June 7, 2018

EU Plans Space Spending Increase (Source: BBC)
The European Union is planning to spend more on space in the 2020s, even without the U.K. as a member. The EU released its long-term space spending plan for 2021–2027 on Wednesday, which seeks to spend 16 billion euros ($18.9 billion) over that period. More than half of that would go to its Galileo satellite navigation program, with the rest for the Copernicus Earth science program, government satellite communications and space situational awareness. The proposed budget is about 5 billion euros higher than the current EU plan, but will require lengthy approvals by the European Parliament and member states. (6/6)

India Funds More Rockets (Source: PTI)
The Indian government has approved funding for a new tranche of PSLV and GSLV rockets. The government approved more than 100 billion rupees ($1.5 billion) for 30 PSLV and 10 GSLV rockets that will be used for launches between 2019 and 2024. The GSLV rockets are of the more powerful Mark 3 variant that can place satellites weighing up to four tons into geostationary transfer orbit. (6/6)

UAE Downselects to 95 Astronaut Candidates (Source: Emirates 24/7)
The United Arab Emirates has selected 95 finalists for its first astronaut class. The 95 people, 75 men and 20 women, came from a pool of more than 4,000 applicants to be the country's first astronauts. The UAE Space Agency plans to select four people as members of its new astronaut corps, who will train for unspecified future missions to the ISS. (6/6)

Dust, Not Alien Megastructures, Likely Behind Weird Dimming of 'Tabby's Star' (Source: C/Net)
The so-called "weirdest star" in the galaxy -- it's also known as the "WTF" star, Boyajian's Star, Tabby's Star and KIC 8462852 -- remains a mystery, but its weird dimming behavior likely can't be explained by aliens. Unless, perhaps, they're incredibly tiny. New research presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Denver on Tuesday suggests a dusty explanation.

A team of teenage students from the Thacher School, a private boarding high school in Ojai, California, trained the school's newly renovated observatory on the star beginning in April 2017 to study its enigmatic dips in brightness. Boyajian's Star has a tendency to dip randomly and erratically throughout the year and has also been slowly dimming overall for more than a century. A swarm of comets, large clouds of dust and even alien megastructures have been suggested as possible culprits for haphazardly blocking the star's light.

The students from Thacher believe their data shows that not only is dust the most likely explanation, but that different types of dust are passing in front of the star.  "Long-term dimming and short-term dimming may be caused by completely independent phenomena happening at the same time," Thacher School rising senior Yao Yin told reporters at AAS.  She says there could be types of dust that differ, either in the size of the grains or in their chemical make-up. One possibility is that some fairly recent collision or other event produced the dust and it hasn't had enough time to become well mixed. (6/6)

Kissimmee Lands 1st Aerospace Firm Under New Incentives Program (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
A$4.5 million project in Kissimmee is one of the first to use the city’s new incentives program aimed at attracting aerospace and aviation businesses. Officials with Know 2 Solutions, which connects aircraft from all over the world through satellite communications hardware and services, expect the company to move into a 28,000-square-foot facility at Kissimmee Gateway Airport next year.

The company recently moved 13 employees from its headquarters in Lutz, just north of Tampa, to an office in Kissimmee. The incentives program is an effort to establish the airport as a hub for space- and aviation-related commercial companies, said Belinda Kirkegard, Kissimmee’s economic development coordinator. (6/6)

SpaceX’s BFR Factory in LA Spied with Four Falcon 9 Fairing Halves (Source: Teslarati)
In an unexpected turn of events, Teslarati photographer Pauline Acalin came across a remarkable scene in Port of Los Angeles – four flight-proven Falcon 9 fairing halves temporarily stored on a plot of land soon to become SpaceX’s dedicated BFR factory. While it’s difficult to guess exactly which fairing half is which, it appears that the halves from PAZ, Iridium-5, and Iridium-6 are present and accounted for.

Reminiscent of SpaceX’s late-2016, early-2017 struggles with finding enough space to store their massive flight-proven Falcon 9 boosters, these fairing halves are unable to be reused as a consequence of too much saltwater exposure, making it significantly easier for the company to effectively find any old plot of SpaceX land on which to store them. (6/6)

Senators Restate Opposition to 2025 Halt in ISS Funding (Source: Space News)
Senators used a hearing Wednesday to restate their opposition to a proposal to end NASA funding of the International Space Station in 2025. At a hearing of the Senate space subcommittee, witnesses raised concerns about the chilling effect that proposal has has on companies considering doing research on the station, while also raising questions about the feasibility of having the ISS operated commercially.

Senators at the hearing reiterated that the ISS should be operated by NASA beyond 2024, perhaps to 2030 or beyond, to maximize the taxpayers' return on investment. Earlier in the day, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said NASA was looking at a "range of options" for the station's future, and that no decisions had been made. (6/6)

NASA: No Plans to Sell ISS (Source: Space News)
NASA officials said there were no plans by the agency to sell the station to commercial operators. Sam Scimemi, director of the ISS at NASA Headquarters, said the agency's goal was to turn over operations of the station to private industry by 2025, an effort that would be a gradual transition. NASA, he said, would continue to pay for any use of the ISS or other commercial platforms it requires for research or astronaut training after 2025. (6/6)

Meteorological Company Joins Embry-Riddle’s Research Park (Source: ERAU)
WeatherFlow, Inc., a leader in private sector weather observational, modeling and forecasting technology, is the newest addition to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Research Park. WeatherFlow will join the Research Park’s existing partners, faculty, labs and research facilities such as the Eagle Flight Research Center and the future Applied Aviation and Engineering Research Hangar. WeatherFlow is a highly experienced team of meteorologists, hardware and software engineers, field technicians and data scientists. The Florida-based company offers its clients weather network products, data and applications, analysis and modeling, consulting and wind energy solutions. (5/31)

Duke Energy's $1.56M Education Grants Promote STEM Programs in Florida (Source: Tampa Bay Business Journal)
Duke Energy gave out $1.56 million in education grants for Florida students and teachers this year, the company announced this week. The company, which has a local office in downtown St. Petersburg, gave grants to 46 Florida-based programs to improve workforce development and promote education in science, technology, engineering and math. (5/31)

Russian Reusable Space Rocket Tests Scheduled for 2022 (Source: Space Daily)
Tests of the first Russian reusable space rocket are scheduled for 2022, according to the project team leader of Moscow-based Foundation for Advanced Research Projects (FPI), Boris Satovsky. According to Satovsky, the rocket will be capable of carrying up to 600 kilograms (over 1,300 pounds) of payload. (6/6)

How Much New-Tech Transportation Death Will We Tolerate? (Source: The Drive)
Our progress as a technological society has always marched in lockstep with our failures. This has been particularly true in the realm of moving vehicles—airplanes, automobiles, spaceships, regular ships. The Titanic disaster spurred increased attention to lifeboat complements. A string of fatal crashes in the 1950s involving the de Havilland Comet—the first commercial jet airliner—launched modern accident investigation methodologies that of course led to countless safety innovations. Decades of nasty wrecks on public roads (and race tracks) led to seat belts, crumple zones, and air bags.

Along the way, we’ve always known that people die in moving vehicles. The forces of physics are undeniable; risk is built into speed. So it should stand to reason that this will remain true in the future, as technology advances through everything from self-driving cars to new generations of supersonic business jets to electric air taxis to even commercial space travel. All of these new modes of travel will pose risks of their own, even if they incorporate the latest safety technology and are even themselves intended primarily as safety innovations, as is the case with autonomous cars.

That may be true, but we’re in a decidedly new era now. These are no longer the swaggering salad days of NASA, for instance, when the tragic loss of three astronauts during the launch-pad fire of Apollo 1 gave the nation pause, but didn’t sway its steely resolve to reach the Moon. Today, there’s not much “steely resolve” in the public’s support of either space-tourism or even autonomous driving. Nor are we even in the age of Challenger and Columbia, when tragedy in the Space Shuttle program gave way more to grief than raw outrage. (6/4)

Seven Arizona Small Businesses Receive NASA Funding (Source: KJZZ)
NASA has selected its 2018 crop of small businesses to receive funding supporting innovation research and technology transfer, with seven awards going to Arizona. The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contracts, which total $43.5 million nationally among 348 awardees, support projects that promise to benefit both NASA's mission and the U.S. economy. Tucson's AdValue Photonics Inc. received one SBIR contract to develop a pulsed ultraviolet laser, while Tucson's Paragon Space Development Corp. received two contracts toward producing a flexible radiator to cool inflatable habitats and a technology for separating condensates from air.

The remaining SBIRs went to Chandler's Cactus Materials, which will develop a compact semiconductor that improves high-resolution spectrometry, and Scottsdale's ZONA Technology Inc., which will build an improved computer model for flight dynamics. The two STTR grants will go to Tempe's Alphacore Inc., which will develop a built-in self-test for battery systems, and Phoenix Analysis and Design Technologies, which will research high-performance materials that mimic biological structures. Both will partner with Arizona State University. SBIR Phase I contracts last six months. STTR Phase I contracts last for 13 months. Both offer a maximum funding of $125,000. (6/4)

Long March 3A Rocket Launches Fengyun-2H Meteorological Satellite (Source: Space News)
China on Tuesday launched the Fengyun-2H weather satellite, successfully inserting the near 1.4-metric-ton spacecraft into a geostationary-transfer orbit. The Long March 3A launch vehicle lifted off from Launch Complex 3 at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China at 09:07 a.m. Eastern, in accordance with airspace closure notices published days in advance. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced success of the launch just under an hour after liftoff. (6/5)

First Engine for the DARPA/Boeing Experimental Spaceplane Assembled by Aerojet Rocketdyne (Source: SatNews)
This new Boeing spaceplane, called Phantom Express, is intended to demonstrate a new paradigm for more routine, responsive and affordable space access. Aerojet Rocketdyne’s AR-22 engine, derived from the Space Shuttle Main Engine that was designed from the outset for reusability, is the main propulsion for Phantom Express.

The AR-22 engine is capable of generating about 375,000 pounds (170,097 kg) of thrust and was designed to fly 55 missions with service every 10 missions. This reusability feature makes the AR-22 ideally suited for Phantom Express. The reusable Phantom Express spaceplane will take off vertically and land horizontally. The vehicle will be equipped with an expendable second stage capable of placing up to 3,000 pounds (1,361 kg) of payload into LEO.

Aerojet Rocketdyne assembled the AR-22 at the company's facility at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The engine will undergo a series of daily hot-fire tests at Stennis starting this summer to demonstrate its ability to support the high flight rates envisioned for Phantom Express. These tests will also provide valuable insight that will be used to refine Phantom Express flight and turnaround procedures, while also informing the design requirements for the new ground infrastructure that Boeing is developing for the flight program. (6/5)