August 10, 2018

Trump Campaign Cashing In on Space Force Hype (Source: Newsweek)
Plans by the Trump campaign to cash in on the creation of the Space Force as a new branch of the U.S. military by selling merchandise about it were called “wrong” and a violation of the norm by a former White House ethics czar. On the day Vice President Mike Pence unveiled the Space Force plans at the Pentagon, the Trump campaign emailed supporters encouraging them vote on their favorite logo for the new branch with a view to creating merchandise using whichever wins.

"President Trump wants a SPACE FORCE—a groundbreaking endeavour for the future of America and the final frontier," read the email from Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale. "As a way to celebrate President Trump's huge announcement, our campaign will be selling a new line of gear." But Norman Eisen, President Obama’s ethics czar and now chair of the board at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington campaign, told Newsweek it gives the appearance Trump is making government decisions “influenced by merchandising opportunities.” (8/10)

Four Satellites a Week to be Launched From New Scottish Spaceport (Source: The Herald)
Around four satellites a week will be launched into orbit from Scotland’s new spaceport within the next 12 years under ambitious plans announced by industry leaders. New figures revealed the UK could launch an estimated 2,000 satellites from the A'Mhoine spaceport in Sutherland between 2021 and 2030. Business Secretary Greg Clark visited the remote site yesterday and said the site would create more than 400 jobs and be worth a potential £3.8billion to the UK economy. (8/9)

NASA Package That Fell From Sky with Note Mentioning Trump Sparks Alarm in New Jersey (Source: CBS News)
A suspicious package that fell from the sky over New Jersey caused some alarm because it contained a note that mentioned President Donald Trump. South Brunswick police say the package, attached to a parachute, was making a hissing sound and included a note that said: "NASA Atmospheric Research Instrument NOT A BOMB!" If this lands near the President, we at NASA wish him a great round of golf."

Mr. Trump has been staying at his golf club in Bedminster, which is 29 miles away. "The weather researchers were apologetic for any concerns they had raised by the hand written note on the device," police said in a statement. NASA told WNBC-TV the package, which fell on Tuesday, is part of six balloons that were launched to measure ozone. It says a summer student employee wrote the note in a "misguided attempt to be lighthearted," and that the student has been removed from the project. (8/10)

It’s Easier to Leave the Solar System Than to Reach the Sun (Source: The Atlantic)
The Parker Solar Probe, a nasa mission, will blast off from the Florida coast in the early-morning hours of Saturday. Next month, the spacecraft will reach Venus, its sidekick on a long journey. Parker will swing past the planet seven times, slowing down with each pass. Eventually the probe will end its rendezvous with Venus and move into a closer orbit around the sun, coming within 3.9 million miles of the sun’s surface to graze its edge. It will be more than seven times closer than any probe has flown before.

As strange as it may sound, it’s much more difficult to reach the sun than it is to leave the solar system altogether. “To get to Mars, you only need to increase slightly your orbital speed. If you need to get to the sun, you basically have to completely slow down your current momentum,” says Yanping Guo, the mission-design and navigation manager for the Parker Solar Probe. Based at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Guo has been working on the probe for about 17 years.

The Parker Solar Probe will experience seven gravity assists from Venus in order to draw closer to the center of the solar system. With each pass, the spacecraft will shed some of Earth’s motion. “Any available launch vehicle—even near-future, the most powerful—it won’t be able to shoot a spacecraft to get to the sun. You must use gravity, and not just a general gravity assist—you have to use the most powerful gravity assist.” (8/10)

World View Balloon Explosion Caused Nearly Half a Million Dollars in Damage (Source: Arizona Daily Star)
The explosion of a stratospheric balloon during ground testing by World View Enterprises at Spaceport Tucson last December caused more than $475,000 in damages to the company’s county-owned building, more than double the initial estimates, according to a new report to the Pima County Board of Supervisors.

World View’s insurance carrier paid the full cost of the repairs, which were initially pegged at about $200,000, according to a memo to the board prepared by County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry in response to queries from Supervisor Ally Miller. World View’s own independent investigation found that the explosion was caused by static electricity and that the company’s preflight safety review “incorrectly assessed both the probability and possible consequences of an explosive event during deflation.” (8/5)

Boeing Crew Sees Starliner on Space Coast as Company Prepares for 2019 Launch (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
“The first thing I noticed is that they are looking kind of like our trainers,” NASA Astronaut Nicole Mann said. In the former processing facility for NASA’s space shuttle, workers put some touches onto three capsules, in varying stages of construction and completion, that will carry astronauts into space.

Mann is one of two first-timers in a crew of five who will be among the first people to fly into space from U.S. soil since 2011. The crew has spent part of this week on Florida’s Space Coast, meeting personnel who have helped build and test the hardware that will carry them into space.

Mann will ride alongside Ferguson and Boe to the International Space Station aboard the Starliner’s first crewed space flight in mid-2019. The trio will take off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the Space Coast. The crew has gone through several launch simulations this week, looking to perfect the sequence that will ready the spacecraft for flight. (8/9)

Stratolaunch Rolls Out for Taxi Test #3 at Mojave Spaceport (Source: Parabolic Arc)
From the Stratolaunch team on Friday at Mojave, California: "We are rolling out this morning for Taxi Test #3. We plan to conduct 5 Taxi Tests prior to First Flight." (8/10)

NASA Official: 'No Threat to Wallops' Closing (Source: DelMarVa Now)
Jay Pittman stood up at the conclusion of the quarterly luncheon meeting of the Wallops Island Regional Alliance on Wednesday and quietly spoke these three words to a packed room: "There's no threat." The assistant director for strategy and integration at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt repeated those words several times during the next few minutes.

Rumors spreading the previous Friday had sparked news media inquiries that led NASA to release an official statement about a study designed to explore ways to improve the relationship and increase efficiencies between NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's sister facilities in Greenbelt, Maryland and Wallops Island, Virginia. Wallops Flight Facility spokesman Keith Koehler said Friday the 90-day study will wrap up by late October, and is not expected to have any impact on the Wallops facility before then.

Still, the official statement only served to increase concerns that "efficiencies" was code for "closing Wallops Island Flight Facility." Peter Bale said he would like to see the Wallops Flight Facility separated from Greenbelt and Goddard to become an independent facility. Around 1,200 people currently work at Wallops, including 280 civil service workers and more than 900 independent contractors, Koehler said, adding that the NASA Wallops annual budget is around $250 million. An economic study prepared by BEACON at Salisbury University in 2011 lists the total economic impact at that time as more than $395 million. (8/10)

What Astronauts Really Think About Having Tourists in Space (Source: Travel + Leisure)
Officially, seven private citizens have already been there, each paying from $20 million to $40 million between 2001 and 2009 (before the trips were put on hold) for a ride on a Russian spacecraft and a stay at the International Space Station. Now numerous private companies — including Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, SpaceX and others — are developing a variety of space tourism programs and out-of-this-world experiences. Some promise earthlings the opportunity to experience weightlessness, while others are selling rocket ship rides and week-long stays at luxury hotels to be built in space.

And while these journeys won’t ever be cheap, carefree, or 100-percent safe, most are already bookable — although details such as departure dates are still to be determined. Another detail not yet determined: what “regular” people who travel into space should be called. Merriam-Webster defines an astronaut as “a person who travels beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.” And while some professional astronauts are fine sharing that title, others suggest a better term for someone who purchases a rocket ride might be “spaceflight participant” or simply “space tourist.”

After all, notes retired NASA astronaut Anna Lee Fisher, “Every passenger on an airplane is not called a pilot.” Whatever citizen astronauts are called, Fisher, one of the “original six” women accepted into NASA’s Astronaut Training Program, and many of her peers don’t seem to have an “I got mine, let’s pull up the ladder now,” attitude when it comes to novices visiting space. Click here. (8/10)

UK Spaceport Landowners to Benefit with at Least 1% of All Launch Fees (Source: Press & Journal)
Plans for the UK’s first spaceport in Sutherland – creating hundreds of jobs – are taking off as proposals for other potential sites in the Highlands and Islands were not ruled out of contention as other bases. It was revealed yesterday that landowners would benefit from at least one per cent of all launch fees, with a further one percent going to the community. Public consultations are to begin this month on the project at Melness, as it was also revealed a final planning application for the site to become the first launchpad for satellites was expected to be lodged next year.

The spaceport is expected to cost in the region of £17million and is to be developed by HIE, with public consultations to take place later this month. Roy Kirk, of HIE, confirmed discussions and consultations were taking place in preparation for submitting a planning application, expected in late 2019. He added: “There are plenty opportunities here for the local supply chain and we hope to host a supplier day in September/October time. We are keen to hear from local organisations and explore how they can get involved in the project.

“Our plan, which is not yet finalised, has been positive in hearing the help and consideration of the Melness crofters. The plan would be we would take a lease with the Crofters Estate and we would then be the landlord and we would build this facility. “The crofters will certainly get a reasonable rental. One percent of all launch fees will be donated to the landowners, with a further one percent being donated to the community.” (8/10)

In Space 'There Won't be Many Prizes for Second Place' (Source: Politico)
Rapid technological progress makes space more of an opportunity for exploration and discovery than ever before. The commercial opportunities are simply staggering. Visionary investors see new markets across a variety of industries, to include space tourism, space-based wireless internet across the globe, space-based solar power, asteroid mining, and space-based manufacturing. Imagine a world where materials harvested from asteroids are stored in space, used to 3D-print new satellites or space vehicles, without any need for a gravity-defeating launch vehicle to put them into space.

Imagine the impact on humanity if space-based solar power and internet access could fuel and connect the whole world for free. This vision is not a 100-year pipe dream. The components and vision are already here. We only require the national vision, will, and commitment.

As human development of space increases rapidly in the coming years, the U.S. military certainly understands and appreciates its expanded role. As a first step, the military recognizes that our reliance on space creates vulnerabilities that must be actively defended. So as a nation and as a military, we now approach space as an active warfighting domain-an arena of competition and conflict as we pursue sustained advantage. Similarly, the U.S. military will continue to ensure that the security of our homeland and planet-enabled in and through space-endures in perpetuity. (8/10)

What Happens When an Astronaut Gets Sick in Space? (Source: Mental Floss)
Astronauts are among the fittest and healthiest people in the world. They're rigorously trained, vetted, and quarantined before they’re allowed up in space—and yet, despite all those precautions, they do sometimes get sick. Apollo 13's Fred Haise, for example, had to deal with a painful kidney infection during the dangerous mission that gave us the phrase "Houston, we have a problem," and one-time astronaut Jake Garn, a Utah senator, got so motion-sick during a 1985 Discovery mission that astronauts now rate their nausea levels on the Garn Scale.

Because space missions are on a strict schedule planned far in advance, sick astronauts on a space mission can't just pop down to Earth to see a doctor. But when astronauts fall ill, they don't have to worry—NASA and other space agencies that have missions aboard the ISS are prepared. Click here. (8/9)

Russia Looks to Hurt U.S. in Space After New Sanctions (Source: Daily Beast)
Russia’s retaliation to new U.S. sanctions is likely going to place American access to space at risk. To get heavy payloads into orbit, American rockets like the Atlas V use Russia’s powerful RD-180 engine—an engine that previous rounds of U.S. sanctions have studiously exempted. But now, following the Trump administration’s decision to retaliate for the Kremlin poisoning a former spy and his daughter, Russian officials are threatening to block sales of the RD-180 to the Americans.

Russian lawmaker Sergei Ryabukhin, who heads the budget committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, responded to the new sanctions by vowing: “The United States needs to finally understand that it’s useless to fight with Russia, including with the help of sanctions.” According to the Russian news agency RIA, Ryabukhin found a place to hit Washington where it’s soft: the rocket engine. Losing access to the RD-180 would make American access to space—something Donald Trump desires enough to create a separate military service branch devoted to it—much more complicated. The engine helps get everything from satellites to astronauts into orbit. (8/9)

Utah Could Play Key Role in Space Force (Source: Deseret News)
Rep. Rob Bishop says Utah and especially Hill Air Force Base could play a key role in President Donald Trump's newly announced plans for a Space Force. "The fact that Utah has been a prime player in space and the aerospace industry and space exploration for so long simply means we have a lot of expertise here in the state that I'm pretty sure will probably be exploited and used," the Utah Republican said. Bishop, whose district includes Hill, said he has yet to be sold on the need to create a new branch of the military by 2020 to defend the United States in space, currently the responsibility of the Air Force. (8/9)

Americans Think NASA Should Focus on Climate Change. Trump Doesn’t (Source: Bloomberg)
NASA’s focus should not be on the cosmos but on Earth, according to a wide-ranging Bloomberg poll of Americans’ views on space. Observing the climate should be NASA’s “top priority,” according to 43 percent of those surveyed, who chose from six possible options. One-quarter said the agency should monitor asteroids and other space objects. Only 3 percent said NASA’s top focus should be sending astronauts to the moon, while a mere 8 percent said a human trip to Mars or other planets should be the agency’s main goal.

The findings point to a stark contrast with NASA’s current focus on human spaceflight and deep-space exploration, as the agency works on a lunar orbital platform for the early 2020s and a mission to Mars in the 2030s. The poll was conducted for Bloomberg Businessweek by research firm Morning Consult, which surveyed 2,202 U.S. adults in July. Under the Obama administration, NASA’s Earth Science program saw the fastest growth of any science division at the agency, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (8/1)

The Evolution of the Big Falcon Rocket (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
On September 29th, 2017, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled detailed plans of the Big Falcon Rocket at the 68th International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia. It was a follow-up speech to the prior year’s presentation when he first discussed the architecture of what was then called the Interplanetary Transport System.  In his highly anticipated speech, Musk laid out the detailed plans for a two stage rocket to enable the colonization of Mars, a moon base, and hypersonic long-distance travel on Earth.

The design featured an enormous Booster that would be powered by 31 Raptor engines, planned to be the world’s most advanced and highest pressure chemical rocket engine. Following stage separation, the booster would return to Earth and land near or on the launch pad.

There were three variants of the rocket’s second stage planned: a Spaceship, Tanker and Cargo Lifter. The primary of which, the BFR Spaceship, was also the colonization vehicle and that could carry up to 100 passengers and a hundred tonnes of cargo. One possible use of the Spaceship was as the world’s first hypersonic passenger transport vehicle, which would enable travel between any two points on Earth in under an hour. Its primary envisioned mission, however, was to be a colonization vehicle for the Moon, Mars and beyond. Click here. (8/9)

Dark Matter Might Be Harder to Detect Because it’s Not From Our Galaxy (Source: New Scientist)
Astronomers recently revealed that our galaxy, the Milky Way, devoured a so-called “sausage” galaxy about 10 billion years ago. Now it seems this sausage might make finding dark matter ever harder. We can’t track dark matter directly because it is invisible and can pass straight through normal matter. But the location of dark matter appears to coincide with regular matter, so we can track its movements by looking to the stars. Click here. (8/2)

NASA Awards Six Companies $44 Million to Develop New Space Exploration Technologies (Source: Houston Chronicle)
In an effort to expand NASA's space exploration goals, the agency is funding 10 commercial projects such as new technologies for lunar lander propulsion and deep space rocket engines. NASA will disperse up to $44 million across the 10 projects, chosen because they "have the potential to significantly benefit the commercial space economy and future NASA missions," according to a space agency statement.

These are projects, Jim Reuter said, that may not have been developed without the agency's help. Six companies, including Blue Origin, were awarded funds. Three of the 10 projects -- being developed by Washington-based Blue Origin, Colorado-based United Launch Alliance and Pennsylvania-based Astrobotic Technology -- received $10 million each, while the rest received smaller quantities. Click here. (8/8)

Griffin: Space-Based Missile Defense Can Be Done (Source: Breaking Defense)
Some 35 years after Ronald Reagan’s famous Star Wars speech, the Pentagon’s R&D chief said that space-based missile defenses are technically feasible and reasonably affordable. Since Reagan’s day, technology has advanced enough that putting both sensors and shooters in space is not only possible but “relatively easy,” Undersecretary for Research & Engineering Mike Griffin said. What’s more, past estimates of the cost of space-based interceptors have been “unrealistically,” even “naively” high.

Specifically, Griffin said the US “absolutely” needs space-based sensors to detect low-flying hypersonic cruise missiles, a new threat that’s much harder to spot from orbit than ICBMs. And he said we probably need space-based interceptors to shoot down high-flying ballistic missiles during the boost phase, the period before the warheads separate from the rocket.

Note these are two different functions with two different types of targets. Space-based interceptors would not work against hypersonic cruise missiles, Griffin said. They fly too low, deep in the atmosphere, so any munition you shoot at them from space would have to be hardened against the heat of atmospheric reentry, which he called prohibitively difficult. “It may not be a bridge too far, but it’s a pretty far away bridge.” (8/8)

NASA Announces New Deputy Director of Johnson Space Center (Source: NASA)
NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) Director Mark Geyer announced Wednesday the selection of Vanessa Wyche as the next deputy director of JSC in Houston. Wyche will assist Geyer in leading one of NASA's largest installations, which has nearly 10,000 civil service and contractor employees – including those at White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico – and a broad range of human spaceflight activities. (8/8)

Here’s What SpaceX Must Do to Win the Commercial Crew Race (Source: Ars Technica)
On Friday, when NASA announced the nine astronauts who would fly aboard the first commercial crew missions, Kathy Lueders sat among the audience clapping. Certainly for the manager of the space agency's commercial crew program, this was a happy day. But much hard work remains before the flights actually take place, and Lueders knows this more than anyone. Ultimately, she bears responsibility for ensuring that these men and women would have the safest possible flights.

“We’ve got to keep going,” she said later Friday, in an interview following the astronaut announcement ceremony. “I kind of feel like we’re having the party before the flight.” First up for SpaceX is the uncrewed mission, Demo-1, presently targeted for November. SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, has expressed confidence in the company’s ability to make this deadline. However, she admitted last Friday that, “Predicting launch dates can make a liar out of anyone.” Click here. (8/8)

Vega’s Long-Awaited (Small) Successes (Source: Space News)
Although the mostly Italian Vega rocket was added to the Arianespace family in 2012, it’s only recently achieved tangible success in wooing the smallest spacecraft operators. The reasons are twofold. First, Vega is about to get an adapter that can fit cubesats and microsats up to 400 kilograms inside the rocket’s payload fairing. The second is lower prices.

This year, Arianespace signed four customers for the first flight the new adapter, the Small Spacecraft Mission System, or SMSS. The customers — U.S. smallsat launch aggregator Spaceflight Inc., Dutch satellite builder Innovative Solutions in Space, Italian satellite builder Sitael and Italian startup D-Orbit — are due to launch on SSMS’s maiden flight in the first half of 2019.

SSMS is a modular system, and doesn’t have to fill the entire payload fairing, according to Avio. Vega can launch with a smaller SSMS along with a primary payload, allowing flexibility on launch timing. Arianespace has not publicly disclosed how much it charges for Vega missions, but Spaceflight President Curt Blake told SpaceNews in April that newfound attractive pricing convinced the company to contract with Arianespace for the first time ever. (8/8)

Efforts to Develop Small-Scale Rockets are Soaring, but Only a Few Get Off the Ground (Source: GeekWire)
The latest “State of the Industry” report for small orbital-class launch vehicles tracks 101 reported efforts to create such rockets, compared with a mere 31 in 2015. But many of those efforts are defunct or in limbo, Northrop Grumman’s Carlos Niederstrasser said.

“We’re definitely starting to see attrition” in the industry, he said. Niederstrasser said only four small launch vehicles have entered service since 2015: three Chinese rockets and Rocket Lab’s Electron. He also noted that the per-kilogram price for putting a payload in orbit can go as high as $50,000. “These small launch vehicles are not going to be the cheapest way to get into the orbit,” Niederstrasser said. “Their main selling point is convenience. … If you really want the cheapest access to space, you’re still pretty much left with the rideshare domain.” Click here. (8/8)

France's ThrustMe Gets $2.8M in European Grant Funds for Electric Thrusters (Source: Space News)
French propulsion startup ThrustMe has received $2.8 million from the European Commission. The funding, provided earlier this month through the EC's Horizon 2020 program, will go towards towards development of a pilot production line for its electric thrusters. The first of those thrusters will fly on an undisclosed satellite next year. (8/8)

Stellar Exploration Develops Bi-Propellannt Thruster for Cubesats (Source: Space News)
A new thruster could enable cubesats to carry out deep space missions more effectively. Stellar Exploration developed a miniaturized bi-propellant thruster system that would provide a 12U cubesat with about 2 kilometers per second of delta-V. NASA funded development of the thruster, and Stellar Exploration is proposing using it on a cubesat mission that would fly as a secondary payload on NASA's Psyche mission. That cubesat would use the thruster to enter Mars orbit when Psyche performs a flyby of the planet en route to its asteroid destination. (8/8)

Putin Pushes Again for Improvements to Russian Space Competitiveness (Source: TASS)
Russian President Vladimir Putin wants the Russian space industry to improve its quality and pricing. Speaking at a meeting of Russian space industry executives Wednesday, Putin said Russian industry "must achieve sustainable growth of quality" while being competitive in price on the global market. He also called for greater financial stability among companies in the field as well as more efforts to hire more young professionals. (8/8)

Cybersecurity a Growing Threat for Smallsats (Source: Space News)
Smallsat operators are facing new demands regarding cybersecurity. The author of a report published earlier this year on cybersecurity threats for space systems said that smallst companies would make "a gigantic mistake" if they thought they didn't need to pay attention to those concerns and take measure such as encrypting transmissions and safeguarding ground stations. Smallsat developers, though, say that full-scale cybersecurity measures, like those used for large satellites, could significantly increase the costs of their satellites and make then uneconomical.

NOAA, meanwhile, is taking a measured approach to data protection plans for remote sensing satellites licensed by the agency. The agency is creating a three-tier system for data protection plans, with less stringent requirements for satellites that pose no significant national security or foreign policy risks. (8/8)

Made In Space Proposes Printing Large Solar Arrays for Small Satellites (Source: Space News)
Made In Space, the Silicon Valley startup focused on additive manufacturing in orbit, plans to boost the power available to small satellites with Archinaut, the company’s in-space manufacturing and assembling technology. “Small satellites have solar panels that produce a kilowatt to a kilowatt and a half,” said Andrew Rush, Made In Space chief executive. “We can give you four to five kilowatts of power.”

Made In Space proposes launching a 150- to 300-kilogram satellite with a tightly-packed solar cell blanket and raw material needed to feed an onboard 3D printer. On orbit, the satellite would manufacture solar arrays optimized for microgravity. Solar arrays built on the ground are reinforced to withstand launch forces, stowed to fit in launch fairings and equipped with mechanisms to deploy in orbit. Instead, the Archinaut solar arrays would be designed for microgravity with a core lattice structure and a robotic arm to integrate the solar array blanket. (8/8)

Astroethics and Cosmocentrism (Source: Scientific American)
In recent months both Breakthrough Listen and the SETI Institute have sponsored both real and virtual meetings to examine the societal impact should their programs prove successful. Anthropologists, historians, ethicists, philosophers and others are joining the interdisciplinary conversation in a serious way, impelled by the increasing possibility of discovery.

All of this activity gives new urgency to a whole series of ethical questions. Does Mars belong to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes? What do we say in response to an alien message, and who speaks for Earth? How do we treat aliens, either remotely or in a “close encounter of the third kind”? In short, whether we discover alien microbes or advanced alien life, we will immediately be faced with the problem of how to interact.

Welcome to the world of astroethics—the contemplation and development of ethical standards for a variety of outer space issues, including terraforming the planets, resource utilization, near-Earth asteroid threats, space exploration, planetary protection—and the discovery of extraterrestrial life. The problems involving E.T. life are particularly fraught, especially if it talks back to us. Before we can act in any situation that involves life, it is first important to assess the moral status of the organisms involved. Click here. (8/8)

UAE Regulations to Focus on Space Economy (Source: Khaleej Times)
The UAE Space Agency is keen on developing appropriate laws and regulations to attract private sector investors in the country's space industry. The chief of the UAE Space Agency, Dr Mohamed Nasser Al Ahbabi, said they have recently completed a Space Investment Strategy, which aims to encourage local companies to invest in space. He said that investors often consider space as "high risk" and want the proper laws and regulations that will protect them legally.

"We are working on space regulations as well. You have to think about the space economy. Investors want to make sure if they invest, they have the right environment. So we need space regulations and laws to protect the local operator and to encourage foreign investors," Dr Al Ahbabi said. (8/8)

VP Pence Announces First Steps Toward Space Force (Source: Space News)
The debate is over. The United States will have a Space Force as a separate branch of the military. In a joint appearance at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary James Mattis, Vice President Mike Pence laid out the Trump administration’s plan to create a U.S. Space Force. It was only seven weeks ago that President Trump directed DoD to begin the process. The president has made it a priority to “restore America’s proud history of leadership in space,” Pence said.

The report lays out four steps that it will take to start the reorganization the military with a goal of creating a fully independent Space Force within a few years, depending on how quickly Congress moves to pass legislation. Things could get contentious on Capitol Hill as the Space Force issue has taken a more partisan tone. Although Democrats have supported the idea in the past, some may withdraw support depending on the outcome of the mid-term election in November.

Without any new legislation and using existing authorities, DoD will establish several of the component parts of the Space Force. The second phase requires Congress to combine these components into the sixth branch of the armed forces. Click here. (8/8) 

What Are We Cutting for the $8 Billion Space Force? (Source: NowThis)
Trump and Pence want $8 billion for the space force. Meanwhile, Trump proposed $3.7 billion in cuts to education, $17 billion in cuts to food stamps, and $6.6 billion in cuts to housing. (8/9)

NASA Signs Off on SpaceX’s “Load-and-Go” Procedure for Crew Launches (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
The NASA manager overseeing development of Boeing and SpaceX’s commercial crew ferry ships says the space agency has approved SpaceX’s proposal to strap in astronauts atop Falcon 9 rockets, then fuel the launchers in the final hour of the countdown as the company does for its uncrewed missions.

The “load-and-go” procedure has become standard for SpaceX’s satellite launches, in which an automatic countdown sequencer commands chilled kerosene and cryogenic liquid oxygen to flow into the Falcon 9 rocket in the final minutes before liftoff.

“From a program standpoint, we went throgh a pretty extensive process where we laid out the different options for loading the crew, and assessing how the vehicles have been designed, and what the trades were,” said Kathy Lueders, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, in an interview Friday. “That came to the program in June, and after looking at it, we felt like the current baseline plan for how SpaceX plans to load the crews meets our requirements.” (8/9)