August 25, 2017

Descartes Raises $30M for Satellite Data Refinery (Source: Space News)
Descartes Labs has raised $30 million to support development of a "data refinery" that processes satellite and other imagery. The company, a spinoff of Los Alamos National Laboratory, has developed a cloud-based supercomputing platform able to extract insights from a wide range of data sets, including satellite images. Los Angeles-based venture firm March Capital led the Series B funding round. (8/24)

Intelsat CEO Joins UN Commission Promoting Broadband Internet Access (Source: Space News)
The CEO of Intelsat is joining a United Nations commission that advocates for broadband internet access. Intelsat said Thursday that Stephen Spengler will become a commissioner on the United Nations Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development. He joins the CEO of Inmarsat and the director general and CEO of the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization as members of the commission with satellite backgrounds. The commission, with 50 members, calls for greater availability of broadband access to drive global development. (8/24)

Bill Nye The Science Guy Is Suing Disney For Big Bucks (Source: HuffPost)
Bill Nye is now the suing guy. In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles, the TV scientist says The Walt Disney Company shortchanged him $9 million in profits from his popular kids show “Bill Nye The Science Guy” ― and that the company took tens of millions more in “ill-gotten” gains, according to reports.

Nye says he ordered an audit of Disney’s books in 2016 after the company asked him to return $496,000 of a $585,000 check it issued him in 2008 for “back-end profits” because of an accounting error, TMZ reported. The suit claims the auditor discovered that Nye had been deprived of $9.3 million since forging a distribution deal with Disney in 1993.

According to Deadline, there is even more money at stake. The suit also accuses Disney of helping itself to at least an additional $28 million at the expense of Nye and his partners. “Bill Nye The Science Guy,” also known as “Disney Presents Bill Nye the Science Guy,” aired from 1993 to 1998 and had a five-year, 100-episode run on PBS ending in 1999. It was also syndicated to regional stations. (8/25)

Debate Rekindled on Commercial Use of ICBM Assets (Source: Space News)
The launch of a Minotaur 4, and a recent GAO report, have rekindled the debate about the use of excess ICBM assets. The Minotaur 4 scheduled to launch late tonight from Cape Canaveral uses excess Peacekeeper motors for its lower stages, which under current U.S. policy restricts the rocket to launching payloads sponsored by the government. A report released earlier this month by the GAO noted there are 720 surplus motors, which Orbital ATK would like to use for both government and commercial launches. Other companies developing small launch vehicles, though, argue making those motors available commercially could have a negative impact on the industry.

Orbital ATK's Barron Beneski said if Orbital ATK were permitted to buy the surplus motors for commercial launches, it would agree to a case-by-case review process meant to ensure the company wasn’t given unfair advantage in commercial launch competitions. Beneski also said Minotaur-class rockets are generally overpowered for small satellite launches, adding that Orbital ATK would be going after customers needing to launch satellites weighing at least 1,000 kilograms. (8/24)

Orbital ATK Set to Inject New Life in Long-Dormant Florida Launch Pad (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
“We now have, effectively, all of the vertical launch companies operating from the Cape Canaveral spaceport,” Space Florida’s chief of strategic alliances Dale Ketcham said. SpaceX and United Launch Alliance regularly send rockets into space from the coast. The launch marks Orbital’s return to Cape Canaveral. Federal, state and local government money helped pay for about $6.6 million in renovation costs for the launch pad. The upgrades included modernizing communication infrastructure. Further changes to accommodate Orbital ATK’s vehicles were paid for by the company. (8/24)

The World's Largest Radio Telescope Has a Massive Tourist Problem (Source: Gizmodo)
In September, China flicked the switch on the world’s largest radio telescope. The unusually large dish in an isolated area of Guizhou province needs radio silence to hone in on potential signs of alien life and distant pulsars, but researchers fear that a huge influx of tourists could be rendering the $180 million dish useless. Now, a choice between a booming local economy and the advancement of science looms on the horizon.

Government statistics released this month show that in the first half of 2017, nearly four million tourists visited “FAST” (Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope). Tourism officials estimate that 10 million tourists will visit the the highly-sensitive device this year. “That will be as many as the tourists to the Great Wall in Beijing,” the official announced. “Here we have a new wonder of the world.” China did such a great job of building something impressive, that its core function is at risk of being nullified. (8/24)

To Boldly Go Where No Chinese Startup Has Gone Before (Source: China Daily)
In the past few years, the commercial space sector has come alive in China as private companies jostle for launch dates. Before, the final frontier was the preserve of government-backed programs from State-owned companies. But now a slew of startups have appeared and along with established tech outfits are rolling out new business models for the space sector at competitive costs. "Private firms can make swift decisions to meet consumer demand," said Peng Yuanyuan, co-founder and chief operating officer at Commsat. "Plus, our trial and error costs are relatively low." (8/24)

SpaceX Has Launched More Rockets in 2017 Than Russia (Source: Business Insider)
SpaceX just launched its 12th rocket of the year. That's more rockets than other country or space company in the world, including the rocket juggernaut Russia, who has launched 11 rockets so far this year. What's more, SpaceX's mission was to send the first exclusively-made Taiwanese satellite to space. If SpaceX keeps up its momentum, it could launch 20 total rockets by the year's end. (8/24)

How Humans Will Finally Reach Interstellar Space (Source: Motherboard)
Instead of laboring over ways to transport our delicate meatbag bodies over light-year distances, wormholes, which are speculative connections in spacetime between two distant points, act as cosmic shortcuts to the stars. The idea of faster-than-light drives, like the one depicted in Battlestar Galactica, is another close cousin of the wormhole. But it's not known whether these phenomena even exist, let alone if they could be harnessed to make an interstellar subway system.

In other words, we may be stuck with the scenic route. But even with that limitation, there are hundreds of speculative concepts for interstellar passenger spacecraft floating around, across a wide spectrum of technical feasibility. Sleeper ships could contain crews placed in some form of suspended animation during the journey, which would reduce the need for bulky life support equipment. Generation ships would be designed to nourish living human colonies for centuries, or even millennia. Seed ships could be entirely robotic, but might contain human embryos that could be delivered to distant star systems where they would be incubated and, presumably, raised by robo-caretakers. (8/24)

Iceye Raises $13 Million for Radar Microsatellites (Source: Space News)
Finnish company Iceye announced Aug. 23 that it has raised $13 million to further development of a constellation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) cubesats. Iceye said in a statement that $8.5 million of the new funding came in a financing round led by Draper Nexus, an early-stage venture capital company with offices in California and Japan. Others participating in the round include True Ventures, Lifeline Ventures, Space Angels and Draper Associates.

The other $4.5 million came from the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovations, known as Tekes, company spokesperson Aubrey Lerche said in an Aug. 24 email. Tekes funds research and development work by companies and organizations in Finland. The company has raised $18.7 million to date, including funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. (8/24)

NASA F-18 Supersonic Flights Underway Over Space Coast (Source: Florida Today)
Two NASA-operated F/A-18 Hornets are responsible for this week's spate of sonic booms heard across northern portions of the Space Coast. Though the former Navy Blue Angels – one a two-seater, the other a single – aren't based here, they have one-of-a-kind accommodations during their stay: Kennedy Space Center's historic 15,000-foot Shuttle Landing Facility.

The fighter-attack aircraft from NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, their pilots and other teams have converged on KSC to conduct research that could one day lead to supersonic flights in the commercial sector. But first, they'll need data from sonic booms – dozens of them – in an effort to make them quieter for future aircraft. (8/24)

Falcon 9 Launches Taiwanese Remote Sensing Satellite (Source: Space News)
A SpaceX Falcon 9 successfully launched a long-delayed remote sensing satellite for the government of Taiwan Aug. 24, executing another first stage landing in the process. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. SpaceX reported no technical issues during the countdown, and foggy conditions at the launch site earlier in the morning partially cleared by launch time.

The rocket’s only payload, the Formosat-5 remote sensing satellite, separated from the upper stage a little more than 11 minutes after launch. The satellite was deployed into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 720 kilometers. SpaceX, during the launch webcast, declared the launch a success. (8/24)

Huntsville Airport Moves Closer to Hosting Dream Chaser Landings (Source: SNC)
Huntsville/Madison County is another step closer to landing a space vehicle at the Huntsville International Airport. The Airport has signed a contract to apply for licensing through the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to land Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser spacecraft on one of its commercial runways. This Phase II contract follows a Phase I contract completed in 2015 that examined the compatibility of SNC’s Dream Chaser with the existing runway and taxiway environments at the Airport. (8/23)

Here Is the Safety Trick That Will Help SpaceX Fly You to the Moon (Source: MIT Technology Review)
To put itself in position to deliver on its promise to fly tourists to the moon next year, SpaceX has had to completely reinvent the way it ensures that rockets won’t fly off track and endanger lives. Working with the U.S. Air Force, the company has developed autonomous rocket-tracking technology that makes it possible to fly its next-generation launch vehicle. It also dramatically cuts the cost of a rocket launch and makes it possible to launch on much shorter notice—both of which could be a boon not just for SpaceX but for the entire U.S. space industry.

Editor's Note: SpaceX did not develop the autonomous flight safety system, but they did agree to integrate and demonstrate the technology. This tech has been in development for years and will indeed make launches more affordable while making the spaceport more capable and efficient. (8/24)

ESA and Chinese Astronauts Train Together (Source: ESA)
ESA astronauts Samantha Cristoforetti and Matthias Maurer joined 16 Chinese astronauts earlier this month for nine days of sea survival training off China’s coastal city of Yantai. The ultimate goal is for ESA to establish a long term cooperation with China and ESA astronauts to fly on China’s space station. Click here. (8/24)

Wonky Signals From Distant Stars Could be Sign of Exocomets (Source: New Scientist)
This isn’t the first time astronomers might have found exocomets. In 2013, Barry Welsh at the University of California, Berkeley, presented findings of changes in a star’s spectra, the absorption lines that show when gas of specific elements is blocking light from a star. However, that wasn’t a direct detection like the one claimed by Vanderburg’s team. Welsh says a spectrographic study would clinch their case for comets, or show they found rocks and dust. (8/24)

In Pursuit of the Perfect Spacesuit (Source: Air & Space Magazine)
Shawna Pandya is testing an advanced spacesuit from Final Frontier Design, a startup co-founded by a designer who previously crafted costumes for Victoria’s Secret fashion shows. During this parabola’s 18 seconds of microgravity, Pandya must return to her seat and attach a five-point safety harness. It’s a task that Paul Kissmann, chief test pilot at Canada’s National Research Council and the man flying the Falcon, thinks is next to impossible. If the remaining parabolas go well and Pandya succeeds, the flight will be a huge step toward the pressurized tests that Final Frontier Design’s suit must pass before use on real space missions. Click here. (8/23)

Setting the Spaceplane Stage (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Fly frequently, travel safely, land on (most) runways, and operate economically: such are the guiding principles for 21st century spaceplanes, cargo-carrying aerospace workhorses routinely launching to low-Earth orbit for space station resupply and crew transfers. Fans disconsolate after retirement of NASA’s shuttle fleet can take heart: The next generation in reusable space vehicles is set to debut. Click here. (8/24)