September 5, 2018

NASA Will Pay You Up To $750,000 to Come Up With a Way to Turn CO2 Into Other Molecules on Mars (Source: BGR)
Missions to Mars will need to be as lean as possible, meaning that using any available resources on the Red Planet will be of utmost importance. With that in mind, NASA just announced the CO2 Conversion Challenge, which asks teams of scientists and inventors to come up with a way to turn CO2 into molecules that can be used to produce all manner of things. And there’s big prize money on the line. To start, NASA is asking teams to focus on converting CO2 to Glucose, but the language of the challenge suggests you can approach that goal from any angle you wish. Click here. (9/3)

Asteroid Mining is Almost Reality. What to Know About the Gold Rush in Space (Source: Digital Trends)
What will be mined? Why would anyone want to do this? And who are the main players in this (literal) space? Read on for a beginner’s guide to all things asteroid mining. Click here. (9/4)

Brazil's Biggest Meteorite Survives Museum-Destroying Fire (Source: Space.com)
After a catastrophic fire blazed through the National Museum of Brazil on Sunday (Sep. 2), destroying many of the institution's 20 million artifacts, the museum's meteorites were some of the few relics left standing. Among the space rocks that survived the blaze is the Bendegó meteorite, which is the largest meteorite ever found on Brazilian soil. The iron-nickel meteorite is one of about a dozen meteorites housed at the museum. (9/4)

China's iSpace Tests Suborbital Rocket (Source: Xinhua)
A Chinese company performed a suborbital launch Wednesday. The SQX-1Z rocket, developed by Chinese company iSpace, lifted off at 1:00 a.m. Eastern from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The rocket carried three cubesat payloads, at least one of which parachuted back to Earth. Although an official media report claims the other satellites entered orbit, other sources confirmed the launch was suborbital. iSpace, not related to the Japanese company of the same name, is one of several ventures developing small launch vehicles in China. Another company, OneSpace, plans to perform its second suborbital test launch later this week. (9/5)

DOD to Study Potential of Space Weapons (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Defense Department is studying, but has yet to endorse, proposals to place a missile defense system in space. At a panel discussion Tuesday, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood said the Defense Department is following congressional orders by looking at the technological and security implications of putting interceptor missiles in space, but that agreeing to do so "are bridges yet to be crossed."

The Pentagon is interested in placing new sensors in space in order to better track hypersonic missiles, although Rood said he didn't consider development of such a system a "provocative act." Another panelist, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin, advocated for the development of hypersonic missiles by the United States. (9/5)

Luxembourg Funds Space R&D (Source: Govt. of Luxembourg)
Luxembourg is establishing a space-related research program. The Space Research Program, announced Wednesday, will fund collaborations between Luxembourg-based companies and research institutions on projects that can "provide sustaining contributions to the Luxembourg space industry ecosystem." The announcement comes a week before the government formally establishes a national space agency whose primary mission will be to support the country's commercial space industry. (9/5)

Roscosmos Head Offers to Continue Rocket Engines Supply to US Despite Sanctions (Source: Space Daily)
At the same time, Russia stated that it was prepared to supply rocket engines to China, Russian state space corporation Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin told reporters Monday. Even though sanctions have been previously imposed on Russia, the state is ready to continue supplying rocket engines to the United States, Russian state space corporation Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin said.

"We expect that talks with the United States will continue. We believe the country's political leadership supports us and, despite sanctions, it is necessary to continue exporting high-tech products. If our US colleagues have such [desire], these supplies will continue," Rogozin said. He said the US can't build rocket engines similar to the Russian ones in terms of price and quality. (9/5)

NASA-Funded Rocket to View Sun with X-Ray Vision (Source: NASA)
Without special instrumentation, the Sun looks calm and inert. But beneath that placid façade are countless miniature explosions called nanoflares. These small but intense eruptions are born when magnetic field lines in the Sun’s atmosphere tangle up and stretch until they break like a rubber band. The energy they release accelerates particles to near lightspeed and according to some scientists, heats the solar atmosphere to its searing million-degree Fahrenheit temperature.

All of this happens in colors of light so extreme that the human eye can’t see them.  Nanoflares aren’t visible — at least not to the naked eye. Finding the traces of nanoflares requires X-ray vision, and scientists have been hard at work developing the best tools for the job. The latest advance in this project is represented by NASA’s Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager, or FOXSI mission, soon to take its third flight from the White Sands Missile Range in White Sands, New Mexico, no earlier than Sep. 7. FOXSI will travel 190 miles up, above the shield of Earth’s atmosphere, to stare directly at the Sun and search for nanoflares using its X-ray vision. (9/4)

NASA Counts Down to Laser Communications for Mars (Source: AFCEA)
In the coming months, researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory expect to take a series of small steps that will ultimately result in a giant leap in laser-enabled Mars telecommunication capabilities. Their technological progress will contribute to a telecommunications infrastructure around the planet that will support both human and robotic expeditions.

Mars is expected to be a veritable hotbed of activity in the relatively near future. NASA’s InSight lander is scheduled to touch down in November to study the planet’s deep interior using seismology and various sensors. The planet also is drawing commercial interest. SpaceX plans to land its Red Dragon spacecraft in 2020. Those systems will be joined in 2021 by NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover and by the ExoMars Rover, a European Space Agency vehicle. Click here. (9/1)

NASA Selects 15 New Potential Space Technologies for Flight Tests (Source: NASA)
NASA’s Flight Opportunities program has selected 15 promising space technologies to be tested on commercial low-gravity simulating aircraft, high-altitude balloons and suborbital rockets. These flights will help advance technologies for future spaceflight, taking them from the laboratory to a relevant flight environment.

During an Aug. 28 visit to NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, where the Flight Opportunities program is managed, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the agency will focus on funding more of these payload flights in the future.

“Flight Opportunities gives researchers and universities the opportunity to get involved with NASA,” said Bridenstine. “By increasing funding for payload integration and flights, we will continue to support and advance the commercial suborbital flight market.” The latest selections will demonstrate technologies of interest to NASA that are capable of supporting future exploration and science missions. Click here. (8/29)

Delta II: End of an Era (Source: Space Review)
Later this month the venerable Delta II rocket will lift off for the final time, carrying a NASA satellite. James Michael Knauf recalls the history, and the accomplishments, of that launch vehicle over nearly three decades. Click here. (9/4)

A Fading Martian Opportunity (Source: Space Review)
NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity has been out of contact with the Earth for nearly three months, and the agency announced plans last week to try to restore contact with it. Jeff Foust reports that the overall Mars exploration program at NASA is facing challenges as well. Click here. (9/4)

Endorsing Openness for NASA Astronauts (Source: Space Review)
Last week, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine suggested that astronauts should be able to do commercial endorsements and other media deals in order to help make the agency more popular. A.J. Mackenzie argues that if the agency really wants to do that, it needs to be more open in how it assigns and reassigns astronauts to missions. Click here. (9/4)

“Where Are They?”: SETI and Modern Science Fiction (Source: Space Review)
Making contact with extraterrestrial intelligence has long been a theme of science fiction. Vidvuds Beldavs examines how one recent trilogy by a Chinese author explores that topic in a new and compelling way. Click here. (9/4)

Airspace Usage a Priority for New Commercial Industry Group Chairman (Source: Space News)
The new chairman of a commercial space industry group says addressing growing demands for airspace, and conflicts with commercial aviation, will be a major priority for him.

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF) announced Aug. 29 that Taber MacCallum, the co-founder and chief technology officer of stratospheric ballooning company World View Enterprises, will be the chairman of the board of the industry group. He succeeds Alan Stern, another co-founder of World View who is best known as principal investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission, who was chairman the past two years.

“I grew up on the Arthur Clarke vision of commercial space operating like an airline,” he said, something that those companies are taking a “baby step forward” to realizing. That growth in activity, though, presents challenges that he believes the industry, through CSF, will need to address. “We’re going to be an increasingly common user of the airspace that we launch through,” he said. “We need to share that safely and efficiently with the airlines, and work with the FAA to become a real partner with the rest of the industry in how we use that airspace.” (9/4)

Every Space Launch Takes a Financial Toll on Airlines, Eagle Research Confirms (Source: ERAU)
Researchers with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s College of Business in Daytona Beach, Florida, are calculating the specific financial impacts of space launches on aviation. Rodrigo Firmo, a graduate research assistant and M.B.A. candidate, recently presented preliminary results of the project at an international conference at ESTACA University in France.

The work of Mr. Firmo and the team further confirms a report released last month by the Air Line Pilots Association, which suggested that airline and airport operations will be negatively impacted until space launch and return activities are fully integrated with the National Airspace. “While government launch activities have always impacted airline operations,” Firmo pointed out, “we now have commercial space company operations impacting commercial airline operations.”

Editor's Note: One solution might be to use ADS-B, the new GPS-enabled aircraft tracking system required by the FAA for aviation, aboard space launch vehicles. (7/17)

ArianeGroup Supplier GKN to 3D Print Turbines for Reusable Prometheus Engines (Source: Space News)
European rocket builder ArianeGroup, the company leading development and production of the Ariane 5 and upcoming Ariane 6 rockets, on Sept. 4 awarded a contract to a Swedish supplier for a reusable engine program. GKN Aerospace’s space business unit in Trollhättan, Sweden, will build two turbines for Prometheus, a reusable liquid-oxygen-and-methane engine projected to cost $1 million per unit — one-tenth the cost of Ariane 5’s Vulcain 2 first-stage engine. (9/4)