April 30, 2024

NASA Looks for an MSR Lifeline (Source: Space Review)
Mars scientists hoped they would have a better idea of when and how they would get samples back from Mars after NASA completed an internal study of the Mars Sample Return program. Instead, as Jeff Foust reports, NASA is now turning to industry for help on how to reduce the costs and accelerate the schedule of MSR. Click here. (4/30)
 
Lazy Cat on a Mountaintop (Source: Space Review)
In the 1970s, US intelligence analysts were concerned about Soviet lasers intended to illuminate American satellites. Dwayne Day examines how the CIA attempted to study those efforts with a telescope in Iran, only to be thwarted by the revolution there. Click here. (4/30)
 
China’s Interest in the Far Side of the Moon: Scientific, Military, or Economic? (Source: Space Review)
China is scheduled to launch later this week Chang’e-6, the first mission to attempt to return samples from the far side of the Moon. Carlos Alatorre explores what is driving the country’s efforts to go to lunar farside and bring back samples. Click here. (4/30)

SES to Acquire Intelsat for $3.1 Billion (Source: Space News)
SES announced Tuesday that it will acquire Intelsat for $3.1 billion, combining two of the biggest GEO satellite operators. The companies said the deal would create a satellite operator with more than $4 billion in annual revenues and adjusted EBITDA of nearly $2 billion. The combined company would operate more than 100 GEO satellites as well as the O3b constellation in medium Earth orbit, and SES said the acquisition would optimize future investments in multi-orbit satellite fleets.

SES and Intelsat had explored a merger last year but walked away from a potential deal last June. SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh said the timing was better now for an acquisition given "significant evolution" at both companies. The deal has the approval of both companies' boards, but SES does not expect it to close until the second half of 2025 because of necessary regulatory approvals. (4/30)

Chinese TSS Crew Returns to Earth (Source: Space News)
A Chinese crewed spacecraft returned to Earth Tuesday. The Shenzhou-17 spacecraft undocked from the Tiangong station at 8:43 p.m. Eastern Monday and landed at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region near Jiuquan spaceport at 5:46 a.m. Eastern Tuesday. On board Shenzhou-17 were Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin, who had been in space since October. They performed two spacewalks while on Tiangong to repair damage to solar arrays and conducted 84 experiments. The Shenzhou-17 crew was relieved by the three-person Shenzhou-18 crew that arrived at Tiangong last week. (4/30)

China Proposes Ambitious Space Missions (Source: Space News)
China is proposing an ambitious series of space science missions. The set of missions, spanning lunar farside astronomy, astrophysics, exoplanets and heliophysics, was announced by the National Space Science Center (NSSC), part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, at a meeting April 27. One mission, Discovering the Sky at the Longest Wavelength (DSL), would place 10 smallsats into lunar orbit, using the moon to shield the satellites from terrestrial radio signals so the spacecraft can detect radio emissions from the early universe.

Another mission, Taiji, will use three satellites to detect gravitational waves. NSSC did not announce any new planetary missions as part of this, but there remains the possibility that one or more proposed planetary missions will be selected under a separate track. (4/30)

Airbus Plans More Imaging Satellites (Source: Space News)
Airbus had outlined plans for new high-resolution imaging satellites. The company said Monday it will develop a new series of spacecraft called Pléiades Neo Next to augment the two Pléiades Neo spacecraft in orbit that provide imagery at a resolution of 30 centimeters. Airbus said it has started work on one Pléiades Neo Next satellite to be launched in the next few years, but did not disclose how many satellites it foresees building. The Pléiades Neo Next satellites will offer enhanced resolution, although the company did not offer specifics. The Pléiades Neo Next program will help Airbus replace capacity lost when two Pléiades Neo satellites were destroyed in a December 2022 Vega C launch failure. (4/30)

Finland's Kuva Space to Provide Hyperspectral Earth Monitoring Data to ESA (Source: Space News)
Finnish startup Kuva Space will provide hyperspectral data to ESA. The company said Monday it won a $1.9 million contract to develop onboard data processing and rapid communications links for its spacecraft, allowing them to quickly provide imagery that will be used to detect illegal activities in the Baltic Sea area between Finland, Estonia and Sweden. The contract was awarded by ESA's Civil Security from Space program, an initiative aimed at bolstering humanitarian, law enforcement, safety and emergency response with space technologies. (4/30)

Dragon Splashes Down Off Tampa Coast with ISS Cargo (Source: NASA)
A Dragon cargo spacecraft returned to Earth early Tuesday. The Dragon splashed down off the coast from Tampa, Florida, at 1:38 a.m. Eastern, concluding the CRS-30 mission to the International Space Station. The spacecraft, which launched to the station last month, returned about 1,850 kilograms of science experiments and equipment from the ISS. (4/30)

Rocket Lab to Launch NASA Cubesats on Next Two Missions From New Zealand (Source: Rocket Lab)
Rocket Lab will launch a pair of NASA cubesats on its next two launches. The company said Monday it will perform back-to-back launches of Electron rockets from New Zealand for NASA's PREFIRE mission, each carrying a single 6U cubesat. The first launch is scheduled for no earlier than May 22 with the second to follow within three weeks of the first. The two launches are required to place the spacecraft into specific orbits to carry out their mission of measuring infrared emissions from the polar regions. (4/30)

Canada Wants to Instill Space in Military Operations (Source: Canadian Press)
A Canadian general says he wants to increase the "space-mindedness" of the Canadian military. Brig. Gen. Michael Adamson, commander of the Canadian Armed Forces Space Division, told a parliamentary committee that his division is working to help the rest of the military better understand the importance of space and the growing need to be aware of threats to space assets. He said the Canadian military will need to work more with the private sector to better leverage their capabilities. (4/30)

Space Force Launch, Security Needs Fuel Boom in Space Contracts (Source: Bloomberg)
A steady increase in space procurement has boosted US defense capabilities over the last decade, and concerns over the prospect of nuclear weapon-equipped Russian satellites may drive more spending. US Space Force procurement has grown faster than other federal agencies’ space-related contract spending since the service’s inception in 2019. It’s projected to hit a high of $18 billion this fiscal year, according to Bloomberg Government data.

NASA clearly leads all civilian agencies in the market, defined by BGOV analysts as including vehicles, launch, payloads, and ground stations and excluding missiles and missile defense. (4/29)

48 Governors (Except Florida and Texas) Oppose Guard Units Moving into the Space Force (Source: Air and Space Forces)
Governors from nearly every U.S. state and territory signed a letter sent to Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on April 29 asking him to withdraw an Air Force proposal to transfer Air National Guard units to the Space Force. While the letter does not endorse the creation of a separate Space National Guard, it does mark a clear pushback against Department of the Air Force plans to move all its space professionals into one service component. All told, the letter has 53 signatories—48 state governors, and five governors of territories. Only the leaders of Florida and Texas did not sign. (4/29)

Saudi Arabia Seeks to Bolster space Credentials Through WEF Partnership (Source: The National)
Saudi Arabia will partner with the World Economic Forum for the creation of an entity called the Center of Space Futures, which will be hosted by the Saudi Space Agency. The center will be a part of WEF’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution network (C4IR), a future-oriented platform for dialogue and co-operation that seeks to make the most of technology to transform economies and societies among various countries and regions. (4/29)

Firefly CEO Sees 'Enough Demand' for Fully Commercial Lunar Missions Independent of NASA (Source: Yahoo! Finance)
When Firefly Aerospace launches its Blue Ghost lander to the moon's surface later this year, it will do so on board a SpaceX rocket and with $112 million in funding from NASA. But CEO Bill Weber sees a future in which the Texas-based firm goes it alone, completing fully commercial lunar missions on a medium-size rocket built in-house — with no funding from NASA.

"Commercial industry needs to be running that transit," Weber told Yahoo Finance in an interview. "And the government, instead of being the prime contract driver, will utilize that capacity. We’re at that point where we’re about to flip. There's most definitely enough demand on the commercial side." (4/29)

FAA Learning Period to Get Another Extension (Source: Space Policy Online)
House and Senate committee leaders announced just after midnight that they have reached agreement on a new FAA reauthorization bill. The vast majority of the bill does not deal with space activities, but one provision would extend the so-called “learning period” for another few months. The language prevents the FAA from promulgating new commercial human spaceflight regulations and will expire on May 11 if this bill does not pass by then. The chairs and ranking members of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee announced the agreement. (4/29)

Six Deep Space Network Antennas in Madrid Arrayed For the First Time (Source: NASA)
In a historic first, all six radio frequency antennas at the Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex – part of NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) – carried out a test to receive data from the agency's Voyager 1 spacecraft at the same time on April 20, 2024. Known as "arraying," combining the receiving power of several antennas allows the DSN to collect the very faint signals from faraway spacecraft. A five-antenna array is currently needed to downlink science data from the spacecraft's Plasma Wave System (PWS) instrument. As Voyager gets further way, six antennas will be needed. (4/29)

NASA Lays Out How SpaceX Will Refuel Starships in Low-Earth Orbit (Source: Ars Technica)
Some time next year, NASA believes SpaceX will be ready to link two Starships in orbit for an ambitious refueling demonstration, a technical feat that will put the Moon within reach. Last year, NASA awarded a contract to Blue Origin to develop its own human-rated Blue Moon lunar lander, giving Artemis managers two options for follow-on missions. Designers of both landers were future-minded. They designed Starship and Blue Moon for refueling in space.

Pretty much every Starship test flight over the next couple of years will have goals that feed into the first Artemis lunar landing. During these upcoming Starship test flights, engineers will measure the slosh of propellants inside the ship, along with tank pressures, and observe how the fluids respond to impulses from small thrusters. In microgravity, these small rocket jets provide "settling thrust" to guide the ship's liquid toward the outflow needed for refueling.

Engineers will also monitor the boil-off rates of the methane and liquid oxygen in space. Over time, cryogenic liquids transition to a gaseous state without insulation or other measures to prevent boil-off. SpaceX and NASA officials want to know how much of the propellant will be lost from boil-off to know how many refueling tankers they need to launch for a Starship lunar landing mission. (4/29)

The Threat of a Solar Superstorm Is Growing—And We’re Not Ready (Source: Scientific American)
The sun is ramping up for a big year. In one sense it already had a big year, thanks to the April 8 solar eclipse. But that was a terrestrial phenomenon. What we’re gearing up for is a decidedly solar one—our star is nearing the peak of its magnetic activity cycle, which means more sunspots, more storms and, potentially, more danger to Earth.

Big flares fire out high-energy x-ray and gamma radiation that can damage satellites orbiting Earth; when those photons strike the metal casing of a spacecraft, they blast away clouds of electrons like shrapnel, and these fast-moving particles generate strong pulses of hardware-frying electromagnetic energy. We should be reinforcing the electricity grid, and making it more decentralized would be a good start. The good news is that astronomers are studying the sun with fierce devotion to better understand and predict its outbursts. (4/26)

NASA Seeks Input on Space Technology Shortfalls (Source: Space News)
NASA is seeking public input on how to prioritize nearly 200 topics in space technology to improve how it invests limited funding on them. The agency has released a list of 187 “technology shortfalls,” or topics where current technology requires additional development to meet NASA’s future needs. The shortfalls are in 20 areas ranging from space transportation and life support to power and thermal management.

By prioritizing technology shortfalls, he argued NASA will be better able to invest its funding on the most important ones. Through this process, people will be able to rate the importance of some or all of the technology shortfalls NASA has identified. They can also list technologies they think should be included or identify those shortfalls that they believe have already been solved. NASA will use the input from that process, as well as a separate internal agency effort, to develop a ranked list of technologies. That should be ready by this summer. (4/29)

Advisory Committee Recommends Moving FAA Commercial Space Office Out of the Agency (Source: Space News)
An advisory committee for the Federal Aviation Administration’s commercial space office has recommended that the office be moved out of the FAA. At an April 23 meeting, the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) unanimously approved a recommendation that the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST, be moved out of the FAA and turned into a standalone organization directly under the Secretary of Transportation.

The proposal, COMSTAC members argued, would address the perception that AST currently does not receive the resources it needs to regulate a growing space launch industry in its current form within the FAA. (4/27)

Stennis Gets New Director (Source: NASA)
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has named John Bailey as director of the agency’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, effective immediately. Bailey had been serving as acting director since January. NASA Stennis is a unique federal city, home to more than 50 resident tenants with a combined workforce of over 5,200. The center tested the SLS (Space Launch System) core stage that helped launch the Artemis I mission. It also is testing all RS-25 engines to help power SLS launches and will conduct flightworthy testing of the agency’s new exploration upper stage prior to its use in space on future Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond.

The center is a leader in partnering and working with commercial aerospace companies to support their propulsion test projects. It also is expanding as an aerospace and technology hub, and in development of intelligent and autonomous systems needed for deep space exploration. (4/29)