August 31, 2023

‘Nothing Like It’: Loeb on Interstellar Meteor Found in Ocean (Source: NewsNation)
The remains of a small meteor discovered in the ocean are “far beyond what you find in the solar system,” according to astrophysicist Avi Loeb. Nearly a decade ago, a meteor traveling faster than 95% of nearby stars crashed into the Pacific Ocean. In June, a research group on the interstellar expedition team of the Galileo Project retrieved remnants to begin analysis.

Loeb, the head of the Galileo Project, told “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” that the team is “very confident” the materials found aren’t from our solar system. “We compared it to what you find on the Earth, moon, Mars, anywhere in the solar system. And nothing like it was seen before,” Loeb said.“This is the first time that scientists analyzed materials from a large object that came from outside the solar system. … It had material strength that was tougher than all other space rocks recognized by NASA over the past decade,” Loeb added.  (8/29)

SpaceX Resupply Mission Will Bring NASA Laser Communication System to ISS This Year (Source: Space.com)
Later this year, SpaceX’s 29th Commercial Resupply Services mission will lift a refrigerator-sized device to the International Space Station. This device — given the catchy name of Integrated LCRD Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal (ILLUMA-T) — will complete NASA’s first two-way, end-to-end laser communications system. Harnessing laser beams, ILLUMA-T will transmit information to another satellite at the rate of a respectable Earth-based internet connection. (8/30)

Massive Crater Found on Distant World Far Beyond Neptune (Source: New Scientist)
An object in the outer solar system appears to have had a huge chunk taken out of it in a violent collision, despite such impacts being rare at this distance from the sun. Flavia Rommel at the Federal University of Technology in Brazil and her colleagues enlisted the help of hundreds of amateur astronomers to study the distant world 2002 MS4, found beyond Neptune’s orbit in the Kuiper belt. The so-called trans-Neptunian object (TNO), was discovered in 2002. (8/29)

Sandia National Labs Collaborates With Government, Industry to Expedite Tech Testing in Space (Source: GovCon Daily)
Sandia National Laboratories is working with NASA, the National Nuclear Security Administration and Voyager Space Holdings subsidiary NanoRacks on a new rapid testing approach for supercomputers and other national security space technologies. The project will use the International Space Station as a testing ground, hosting payloads carrying different technologies. (8/30)

QinetiQ Wins $224 Million Contract to Provide Technical Services to Space Development Agency (Source: Space News)
QinetiQ US, a defense contractor based in Lorton, Virginia, was awarded a $224 million contract to provide systems engineering and technical support to the Space Development Agency. SDA is an agency under the U.S. Space Force. It is building a mesh network in low Earth orbit — called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture — projected to have hundreds of satellites.

QinetiQ received a five-year contract for “management and professional services, acquisition support, and engineering and technical analysis needed to deliver the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture,” said a DoD contract announcement Aug. 30. DoD said the contract was a competitive acquisition and two offers were received. (8/31)

Space Business: Unrestricted (Source: Quartz)
With global competition heating up over everything from AI chips to rocket ships, the US will be forced to balance secrecy with its desire to capitalize on know-how from around the globe—a reality dramatized in the recent film Oppenheimer, which depicted the challenge of developing advanced weapons with refugee scientists, some of whom were technically enemy aliens. A Biden-backed immigration bill that would have let more graduates with advanced science and math degrees stay in the country didn’t even come to a vote in the last Congress.

Is it possible that the US aerospace industry is missing out on foreign expertise simply because of a common misunderstanding about export control laws? Which brings us to Elon Musk’s latest squabble with the government. This time it’s not about how he uses his rockets, but who is allowed to build them. The government is correct in saying that asylees and refugees are treated the same as US citizens or permanent residents under export control laws, according to Joseph Gustavus. Both the ITAR and the Export Administration Regulations, the two relevant statutes, recognize these categories as “US persons.”

Still, the lawsuit surprised many aerospace executives who deal with export control rules because SpaceX’s hiring policy reflects the common rule of thumb in the industry. While these officials didn’t want to comment on the record about misunderstanding US laws, confusion over export controls rules is common. For example, an export control tutorial provided for small businesses that receive research funding from the government doesn’t mention the exception, though NASA’s 2021 Export Control Operations Manual does. (8/31)

NASA and NOAA Pick Ball, Northrop, Orbital Micro, and Spire for LEO Satellite Tech (Source: NASA)
NASA awarded study contracts to four companies for a NOAA weather satellite instrument. The contracts, with values of between $4.65 million and $5 million each, went to Ball Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, Orbital Micro Systems and Spire. The 12-month Phase A contracts cover initial design work for the Sounder for Microwave-Based Applications, a microwave sounder NOAA plans to use on future low Earth orbit weather satellites. (8/31)

NASA Preparing for Asteroid Sample Return (Source: Space News)
NASA is making final preparations for the return of a spacecraft carrying samples from an asteroid. The agency conducted a dress rehearsal Wednesday for the recovery of a sample return capsule from the OSIRIS-REx mission, scheduled to return to Earth Sept. 24 and land at the Utah Test and Training Range. The capsule contains about 250 grams of material collected from the asteroid Bennu in 2020. Scientists will examine the samples in the hopes of better understanding the formation of the solar system. The training includes preparing for contingencies if something goes wrong with the capsule's return that causes it to crash, but officials said they were confident that the recovery will go as planned. (8/31)

Defunct Soviet Satellite Hit by Orbital Debris? (Source: Space.com)
A defunct Soviet-era satellite may have been hit by orbital debris. The Space Force is tracking seven debris objects that appear to have come from either Cosmos-2143 or 2145, two of eight Strela communications satellites launched in 1991 into 1,400-kilometer orbits. It was not clear what created the debris, but an impact by another piece of debris potentially too small to be tracked is a likely cause. It was also not clear if the affected satellite completely broke apart or was only damaged. (8/31)

Spire Global Effects 1-For-8 Reverse Stock Split (Source: Spire)
Spire Global announced that a 1-for-8 reverse stock split of the Company’s Class A and Class B common stock will become effective on August 31. The 1-for-8 reverse stock split will reduce the number of outstanding shares of the Company’s Class A common stock from 166,782,887 to approximately 20,847,860 and will reduce the number of outstanding shares of the Company’s Class B common stock from 12,058,614 to approximately 1,507,325. The move will meet the minimum average closing price requirement for listing on the New York Stock Exchange. (8/30)

Momentus to Provide Hosted Payload Services for FOSSA Systems (Source: Space Daily)
Momentus has signed a contract with FOSSA Systems ("FOSSA"), a Spanish company that offers global low-power Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity and in-space services to provide hosted payload services starting in 2024. The contract also includes two options for additional hosted payloads. The hosted payloads will strategically complement FOSSA's existing IoT satellite constellation with additional capacity and serve as a technology demonstrator platform independent of the future satellite launches FOSSA has scheduled for 2024 and 2025. (8/30)

LeoStella and Hera Systems Establish Strategic Alliance (Source: Space Daily)
Focused on revolutionizing satellite manufacturing and diversifying customers' choices for multi-satellite solicitations, smallsat experts LeoStella and Hera Systems have announced a strategic manufacturing alliance. This collaboration will mitigate supply chain risks, increase the reliability of production and delivery schedules, and maintain competitive pricing for small satellite constellations. (8/30)

Australia's Spiral Blue Offers Satellite Software Testing (Source: Space News)
An Australian startup is offering developers an opportunity to run their software in space. Spiral Blue has its SE-1 computer as a payload on a Satellogic imaging satellite launched in January, and has used it to test machine-learning algorithms to remove clouds from images. Through an initiative called Your Code in Space, the company is offering other developers access to the computer to run software for applications like environmental monitoring, disaster response, agricultural insights, urban planning and wildlife conservation. (8/31)

China's Galactic Energy Launches Remote Sensing Satellite (Source: Space Daily)
Galactic Energy, a private rocket maker in Beijing, carried out on Friday the eighth flight mission of its CERES 1 rocket to deploy a remote-sensing satellite into orbit. The CERES 1 Y8 rocket blasted off at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and placed the Jilin 1 Wide-View 02A satellite into its preset orbit. The Y8 in the rocket's designation code meant that the rocket was the eighth of its type. This was China's 38th rocket launch in 2023. (8/30)

China Launches Remote Sensing Satellites (Source: Xinhhua)
China launched a set of imaging satellites Thursday. A Long March 2D rocket lifted off at 3:39 a.m. Eastern from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center and placed three Yaogan-39 satellites into orbit. Chinese media described the spacecraft only as remote sensing satellites, although the Yaogan series are typically for military reconnaissance. (8/31)

China Warns Against US Satellites' Close Approach to Chinese Spacecraft (Source: Space News)
Chinese researchers says close approaches by U.S. military satellites to Chinese spacecraft in geostationary orbit are threats to them. A paper identified 14 potential close approaches by the U.S. Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) satellites to Chinese satellites in GEO in 2020 and 2021.

These rendezvous and proximity operations include both flybys and fly-arounds, coming in one case within about 9.5 kilometers. Approaches that close could allow the GSSAP satellites to take high-resolution images of Chinese spacecraft, which the paper concluded was a serious threat to China's high-value assets in GEO. Western researchers noted that both China and Russia have their own spacecraft in GEO that have made close approaches to other spacecraft and, in one Chinese case, docked with and removed a defunct satellite from GEO. (8/31)

Hackers Shut Down 2 of the World's Most Advanced Telescopes (Source: Space.com)
Some of the world's leading astronomical observatories have reported cyberattacks that have resulted in temporary shutdowns. The National Science Foundation's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, or NOIRLab, reported that a cybersecurity incident that occurred on Aug. 1 has prompted the lab to temporarily halt operations at its Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii and Gemini South Telescope in Chile. Other, smaller telescopes on Cerro Tololo in Chile were also affected. (8/30)

Firefly Ready for Call-Up to Launch Military ‘Responsive Space’ Mission (Source: Space News)
Firefly Aerospace and Millennium Space Systems announced Aug. 30 that they are standing by waiting for orders from the U.S. Space Force to prepare to launch a satellite on short notice. The companies were selected last year to conduct a demonstration of a rapid-response space mission to low Earth orbit known as Victus Nox. (8/30)

'World-Class Centrifuge': Draper Building Unique Missile-Testing Facility in Titusville (Source: Florida Today)
How can scientists in a laboratory setting simulate the immense gravitational forces of a submarine-launched ballistic missile in flight? Try mounting a payload at the end of a centrifuge arm more than 50 feet long — then spinning it around so fast inside a circle-shaped building that it generates more than 25 times the force of Earth's gravity, described Stephen Rusinko, Draper director of operations and production.

Draper, which designs guidance systems for U.S. Navy missiles, is building one of the world's largest centrifuge facilities in Titusville. Tuesday morning, roughly 90 people gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony for the roughly $50 million future Strategic Enhanced Ground Test Facility. Draper CEO Jerry Wohletz said the centrifuge campus will employ 150 highly skilled workers. (8/29)

DART Showed How to Smash an Asteroid. So Where Did the Space Shrapnel Go? (Source: WIRED)
Nearly a year ago, NASA flung the DART spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos at 14,000 miles per hour. It was the first test to see whether they could slightly deflect a space rock’s trajectory using a high-speed collision, a technique that could be used to protect Earth from future killer asteroids. It worked. But now they’re trying to figure out the details of the crash. And if people have to defend earthly life from a potential asteroid impact, those details will surely matter. They predicted there would be debris, but they didn’t know exactly what to expect.

David Jewitt and his colleagues used the Hubble Space Telescope to zoom in repeatedly on Dimorphos. The combined deep observations allowed them to discern objects that are otherwise too faint to see. A few months after the DART probe’s impact, they found a swarm of about three dozen boulders not seen before—the largest 7 meters in diameter—slowly drifting away from the asteroid.

Dimorphos was never a threat to Earth, but details like these would matter in a real asteroid deflection scenario. Boulders and smaller ejecta would have to be knocked out of the way, along with the rest of the asteroid, in order to spare the planet. Or let’s say the asteroid wasn’t spotted until it was very close to Earth, and its trajectory couldn’t be altered enough to avoid a crash. Could it at least be pulverized into boulders small enough to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere? “Is it better to be shot by a high-velocity rifle bullet or a bunch of pellets from a shotgun?” asks Jewitt. “The answer is: The shotgun is better.” (8/30)

Explaning the Ups and Downs in Pulsar Brightness (Source: Hobby Space)
With a remarkable observational campaign that involved 12 telescopes both on the ground and in space, including three European Southern Observatory (ESO) facilities, astronomers have uncovered the strange behaviour of a pulsar, a super-fast-spinning dead star. This mysterious object is known to switch between two brightness modes almost constantly, something that until now has been an enigma. But astronomers have now found that sudden ejections of matter from the pulsar over very short periods are responsible for the peculiar switches. (8/30)