company said Monday that the tug, launched in January, has fired its Microwave Electrothermal Thruster (MET) more than 35 times, raising the spacecraft's orbit by a few kilometers. The thruster vaporizes water with microwaves to generate thrust, and Momentus said the MET exceeded expectations in the recent maneuvers. The MET is a key technology for the company, but could not be tested on its first Vigoride launched last year because of other technical problems with the vehicle. (5/8)

Astronauts Move ISS Hardware, Ready for Axiom Launch (Sources: NASA, Space.com)
Four astronauts took a Crew Dragon spacecraft on a brief trip Saturday from one International Space Station docking port to another. The Crew Dragon spacecraft Endeavour, which had been docked to the zenith port of the Harmony module since its arrival on the Crew-6 mission in March, undocked at 7:10 a.m. Eastern and moved over to the forward port on Harmony, docking there about 50 minutes later. The maneuver frees up the zenith port for a future Dragon cargo mission. The cargo mission needs to dock to that port so the station's robotic arm can retrieve cargo, including new solar arrays, from the Dragon's trunk.

That port will first be used by a rescheduled private astronaut mission. NASA said late Friday that it and SpaceX had rescheduled the launch of Ax-2 mission for Axiom Space to no earlier than May 21. That mission, also flying on a Crew Dragon, will carry four astronauts, commanded by former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, to the station for 10 days. That mission had been scheduled for earlier in the month but was pushed back because of the delayed Falcon Heavy launch from the same pad used for Crew Dragon missions. (5/8)

China Moves TSS Hardware, Readies for Next Launch (Source: Xinhua)
One Chinese cargo spacecraft undocked while another is being readied for launch. The  Tianzhou-5 undocked from China's space station early Friday after arriving there in November with supplies for the Shenzhou-15 crew. The Tianzhou-6 spacecraft arrived at the launch pad in Wenchang, China, on Sunday atop its Long March 7 rocket. That spacecraft is expected to launch Wednesday to the station. (5/8)

DoD Spending on Commercial Space Services Negligible, Despite Growing Space Force Budget (Source: Space News)
Pentagon officials have called attention to DoD’s need to access commercial space industry services. However, very little of the Space Force’s budget is being allocated to these types of services, a space industry and budget analyst said May 2. Commercial space services — enabled by increasingly capable small satellites and cheaper access to orbit — include imagery, space surveillance, weather data, broadband communications and others that could be procured as an alternative to traditional acquisitions.

What the Space Force budget shows is that, other than satellite communications, very few technologies today are bought as services, analyst Mike Tierney, head of legislative affairs at the National Security Space Association, said at a briefing on Capitol Hill. The Pentagon’s funding proposal for fiscal year 2024 seeks $30 billion for the U.S. Space Force, which DoD called its largest ever space budget. (5/5)

NASA: Up to 4 of Uranus' Moons Could Have Water (Source: Space Daily)
NASA scientists concluded that four of Uranus' largest moons likely contain an ocean layer of water between its core and icy crust. The NASA study announced Thursday is the first to detail the evolution of the interior makeup and structure of all five large moons -- Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon and Miranda. It suggests four of the moons hold oceans that could be miles deep after scientists had previously considered the other moons too small to keep an internal ocean from freezing, with Titania, the largest of Uruanus' seven moons the most likely to retain the necessary heat. (5/5)

Space Startups Need to Start Preparing for a Post-Starship World (Source: Tech Crunch)
TechCrunch spoke with three pure-play space VCs — Space Capital founder and managing partner Chad Anderson, Space.VC founder and general partner Jonathan Lacoste and E2MC Ventures founder Raphael Roettgen — to learn more about how they advise founders to think through Starship’s super-heavy implications. While the trio diverges on many fine points, they all agreed that founders should be thinking now about how Starship could affect their operations, for better or worse.

“Starship has such high importance to the space sector that probably almost everyone who has a space company has to war game what that means for their business,” Roettgen said. The most obvious way in which Starship is likely to revolutionize the industry is by continuing the trend SpaceX firmly established with the debut of Falcon 9: further lowering the cost of launching mass to space. Starship will be capable of carrying 100 to 150 tons of stuff to orbit, a paradigm-shifting quantity that far outstrips the payload capacity of any rocket that humans have ever designed. (5/7)

Is NASA's T-minus Launch Countdown a Mocking Reference to Satan? (Source: PolitiFact)
When NASA uses the term "T Minus" during a launch countdown, is it secretly invoking the name of the devil? A social media post suggests as much, but it’s wrong. "Have you ever wondered why NASA always starts their countdown with T minus…? They are mocking everyone with disclosing in plain sight the letter T subtracted from their name… The same title given to the father of all lies… SATAN." The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. "T Minus" does not mean anything demonic. The "T" in "T Minus" stands simply for "time" or "test." NASA has multiple types of countdown besides "T Minus," including "L Minus" and "E Minus." (5/5)