March 24, 2024

California Must Invest More in the Space Industry, Say State’s Members of US House and Senate (Source: OC Register)
Several dozen members of California’s congressional delegation asked Gov. Gavin Newsom to prioritize investment in the space industry, part of a move among leaders responding to recent job cuts and funding shortfalls. In their letter, 40 House members and the state’s two senators emphasized the need for greater state leadership and continued investment, which they said will bring to California high-paying jobs and large economic growth.

California has a rich heritage of spaceflight, said Madhu Thangavelu, a lecturer of astronautical engineering at the University of Southern California. The state, instrumental in landing men on the moon in the space race, is home to offices or headquarters of several industry heavyweights, including Boeing, Northrop Grumman, NASA and SpaceX.

“No other state could compete with California because of our heritage,” he said. “There’s a whole culture around human spaceflight that exists in all of California.” Since 2019, California has invested $625 million in more than 25 counties in the defense and space industry through various programs, said Newsom spokesperson Omar Rodriguez, including those that offer tax credits to businesses based in the state. (3/23)

Adrianos Golemis First Greek to Succeed in ESA Tests for Astronauts (Source: EuroNews.next)
Adrianos Golemis has passed the European Space Agency (ESA) test to become an astronaut, making him the first Greek to do so. Every year, 22,500 applicants apply for ESA's exams to become an astronaut. Only twenty-five make it through all three rounds. Golemis has passed the first after years working for ESA as a doctor. (3/22)

Finding Atmospheres on Red Dwarf Planets Will Take Hundreds of Hours of Webb Time (Source: Universe Today)
The JWST is enormously powerful. One of the reasons it was launched is to examine exoplanet atmospheres to determine their chemistry, something only a powerful telescope can do. But even the JWST needs time to wield that power effectively, especially when it comes to one of exoplanet science’s most important targets: rocky worlds orbiting red dwarfs.

New research suggests that it could take the capable JWST hundreds of hours of observing time to detect these atmospheres to a greater degree of certainty. The new research is “Do Temperate Rocky Planets Around M Dwarfs Have an Atmosphere?” The sole author is Rene Doyon from the Physics Department at the University of Montreal, Canada. The paper hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet. (3/22)

SpaceX Would Rather Use A Ford F-150 Lightning Than Cybertruck (Source: Jalopnik)
The Ford F-150 Lightning has earned the SpaceX seal of approval before the Tesla Cybertruck, and it has been photographed bearing the livery of Elon Musk’s commercial spaceflight company. It seems even SpaceX would rather rely on Ford’s EV pickup than the Cybertruck when it comes to the serious business of launching rockets and people into space — at least for now, while Tesla is ironing out the kinks in the Cybertruck’s shiny and ill-conceived design.

The Cybertruck has run into a few problems as production of the EV struggles on. It’s been plagued by build quality issues that run the gamut from the threat of rust (or “surface contaminants”) to being immobilized by “critical steering issues.” Point is, the Cybertruck is hardly the EV of choice for an organization when a working vehicle is mission-critical. And that may be why “SpaceX has Ford Lightnings” running around as work trucks. (3/22)

AT&T, AST SpaceMobile Promise 'True Broadband' From Satellite Phone Service (Source: PC Magazine)
AT&T’s plans to launch satellite-to-phone connectivity via its partner AST SpaceMobile don’t feature the rocket fuel of the Apple or SpaceX hype machine, but they do include something absent from the Emergency SOS feature on newer iPhones and early versions of T-Mobile’s planned Starlink service: usable broadband.

AT&T and AST executives made that pitch in a panel Wednesday in Washington. “We solve a real problem,” said Abel Avellan, AST chairman, founder, and CEO. “This is not just going to be texting, it's not just going to be voice, it's going to be true broadband,” added Chris Sambar, AT&T network head. (3/21)

Space Force Sends Congress $1 Billion List of Unfunded Projects (Source: C4ISRnet)
The Space Force asked Congress for more than $1 billion for a largely classified slate of high-priority efforts it didn’t include in its fiscal 2025 budget request. The list, obtained by C4ISRNET, includes $846 million in classified projects. The remaining $305 million is largely focused on improving the resiliency of Space Force systems and training capabilities. (3/22)

Bezos Readies Blue Origin for Its Biggest Test (Source: The Information)
At some point during the second half of this year, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, will stuff his feet into a pair of cowboy boots and, if everything goes as planned, watch as a rocket made by his space startup, Blue Origin, blasts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The boots are a good luck charm that Bezos wears whenever Blue Origin launches a rocket.

For the launch later this year—the first for a gigantic new rocket called New Glenn—the company can use any advantage it can get. What’s his anticipation level for the launch? “On a scale from 1 to 10, I’m at a 12,” Bezos said, sitting inside a bustling Cuban restaurant on the outskirts of Miami. (3/22)

Europa Clipper May Only Need 1 Ice Grain to Detect Life on Jupiter's Ocean Moon (Source: Space.com)
A single grain of ice ejected from Jupiter's ocean moon Europa, if captured by NASA's forthcoming Europa Clipper spacecraft, could be enough to reveal evidence of alien  life, a new experiment suggests. "With suitable instrumentation, such as the SUrface Dust Analyzer on NASA's Europa Clipper space probe, it might be easier than we thought to find life, or traces of it, on icy moons," said Frank Postberg.

Under the assumption that Europa Clipper may also fly through an icy moon plume, scientists investigated whether the spacecraft's Surface Dust Analyzer (SUDA) might be able to detect any life carried up from the ocean on the plume. SUDA is designed to study particles of Europa's surface ice and dust sputtered into space as the moon is  constantly bombarded by micrometeorites, but perhaps it could analyze ice grains in the plumes, too. (3/22)

China’s Military is Taking a Strategic Approach to On-Orbit Refueling (Source: Space News)
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is already integrating lessons learned into military doctrine and training tools, while a defense contractor has already demonstrated what it calls a space fuel tanker in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO), according to a report published by the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) March 18. The report underlines that the PLA has a strategic focus on enhancing its on-orbit logistics capabilities and is integrating commercial enterprises into the space sector. These developments have potential implications for international space operations norms and should prompt action by the U.S. Space Force to attain similar capabilities and readiness. (3/22)

NASA Suspends Swift Gamma-Ray Space Telescope Operations (Source: Space.com)
NASA has officially halted science observations conducted by its Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. Don't worry, though. The space telescope, which observes some of the most powerful blasts of radiation from the universe's most violent cosmic events, known as "gamma-ray bursts," is only temporarily out of order. NASA placed Swift into safe mode on March 15 as a result of the "degrading performance" of one of the three gyroscopes the space telescope uses to direct itself toward astrophysical sources astronomers want to study. (3/22)

NASA Johnson Space Center to Host Visit by Texas Governor Greg Abbott (Source: NASA)
NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will host a Tuesday, March 26, visit by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who will make a major announcement on the future of the space industry in Texas. Abbott will be joined by NASA Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa Wyche, Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, Texas Representative Greg Bonnen and other state and space industry leaders. (3/22)

Flight Attendant Becomes First Belarusian in Space on Soyuz MS-25 (Source: CollectSpace)
For the first time, a spacecraft has lifted off with a flight attendant aboard, but there will be no drink service during the flight. Marina Vasilevskaya, who also served as a flight instructor for Belavia Airlines in her home country of Belarus, traded her attendant uniform for a Russian Sokol pressure suit to become the first Belarusian to fly into space. On Saturday (March 23), she launched on Russia's Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft with cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky of Roscosmos and NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson on a mission to the ISS. (3/22)

Aerospace Corp. to Invest $100 Million in California Campus, Move Headquarters to Washington D.C. Area (Source: LA Times)
Research and development lab Aerospace Corp. moved its headquarters this week to Virginia from El Segundo but reaffirmed its commitment to its South Bay campus by announcing a $100-million investment there. The federally funded nonprofit corporation, which supports government and private-sector space work, said there would be no “significant relocation of current employees” in the move to Chantilly, Va., where it has another campus, but said industry changes required it. (3/22)