November 19, 2023

Rocket Lab Expanding to Baltimore County MD (Source: CBS News)
Gov. Wes Moore announced that Rocket Lab plans to manufacture products for spacecraft and rockets in Maryland. The company will make the products in a Space Structures Complex situated at the former Lockheed Martin building in Middle River. Rocket Lab intends to create 65 permanent full-time jobs at its new location by December 2025, state officials said. Maryland is helping Rocket Lab by providing the company with a $1.56 million repayable loan through the Advantage Maryland program. Rocket Lab is eligible for other incentives and tax credits, too, according to state officials. (11/17)

Maritime Launch Announces Non-Brokered Private Placement of Convertible Debentures (Source: Maritime Launch)
Maritime Launch Services, developer of Canada’s first commercial spaceport, Spaceport Nova Scotia, is pleased to announce a non-brokered private placement of unsecured convertible debentures for minimum gross proceeds of $2,000,000. (11/17)

Senator Warner Introduces Legislation Boosting Spaceports (Source: The River 95.3)
Virginia Senator Mark Warner and Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan introduced bipartisan legislation to support spaceports across the nation. The legislation will increase investment in space and address the spaceport bottleneck. The Alleviate Spaceport Traffic by Rewarding Operators Act, or ASTRO, would award funding to spaceports with a track record of launches, protecting and promoting America’s strategic, military, and commercial interests in space exploration while supporting their local economies.

The ASTRO Act would help private spaceports get the resources they need to improve the infrastructure and increase launch capacity and cadence. Through the Act, spaceports would receive $250,000 for each licensed launch and $100,000 for each permitted launch up to $2.5 million to promote investment in spaceports that have a record of successful launches. (11/17)

Quantum Chemistry Experiment on ISS Creates Exotic 5th State of Matter (Source: Space.com)
Aboard the ISS there's a compact lab about the size of a small refrigerator that makes some of the coldest stuff in the universe. It's called the Cold Atom Lab, and for some time, scientists have been using this chamber to research the strange quantum properties of atoms in microgravity. But on Wednesday they announced they've reached a milestone. The Cold Atom Lab officially generated a quantum gas containing two species of atoms. This could ultimately open the door for totally new space-based experiments in quantum chemistry.

When thinking about states of matter, gases, liquids, solids and plasmas are the four well known ones — but there's also an exotic fifth state of matter, the Bose-Einstein condensate, that was first discovered in the 1990s. Bose-Einstein condensates are generated in ultracold labs like the Cold Atom Lab, where lasers or magnets help chill a cloud of atoms close to absolute zero. In this state, atoms slow down, their edges blend together, and scientists can observe quantum effects that are usually very hard to investigate. (11/17)

Investors Grant Astra Extension on Loan (Source: Space News)
Investors in launch vehicle and spacecraft propulsion company Astra Space have given the company a four-day extension on a loan to provide the company more time to line up a longer-term funding deal. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission late Nov. 17, Astra announced that JMCM Holdings LLC and SherpaVentures Fund II, LLP has agreed to extend the maturity date of a loan, provided earlier this month, by four days to Nov. 21. (11/18)

It Wasn’t an Earthquake, It Was SpaceX (Source: KVEO)
SpaceX’s Starship launch left many confused and frightened this morning when they woke up to the ground rumbling. ValleyCentral can assure you it was not an earthquake. It was just a rocket attempting to head into sub-orbital space. (11/18)

SpaceX Launches Starlink Satellites From Florida (Source: Florida Today)
Quickly swallowed by a shroud of thick mist, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took flight in the darkness early Saturday morning from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. SpaceX's Starlink 6-28 mission lifted another 23 internet-beaming satellites into low-Earth orbit at 12:05 a.m. EST from Launch Complex 40 — though the rocket essentially could not be seen by spectators from as close as Cocoa Beach. (11/18)

Cosmic Vanishing Acts: NASA Unraveling the Mystery of Shrinking Exoplanets (Source: SciTech Daily)
A new study could explain the ‘missing’ exoplanets between super-Earths and sub-Neptunes. Some exoplanets seem to be losing their atmospheres and shrinking. In a new study using NASA’s retired Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers find evidence of a possible cause: The cores of these planets are pushing away their atmospheres from the inside out. (11/18)

Spanish Researchers 3D Printed and Deployed a Communication Satellite in 90 Minutes (Source: Interesting Engineering)
When an emergency strikes, establishing telecommunications in the area is a primary hurdle rescue workers face. Now, researchers at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) in Spain have devised a simple solution using 3D printing that can begin establishing telecommunications in as little as 90 minutes. They demonstrated how a nanosatellite can be 3D printed in just 90 minutes and deployed using a hot air balloon to establish communications in an affected area. (11/17)