October 6, 2017

Two Launches Same Day? Not This Week (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Hopes of launching two rockets into space on the same day from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport have been dashed, at least this time. On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson shared on social media that Air Force Brig. Gen. Wayne Montieth was confident the Eastern Range could accommodate multiple missions. “Good news for Florida’s Space Coast,” Nelson posted on Twitter. “Just spoke w/ Air Force Gen. Monteith - he confirmed the Cape is ready to handle two launches in a day.”

But SpaceX’s planned launch Saturday will now not take place any earlier than Wednesday, which all but eliminates its chances of launching the same day as a United Launch Alliance mission. Earlier, the possibility of two launches on the same day arose after ULA scrubbed a launch before dawn this morning and faced potentially inclement weather for a reschedule on Friday’s rescheduled launch date. Thursday’s mission to send a spy satellite into space was delayed because of high winds.

Space Florida’s chief of strategic alliances Dale Ketcham praised the U.S. Air Force’s efforts on the coast. “Kudos to the Air Force for getting us to this point,” he said. “The commercial world can’t help but be impressed and that’s good for the Cape and Florida.” (10/5)

Blue Origin CEO: We're Taking Tourists to Space Within 18 Months (Source: CNN)
Bob Smith, the CEO of the space outfit founded by Amazon mastermind Jeff Bezos, mentioned the new timeline during the first meeting of the newly revamped National Space Council on Thursday. That's a later date than Blue Origin had touted in the past. Just a year ago, the company's president, Rob Meyerson, said the first launch with passengers would be sometime in 2018. In an emailed statement on Thursday, Blue Origin insisted its "internal dates have not shifted," but added, "we will fly humans when we're ready, and not a moment sooner." (10/5)

Blue Origin Seeks Approval for Launching Government Payloads on New Glenn Rocket (Source: Space News)
The new CEO of Blue Origin said the company is in talks about certifying its New Glenn rocket for government missions. Bob Smith, speaking at the National Space Council meeting Thursday, said Blue Origin was in "early discussions" with NASA and the national security community on how to certify the rocket. Blue Origin has been focused on the commercial market for the large rocket, and company officials previously stated that it was not interested in pursuing national security missions. Doing so could put the company in competition with United Launch Alliance, which is considering using Blue Origin's BE-4 engine in its Vulcan rocket. (10/5)

Satellite Manufacturer OneWeb is Hiring, Building at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Construction on a new factory for OneWeb Satellites on Florida’s Space Coast is shaping up, even while the fledgling space company builds its first few satellites in France. OneWeb has joined with European jet manufacturer Airbus in a billion-dollar effort to launch upwards of 1,000 satellites to form a new communication network for the planet.

“We are going to launch every 21 days over two years across multiple sites,” Greg Wyler said. The company is hiring at Cape Canaveral now, advertising for and antenna engineer, a radio frequency design engineer, and multiple manufacturing associates. The website says the manufacturing jobs only require a high school diploma, or GED equivalent, and three years of experience in manufacturing environment, among other things. (10/5)

Declassified Documents Say US Knew Sputnik Was Soon to Orbit (Source: Defense News)
News bulletin in 1957: Sputnik stuns the world. CIA in 2017: Not really. The CIA released newly declassified documents on Wednesday revealing that while the American public was surprised when the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite 60 years ago, intelligence agencies weren’t caught off-guard.

President Eisenhower had advance knowledge about the Soviets’ work on Sputnik, which was launched by a rocket on Oct. 4, 1957. He had been worrying for several years about the Kremlin’s long-range missile capability and how rockets armed with nuclear warheads could threaten America. The documents indicate that U.S. intelligence and military officials and members of the Eisenhower administration not only knew that the Soviet Union was planning to launch Sputnik, but knew it could be put into orbit by the end of 1957. (10/4)

Congressman: Military Space Needs More Attention (Source: Space News)
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Thursday that military space needs more attention, even if it is not through the creation of a Space Corps. Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) said that "space is not going well" and that there is a need for space operations to be separated to at least some degree from the rest of the Air Force. The House version of a defense authorization bill would require the formation of a Space Corps within the Air Force, a provision missing in the Senate's version of the bill. Thornberry said a compromise might involve reforms for space operations that fall short of creating the Space Corps. (10/5)

Space Council Adds Moon to NASA's Plans (Source: Space News)
At the first meeting of the reconstituted National Space Council Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence instructed NASA to include the moon in its human spaceflight plans. Pence told NASA to submit a plan within 45 days for fulfilling a policy that now calls for human missions to the moon as a "stepping-stone" for later human missions to Mars. That plan could incorporate the Deep Space Gateway, a concept for an outpost in cislunar space that NASA introduced earlier this year. At the Council meeting, Pence also requested a "full review" of commercial space regulations to identify areas that can be streamlined, and completion of a "space strategic framework" by the National Security Council. (10/5)

MDA Completes DigitalGlobe Acquisition (Source: Space News)
MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) has completed its acquisition of DigitalGlobe, and is renaming the combined company. MDA said with the $2.4 billion acquisition of DigitalGlobe now closed, the combined company will now be known as Maxar Technologies, and its stock will be traded on both the New York and Toronto stock exchanges. As part of the deal, DigitalGlobe CEO Jeffrey Tarr is stepping down, and will hold an advisory role at Maxar through the end of the year. (10/5)

Astronauts Fix ISS Robotic Arm Grappler During Spacewalk (Source: CBS)
Two astronauts gave the space station's robotic arm a new hand during a spacewalk Thursday. Randy Bresnik and Mark Vande Hei replaced one of two grappling fixtures, known as latching end effectors, on the Canadarm2 robotic arm during the nearly seven-hour spacewalk. That fixture suffered a malfunction in August, prompting its replacement using an onboard spare. The astronauts, performing the first of three spacewalks scheduled for this month, replaced the fixture ahead of schedule and were able to do some additional "get-ahead" tasks before completing the spacewalk. (10/5)

SpaceX Launch Rescheduled to Wednesday (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
SpaceX has rescheduled a launch previously planned for Saturday evening. The company said Thursday the SES-11 launch on a Falcon 9 from the Kennedy Space Center was now scheduled for next Wednesday in order to give the company more time to complete launch preparations while also avoiding poor weather forecast for the weekend. The delay does not affect Monday's Falcon 9 launch of 10 Iridium satellites from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which remains on schedule after completing a static fire test early Thursday. (10/5)

Canadians Concerned With Russian Rocket's Contamination of Arctic Waters (Source: National Post)
Canadians are concerned that an upcoming Russian rocket launch could contaminate arctic waters. The second stage of a Rockot rocket launching from Plesetsk, Russia, will splash down in waters between Greenland and the Canadian Arctic, carrying up to eight tons of excess UDMH fuel. That fuel is highly toxic, although any residual fuel would likely be quickly diluted by seawater. The Inuit Circumpolar Council, a group of Inuit leaders in Canada and Greenland, issued a statement Thursday asking that a Rockot launch later this month of a European Earth science satellite be postponed. (10/5)

Indian Google Lunar Prize Team Still Raising Funds (Source: IANS)
With less than six months to go in the competition, a Google Lunar X Prize team is still looking to raise significant funding for its mission. Team Indus said this week that it has raised, and spent, more than half of the estimated $70 million cost of the mission, but that it was still "trying to accumulate the rest through sponsors and others interested in this mission," according to the mission's leader, Rahul Narayan, adding he was in talks with several people who could provide the remaining funds. The competition's current rules require teams to complete their missions, which involves landing a spacecraft on the moon and traveling at least 500 meters there, by the end of March 2018. (10/6)

Ariane 6 Could Use Reusable Prometheus Engine (Source: Space News)
Europe’s upcoming Ariane 6 rocket, though designed to be expendable, could one day sport a reusable engine, according to Patrick Bonguet, head of the Ariane 6 program at ArianeGroup. Whether or not the rocket would ever use that engine, called Prometheus, depends on whether Ariane 6 manufacturer ArianeGroup, formerly Airbus Safran Launchers, finds enough benefit for the European launch sector.

So far, the merits of reusable rockets to ArianeGroup are unclear at best, Bonguet said, but the company is researching the technology to be ready for implementation should it prove worthwhile. “We could replace Vulcain 2.1 by Prometheus,” Bonguet told SpaceNews. “Or Prometheus can be the first break to build the next generation. We will see where we are in 2025 or 2030, and then decide on the right time whether to go one way or the other.” (10/5)

Groundbreaking Work in UK on Hypersonic Flight (Source: Money Week)
Groundbreaking work in hypersonic flight is now going on in Britain, years after we quit the first space race. (Hypersonic flight is considered to start at Mach 5 – that’s five times the speed of sound. For comparison, the F-35B Lightning II fighter jets ordered for the Royal Navy’s new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers – one of the most technologically advanced aircraft in the world – will have a top speed of around Mach 1.6.)

Oxfordshire-based Reaction Engines has spent years perfecting the technology to one day take its Skylon spaceplane to the International Space Station and back. And it’s the revolutionary Sabre (which stands for Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine) propelling the Skylon that has got investors excited.

One of the key problems with travelling at hypersonic speeds is the extremely high temperature at which the air enters the engines. At Mach 5, this air is heated to around 1,000º. But thanks to thousands of thin-walled coolant-filled tubes within Sabre, the air is cooled to –150º in 1/100th of a second. Click here. (10/5)

Planet 9 Might Be an Immigrant (Source: (Air & Space)
n a new paper, Caltech researchers Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin put some constraints on the possible existence of Planet 9, which they believe is a Super-Earth planet orbiting in the far reaches of the outer solar system. Planet 9, if it is confirmed to exist, would nicely explain the unconventional motions of distant objects in the Kuiper Belt and beyond, and would address the long-standing question of why the planets of our solar system orbit in a plane tilted six degrees from the Sun’s equatorial plane.

Brown and Batygin used extensive computer simulations to constrain the mass and orbit of Planet 9, and found that only a narrow range of orbits can explain their observations. They now believe the planet has a mass somewhere between 5 and 20 Earth masses, and that it orbits between 150 and 350 AU from the Sun (1 AU is the average distance between the Sun and Earth). They also conclude that the planet is likely to be inclined to the plane of Earth’s orbit by about 30 degrees. What’s more, they think it should be detectable, especially when the Sun, Earth, and Planet Nine are lined up with each other. (10/6)