June 15, 2018

Vector Aiming for First Orbital Flight This Year (Source: Ars Technica)
Time for talk ending soon, Vector chief says. The launch company Vector has gotten a lot of good press in recent years, but now it is time to deliver, says company co-founder Jim Cantrell. "It's always important to have positive press, but we're kind of living on good deeds more than good press these days," he told Tucson.com. Vector is planning construction of a new, 100,000-square-foot rocket factory near Tucson International Airport.

When will the Vector-R fly? ... Cantrell has said the company's rocket will make its first orbital flight in 2018, and in the Tucson.com article he says that mission will come some time in October, when Vector plans to launch from a range in Alaska. It is safe to say the aerospace industry is skeptical as to whether this will actually occur. However, if Vector meets its deadline, the achievement will be commendable. (6/14)

SpaceX Hopes to Launch 4,000 Satellites, Mostly from Florida, NASA Report Says (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
paceX has plans to launch more than 4,000 satellites, the majority of which will head into space from the Space Coast, according to an environmental impact study done by the Elon Musk-led company and NASA. If it comes to fruition, the work would further solidify Cape Canaveral as the world’s busiest private launch center.

Buried in a 73-page study released in April was a reference to a project SpaceX has been pursuing that would establish a constellation of small, Internet-beaming satellites for the company. SpaceX has been working toward launching up to 4,425 satellites, the building blocks of a project called Starlink that could end up providing near-global access to Internet services. The company sent two demonstration satellites into space from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in February. (6/15)

Oxford Space Systems Raises $8.9M (Source: Space News)
British startup Oxford Space Systems has raised $8.9 million to expand its spacecraft components business. The company said Longwall Ventures, a U.K.-based early stage investor, led the round, with several other funds participating. Oxford is developing deployable space structures like antennas, competing against established companies in that sector such as Harris and Northrop Grumman. The company says it's seeing a "huge amount of interest" in its products and just moved into a new facility at the Harwell Space Cluster. (6/14)

'Culture of Optimism' at NASA Leading to Cost Overruns (Source: Space News)
A House hearing on NASA project overruns pointed blame at the agency, contractors and Congress itself. At the hearing, NASA Inspector General Paul Martin said that a "culture of optimism" at NASA can lead to the agency developing unrealistic cost and schedule estimates for program, putting ultimate mission success ahead of adhering to those estimates. A provision in a NASA authorization bill approved by the House Science Committee in April would create a "watch list" for contractors who perform poorly on programs, but other witnesses said uncertainty about the timing of budgets from Congress, and use of flatline budgets, also causes problems for NASA programs. (6/15)

Georgia Spaceport Loses Supporter in State Legislature (Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
A state legislator who has been a strong supporter of a Georgia spaceport recently lost his reelection bid. State Rep. Jason Spencer lost a Republican primary last month to Steven Sainz, who is facing no Democratic opposition in the November general election. While Spencer had been a leading advocate for the proposed Spaceport Camden on the Atlantic Coast, Sainz said he'll back the spaceport only as long as property rights of local residents aren't violated. Some of those local residents are concerned about overflights of launches from the spaceport, which is in the midst of an FAA licensing review. (6/14)

SpinLaunch Raises $40M, Considers Hawaii, Alaska, Virginia, Florida for Launch Operations (Sources: Bloomberg, GeekWire)
A company that wants to build a catapult-like system to launch small payloads has raised $40 million. SpinLaunch said Thursday that it raised the Series A round from several major firms, including Airbus Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Alphabet Inc.'s GV (formerly Google Ventures). SpinLaunch has provided few technical details about its approach, but past reports have indicated it plans to develop a rotational system that would hurl payloads at a fraction of orbital speed. That concept has generated significant skepticism about its viability in the space community, with questions on issues ranging from accelerations on payloads to aerodynamic forces once released from the catapult.  (6/14)

Myhrvold Disputes NASA's Asteroid Estimates (Source: New York Times)
A debate between a NASA near Earth asteroid project and a former Microsoft executive has entered a new phase. Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft chief technologist, recently published peer-reviewed papers criticizing asteroid size estimated developed by NASA's NEOWISE mission. "The science is terrible," he said of the NASA work, and argued that the agency should put on hold planning for a follow-on mission, NEOCam. In a statement, NASA said it was "confident the processes and analyses performed by the NEOWISE team are valid" despite the research by Myhrvold. (6/14)

Moon Express Among '10 Best Tech Startups in Florida' (Source: Tech Tribune)
Moon Express, Inc. (MoonEx) is a privately funded commercial space company blazing a trail to the Moon to unlock its mysteries and resources with low cost robotic spacecraft products & services using exponential technologies. Driven by long-term goals of exploring and developing lunar resources for the benefit of humanity, the company has short-term business on-ramps of providing lunar transportation and services for government and commercial customers.

NASA partnered with Moon Express in 2014 under its Lunar CATALYST program to help build the capability to return the United States to the surface of the Moon. In October 2015, Moon Express announced a launch contract with Rocket Lab USA for 3 launches to the Moon beginning in 2017. In 2016, Moon Express announced an agreement with the U.S. Air Force to utilize Cape Canaveral Launch Complexes 17 and 18 for the development of its spacecraft. Click here. (6/12)

The Next Space Age (Source: Space News)
Today, the private sector in the U.S. is on the cusp of unlocking the great economic potential of outer space. Innovators and entrepreneurs are investing in companies to mine asteroids, repair satellites and manufacture goods in outer space. But regulatory uncertainty and burdensome bureaucracy threatens to push American investment and jobs overseas. It should surprise no one that government rules on testing, launches, reentry, live video, pictures and activities in space are badly outdated.

That’s why Congress and the Trump administration are pursuing aggressive updates to the existing system. As step one, President Donald Trump reconstituted the National Space Council and appointed Vice President Mike Pence to chair the group, which also includes cabinet officials, policy experts and voices from industry and academia. One of Pence’s first initiatives, approved by the Council, was to “unlock new opportunities, new technologies and new sources of prosperity” by building a robust space economy.

The American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act accomplishes these goals. The bill empowers the Commerce Department to lead the promotion and regulation of private space activities so American industry can innovate, grow and compete. It creates a competitive regulatory environment so America becomes the country of choice for private sector space activities. All this while also protecting national security and fulfilling our Outer Space Treaty obligations. Click here. (6/14)

Trump's Pick to Lead NOAA Riddled with Conflicts of Interest (Source: Axios)
For nearly a year and a half, NOAA has operated without a Senate-confirmed leader, setting a record for the position's vacancy. Despite support from most Republicans, former AccuWeather CEO Barry Lee Myers, has been mired in controversy and concerns over conflict of interest. Three past NOAA administrators expressed hesitation about his nomination, arguing that it would be nearly impossible for him to distance himself completely from his interests at AccuWeather.

Myers spent his career working at AccuWeather, which was founded by his brother Joel. However, he has no background in science, making him an unusual pick for the job. Arguably more concerning are the potential conflicts of interest associated with his family and prior lobbying work to encourage the privatization of NOAA's National Weather Service.

Myers was appointed to a NOAA working group in 2009, where he helped shape policy to keep the National Weather Service from expanding information access to smartphones and social media. At the same time, AccuWeather broadened their own mobile platform. In February, Myers clashed publicly with the NWS when AccuWeather sent out a false alert to devices on the East Coast, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean that a tsunami was on the way after the NWS performed a test warning. Myers blamed the test warning, saying it was mislabeled. NWS investigated and found no error. (6/14)

Australia’s Future in Space (Source: ASPI Strategist)
When I was the deputy secretary for strategy in the Defence Department, one of the things on my to-do list which never quite got done was to produce a public defence policy for space. Even back in palaeolithic 2009 it was slightly embarrassing that such a policy statement, classified and unclassified, didn’t exist. So many ADF capabilities relied on communications, IT, sensors and emitters that drew on systems operating in or through space.
Indeed, wherever Defence links into Australia’s national infrastructure for logistic support, or engages with government decision-makers, or works with friends and allies, our complete reliance on the enabling effects of space systems is matched only by our utter vulnerability to those systems being damaged. Why was I unable to produce such a policy statement? Looking back, four factors come to mind. One was the sheer number of players across the Defence tribes who felt they had a dog in the space fight. (6/14)

How Much is a Moon Rock Really Worth? (Source: Washington Post)
A Tennessee woman is suing NASA for the right to keep a vial of what she says is moon dust, given to her by astronaut Neil Armstrong in the 1970s. The financial stakes in the lawsuit are potentially quite high: Just last summer, for instance, a bag containing a trace of moon dust from Apollo 11 sold at auction for $1.8 million. The Tennessee woman, Laura Cicco, has a lot more than just a trace: “probably 10 to 15 cubic centimeters” of the stuff, her lawyer estimates.

Putting a valuation on that much moon dust is nearly impossible, given the rarity of the material and the legal murkiness surrounding ownership of it (more on that in a bit). But that doesn't mean we can't try. According to NASA, human astronauts have ferried a grand total of 842 pounds of lunar material from the moon's surface to Earth during the Apollo missions. Unmanned Luna missions sent by the former Soviet Union brought back about three quarters of a pound more. Material from the moon can also end up on Earth in the form of lunar meteorites. Click here. (6/13)

This Startup Got $40 Million to Build a Space Catapult (Source: Bloomberg)
Flying cars. Cures for death. And now ... space catapults. Bless you, California, for not letting reality get you down. On Thursday, a Silicon Valley startup called SpinLaunch Inc. will reveal the first details of its plans to build a machine meant to hurl rockets into space. To achieve that goal, SpinLaunch has secured $40 million from some top technology investors, said Jonathan Yaney, the founder.

The company remains tight-lipped about exactly how this contraption will work, although its name gives away the basic idea. Rather than using propellants like kerosene and liquid oxygen to ignite a fire under a rocket, SpinLaunch plans to get a rocket spinning in a circle at up to 5,000 miles per hour and then let it go—more or less throwing the rocket to the edge of space, at which point it can light up and deliver objects like satellites.

SpinLaunch has a working prototype of its launcher, although the company has declined to provide details on exactly how the machine operates or will compare to its final system. The startup plans to begin launching by 2022. It will charge less than $500,000 per launch and be able to send up multiple rockets per day. (6/14)

Three Baby Planets Discovered by Astronomers in Our Galaxy (Source: Mashable)
Finding young planets in our galaxy is still very much at the forefront of science. But with the help of the world's most expensive ground-based telescope, two teams of astronomers are convinced they've found not one, but three baby planets. The young planets orbit a star called HD 163296, which is located about 330 million light years away from us in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer).

It's the first time the $1.4 billion Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope has discovered new planets, thanks to a special technique to help hunt them down. Both teams of astronomers looked to unusual patterns in the flow of gas within a planet-forming disc around a young star. (6/13)

Do We Need a Single International Language in Space? (Source: Space.com)
Nowadays, most humans leaving Earth must do so through Russian territory. Space fliers ride on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which lifts off from a special parcel of Russian territory in Kazakhstan. Their spacecraft mission is commanded by a Russian citizen and a large chunk of their destination — the International Space Station — has modules and operations in Russian, too.

This means that all astronauts going to the ISS, no matter how many languages they speak, also need to learn Russian. And astronauts and cosmonauts all over the world need to learn at least some English to work with NASA. English is a challenging language for foreigners to learn. Do we need an international space language? Experts say it may be time to consider it, especially since the ISS could run out of funding and wrap up operations in the 2020s and the space world is changing rapidly. (6/13)