April 29, 2018

NASA Emphasizes Commercial Lunar Lander Plans with Resource Prospector Cancellation (Source: Space News)
A lunar rover mission that struggled to win support at NASA, even after a change in space exploration policy, will no longer be pursued as the agency turns its attention to commercial lunar lander services. NASA confirmed it no longer planned to fly the Resource Prospector (RP) mission, a lunar rover intended to travel into permanently shadowed regions of the lunar poles and assess the ability to extract water ice, a potentially valuable resource for future human missions.

Instead, the agency said, selected but unspecified instruments from RP will instead be flown on future commercial lunar lander missions under a new Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. NASA released a draft request for proposals for that program April 27. (4/28)

From NASA to Alexandra - Scientist Returns to Lead Kiwi Space Research (Source: New Zealand Herald)
She grew up in Putaruru, population 3777, before the US called, followed by Nasa. Now, Delwyn Moller has come back to New Zealand where she has joined our tiny space industry. Her job involves studying data taken from the hundreds of satellites buzzing around Earth to determine how we can protect our agriculture, oceans and wildlife. She has also brought home her husband Brian Pollard, who designed the radar used to help land the Mars Curiosity rover. (4/29)

Pakistan Set to Launch Space Program to Keep an Eye on India (Source: Business Standard)
Pakistan is set to launch an ambitious space programme during the next fiscal year with an aim to keep an eye on the Indian side and reduce its dependence on foreign satellites for civil and military purposes, according to a media report.

Several projects will be initiated to develop self-reliance capacity and reduce dependence on foreign satellites, mainly the US and French satellites for civil and military communications. The budget of the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Organisation (Suparco) for the upcoming fiscal year 2018-19 is Rs 4.70 billion which includes Rs 2.55 billion for three new projects, Dawn News reported. (4/29)

Blue Origin Conducts Successful New Shepard Flight Test (Sources: Parabolic Arc, Blue Origin)
Blue Origin conducted another suborbital launch and landing of its New Shepard rocket at the company's west Texas desert launch site. This was the eighth launch of the New Shepard system, and the second one with paid experiments aboard. An instrumented crash test dummy named Mannequin Skywalker was aboard for the second time.

The 10-minute flight was apparently nominal. The booster landed successfully and the capsule touched down under three parachutes. The capsule reached an apogee of 351,000 ft (107 km or 66 miles), which was a new record for the company and the altitude they're targeting for operations. Blue Origin officials have said they plan additional flight tests this year. It is possible they will fly test subjects on the vehicle by the end of 2018. (4/29)

For the First Time, Astronomers Have a Reliable Map of the Heavens (Sources: The Economist, Science)
For something so enormous, astronomers know remarkably little about the Milky Way, Earth’s home galaxy. They know its rough dimensions—somewhere between 100,000 and 180,000 light-years. Now the European Space Agency (ESA) has taken a "galactic census" of the Milky Way, unveiling the second major data release from the Gaia mission. Along with some stars further afield, the data release provides the most detailed map of our home galaxy, which includes position, distance and motion data of nearly 1.7 billion stars, as well as the orbits and positions of thousands of asteroids. (4/27)

Astra Launch at Alaska's Kodiak Spaceport Complex Scheduled for May (Source: San Luis Obispo Tribune)
After being canceled just minutes before liftoff, a test rocket manufactured by California-based Astra Space Inc. is scheduled to launch from Kodiak next month. Officials at the Pacific Spaceport Complex did not give a cause for why an April 6 was scrubbed earlier this month, but confirmed the decision was not related to the spaceport facilities. The new launch is scheduled for May 10 or May 11, said Mike Morton, a director of the Alaska Aerospace Corp. (4/28)

Bezos: Blue Origin is His Most Important Work (Source: CNBC)
Jeff Bezos believes his space company, Blue Origin — rather than Amazon or the Washington Post — is representative of his "most important work," and imperative for humanity's long-term survival, the mogul said. Bezos said his vision for an interplanetary human society actually began as a child, and is culminating with the private space venture that's in a race with SpaceX to send humans into outer space. On Sunday, Blue Origin — which has an ambitious plan to send tourists beyond the Earth as early as this year — is expected to launch its first rocket of 2018. (4/28)

Lompoc Tourism Officials Hopeful that Mission to Mars Will Bring Economic Boost Back on Earth (Source: SYV News)
While this week’s historic Mission to Mars launch has already captivated the imagination of space and science enthusiasts around the globe, several agencies in and around the Lompoc Valley are hoping to capitalize on that enthusiasm and use it to bolster the local economy.

Thousands of visitors are expected to descend upon the region this week to witness the first leg of the NASA InSight lander’s six-month journey to Mars. The spacecraft will leave Earth aboard a United Launch Alliance-built Atlas V rocket that is scheduled to take off from Vandenberg Air Force Base’s Space Launch Complex-3E at 4:05 a.m. Saturday. If successful, the launch will kick off the first interplanetary mission to ever originate from the West Coast of the U.S. (4/28)

Life on Mars — So Close, But So Frightening (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Ever since “The Martian” — both the book and the movie — readers have been clamoring for more novels set on the Red Planet. Near-future science fiction has become a subgenre unto itself, as recent books explore our first tentative steps on a planet that isn’t our own, returning to the Moon before heading out further into the solar system.

There’s often an emphasis on science and engineering, ensuring these new novels are rooted in what might be possible, rather than the breadth of what we can imagine. They dig into the technical details like Andy Weir did so well in “The Martian,” celebrating ingenuity and creativity in the face of overwhelming odds. The three new books on this list all present themselves as thrillers featuring our first outposts on the Red Planet. Click here. (4/28)

Air Force Confident it Can Build Satellites Faster. A Bigger Concern: Software (Source: Space News)
Space modernization is “one of the cool parts of this job,” said Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics. Only a few weeks into the job, Roper is overseeing wholesale changes in how the Air Force buys space technology and manages programs. The battle cry is to move fast, especially with satellites. The Pentagon is trying to replace traditional constellations with new systems that are more resilient to jamming and cheaper so they can be deployed in large numbers.

Speaking broadly about what ails military procurement programs, Roper said he is generally satisfied with the performance of Air Force programs — but only on the hardware side. “Our big issue is software,” he said. “Almost every software intensive program is over budget and behind schedule.” (4/28)

These Balloon Rides Will Bbe (Nearly) Out of This World (Source: Houston Chronicle)
NanoRacks is bringing its space-bound cargo a little closer to home, a mere 12 miles off Earth’s surface in a high-altitude balloon. That cargo could one day in the not-so-distant future include humans as the company, known for getting experiments and satellites aboard the International Space Station, works to open “the space frontier for everybody, whether for research or personal experience,” CEO Jeff Manber said.

NanoRacks is partnering with a Hong Kong company, KuangChi Science, that is developing the helium-powered Traveler balloon. The craft differs from the familiar hot-air balloon with a more aerodynamic design, sturdier materials and a pressurized cabin to protect occupants from the perils of flying super high.

NanoRacks is working to help non-Chinese companies get their research, Earth-observation devices and people into near-space aboard the Traveler. The goal is to send up commercial payloads later this year and people as early as 2021. (4/25)

19-Year-Old Uses Machine Learning to Clear Space Debris (Source: Vox)
When 15-year-old space enthusiast Amber Yang first heard about the increasingly dangerous environment in lower earth orbit, she decided to take action. During her winter break at school, she spent time learning the ins and outs of astrophysics, coding, and space junk. Her final product was Seer Tracking, an AI-based orbital debris tracking program that she says may be the most accurate in the world. Now, 19 and a physics major at Stanford University, she’s continually developing and perfecting Seer in hopes of protecting the future of space exploration. (4/25)

Next Space Station Resupply Launch Scheduled May 20 at Wallops Island (Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch)
The next mission to resupply the International Space Station is scheduled to launch early on May 20 from a state-owned spaceport at Wallops Island on the Virginia Eastern Shore. The pre-dawn launch would be the sixth from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport by Orbital ATK, the Dulles-based aerospace company that is resupplying the space station under a multibillion-dollar contract with NASA. (4/25)

Droids Beat Astronomers in Predicting Survivability of Exoplanets (Source: RAS)
Artificial intelligence is giving scientists new hope for studying the habitability of planets, in a study from astronomers Chris Lam and David Kipping. Their work looks at so-called ‘Tatooines’, and uses machine learning techniques to calculate how likely such planets are to survive into stable orbits. Circumbinary planets are those planets that orbit two stars instead of just one, much like the fictional planet Tatooine in the Star Wars franchise. Tens of these planets have so far been discovered, but working out whether they may be habitable or not can be difficult.

Moving around two stars instead of just one can lead to large changes in a planet’s orbit, which mean that it is often either ejected from the system entirely, or it crashes violently into one of its twin stars. Traditional approaches to calculating which of these occurs for a given planet get significantly more complicated as soon as the extra star is thrown into the mix.

After creating ten million hypothetical Tatooines with different orbits, and simulating each one to test for stability, this huge training set was fed into the deep learning network. Within just a few hours, the network was able to out-perform the accuracy of the standard approach. More circumbinary planets look set to be discovered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, and Lam expects their work to help. (4/23)

ULA Head Teases Vulcan Engine Decision as Coming ‘Very Soon’ (Source: Defense News)
A decision on whether a Blue Origin or Aerojet Rocketdyne engine will power United Launch Alliance’s future Vulcan rocket will be coming “very soon,” ULA’s president and CEO said April 17. How soon? “Soon,” Tory Bruno, who has led ULA since 2014, told Defense News in an exclusive interview at Space Symposium.

Perhaps when Blue Origin wraps up hot fire tests of its BE-4 engine? Or when the U.S. Air Force selects three companies to continue developing launch systems this summer? Bruno takes out a notebook and flips it open. The word “SOON” is printed in all-caps across the page. “As you come closer in a competitive selection, you find that it’s harder to be as open,” he explained. (4/27)

SpaceX Cargo Launches May Soon Cost 50% More — But It's Still an Offer NASA Can't Refuse (Source: Business Insider)
Government auditors published a new report about NASA's commercial spaceflight program that focuses in part on SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk. The report says sending cargo to and from the International Space Station may soon cost NASA about 14% more per kilogram.

It also said that SpaceX will increase its price about 50%, due to new NASA requirements that forced the company to redesign its Dragon cargo spaceship. But SpaceX missions will still be cheaper than its competitors' and do things other companies can't. The report pins most of the blame on NASA for the cost increase. (4/28)

NASA Set to Launch New Mars-Bound Spaceship from Vandenberg Air Force Base (Source: KABC)
NASA is sending a new spaceship to Mars -- the InSight probe, which is set to launch early next month from Vandenberg Air Force Base on an Atlas V 401 rocket. The 790-pound InSight lander is the first spaceship dedicated to digging deep below the surface of the red planet. It has a robotic arm that is capable of digging up to 16 feet underground. The probe will also measure temblors on the planet, known as "marsquakes." The May 5 launch window opens at 4:05 a.m. (4/27)

Mars 2020 Rover Heat Shield Fracture Discovered (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
The heat shield planned to be used for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover mission developed a fracture during structural testing, a post-test inspection showed. NASA said this issue should not impact the mission’s launch readiness date of July 17, 2020.

According to the space agency, the mission team is already working to produce a replacement heat shield that will take the place of the damaged one. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, along with Lockheed Martin Space, is working to understand why the fracture occurred and to ensure the replacement doesn’t encounter the same problem.

The fracture, or crack, is along the heat shield’s outer edge and runs along the component’s border. It was discovered April 12, 2018, after it had undergone a roughly week-long testing phase carried out by Lockheed Martin Space. In the end, the test achieved its goal: to determine the heat shield’s strengths—and weaknesses. During these checks, the heat shield can encounter forces up to 20 percent greater than what it would actually encounter during a reentry into the tenuous atmosphere of the Red Planet. (4/28)