June 11, 2018

Lockheed Loses Texas Tax Appeal Over Fighter Jet Sales (Source: Law360)
Sales of military aircraft built at a Lockheed Martin Texas facility that were eventually sold by the U.S. government to foreign governments were correctly sourced to Texas and are subject to Texas franchise tax, the state’s Court of Appeals ruled Friday in a case of first impression. Lockheed Martin claims sales of military aircraft should have been sourced to foreign nations, not Texas. (6/11)

Life Recovered Rapidly at Impact Site of Dino-Killing Asteroid (Source: FSU)
About 66 million years ago, an asteroid smashed into the Earth triggering a mass extinction that ended the reign of the dinosaurs and snuffed out 75 percent of life. While the asteroid killed off scores of species, a new study from Florida State University scientists, in collaboration with lead researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, has found that the crater it left behind was home to sea life less than a decade after impact, and contained a thriving ecosystem within 30,000 years — a much quicker recovery than other sites around the globe.

“This study provides the first evidence that life, at least more simplistic organisms, recovered relatively quickly within the impact crater that marks the demise of the dinosaurs,” said Jeremy Owens, an assistant professor in Florida State’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science and a member of the Geochemistry Group at the FSU-based National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, where he conducted measurements for the study. (5/30)

Embry-Riddle Gets $1 Million Grant for New Aviation and Engineering Research Center (Source: ERAU)
A new project at Embry-Riddle’s Daytona Beach Campus is expected to create 387 new jobs and spur $1.6 million in private investment. Partially funded by a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce through its Economic Development Administration (EDA), the project will establish Embry-Riddle’s Applied Aviation and Engineering Research Hangar. This facility will be the new home of the Eagle Flight Research Center (EFRC), a hub for engineering research and development. (6/11)

Budget Cutters May Doom the International Space Station (Source: The Hill)
If certain green eye-shade bureaucrats in Washington have their way, funding for the International Space Station (ISS), which already consumes a miniscule part of the federal budget, would be pared back to nothing within a few short years. Such a move would have ramifications far beyond the scientific and national security “black hole” into which our manned space program would plunge if the budget were thus decimated.

As things stand now, thanks to fiscal cutbacks and America’s failure to develop any spacecraft to replace the Space Shuttle (which was closed down in 2011), the only way an American astronaut can travel to the ISS is by paying Russia an average of $75 million per person to hitch a ride on a Soyuz space taxi. And even that program — which is dependent on Russia’s continued good faith in meeting its commitments — is set to expire next year.

In the absence of continued funding for the ISS, and without development of new launch and spacecraft vehicles, America’s manned space program will begin a sad fade to “lights out” starting next year. It is in this environment that NASA’s proposed fiscal 2019 budget includes a plan to end all federal funding for the ISS by 2025.  The good news is that this, in turn, has spurred strong opposition from those in Washington who understand the value of manned space exploration generally and the ISS in particular. (6/10)

SpaceX Revives the Space Coast (Source: Spectrum News)
Senator Bill Nelson took to Twitter this week to remind people that commercial space companies are now a thing of the present. Things are about to change after Senator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut, along with six other senators passed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Transition Authorization Act of 2017.

This year, SpaceX submitted plans to NASA to expand its operations at Kennedy Space Center. This is quite a change from how things looked back in 2013, Space Coast resident Joe Manke recalls. He says after the government shutdown, which lead to 97 percent of NASA’S workforce to be furloughed, people started moving away. "People started leaving and the housing market went down," Manke said. "That's how I was able to afford buying my house." (6/10)

SpaceX is Not a Threat to NASA (Source: The Hill)
SpaceX has astonished the world with the Falcon 9 rocket and its reusable first stage. The development has helped to drive down the cost of space travel and promises to open space to commercial development and more voyages of exploration. The rise of SpaceX and commercial space in general, including Blue Origin, is not sitting very well with the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle. It recently published an editorial arguing that Musk is threatening to supplant NASA, what the Chronicle called “the people’s space program.” The key paragraph reads thus:

“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. Musk would like to help solve that problem...by securing more public money for the company to fund missions beyond Earth and canceling NASA’s future rocket platform. In other words, SpaceX has made clear that its plan is to supplant NASA, not aid it.”

The problem is the paragraph contains a number of false premises. First, NASA has gotten some healthy funding increases in recent years, past $21 billion for the next fiscal year. Second, SpaceX and the other commercial space companies are not interested in supplanting NASA. They want to partner with the agency that sent men to the moon and built the International Space Station. The rise of commercial space represents a unique opportunity for NASA to achieve even greater glory. (6/10)

Australian Space Agency Won't Be 'NASA Down Under' (Source: SBS)
Fighting among states over a new national space agency is counter-productive because it's not going to be "NASA Down Under", a space expert says. Western Australia and Victoria have launched campaigns calling for the new federal agency to be based in their states, hoping to benefit from space industry jobs. But Australian Strategic Policy Institute space lead Dr Malcolm Davis says a decision on the agency's base needs to be made quickly to stop states fighting.

"What the states need to understand is the space agency is not going to be a NASA Down Under," Dr Davis told AAP on Monday. "It's not going to be an all-encompassing organization that builds hardware, launches hardware, runs space missions." Instead the agency will coordinate funding, research and policy in a bid to drive private sector investment. (6/11)

Mars-Bound MarCO Twins Will Go Where No CubeSat Has Ever Gone (Source: Air & Space)
CubeSats, those pint-size satellites that ride along on most every orbital launch these days, are quietly transforming the space business. So far, though, their impact has been limited to missions in Earth orbit. That’s about to change. If all goes well, NASA’s latest Mars lander, due to launch on Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, will be accompanied by two tiny companions making the trip to the Red Planet.

It will be NASA’s first planetary mission launched from the West Coast, and the first time CubeSats have been sent into deep space. Mars Cubesat One, or MarCO, consists of two briefcase-size robots (MarCO-A and -B) equipped with their own solar arrays, communications, navigation and propulsion. They’ll get a boost out of Earth orbit with the InSight lander on its Atlas V rocket, then separate and fly on their own for the six-month coast to Mars. The 30-pound CubeSats will use a compact, cold-gas propulsion system to make course adjustments along the way. (5/4)

Rocket Week Launching for Students and Educators at NASA Wallops (Source: NASA)
University and community college students will get a boost in their studies and support in launching their careers during Rocket Week June 15-22, 2018, at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Nearly 200 university and community college students and instructors from across the country will build and fly experiments on a NASA suborbital rocket through the RockOn! and RockSat-C programs.

Another 20 high school educators from across the United States will be at the Facility to examine how to apply rocketry basics into their curriculum through the Wallops Rocket Academy for Teachers (WRATs). The week culminates at 5:30 a.m. EDT, June 21, with the launch of a NASA Terrier-Improved Orion suborbital sounding rocket carrying the students’ experiments. The rocket is 36 feet long and the payload weighs 667 pounds. (6/11)

Aciturri Joins PLD Space Shareholder (Source: Aciturri)
Aciturri has become a shareholder in the PLD Space company, a Spanish firm based in Alicante dedicated to the development of suborbital and orbital launch vehicles. The project of the company PLD Space constitutes a commitment to the space sector that fits perfectly with our diversification strategy, and in which, besides our support as a financial partner, we believe we can contribute our knowledge and technology.

The latest funding round, recently closed, has allowed the company to complete its "Series A" of 17 million euros, thanks to which it will start manufacturing two ARION 1 rockets that will make their first flight in 2019. Additionally, it will expand during this quarter its propulsion test facilities at Teruel airport.

The ARION 1 is the first of the models that PLD Space is developing, and it is designed as a suborbital sounding rocket for research or technological development in micro-gravity environments and in the higher parts of the atmosphere. (6/11)

Rocket Lab Confirms Three Launches with Spaceflight (Source: Rocket Lab)
Rocket Lab, a US orbital launch provider for the small satellite industry, has today announced a partnership with satellite rideshare and mission management provider, Spaceflight, for three orbital launches across 2018/19. The first mission, scheduled for the end of 2018, will launch a BlackSky microsat along with several rideshare customers.

The second launch will be a commercial rideshare mission in early 2019. Rocket Lab and Spaceflight have also signed a letter of agreement, which is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks, for a third mission to fly a Canon spacecraft in late 2019. The three-launch deal cements Spaceflight’s first missions aboard the Electron launch vehicle. The missions join a busy manifest that will see Rocket Lab launch monthly by the end of 2018, scaling to a launch every to weeks in 2019. (6/11)

How Blockchain Technology Can Track Humanity’s Lunar Heritage Sites (Source: Space Review)
One challenge for future human lunar exploration is keeping track of past exploration sites in order to preserve their heritage. Roy Balleste and Michelle L.D. Hanlon describe how the blockchain can be used to help create a database of those sites to aid in efforts to protect them. Click here. (6/11)
 
Settling Into the New Job (Source: Space Review)
It’s been more than a month and a half since Jim Bridenstine was sworn in as NASA administrator, and perceptions about him are already changing. Jeff Foust reports on an interview Bridenstine had with reporters that dealt with topics ranging from his views on climate change to the role of commercial capabilities versus NASA-run programs. Click here. (6/11)
 
The Earth, Space Settlement, and the Hard Drive Analogy (Source: Space Review)
In a recent interview, Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Red Mars trilogy about humans living on Mars, dismissed the idea of actual human settlements there or elsewhere beyond Earth. John Strickland takes issue with Robinson’s assessment and argues that establishing a human presence beyond Earth remains critical to civilization’s future. Click here. (6/11) 
 
The Origin of Civilian Uses of GPS (Source: Space Review)
Many articles today claim that the civilian use of GPS started only after an off-course Korean airliner was shot down by the Soviets in 1983. Richard Easton argues that GPS, from its beginnings long before that incident, planned to have civilian applications. Click here. (6/11)

Inmarsat Rejects Echostar Takeover Bid (Source: Space News)
Inmarsat rejected an unsolicited proposal by EchoStar to acquire the mobile satellite services operator. Inmarsat said Friday that the proposal "very significantly undervalued Inmarsat" but did not disclose the details of the proposal. EchoStar has $3.3 billion in cash reserves and is seen by many observers as a key player in a widely anticipated consolidation of the industry to deal with overcapacity. However, one analyst noted that EchoStar has "historically have been fairly cheap in what they've been willing to pay" for such deals, which could hinder those plans. (6/9)

Air Force Space Procurement Not Broken (Source: Space News)
An Air Force general rejected claims that the service's space procurement process is broken. Speaking Friday in Washington, Lt. Gen. John "JT" Thompson, head of the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), said that the Air Force was the "best in the world" in space activities. "You don't get that way if you don't have good acquisition processes and good acquisition organizations," he said. Nonetheless, SMC is undergoing a reorganization that will, he said, "value speed and innovation" to address new threats to space assets. (6/11)

Pope Gets Flight Suit From Italian Astronaut (Source: Reuters)
If Pope Francis ever decides to go to space, he already has the flight suit for the trip. Astronauts visiting the pope Friday presented him with a personalized flight suit that features a small white cape. "Since clothes make the man, we thought we'd have a flight suit like ours made for you," said Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli, who spoke with Pope Francis from the space station last year. (6/11)

Airman Missing Since 1983 Maybe Didn't Defect With Space Secrets (Source: Washington Post)
Last week, nearly 35 years after he went missing, the Air Force finally found Capt. William Howard Hughes Jr. living in California under the fictitious name “Barry O’Beirne.” Hughes was arrested at his residence without incident June 6 on charges of desertion. Upon launching its investigation into Hughes back in 1983, the Air Force did not immediately rule out defection to Russia as a possibility.

In the years after Hughes went missing, a slew of NASA catastrophes, such as the space shuttle Challenger disaster of 1986, as well as the explosion of the Ariane rocket in French Guinea, caused national security commentators to speculate whether the disasters were related and possibly the result of Soviet sabotage. Hughes’s disappearance, in the eyes of some, fit right into the puzzle.

In a 1986 Los Angeles Times commentary titled “Sabotaged Missile Launches?” for example, the former longtime New York Times foreign correspondent Tad Szulc wrote: “The French and American accidents are adding up to a bizarre pattern, surrounded by strange coincidences and unexplained events, deeply preoccupying Western intelligence. These include the apparent defection to the Soviet Union in 1983 of the U.S. Air Force’s leading expert on rocket self-destruct procedures” — meaning Hughes. (6/11)

Unearth Your Potential and Become a Space Nation Astronaut, For Real! (Source: Travel Tester)
After the final dismantling of the NASA Space Shuttle Program in 2013, space exploration has shifted more towards private players, such as aerospace companies like SpaceX, Axiom Space, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Moon Express, which is backed by Buzz Aldrin. But since this year, there is a new player in the field, looking to become the number one social and educational element of this new movement. Finnish startup and space media company Space Nation is using NASA’s learnings to develop a unique program… that you can be a part of!

The company started as the childhood dream of Kalle Vähä-Jaakkola, a pig-farmer’s son from a rural area in Western Finland. In 2010, he met Mazdak Nassir, a film-director who later became the co-founder of Space Nation. They have teamed up with Peter Vesterbacka, who is the builder of the global phenomenon Angry Birds.

Since its founding in 2013, Space Nation has broken crowd-funding records, acquired a lab space on the International Space Station (ISS) and became the first space tourism company to become an affiliate member of the United Nation’s World Tourism Organization UNWTO. (6/9)

In-Orbit Services Poised to Become Big Business (Source: Space News)
A transition is happening in the satellite business. Fast-moving technology and evolving customer demands are driving operators to rethink major investments in new satellites and consider other options such as squeezing a few more years of service out of their current platforms. Which makes this an opportune moment for the arrival of in-orbit servicing.

Sometime in early 2019, the first commercial servicing spacecraft is scheduled to launch. The Mission Extension Vehicle built by Orbital ATK on behalf of subsidiary SpaceLogistics, will the first of several such robotic craft that are poised to compete for a share of about $3 billion worth of in-orbit services that satellite operators and government agencies are projected to buy over the coming decade.

Servicing satellites in geosynchronous orbit is a “nascent industry” with significant future potential, said Carolyn Belle, senior analyst at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, research firm Northern Sky Research. Companies are weighing “service-or-replace trade-offs.” In an uncertain business climate, satellite manufacturers and operators are looking for new ways to manage their fleets, and might find life-extension services a compelling option. (6/4)