April 18, 2018

Israel’s StemRad Advances Astronaut Radiation Protection (Source: Aviation Week)
NASA and the Israeli Space Agency have signed an agreement that could lead to the testing of an astronaut radiation shielding vest provided by Tel Aviv startup StemRad Ltd. aboard Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1). EM-1 is to mark NASA’s first uncrewed test flight of the Space Launch System and deep-space Orion crew capsule, a nearly four-week voyage around the Moon and back planned to launch in late 2019-20.

Even before EM-1 circles the Moon with a radiation sensor-equipped astronaut test mannequin furnished by the German Aerospace Center on EM-1, StemRad’s AstroRad protective test garment is to launch to the International Space Station next year as a U.S. National Laboratory payload so that astronauts can evaluate the ergonomics of the protective clothing. An AstroRad weighs just more than 50 lb. (25 kg) and is fashioned from high-density, hydrogen-rich polymers. (4/17)

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross Lays Out Plan to Streamline Space Regulations (Source: GeekWire)
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross pledged to make outer space more business-friendly as part of his drive to turn his department into the “one-stop shop for space commerce.” He pointed to last month’s early cutoff of video from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch as an issue he’s addressing. “This is a perfect example of how commercial activity in space is outpacing government regulation,” he said. “No more.”

Ross said giving the space industry freer rein will become more important as commercial space ventures proliferate. Commercial space is on track to become a trillion-dollar industry “sooner than most people realize,” he said. One of the major shifts being implemented by the Trump administration is to put the Commerce Department in the lead position for space industry regulation, instead of the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation.

As part of that shift, Ross said a new director would soon be appointed for the Office of Space Commerce, “a position that had been left vacant for nearly 10 years.” “This individual will serve as an ambassador for U.S. space companies, and will advocate for our business opportunities around the world,” he said. The Commerce Department will also set up a “mission authorization framework” that will cover all commercial space activities and spectrum issues that are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. (4/18)

Why Isn't FCC on National Space Council? (Source: Space News)
One FCC commissioner believes her agency deserves a seat at the National Space Council table. Jessica Rosenworcel said at an FCC meeting Tuesday that she was surprised the agency, which regulates satellite communications, was not included among the agencies represented on the council. She noted that the FCC, as part of its licensing process, plays "an important role" in dealing with space debris and space traffic management. (4/18)

Blue Origin’s Reusable BE-4 Engine Will Be Able to Launch ‘100 Full Missions,’ CEO Says (Source: CNBC)
Blue Origin is headed quickly toward commercial operations as the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos nears the end of testing for several of its major projects. The company's BE-4 engine, the thunderous staple of Blue Origin's propulsion business, has demonstrated that it "works, and works well," CEO Bob Smith said. Blue Origin recently test fired a BE-4 engine for nearly two minutes at nearly three-quarters of full power. That test showed the durability of the engine, according to Smith, and how the design for reusability is paying off.

"That's why we've spent so much time in developing this, over seven years developing this engine, to make it reusable," Smith said. "This engine will actually perform 100 starts — 100 full missions that we'd actually be able to go do," Smith said. BE-4 is built for Blue Origin's coming New Glenn rocket. ULA is also considering the BE-4 to power the first stage of its Vulcan rocket. (4/17)

Lightfoot: Accept Risk Wisely, with ‘Eyes Wide Open’ (Source: GeekWire)
NASA should rethink its approach to the risks of spaceflight as it prepares for a new wave of exploration, the space agency’s outgoing chief says. “Protecting against risk and being safe are not the same thing,” Acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot said. “Risk is just simply a calculation of likelihood and consequence.”

Lightfoot said he’s worried that excessive risk aversion could hobble NASA as it prepares to build an outpost in lunar orbit and blaze a trail to Mars. “We need to require what I call an ‘Eyes Wide Open’ strategy,” he said. Such a strategy calls for leaders to have a full understanding of the risks and make the right decisions about them, while keeping the bigger picture in mind. (4/18)

Florida's Aerospace Footprint (Source: GCRL)
When it comes to aerospace and aviation, Florida is among the most active in the nation with clusters spread throughout the state, including the military intensive Panhandle. Besides MROs, Florida has long been a gateway to space, the air traffic hub for the western hemisphere, a center for flight training and home to aircraft and component manufacturing. Click here. (4/18)

How Trump’s NASA Nominee Used a Nonprofit He Ran to Benefit Himself (Source: Daily Beast)
Rep. James Bridenstine (R-OK) is a former Navy pilot with virtually no management experience in any large organization. But the Oklahoma Republican has been tapped by President Donald Trump to take over NASA, a federal agency with a budget of $18.5 billion, 18,000 federal workers, and over 60,000 contract employees. For this lack of technical experience—along with a skepticism of climate change and opposition to LGBT rights — Bridenstine has faced sharp criticism on the Hill. But another issue may soon end up complicating his nomination.

An investigation and review of public records by the Project On Government Oversight shows that, prior to his time in Congress, Bridenstine led a small non-profit organization into hefty financial losses. Some of the losses involved the use of the non-profit’s resources to benefit a company that Bridenstine simultaneously co-owned and in which he’d invested substantial sums of his own money.

Bridenstine has vehemently denied mismanaging the non-profit: the Tulsa Air and Space Museum. His stake in the separate company, the Rocket Racing League, has been well known. But the fact that he was using the Museum’s resources to benefit that company has not previously been covered by the press and now raises red flags for tax law experts. "This is a classic example of the use of a charity's assets for private benefit," said Marc Owens. Click here. (4/18)

Russia Appears to Have Surrendered to SpaceX in the Global Launch Market (Source: Ars Technica)
As recently as 2013, Russia controlled about half of the global commercial launch industry with its fleet of rockets, including the Proton boosters. But technical problems with the Proton, as well as competition from SpaceX and other players, has substantially eroded the Russian share. This year, it may only have about 10 percent of the commercial satellite launch market, compared to as much as 50 percent for SpaceX.

In the past, Russian space officials have talked tough about competing with SpaceX. For example, the Russian rocket corporation, Energia, has fast-tracked development of a new medium-class launch vehicle that it is calling Soyuz-5 to challenge SpaceX. On Tuesday, however, Russia's chief spaceflight official, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, made a remarkable comment about that country's competition with SpaceX.

"The share of launch vehicles is as small as 4 percent of the overall market of space services," Rogozin said in an interview with a Russian television station. "The 4 percent stake isn’t worth the effort to try to elbow Musk and China aside. Payloads manufacturing is where good money can be made." According to an independent analysis, the global launch market is worth about $5.5 billion annually. Losing its half-share of this market, therefore, has probably cost the Russians about $2 billion, which is a significant fraction of its non-military aerospace budget. (4/18)

A Time of Historic Change for National Security Space (Source: Space News)
The head of Air Force Space Command says this is a time of "historic change" for national security space. Speaking at the 34th Space Symposium Tuesday, Gen. Jay Raymond said he saw a "strategic alignment of leadership and resources" to support space superiority, citing backing from Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson. Those views were echoed by Gen. John Hyten, head of Strategic Command, who says he sees an "alignment of purpose, alignment of vision, alignment of leadership" supporting national security space. (4/18)

Restructuring Air Force Space Acquisition (Source: Space News)
The Air Force is revamping a key space organization so that it can acquire systems more rapidly. Lt. Gen. J.T. Thompson, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, said that restructuring of the organization, which oversees $6 billion in space programs, will start this year after a four-month review. The first test for "SMC 2.0" will be the development of a next-generation missile-warning satellite system to succeed SBIRS. Air Force Secretary Wilson said she wants to see SMC develop those new satellites in five years, versus the nine years needed to build two more SBIRS satellites. (4/18)

Commercial Capabilities for NRO Surveillance From Space (Source: Space News)
The National Reconnaissance Office is also looking to speed up its activities, including making use of commercial capabilities. NRO Director Betty Sapp said her agency will take over the EnhancedView commercial imagery contract from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency in September and hoped to find synergies with its own systems. NRO is also interested in commercial capabilities in small satellites and launch vehicles. Sapp said NRO is expanding its internal research and development work to help keep ahead of evolving threats. (4/18)

Commercial Imagery Satellites Capture Missile Strike Damage in Syria (Source: C4ISRnet)
Early Saturday morning, the United States and its European allies launched targeted air strikes against the Assad regime in Syria in retaliation for the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons. The satellite imagery companies DigitalGlobe and Planet captured high-resolution images of the strikes, providing the public with a valuable glimpse at the critical information offered by satellites orbiting the globe. Click here. (4/17)

EarthNow to Use OneWeb Satellite Bus for Real-Time Video From Orbit (Source: GeekWire)
The latest spinout from Intellectual Ventures, EarthNow, says it’s coming out of stealth mode with backing from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and other high-profile investors. EarthNow aims to operate a fleet of small satellites that will send continuous real-time video views of our planet from Earth orbit. The satellites will be modified versions of the spacecraft that Airbus is building for the OneWeb broadband internet satellite constellation.

In addition to Gates, EarthNow’s investors include Airbus, OneWeb founder and executive chairman Greg Wyler and Japan’s SoftBank Group, the startup said today in a news release. The amount of funding was undisclosed, but for what it’s worth, SoftBank made a billion-dollar investment in OneWeb back in 2016. The funding will be used primarily to mature the overall design for the Earth observation system, EarthNow said. (4/18)

NASA Mapping Hurricane Damage Across Florida Everglades (Source: Space Daily)
Last spring, NASA researchers flew over the Everglades and Puerto Rico to measure how mangroves and rainforests grow and evolve over time. Five months later, hurricanes Irma and Maria tore through those study areas - creating a unique opportunity to investigate the devastating effects of massive storms on these ecosystems, as well as their gradual recovery.

Flying the same paths over the Everglades three months after Hurricane Irma, the scientists' preliminary findings reveal that 60 percent of the mangrove forests analyzed were heavily or severely damaged. Next week, the team will return to Puerto Rico to conduct an airborne survey of the rainforest there - quantifying the damage and possibly identifying sites vulnerable to landslides.

The view of southeastern Florida, less than three months after Hurricane Irma hit, revealed swaths of leafless trees and broken branches, even uprooted mangrove trees. "It's staggering how much was lost. The question is, which areas will regrow and which areas won't," said Lola Fatoyinbo. "This is an opportunity - with all these data, we can really make a difference in understanding how hurricanes impact Florida's mangrove ecosystems." (4/17)

Doubt Surrounds the Only Experiment That Claims to See Dark-Matter Particles (Source: The Atlantic)
For 20 years, an experiment in Italy known as DAMA has detected an oscillating signal that could be coming from dark matter—the fog of invisible particles that ostensibly fill the cosmos, sculpting everything else with their gravity. One of the oldest and biggest experiments hunting for dark-matter particles, DAMA is alone in claiming to see them. It purports to pick up on rare interactions between the hypothesized particles and ordinary atoms.

But if these dalliances between the visible and invisible worlds really do produce DAMA’s data, several other experiments would probably also have detected dark matter by now. They have not. Rita Bernabei presented the results of an additional six years of measurements, showing DAMA’s signal looks as strong as ever. But researchers not involved with the experiment have since raised serious arguments against dark matter as the signal’s source.

In a paper posted on April 4, three physicists showed that a standard dark-matter wimp cannot produce the new dama signal. “The vanilla one that everybody loves—that one’s gone,” says Freese, who coauthored the new paper with her student Sebastian Baum and Chris Kelso of the University of North Florida. Click here. (4/18)

Boeing Bows Out of GPS 3 Competition (Source: Space News)
Boeing has decided to not challenge Lockheed Martin for the next production lot of up to 22 GPS 3 satellites. “We have not put in a proposal for GPS 3,” said Rico Attanasio, Boeing’s director of Department of Defense and civil navigation and communications programs. Bids were due this week. “As you can imagine, this was a very difficult decision for us,” Attanasio said. (4/18)

'Africa’s Satellite’ Avoided Millions Using A Very African Tax Scheme (Source: ICIJ)
The New Dawn Satellite was proudly African – partly funded by local investors and promoted as a way for African schoolchildren, nurses, civil servants and businesses to access world-class internet and mobile phone networks. But if its purpose was to promote African development, its tax strategy did exactly the opposite. The companies behind the New Dawn Satellite channeled millions of dollars in payments from African companies and governments through offshore companies in Mauritius, one of the continent’s premier tax havens.

In so doing, the companies achieved a Mauritian double-whammy, using one kind of offshore company to avoid local taxes and another to pay as little as possible on bills paid from overseas using treaties signed between Mauritius and its African neighbors. The primary money-making company estimated that it would pay $22,500 in taxes on $75 million in revenue – just 0.03 percent. In a 17-year lifespan, the company predicted, it would earn $936 million yet never pay taxes above $300,000.

That’s according to a PowerPoint presentation from the Paradise Papers, offshore documents that include nearly seven million files from the law firm Appleby and its clients, including the satellite’s co-owner, Intelsat. The Mauritius arrangement lasted until 2013 when Intelsat closed the companies down after unexpectedly low financial returns. The company’s tax return that year reflects that it paid 0.09 percent tax on $31.6 million. (2/20)

Rocket-Control Glitch Delays Launch of NASA's Planet-Hunting Satellite (Source: Voice of America)
An 11th-hour technical glitch prompted SpaceX to postpone its planned launch on Monday of a new NASA space telescope designed to detect worlds beyond our solar system, delaying for at least 48 hours a quest to expand astronomers' known inventory of so-called exoplanets. SpaceX halted the countdown a little more than two hours before its Falcon 9 rocket had been scheduled to carry the Transit Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. (4/16)

Spaceplane Which Will Take Tourists Into Orbit at Five Times Speed of Sound Could Fly by 2025 (Source: Yahoo)
A spaceplane which could blast tourists directly from a runway into orbit at five times the speed of sound could be in the air by 2025 after new investment. The Skylon uses a revolutionary ‘air breathing’ engine which can blast passengers – or cargo – into space in just 15 minutes.

Instead of huge multi-stage rockets, a relatively light plane will take off from a conventional runway and reach space in a single journey without a pilot. The engine could also make possible passenger flights from London to Australia in just over four hours – and drive airliners with twice the speed of Concorde. (4/13)

Luxembourg Leads the Trillion-Dollar Race to Become the Silicon Valley of Asteroid Mining (Source: CNBC)
In the 1980s the tiny European nation of Luxembourg arose out of almost nowhere to become a leader in the satellite communications industry. Now it's looking to the skies again, as it hopes to be the global leader in the nascent race to mine resources in outer space. The prospect of asteroid mining, long the stuff of science fiction, is now being likened to a 21st-century gold rush.

There's a quest for resources among the stars, and asteroids are the prime targets, either for the metals they contain that could influence Earth-bound commodity markets, or for the water inside them that can be distilled into rocket fuel for future missions into deep space. That's where Luxembourg sees an opportunity to play host to entrepreneurs and start-ups with their sights on space, becoming the worldwide hub of the space mining industry in the process. Private space exploration is a brand new market with trillions of dollars in potential. (4/16)

A Vans x NASA Collaboration Is Rumored to Drop This Fall (Source: Sole Collector)
Over the years, Vans has become a frequent collaborator for everything from streetwear heavyweights like Supreme to classic cartoons like Spongebob Squarepants. Now, there is word that Vans will be dropping an extensive collection in collaboration with NASA to celebrate outer space.

Initial images of one of the pairs from the collab have surfaced online. This pair in particular is a Vans Old Skool that looks to resemble a space suit. White tumbled leather covers the upper, while a grey mesh is used on the tongue. Other details that allude to an astronaut's suit include a removable American flag patch on the heel, NASA branding on the lateral side panel, black tongue tabs that read "Shuttle" and "Mission," respectively, and a yellow foam lining. Click here. (4/17)

Technical Issue Delays Next Rocket Lab Electron Launch (Source: Space News)
Rocket Lab is postponing its next launch by a few weeks because of a technical problem, but the company says it is optimistic about its long-term prospects as demand for its small launch vehicle grows. The company, headquartered in the United States but with launch operations in New Zealand, announced April 17 that it was postponing a launch of its Electron rocket scheduled for April 19 because of a problem detected in a wet dress rehearsal a few days earlier. (4/17)

Space Law Workshop Exposes Rift in Legal Community Over National Authority to Sanction Space Mining (Source: Space News)
International space experts conducted a spirited debate April 16 on whether national or international laws should govern space mining at a Space Law Workshop. “The problem is there is currently not legal certainty about what is allowed and what is not allowed,” said Tanja Masson-Zwaan, former president of the International Institute of Space Law (IISL). “In the Outer Space Treaty, the question of whether you can own extracted resources is not clearly answered.”

The United States and Luxembourg have passed laws giving companies the rights to space resources they extract. Companies are relying on that legal authority to attract investment for their plans to mine the moon and asteroids. “If I’m a U.S. company, the only law I am obligated to follow is U.S. law,” said George Sowers, Colorado School of Mines professor and former United Launch Alliance vice president and chief scientist. Not all international space experts agree, however, that individual nations have the authority to grant companies permission to extract resources in orbit.

The Working Group “is also of the opinion that some kind of international governance would be the ideal solution,” said Masson-Zwaan. “The point is I don’t think we can wait because the companies are knocking on the door. That is the reason national laws came into being. And that led COPUOS to make it an agenda item.” (4/17)