October 9, 2023

Germany Supports Launch Alternatives (Source: Ars Technica)
Germany moves to competitive launch procurement. After decades of Arianespace serving as the primary rocket vendor for all European nations, Germany is seeking to take a different approach to buying launch services. The country will pursue a competitive procurement process when purchasing launch services for its satellites and intends to use its position within the European Space Agency to advocate that the agency does the same, European Spaceflight reports.

Not entirely altruism ... Germany adopting this stance is significant as the country is one of the two primary contributors to the Ariane 6 rocket, which Arianespace is actively marketing to European nations and international customers. Moreover, for 2023 at least, Germany is the largest contributor to the ESA budget. Of course, there are some ulterior motives. Germany is home to some of the most promising European launch startups, boasting the likes of Isar Aerospace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and HyImpulse. (10/6)

Dassault Considers Entering Launch Business (Source: Ars Technica)
French aviation company talking to Rocket Lab. The French industrial firm Dassault Aviation is studying the potential development of a reusable space transportation system to launch satellites into low-Earth orbit. The company's design consists of an airborne reusable hypersonic vehicle and a subsonic carrier aircraft.

Powering the space plane from New Zealand ... According to The Letter A, one of the companies Dassault is talking to is Rocket Lab, which potentially could supply rocket engines for the space plane. It is not clear how far along the discussions are or how committed to the project Dassault is. But this would represent a nice diversification opportunity for Rocket Lab if it comes to pass. (10/6)

Protests Over Scottish Spaceports (Source: Ars Technica)
Protesters raise concerns over Scottish spaceports. Protesters from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Drone Wars UK appeared outside the king's official residence in Edinburgh on Tuesday to highlight concerns about the environmental impact of spaceports and their role in bolstering militarism, The National reports. There are currently plans for at least five new spaceports in Scotland, but the campaigners drew particular attention to three: the Saxa Vord spaceport in Unst, Shetland; the Orbex spaceport on the A’Mhoine peninsula in Sutherland; and a spaceport in North Uist being proposed by Comhairle nan Eilean Siar in conjunction with private military contractor QinetiQ.

Opposed to military use of space ... Lynn Jamieson, the chair of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said all the projects posed a threat to biodiversity. The Scottish Government has previously encouraged development of the spaceports as a good economic opportunity and noted they could allow Scotland to become a leading nation in space. However, the protesters contend that the industry in Scotland must not be permitted to prop up an increasingly militarized view of space. (10/6)

Russia's Phantom Rockets (Source: Ars Technica)
Russia's phantom rocket designs. The leader of Russia's space corporation, Yuri Borisov, discussed his country's future ambitions in space on Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress. He spoke expansively about Russia's plans to build a new space station in low-Earth orbit, the Russian Orbital Station, as well as other initiatives. Among these were the Amur and Korona rockets, Ars reports.

More like Potemkin rockets ... Russia has been talking publicly about the reusable "Amur" rocket for three years now. It looks similar to SpaceX's Falcon 9 and aims to have a reusable first stage. But there has apparently been zero progress toward developing the hardware. As for the Korona rocket, who knows? It's probably a reference to a single-stage-to-orbit rocket first conceived 30 years ago when NASA and McDonnell Douglas were working on the DC-X launch vehicle in the United States. I doubt that ever happens. (10/6)

XCAM Secures UK Space Agency Funding for New Space Camera System (Source: Space Daily)
UK based XCAM Ltd, world leaders in specialist digital camera systems, have secured over 200,000 pound grant funding from the UK Space Agency's Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation (CEOI) , to develop and evaluate a New Space ultra-low-light camera system suitable for use in a range of compact Earth observation instruments in the visible and NIR wavelengths. (10/9)

SDA Making Waves with Procurement Approach (Source: Space News)
The head of the Pentagon's Space Development Agency says he is fighting critics within the Defense Department about his agency's approach to acquisition. In a recent social media post, Derek Tournear said he was told to "stop playing the role of 'bad cop'" at SDA by pushing non-traditional approaches to space acquisition, such as purchasing dozens of satellites from multiple companies for its tracking and communications constellation.

He said SDA's unconventional approach has helped achieve some progress, with two successful satellite launches achieved in 2023, but is being met with resistance from defenders of the established system. Tournear staunchly defended SDA's approach, emphasizing that military forces need access to cutting-edge technologies in a timely manner and that traditional methods often have fallen short. (10/9)

Slingshot Spies Russian Satellite Spying on Other Satellites (Source: Space News)
Slingshot Aerospace is tracking a Russian satellite that appears to be eavesdropping on other satellites in geostationary orbit. The company said last week that it identified multiple maneuvers by Luch-2, a Russian satellite launched in March, that are highly reminiscent of the behavior exhibited by Luch-1, which in 2015 caused an international stir when it parked itself between two Intelsat commercial communications satellites for five months. Both satellites are believed to carry signals intelligence payloads to try to listen in on communications with other spacecraft. Slingshot said it detected the maneuvers by Luch-2 using artificial intelligence software that looks for abnormal behaviors by satellites. (10/9)

Azerbaijan Joins China's Lunar Base Effort (Source: Space News)
Azerbaijan is joining a Chinese-led effort to develop a lunar base. Officials with the China National Space Administration and Azerbaijan's space agency, Azercosmos, signed an agreement on cooperation regarding the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) during the International Astronautical Congress last week in Baku, Azerbaijan. The agreement, as with a statement released last month about South Africa joining the ILRS, does not provide specifics of the cooperation. China says it has now attracted around 15 signatories to its ILRS initiative but has not released the full list of partners. China and Russia presented a joint ILRS roadmap in 2021, but Beijing has since apparently taken the role of lead of the project after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (10/9)

Vega Launches Smallsats (Source: Space News)
Europe's Vega rocket launched a dozen smallsats Sunday night. The Vega lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana, at 9:36 p.m. after a launch attempt Friday night was scrubbed in the final seconds of the countdown because of an unspecified technical issue. The Vega carried the THEOS-2 imaging satellite for Thailand, the FORMOSAT-7R/TRITON weather satellite for Taiwan and 10 cubesat secondary payloads. The launch was the first for the Vega family of vehicles since the December 2022 failure of the larger Vega C. That failure was blamed on the rocket's second-stage motor, which was upgraded for the Vega C. ESA said last week that Vega C launches will not resume until the fourth quarter of 2024 in order to redesign part of that second stage. (10/9)

India Tests Crewed Spacecraft This Month (Source: Hindustan Times)
India's space agency ISRO is planning an abort test of its Gaganyaan crewed spacecraft later this month. ISRO officials said the test, planned for around Oct. 25, will demonstrate the performance of the abort system that would pull the capsule away to safety in the event of a launch failure. A successful test would allow ISRO to proceed with an uncrewed orbital test flight, likely in the first quarter of 2024. (10/9)

How ‘The Exorcist’ Led to Space Tourism (Source: The Messenger)
The 1973 horror film The Exorcist is directly responsible for the inchoate space tourism industry. Kinda. In the late 1960s, a British multi-instrumentalist prodigy, Mike Oldfield, started tinkering with a melody later known as "Tubular Bells." The future billionaire Sir Richard Branson was launching a record label he called Virgin Records. Then he did something truly gutsy. He rolled the dice on Oldfield's Tubular Bells project.

The Exorcist only uses a short snippet of Tubular Bells in the movie, but when the film became an international sensation in December 1973, sales of the record went big. And we know what happened to Virgin. From music to nightclubs to the multi-media megastores, to the airline industry to, weirdly, healthcare and, eventually, space tourism through Virgin Galactic.

Would any of that have happened without the early needle drop in The Exorcist? We'll never know. But Branson has never forgotten his roots. In 2013, he named one of his aircrafts the Tubular Belle, and in 2021, a successful operation in Virgin's LauncherOne mission, which sent payloads into low orbit, was named "Tubular Bells: Part One." (10/8)

Why I’m Worried About Commercial Space Travel (Source: I News)
Space remains controversial both on a personal and corporate level. Only this week, astronomers expressed concern that light pollution from dozens of new satellite launches, including the giant “squash-court size” BlueWalker 3, will interfere with star-gazing. And, obviously, rocket launches can leave a huge carbon footprint – although today’s liquid hydrogen powered rockets leave a cleaner vapour exhaust. What happens when those launches number in the thousands?

Then there’s the expense. Britain spends just 0.05 per cent of GDP on its space programme, the lowest amount of any major European country. That’s still millions of pounds in a time of economic crisis. We decided a decade ago that we would not contribute to the ISS, as it was not “value for money”. NASA, which spent over $22bn last year, accepts it cannot afford another ISS, without private funding. Do we leave space exploration to Richard Branson, Elon Musk and wealthy tourists? Clearly, therein lies ethical dangers. (10/9)

Major Investor in Scotland’s Spaceport Banned From Being Company Director (Source: Daily Record)
A self-proclaimed “wonderkid” exposed by the Sunday Mail after becoming a major investor in Scotland’s space port has been banned from being a company director. Michael Haston was lauded by the BBC when his private equity firm took a multi-million pound stake in the government-backed rocket launch center on Shetland in 2020. But the SaxaVord space site cut all ties with the businessman after we revealed details of his checkered dealings.

Now the UK Government’s Insolvency Service have confirmed his eight-year director ban. Their records state: “Mr Haston failed to ensure that Leonreed Limited maintained and/or preserved adequate accounting records, or in the alternative, has failed to deliver up to the Liquidators such records.” Dozens of people lost millions after investing in a finance company run by Haston, who also goes by the name Michael McQueen. (10/8)

NASA's Plan to Crash and Burn the ISS Explained (Source: Salon)
In a few short years, some of us will be able to look up at the sky and see a flaming dot roar toward the Earth and crash into the ocean. In that dot will be 30 years of international scientific cooperation between nations that are more often at each others’ throats than in each others’ labs. As the dot gets closer, we’ll see the burning fragments of the International Space Station modules — and maybe even some other countries’ modules that we bring down with us.

Congress has authorized ISS operations into 2030, though budget fears still hover over some in the field. NASA’s latest public relations sprint, however, is geared toward finding commercial contractors that can tug the U.S. modules back to earth for a splashdown. And those which can privatize such low-orbit destinations, demoting NASA’s role from that of public creator to private customer. NASA is now asking U.S. companies for input on its upcoming rules for commercial space stations in low-earth orbit — destinations available to NASA once the ISS is retired — with an industry briefing scheduled for Oct. 12. (10/8)

Wanted: Bright Ideas to Develop the Lunar Economy (Source: ESA)
Hundreds of missions to the Moon are due to be launched in the coming years. To create a sustainable lunar link, ESA has initiated its Moonlight programme to support space companies in Europe to create a constellation of lunar satellites. The satellites will offer communication and navigation services that could empower entrepreneurs to create innovative businesses for customers on the Moon and on Earth. These businesses will create new jobs in Europe and around the world. Economic consultants have estimated that the total lunar revenue opportunities could be €40 billion over the next decade, rising to almost €160 billion up to 2040. (10/9)

HotSat-1: UK Spacecraft Maps Heat Variations Across Earth (Source: BBC)
A novel UK satellite has returned its first pictures of heat variations across the surface of the Earth. HotSat-1 carries the highest resolution commercial thermal sensor in orbit, enabling it to trace hot and cold features as small as 3.5m across. In the initial imagery, a Chicago train is observed moving through the night and the flame fronts of Canadian wildfires are precisely mapped. London operator SatVu plans to launch seven additional spacecraft. (10/6)