October 30, 2023

Spain's Arkadia Raises $3 Million for Spacecraft Propulsion (Source: Space News)
Spanish propulsion startup Arkadia Space has raised a seed round. The company announced last week it raised $3 million from venture capital funds Draper B1 and Expansion Ventures as well as individual investors like former Spanish astronaut Pedro Duque and Loft Orbital founder Antoine de Chassy. The company, founded in 2020 by four members of the PLD Space propulsion team, is developing spacecraft thrusters that run on green propellants, and will use the funding to expand its facilities and accelerate work on a bipropellant thruster. (10/30)

Blue Origin's Gary Lai Co-Founds Interlune for Lunar Resource Extraction (Source: GeekWire)
Blue Origin's chief architect has co-founded a space resources startup. Gary Lai revealed at an awards ceremony this weekend that he is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Interlune, which is developing technologies to extract lunar resources for use on Earth. Other co-founders of Interlune are Rob Meyerson, the former president of Blue Origin, and Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt. Lai said he will continue to advise Blue Origin on a part-time basis but plans to spend more time with Interlune. (10/30)

Alluvionic Named a PMI Project of the Year Finalist for Launch Checklist (Source: Alluvionic)
Alluvionic has been named one of six international finalists for the Project Management Institute (PMI) Project of the Year Award for its Launch Checklist Modernization Project for the 45th Space Launch Delta (45 SLD) and the United States Space Force (USSF). The Project of the Year Award recognizes excellence in project management practices, including superior organizational results, innovation, and positive impacts on society. Alluvionic’s Launch Checklist Modernization Project helps ensure Project Assurance for military, civil and space exploration, and is now in daily use by the USSF as they provide launch authority for the U.S. Eastern Range. (10/27)

NASA Safety Panel Raises Concerns About ISS Transition (Source: Space News)
NASA's safety advisers are raising concerns about how NASA will shift from the International Space Station to commercial stations. The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel issued a recommendation calling on NASA to provide a "comprehensive understanding" of its plans to transition off the ISS at the end of the decade, citing uncertainties about whether commercial space station providers will be ready by then as well as their ability to close their business cases. Industry, meanwhile, is worried that budget cuts could reduce NASA's support for commercial space station development. The panel said that NASA needs to ensure that a spacecraft needed to safely deorbit the ISS is fully funded and remains on schedule. (10/30)

FAA Expects Extension of Human Spaceflight Learning Period (Source: Space News)
The FAA expects the "learning period" restricting regulations of commercial spaceflight participant safety to be extended. During a panel at the ASCEND conference last week, an FAA official said he expected that the learning period, which has been extended several times already, to be extended again past its current Jan. 1 expiration, although it's not clear by how long. Industry has argued that the extension is necessary to support ongoing discussions of future regulations, while a recent RAND Corporation report recommended that the learning period be allowed to expire. Both industry and government, though, do support ongoing work to study what might be included in future regulations, such as a rulemaking committee established earlier this year by the FAA. (10/27)

Bennu Samples Heading to Smithsonian for Display (Source: CollectSpace)
Samples from the asteroid Bennu will go on public display at the Smithsonian later this week. The National Museum of Natural History will put a piece of the asteroid, returned by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft last month, on display starting Friday. Two other museums will also receive Bennu samples that will go on display as soon as mid-November. (10/30)

India’s 2040 Moon Landing Could Make it a Space Superpower (Source: The Hill)
The Indian government has announced a long-term plan for its space program. It includes a Venus orbiter, a Mars lander, a crewed space station by 2035 and a crewed lunar landing by 2040. India also plans to launch a crewed spacecraft dubbed the Gaganyaan by 2025. The scope of New Delhi’s space ambition is breathtaking, to put the matter mildly.

India has been putting itself on the map as a rising space power. The country signed the Artemis Accords in July, placing it firmly in the NASA-led coalition to return astronauts to the moon and eventually land them on Mars. India has not neglected fostering its own commercial space sector. The International Trade Administration notes that it “has experienced major growth over the last several years.” India has established a regulatory arm called the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center. Among the top Indian commercial space companies are Skyroot, Aerospace, Bellatrix Aerospace, Dhruva Space, Agnikul Cosmos and Pixxel.

Why is India going so all-out to become a space leader? One reason has to be soft political power. India’s government likely has noticed that, for the last 50 or so years, the countries that matter have been spacefaring, including the United States, the old Soviet Union and, at least for the time being, the People’s Republic of China. (10/29)

Australian School Students are Experimenting with ‘Space Veggies’ in a NASA Initiative (Source: The Conversation)
A pink glow is shining on the faces of enthusiastic students as they tend to plants in purpose-built grow boxes for space stations. These students are the first in Australia to experience Growing Beyond Earth – a schools citizen science program from NASA and Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in the United States. In this project, students grow plants in controlled conditions to test if they would be suitable for NASA missions, to help feed a future cadre of astronauts. (10/30)

‘It Only Makes the News When the Toilets Stop Working’: Has the 25-Year-Old ISS Been a Waste of Space? (Source: The Guardian)
The forthcoming destruction of the ISS raises key questions. Was it worth £120bn to build and operate? What have we have learned over the past 25 years that justifies this incredible outlay? What will replace it, and who will pick up the bill? Many scientists point out that the ISS has provided invaluable insights on how to live and work in zero gravity, knowledge that will be crucial as humanity prepares to return to the moon and head off on long-duration trips to Mars and beyond.

Others disagree. They argue that the money spent on the ISS would have been better invested in different projects. In the 1990s, when planning of the ISS began, the US – the principal funder of the international station – was considering two major rival scientific projects. The first was the ISS. The second was a proposed particle accelerator, the Superconducting Super Collider. Both came with colossal pricetags, and the US Congress decided the nation could only afford to provide cash for one. Mainly for political reasons, it chose the ISS and axed funding for the super collider.

The decision left Europe free to build its own particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), at Cern, in Geneva, where research has since garnered a host of Nobel prizes. By contrast, the US ended up with an “orbital turkey”, as the late US Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg described the ISS. (10/30)

L3Harris' Aerojet Buy Boosts Rocket Motor Production (Source: Defense One)
L3Harris Technologies is working to increase solid rocket motor production after its $4.7 billion acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne, aiming to address supply chain issues that have hindered the delivery of rocket motors. CEO Chris Kubasik announced during the company's third-quarter earnings call that they have the Pentagon's full support and expect "noticeable improvements" in rocket motor output by the end of 2024. (10/27)

Blue Origin Ready To Scoop Up NASA Contract If SpaceX Misses (Source: WCCFtech)
While it has not provided any tentative launch dates for the first lunar cargo lander mission, the company outlines that it will test the BE-7 rocket engine and its power and fuel management systems. It will also provide a test bed of sorts for the MK2 lander - Blue's prototype for its crew lunar lander. The company was also careful to mention that the MK1 is a single launch vehicle, which makes it stand in sharp contrast to SpaceX's significantly larger lunar lander that relies on in-orbit refueling from a SpaceX propellant depot for its lunar flights.

The crew and cargo variants are both covered by NASA's May award, and the cargo lander's payload specifications depend on whether it will stay on the Moon or make a roundtrip to Earth. The Blue Moon lunar lander falls under NASA's Sustainable Lunar Development contract, which is worth $3.4 billion, and at the contract announcement press conference, Blue Origin's vice president for lunar transportation, Mr. John Couluris, shared that his company was also contributing $3.4 billion to the effort. (10/27)

Light and Gravitational Waves Don't Arrive Simultaneously (Source: Big Think)
There’s an important rule in relativity that — as far as we know — all objects must obey. If you have no rest mass as you travel through the vacuum of space, you absolutely are compelled to travel exactly at the speed of light. This is exactly true for all massless particles, like photons and gluons, approximately true for particles whose mass is tiny compared to their kinetic energy, like neutrinos, and should also be exactly true for gravitational waves. Even if gravity isn’t inherently quantum in nature, the speed of gravity should be exactly equal to the speed of light. At least, that’s a necessity if our current laws of physics are correct.

And yet, when we saw the first neutron star-neutron star merger in both gravitational waves and with light, the gravitational waves arrived first by a substantial, measurable margin: by almost 2 seconds. What’s the explanation? Even though the signal originated from 130 million light-years away, the distance shouldn’t matter; if the signals were generated at the same time, and they travel at the same speed and follow the same path, then they should’ve arrived at the same time, too. (10/26)

Mouse Embryos Grown in Space for First Time (Source: Phys.org)
Mouse embryos have been grown on the International Space Station and developed normally in the first study indicating it could be possible for humans to reproduce in space, a group of Japanese scientists said. The researchers, including Teruhiko Wakayama, professor of University of Yamanashi's Advanced Biotechnology Center, and a team from the Japan Aerospace Space Agency (JAXA), sent frozen mouse embryos on board a rocket to the ISS in August 2021. (10/29)

Boeing Pencils in Anytime After April 1st for Next Crew Flight Test (Source: Space Daily)
NASA and Boeing have moved their timelines, setting an April launch date for the Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test (CFT) to the ISS. The decision for the slight delay from a March target was taken during a launch manifest evaluation, factoring in upcoming crew rotations and cargo resupply missions scheduled for this spring. Upon satisfying NASA's stringent safety requirements, the CFT will mark Starliner's first crewed mission to the ISS. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are set to be onboard for this landmark event. (10/30)

Rogue Wins AFWERX Contract for Innovative Space Inspection Technology (Source: Space Daily)
Rogue Space Systems Corporation, an emerging name in space servicing solutions, has been awarded a Direct-to-Phase II contract by AFWERX, an initiative of the U.S. Department of the Air Force (DAF). The contract focuses on the incorporation of sensor fusion technology, designed to address key challenges in ensuring safe close-proximity operations in space. (10/30)

South Korea's KERI Develops Pioneering Thermoelectric Technology for Space Probes (Source: Space Daily)
Researchers from the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI)-Drs. SuDong Park, Byungki Ryu, and Jaywan Chung-have formulated a new approach to thermoelectric efficiency and engineered a high-efficiency, multistage thermoelectric power generator module. This development has implications for the performance of Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs), key power sources for space probes, and has caught the eye of the German Aerospace Research Institute.

RTGs have long served as reliable power generators in various space applications, including space probes and rovers. Using radioactive isotopes like plutonium-238 and americium-241, RTGs generate substantial heat, usually ranging between 400-700 degrees Celsius, inside a sealed vessel. The critical innovation lies in the capability to directly convert this thermal energy into electrical energy, particularly valuable in the unforgiving thermal conditions of space. (10/30)

Crunch Time for ESA's Phoebus Propellant Tank (Source: Space Daily)
Aside from the engines and software, orbital calculations and the launch pad, the tanks that hold the fuel are a masterful example of engineering in their own right - and ESA will soon be testing the next generation of rocket tanks: Phoebus. Designing and building the cryogenic right tank for a rocket is no easy feat, and it gets even more complicated during launch. On ignition of a rocket engine and liftoff the rocket is subjected to an intense blast, compressing and shaking each component, and the fuel tanks get the worst of it as they hold liquids that slosh around inside.

ESA's Phoebus project is looking to carbon fibre-reinforced plastic for the next generation of rocket fuel tanks. Carbon fibre materials have taken the world by storm as they are extremely lightweight and strong, but so far they have not been able to be made suitably leak-tight for storing liquid hydrogen, nor liquid oxygen due to its reactivity. European teams at ESA, MT Aerospace and ArianeGroup have now overcome both these limitations by using new manufacturing technologies, as well as state-of-the art design methodologies and fine-tuning the plastics chemistry. (10/30)

Is India's NavIC Better Than GPS? (Source: Rediff)
India has a new boast to make in scientific innovation: NavIC, an independent standalone navigation satellite system developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) that can be used by sectors ranging from logistics to telecommunications. Apple in September launched iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models of its smartphones that for the first time support NavIC, or Navigation with Indian Constellation.

Developers using Apple's iOS app can choose NavIC like they do with the Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), the European Union's Galileo, or China's BeiDou. India in September said it might make it mandatory for all 5G phones sold in the country to support NavIC by January 2025. It is likely to mandate NavIC-enabled chips in all mobile devices by 2025.

NavIC consists of a constellation of seven satellites and a network of ground stations and is touted to be more accurate than GPS. Software development firms would prefer NavIC-enabled systems in their products, as it follows the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) that operates on a much wider scale. (10/30)

Misaligned Binary Star Systems are Rogue Planet Factories (Source: Universe Today)
Most of the planets in the Universe orbit a star. They are part of a system of planets, similar to our own solar system. But a few planets drift alone in the cosmos. For whatever reason, be it a near collision or slow gravitational perturbations that destabilize its orbit, these planets are cast out of their star system and sent adrift. These rogue planets are notoriously challenging to find, but as we start to discover them we’re finding they are a bit more common than we’d thought. Now a new study posits a reason why.

For a single-star planetary system such as ours, a planet would either need a near-collision to be thrown out of the system, or there would need to be a close cluster of planets to gradually destabilize a world. We know from the evolution of our solar system that planets have shifted in their orbits significantly, and we know that the Earth and Moon formed when a Mars-sized world struck Earth in its youth, so rogue planets could come from systems like ours. But simulations show that the number of rogue planets a single-star system produces is relatively small. (10/28)

Prometheus Full Ignition: Progress for Ultra-Low Cost Reusable Rocket Engine (Source: SciTech Daily)
The development of a cost-effective, reusable Prometheus engine for European rockets has seen substantial progress. An ongoing project to develop a low-cost, reusable engine for European rockets made considerable progress over the summer and autumn, with a series of tests that achieved full ignition and, ultimately, a 30-second burn with re-ignition of an early prototype of the Prometheus engine. Work at ArianeGroup’s test facility in Vernon, France achieved first ignition in June 2023, followed by the 30-second firing and re-ignition on October 20. (10/28)

Space Development Agency Awards Northrop Grumman $732 Million Contract for 38 Satellites and Support Services (Source: Space News)
The Space Development Agency awarded Northrop Grumman a $732 million contract for 38 communications satellites that will be part of the U.S. military’s low Earth orbit space architecture. These satellites are for the portion of SDA’s mesh network known as Transport Layer Tranche 2 Alpha that will have a total of 100 satellites. The agency selected York Space Systems to build the other 62 spacecraft. The Alpha satellites are projected to launch in late 2026. (10/30)

Maxar Intelligence Announces New Executive Appointments (Source: Space News)
Maxar announced Oct. 30 that Dan Smoot was selected as the new CEO of its satellite imagery business known as Maxar Intelligence. Smoot, a veteran technology industry executive, will take over as CEO Nov. 6. He replaces Daniel Jablonsky, former CEO of Maxar Technologies.
(10/30)

Supervolcano Eruption on Pluto Hints at Hidden Ocean Beneath the Surface (Source: Space.com)
Although it has been close to a decade since NASA's New Horizons spacecraft visited Pluto, the dwarf planet continues to reveal itself as a surprisingly complex world. Scientists studying spacecraft data of an unusual crater near a bright, heart-shaped region on Pluto called Sputnik Planitia say they may have found a supervolcano that likely erupted just a few million years ago. That might sound like an incredibly long time ago, but cosmically speaking, it's pretty recent. For context, the solar system is more than 4.5 billion years old. (10/30)