August 9, 2018

Here's How NASA Created America's Private Space Industry (Source: Vice)
When you think about cutting-edge spaceflight in 2018, SpaceX is probably the first name that comes to mind. If you're a wonk, maybe Orbital ATK, or Blue Origin, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. What you're probably not thinking of is NASA.

NASA was established by the federal government during the Cold War to project American prestige and beat the Soviets, all in the name of space science. But the agency’s image peaked around the time Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon, and its image fell victim to a series of failed space missions, deep funding cuts to research, and changing political will.

For over a decade, NASA has been steadily ceding exploration of the cosmos to for-profit companies, its public profile fading with each new SpaceX launch. But without NASA, America’s private space industry probably wouldn't have gotten off the ground in the first place. (8/8)

Space Florida Offers Cash Prizes for Aviation and Aerospace Ventures (Source: Space Florida)
The Florida Venture Forum in partnership with Space Florida invites you to attend the first Florida Aviation & Aerospace Capital Forum on November 14th, 2018 at the Guidewell Innovation Center in Lake Nona, Florida. $100,000 in total prize money to be awarded by Space Florida. Three awards to be given to the top presenting companies, as determined by an onsite team of investor judges. Prize money to be divided as follows: $50,000 to the first place winner, $30,000 to the second place winner and $20,000 to the third place winner. Click here. (8/8)

Boeing Supports Capitalization of 3D Printing Company (Source: Boeing)
Boeing participated in a $12.9 million capital raise in 3D printing startup Digital Alloys, Inc., a company developing high-speed, 3D-printing systems that combine multiple metals. The resulting products have better thermal, electrical, magnetic and mechanical properties that "could be used on Boeing products," the company said. More than 60,000 3D-printed parts are in use on Boeing spacecraft, defense and commercial products, Boeing said.

Boeing HorizonX Ventures, the company's investment arm for emerging tech, joined Digital Alloys' Series B, led by G20 Ventures. Khosla Ventures, an investor in space startups Rocket Lab and Akash Systems also participated in the round, as did Lincoln Electric. (8/8)

Hawaii Supreme Court Rules in Favor of State on Telescope Sublease; No Decision Yet on Land Use Permit (Source: Hawaii Tribune Herald)
The state Supreme Court ruled that a contested case hearing is not required for the Thirty Meter Telescope’s sublease on Maunakea. The unanimous decision released Wednesday overturns a lower court ruling that would have required the state Land Board to grant another quasi-judicial hearing to determine if the $1.4 billion project should be built on the mountain, which some Native Hawaiians consider sacred.

E. Kalani Flores requested a contested case hearing for the sublease because of impacts he said the project would have to cultural and traditional practices. The state Land Board later denied the request. Hilo Circuit Court Judge Greg Nakamura ruled in his favor during an appeal, and issued an order in January 2017 vacating the sublease.

While the high court justices agreed that Flores’ has a substantial interest, they ruled that he didn’t show he would provide evidence that is materially different from what was presented during the other hearings for the project. Flores had participated in the contested cases for the land use permit. (8/8)

Cocoa Beach Retesting Groundwater Containing Cancer-Causing Chemicals (Source: Click Orlando)
With cancer-causing chemicals detected in groundwater and traces of chemicals in drinking water in communities near Patrick Air Force Base, Cocoa Beach officials said the city will do more testing in the next two weeks. City Manager Jim McKnight said the testing will be done at the same five sites that were tested last month, including the sewage plan, golf course, other neighborhoods and Port Canaveral.

Chemical levels found in Cocoa Beach groundwater were much higher than those found in Satellite Beach. Cocoa Beach and Satellite Beach officials met with the U.S. Air Force last week. "Patrick Air Force Base has some responsibility here, since they appear to be the main source, by preliminary testing, of what we're dealing with," McKnight said. "I think the tough questions are yet to come." (8/6)

Five Decades After Black Arrow, a Reawakening UK Launch Industry Aims for Bullseye (Source: Space News)
On Oct. 28, 1971, a Black Arrow rocket lifted off from the Woomera test range in Australia. The rocket placed into orbit a small satellite called Prospero to study the effects of the space environment on satellites. It marked the first time a British-built rocket placed a satellite into orbit. It was also the last time a British-built rocket placed a satellite in orbit.

The British government canceled the Black Arrow program three months earlier but allowed this final launch to proceed because the rocket had already been shipped to Australia. The United Kingdom became the first country to develop an orbital launch capability, only to give it up.

Now, after years of efforts within the British government, and lobbying by the country’s space industry, the U.K. is taking steps to get back in the launch business. Government officials described how they would re-establish a launch capability, this time using sites in the country but vehicles, in many cases, developed outside of it. Click here. (8/8) 

Strange 'Rogue Planet' Travels Through Space Alone (Source: CNN)
A strange 200 million-year-old object with the mass of a planet has been discovered 20 light-years from Earth, outside our solar system. The "rogue," as it's referred to by researchers, is producing an unexplained glowing aurora and travels through space alone, without a parent star.

The object, named SIMP J01365663+0933473, has 12.7 times the mass of the gas giant Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. It also has a strong magnetic field that is more than 200 times stronger than Jupiter's.
The temperature on its surface is more than 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Although this sounds hot, it's quite cool compared with the sun's surface temperature of about 9,932 degrees Fahrenheit. (8/7)

Explore New Worlds With JPL’s Open Source Rover (Source: IEEE Spectrum)
I’m not the only person who thinks that JPL’s rovers are incredible, and other rover fans have been pestering the roboticists at JPL for a cute little rover that can be built at home. JPL has been working on this for a little bit, and they’ve just announced the end product of their Open Source Rover project, and it’s “space robots for everyone!”

The Open Source Rover (OSR) was designed at JPL by a very small team: just two student interns and a JPL project lead, plus a bunch of help from experienced JPL robotics engineers. The goal was to make something accessible and affordable, since a previous education outreach rover that JPL had come up with (called ROV-E) was super popular but also cost over US $30,000. The goal with OSR was to decrease the cost an order of magnitude, while keeping it useful and compelling and easy to build, all in just 10 weeks. (8/7)

NASA Doesn’t Have the Funds to Get to Mars Alone, Ted Cruz Says (Source: Ars Technica)
On Friday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) spent the morning at Houston's Johnson Space Center for a ceremony announcing the nine astronauts who will fly aboard NASA's first commercial crew missions. During the visit, Cruz burnished his space credentials, noting that nearly full funding for the commercial crew program by Congress coincided with his selection as chairman of the Senate committee that oversees NASA in 2015.

Recently, Sen. Cruz said that—while he does not oppose the Trump administration's plan to use the Moon as a proving ground for human exploration in deep space—NASA's goal must remain Mars, with human landings in the 2030s. "Let me be clear," he said at a committee hearing last month. "Mars is today the focal point of our national space program. And if American boots are to be the first to set foot on its surface, it will define a new generation. Generation Mars.”

"The innovation that we're seeing from SpaceX and from private companies across the board is much of the reason for the optimism we see concerning space," Cruz said. "We need competition and entrepreneurs inventing and innovating. You know, just a few years ago the concept of reusable rockets, rockets that could land and be used again, would have seemed like science fiction. Now we're seeing that done. That's the kind of innovation it's going to take to get to Mars and beyond, and it is only through robust competition in the private sector that we'll see that happen." (8/7)

Is Humanity About To Accidentally Declare Interstellar War On Alien Civilizations? (Source: Forbes)
Perhaps we'll someday send an array of laser-propelled starchips to a star system, hoping to probe and gain more information. After all, the main science goal, as it's been proposed, is to simply take data during arrival and transmit it back. But there are three huge problems with this plan, and combined, they could be tantamount to a declaration of interstellar war.

The first problem is that interstellar space is full of particles, most of which move relatively slowly (at a few hundred km/s) through the galaxy. When they strike this spacecraft, they'll blow holes into it, rendering it into cosmic swiss-cheese in short order.

The second is that there's no reasonable deceleration mechanism. When these spacecrafts arrive at their destination, they'll still be moving at roughly the speeds they took off at. And the third is that aiming to the level-of-precision needed to pass close to (but not collide with) a target planet is virtually impossible. The "cone of uncertainty" for any trajectory will include the planet we're aiming for. (8/7)

What Does Space Travel Do to Your Gut Microbes? (Source: Space.com)
Right now, there are trillions of microscopic, living organisms like bacteria, known as microbes, living in and on your body — but how are these microbes affected by spaceflight? Rodent Research-7 (RR-7), an investigation currently being conducted aboard the International Space Station, aims to find out. In RR-7, researchers are studying the microbes that live in the digestive tract of rodents to see how they respond to spaceflight and how that response, in turn, affects the animals' immune system.

Researchers said they hope that this work — and studies that explore how spaceflight affects microbes — will ensure the health of future astronauts, according to a new statement from NASA. The research can help support future, longer-duration missions. "We want to know the effect of microgravity on the microbiota of mice to begin to understand the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human microbiota. We need to know that before we send humans on long-duration missions to the moon or Mars," said Fred Turek.

There is a growing body of research exploring the relationship between human health and our gut microbes. And, while our understanding of how the immense variety of tiny organisms that inhabit our bodies is evolving, there is a clear connection between our health and our microbes. As noted in the statement from NASA, "disruption of microbial communities has been linked to multiple [human] health problems affecting intestinal, immune, mental and metabolic systems." (8/7)

Earth’s Moon Could Have Been Habitable 3.5 Billion Years Ago (Source: Air & Space)
Earth’s Moon might have been habitable about one billion years after its formation, when pools of liquid water may have existed on the lunar surface. Today, of course, the Moon has no atmosphere and no liquid water. It’s uninhabitable and certainly lifeless. But 3.5 billion years ago, a billion years after it formed, the lunar environment was quite different.

During this period of extreme outgassing from lunar magma, the Moon is estimated to have had an atmospheric pressure of 10 millibar, or one percent of Earth’s current atmosphere. This is thicker than the current atmosphere on Mars, and would have been substantial enough for liquid water to pool on the lunar surface, perhaps for many millions of years.

Combine this with recent findings that lunar rocks are more water-rich than previously thought, and we can hypothesize that lakes, even an ocean, could have stably existed on the Moon for a substantial amount of time. There is also evidence that the early Moon had a magnetic field, which might have partially protected its surface from solar and cosmic radiation. This would have resulted in a temporarily habitable world, at a time when life on Earth had already gained a foothold. (7/23)