May 11, 2018

House Spending Bill Could Brighten Prospects for Two Giant Telescopes (Source: Science)
Two planned giant telescopes may soon get a boost from Congress. Representative John Culberson (R–TX), who chairs a spending panel that sets funding levels for the NSF, is hinting that he wants NSF to get behind both the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), a $1.4 billion facility proposed for Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), a 25-meter telescope already under construction in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.

The first step could come Thursday, when the full House appropriations committee is expected to take up Culberson’s $62 billion spending bill covering NSF and several other federal science agencies. Although details of that bill have not been made public, Culberson seems eager to provide a down payment for a significant NSF investment in at least one of the billion-dollar telescope projects by using the agency’s new construction account. (5/11)

NASA Adds Helicopter Drone to Mars Rover Mission (Source: NASA)
NASA is sending a helicopter to Mars. The Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with the agency’s Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet.

Started in August 2013 as a technology development project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Mars Helicopter had to prove that big things could come in small packages. The result of the team’s four years of design, testing and redesign weighs in at little under four pounds (1.8 kilograms). Its fuselage is about the size of a softball, and its twin, counter-rotating blades will bite into the thin Martian atmosphere at almost 3,000 rpm – about 10 times the rate of a helicopter on Earth. (5/11)

SpaceX Launches Bangladeshi Satellite, Lands Upgraded Rocket on Drone Ship (Source: SPACErePORT)
SpaceX on Friday successfully launched a Bangladeshi satellite atop an upgraded version of its Falcon-9 rocket. The Block 5 variant of the Falcon-9 flew from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport, and the rocket's first stage successfully landed aboard SpaceX's Of Course I Still Love You drone ship. (5/11)

Musk Wants to Launch the Same Rocket to Orbit Twice in a Single Day (Source: Quartz)
Launching the same rocket to orbit twice in 24 hours has never been done before. But Elon Musk says the newest version of his Falcon 9 rocket will accomplish the feat in 2019. “This is a ridiculously hard thing that has taken us 16 years of extreme effort and many, many iterations," he said.

Key to that goal is the ability to simply re-fuel the reusable rocket between flights, with no scheduled maintenance needed. The current version of the rocket requires at least 10 days of refurbishment between flights, on “hundreds of little things that need to be made more robust,” Musk said.

Post launch, Musk said his team will be “taking this rocket apart and confirming our design assumptions to be confident that it is indeed able to be reused without taking it apart. We need to take it apart to confirm it doesn’t need to be taken apart.” (5/11)

SpaceX Expects 100s of Falcon 9 Launches With Fleet of 30 Rockets (Source: Teslarati)
In a blissfully detailed prelaunch briefing, SpaceX CEO delved into the details of the audacious future ahead of the company’s new flagship rocket, Falcon 9 Block 5. While he made it clear that reliability, safety, and mission success are the primary focus of the vehicle, Musk did not shy away from emphasizing his immense confidence and optimism for Falcon 9 Block 5 – confidence that was validated with Friday's successful launch and landing.

Most prominently, Falcon 9 has a long and productive future ahead of it, barring wildly unforeseen circumstances. Musk expressed SpaceX’s intent to build a fleet of 30 to 50 additional Block 5 boosters intended to support a minimum of three hundred Falcon 9 launches before the family of rockets is retired. The purpose-built reliable and reusable vehicle is further intended to be capable of as many as ten launches with “literally no action taken between flights.”

Although SpaceX fully intends to recoup its considerable investments (likely approaching $2 billion for Falcon 9 and Heavy) and ensure that a reliable stream of income is available for BFR, Starlink, and other R&D projects, the cost of a flight-proven booster is now reportedly down to roughly $50 million per launch, nearly 20% lower than the listed base price of $62 million. Consequently, reusability is already saving customers large sums of money and ensuring that Falcon 9 remains the absolute cheapest vehicle for the performance. (5/11)

Revitalizing Space Exploration Would Boost U.S. Manufacturing (Source: Forbes)
President Trump signaled what hopefully will become a vigorous return to space exploration by the United States when he reconstituted the National Space Council. Dormant since the end of the George H.W. Bush administration, the Council’s chairman, Vice President Mike Pence, and its new Executive Secretary, Dr. Scott Pace, have vowed to build a new manned space program to reach the moon and beyond to Mars.  

A new era of cooperation with the private sector space leaders such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Vulcan Aerospace and Boeing will be crucial to the success of the effort. Also crucial will be a more robust federal research and development commitment in the fields of physical science, advanced computing and communications, software and engineering. As with the two previous boom cycles of aerospace development, in World War II and the Apollo program, one of the main beneficiaries of the aggressive new effort will be the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Several high-tech billionaires have stepped up to continue the American quest to conquer the newest frontier: outer space. Paul Allen, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have all devoted considerable imagination and resources to create new space technology. Their firms-—especially SpaceX, Stratolaunch Systems and Blue Origin—-have begun to have some success in creating the launch, reentry and long-haul space vehicles needed to overcome the low-earth orbit quagmire and create the possibility for deep space exploration. Much of their success results from a willingness to take chances and try new approaches using and perfecting existing technology resulting from basic research. (5/10)

Off-Earth Manufacturing Is Just Getting Started (Source: Space.com)
Space is a dangerous place for humans: Microgravity sets our fluids wandering and weakens muscles, radiation tears through DNA and the harsh vacuum outside is an ever-present threat. But for materials that show incredible strength, transmit information with barely any loss, form enormous crystals or even grow into organs, the harshness of space can be the perfect construction zone.

As the cost of spaceflight goes down, more of these materials may become cost-effective to make or study in space. And soon, more and more people might be carrying around objects built off the planet.

"We generally make things by subjecting them to a different environment," said Andrew Rush, president and CEO of Made In Space, an in-space manufacturing company. "We make food by cooking it in fire, heating it up and causing chemical reactions. We make steel by heating things up at high temperature and maybe, depending on the steel, [in a] high-pressure environment. We can quench things; we can make things cold to make different materials or improve on those materials. (5/11)

ULA Selects Aerojet to Provide Vulcan Upper Stage Engine (Source: Space News)
ULA has picked Aerojet Rocketdyne’s RL10 engine to power the upper stage of its next-generation Vulcan rocket, the second such contract Aerojet has secured in as many months. Orbital ATK announced last month it will use the RL10C on the upper stage of its OmegA rocket. ULA said it will use a new variant of the RL10, known as the RL10C-X, on the upper stage of the Vulcan. That version incorporates improvements, like additive manufacturing of engine components, to improve its quality and affordability.

The agreement continues a long relationship with Aerojet Rocketdyne, which also provides versions of the RL10 for the upper stages of ULA’s Atlas and Delta rockets. The agreement covers the delivery of engines over the next decade. Terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed.

ULA did not disclose who Aerojet beat out for the Vulcan upper stage contract. However, the leading competitor is widely thought to be Blue Origin, which offered the BE-3U, an upper-stage version of the BE-3 engine currently used on its New Shepard suborbital vehicle. Blue Origin plans to use the BE-3U on the second stage of its New Glenn orbital launch vehicle. (5/11)

NASA Successfully Test Fires 3D-Printed Rocket Engine Part (Source: Popular Mechanics)
NASA successfully hot-fire tested a 3D-printed combustion chamber for a rocket engine. The successful test is the latest in a series of advancements in 3D-printed rocket technology from both private companies and public research groups. The engine project is the work of three NASA centers across the country: Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio; Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia; and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

In 2015, material scientists at Glenn developed a powdered copper alloy that engineers at Marshall used to 3D-print the space agency's first full-scale copper rocket engine part, a lining for the combustion chamber. Now, a new manufacturing project created a chamber jacket for that lining. Chamber jackets are used to help protect parts of the engine from the immense pressure generated in the engine's combustion chamber. (5/10)

Space Tourism Could Be a Reality in 2018 (Source: Conde Nast Traveler)
Two space-faring companies run by billionaire entrepreneurs—Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin—just hit significant milestones, meaning we’re closer than ever to vacationing beyond this planet. In early April, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo successfully completed a long-awaited first powered test flight. And on April 29, Blue Origin made another successful test launch of its New Shepard rocket, this one equipped with a crash-test dummy and a handful of scientific experiments. So, are we about to start planning trips to space? 

Still, despite the strides made this spring, some skepticism is warranted. There’s been talk about space tourism for decades and Virgin Galactic, in particular, has had a series of delays and one fatality, during a failed test flight in 2014. “Richard Branson has been promising and promising that space tourism flights were right around the corner,” says Davenport. “But now it does seem like he’s finally very close.” (5/11)

Star Wars! Billionaires Spearhead Space Exploration (Source: ORF)
Billionaire entrepreneurs are now leading space exploration, including the quest for expanding humanity’s footprint in outer space. Barely weeks after billionaire Elon Musk stunned the world with images of Starman cruising in outer space in a red Tesla Roadster, his counterpart, Jeff Bezos, launched the Mannequin Skywalker to experience weightlessness in space. Both of them now say they expect to replace these lifeless dummies with real people.

There is no doubt about Musk and Bezos’s passion for exploring space, but the question must be asked — will their intervention actually help? The answer is yes. Though the duo may differ in their respective goals for taking to human spaceflight, they share the motivation and willingness to take risks associated with these ventures. In the process, they have rejuvenated the case for reusable launch vehicles, bringing down the cost of access to space. (5/10)

ULA Machinist Union Workers Protest Outside Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) have begun picketing United Launch Alliance (ULA) practices in Cape Canaveral, Florida; Decatur, Alabama; and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Their protest stems from their rejection of what has been described as ULA’s “last, best, and final offer” of a contract.

According to the union, ULA’s new contract requires workers to relocate long distances for up to six months with very little notice, and to work mandatory overtime – also with no notice. The IAM is concerned that ULA is attempting to replace workers with sub-contractors. Workers say they will continue striking and picketing until the company meets their demands, which include making travel and overtime work voluntary and based on seniority. Workers also want guarantees that their jobs will not be replaced.

ULA has agreed to meet with the IAM and a federal negotiator in Glendale, California, on May 15. Kevin DiMeco, the Vice President with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers is optimistic that the situation will be resolved amicably. DiMeco also wanted to emphasize that the dispute is not about money, but about the unfair disruptions to workers lives with unreasonable travel and overtime demands. (5/10)

Strained Mars Data Relay Capabilities Possible in 2020s (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
As InSight begins its journey to Mars, communications between the Red Planet and Earth could face a potential gap in data relay capabilities over the next decade. As its current fleet of orbiting spacecraft age with no new NASA orbiter under development, SpaceFlight Insider investigated the options available to maintain data relay capabilities with spacecraft on the surface into the 2020s.

Communicating with spacecraft on the surface of Mars is no easy task. A range of limiting factors including the planet’s rotation, the number of spacecraft at Mars, and the weak signals transmitted from surface spacecraft can make consistent and rapid direct communication from the surface of Mars to Earth a challenge.

When asked about NASA’s plans to rely on current data relay spacecraft, MRO Project Scientist Dr. Richard Zurek remains optimistic about the continuity of relay capabilities into the 2020s. Dr. Zurek also serves on NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) and is currently the Chief Scientist for the Mars Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “There is some concern that the assets we have are aging, but the program is looking at options to fill the gap,” Dr. Zurek said. (5/10)

China’s Misguided Grab For Aerospace IP (Source: Aviation Week)
The U.S.’s biggest aerospace export market is China. It also has an extraordinary and growing aerospace trade surplus with China.

According to U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) numbers, U.S. aerospace exports to China in 2017 totaled $16.3 billion, while U.S. aerospace imports from China came to $956 million. That 17-1 lead has been growing and is now in near-record territory. In 2010, the U.S. lead was 10-1. But over the past 10 years, China’s aero exports to the U.S. have risen at a 10.5% compound annual growth rate; U.S. exports to China have risen at a 12.9% rate.

There are several reasons why the U.S. lead is increasing. As a market, China is growing along with the size of its middle class population, which wants to fly, fueling strong airline traffic numbers and jetliner demand. But more important, as a supplier, China’s ambitious strategy for its aerospace industry development is very badly flawed. (5/2)

SpaceX is Coming to Gentrify Los Angeles (Source The Outline)
SpaceX is coming to Los Angeles, and it could be bringing gentrification with it. The company just got written approval to use a 19-acre plot in the Port of Los Angeles for to build the Big Fucking Rocket, which Elon Musk will supposedly use to take people to Mars by 2022. However, the SpaceX construction facility will located in a part of Los Angeles that’s experienced some serious gentrification and displacement issues in recent years.

The Port of Los Angeles is in the middle of a $100 million renovation project to redevelop its Waterfront District. The project involves the creation of new public spaces and the construction of the San Pedro Marketplace. Recently, the development of this marketplace necessitated the demolition of a local restaurant. The project also lead to a series of evictions from the local marina in 2016.

Los Angeles is already facing massive gentrification issues. Some working class people are forced to commute for as long as six hours each day just to balance a well-paying job with affordable real estate. Tech-driven ventures have earned a reputation for accelerating gentrification. And Elon Musk doesn’t exactly have a worker-friendly reputation among his ventures. (5/10)

Canada Prevents Maxar From Selling Radarsat Data (Source: Space News)
Maxar Technologies won't be able to sell data from the newest Radarsat satellites. The company said in an earnings call this week that the Canadian Department of National Defence has rights to all the synthetic aperture radar imagery from the three Radarsat Constellation satellites, scheduled for launch later this year. Maxar, which continues to sell imagery from the Radarsat-2 satellite, said it's in discussions with the Canadian government about funding a "continuity program" that could add more satellites to the constellation, whose data could be sold commercially.

Maxar, which owns satellite manufacturer SSL, also said it believes the drop in orders for commercial geostationary orbit communications satellites has bottomed out, with demand stabilizing at about 8 to 12 satellites per year. (5/10)

Astrophysics Decadal Survey Plan in Question (Source: Space News)
NASA is continuing to suggest the next astrophysics decadal survey be delayed, but many astronomers are opposed to that move. A questionnaire recently sent to astronomers by a NASA advisory group asked if they supported a delay of up to two years in the next decadal, currently scheduled for release in late 2020, to address uncertainty regarding the launch of JWST and the future of WFIRST. A delay, NASA officials argue, would ensure that the study can incorporate the latest science to better prioritize future missions. Many astronomers want to keep the study on its current schedule, though, seeing little benefit to a delay. (5/10)

NASA's Lunar Rover Workers to be Reassigned (Source: Houston Chronicle)
NASA employees working on a recently canceled lunar rover will be reassigned to other projects. About 90 people were working on Resource Prospector, a rover that would have looked for water ice in permanently shadowed lunar craters. NASA announced last month it was cancelling the mission and focusing instead on a commercial lunar payload services program. Those employees working on Resource Prospector will be reassigned to "other opportunities" within NASA when the project is wrapped up this month. (5/10)

Out-of-This-World Vostok Space Beer Bottle Could Bring Suds to Zero-G (Source: Space.com)
First, they made space beer. Now, they want a special bottle for astronauts to drink the brew in microgravity. Australian beer company 4 Pines Brewing and space-engineering firm Saber Astronautics Australia are building a special bottle for their pioneering Vostok Space Beer, which was named after the vehicle that cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin rode to orbit in April 1961.

The companies are asking for $1 million on Indiegogo to make the design a reality. (As of Wednesday, May 9, just 3 percent of that total had been raised, with 23 days to go.) Participants in the Indiegogo campaign can buy a prototype of the beer bottle for themselves; the two companies are using the fundraising campaign to market the bottle and to let the public join the research effort. The funds will be used to complete the industrial design of the bottle and to fund people researching it in flight, the companies told Space.com in an email. (5/10)

Will Uncle Sam Shower Some Love on Spaceports? (Source: Popular Mechanics)
All around the country, from Virginia to Alaska and all points in between, new spaceports are popping up to support the burgeoning private space industry. Now, the federal government may be ready to throw some fuel on that fire. In April, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a FAA bill that the Senate will begin debate within weeks. Tucked inside the FAA bill is an amendment (H. Amend. 565) that would “require a study on possible funding options for a potential federal grant program for spaceport activities.”

In other words, Congress could pony up some grant money to support emerging spaceports and create a new office devoted to easing their birth pains. Senators want to send the bill to President Trump before the August recess (a responsible thing to do since, the current FAA authorization expires in September.)

The spaceport support has a good chance of survival. There are other, higher-profile issues for Senators to chew over in the FAA bill. In the House, only amendment lead sponsor Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va) and Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) spoke about it, both in favor. It passed by a bipartisan voice vote. “This amendment will strengthen the nation’s competitiveness in this nascent industry,” Larsen said, “and offer us a better understanding of how we can maintain a robust and resilient network of space transportation infrastructure. (5/1)

NanoRacks Selected as 'Launch Provider' for Canadian Cubesat Project (Source: Space Daily)
NanoRacks is pleased to announce that the Company has been awarded the launch services and deployment contract for the Canadian CubeSat Project - a nationwide small satellite development program sponsored by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

The project provides funding to post-secondary institutions in Canada as part of a challenge to design, build, launch, and operate their own satellites which will be deployed from the International Space Station. The contract is for the launch and deployment of up to 15 CubeSats, totaling 33U of deployment volume, representing each Canadian province and territory. (5/8)

Multi-Use Variable-g Platform Arrives at the Space Station (Source: Space Daily)
Delivered to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX CRS-14, the Multi-use Variable-g Platform (MVP) is a new commercial testbed for centrifuge-based science aboard the orbiting laboratory. Because gravity determines so much of a live organism's behavior and growth, centrifuge-based experiments have long been a part of biological investigations in space.

While the pull of Earth's gravity makes this type of investigation difficult at home, the space station's microgravity environment makes it the perfect place for fractional gravity experimentation. MVP greatly expands that testing capability for the space station. (5/10)

House Panel Lays Foundation for Future Space Force (Source: Space News)
The House Armed Services Committee in its version of the Fiscal Year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act — passed after midnight Wednesday by a vote of 60-1 — pushes forward with the reorganization of military space forces. The proposal sets the stage for further debate over the coming months as the HASC language moves toward a House vote and a House-Senate conference this fall.

The committee swiftly approved the recommendations of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee on military space reforms. One is to establish a subordinate unified Space Command under U.S. Strategic Command. Another provision calls for the secretary of the Air Force to establish a new numbered Air Force dedicated to space warfighting. The bill also directs the deputy secretary of defense to develop a plan to establish a separate acquisition system for military space vehicles, ground systems and terminals.

Unlike last year’s bill, this one does not mandate the establishment of a separate space corps in the U.S. military. That proposal is on hold pending the completion of an independent study mandated in the 2018 NDAA. The only obstacle in this year’s push to reorganize space was an amendment introduced by Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee Chairman Mike Turner to delay the creation of a sub-unified space command until after the Pentagon submits the independent study. (5/10)

Breakthrough Listen Begins Survey of Milky Way Galactic Plane at Parkes (Source: Space Daily)
Breakthrough Listen - the initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the universe - has announced a survey of millions of stars located in the plane of our galaxy, using the CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope ("Parkes") in New South Wales, Australia, has commenced.

Listen observations at Parkes began in November 2016, targeting a sample consisting mostly of stars within a few light years of Earth. Now, observations have expanded to cover a huge swath of the Milky Way visible from the site. The expanded survey is made possible by new capabilities installed at Parkes by Breakthrough Listen: new digital instrumentation capable of recording the huge data rates from the Parkes "multibeam" receiver.

The previous receivers used by Listen only observed a single point on the sky at a time, and were used to perform a detailed search of stars near to the Sun for evidence of extraterrestrial technology. In contrast, the multibeam receiver has 13 beams, enabling a fast survey of large areas of the sky, covering all of the Galactic Plane visible from the site. (5/8)

Waves Similar to Those Controlling Earth Weather Found on the Sun (Source: Space Daily)
A team of scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) and the University of Gottingen has discovered new waves of vorticity on the Sun. As described in the latest issue of Nature Astronomy, these Rossby waves propagate in the direction opposite to rotation, have lifetimes of several months, and maximum amplitudes at the Sun's equator.

For forty years scientists had speculated about the existence of such waves on the Sun, which should be present in every rotating system. Now, they have been unambiguously detected and characterized for the first time. The solar Rossby waves are close relatives of the Rossby waves known to occur in the Earth's atmosphere and oceans. (5/8)

NASA Spacecraft Discovers New Magnetic Process in Turbulent Space (Source: NASA)
Though close to home, the space immediately around Earth is full of hidden secrets and invisible processes. In a new discovery reported in the journal Nature, scientists working with NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft — MMS — have uncovered a new type of magnetic event in our near-Earth environment by using an innovative technique to squeeze extra information out of the data.

Magnetic reconnection is one of the most important processes in the space — filled with charged particles known as plasma — around Earth. This fundamental process dissipates magnetic energy and propels charged particles, both of which contribute to a dynamic space weather system that scientists want to better understand, and even someday predict, as we do terrestrial weather.  Reconnection occurs when crossed magnetic field lines snap, explosively flinging away nearby particles at high speeds. The new discovery found reconnection where it has never been seen before — in turbulent plasma. (5/9)

Trump White House Quietly Cancels NASA Research Verifying Greenhouse Gas Cuts (Source: Science)
You can't manage what you don't measure. The adage is especially relevant for climate-warming greenhouse gases, which are crucial to manage—and challenging to measure. In recent years, though, satellite and aircraft instruments have begun monitoring carbon dioxide and methane remotely, and NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), a $10-million-a-year research line, has helped stitch together observations of sources and sinks into high-resolution models of the planet's flows of carbon. Now, President Donald Trump's administration has quietly killed the CMS, Science has learned.

The move jeopardizes plans to verify the national emission cuts agreed to in the Paris climate accords, says Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of Tufts University's Center for International Environment and Resource Policy in Medford, Massachusetts. "If you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the agreement," she says. Canceling the CMS "is a grave mistake," she adds.

The White House has mounted a broad attack on climate science, repeatedly proposing cuts to NASA's earth science budget, including the CMS, and cancellations of climate missions such as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 (OCO-3). Although Congress fended off the budget and mission cuts, a spending deal signed in March made no mention of the CMS. That allowed the administration's move to take effect, says Steve Cole, a NASA spokesperson in Washington, D.C. Cole says existing grants will be allowed to finish up, but no new research will be supported. (5/9)

NASA Missions Press Ahead Despite Budget Uncertainty (Source: Space News)
As House appropriators prepare to take up a spending bill that funds NASA, some programs proposed for cancellation are pressing ahead despite fiscal uncertainty that one scientist described as “psychologically damaging.” The commerce, justice and science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to mark up its fiscal year 2019 spending bill May 9. That bill includes funding for NASA, as well as NOAA, National Science Foundation and other agencies.

The markup comes nearly three months after the White House issued its budget proposal for 2019, which offered $19.9 billion for NASA but included the cancellation of the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), the next large astrophysics mission after the James Webb Space Telescope. It also proposed to terminate the same four Earth science missions the administration sought to end, unsuccessfully, in its 2018 budget request. (5/8)

Parallel Universes: Theories & Evidence (Source: Space.com)
Is our universe unique? From science fiction to science fact, there is a concept that suggests that there could be other universes besides our own, where all the choices you made in this life played out in alternate realities. The concept is known as a "parallel universe," and is a facet of the astronomical theory of the multiverse.

The idea is pervasive in comic books, video games, television and movies. Franchises ranging from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to "Star Trek" to "Doctor Who" to "Digemon" use the idea to extend plotlines. There actually is quite a bit of evidence out there for a multiverse. First, it is useful to understand how our universe is believed to have come to be. Click here. (5/9)

The FAA Needs More Money (Source: Federal Times)
The head of the Aerospace Industries Association is calling on the Trump administration and Congress to increase funding for both NASA and the FAA, particularly with a surge in commercial drone activity expected in coming years. Eric Fanning, who took over as head of the aviation trade group at the start of the year, told Federal Times that both agencies have struggled in the wake of budget sequestration — and that it is time to reverse that trend.

The Trump administration has been vocal about a desire to invest in both commercial and military space, including the launch of a new Space Council headed by Vice President Mike Pence. For fiscal year 2019, the administration requested $19.9 billion for NASA, an increase over the FY18 request of $19.1 billion, which had been a drop from the previous year.

But the FAA, with oversight over all air traffic in the United States, has not received the same level of attention — something Fanning believes needs to change given expected growth. “The FAA is one of the unsung heroes, a critical agency. We have the safest civilian airspace anywhere in the world. [We’d] like to maintain that record as they’re trying to upgrade very outdated technology,” Fanning said. The administration had a budget request of $16.1 billion in FY19, down from its FY17 enacted budget of $16.4 billion. (5/8)

Russia Offers Space Tourist Flight to US, European Astronauts, UAE Citizen (Source: Space Daily)
A United Arab Emirates (UAE) national currently stands as the main candidate to become a space tourist on the International Space Station (ISS) in the spring of 2019, although similar offers of this opportunity were also sent to US-based company Space Adventures, the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. The tourist is supposed to arrive at the ISS on board Russia's Soyuz spacecraft.

"Due to the postponement of the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module's launch to the ISS to 2019 free seats appeared on the Soyuz spacecraft for the fall of this year and the spring of 2019. In the spring of 2019, a seat on a space flight is expected to be provided for a participant or a tourist. Another source told Sputnik that initial discussions about the flight of two foreign candidates were currently ongoing, with one of them being from the UAE and the other one from Bahrain.

He added that a possible flight with professional astronauts from the United States or Europe would be more profitable in terms of Russia's economy, because it would be a long six-month expedition rather than a ten-day flight. (5/9)

Atmospheric Seasons Could Signal Alien Life (Source: Space Daily)
The hunt for life on potentially habitable exoplanets, which are impossible to visit in person, will begin with a search for biological products in their atmospheres. These atmospheric fingerprints of life, called biosignatures, will be detected using next-generation telescopes that measure the composition of gases surrounding planets that are light years away.

It's a tricky business, since biosignatures based on single measurements of atmospheric gases could be misleading. To complement these markers, and thanks to funding from the NASA Astrobiology Institute, scientists at the University of California, Riverside's Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center are developing the first quantitative framework for dynamic biosignatures based on seasonal changes in the Earth's atmosphere. (5/10)

Cosmonaut Could Ride US Spacecraft to Moon for First Mission (Source: Space Daily)
The first flight of a Russian cosmonaut to the moon could take place aboard of the US Orion spacecraft in 2024, a space industry said. "The possibility to send one Russian cosmonaut as part of the crew of the Orion spacecraft that will drag the Russian airlock module to the moon is on the agenda. The Russian cosmonaut will have to ensure the integration of the module with the station," the source said.

A source in Russia's Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (RSC Energia) that would produce the module confirmed this information to Sputnik, saying that four manned missions were expected to be sent to the station and the Russian cosmonaut should accompany the Russian-made module during its transportation to the Earth satellite. (5/7)