February 4, 2018

The Funniest, Most Accessible Book on Rocket Science is Being Reissued (Source: Ars Technica)
It's rare that a book about as high-minded and serious a topic as rocket science manages to be both highly informative and laugh-out-loud funny. But if there's a better way to describe John Clark's Ignition!, I've yet to discover it. A cult classic among chemists, many of the rest of us discovered the book via one of Derek Lowe's tales of hilariously scary chemicals.

It's where I learned words like hypergolic, which describes how eager one chemical is to spontaneously ignite, and realized that some of these mid-century scientists must have had as much right stuff as any test pilot. But there was hitch—Ignition! was out of print, so reading it involved an interlibrary loan (or a dodgy PDF, which of course I can't condone).

But now, Rutgers University Press has decided to dust it off and reissue it. From May it will finally be possible to put a physical copy on one's bookshelf. And honestly, if you've got any interest in chemistry—particularly the branch of it involving violent, energetic, and occasionally explosive reactions—it's a book you need to read. (2/4)

Copenhagen Suborbitals Plans Nexø II Launch (Source: Copenhagen Suborbitals)
The Nexø II rocket will be the most advanced rocket build and launched by CS so far. The Nexø rocket class is a technology demonstrator in advance of building the significantly bigger Spica rocket that will take our astronaut to space. Thus, Nexø is an important part of the Spica roadmap and the technology developed and used in the Nexø class will be used in the Spica rocket. Click here. (2/4)

Copenhagen Suborbitals Distances From Madsen (Source: Copenhagen Suborbitals)
Peter Madsen has had no connection to Copenhagen Suborbitals since June 2014. Prior to that, he had been in disagreement with the other members of the group for years, including the board. This culminated in June 2014, and created a deep rift between Peter Madsen and the rest of us. In June 2014, Peter Madsen chose to leave Copenhagen Suborbitals with immediate effect. Since then, Peter Madsen has had no connection with or relation to us. Editor's Note: Madsen has admitted to a gruesome crime aboard his home-made submarine in August 2017. (2/4)

Space - An Economic Engine for Florida (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
Florida has been at the leading edge of our Nation’s space program, dating back to 1950 when Cape Canaveral became the location from which America’s space flights began with the launch of a Bumper 2 rocket. History was also written when Alan Shepard became the first American in space as his Freedom 7 spacecraft launched from Florida in 1961.

Proudly, Florida continues to be the primary center of space launches for the United States. Florida benefits from this distinction as aerospace businesses bring high-tech, high-wage jobs to the state and we must continue to innovative in order to maintain this competitive edge.

Florida is expecting to launch more than 30 commercial, DOD and NASA payloads in 2018. As Floridians, we are proud to be at the forefront of the nation’s space launch activity. Our future looks bright as NASA’s Space Launch System starts launching in 2019. Commercial activity – from SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Orbital ATK, Blue Origin and others – will also contribute to Florida’s sustained preeminence in launch operations. (2/4)

Thousands Expected to Descend on Space Coast for SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch (Source: Florida Today)
Thousands are expected to descend on the Space Coast for Tuesday's inaugural SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch, crowding spots from beaches to arched causeways to witness the world's most powerful rocket lift off from Kennedy Space Center. "It will be a historic event, so we expect the community to fill up in terms of hotel rooms and any kind of lodging," said Eric Garvey, the Space Coast Office of Tourism's executive director.

He estimates up to 100,000 people could visit for the three-core rocket's launch, but combining that with area residents could boost the number to half a million. "We already have a lot of seasonal guests in town," Garvey said, noting that even last Wednesday's Falcon 9 launch from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport generated sizeable crowds. (3/4)

Virgin Galactic Ramps Up NM Operations as Spaceport Optimism Increases (Source: NMPolitics.net)
While the N.M. Legislature works through proposals intended to attract additional customers to Spaceport America with what appears to be a greater optimism than in past years, the facility’s existing anchor tenant, Virgin Galactic, continues to ramp up operations in southern New Mexico.

Virgin Galactic has increased its staffing in Las Cruces to 32 full-time employees, up from 21 in August. Many of those employees are from New Mexico or the border region, said Jonathan Firth, the company’s executive vice president for spaceport and program development. The company’s Las Cruces office is preparing to move at least 85 additional employees from Mojave, Calif. to Las Cruces once testing of its space vehicle is complete in California. (2/2)

“Delivery Of The Decade” For Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (Source: Big Island Video News)
Astronomers are calling it “the most important delivery of the decade” at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. On January 26, during a small window between the snow flurries atop Mauna Kea, the observatory’s newest and most advanced instrument arrived. SPIRou (SpectroPolarimètre Infra-Rouge) belongs to the next generation of astronomy instruments with the goal to find Earth- like planets in the habitable zones of nearby red-dwarf stars. It is capable of detecting the tiny wiggle in a star, which indicates the presence of planets. (1/28)

Boeing Gets $6.6 Billion From Pentagon to Expand Missile Defense (Source: Bloomberg)
Boeing Co. has received a $6.56 billion contract to continue managing the U.S. missile defense system intended to stop North Korean or Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Defense Department said. The sole-source contract announced Wednesday extends Boeing’s management role for six more years, through 2023, and brings its total contract to $12.6 billion. It includes overseeing the addition of 20 ground-based interceptors to the 44 already stationed in California and Alaska.

Boeing oversees development and support of the network of interceptors, sensors and communications links, sharing funding with subcontractors: Orbital ATK Inc. builds the rocket booster, Raytheon Co. makes the hit-to-kill warhead, Northrop Grumman Corp. provides the battle management system and Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc. makes the warhead’s in-flight guidance system. (2/1)

US Losing Its Advantage in Race for Hypersonic Technology (Source: Military.com)
Did the U.S. military miss its window of opportunity to beat out adversaries in hypersonics development? That depends on what the U.S. chooses to build even as Russia and China are rapidly advancing the technology, according to the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We have lost our technical advantage in hypersonics; we haven't lost the hypersonics fight," Air Force Gen. Paul Selva told reporters Tuesday during a roundtable discussion in Washington, D.C. (1/31)

Boeing's Hypersonic Valkyrie Will Likely Struggle To Catch Up With Lockheed's SR-72 (Source: The Drive)
Boeing surprised the aerospace world with the unveiling of their own notional hypersonic aircraft design that intends to compete with Lockheed's shadowy hypersonic demonstrator aircraft and its upscaled "SR-72" platform that could follow. But this news comes as more evidence has emerged supporting long held claims that Lockheed's Skunk Works is much farther along in the development process of their hypersonic aircraft than they try to let on. (2/2)

NASA Dinged for NSBRI Spending (Source: NASA Watch)
We found that NSBRI delivered research products that helped NASA make progress toward the goal of mitigating human health and performance risks associated with space travel. However, while most NSBRI charges complied with applicable laws and the award's terms, NASA improperly permitted NSBRI to use $7.8 million of research funds to renovate and pay rent for laboratory space in a private building during the final 7 years of its agreement. ... In our judgment, NASA improperly approved NSBRI's request to use cooperative agreement funds to renovate the NSBRI work space. (2/1)

What If GPS Stood for “Galactic Positioning System”? (Source: IEEE Spectrum)
Researchers with NASA’s Neutron-star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) mission described something remarkable: the first successful demonstration of a system to use pulsars for navigation in space. You first need to know a little something about puslars. Pulsars appear to be neutron stars with strong magnetic fields. The poles of the magnetic field do not coincide with the star’s rotation axis, so they rotate with the star, channeling electromagnetic energy in a direction that sweeps rapidly across the sky like the beam from a lighthouse.

When the Earth is momentarily illuminated with some of that energy, a pulse is received by the radio astronomer’s antenna. And those pulses repeat at regular intervals, controlled by the rate of spin of the neutron star. In 1974, George S. Downs working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory proposed the possibility of using radio pulsars for spacecraft navigation. Then in 1993, millisecond x-ray pulsars were discovered. These potential sources of navigation signals offered both “stable clocks” and the ability to receive their signals with compact x-ray antennas rather than large radio dishes.

In 2016 China launched its X-Ray Pulsar Navigation-1 satellite, intending to demonstrate the use x-ray pulsars for navigation. But the Chinese satellite lacked sufficient sensitivity. NASA then launched the NICER x-ray telescope and mounted a successful demonstration that x-ray pulsars could be used for navigation. That experiment, which has its own acronym, SEXTANT (for Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology). “Our navigation goal was 10 kilometers,” says Mitchell. “We were able to do quite a bit better in less than 8 hours.” (2/1)

Astrophysicists Discover Planets in Other Galaxies Using Microlensing (Source: Phys.org)
A University of Oklahoma astrophysics team has discovered for the first time a population of planets beyond the Milky Way galaxy. Using microlensing—an astronomical phenomenon and the only known method capable of discovering planets at truly great distances from the Earth among other detection techniques—OU researchers were able to detect objects in extragalactic galaxies that range from the mass of the Moon to the mass of Jupiter. (2/2)

In-Orbit Servicing Market Opportunity Exceeds $3 Billion (Source: NSR)
NSR’s industry-first In-Orbit Servicing Markets (IoSM) report, released today, finds the nascent in-orbit servicing market poised for growth, and forecasts a total market of over $3B in the next 10 years. Life extension services drive most of this revenue, as many in-orbit service providers plan to enter the market in the next five years servicing commercial and government customers with additional solutions to fleet management.

“In-orbit servicing is an entirely new market, ripe for growth, providing the satellite industry with an attractive value proposition in an environment of falling capacity prices, rapid technology changes, and uncertainty in CAPEX,” noted Carolyn Belle, NSR Senior Analyst and report co-author. Affordability has long been a major barrier for IoS players, but as the technology advances, the business case evolves.

Until a few initial in-orbit demonstrations prove the technology works as a system, there will be a reasonable level of apprehension amongst stakeholders. But the potential of In-Orbit Servicing is vast and varied: from life extension, de-orbiting, and salvage operations that lead early revenue opportunities, to satellite repair and alteration on the mid-term roadmap, while diverse emerging applications support is a long-term objective. (1/30)

NASA's Safety Bureaucracy Tips the Scales Against Private Space (Source: American Greatness)
In the past two weeks, two separate reports have come out suggesting that the commercial manned capsules SpaceX and Boeing are building to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station for NASA have serious safety issues that could cause significant delays before either company can begin operations. Both reports have since been used both by politicians and industry experts to attack these commercial ventures. SpaceX, in particular, has come into sharp focus as the subject of this criticism.

To all this I say, hogwash! What both reports actually demonstrate is that the bureaucrats in Washington have very little interest in safety, but instead are more focused on putting their thumbs on the scale in order specifically to harm these private efforts—especially SpaceX’s.
One report in particular, by NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), was especially hostile to these private efforts, even as it remained completely unconcerned about similar but far worse safety issues that exist with NASA’s government-built and competing SLS and Orion programs. Both reports also illustrated starkly the complete lack of understanding that the Washington community has for the nature of exploration, the very task that NASA was founded to spearhead. (1/31)

Here's How the SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket Stacks Up to its Competition (Source: Mashable)
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy will be one of the first of a new generation of powerful rockets designed to bring payloads deep into space. Plenty of companies are interested in developing or have already developed their own heavy-lift rockets, in the hopes that industry players and nations will want to buy rides to orbit or beyond aboard their launchers.

The rocket is designed to bring 140,660 pounds of mass to low-Earth orbit (LEO) and 58,860 pounds to Geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). For comparison, United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy — the most powerful rocket launching now — can bring 62,540 pounds to LEO and 30,440 pounds to GTO. The Saturn V — the rocket that brought humans to the moon for the first time — had the ability to launch about 308,000 pounds of mass to LEO. (2/2)

Russian ISS Spacewalk Aims to Improve Communications (Source: CBS News)
Two veteran cosmonauts floated outside the International Space Station Friday to remove an electronics box and install a more powerful replacement as part of an upgrade to improve communications with the Russian segment of the lab complex. Station commander Alexander Misurkin and crewmate Anton Shkaplerov opened the hatch of the Pirs docking and airlock module at 10:35 a.m. EST to officially kick off a planned six-and-a-half hour excursion near the aft end of the Russian Zvezda module.

The spacewalk came just 10 days after two NASA spacewalkers, Mark Vande Hei and Scott Tingle, carried out the year's first station EVA, installing a new grapple mechanism on one end of the lab's robot arm. A second spacewalk to complete unfinished arm-related work is planned later this month. The goal of Friday's excursion was to remove a 60-pound radio receiver used with the Russian Lira communications system's OHA high-gain antenna. (2/2)

Trump Administration Continues Support of Outer Space Norms of Behavior (Source: Space News)
A former Obama administration official is optimistic that the Trump administration will continue to pursue the development of non-binding international agreements to promote norms of behavior in outer space.

In a Feb. 1 speech at a U.S.-Japan space policy forum here, Frank Rose, chief of government relations at the Aerospace Corporation and a former assistant secretary of state and deputy assistant secretary for space and defense policy, said he was encouraged by statements by administration officials calling for continued development of such agreements on issues like orbital debris and proximity operations. (2/2)

Global Eagle Submits Overdue SEC Filings, Details $223 Million Loss (Source: Space News)
Satellite connectivity and content provider Global Eagle Entertainment on Jan. 31 handed in the last of its late financial documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and expects the Nasdaq stock exchange will soon halt its delisting process.

The Los Angeles-based company had received several warnings since March that it was out of compliance with Nasdaq criteria. Global Eagle blamed its tardiness in delivering to the SEC a 2016 annual report and quarterly reports for the first nine months of 2017 on difficulty integrating recent mergers, most notably the $550 million purchase of EMC in May 2016. (2/2)

Space Center Houston Hosts More Than 500 Teachers At Conference (Source: Houston Public Media)
Space Center Houston is hosting more than 500 teachers from all over the world this week at the 24th edition of its Space Exploration Educators Conference, which started on Wednesday and will conclude on Saturday, February 3rd. On Thursday, several of them participated in a video conference with American astronaut Joseph Acaba, who is currently in the International Space Station. (2/1)

Commercial Space Race Lifts Off in China (Source: ECNS)
With more private firms and investors entering the commercial aerospace industry in China over the past three years, the sector, which is currently focused on satellites and rockets, is set to realize enormous value in the near future, industry analysts told the Global Times on Wednesday.

In 2014, the State Council, China's cabinet, formally announced it would allow private companies to research, manufacture and launch as well as operate commercial satellites, which prompted a batch of Chinese entrepreneurs to excitedly pitch some ideas in the industry. One of those included Yang Feng, CEO of satellite-maker Spacety, which is based in Changsha, capital of Central China's Hunan Province. (2/2)

Japan Launches Mini-Rocket with Microsatellite (Source: Xinhua)
Japan launched a mini-rocket on Saturday which successfully put a microsatellite into orbit. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said that the No. 5 vehicle of the SS-520 series lifted off from the Uchinoura Space Center in Kagoshima prefecture, southwestern Japan, Saturday afternoon. The rocket, measuring 10 meters in length, 50 centimeters in diameter and some 2.6 tons in weight, was the smallest satellite-carrying rocket in the world, according to the JAXA.

The rocket successfully sent a microsatellite weighing about 3 kilograms into its intended orbit. The microsatellite, developed by the University of Tokyo, is aimed to collect imagery of the Earth's surface. (2/3)

Japanese Companies Fire Up Small-Rocket Missions (Source: Nikkei Asian Review)
A number of Japanese companies have been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to get commercial launches of small rockets off the ground. But they have not given up. Canon Electronics and Interstellar Technologies both failed in their first attempt to launch a small rocket.

Having learned from the missteps, they are set to try again soon. If they succeed before the full enactment in November of a law governing the commercial use of space in Japan, their chances of turning their launch businesses into moneymakers will improve significantly. Canon Electronics has set up a company, together with IHI Aerospace, Shimizu and Development Bank of Japan, and is trying to create a commercially viable rocket launch business. (2/2)

Florida Space Day Planned on Feb. 14 in Tallahassee (Source: SPACErePORT)
The aerospace industry represents billions of dollars in annual economic impact and employs thousands of residents in the state’s 67 counties. On February 14, 2018, Florida’s space industry representatives will visit Tallahassee to participate in Florida Space Day. Private companies, local, state and federal agencies, and academic institutions will participate in this unique, annual event, meant to educate our state leaders on the challenges and opportunities Florida has during this dynamic time in the space program. (2/3)

We Can Use Poop to Make Space food, Penn State Study Says (Source: USA Today)
Astronauts on a deep space mission to Mars may be able to grow their own food in space — using their feces. Researchers at Penn State University, in a NASA-funded study, found methane gas produced from liquid and solid waste can produce a high-protein food paste similar to Marmite and Vegemite spreads. It could be the solution to food during deep space missions to Mars, which could last months or years. Hauling food into space takes up room and adds to fuel costs. Growing hydroponic vegetables also requires energy and water. (2/2)

What We Know About the Secret Silent Barker Space Program (Source: C4ISRnet)
The Air Force plans to launch a new secret payload, known as Silent Barker, as a way to improve space situational awareness in 2022, according to a request for proposals released Jan. 31. Gen. John W. Raymond, the head of Air Force Space Command, said in written testimony in May 2017 that Silent Barker is a “collaborative acquisition program” between the NRO and the Air Force.

The program aims to improve satellite threat intelligence and space situational awareness. Raymond was testifying before the House Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subcommittee. Since then, in media roundtables, Air Force officials have declined to say much about the program. But in a formal solicitation released Jan. 31, the Air Force said it planned to launch the new capability in fiscal 2022. The DoD’s tight-lipped posture was underscored this week by Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“We have to be very disciplined about what we say regarding space,” Selva said, according to a report in SpaceNews. “There are things we should never talk about.” The Air Force plans to launch Silent Barker from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport in 2022. (2/1)