July 31, 2023

NASA-Supported Studies Will Focus on Addressing Space Debris (Source: NASA)
As part of NASA's efforts to address the increasingly critical issue of space debris, the agency announced on Friday, July 28, that it will continue an initiative established in 2022 to fund research to analyze the technical, economic, social, and policy issues associated with keeping space safe and accessible. The two NASA-funded projects will examine ways to incentivize commercial debris mitigation as well as policy opportunities to keep low-Earth orbit, cislunar space (the region beyond Earth’s geosynchronous orbit but still within the area of gravitational influence of the Earth and the Moon), and other parts of space safe and secure for future missions. (7/21)

ISS Crew Launches Coming in August, September (Source: Space News)
Two crewed missions are on track to launch to the International Space Station in the next month and a half. At a briefing last week, NASA officials said they were targeting no earlier than Aug. 17 for the Crew-7 Crew Dragon mission, carrying four people from NASA, ESA, JAXA and Roscosmos to the station. That will be followed in mid-September by Soyuz MS-24, carrying two Roscosmos cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut. Officials said at the briefing that Roscosmos concluded an "external force" like a debris or micrometeoroid impact caused the coolant leak on a Soyuz spacecraft last December, and NASA concurred with that assessment based on the data they have seen. (7/31)

Astronaut Feustel Retiring From NASA (Source: NASA)
Astronaut Drew Feustel is leaving the agency. NASA announced Friday that Feustel will retire from the astronaut corps on Monday. NASA selected Feustel as an astronaut in 2000 and he flew on the STS-125 shuttle mission, the final Hubble servicing flight, and STS-134, the penultimate flight of the shuttle program. He also spent six months on the station in 2018, serving as commander of Expedition 56. He spent two years as deputy chief astronaut and also acting chief astronaut. (7/31)

Physicist Says SpaceX Launch Possibly Made Hole in Earth's Atmosphere (Source: Business Insider)
A space physicist has said it's "quite possible" that a SpaceX rocket launched earlier this month made a hole in the Earth's ionosphere. The ionosphere is where Earth's atmosphere meets space and stretches roughly 50 to 400 miles above Earth's surface, NASA said. Jeff Baumgardner, a senior research scientist from Boston University, made the comments to Spaceweather. Ionospheric holes have become more common as record numbers of rockets are launched, the report said. The holes are temporary as reionization occurs when the sun rises. (7/30)

Has Government Been Hiding Signs of Extraterrestrial Life? (Source: CNN)
A House hearing on "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena" implied there has been a government cover-up of UFO evidence. "It has nothing to do with national security.," says Harvard Astrophysicist Dr. Avi Loeb, who retrieved an extraterrestrial object from the ocean floor. "It has a lot to do with science. We would like to know if we have neighbors." Click here. (7/29)

5 Facts About Spaceport America (Source: Albuquerque Journal)
Located just west of White Sands Missile Range in Sierra County, roughly 30 miles southeast of Truth or Consequences, Spaceport America is the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport. The spaceport has already had more than 300 launches, according to its website. Every year the company hosts several vertical rocket launches, high altitude balloon missions, other aerospace missions and hosts the world's largest rocket competition, the Spaceport America Cup, which had almost 6,000 participating rocketeers from all over the world earlier this year. (7/30)

New Satellite Will Able to See 'X-Ray Rainbow' From Huge Objects in Space (Source: Space.com)
We'll soon get sharper vision on cosmic X-rays. A new satellite aims to study huge objects in the universe, using instruments able to measure the heat of a single X-ray photon. The X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM — pronounced "crism") will analyze X-rays using the widest field-of-view instrument ever implemented in this kind of imaging probe. (7/30)

Boeing Provides $950K to Support Diversity in Aerospace (Source: Airport Technology)
Boeing is investing $950,000 in scholarship programs to foster diversity in the aviation industry and address the increasing need for commercial airplane pilots. The company is contributing $450,000 to Fly Compton, a Los Angeles-based initiative that exposes minority youth to the aerospace sector. An additional $500,000 is being allocated to 25 scholarships through five organizations focused on aviation. (7/28)

Using Cosmic Weather to Study Which Worlds Could Support Life (Source: Space Daily)
As the next generation of giant, high-powered observatories begin to come online, a new study suggests that their instruments may offer scientists an unparalleled opportunity to discern what weather may be like on far-away exoplanets. Dubbed the extremely large telescopes (ELTs), these observatories, which include the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), will be some of the largest ground-based telescopes ever built, and their instruments are expected to exceed the capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Data collected with their powerful instruments will allow astronomers to use Doppler Imaging - a technique that can recreate 2D maps of an object's surface - to make accurate measurements of the magnetism and chemistry of ultracool targets, or cosmic objects with temperatures less than 2700 K, such as brown dwarfs (BDs) or very low-mass stars (VLMs) - and even some exoplanets. (7/31)

Why Menstrual Cups in Space Matter (Source: Salon)
When America's first woman in space, Sally Ride, was preparing for her 1983 liftoff, NASA's male engineers were so clueless about menstrual periods that — when trying to tally how many tampons Ride needed for her six-day flight — they asked her "Is 100 the right number?" "No," Ride told them. "That would not be the right number." Things have changed a bit for menstruating astronauts since the '80s, though not as much as they need to.

NASA still sends tampons and pads into orbit on space-bound payloads, but this can quickly get expensive. Supply runs to the International Space Station can cost around $10,000 per pound, though, so every inch of a spacecraft's real estate — including that needed for bio-waste — is precious. Meanwhile, the agency's goal is to get overall per-pound cost under $1,000 within 25 years.

That's where the AstroCup payload project comes in. It's the product of a team of researchers and program co-designer Lígia Fonseca Coelho, a Fulbright Scholar and astrobiology researcher from Técnico University, in Lisbon, Portugal. In 2019, Coelho realized that reusable menstrual products like menstrual cups weren't even options considered in space agency planning, despite their increasing adoption on earth through products like flexible menstrual cups. So she started working on bringing astronauts new options for period support and space agencies a new way to condense payload size. (7/30)

Seattle Event Sets a Course for Research on International Space Station — and Its Heirs (Source: GeekWire)
About 900 members of the space community — including astronauts, government officials, researchers and industry professionals — are converging on Seattle this week for the International Space Station Research and Development Conference. But this week’s ISSRDC event is about more than just the ISS.

The 12th annual conference, which is being held in the Pacific Northwest for the first time, comes as NASA and its commercial partners are making plans for privately operated outposts that will take the place of the ISS when it’s brought down from orbit. That fiery retirement party is currently set for the 2030-2031 time frame. (7/30)

'Space Race' Shows Some Still Cling to Cold War Script (Source: China Daily)
NASA chief Bill Nelson visited Argentina and talked about China's achievements in lunar and space exploration at a news conference, claiming that there is a "space race" between China and the United States. This is a term full of Cold War connotations, and it is now being brought to the hot topic of international space cooperation in Argentina by Nelson. No wonder local media commented that Nelson's visit "has a political purpose".

Nelson's visit to hype up a so-called "space race" is believed to have an important intent to provoke and disrupt China-Argentina space cooperation. The China-Argentina Joint Space Exploration Station in Neuquen, Argentina, is China's first deep-space tracking station overseas, which was officially put into operation in 2017. It is intended for peaceful development and utilization of outer space by China and Argentina and is open to the international community. (7/31)

First Angara Rocket Expected at Vostochny Spaceport This Fall (Source: TASS)
The first Angara-A5 carrier rocket, intended for the Vostochny Cosmodrome, is still under construction and is expected to be shipped to the spaceport this fall, Director General of the Khrunichev Center Alexey Varochko told TASS. "The construction of the first Angara-A5 carrier rocket for the Vostochny cosmodrome is continuing according to schedule... Sending the product to the cosmodrome to prepare it for launch is planned for this fall," Varochko said. (7/30)

Elon Musk Really Hates Getting Permits To Do Stuff (Source: ESG Hound)
For the past few weeks, I’ve been mulling over the right contextual hook to describe why it matters that Elon Musk, the world’s most visibly divorced man, simply cannot be bothered to comply with the law. And then, as luck would have it, this week the heavens opened up and dropped a giant steel [unpermitted] “X” sign on the roof of Twitter/X Corp’s San Francisco headquarters. Musk’s ham-fisted rebrand of Twitter into X has been understandably seized upon by the internet commentariat and press as just another example of his rapidly decaying PR prowess.

As desperately as I would like to stop writing about the company’s ongoing comedy of errors in South Texas, it’s impossible to look away. So the extended introduction involving a big silly sign may seem like a non-sequitur, but I think it’s a fascinating parallel with the latest developments at Starbase. Back in April, I laid out the case that the Boca Chica launch site was woefully designed for purpose, lacking standard measures used for energy suppression (namely a flame trench and water deluge system).

According to 33 U.S.C. 1319(c)(1) & (2) it is a crime for someone who “Discharges a pollutant from a point source into a water of the United States without a NPDES or 404 Permit or in violation of a permit.” Not a civil penalty, a *crime* crime, with prison sentences of up to 3 years for knowingly committing such a violation. The problem here is that SpaceX doesn’t have such a permit. They have had years to apply for one, but simply… haven't. (7/31)

Ridwire Hires Flynt as Senior VP (Source: Redwire)
Jacksonville-based Redwire Corp. announced today that veteran aerospace executive G. Allen Flynt has been hired as Senior Vice President of Space Platforms and Robotics. In this role, Flynt will leverage over 35 years of industry experience to drive development of new Redwire solutions and systems to support the growing space industry. Flynt will manage Redwire’s growing portfolio of critical technologies enabling human spaceflight missions, platforms, and space robotics. (7/31)