November 24, 2023

Space Companies Want More Dock Space at Port Canaveral (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Private aerospace leaders want Florida lawmakers to consider steps to streamline local regulations, expand a pool of workers such as machinists and welders and provide more dock space for the industry at Port Canaveral. Megan Mitchell, vice president of government relations for Blue Origin, an aerospace company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, pointed to future needs as the company’s New Glenn rocket system moves into the regular blastoff rotation.

“There is no other location that can support that massive vehicle recovery,” Mitchell told members of the House Regulatory Reform & Economic Development subcommittee last week. “We look forward to growing further here,” Mitchell added. “But we recognize that possibly, in just a few years, we’re going to need additional support and infrastructure. So, we do request that the committee look at the horizon to ensure that the continued success long into the future is available.”

Backing Mitchell, Space Florida President and CEO Rob Long told lawmakers that space at Port Canaveral is “physically limited.” A study is underway to look at the growth of Port Canaveral and other ports to handle the expanding aerospace industry, Long said. Port Canaveral lists among its goals and objectives an ability to “increase cargo handling capabilities and add capacity for more flexibility to accommodate diverse commodities and increased heavy lift and project cargo for expanding commercial space operations,” according to the Florida Ports Council. (11/20)

What to Expect from Virgin Galactic's Upgraded Spaceplane (Source: Gizmodo)
Compared to its predecessor, the Delta class vehicle will be larger and able to carry six passengers on board rather than Unity’s four-person capacity. The fourth seat has been used to carry a Virgin Galactic employee on board the suborbital flights. The company also claims that the Delta vehicles will require less maintenance between flights, and will therefore be capable of launching up to twice a week. Unity, on the other hand, can only fly once a month.

The new Delta vehicle will have the same outer mold line as Unity, but its composite structure and avionics will be designed to make it lighter and faster to turn around between flights. Delta also requires a new mothership. Virgin Galactic’s current mothership, the VMS Eve, will be replaced by aircraft designed by Aurora Flight Sciences, a Virginia-based Boeing subsidiary. The new motherships are an upgraded version of Eve, designed to be faster to produce and easier to maintain to help the company scale up its operations. (11/22)

Viasat Warns Satellite Power Limit Review Would Hurt GEO Innovation (Source: Space News)
A proposal to review satellite transmission power limits risks curtailing investments and innovation in geostationary orbit (GEO) where space companies such as Viasat operate. The move to review Equivalent Power Flux Density (EPFD) limits, affecting how powerful non-geostationary (NGSO) satellite signals should be to avoid disrupting GEO spacecraft, is up for debate at the four-week WRC-23 conference in Dubai to update global spectrum rules. If the proposal is adopted, the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union would study EPFD limits, potentially leading to proposed regulatory changes. (11/22)

1st Country With Lunar Outpost, Competition ‘Heating-Up’ Between US-Led Artemis & China’s ILRS (Source: EurAsian Times)
The fierce rivalry between the US and China in the modern lunar race, focused on placing humans on the Moon, intensifies as both countries seek to rally more partners for their ambitious missions. Both China and the United States have set their sights on establishing settlements at the Moon’s South Pole, where water in the form of ice exists in permanently shadowed craters.

Through its Artemis program, the US is forming a lunar coalition with the Artemis Accords, outlining guidelines for lunar exploration. The Artemis program, led by NASA, aims to construct one or more bases near the Moon’s South Pole by the end of the 2020s. These endeavors are crucial for NASA’s broader goal of sending astronauts to Mars by the late 2030s or early 2040s. Meanwhile, China is collaborating with Russia on the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a project with somewhat similar objectives to Artemis, intending to establish a base near the Moon’s South Pole. (11/22)

Space Force Wants to Track 'Abnormal Observables' with Unknown Origins in Earth's Orbit (Source: Space.com)
The U.S. Space Force wants to be able to identify and track mysterious objects in orbit. The Space Force's Space Training and Readiness Command, or STARCOM, which is tasked with educating and training U.S. Space Force personnel, recently published a document titled "Space Doctrine Publication 3-100, Space Domain Awareness" that outlines what space domain awareness (SDA) is and how to establish and maintain it. In a nutshell, SDA means being able to identify, understand, track and maintain custody of all of the various objects in orbit around Earth. (11/24)

How Hedera Hashgraph Will Unlock $ Billions for the Space Industry (Source: Medium)
Within the distributed ledger technology industry, the most emerging and high performance technology is Hashgraph. Hashgraph solves all of the shortcomings of the predecessor technology Blockchain. At its core layer it is able to perform trillions of transactions per second with shards (Ethereum does 14 transactions per second) whilst consuming 970.000.000 times less Energy than first generation Blockchains. It is the greenest distributed ledger technology in the world.

The applications of Hashgraph technology in the space industry are vast, including the following use cases: Secure Satellite Communication & Payment Networks; Tokenisation of Resources from Asteroid Mining; Space Supply Chain Management; Tracking & Management of Space Traffic; and Smart Contracts for autonomous spacecrafts. Click here. (11/23)

NASA Uses Two Worlds to Test Future Mars Helicopter Designs (Source: Phys.org)
For the first time in history, two planets have been home to testing future aircraft designs. In this world, a new rotor that could be used with next-generation Mars helicopters was recently tested at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, spinning at near-supersonic speeds (0.95 Mach). Meanwhile, the agency's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has achieved new altitude and airspeed records on the Red Planet in the name of experimental flight testing. (11/22)

Why NASA Immediately Suspended All Mars Missions (Source: Popular Mechanics)
On November 11, NASA stopped sending commands to Martian spacecraft, and this communication blackout will continue until November 25. The reason for this two-week hiatus is because Mars is currently in solar conjunction, meaning the Sun currently lies directly between Earth and Mars, and radio commands could be disrupted by the Sun's charged particles. Although receiving no new commands, the Martian rovers, satellites, and one tiny helicopter will have a pre-planned list of scientific objectives and will continue to send health checks during the two-week break. (11/23)

SpaceX Plans to Sell Shares Next Month at $150B Valuation (Source: Seeking Alpha)
SpaceX plans to start a tender offer next month that will value billionaire Elon Musk's space firm at about $150 billion, around the same valuation it had this summer. The space exploration and satellite company raised $750 million in a tender offer in July with shares priced at more than $80 apiece, valuing the company at $150 billion. SpaceX in January was valued at $137 billion when it raised $750 million from investors. (11/22)

Elon Musk's 'Multiplanetary' Civilization Doesn't Offer Real Hope (Source: The Federalist)
Musk has given a compelling philosophical defense of multiplanetary colonization. If current models of our solar system hold, then humans only have a few billion years left to prepare for the sun’s death. After those short years pass, the sun will no longer sustain life on Earth. Musk wants humans to get ahead of this calamity. He’s waking us all up to the idiom: “Don’t put all your humans on one planet.” By spreading out, we’ll become extinction-proof. Our vision of human nature helps us determine how far the human empire should extend.

If we, with Lewis, view man as a fallen species that brings sin and destruction, then we probably don’t want his domain to increase. If we, with Musk, view man as essentially good — as a civilizing and enlightening force in the universe — then we should increase his domain in space and time as much as possible. I don’t think that Musk has Martian chattel slavery or extraterrestrial genocide in mind. But he will not captain the Starship forever. The terraforming of Mars would take hundreds of years. Other generations, with different aspirations, will lead civilization toward more and more distant planets. (11/23)

Members of Congress Seek Increase in Mars Sample Return Funding (Source: Space News)
Members of Congress are asking NASA not to slow down work on the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program now while also lobbying fellow members to provide more money for the effort in 2024. In a Nov. 21 letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, six members of California’s congressional delegation expressed their “strongest opposition” to a NASA directive earlier this month to slow down work on MSR because of uncertainty about how much funding will be available to the program in fiscal year 2024. (11/22)

AAC Clyde Space Wins SEK 13.4 M Starbuck Order (Source: BeQuoted)
AAC Clyde Space has won a EUR 1.14 million order on Starbuck power systems. The order is scheduled for final delivery in the first quarter of 2025. The Starbuck power system is a PCDU (Power Conditioning and Distribution Unit) system developed for small satellites. With a modular design, the solutions can be utilized and adapted for an array of different applications stretching from lunar exploratory and deep space scientific missions to military and commercial constellation applications. (11/24)

New Findings in Lunar Soil Samples Suggest Moon Water Could Fuel Future Space Exploration (Source: The National)
Scientists working on lunar soil samples brought back from an Apollo mission have discovered the presence of hydrogen, suggesting that water found on the Moon could be used to make rocket fuel. The detection of hydrogen adds on to previous studies which have shown that water was possibly trapped in glass beads spread across the lunar surface. Its discovery could be a crucial resource for astronauts who set up base on the Moon because rocket fuel can be made with water via electrolysis, where you split hydrogen with oxygen. (11/23)

Astronauts May Suffer From Erectile Dysfunction After Trips to Space, Study Finds (Source: Independent)
In the years to come, space agencies such as NASA hope to send their astronauts on long trips into space, including to Mars. In the years to come, humans are expected to embark on long space journeys that could see them travel for months to previously unexplored parts of space. But researchers have warned that there is a vast set of important health risks from those trips: more than 30 of them in all, according to NASA’s research.

Now scientists have added another risk: their sexual health. What’s more, scientists warned that the problems do not abate even with time, though there might be an opportunity to treat them. In the new study, though to be the first to look at the sexual health risks of deep space journeys, researchers took rats and subjected them to similar conditions that will meet humans in space: lower weight, to mimic the microgravity of space travel, and simulated galactic cosmic radiation of the kind that will rain down on space travelers. (11/23)

ESA Declares Ariane 6 Full-Duration Hot Fire Test a Success (Source: Space Policy Online)
Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket appeared to take another step forward as ESA declared the full duration firing of the core stage engine a success. European officials have been waiting for the results of this test before announcing when this new version of the Ariane rocket will leave the launch pad for the first time. (11/23)

Ottawa’s Square Peg Communications to Help ESA With 5G Over Satellite (Source: SpaceQ)
The European Space Agency (ESA) has chosen Ottawa-based Square Peg Communications to assist them with developing satellite-based 5G communications. The project aims to “implement an emulation environment that reliably tests a variety of scenarios across multiple constellations as part of its Space for 5G and 6G Strategic Programme Line.” The project will have funding from the ESA, though exact amounts were not stated by either party. (11/23)

After Chandrayaan-3's Success, ISRO Prepares for Chandrayaan-4 Lunar Mission (Source: Entertainment Times)
Despite its inability to return to Earth, Chandrayaan-3 is considered a successful mission. Now, ISRO is hinting at another significant step forward in space exploration: the Chandrayaan-4 mission. Unlike its predecessors, experts anticipate that Chandrayaan-4 will bring back lunar samples to Earth. The spacecraft will travel to the moon, land, collect samples, and then connect to another module in space. When the two modules approach Earth, they will split into two parts: one part will return to Earth, while the other will orbit Earth. (11/23)

China Conducts Launch to Test Satellite Internet Capabilities (Source: Space News)
China sent an undisclosed number of satellites into orbit Thursday to test satellite internet technologies. A Long March 2D rocket using a Yuanzheng-3 upper stage lifted off Nov. 23 from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., (CASC), only announced the nature of the payload when it declared the launch successful. (11/23)

Second OMG Cosmic Ray Particle Breaks Physics Again (Source: Cosmos)
Astronomers have observed the second largest cosmic ray ever detected. Physicists cannot comprehend where in the universe such an energetic ray could come from. The particles within it shouldn’t exist. Cosmic rays’ highly energetic streams of subatomic particles shoot through the universe at nearly the speed of light. They are made up of about 89% protons (hydrogen nuclei), 10% helium nuclei and the remaining 1% is made up of heavier nuclei (all the way to uranium on the Periodic Table).

In 1991, the highest energy cosmic ray ever was detected. It was dubbed the “Oh-My-God” particle. Nothing in the galaxy had the power to produce it and it had more energy than was theoretically possible for a cosmic ray travelling from another galaxy. “No promising astronomical object matching the direction from which the cosmic ray arrived has been identified, suggesting possibilities of unknown astronomical phenomena and novel physical origins beyond the Standard Model,” says study leader Toshihiro Fujii. (11/24)

China Eyes Additional Modules for Tiangong Space Station (Source: Space.com)
Since initial construction of the orbital outpost was completed in 2022, China's space station has entered a phase of application and development that will span more than 10 years. During that time, two piloted spacecraft and one or two cargo spacecraft will be launched each year. According to several Chinese space sources, TSS is set to expand to have a cross-shaped configuration. Also, the facility may include additional modules to double its size in the coming years. The station currently consists of three modules: the Tianhe core module and the Wentian and Mengtian lab modules. (11/23)

Ovzon in Final Negotiations with Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) for Satcom Services (Source: Ovzon)
Ovzon is in ongoing negotiations with SSC regarding an order of SATCOM-as-a-Service including Ovzon mobile satellite terminals, with delivery in 2024, with an expected order value of approximately 10 MUSD. (11/21)

CRP Technology Signed a New Technical Partnership for Space Exploration and Technology Development (Source: CRP)
CRP Technology officially joined the UAE private aerospace company Orbital Space as a partner for their Lunaris Moon Mission. CRP Technology will manufacture in Windform composites the lunar payloads for both testing and mission phase, contributing to a momentous milestone in the UAE’s space exploration history. (11/21)

Welsh Technology to Join Search for Life on Mars (Source; BBC)
A scientific instrument built in Wales will lead the search for life on Mars at the end of this decade. Enfys, meaning "rainbow" in Welsh, is an infrared spectrometer and will be assembled at Aberystwyth University. It will be fitted to the European Space Agency's Rosalind Franklin rover, which launches to the Red Planet in 2028. (11/22)

Thales Alenia Space to Provide Communication Transponder for Turkey’s First Lunar Mission (Source: Thales Alenia)
Thales Alenia Space has signed a contract with TÜBİTAK Space Technologies Research Institute (TÜBİTAK UZAY) to provide a Communication Transponder for AYAP-1, Turkey’s first lunar mission. The Lunar Research Program (AYAP) is an integral part of the National Space Program led by the Turkish Space Agency, with TÜBİTAK UZAY in charge of the design, development, integration, test, launch and operations of the AYAP-1 spacecraft. With this project, Turkey aims to successfully carry out its first lunar mission. (11/21)

AAC Clyde Space's Satellite Kelpie-2 Payload Antenna Failure (Source; BeQuoted)
AAC Clyde Space's 3U Space Data as a Service satellite Kelpie-2 suffered an anomaly of its payload antenna which did not deploy. Due to the malfunction the satellite will be unable to deliver the planned data services, and as such it is considered a total loss. The loss of the satellite has been reported to the company's insurer.  AAC Clyde Space is investigating other options to deliver the data service to the customer to mitigate any financial consequences. The cause was identified as a procedural issue that has been corrected for future uses of that antenna. The satellite was launched in June 2023. (11/22)

Azercosmos and Brazilian Space Agency Sign MOU for Space Initiatives (Source: Azercosmos)
Azercosmos, the Space Agency of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on space cooperation. The MoU envisages Brazil-Azerbaijan collaboration in space science, technology, and application and will serve as an instrument to establish a framework for future cooperation in the domain of outer space. (11/23)

UK Aims to Join Atlantic Constellation with Funding for New Earth Observation Satellite (Source: Gov.UK)
The UK is aiming to join Portugal and Spain as a member of the Atlantic Constellation and is contributing a new pathfinder satellite designed and built by a UK-based company adding to the innovative Earth and coastal monitoring and data sharing network. (11/21)

North Korean Spy Satellite Team Attend Banquet with Kim Jong-un and Daughter Ju Ae (Source: The Guardian)
The North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, has celebrated a “new era of a space power” with his family including daughter Ju Ae and the scientists who put the North’s first spy satellite into orbit. Pyongyang’s launch of the Malligyong-1 on Tuesday was its third attempt after failures in May and August. Images released by Pyongyang showed Kim praising scientists and space program workers at the National Aerospace Technology Administration (NATA) while accompanied by Ju Ae. (11/24)