June 18, 2018

Florida Agency Collecting Data on Patrick Air Force Base Cancers (Source: Military Times)
The Florida Department of Health is gathering data from current and former residents who are concerned their cancers may be linked to living near Patrick Air Force Base, the agency confirmed Thursday. Residents in nearby Satellite Beach have been tracking the issue since the Pentagon’s issued its first-ever public report this March on the levels of water contamination at current and former military installations, including Patrick.

“The department was contacted by a concerned citizen regarding an area in Brevard County and is currently working to gather more information related to their concerns,” said Florida Department of Health spokesman Devin Galetta. Galetta said they put the initial concerned resident in touch with the Florida statewide cancer registry and “will work with the county health department and the state’s epidemiology division to determine any necessary next steps.”

On the community Facebook page, dozens of current or former residents wrote in with personal stories of cancer battles and questions as to what they should do next. Almost two decades ago, the community around Patrick was identified as having an unusually high rate of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, although no root cause was identified. (6/14)

Gulf Coast Aerospace Corridor Releases June Report (Source: Gulf Coast Reporters' League)
A second jetliner assembly line, another F-35 reprogramming lab, a new maintenance, repair and overhaul facility, additional rocket engine assembly and testing, and continued work on NASA’s Space Launch System are among the aerospace activities that occurred in the year since the Gulf Coast Aerospace Corridor 2017-2018 reference book was published. Growth has marked nearly every aspect of the Gulf Coast region’s sizeable and varied aerospace/aviation sector, along with a continued push to train the field’s future workforce. Click here. (6/17)

Aevum's New Rocket-Drone Airplane Duo Could Launch Satellites Every 3 Hours (Source: Space.com)
Alabama-based startup Aevum aims to per mission, using an air-launch system called Ravn. "Ravn is designed to launch every 180 minutes," says Jay Skylus, Aevum's CEO and chief launch architect. Aevum is focused on launching multitudes of tiny satellites into space. Such constellations of satellites could enable advances such as "wireless internet everywhere," Skylus said.

The key to Ravn's planned launch rate is its unmanned nature, which "simplif[ies] ground operations considerably," Skylus said. "Ravn takes off and lands horizontally on any standard runway. Ravn is engineered to be autonomous from the moment it leaves the hangar from taxi, takeoff, launch, landing and taxi return to the hangar." As such, Ravn may need a ground crew of as few as six people, Skylus said. "Compared to the ground- crew needs of other launch systems, Ravn requires at least an order of magnitude less ground-crew personnel," he said.

The first stage of Ravn consists of a reusable, fully autonomous unmanned (Mach 2.85) aircraft system designed for atmospheric flight. "The overall aerodynamic design of the vehicle has been optimized for the rocket separation," Skylus said. Editor's Note: This is ambitious. Flying this aircraft every 3 hours would be a huge accomplishment even without the air-launch rocket. Releasing the rocket at Mach-2+ is also a huge hurdle, with potential catastrophic interference from the supersonic shock wave. (6/18)

Trump Directs Pentagon to Create 'Space Force' (Source: The Hill)
President Trump on Monday announced that he's directing the Pentagon to create a “space force” as the Defense Department’s sixth military service branch. “In defending America, it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space, we must have American dominance in space,” Trump said during a meeting with members of the National Space Council.

“I’m hereby directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a space force as the sixth branch of the armed forces. That’s a big statement. We are going to have the Air Force and we are going to have the Space Force, separate but equal.” The declaration follows statements made in March in which he endorsed the idea of creating an independent military branch for space. (6/18)

Thailand to Buy Airbus Satellite as Prayut Visits France (Source: Channel News Asia)
Thailand will secure the purchase of a US$215 million observation satellite from Airbus during his trip to France this month, a diplomatic source said on Friday (Jun 15), as Europe re-engages with the kingdom following a chill in relations after a 2014 coup. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha, who toppled an elected government four years ago, will stop in Britain and France next week for meetings with political and business leaders.

The trip comes after the European Union agreed to resume official contacts with Thailand in December, ending a more than three-year suspension put in place after Prayut's May 2014 coup installed the country's most authoritarian government in a generation. (6/16)

Calculating the Economics of Reusable Launch Vehicles (Source: Via Satellite)
From the perspective of Firefly Aerospace CEO Tom Markusic, it just doesn’t make sense for a new launch startup to focus exclusively on reusability. Building an expendable vehicle for the first time is hard enough, he says; adding in the technical challenges associated with making parts of it reusable is a risk that could cripple your business before it even gets off the ground. Markusic believes experimenting with reusable models should be left to more “mature” companies.

“You can try to go straight to a reusable solution but the technological barriers you’re going to face are so much more significant than doing a conventional expendable vehicle,” he says. “I believe it would be somewhat reckless to try to fund a company right from the outset with a reusable vehicle.”  The argument for reusability only grows stronger as you approach the higher-end payload mass of the market, says Forecast International analyst Bill Ostrove. “The more expensive it is to build a rocket, the easier it's going to be to recoup your expenses by spending a little bit extra on rocket construction to make it reusable,” he says.

Still, Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith believes it’s just a matter of time before reusability becomes commonplace across all launch paradigms. “With the launch rate, availability and overall cost structure being much better … [the launch industry] is going to be dominated by reusability. It just has to be — there’s no other way,” Smith asserts. One of the reasons circles back to the issue of reliability, arguably the launch industry’s greatest downfall. A common misconception is that launching on a previously flown asset is inherently more risky. In reality, increased reliability and reusability go hand in hand, Smith says. (6/16)

Space Council Group Loses Gingrich, Worden to Conflicts (Source: Wall Street Journal)
The council meeting will be followed tomorrow by the first meeting of its advisory group, but two people originally named to the group will be missing. Both Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and Pete Worden, former director of NASA's Ames Research Center, have been dropped from the Users' Advisory Group because of business and financial conflicts of interest. Gingrich said he'll attend the meeting as a private citizen because his attorneys were "very uncomfortable" about him taking another role on the advisory group. Worden said that his work advising the government of Luxembourg on its space resources initiative created problems. (6/17)

Cruz and Colleagues Consider Alternatives for Commercial Space Regulation (Source: Space News)
A key senator said recently he hadn't taken a position on which agency should oversee "non-traditional" commercial space activities. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), chairman of the Senate space subcommittee, said Thursday there were good arguments for giving that authority to the Commerce Department, as a House bill does, as well as to the Transportation Department. Cruz and other senators are working on a commercial space bill and had, according to industry sources, been leaning towards giving Transportation that authority. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, speaking at the same advisory group meeting, said a decision needed to be made in order to remove regulatory uncertainty for new commercial space applications like satellite servicing and lunar landers. (6/18)

ESA Good With Lunar Gateway Participation (Source: ESA)
The European Space Agency is backing participation in NASA's Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway. The ESA Council, meeting last week, endorsed participation that could include enhancements to the European-built Orion service module to support crews staying at the Gateway as well as the development of modules for it. ESA hopes to finalize those agreements in time for them to be approved at its next ministerial council in late 2019. ESA is also studying participation in a Mars sample return effort and concepts for future lunar exploration missions. (6/18)

Indian Satellite OK After Checks That Delayed Ariane Launch (Source: PTI)
India's GSAT-11 has been cleared for launch after inspections. The Indian space agency ISRO said that no problems were found with GSAT-11 and that the agency was working with Arianespace to find a new launch slot for the communications satellite. GSAT-11 was scheduled to launch in May on an Ariane 5, but ISRO postponed the launch and shipped the satellite back to India for testing after the failure of the GSAT-6A satellite shortly after launch in March. (6/18)

China Aims for December Lunar Landing (Source: GB Times)
China is now planning to launch its Chang'e-4 lander mission in December. Wu Weiren, a chief designer of the China Lunar Exploration Project, told Chinese television recently that the mission is on schedule for a December launch. The spacecraft will attempt the first landing on the far side of the moon, communicating with Earth through the Queqiao relay satellite that just took up position at the Earth-moon L2 Lagrange point. (6/18)

ESA Council Commits to Ariane 6 and Transition From Ariane 5 (Source: Space Daily)
The ESA Council met to discuss the path towards the future exploitation of Ariane 6. In view of the progress made in the Ariane 6 program, Participating States have decided on the completion of the development up to full operational capability and agreed to fund industrial incentives associated with the development of Ariane 6 and P120C solid rocket motor. Participating States also committed to start with the first step of the Ariane 6 and P120C Transition Program. This program supports the evolution from Ariane 5 to full operational capability of Ariane 6.

It will operate in two configurations: Ariane 62 is fitted with two P120C strap-on boosters while Ariane 64 has four. Ariane 6's maiden flight is planned for mid-2020. P120C is the largest carbon-fibre solid propellant booster ever built in one segment at almost 13.5 m long and about 3.4 m in diameter. Two boosters will be used on Ariane 6's maiden flight in 2020. (6/18)

Long Held Theory About the Moon Holds Water (Source: Tohoku University)
A team of Japanese scientists led by Masahiro Kayama of Tohoku University's Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, has discovered a mineral known as moganite in a lunar meteorite found in a hot desert in northwest Africa. This is significant because moganite is a mineral that requires water to form, reinforcing the belief that water exists on the Moon. (6/13)

As Mega-Constellations Loom, US Seeks to Manage Space Debris Problem (Source: Ars Technica)
Space is getting ever more crowded. Because even tiny objects are traveling at tens of thousands of km per hour relative to Earth, they pose a significant danger. The National Space Council thinks we could do a better job of tracking and mitigating this debris. A new Space Policy Directive directs the US Department of Defense to modernize its approach to tracking space debris and to increasingly rely on commercial debris-detection services to enhance the country’s “space situational awareness.”

The Department of Commerce will provide a basic level of space situational awareness for public and private use, based upon the DOD catalog. Proposals from several companies, including OneWeb and SpaceX, to build mega-constellations of satellites for broadband internet access have also “really crystallized everyone’s attention,” Scott Pace said. If the country is going to sustain growth in the commercial space sector, new policy is needed beyond rules established just for government launches and satellites.

The reforms, which will be enacted over the coming months and years, will be specific to the United States rather than negotiated through the United Nations. Pace said the space council opted for a bottom-up process in the name of expediency, rather than trying to create an international treaty. By setting a proper example, he said, the United States intends to establish norms that Europe, China, Russia, and others working in space will follow. (6/18)