January 1, 2018

Polar Launches Soon at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport? (Source: Florida Today)
The Air Force has opened a “polar corridor” that would allow certain rockets to launch spacecraft from Cape Canaveral into north-south orbits circling the poles, a development that could bring more launches to Florida. Polar launches historically have been flown from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where a small number of missions each year fly south over the Pacific Ocean toward Antarctica. No near-term missions plan to use the new polar corridor, but over time it could lead to more Cape launches and consolidation of the nation’s launch infrastructure.

Both the military and commercial launchers could save money by no longer having to maintain and staff infrastructure sites on both coasts. “Adding polar missions to the Cape's manifest might be very attractive to the Air Force, especially as they consider a new round of base closures in the near future,” said Edward Ellegood, an analyst at Saalex Solutions, a range operations contractor at Kennedy Space Center. "United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Orbital ATK and Blue Origin could reduce the costs associated with operating facilities and deploying personnel to the West Coast for only a few missions per year.”

The Eastern Range began analyzing options for polar launches as a wild fire raged near Vandenberg in September 2016. The fire damaged power and communications lines and delayed a commercial mission by two months. Monteith did not detail the precise trajectory, but said it involved “a little jog shortly off the pad” to turn south once offshore, “and then we’d skirt Miami.” The rocket’s first stage would drop safely before reaching Cuba, he said. The second stage would be so high up by the time it flew over the island that no special permissions would be required. (1/1)

Autonomous Launch Destruct System a Requirement for Florida Polar Missions (Source: Florida Today)
Today, only SpaceX’s single-stick Falcon 9 rocket could fly the polar corridor, and the company has no stated plans to use it, even as it is midway through an eight-launch campaign from Vandenberg for Iridium Communications. But every big rocket is expected to be equipped with automated destruct systems within a decade. United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan, Blue Origin’s New Glenn — both still in development — and SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy might be cleared to fly south within a few years.

Blue Origin, which has a contract to launch OneWeb satellites into polar orbits in the 2020s, does not yet have a Vandenberg launch site and says those missions could launch from the Cape. According to Blue Origin: “New Glenn has the capability and performance to launch customers into polar orbit from Florida,” the company said in a statement. (1/1)

Potential for Polar Missions Contrasts Florida and California Launch Experiences (Source: Florida Today)
The Cape’s southerly polar-launch corridor may be about more than geography. Though Vandenberg typically hosts just a few orbital rocket launches a year (but eight in 2017), getting on its schedule can be a challenge. The base must prioritize test flights of Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles and Missile Defense Agency interceptors, and is not as accustomed to quick turnarounds between launches.

In addition, 45th Space Wing Commander Monteith said his California counterpart leading the 30th Space Wing does not enjoy the same level of support found on the Space Coast. “He was talking about things that I have no experience with whatsoever, and that is almost an adversarial relationship with the local community and state on bringing in new business and fostering commercial growth,” Monteith said. Monteith, on the other hand, is touting improvements that would enable up to 48 Cape launches annually within five years, up from 19 this year. (1/1)

A Little More Money for NASA Could Launch New Industries (Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Supporters claim the new tax overhaul will boost the economy by 5 percent a year. Most economists and nonpartisan tax groups put that rate closer to half a percent to a percent, while increasing annual deficits by $1 trillion over a decade. While I’m no economist — I’m a space engineer — I can show a far more cost-effective way to ensure brisk growth for the nation’s economy, not just in the next decade but the next generation. We’ve tried it before, and it has exceeded nearly everyone’s expectations.

Actually, it has been tried twice: once when Europeans settled the American frontier and again when, in a single decade, we put men on the moon and brought them back safely. A new economic booster would combine the two ideas. It would settle a frontier, and it would entail an ambitious public-private program in outer space. Let’s look at the last time we spent a significant portion of the federal budget on space — the 4 percent devoted to NASA during the Apollo program in the 1960s and early ‘70s.

Look at the American economy before, during and after Apollo, and you can see a correlation between economic growth and a robust aerospace program. During the 1950s, gross domestic product grew by 26 percent (from $2.27 trillion to $3.06 trillion in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars.) During the 1960s — the decade of Apollo — GDP grew by 35 percent ($3.08 trillion to $4.72 trillion). During the 1970s, GDP grew by 28 percent ($4.71 trillion to $6.5 trillion). In other words, the American economy grew one-third faster during the Apollo decade than during the decades before and after. (1/1)

Moon Shot: Lunar Mining (Source: Geographical)
Naveen Jain clears his throat ceremoniously. ‘We want to go to the Moon – not because it is easy, but because it is great business,’ he says, altering the words President Kennedy used to describe the first Moon landing. Jain is the co-founder and chairman of Moon Express, the first of two private companies with a license to leave Earth’s orbit, land on the Moon and return with bits of it. ‘When we get our Moon shot, it will really show what entrepreneurs are capable of,’ he says. They hope to launch by the end of this year. Click here. (1/1)

Billions Of Exoplanets? Count On It, Say Space Scientists (Source: Forbes)
Exoplanets are everywhere. Already, astronomers have discovered thousands. As of New Year’s Day 2018, NASA has confirmed the existence of 3,572 exoplanets, with 5,078 more awaiting verification. But scientists say they've barely begun. And the number of exoworlds they estimate is astounding. "There are hundreds of billions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy," says UCLA's Jean-Luc Margot. To put that in perspective: imagine counting them all, at the rate of one per second. That task, says Margot, would take "about 3,000 years" to finish.

Virtually all astronomers now say the vast majority of stars, maybe almost all, have at least a few planets around them. They once thought the opposite. Exoplanets were believed nearly nonexistent. Our solar system, with eight major worlds, was presumed a quirk. Then the Kepler Space Telescope stared at a patch of sky between constellations Cygnus and Lyra—and saw exoplanets all over the place. To calculate a more specific estimate on the number of exoplanets in the galaxy, researchers start with the number of stars. There are least 100 billion stars are in the Milky Way, scientists say—maybe up to 400 billion.

Says Guillem Anglada-Escude, an astrophysicist at Queen Mary University of London, and part of the team that discovered Proxima b, Earth’s closest exoplanet: “100 billion is a reasonable number.” “100 billion is a reasonable number.” So take 100 billion stars, assume three planets per star, and multiply: that's 300 billion planets in the galaxy. Presume more stars—200 billion? 300 billion?—and “you’re looking at close to a trillion planets.” (1/1)

Supermassive Black Holes Suffocate Star Formation by Sucking Energy From Their Galaxies (Source: Newsweek)
Astronomers have finally spotted evidence for their long-standing suspicion that the larger a galaxy's central supermassive black hole, the faster star formation in that neighborhood ends. "This is the first direct observational evidence where we can see the effect of the black hole on the star formation history of the galaxy," said astronomer Jean Brodie. (1/1)

Time Running Out to Win Google Lunar X Prize (Source: Parabolic Arc)
The clock is ticking for the remaining teams in the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize competition. Barring another extension, they have until March 31 to land a vehicle on moon and travel 500 meters across it to claim the $20 million first prize or $5 million second prize. It’s not clear whether any of them will make the deadline. Click here. (1/1)

Billionaires May Be the Future of Space Policy — Here's What They Want (Source: Business Insider)
Last month, the first space nation left the International Space Station. That space nation, Asgardia-1, is actually a satellite containing personal data from some of the "nation's" 300,000 "citizens," launched into space by billionaire Igor Ashurbeyli.

Asgardia is as yet unrecognized by the United Nations, and its citizens are people who filled out an application form. The goal "is to provide permanent presence of humans in space," Ashurbeyli told Foreign Policy in a recent interview. Ashurbeyli isn't the only billionaire with unusual ideas about what humanity should be doing in space.

On Saturday, Politico and the New York Times both published articles revealing that another tycoon, Robert Bigelow, had convinced lawmakers to secretly appropriate money to have the Pentagon look for UFOs. In fact, a number of private individuals of great wealth are charting the future of space policy, whether through money or influence. Click here. (1/1)

Chinese Space Station is Falling to Earth This Year (Source: The Verge)
Sometime in late March of next year, a Chinese space station named Tiangong-1 is going to fall back down to Earth — and some big pieces may survive the reentry. The module’s descent has caused a bit of concern about debris raining form the sky. But in reality, a falling space station is the last thing anyone should be worried about.

Satellites and spacecraft fall to Earth all the time. Vehicles in lower orbits get bombarded by small particles in the planet’s upper atmosphere, and that eventually drags them downward. But usually, these falling objects are small enough or shaped in such a way that they’ll burn up safely while re-entering the atmosphere.

The problem with Tiangong-1 is that it’s rather massive. Launched in 2011, Tiangong-1 — or “Heavenly Place” — served as China’s first ever crewed space station. The module weighs nearly 19,000 pounds and it’s pretty dense too. And it’s estimated that around 10 to 40 percent of a spacecraft will make it down the ground. For small satellites, that’s not much. For Tiangong-1, that’s between 2,000 and 8,000 pounds. (12/31)

Rocket Launches and Trips to the Moon We’re Looking Forward to in 2018 (Source: New York Times)
If you love space and astronomy, 2018 will be an exciting year. NASA has announced windows of time for sending spacecraft to Mars and the sun. Japanese and American probes already in space are set to enter orbit around two near Earth asteroids. And a variety of eclipses and meteor showers offer ample opportunities for skygazing. Click here. (1/1) 

How China is Taking On the World in Space (Source: Curious Droid)
China has been developing their space program for almost as long the US starting in 1958 but it's only quite recently that it has caught up with the west and is poised to be a leader in space in the next decade or so. In this video, we look at how China is taking on the world in space. Click here. (12/27)