August 2, 2018

Boeing Delays Starliner Test Flight (Source: Space News)
Boeing announced Wednesday it was delaying the test flights of its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle after a problem during an abort engine test. The company said it now expects an uncrewed test flight to take place late this year or early next year, with a crewed flight to follow in mid-2019. Engineers have found the root cause of a problem during a static-fire test of the vehicle's abort engines in June, when several valves failed to close properly at the end of the test. Boeing plans to delay a pad abort test of the vehicle, which had been planned for later this summer, until next spring, noting that the abort system is not needed for the uncrewed flight test. The company called the revised schedule "realistic" but noted that there remain risks that could result in additional delays. (8/2)

SpaceX Is Now Poised To Beat Boeing To This Milestone In Space Travel (Source: Investor's Business Daily)
An unmanned test of Boeing's Crew Space Transportation-100 Starliner capsule previously was due in August, and a crewed test was scheduled for November. But Boeing pushed back its plans by about six months, telling reporters on a call that it now sees the first unmanned flight in "late 2018 or early 2019," according to CNBC.

While SpaceX has seen delays too, it now looks poised to conduct its tests first. After initially estimating an April launch, SpaceX currently expects an uncrewed Crew Dragon capsule to launch in August. The first crewed mission is set for December, pushed back from an earlier timeline of August. SpaceX and Boeing will receive their final schedules Friday for a crewed mission to the International Space Station. Vice President Mike Pence is expected to announce the schedules at the Kennedy Space Center. (8/1)

Airbus Studies Broadband Constellation for Telesat (Source: Space News)
Airbus has won a study contract from Telesat for its proposed broadband constellation. The contract covers a "series of engineering activities and technical reviews" and is similar to one that Telesat awarded earlier this week to a team of Thales Alenia Space and Maxar Technologies' SSL. Telesat plans to award a contract next year for production of the constellation. Airbus is already teamed with OneWeb to produce that company's constellation, although the spacecraft envisioned by Telesat are larger and more complex than OneWeb's constellation. (8/2)

Airbus Wins Eutelsat Contract for Geo Satellites (Source: Space News)
Airbus also won a contract from Eutelsat to build two geostationary satellites. The contract is for construction of two all-electric satellites that will replace three existing Hotbird satellites that provide video services to Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Eutelsat said it expects "significant savings" from the new spacecraft relative to the original cost of the earlier Hotbird satellites, which cost about $700 million when built and launched 10-12 years ago. The new satellites are expected to launch in 2021. (8/2) [SpaceNews]

Air Force Plans Next-Gen Launcher Contracts This Month (Source: Space News)
The Air Force plans to make awards for development of next-generation launch vehicles later this month. The Air Force has planned to issue Launch Service Agreement contracts in July to multiple companies, but a spokesperson for the Space and Missile Systems Center said the awards are now planned for sometime this month. Several companies, including Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, SpaceX and United Launch Alliance are believed to be competing for the contracts, which will cover development of vehicle prototypes. (8/2)

Senate Committee Approves Commercial Space Bill (Source: Space News)
The Senate Commerce Committee approved a commercial space bill Wednesday. The committee favorably reported the Space Frontier Act during a brief markup session that also approved several other unrelated bills. The bill, introduced last week, seeks to streamline commercial launch and remote sensing regulations, and also authorizes an extension of the International Space Station through 2030. The bill's lead sponsor, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), said he's hopeful that the bill can make it through Congress and be signed into law by the end of the year. (8/2)

Made In Space Proposes On-Orbit Augmentation of Microsatellites (Source: Space.com)
Made In Space says its on-orbit satellite assembly technology could be used to give large power systems to small satellites. The company is developing a system called Archinaut to support assembly of spacecraft in orbit. An initial use of Archinaut, according to the company, would be to assemble large solar panels for smallsats after their launch, getting around problems such as folding large arrays into small volumes for launch. The company believes the technology could be demonstrated within about three years. (8/2)

Golden Apollo Replica Still Missing (Source: AP)
A golden replica of the Apollo lunar module stolen from a museum more than a year ago remains missing. Thieves stole the 18-karat gold replica of the Apollo 11 lunar module, weighing about 0.8 kilograms, from the Armstrong Air and Space Museum last July, but investigators have yet to find the item or identify any suspects. An identical replica given to Buzz Aldrin in 1969 was sold at action at auction last year for nearly $150,000. (8/2)

Congress Is Quietly Nudging NASA to Look for Aliens (Source: The Atlantic)
In October 1992, astronomers kicked off an ambitious project years in the making. Two radio telescopes, one in Puerto Rico and the other in California, started scouring the night sky for potential signals from alien civilizations somewhere deep in the cosmos. “We begin the search,” declared Jill Tarter, the project scientist, as the telescopes started listening around glimmering stars many light-years from Earth.

A year later, the search was suddenly over. A senator from Nevada wiped out all funding for any efforts in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or seti, in NASA’s budget, including this new project. The search for extraterrestrial life, in general, would continue, of course, carried out by academic institutions around the world. That could soon change. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives recently proposed legislation for NASA’s future that includes some intriguing language. The space agency, the bill recommends, should spend $10 million on the “search for technosignatures, such as radio transmissions” per year, for the next two fiscal years.

The House bill—should it survive a vote in the House and passage in the Senate—can only make recommendations for how agencies should use federal funding. But for SETI researchers like Tarter, the fact that it even exists is thrilling. It’s the first time congressional lawmakers have proposed using federal cash to fund seti in 25 years. (8/1)

Exoplanets Where Life Could Develop as on Earth (Source: Space Daily)
Scientists have identified a group of planets outside our solar system where the same chemical conditions that may have led to life on Earth exist. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB), found that the chances for life to develop on the surface of a rocky planet like Earth are connected to the type and strength of light given off by its host star.

Stars which give off sufficient ultraviolet (UV) light could kick-start life on their orbiting planets in the same way it likely developed on Earth, where the UV light powers a series of chemical reactions that produce the building blocks of life. The researchers have identified a range of planets where the UV light from their host star is sufficient to allow these chemical reactions to take place, and that lie within the habitable range where liquid water can exist on the planet's surface. (8/2)

Former Air Force Secretary Says Nobody in Pentagon Wants President Trump's Space Force (Source: TIME)
The former Secretary of the Air Force says the military’s top brass doesn’t support President Donald Trump’s plan to create a Space Force. “None of them are in favor of a Space Force, I say none of the top leaders, but they’re stuck. The President has said it and it will be interesting to see how they now deal with it,” Deborah Lee James, who was Secretary of the Air Force in the Obama Administration, said Monday. (7/31)

Russian Embassy Trolls US Launch Industry After New Rocket Engine Sale (Source: Ars Technica)
According to Russian publications, the Russia-based rocket propulsion company Energomash has signed a deal to sell six more RD-180 rocket engines to United Launch Alliance in 2020. These six engines will allow for six additional flights of the Atlas V rocket, which flies national security payloads and science missions for the US government. Soon, the rocket will also fly Boeing's crewed Starliner spacecraft into orbit.

NASA has understandably made a big deal out of its commercial crew program through which it is paying Boeing and SpaceX to develop spacecraft that will allow astronauts to launch to the International Space Station from Florida. Since the 2011 retirement of the space shuttle, NASA has gotten its people into space aboard Russian rockets launching from Kazakhstan.

Seizing upon this announcement, the Russian embassy in Washington, DC, evidently felt the need to troll United Launch Alliance, the US military, and NASA on Twitter, saying, "Russian rocket engines to continue launching America into space." (8/1)

Maxar Creating New Smallsat Division as it Shrinks SSL (Source: Space News)
Maxar Technologies is setting up a new organization focused solely on small satellites while continuing to downsize its geostationary satellite manufacturing business at Space Systems Loral. Howard Lance, Maxar’s chief executive, said the company is still examining strategic alternatives for its business of building large multi-ton geostationary communications satellites — one of which is exiting that line of work altogether — but has not yet made a decision.

Speaking July 31 on a conference call with analysts, Lance said Maxar is laying off staff in Palo Alto, California where SSL builds satellites of all sizes, while scaling up the new division in nearby San Jose, California to focus on smallsat work that is growing instead of shrinking. (7/31)

NASA Wants to Know If Space Travel Affects Plant and Animal Evolution (Source: NextGov)
Matt Damon already proved potatoes can survive on Mars, but NASA now wants to figure out how spaceflight and changing gravity patterns impact the way other plants and animals grow and develop.

The space agency began accepting proposals for a number of different projects under its space biology research program, a broad initiative aimed at investigating how short- and long-term spaceflights affect the internal processes of cells, microorganisms, plants and animals. Projects will also focus on how space environments affect reproduction and evolution over multiple generations.

“Space biology science enables NASA to achieve the goals of fundamental and translational biology research in space that is critical to the Agency’s exploration and space commercialization missions,” officials wrote in the research announcement. The program comes as NASA begins laying the groundwork for long-term human missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. (7/27)

HyperSciences Wins Support for Ram Accelerator From NASA, Shell — and From Crowdfunding (Source: GeekWire)
Things are looking up, and looking down, for HyperSciences Inc. Either way, that’s good news for the four-year-old hypersonic startup in Spokane, Wash., and for its founder and CEO, Mark Russell. Hypersciences’ key technology is a ram accelerator system that can be used to drill downward into rock up to 10 times more quickly than traditional methods — or send a projectile upward at 6,700 mph, roughly nine times the speed of sound.

The drilling application, known as HyperDrill, won more than $1 million in support from Shell Global’s GameChanger program for early-stage technology development. In May, Shell sent HyperSciences a non-binding letter of intent to provide another $250,000 in development funding, potentially leading to a $2.5 million field trial.

Also in May, NASA awarded HyperSciences a $125,000 Small Business Innovation Research Phase I grant to develop a hypersonic launch system based on the company’s HyperCore ram accelerator technology. To take HyperSciences to the next level, Russell and his team have turned to SeedInvest, an online platform for equity-based crowdfunding, SeedInvest lets investors sign up for shares in line with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulation A rules. (7/28)