August 31, 2018

Senate Inaction Could Punt FAA Authorization to Post-Election (Source: AIN)
The Federal Aviation Administration's short-term authorization expires at the end of September, and the Senate may put off action on a five-year authorization bill until after the November elections. The FAA's previous long-term authorization expired in 2015, and the Senate has a history of using short-term extensions for the FAA. (8/30)

New Space Race Fuels Massive Economic Comeback on Space Coast (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
“We’ve never been busier,” said Brenda Mulberry, president of Merritt Island’s Space Shirts. The store has more than doubled its business since the shuttle program formally ended seven years ago Friday. The 30-year program’s closure signaled the loss of about 9,000 direct jobs and thousands more indirect ones in Brevard County. Worsened by the economic recession, unemployment in Brevard bottomed out at 11.8 percent in 2010. Some people thought Kennedy Space Center had closed.

To survive, KSC moved from just a launch site to a place where spacecraft could be assembled, including the next-generation deep space exploration vehicle Orion, which is nearly completed. The region’s economy diversified to welcome suppliers and manufacturers. Brazilian aerospace giant Embraer created nearly 1,000 jobs and aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman Corp. added about 3,000. And then came the high-profile private space companies.

Tesla founder Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin set up camp on the Space Coast, bringing with them a new, 330-job rocket factory for Blue Origin, opening in February, and the promise of crewed flights from SpaceX as early as April — the first from American soil since the shuttle program shut down. By July 2018, unemployment in Brevard had fallen to 3.9 percent. And by August, the Space Coast Economic Development Commission said the Cape had created 8,718 mostly space-related jobs since October 2010, when unemployment rates were at their highest. Click here. (8/31)

SpaceTEC Adopts Apprenticeship Effort for Aerospace Industry (Source: SpaceTEC)
SpaceTEC and the Space Coast Consortium have agreed to have the Consortium operate as an autonomous sub-committee under the umbrella of SpaceTEC. The consortium of local industry leaders willoperate under the SpaceTEC 501c3 status to implement and manage an apprenticeship program that directly suits the workforce talent pipeline needs of the Consortium and the region's growing aerospace industry. SpaceTEC will provide the general administration and fiscal transparency required of the program through its 501c3 status and will assist as the Principal Investigator to seek federal, state and local funding to support the apprenticeship program. (8/28)

Proton Medium Shelved by Russia (Source: Space News)
A version of the Proton rocket that International Launch Services billed as a competitor to SpaceX's Falcon 9 is now on "indefinite hold." ILS said it has paused development of the Proton Medium, a two-stage version of the Proton Breeze M, and will shift customers who ordered Proton Medium launches to the larger Proton. ILS had previously offered the Proton Medium as an alternative to the Falcon 9, and at one point thought the rocket would be the most commonly used version of the Proton. Khrunichev, which manufactures the Proton, halted work on the medium version as it studies accelerating the transition to the Angara rocket. (8/31)

Big Air Force Launcher Decision Coming in September (Source: Space News)
The Air Force is expected to make awards for next-generation launch vehicles in September. The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) said it plans to announce the winners of the Launch Services Agreement competition next month to support development of prototypes of new launch vehicles. SpaceX and United Launch Alliance are the frontrunners to win contracts, with Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman also competing. Earlier schedules called for the Air Force to make the awards in July, but sources said it needed more time to evaluate the bid from Blue Origin. (8/31)

Texas Wants Lunar Lander Program at JSC (Source: Ars Technica))
Members of the Texan congressional delegation are asking NASA to base its lunar lander development program at the Johnson Space Center. In a letter signed by both of the state's senators and three House members who chair key committees or subcommittees, the members argued that the Johnson Space Center would be the best location to manage development of future lunar landers as part of NASA's lunar exploration effort. NASA expects to select the centers that will manage lander development, as well as the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, by the end of the year. (8/31)

UK Company Launches Test Rocket in Scotland (Source: STV)
A British launch company carried out its first, albeit small-scale, launch from Scotland. Skyrora said its Skyrora Nano rocket, launched from an estate in Scotland, reached a peak altitude of more than six kilometers and top speed of Mach 1.45 during the recent launch. The company used the launch to test technologies it intends to use in future suborbital and orbital launch vehicles. Skyrora has also expressed an interest in using a launch site the British government announced it will develop in northern Scotland. (8/31)

Japan Plans Asteroid Landing on Sep. 21 (Source: BBC)
The Japanese space agency JAXA has set dates for deploying landers on the surface of the near Earth asteroid Ryugu. Officials said that the Hayabusa2 spacecraft will deploy a small package called Minerva II-1 on Sep. 21, which will land on the surface and deploy two "rovers" that will move by hopping across the surface. On Oct. 3, Hayabusa2 will release Mascot, a lander developed by the French and German space agencies. Hayabusa2 itself will briefly touch the surface of Ryugu later in the mission to collect samples for return to Earth. (8/31)

Scientists Urge NASA to Try Mercury Lander (Source: Space.com)
Planetary scientists say it's time to send a lander to the surface of Mercury. In a recent white paper, a group of scientists argued that NASA should perform a feasibility study of a lander to the innermost planet. Mercury has been studied by flyby and orbiter missions, including NASA's Mariner 10 and MESSENGER spacecraft and ESA's upcoming BepiColombo, but proposals for landers have been rejected in the past as being not technically feasible. In the white paper, scientists said technological advancements make such a lander less difficult to build now, and that it could perform key scientific work that can't be done from orbit. (8/31)

Japanese Startup Plans Cubesat for Couples (Source: Asahi Shimbun)
A Japanese startup is providing a unique way to express your love. Warpspace Inc. is offering couples the opportunity to buy a nameplate celebrating their wedding that will be flown on a cubesat. That spacecraft will be launched from the ISS late next year, and couples will get photos of the satellite's deployment and perhaps notices of when the satellite is flying overhead. Cubesats released from the ISS, though, typically have lifetimes measured only in months before they reenter. (8/31)

ISS Cabin Pressure Steady After Crew Repairs Tiny Hole (Source: NASA)
The International Space Station’s cabin pressure is holding steady after the Expedition 56 crew conducted repair work on one of two Russian Soyuz spacecraft attached to the complex. The repair was made to address a leak that had caused a minor reduction of station pressure.

After a morning of investigations, the crew reported that the leak was isolated to a hole about two millimeters in diameter in the orbital compartment, or upper section, of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft attached to the Rassvet module of the Russian segment of the station. (8/30)

Cruz Warns Against Privatizing the International Space Station (Source: National Review)
NASA’s plan to commercialize the International Space Station (ISS) while ending direct government funding for the program by 2025 would cost jobs, waste billions of dollars, and create gaps in U.S. capabilities for China and Russia to exploit. It is also, by many measures, simply infeasible.

In fact, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine acknowledged in a June interview with the Washington Post that he does not have a specific plan for transitioning the ISS to private management. That may be because his agency’s own inspector general has expressed skepticism toward the idea of privatizing the Space Station, which currently costs NASA anywhere from $3 billion to $4 billion annually, according to government figures.

Since NASA would continue to use the ISS to fulfill research objectives that extend beyond 2025, it’s not clear how much taxpayers can expect to save. If anything, a decision to cancel NASA’s direct involvement could end up costing taxpayers more over the long term: If the ISS turns out not to be profitable, as seems more than likely, the inevitable response of the company or companies that have assumed control of it will be to embrace corporate cronyism and petition future administrations for federal aid. (8/30)

Repudiating the Global Commons: Trump’s Militarization of Space (Source: International Policy Digest)
In international law, a category regarded by certain legal philosophers as non-existent (there being no overarching sovereign to police it), aspirations reign like obstinate fantasies. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty is one such example, decorated by such expressions as outer space being the “province of all mankind” (Art. 1), with the “common interest of all mankind in the progress of the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes” being its animating principle.

Mightily presumptuous: the whole realm of the celestial heavens a province for all mankind; that it be explored and be exploited, garnished by such utopian hopes as “peaceful purposes.” But humankind was still bloodied from the savages of a world conflict that had taken the lives of tens of millions. It was popular, even in the shadow of the mushroom cloud, to dream.

Space was envisaged as a world where humans could play out various imaginaries. Unconquered as such, it supplied cultural, political and social rationales to human existence even as it promised a vicious competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. “It is believed,” opined the space author Vladimir Kopal in January 1967, “that the Treaty will contribute, at least to a certain degree, to diminishing the danger of a major armed conflict which would be waged in and through outer space.” (8/30)

India's Air Force to Select Astronauts for Manned Spaceflight (Source: Deccan Herald)
India’s first manned spaceflight mission, Gaganyaan will take off to space in December 2021, with three Indians selected by the Indian Air Force (IAF). This timeframe, announced here on Wednesday by Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chairman K Sivan, will allow the space agency to stick to the 2022 deadline set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (8/30)

Bridenstine Wants to Sell Naming Rights, Allow Astronauts to Seek Endorsements (Source: Space Policy Online)
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine today raised the possibility of selling naming rights to NASA rockets and spacecraft and allowing NASA astronauts to seek the same types of endorsements as sports figures. Those are just two of his ideas on how NASA can further embrace the commercial space movement.  He has created a new NASA Advisory Council (NAC) committee to advise him on regulatory and policy matters to determine what is possible and where there are barriers.  Maxar Technologies’ Mike Gold, a well known commercial space industry insider, was appointed to chair the committee.

The idea of painting corporate names on NASA rockets is hardly new, but has been shot down in the past as unseemly.  Bridenstine said it might offset some of NASA’s costs. As for NASA astronauts being allowed to seek endorsements — he mentioned being portrayed on cereal boxes like top athletes — Bridenstine made two points.  First, he thinks it will help inspire kids to think about becoming NASA astronauts or scientists instead of race car drivers.  Second, commercial astronauts, who will begin flying soon, will not be constrained so why should those who choose to work for NASA instead? (8/30)

Pentagon: Chinese Military ‘Likely’ Spied on Kodiak Missile Test (Source: Kodiak Daily Mirror)
According to a report from the Pentagon, a Chinese spy ship sailed near the Aleutian Islands last July “likely to monitor” a missile test underway at the Kodiak spaceport. The U.S. military conducted two tests of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system last summer at the Pacific Spaceport Complex; one on July 11, 2017 and another on July 30. It was unclear which of the two tests was likely monitored by the Chinese according to the report, titled “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China,” released publicly on August 21. (8/27)