April 21, 2018

Rise of the Megaconstellations Breathes Life Into Active Debris Removal Schemes (Source: Space News)
For years, efforts to capture space debris and remove it from orbit faced a conundrum: Who would pay for the service? Little government funding is available. Insurers are not stepping up. And individual satellite operators showed little interest because while the problem is growing, the threat to any single spacecraft remains incredibly small.

Finally, entrepreneurs and space policy experts think they have an answer. The megaconstellations promising global broadband service are heightening concern about orbital debris and creating demand for space-based trash collection. Because their collision risk is higher, the new constellations look like a promising market for satellite removal.

A constellation’s defunct spacecraft could threaten its working satellites traveling in the same orbit. “The constellation operators don’t want their dead satellites hitting their active satellites,” said Hitchens, former director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva. Nor do constellation operators want to pollute low Earth orbit. Click here. (4/18)

New 'Space Fence' Will Spot Space Junk, Small Sats, and Orbital Weapons (Source: Popular Mechanics)
There’s a well-deserved complaint that military technology takes so long to develop that it’s obsolete by the time it’s fielded. But that gripe can't be made against the U.S. Air Force’s “Space Fence,” a new radar system being built to monitor action in Earth’s orbit.

Later this year the Air Fore is scheduled to take possession of a powerful, electronically steered, phased array radar located on the remote Kwajalein atoll in the Pacific. Manufacturer Lockheed Martin says the facility is the solution to some pressing issues in civil and military spaceflight, including the proliferation of space junk, militarization in orbit, and the shrinking size of satellites.

This Space Fence would spot an object in orbit, plot its projected orbit, and predict a future collision. The system can also detect changes to what it expects to be routine operations and then alert personnel. With that warning, a satellite could maneuver space junk and detect impacts that could a cascade of collisions. (4/16)

Train Like a Martian (Source: Mars Generation)
Sign up now and join us for our third annual #TrainLikeAMartian event! We expect that the event will be a blast! Anyone can join including individuals, students, teachers, schools, sports teams, community organizations and anyone who wants to get involved. For educator resources to plan for event please click here. (4/19)

Bankrupt Spaceflight Company's Assets to Help Young Minds Soar (Source: Space.com)
Before it went bankrupt last year, XCOR Aerospace had ambitious plans to fly tourists to space with the company's fully reusable Lynx suborbital vehicle. But now, the company's assets will be used for a more down-to-Earth purpose: giving high school and college students hands-on experience with rockets and space technology.

A nonprofit organization called Build A Plane purchased XCOR's assets at auction for just under $1.1 million, according to court records. The amount was slightly above the $1 million bid by Space Florida, an agency that supports space in the Sunshine State and that was also one of XCOR's largest creditors. Build A Plane plans to use the assets for a new school the organization wants to build in Lancaster, California, said the nonprofit's founder, Lyn Freeman. (4/20)

Lockheed Martin Working to Lower Orion Costs (Source: Space News)
As Lockheed Martin prepares to complete assembly of the Orion spacecraft flying on the first Space Launch System mission, the company says it’s making progress in lowering the costs of the future spacecraft, including through reuse. Mike Hawes at Lockheed Martin Space Systems said the Orion crew capsule for the Exploration Mission (EM) 1 flight should be ready in June to be combined with the European-built service module, expected to arrive in the U.S. a little later in the summer.

The service module has been one of the pacing items in the schedule for the overall mission, along with the SLS core stage. “This is their first-time build, so they have had supplier challenges. They have had some assembly challenges,” he said of ESA and the service module prime contractor, Airbus.

Elements of the Orion spacecraft that will fly on EM-2, scheduled for launch in the early 2002s, are also in production, he said, including the pressure vessel and heat shield. The company is using experience from the EM-1 Orion, as well as the earlier Exploration Flight Test (EFT) 1 Orion mission in 2014, to find ways to lower costs for EM-2 and beyond. (4/20)

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. Luxembourg sees an opportunity to play host to entrepreneurs and start-ups as the worldwide hub of the space mining industry. Private space exploration is a brand new market with trillions of dollars in potential; the FAA expects space tourism to be a $1 billion sector over the next several years.

It started in 2016 when Luxembourg established the Space Resources initiative and earmarked $223 million of its national space budget to provide early-stage funding and grants to companies working toward space mining. In the event more money is needed, Luxembourg "will be able to provide that money," Schneider said at a press conference announcing the funding in June 2016.

Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources are already working closely with Luxembourg's government. Stibrany said the government contributed an undisclosed amount of R&D funding to Deep Space Industries. And in November 2016, Planetary Resources and Luxembourg struck a deal: $28 million in investment from the Grand Duchy in exchange for an undisclosed equity stake in the company. (4/19)

Indian Space Agency Claims to Have Saved $120 Million on Second Lunar Mission (Source: Space Daily)
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has claimed that it has saved $120 million in public money in the upcoming moon mission "Chandrayaan-2," which is expected to be launched in October-November this year. "The total cost of the mission is about INR 800 crore ($124 million), which includes INR 200 crore ($31 million) as the cost of launching and INR 600 crore ($93 million) for the satellite.

"This cost is almost half of $232 million, which would have been otherwise incurred if the same mission had to be launched from a foreign launching site," said K. Sivan, the ISRO chairman. The ISRO had planned the launch of the mission for April but, in the review, it was decided that more tests were needed to be done before the launch. "This will be the first-of-its-kind moon mission to this extent," Sivan emphasized. (4/20)

Moon Colonization: Why Do We Want It and What Technologies Do We Have? (Source: Space Daily)
Scientists are convinced that humankind is capable of turning the Moon into a space outpost: people have cosmodromes, heavy carrier rockets, space modules and lunar rovers. Sputnik reveals what is behind the human desire to conquer space and what challenges colonizers may face on the way.

The idea of the Moon's colonization was quite popular during the Cold War era. But in the mid-1970s such projects by the USSR and the US were suspended as travel to the satellite proved very expensive and didn't pursue any concrete goal. But half a century later, the dreams of settling on the Moon have taken over mankind once again. Click here. (4/20)

Dream Chaser Cargo Spaceplane Assembly Poised To Begin (Source: Aviation Week)
Sierra Nevada expects to receive aeroshell panels next month for the first orbital Dream Chaser, marking a key milestone in the run-up to the start of spaceplane assembly at the company’s Louisville, Colorado, facility. The panels, along with the vehicle’s composite primary structure, are produced by Lockheed Martin and form the bulk of the vehicle’s aerodynamic surfaces.

The structural elements are coming together as Sierra Nevada continues through critical design review (CDR), the final phases of which are expected to be completed in July. The Dream Chaser is under development to deliver cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) under NASA’s 2016 Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS2) contract. It is on schedule for first launch in the fourth quarter of 2020 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5. (4/19)