May 30, 2018

SpaceX’s Starlink High-Speed Internet Satellites Alive and Well in Orbit (Source: Teslarati)
Comments from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and other executives have confirmed that the company’s first two prototype Starlink internet satellites are healthy and progressing through a range of tests three months after launch. Designed to flesh out a broad range of technologies and flight-test SpaceX’s ability to design, manufacture, and operate advanced communications satellites, what little public information available on the satellite constellation indicates that the test program is thus far a success.

While it can be argued that SpaceX already has years of experience building and operating satellites in the form of Cargo Dragon and Falcon 9’s upper stage, small high-throughput communications satellites are a dramatic leap outside of the company’s demonstrated comfort zones. As such, the fact that the first true standalone Starlink prototypes have survived several months in orbit and managed to demonstrate at least a few of their complex technologies with some success. (5/29)

Lockheed Martin Snags More Military Work at Cape Canaveral (Source: Orlando Business Journal)
The total value of contracts Lockheed Martin won between January and May 16 of this year for work on its Fleet Ballistic Missile Program at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport has risen to $618.4 million. Lockheed Martin was awarded four de3als for its Trident II D5 nuclear missile for U.S. submarines, the largest of which was $522 million in March. (5/25)

Space Coast Job Growth Surges as Aerospace Firms Take Off (Source: Orlando Business Journal)
Florida's Space Coast is beginning to see big benefits from space business diversification as more jobs crop up to support the growing aerospace industry. In fact, the Brevard County region reported just 3.4 percent unemployment in April, with the manufacturing sector taking the lead by adding 1,300 jobs since April 2017.

"We're bringing in a whole boatload of new programs and new companies," said Space Florida's Dale Ketcham. "When everyone is up and running, we would have well exceeded the number of jobs that were lost from the retired Shuttle program." But providing a workforce for these jobs is a growing challenge. That's where higher-education institutions come into play. More industry and academic leaders are working together to address the issue, but Ketcham says "there's still so much to do." (5/25)

Houston’s Future as Space City at Risk (Source: Houston Chronicle)
One of the last surviving men to walk on the moon has left this world for the last time. Al Bean, the fourth man to set foot on the moon and a resident of America’s first space station, made a second career out of an interesting hobby. He became the only artist who ever painted pictures based upon his experiences and personal observations of another world. It reminds us how dramatically America’s approach to space exploration has changed. Instead of giving us astronaut heroes like Bean, our government’s space policy now promotes eccentric tycoons like Elon Musk.

NASA appears just as starved of resources as before, despite the omnipresent talk among politicians of returning America to the moon and beyond. It’s just that now, some of the funding goes to SpaceX and to Musk. That money may well help Musk build a thriving business that helps humanity in other ways, but the space agency itself is still stuck in low gear.

SpaceX has made clear that its plan is to supplant NASA, not aid it. There are arguments to be made for and against the proposition that NASA’s core responsibilities should be privatized, but Houston’s interest is clear. For more than 50 years, the Johnson Space Center has been the city’s guarantor of glory, one of its greatest assets. We’re at an inflection point. The nation can preserve the idea of a people’s space program, piloted by men and women like Bean, with Houston at its center. Or it can relinquish the nation’s space heritage to billionnaires like Musk. (5/30)

Space Program Launches Photographer's Dream (Source: Florida Today)
The space program is launching more than rockets for one local photographer whose dream of working at NASA is coming true and opening doors he never thought possible. Adam Byerly was born in Daytona Beach and found his passion for photography early on among the sand and sea. A waterman who enjoyed surfing and fishing, he began teaching scuba at age 18 while living in Maui, Hawaii. At the time, underwater housings were out of his budget so he gravitated toward photographing saltwater fishing, surfers and the shoreline. Click here. (5/30)

NASA Website Lets You Explore Alien Planets in 360 Degrees (Source: Mashable)
In all likelihood, no one from Earth today will set foot on a world orbiting another star, but thanks to NASA, we may have the next-best thing. NASA's Exoplanet Exploration tool lets anyone with an internet connection experience what it might be like to stand on the surface of a planet light-years from Earth and look up into the sky. The website is designed to transport you to some popular exoplanet destinations — like Kepler-186f, the newest planet to be given this treatment — to look around the planet in 360 degrees. Click here. (5/30)

Why The US Needs a ‘Coast Guard’ in Space (Source: Eurasia Review)
The idea of a “Space Guard”, first conceived of by the US Air Force officer Cynthia A.S. McKinley and later expounded on by space journalist James C. Bennett, is back in fashion. A Space Guard, modeled after the Coast Guard is so appealing because if such an agency were truly a Coast Guard analogue, it would be vested with nearly every regulatory, management, and operating authority that the United States would need for the effective governance of space.

The American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act recently cleared the House of Representatives. The Act seeks to improve on the status quo of commercial space regulation where the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, the Department of Commerce’s Office of Space Commerce (OSC), NASA, and in some cases NOAA, the FCC and the US Air Force all have roles to play in regulating or providing oversight for US commercial space launches and activity. This hodgepodge of is inefficient, creates delay, and prevents America from acting with unity of purpose in space. The Act seeks to fix this by creating a “one stop shop” in the Department of Commerce to better facilitate and ostensibly regulate space commerce.

Modifying the OSC in this manner is insufficient because as conceived, it would not adequately balance any other governmental equities beyond facilitating commerce. Further, the enhanced OSC lacks both true regulatory teeth and a corresponding operational capability to provide oversight and where necessary enforce what should be a comprehensive, statutorily-based regulatory scheme intended to protect Americans on the way to, in, and returning from space; protect America from all hazards and threats delivered from space and space activities; and to protect space itself. (5/30)

Satellite Warns of Refugee Island Flood Risk (Source: ESA)
In what the UN describes as the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis, almost 700 000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar for neighboring Bangladesh since August 2017. With the Bangladesh government proposing a vulnerable low-lying island as a relocation site for thousands, Sentinel-1 data have shown how unsuitable this site would be. While the Rohingya have faced decades of repression, this recent mass exodus is blamed on large-scale atrocities committed by the Myanmar military.

The area is particularly prone to cyclones, with coastal zones and islands at highest risk. Some nearby islands have a tidal range as high as 6 m, meaning that they are at risk of being completely submerged. Regardless of cyclones, the region is often inundated by heavy rainfall during the South Asian monsoon, which lasts from June to October. Information from satellites is often used during humanitarian crises to map, for example, the extent of camps and other temporary settlements. In this case, however, the Earth Observation-based Services for Dynamic Information Needs in Humanitarian Action project used data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar mission to show exactly how precarious Thengar Char is. (5/30)

NASA Full of 'Fear and Anxiety' Since Trump Took Office, Ex-Employee Says (Source: Guardian)
NASA’s output of climate change information aimed at the public has dwindled under the Trump administration, with a former employee claiming “fear and anxiety” within the agency has led to an online retreat from the issue. Laura Tenenbaum, a former science communicator for NASA, said she was warned off using the term “global warming” on social media and restricted in speaking to the media due to her focus on climate change.

“NASA’s talking point is that it’s business as usual, but that’s not true,” said Tenenbaum, who departed Nasa in October after a decade at the space agency. “They have stopped promoting or emphasizing climate science communication, they have minimized it. People inside the agency are concerned Trump will cut climate science funding. There is a fear and anxiety there and the outcome has been chaos.”

Tenenbaum said that around a month after Trump’s inauguration last year an “arduous review process” was put in place over every blog post, Facebook post and tweet that she put out from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “I was told verbally by media relations it was because with Trump as president, climate change is now a sensitive subject,” she said. “There was confusion about what to do now we have a president who doesn’t believe in climate change. Everyone was scrambling. It was chaos.” (5/30)

How Do Astronauts Poop in Space? NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson Explains (Source: USA Today)
This certainly isn't the number one perk about space travel: going number two. Last week, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson talked about spending 665 days in space, the most of any American. As the interview suggests, Whitson loved space travel, except the part where you have to poop. Whitson, who compared traveling in space to a "camping trip," said urinating in an International Space Station toilet is easy. Pooping is very different. "Number two... is more challenging because you're trying to hit a pretty small target," Whitson said. Click here. (5/30)

OneWeb Considers Expansion in Florida with Space Antenna Operation (Source: Florida Today)
OneWeb plans to open an antenna assembly, storage and testing facility at the Port Canaveral Logistics Center in Titusville. Canaveral Port Authority commissioners could consider approving a five-year lease agreement with the company as soon as Wednesday night. But the port as of Tuesday afternoon had not received a signed lease from OneWeb, so it is possible the Port Authority action will be delayed until its June 27 meeting.

Under the proposed agreement, OneWeb would lease 19,210 square feet of space in the 246,240-square-foot building at 7700 U.S. 1 in south Titusville. The port would receive revenue from the lease of $839,706 during the initial five-year lease period. As part of the agreement, the port agreed to reimburse OneWeb for up to $365,560 in capital improvements at the site. OneWeb's move into the Port Canaveral Logistics Center would be part of a major Space Coast expansion for the aerospace company. (5/30)

Fizzy Beer and Exploding Heads: Actors Tell How 'The Expanse' Keeps It Real (Source: Space.com)
Actor Cas Anvar of "The Expanse" was about to shoot a scene in which, suspended by wires, he would jump off a set of stairs, spin around in simulated zero gravity, and catch a blob of beer in his mouth that he had spurted from a metal can. But he had a question. "Right before we started rolling, I went, 'Holy crap, how does carbonated beverage perform in zero gravity?'" he said. "Because no one had talked about it, no one had brought it up. So I scrambled and I asked people. And we came up with a thing. That's why I put my hand on top of [the can], because I wasn't sure if it would come gushing out. If you can't see it, we don't have to fix it."

It was an example of the sort of care that the actors and producers of "The Expanse" take in trying to make their futuristic space drama — set in a time when millions of people are living and working in space colonies — as realistic as possible. The tension between realism and the needs of dramatic storytelling was a key theme running through a panel discussion on the science of "The Expanse" conducted May 25 during the National Space Society's International Space Development Conference (ISDC) here in Los Angeles. (5/30)

NASA Drops Request to Delay Next Astrophysics Decadal Survey (Source: Space News)
Two months after suggesting the next major review of priorities in astrophysics research and missions to achieve those goals be delayed, the head of NASA’s science directorate says that study should stay on schedule. In a May 25 tweet, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science, said he concluded that the next astrophysics decadal survey, known as Astro2020, should not be delayed after reviewing an “analysis” from the National Academies. (5/30)

Second SpaceShipTwo Makes Second Powered Test Flight (Source: Space News)
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane performed a successful test flight May 29, bringing the company one step closer to realizing its long-delayed dreams of space tourism and research flights. VSS Unity, the second SpaceShipTwo built for Virgin Galactic, took off attached to its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft at about 11:40 a.m. Eastern from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. About an hour later, SpaceShipTwo separated from WhiteKnightTwo and fired its hybrid rocket motor for 31 seconds.

The vehicle reached a top speed of Mach 1.9 and altitude of 34,900 meters on the flight, both records for the SpaceShipTwo test flight program. The spaceplane glided to a runway landing in Mojave about 10 minutes later. (5/29)

Tory Bruno, the Other Rocket Man (Source: Air & Space)
Tory Bruno resists the temptation to trash-talk Elon Musk, for the most part. Holding back can’t be easy. Among space enthusiasts, Musk and the company he founded, SpaceX, are the disrupters, the swashbuckling innovators whose cheap, reusable rockets will pave the way for an explosion of orbital commerce and creativity. Old Space, according to this construction, stays hopelessly mired in the past.

Bruno is in charge of the establishment empire striking back. The imperium in this case is United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of America’s two aerospace titans, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, mashed together a dozen years ago to create a reliable national delivery service for U.S. military spacecraft and NASA. Reliable ULA has been, its Delta and Atlas rockets completing 122 successful launches as of last fall, and five more since.

“One of the subtle things you would notice, if you hung out with us, is that we count,” says Bruno, during a break from an executive meeting held at a hotel near the company’s manufacturing center in Decatur, Alabama. (Corporate headquarters is near Denver.) “We have a slide we show internally, which shows 122 boxes with little pictures of rockets, and a little blank box at the end. That’s the most important mission: the very next one.” (5/30)

Germany Trades P120 Booster Production for Ariane 6 Turbo Pumps, Upper Stage Carbon Fiber Research (Source: Space News)
European Space Agency member states have agreed to keep all production of P120 solid rocket boosters in Italy instead of opening a second production line in Germany. Germany will instead produce turbo pumps for the upcoming Ariane 6 rocket and redirect its P120 funds towards technology maturation work on a carbon fiber upper stage that could give Ariane 6 another 1,000 kilograms of lift capacity.

The compromise, reached during a May 17-18 meeting of the ESA launcher program board in Frascati, Italy, puts to rest the controversial division of P120 production. The 2016 decision, while popular in Germany, was viewed unfavorably in Italy. The P120 serves as the first stage of the Vega C rocket and will be used as a strap-on booster for the Ariane 6 heavy-lift rocket. Vega C, like the standard Vega rocket used today, is built almost entirely in Italy. Ariane 6 production, in contrast, is spread more broadly across France, Germany and other ESA member states who pay for the launcher’s development and use. (5/30)