December 7, 2023

US Defense Business Board Recommends Space Force, NRO, MDA Autonomy in Acquisition Decisions (Source: Executive Gov)
On Nov. 15, the Office of the Secretary of Defense Business Board released findings of its investigation into the effectiveness of a unity of effort in the U.S. government’s space acquisition decision-making. The Defense Business Board concluded that the National Reconnaissance Office and Missile Defense Agency should keep operating separately from the U.S. Space Force to avoid red tape and maintain the efficiency of acquisition authorities within the Department of Defense. (12/6)

Sidus Space Receives NASA ASTRA Flight Software and Hardware for Installation on LizzieSat Ahead of Launch (Source: Sidus Space)
Sidus Space has received its ASTRA (Autonomous Satellite Technology for Resilient Applications) Flight Software Version 1.0 and ASTRA flight hardware from NASA Stennis and installed it on the Company’s LizzieSat satellite ahead of its first quarter 2024 SpaceX Transporter 10 launch. NASA Stennis has completed its Flight Readiness Review in preparation for the 2024 launch and will be one of six payloads aboard LizzieSat. (12/7)

Firefly Advances On-Orbit Services Under DARPA Program (Source: Space Daily)
Firefly Aerospace has been selected to develop a framework for integrated on-orbit spacecraft hubs as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's 10-Year Lunar Architecture capability study. The proposed hubs, utilizing Firefly's Elytra orbital vehicles, will offer services such as refueling, delivery, and transportation. (12/6)

Incredible Pace of SpaceX Launches Continues with Thursday Falcon-9 Launch at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Space Daily)
SpaceX sent up 23 Starlink satellites during a mission from Florida, marking the company's 90th orbital mission of 2023. This mission marks the 125th operational Starlink mission, bringing the total number of launched Starlink satellites to 5,559, with more than 5,187 Starlink satellites currently in orbit. The booster flew and landed for the ninth time. They are now only 10 launches away from the ambitious goal to have 100 orbital flights in 2023. (12/7)

China's Sea-Based Rocketry Expands with Smart Dragon 3's Success (Source: Space Daily)
In a historic event that marked a significant milestone in space exploration, the South China Sea became the backdrop for its very first space launch mission. The early morning of Wednesday witnessed the awe-inspiring spectacle of a Smart Dragon 3 carrier rocket lifting off the coast of Yangjiang in Guangdong province, using a launch service ship. It took place against the backdrop of complex geopolitical issues in the South China Sea, a region of significant strategic importance, with multiple countries, including China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan, having competing territorial claims. (12/7)

Albedo Secures NRO Contract for Advanced VLEO Satellite Imaging Capabilities (Source: Space Daily)
Albedo, a trailblazer in the field of Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) satellite technology, announced a 2.5-year contract from the National Reconnaissance Office's (NRO) Commercial Systems Program Office (CSPO). This contract focuses on the Commercial Electro-Optical Capabilities (CEC) area. Albedo will work in tandem with the NRO to bolster both near and long-term Earth Observation (EO) remote sensing capabilities. This will be achieved through an array of techniques including modeling, simulation, and meticulous data evaluation. (12/6)

Northstar Earth and Space Raises $15 Million for Orbital Tracking Constellation (Source: Space News)
NorthStar Earth and Space has raised another $15 million to support its first four satellites for tracking objects in orbit. The Canadian company raised the Series D round, announced Wednesday, from Telesystem Space, a family-owned technology fund based in Canada, along with the government of Quebec and Luxembourg Future Fund. The additional funding will get the company through its first launch of four satellites by Rocket Lab. Those satellites, built by Spire, were scheduled to launch earlier this year by Virgin Orbit before that launch company went bankrupt, and the Rocket Lab launch was delayed by an Electron launch failure in September. (12/7)

Egypt to Cooperate in China's Lunar Efforts (Source: Space News)
Egypt and China signed a series of space agreements Wednesday that include cooperation on the China-led International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). Egypt is the first Arab country to join ILRS and the second on the African continent to sign up, after South Africa joined in September. The countries also signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation and peaceful use of outer space. The agreements come days after China launched the Misrsat-2 remote sensing satellite for Egypt. (12/7)

ULA Working with NASA on Refined Inflatable Heat Shield for Vulcan Engine Recovery (Source: Space News)
The success of a NASA inflatable heat shield experiment last year has attracted interest from industry. The LOFTID project successfully flew an inflatable decelerator six meters across last November that reentered and splashed down in the Pacific. Since then, NASA has been working with United Launch Alliance on a larger version of the system, 10 meters across, that could be used as part of ULA's efforts to recover and reuse the booster engine section of its Vulcan rocket. Other companies that NASA did not disclose during a presentation at a committee meeting last week are interested in even larger versions of the technology up to 20 meters across. (12/7)

SpaceX Stock Offering Would Value Company at $175 Billion (Source: Bloomberg)
A new SpaceX tender offer for its stock would value the company at $175 billion or more. The offer would be an increase over the $150 billion valuation the company set in a stock tender offer in the summer. It would make privately held SpaceX among the 75 biggest companies in the world by market capitalization, with a value about the same as T-Mobile and Nike. (12/7)

ULA Prepares for Vulcan Launch Rehearsal (Source: Florida Today)
ULA is preparing for a wet dress rehearsal of its Vulcan rocket ahead of its first launch. The rehearsal, scheduled for today, will involve fueling the rocket and going through a practice countdown. That is one of the last major tests before the first Vulcan launch, scheduled for early Dec. 24 carrying Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander. (12/7)

Japan's iQPS Goes Public, Raises $27 Million (Source: Nikkei)
Japanese synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging company iQPS has gone public. The company raised $27 million in an initial public offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Wednesday. The company, whose formal name is Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space, is developing a constellation of SAR satellites with up to 24 in orbit by 2028. The next iQPS satellite is scheduled to launch on the return-to-flight mission of Rocket Lab's Electron next week. (12/7)

NASA Could Send UAE Astronaut to Moon (Source: The National)
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says his agency is in discussions with the UAE about sending an Emirati astronaut to the moon. Nelson, during a media event in the UAE Wednesday, confirmed that there are discussions between the U.S. and UAE about a role in the Artemis program that could include flight opportunities for Emirati astronauts, but that he was not ready to make any announcements. Reports a year ago indicated that the UAE could supply an airlock module for the lunar Gateway, which would likely involve giving the UAE seats on later Artemis missions. However, there has been no formal announcement by NASA about a role for the UAE on the Gateway. (12/7)

Spire Global Awarded Space Services Contract by Lacuna Space to for 6 IoT Satellites (Source: Space Daily)
Spire Global entered into a landmark Space Services contract with Lacuna Space, a prominent satellite IoT connectivity provider. This agreement marks a significant step in expanding global IoT (Internet of Things) networks, with Spire initially slated to build and launch six satellites equipped with Lacuna Space's payloads and antennas. Furthermore, there's potential for this collaboration to extend to dozens of satellites, signifying a major scale-up in the constellation.

Manufactured in Spire's Glasgow facility, these six new satellites will join Lacuna Space's existing fleet of ten satellites. This expansion is aimed at enhancing Lacuna Space's IoT network, offering low-cost, reliable global connections essential for sectors such as agriculture, maritime, logistics, and environmental monitoring. The applications of these IoT services are vast, ranging from remote soil moisture measurement for improved agricultural yield to efficient tracking of maritime assets. (12/6)

The Rise of the Virtual Mission (Source: Space Daily)
Loft defines a virtual mission as the deployment of a customer-developed software app onto Loft's space infrastructure to leverage onboard resources such as imagers and computing. YAM-6's payloads include a hyperspectral imager, an RGB imager, a software-defined radio, and real-time connectivity via an inter-satellite link. They're paired with a powerful robust set of CPU and GPU compute options and are AI-ready, with GPU acceleration for heavier AI workloads, such as image processing or change detection.

Over the past two years, Loft has quietly built the product stack that enables any developer to deploy software apps to Loft satellites, or what we call virtual missions. Today, we're excited to announce YAM-6, the first virtual mission-enabled satellite. Launching on Transporter-10, YAM-6 will abstract away the hardware by providing access to Loft-owned sensors and compute nodes that support AI. This is a revolutionary shift in the space industry: you don't have to own a satellite, or even a payload, to operate in space. (12/5)

Remarkable Year Continues, With Warmest Boreal Autumn. 2023 Will Be the Warmest Year on Record (Source: EU)
November 2023 was the warmest November on record globally, with an average surface air temperature of 14.22°C, 0.85°C above the 1991-2020 average for November and 0.32°C above the temperature of the previous warmest November, in 2020. For the calendar year to date, January to November, the global mean temperature for 2023 is the highest on record, 1.46°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, and 0.13°C higher than the eleven-month average for 2016, currently the warmest calendar year on record. (12/6)

Rocket Auroras (Source: Quartz)
As rockets speed their way to space, they’re punching holes in the ionosphere, the uppermost layer of Earth’s atmosphere. This isn’t causing the sky to fall—but it is causing “bleeding” auroras. At around 150 miles up, the exhaust of a rocket’s second stage (which is mostly carbon dioxide and water vapor) interacts with molecules already there. This forms the red glow of an artificial aurora and creates a temporary hole in the atmosphere.

Before you start worrying—no, these effects don’t pose a risk to human health. However, they have been noticed to briefly disrupt HAM radio signals and GPS. The most recent sighting was in November, when SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch created a blood-red artificial aurora visible in Texas. This aurora formed as the Falcon 9 burned its rockets on re-entry. These descent auroras are smaller and more spherical than those made when a rocket is ascending. (12/7)

DOE and NASA Interagency Research Coordination Act Passes in House (Source: WMBD)
The DOE and NASA Interagency Research Coordination Act will help collaboration between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Department of Energy (DOE). The bill will enable cooperation between DOE and NASA without congressional approval. This will help in important Research and Development areas like nuclear propulsion, high-energy physics, and quantum information sciences. (12/5)

Vaya Space Demonstrates Missile Engine Tech (Source: Vaya Space)
Space Coast-based Vaya Space announces a significant milestone in defense technology with successful demonstrations of a revolutionary tactical missile class vortex-hybrid engine. The breakthrough tests, witnessed by representatives from Army Futures Command, NASA, and the Prime Contractor Community, took place at Vaya’s Engine Test Facility in Cocoa, Florida.

The recent tests, numbered nine and ten in a planned series of thirty, focused on assessing the engine's capability to start, stop, and relight while operating within the performance parameters of a Hellfire missile engine. Vaya's vortex-hybrid engines signify a paradigm shift in missile propulsion technology, providing a truly insensitive propulsion system that offers unprecedented range, maneuverability, survivability, and scalability. (11/28)

Earth on Verge of Five Catastrophic Climate Tipping Points, Scientists Warn (Source: Guardian)
Many of the gravest threats to humanity are drawing closer, as carbon pollution heats the planet to ever more dangerous levels, scientists have warned. Five important natural thresholds already risk being crossed, according to the Global Tipping Points report, and three more may be reached in the 2030s if the world heats 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial temperatures.

Triggering these planetary shifts will not cause temperatures to spiral out of control in the coming centuries but will unleash dangerous and sweeping damage to people and nature that cannot be undone. Click here. (12/5)

Space Flight Without the Rocket Fuel? A Florida-Based Company Is Aiming for the Stars (Source: Penta)
No single automobile, vessel, or aircraft can possibly match the pollution potential of the fuel-driven rockets used to put astronauts and satellites into space—making extraterrestrial exploration and space tourism dirty propositions in the age of climate change. Now, the minds behind a luxury travel venture want to send customers closer to the stars while leaving no carbon footprint via a creative approach: They skip the rocket in favor of a balloon.

Florida-based Space Perspective turned to a pressurized, hydrogen-inflatable design— Spaceship Neptune, including a “SpaceBalloon” (made of more than 18 million cubic feet of temperature-resistant material and standing 700 feet tall when ready for liftoff); a Reserve Descent System (a four-parachute emergency method for returning crew and passengers to Earth in the event of SpaceBalloon failure); and the creature comfort-rich Neptune Capsule for crew and passengers.

While other spacecraft separate the crew compartment from the main propulsion system during progressive stages, Spaceship Neptune’s human carrier capsule remains secured to the SpaceBalloon for the entire flight from liftoff to splashdown. Jane Poynter, Space Perspective CEO and co-founder, says that forgoing any use of rockets and employing various carbon offsets, the company fulfills the visions of previous astronauts and cosmonauts who viewed the entire planet Earth from above while wishing for its environmental salvation. (11/30)

AIA Questions Performance Bond Idea for Satellite Debris (Source: SATNews)
The Aerospace Industries Association is pushing back against the draft proposal dubbed "Mitigating Orbital Debris in the New Space Age," specifically a proposed performance bond requirement. AIA points out that "the formula for the bond requirement disincentivizes operators from using more durable, longer-lived commercial systems or financing innovations in on-orbit debris mitigation, mission extension, and disposal services." (12/5)

Elon Musk Was Reportedly “Speechless” When Someone Pointed Out a Basic Flaw in His Mars Plan (Source: Futurism)
A new deep dive into the history of OpenAI includes some surprising details about one of the firm's erstwhile cofounders, Elon Musk — including that he was apparently dumbfounded when another would-be artificial intelligence guru pointed out a basic flaw in his much-hyped plan to colonize to Mars.

Google DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis and Musk began talking about the Red Planet soon after they first met in 2012. During a tour of SpaceX's headquarters, the South African-born billionaire began bragging about his plans to take humanity to Mars to escape global overpopulation and the other issues facing our planet — and Hassabis agreed, with one caveat: if AI surpassed human intelligence, it could easily follow us off-planet and kill us there, too. (12/5)

Experts Explain Why Elon Musk's Plan to Colonize Mars is 'Romanticized', Not 'Realistic', 'Cosmic Vandalism' (Source: Business Insider)
Musk's goal goes beyond mere aspiration. He's said a permanent colony on the red planet could sustain our species if all humanity is extinguished on Earth. But what if Musk is making a mistake? Yes, experts agree we might want to settle other worlds, but Mars might not be our best bet, at least not now, four scientists said. Click here. (9/7)

Interstellar Astronauts Would Face Years-Long Communication Delays Due to Time Dilation (Source: Space.com)
Due to the mind-blowing distances and speeds required, interstellar travel would be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, for humanity to achieve. But new research highlights yet another challenge: communication blackouts. The first problem is that light itself can only travel at a finite speed. While this doesn't severely hinder communication near Earth, engineers already have to deal with this challenge when communicating with probes sent across the solar system. (12/5)

"Singularities Don't Exist," Claims Black Hole Pioneer Roy Kerr (Source: Big Think)
Using a powerful mathematical argument, Kerr argues that singularities shouldn't physically exist. He may be right. The ideal methematical case of having a mass with no rotation to it isn’t exactly a good physical model of reality. It makes sense that all physically realistic black holes would be rotating. When you add rotation in, the situation for how spacetime behaves suddenly becomes a lot more complicated than it was in the non-rotating case.

Instead of a single, spherical surface describing the event horizon and a point-like singularity at the center, the addition of rotation causes there to be several important phenomena that aren’t apparent in the non-rotating case. Once you cross over to be inside the inner event horizon in Kerr spacetime, it once again becomes possible to travel in any direction between the theorized ring singularity and the inner event horizon. The “trapped surface” only exists between the inner and outer event horizons, not interior to the inner event horizon: where the ring singularity allegedly exists. (12/5)

The Elusive Origins of Long Gamma-Ray Bursts May Finally Be Revealed (Source: Space.com)
Some of the universe's most energetic and mysterious light shows, long gamma-ray bursts, could be generated after dense dead stars collide to create infant black holes surrounded by a natal disk of gas and dust. This is the conclusion of a team of researchers who used computer simulations to show that when neutron stars  —  dense, extremely dead stars created when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel  —  collide and merge, a long gamma-ray burst can be launched alongside the event's jets and winds of energetic particles. (12/4)