November 8, 2017

We Have Every Reason to Fear Trump’s Pick to Head NASA (Source: Guardian)
Bridenstine’s testimony was that of a completely different person than Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK). He said that he would be an apolitical administrator; he accepted at least some very basic climate science; said he would support Nasa’s climate science research; would no longer support discrimination of LBGT Americans; etc.

However, in their congressional hearings, Scott Pruitt and Rick Perry also accepted the century-old science telling us that humans contribute to global warming. In the time since the Senate confirmed their appointments, the Trump administration has begun the processes to withdraw the US from the international Paris climate agreement and repeal the Clean Power Plan. (11/6)

Vega Launches Moroccan Satellite From Kourou (Source: Space News)
A Vega rocket launched a high-resolution imaging satellite for Morocco Tuesday night. The Vega lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana, at 8:42 p.m. Eastern and released the Mohammed 6-A satellite into orbit about an hour later. The satellite, built by Thales Alenia Space and Airbus Defence and Space, is the first of two satellites designed to provide high-resolution images for the government of Morocco. The launch was the third this year for the Vega and the 11th overall for the small launcher. (11/7)

NASA Dinged for Exploration Budget Planning (Source: Space News)
A lack of budget reserves could lead to more problems down the road for NASA's exploration programs, according to a report. The NASA Office of Inspector General, in its annual report on management changes facing the industry, noted both the Space Launch System and Orion programs had budget reserves far below recommended levels for programs in development. The lack of reserves for SLS in particular "is unlikely to be sufficient to enable NASA to address issues that may arise during development and testing." The report also noted the potential for schedule slips or cost increases for two science missions, Parker Solar Probe and ICESat-2, scheduled for launch next year. (11/7)

Bridenstine Confirms Support for SLS/Orion (Source: Space News)
NASA administrator nominee Jim Bridenstine expressed his support for SLS and Orion in responses to additional questions from senators. In written responses to questions for the record, Bridenstine called SLS and Orion the "backbone" for the agency's deep space exploration plans. He also said the Deep Space Gateway, the cislunar outpost NASA is currently studying, could be useful, but added he would work with Congress to determine if it is the best path forward. The Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled to vote on advancing his nomination to the full Senate during a brief executive session this morning. (11/7)

UK Military Hopes for Commercial Space Innovation (Source: Space News)
The British military is looking for ways to leverage commercial space innovation for its own needs. In a speech Tuesday, General Sir Chris Deverell, commander of the U.K. Joint Forces Command, said the military had "swallowed the innovation pill" and wanted to take advantage of commercial capabilities. That includes studying how to recapitalize its Skynet fleet of military communications satellites over the next decade. (11/7)

India Hopes Commercial Participation Will Help Double Launch Manifest (Source: Times of India)
India plans to turn to the commercial sector to double the number of launches. Officials with the Indian space agency ISRO said they want to increase the number of launches from the current 9 to 10 per year to as many as 18-19 a year. Doing so will require having industry take over more of the work building and testing launch vehicles. (11/7)

Luxembourg Plans Earth Observation Satellite (Source: Space News)
Luxembourg is the latest country planning its own Earth-observation satellite. The proposed satellite, to be used for civil and military purposes, would be based on an existing system. A manager with the country's Directorate of Defence said the government is already in talks with an undisclosed company about the satellite, with the goal of awarding a contract in 2018 for launch in 2021. Luxembourg's first government communications satellite, GovSat-1, is scheduled for launch early next year on a Falcon 9. (11/7)

Russian Test Subjects Simulate Lunar Flight (Source: AFP)
Six people have embarked on a trip to the moon — without leaving Moscow. Three men and three women entered a spacecraft mockup at the Institute for Biomedical Problems for a 17-day experiment to simulate a flight to the moon and back. The test is part of an effort known as Scientific International Research In a Unique terrestrial Station, or Sirius, that will increasingly extended simulated spaceflights, including a year-long mission. (11/8)

100 Women: The Women Who Sew for NASA (Source: BBC)
Without its seamstresses, many of Nasa's key missions would never have left the ground. From the Apollo spacesuits to the Mars rovers, women behind the scenes have stitched vital spaceflight components. One of them is Lien Pham, a literal tailor to the stars - working in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's shield shop to create thermal blankets, essential for any spacecraft leaving Earth.

It may not sound glamorous, but Lien does work with couture materials. The Cassini mission, her first project at NASA, went to Saturn cloaked in a fine gold plate for durability over its 19-year journey. Your shoes have more in common with interplanetary spacecraft than you might think - thermal blankets are created on the same industrial sewing machines as footwear, and then laced onto the spacecraft so they don't come loose during launch. Click here. (11/8)

Apollo 12 Astronaut Dies (Source: CollectSpace)
Dick Gordon, who flew to the moon on Apollo 12, has passed away. Gordon died Monday at the age of 88, and the cause of death was not released. Gordon, part of NASA's third astronaut class, flew with Pete Conrad on Gemini 11 in 1966, performing two spacewalks. He was the command module pilot on Apollo 12, remaining in lunar orbit while Conrad and Alan Bean walked on the moon. Gordon was in line to command Apollo 18 and walk on the moon himself, but that mission was cancelled. After leaving NASA in the early 1970s, he held several executive positions in industry, ranging from energy and engineering companies to executive vice president of the NFL's New Orleans Saints. He was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in Florida in 1993. (11/7)

NASA Opens $2 Million Third Phase of 3D-Printed Habitat Competition (Source: Space Daily)
Future missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond will require innovative options to shelter our explorers, and we won't be able to carry all of the materials with us from Earth. NASA's 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, a Centennial Challenges competition, seeks ways to create or develop the technologies needed to create such habitats on-site, and challenges citizen inventors to lead the way. Today, NASA and challenge partner Bradley University of Peoria, Illinois, announce the opening of Phase 3 of the competition for team registration. (11/8)

NASA Moves Orion Abort Test Ahead of Delayed SLS Debut (Source: Aviation Week)
NASA will advance an ascent abort test of the Orion capsule while the agency readies for a late 2019 or early 2020 Space Launch System (SLS) debut, a program manager tells Aviation Week. Ascent Abort Test 2 (AA-2) will test the capsule’s Tandem Tractor (Tower) launch abort system, which comprises three solid rocket motors and a parachute landing system. The AA-2 will test the system at maximum dynamic pressure (max Q). This test will be launched from Space Florida's LC-46 launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. (11/8)

OneWeb Signs $190M Contract with Hughes for Ground Network (Source: Fierce Wireless)
Hughes Network Systems signed a contract for $190 million with OneWeb for the production of a ground network system that will support OneWeb’s constellation of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites.

The contract builds on an original system development agreement the companies signed in June 2015, bringing the total value of both agreements to more than $300 million. The contract includes production of gateway sites, each with multiple tracking satellite access points to support handoff of high-speed user traffic between satellites.

The joint development of the ground network system actually began about two years ago. The current agreement includes equipment to support multiple satellite access points in gateway locations around the world, each including a custom switching complex, outdoor modems and power amplifiers. Shipments are expected to begin in mid-2018. (11/7)

Uber in Deal with NASA to Build Flying Taxi Air Control Software (Source: Reuters)
Uber is taking part in a joint industry and government push with NASA to develop software which the company aims to use to manage “flying taxi” routes that could work like ride-hailing services it has popularized on the ground. Uber said on Wednesday it was the first formal services contract by NASA covering low-altitude airspace rather than outer space. NASA has used such contracts to develop rockets since the late 1950s. (11/8)

Space War: How the Air Force Plans to Defend the Final Frontier (Source: Popular Mechanics)
The "left hook" of Operation Desert Storm n 1991, when U.S. and allied ground forces attacked the western flank of the Iraqi military in Kuwait, revealed the true power of satellites in wartime. "Going through a desert, at night, without roads and maps—it was all enabled by GPS," Raymond says. Fast-forward a quarter-century and tensions are again on the rise, from Syria to the Korean Peninsula. And today, the United States no longer enjoys the type of control it had over space in 1991.

A hypothetical attack on U.S. satellites has been a serious public concern since at least January 2007, when a Chinese missile shot a Chinese satellite out of the sky. Russia has been researching anti-satellite weapons since at least the 1980s. The past few decades have shown how space operations can revolutionize military operations on Earth. The next theater, however, might be space itself. Click here. (11/6)

SpaceX vs. Blue Origin: The Bickering Titans of New Space (Source: Teslarati)
In the past three years, SpaceX has made incredible progress in their program of reusability. In the practice’s first year, the young space company led by serial tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has performed three successful commercial reuses of Falcon 9 boosters in approximately eight months, and has at least two more reused flights scheduled before 2017 is out. Blue Origin is perhaps most famous for its supreme confidence, best illustrated by Bezos offhandedly welcoming SpaceX “to the club” after the company first recovered the booster stage of its Falcon 9 rocket in 2015.

Blue Origin began in the early 2000s as a pet project of Bezos, a long-time fan of spaceflight and proponent of developing economies in space. After more than a decade of persistent development and increasingly complex testbeds, Blue Origin began a multi-year program of test flights with its small New Shepard launch vehicle. Designed to eventually launch tourists to the veritable edge of Earth’s atmosphere in a capsule atop it, New Shepard began its test flights in 2015 and after one partial failure, has completed five successful flights in a row. Click here. (11/7)

Bezos, Musk Have Different Ideas About How to Pay for Space Race (Source: Mercury News)
Jeff Bezos sold $4 billion of Amazon.com stock in the past three years, including $1.1 billion last week, using most of the money to support his space company, Blue Origin. That sets its business model apart from other billionaire-backed space ventures, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which have both taken outside funding and moved more quickly to commercialize operations.

There’s a clear difference with Musk’s SpaceX, which sought to generate revenue as soon as possible after its founding in 2002. Securing commercial launch contracts helped the Hawthorne, California-based firm generate a small operating profit on $1 billion of revenue in 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported in January. (11/7)

Dark-Matter Hunt Fails to Find the Elusive Particles (Source: Nature)
Physicists are growing ever more frustrated in their hunt for dark matter — the massive but hard-to-detect substance that is thought to comprise 85% of the material Universe. Teams working with the world’s most sensitive dark-matter detectors report that they have failed to find the particles, and that the ongoing drought has challenged theorists’ prevailing views.

The latest results from an experiment called XENON1T at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, published on 30 October1, continue a dry spell stretching back 30 years in the quest to nab dark-matter particles. An attempt by a Chinese team to detect the elusive stuff, the results of which were published on the same day2, also came up empty-handed. Ongoing attempts by space-based telescopes, as well as at CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, have also not spotted any hints of dark-matter particles. (11/8)

Hawking’s Latest Doomsday Prediction: Earth Could Go to Hell by 2600 (Source: GeekWire)
British physicist Stephen Hawking has warned repeatedly that Earth could well be doomed, but his latest warning gives us no more than 583 years before we get burned on Earth. During a video clip aired on Sunday, the 75-year-old scientist said that humanity would have to deal with exponential growth in the centuries ahead. He noted that the world’s population has been doubling every 40 years.

“This exponential growth cannot continue into the next millennium,” Hawking, who has been coping with neurodegenerative disease for decades, said in his computer-synthesized voice. “By the year 2600, the world’s population would be standing shoulder to shoulder, and the electricity consumption would make the Earth glow red-hot. (11/7)

“Zombie Star” Has Astronomers Stumped (Source: Air & Space)
A supernova discovered three years ago has turned out to be far more interesting than it first appeared to be—and perhaps evidence of some previously undetected type of astronomical event. The object, designated iPTF14hls, remained bright for months longer than a typical supernova, leading a team of astronomers to say it could be powered by a type of explosion that had been theorized but never seen. Click here. (11/9)