December 30, 2017

How Canada Lost its Foremost Space Company (Source: Globe and Mail)
Canada's foremost space company, MDA, recently relocated to the United States – weakening our national security and limiting our ability to compete in space. MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. was founded in Vancouver in 1969; it went on to build the Canadarm and became a world leader in synthetic aperture radar satellites, which can produce high resolution images of the Earth's surface through darkness and clouds.

MDA is now incorporated in Delaware and managed from California by an American chief executive officer who reports to a board composed almost entirely of Americans. As of October, 2017, the company has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange under a new name – Maxar Technologies. The government of Stephen Harper would never have allowed this to happen. In 2008, Industry Minister Jim Prentice used the Investment Canada Act to block the sale of MDA's space division to a U.S. company because of its importance to Canadian security and sovereignty, especially in the Arctic.

That experience prompted the Harper government to introduce an explicit national security test into the Investment Canada Act. The Trudeau government could have used that test to block MDA's transformation into a U.S. company. The Investment Canada Act applies to any acquisition of a controlling interest in a Canadian company by non-Canadians, which is what has happened – since October – as a result of Maxar Technologies' listing in New York. There is little doubt that MDA's transformation into a U.S. company weakens Canada's national security. (12/28)

A California CubeSat Development Education Initiative Overview (Source: CDE)
Most high schools lack sufficient funds for sponsoring innovation and development of CubeSats. This impact is felt across the STEM and Aerospace programs of many schools across the United States, disadvantaging ambitious deserving students with bright futures. The CubeSat Development Education Initiative is a nonprofit California based organization that promotes and provides space systems engineering opportunities and enrichment to students.

The CubeSat Development Education Initiative was inspired by a California high school student who attempted to develop a CubeSat satellite at his high school and experienced firsthand the many roadblocks to Aerospace education. Click here. (12/29)

China's 7,680mph Hypersonic Aircraft Delivered its Warhead 'Within Meters' of its Target 870 Miles Away (Source: Daily Mail)
Last month, China conducted the first flight tests of its new hypersonic ballistic missile - and new details have revealed how it might operate in the real world. The DF-17 is a ballistic missile equipped with a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), which is said to be capable of achieving speeds of up to 7,680 miles per hour (12,360 kph) – or 10 times the speed of sound.

In the tests, the missile’s payload flew roughly 870 miles in about 11 minutes with the HGV, though intelligence experts suspect it could one day achieve over 1,500 miles (2,500 km). US officials tested tested an HTV-2 vehicle in 2011, an unmanned aircraft capable of Mach 20, but the hypersonic flight lasted just a few minutes before the vehicle crashed. Hypersonic vehicles travel so rapidly and unpredictably they could provide an almost-immediate threat to nations across the globe. (12/29)

Where Are All the Aliens? Zoo Theory Has Creepy Explanation for Why We Haven’t Made Contact Yet (Source: Newsweek)
One popular theory to explain why aliens have not made open contact with humans is the “Zoo Theory.” John A. Ball, an MIT radio astronomer, proposed the theory in 1973, suggesting that aliens may purposely be avoiding contact with humans so they don't interfere with our activity, similar to zookeepers at a zoo or nature preserve, Science Alert reported.

“ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) may be discreetly and inconspicuously watching us but not dabbling," Ball wrote in his paper on the subject. According to this theory, we are too unevolved and uncivilized to be a threat or burden to alien life, but rather than interfere with our natural evolution, they monitor us from afar. Of course, they aren’t completely perfect in their effort to stay out of human affairs, which is why we have several thousand alleged sightings each year. (12/29)

All the Wild Shit We're Going to Do in Space and Physics in 2018 (Source: Gizmodo)
It’s time to gaze into our crystal ball and see what the coming year has in store for science. From powerful new rockets and asteroid-sampling spacecraft to groundbreaking particle physics, there’s plenty to look forward to in 2018. Click here. (12/29)

NASA's Search For Transfats And Other Fatty Acids On Mars (Source: Forbes)
The hunt for biomarkers on Mars often comes down to looking for the same sorts of fatty acids --- even transfats --- that make up a human diet on Earth. Finding fatty acids --- organic molecules made up of chains of carbon and hydrogen --- doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve found evidence for life itself. After all, these molecules can be produced without biology.

But even finding abiotically-produced fatty acids would give astrobiologists a big leg up in knowing where to look for past habitable regions on Mars. NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover and its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument have found chlorobenzene (an organic ring molecule) in Gale Crater’s Sheepbed Mudstone. But, to date, no one has ever had a positive detection of a fatty acid on Mars.

Organic ring molecules found near the Martian surface suggest that they have survived high-energy radiation and abundant surface oxidants, both of which are capable of ripping such carbon chain compounds apart. Determining which, if any, organic molecules are present in the near-Mars surface helps astrobiologists determine Mars’ possible prebiotic or biotic chemistry. (12/29)

U.S. and China Both Want to Launch a Mars Sample Return Mission Before 2030 (Source: Popular Mechanics)
The best way to study Martian rocks and soil would be to do it on Earth. While spacecraft-mounted instruments-—such as the Curiosity rover's ChemCam-—are invaluable to planetary scientists, they are no replacement for a sample in the lab. The amount of compositional and absolute age data that scientists can obtain with a laboratory full of state-of-the-art equipment and chemicals to test sample materials is unparalleled, as evidenced by research conducted on meteorites (including from Mars) and Apollo moon samples.

To continue this work, scientists need a pristine sample of Martian rock and soil, which would help build a Rosetta Stone to unlock the history of the solar system. The potential knowledge to be obtained from such a sample ranges from the formation of Mars to the nature of the planet's ancient surface waters to possible habitability in the Red Planet's past, and in turn, perhaps the secret to the origin of life on Earth.

With so much to gain, both NASA and the Chinese national space agency are designing missions to retrieve a sample from Mars before the end of the 2020s. The missions are ambitious, incomplete, and reliant on yet-to-be developed technologies. They both start, however, with flights to Mars in 2020. Click here. (12/29)

China to Build Mars Village in Qinghai Province (Source: Xinhua)
China is building a village simulating the environmental conditions on Mars, in northwest China's Qinghai Province. The project, as part of China's Mars exploration preparation, was approved by experts in Beijing. The village will be constructed in the red rock area of the Qaidam basin in western Qinghai, which has been dubbed "the most Martian place on Earth." Covering 702 hectares, the "Mars Village" will consist of a tourism center, a Mars community, a simulation base and other facilities. Total investment is estimated at 850 million yuan (about $130 million). (12/29)

Oklahoma Astronaut Museum Announces 'Legacy Campaign' for More Space (Source: CollectSpace)
Twenty five years after it was founded, an astronaut's hometown museum is looking to expand – just in time to mark a half century since its namesake's historic flight to the moon. The Stafford Air & Space Museum, named for Gemini and Apollo astronaut Thomas Stafford, announced its "Legacy Campaign," a major fund-raising effort to grow its facilities by more than 18,000 square feet. The museum aims to have the first phase of the expansion completed in time to host a celebration for the 50th anniversary of Stafford's Apollo 10 mission in May 2019. (12/29)

Trump's 'Back to the Moon' Directive Leaves Some Scientists with Mixed Feelings (Source: Space.com)
Despite President Trump's declared intention to send human explorers to the moon before Mars, astronomers and planetary scientists remained wary. While some expressed their enthusiasm for the plan, others questioned whether it would ever become a reality. "It's all hot air until someone actually does something," said exoplanet scientist Stephen Kane.

On Dec. 11, Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, a document that shifts U.S. policy, directing NASA to land astronauts on the moon before sending them on to the Red Planet. The document made no mention of funding or deadlines. "This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprint, we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars," Trump said at the event. (12/29)

India Recoups for Key 2018 Space Missions (Source: The Hindu)
India's national space agency ISRO expects to regain in the new year some of the ground and pace it lost in 2017 owing to a damp-squib launch mission of August. Starting January, the line-up for the first half of 2018 is highlighted by at least three or four significant missions. Among the prospective launches are a lunar lander cum rover mission, the Chandrayaan-2; the second GSLV-MkIII heavy-lift launch carrying the advanced communications satellite GSAT-20; and the third purported military communications spacecraft, GSAT-6A, in February. Then there is the private commercial Moon rover mission that Bengaluru startup TeamIndus plans to send by March on a PSLV; the company is a finalist in a Google XPrize lunar contest. (12/29)

Russian Space Agency Denies Programming Error Bungled Rocket Launch (Source: Tech Crunch)
A failed rocket launch from Russia’s new spaceport at Vostochny last month was not in fact caused by an elementary programming error, as recent reports have indicated. veryone wants to know what happened — hundreds of millions of dollars went up in smoke in this failed launch. Roscosmos’s Aleksandr Ivanov explained that the issue was “incorrect operation of software algorithms in combination with unaccounted peculiarities of azimuths of the launch from the new Vostochny Cosmodrome.”

But then yesterday Rogozin offered a surprising addendum in an interview: human error. “The rocket was really programmed as if it was taking off from Baikonur. They didn’t get the coordinates right,” he said, as translated by Reuters. If true, that would be a major embarrassment to the Russian space program — the idea that such an obvious mistake (Baikonur is the country’s primary spaceport in Kazakhstan) could not just be made in the first place, but also fail to be detected and corrected. Perhaps that’s why Roscosmos immediately and strenuously denied Rogozin’s account:

"The flight task was tested exclusively for the Vostochny Cosmodrome, which was checked by specialists in accordance with existing methods. The reason for the accident is a combination of several factors at the Vostochny Cosmodrome… [that are] impossible to detect by any existing mathematical models." (12/29)