January 31, 2018

Richard Branson: Pioneering Space Travel (Source: In Depth)
Sir Richard Branson discusses his numerous outer space ventures, including Virgin Galactic Airways, VIrgin Orbit and OneWeb, which has plans to launch up to 3,000 satellites into orbit to provide internet access to the estimated four billion people on Earth still without it. Branson also candidly recounts a tragic 2014 Virgin Galactic test flight in which the pilot was killed and a unanimous decision to stay the course among Virgin Galactic stakeholders. Click here. (1/31)

UCF Seeks New Way to Mine Moon for Water (Source: UCF)
UCF’s Phil Metzger and Juliet Brisset from the Florida Space Institute recently landed a contract to develop a model to mine the moon for water. Data suggests the moon has water locked away in its icy soil, especially at the moon’s poles. The challenge is finding an effective and inexpensive way to get it. Water is important because its chemical composition could be split into hydrogen and oxygen, which could then be made into rocket fuel. The ability to generate rocket fuel in space could open up more launch possibilities and reduce costs for transportation throughout lunar space and beyond.

Metzger and Brisset aim to come up with a viable method to extract the water. The idea would be to drill holes deep into the moon and pump heat through the holes to warm the regolith underground, which has water locked in frigid ice chunks. As the regolith warms up, the water would be released as vapor and collected through pipes in the hole.

Others have proposed having big equipment dig for the water and drag ice chunks to processing plants on the moon. But the proposed process may require equipment that has less mass and be more reliable than the wheeled digging equipment needed dig up piles of regolith and haul it to processing plants that would extract the water. Click here. (1/31)

Florida Tech is Creating The Largest Database of Mars "Soil" with Citizen Science (Source: Florida Tech)
Florida Tech and the Aldrin Space Institute are building the largest database of Mars "soil" also known as regolith. By collecting samples from desert environments, we are able to simulate what growing plants on Mars might require. Click here. (1/31)

NASA Hitches Ride on Commercial Satellite for UCF-Led Atmosphere Study (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
The NASA GOLD mission launched into space on its way to study the area where Earth’s atmosphere intermingles with space. The Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk is an instrument attached to a commercial satellite that lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana last week. It’s the first time NASA has hitched a ride on a commercial satellite for one of its science missions. The region that is being studies is where lower atmosphere weather interacts with solar activity from above Earth’s magnetic field.

“The upper atmosphere is far more variable than previously imagined, but we don’t understand the interactions between all the factors involved,” said Richard Eastes, GOLD principal investigator and researcher at the Florida Space Institute at the University of Central Florida. “That’s where GOLD comes in: For the first time, the mission gives us the big picture of how different drivers meet and influence each other.” (1/26)

U.S. Defense Firms Want to Keep Tax Windfall (Source: Wall Street Journal)
U.S. defense executives urged lawmakers and federal officials to let them invest the windfall from new tax rules in weapons research rather than on lower prices for the Pentagon. Lockheed Martin Corp. on Monday said it expects its tax rate to fall more than a third, to below 18%, and pledged to boost investment in new weapons and training. The world’s largest defense company by revenue also said it would make a $5 billion payment to its pension fund. (1/29)

Canadian Foresight Allowed Software Patch to Prevent Canadarm Spacewalk (Source: SpaceQ)
When the Canadarm2 was built engineers made sure that it could get software updates even though it designed almost 20 years ago using what we would now consider outdated hardware. It turns out that foresight was well thought out. This past week when confronted with a communication problem between components on the Canadarm2, in this case, the newly installed Latching End Effector (LEE), or robotic hand, and the Canadarm2’s communication system, engineers worked overtime to come up a solution. (1/30)

Florida Bill Would Boost Apprenticeship Programs for Aerospace Workforce Development (Source: SPACErePORT)
In response to industry concerns about the availability of qualified workers to fill the growing number of unfilled positions in the state's aerospace industry, State Rep. Robert Asencio is sponsoring HB-711 during the ongoing Legislative Session in Tallahassee. The bill focuses on establishing a legal and policy framework for apprenticeship programs that can be supported by academia (high schools and colleges) and industry. A task force would be created to identify international best practices and propose changes to state law in 2019 that keep Florida at the forefront of aerospace industry and workforce innovation. The bill is among those issues that may be actively supported by the industry during Space Day at the State Capitol on Feb. 14. (1/31)

Competition Ramping Up For Airline Satellite Connectivity (Source: Aviation Week)
The coming year will see a number of key developments in the satellite-based inflight connectivity sector, as competing providers bring new satellites online and add high-throughput satellite (HTS) capacity to their existing networks in a bid to position themselves as offering the fastest, highest-capacity service to airlines.

Developments in 2018 will include the entry into service of ViaSat’s second Ka-band satellite, ViaSat-2, the continued addition of HTS capacity to support Panasonic Avionics’ and Gogo’s Ku-band networks and the launch of Thales Group’s new, dedicated Ka-band offering over the Americas.

Thales is working with SES and Hughes Network Systems to bring to market a new inflight connectivity service to airlines based in North America. It will operate under the FlytLIVE brand. The service will initially use the two satellite companies’ existing networks but will eventually switch to the SES-17 satellite when it becomes operational in late 2020 or early 2021. (1/26)

Ariane 5 Narrowly Avoided Disaster in First Launch of 2018 (Source: Via Satellite)
An Ariane 5 rocket managed to orbit two communications satellites and a NASA scientific payload on Jan. 25, despite an anomaly that threatened to tarnish Arianespace’s pristine launch record. Late Thursday evening, Arianespace was unable to acquire the rocket’s telemetry after it slipped under the horizon, but Arianespace Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Stephane Israel later confirmed that SES and YahSat have both made contact with their respective satellites.

According to an Arianespace statement issued this morning, initial investigations attributed the telemetry loss to a trajectory deviation. While the mission was ultimately declared a success, the launch provider has set up an independent inquiry commission together with the European Space Agency (ESA). Upcoming launches at the Guiana Space Center will proceed as scheduled, Arianespace stated. (1/30)

UF Research: Putting Down Roots in Space (Source: NASA)
Understanding how spaceflight affects plants is critical for future efforts to cultivate plants during spaceflight. Optimizing plant growth, both on Earth and in space is critical because plants may serve as a food source for long term missions, or even be used to supplement life support missions. The Characterizing Arabidopsis Root Attractions (CARA) investigation sought to get to the root of this issue by examining the genetic basis of plant responses, and dug up intriguing possibilities for further studies.  

“We did expect that genetics would play a role in adaptation to spaceflight,” CARA co-investigator Robert Ferl of the University of Florida said. “What we did not expect was that certain genes might play dramatic roles. Click here. (1/30) 

Plasma Technology Could Help Produce Sustainable Oxygen Supply for Human Colonies on Mars (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
A future human colony on Mars will need a sustainable oxygen supply for its operations in the harsh Martian environment. A new research conducted by a team of Portuguese-French scientists suggests that plasma technology could be the key to producing the necessary amount of oxygen for crew activities on the Red Planet. This is due to the fact that the Red Planet, with its primarily carbon dioxide atmosphere, has excellent conditions for creating oxygen through a process known as decomposition. (1/30)

Space Secrets are Hard to Keep (Source: Space News)
The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is worried it's too hard to keep space secrets. Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Air Force Gen. Paul Selva appeared concerned about the ability of hobbyists to accurately track satellites in orbit without the need for "elegant" sensors. "The basic existence of that data gives potential competitors knowledge of the space enterprise that all they have to do is add more high-fidelity sensors to it and they get a really good picture of what's up there," he said. "We have to be very disciplined about what we say regarding space." (1/30)

CASIS Finds Growing Interest in ISS Utilization Amid Questions About Lab's Future (Source: Space News)
The organizations that operates  the national laboratory portion of the ISS is focused on near-term utilization, and not the station's long-term future. At a meeting of the board of directors of the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) Tuesday, executives and board members promoted results that indicate growing interest from commercial and other users in the station's facilities. Those comments come after a report by the NASA Office of Inspector General earlier this month that found that CASIS was not meeting most of its performance expectations in its agreement with NASA. The meeting said little about plans, which could be announced with the release of the new NASA budget proposal next month, to end funding of the ISS in the mid-2020s. (1/30)

China's Linkspace Advances Reusable Rocket Plans with Tethered Test (Source: GB Times)
A Chinese startup has taken a step towards a reusable launch vehicle with a successful launch and landing test. Linkspace flew a small vehicle in a tethered flight test earlier this month, taking off and landing vertically under rocket power, traveling between two pads just a few meters apart. The test was similar to those performed in the past by American startups like Masten Space Systems and the former Armadillo Aerospace. Linkspace is developing NewLine-1, a small launch vehicle with a reusable first stage, whose first launch is planned for 2020. (1/30)

New Mexico Spaceport Confidentiality Bill Moves Forward (Source: Albuquerque Journal)
A bill to exempt Spaceport America documents from open-records laws took a step forward Tuesday in the New Mexico legislature. A committee of the New Mexico Senate voted to advance the bill, which would exempt many records related to the commercial spaceport and its customers from public inspection. Proponents of the spaceport argue that secrecy is needed to protect confidential business documents and keep the state competitive. The bill now goes to another committee for consideration before being taken up by the full senate. (1/30)

Rockets Galore (Source: Orlando Business Journal)
Space Florida says this year's biggest aerospace accomplishment hopefully will be showing significant improvement in the state's ability to effectively train the aerospace workforce. Finding the right skilled talent to fill all the new positions that are being created on the Space Coast is a challenge. It's a national problem and a good one to have, but it's still a problem. (1/19)