September 6, 2018

Farmers Adapt NASA’s Mars Rover to Raise Chickens (Source: The Economist)
Breeding chickens on a large scale isn’t rocket science. It is much harder. The birds are bad at regulating their body temperature, and the big sheds they are kept in can get stuffy. Flickering lights and loud noises make them anxious. And ammonia from the faeces of birds crammed tightly together often produces unedifying “hock burns”. All of which means they require constant monitoring to ensure they are gaining weight. But babysitting chickens is time-consuming. A single worker can hope to weigh only a small sample by hand each week. Remotely monitored scales can help but, even when wheeled back and forth on pulleys, they suffer from blind spots.

Now an answer to these problems has come from a surprising place: Mars. Thrive Multi Visual, an agritech startup from Shropshire, is devising a chicken-weighing robot based on the rover developed by NASA to explore the red planet. The company plans to kit out the vehicle with cameras that can weigh chickens by sight alone. Thermal-imaging gear and other gadgets will monitor indicators such as body-heat and humidity. An indoor GPS system, also adapted from space technology, will allow the robot to drive itself around and self-charge, while sensors will prevent it from running over laggards that are slow to strut out of its way. If it works, the chicken rover will greatly reduce the work involved in looking after the birds—handy for farmers fearing labor shortages after Brexit.

Thrive MV is one of seven companies supported by the European Space Agency’s Business Incubation Center UK. Twenty such centers have been set up across Europe since 2000 to nurture young tech firms devising down-to-earth uses for space technology. In Britain each company receives technical support from ESA scientists for a year, as well as help with networking and cheap office space in Harwell, which is now home to around 80 space-related companies. The centre, which was set up in 2011, saw its 60th company graduate in August. (9/1)

United Launch Alliance Ramping Up For Vulcan Rocket Production (Source: Aviation Week)
United Launch Alliance (ULA) has started production of qualification hardware for Vulcan, an evolvable, semi-reusable family of medium- and heavy-lift launch vehicles designed to cut costs, increase performance and end dependence on Russian engines for national security space launches. It is a mission that has shifted dramatically since ULA’s founding in 2006, namely to ensure that the U.S. military has two independent, reliable and economically sustainable routes to space. (9/6)

Jacksonville Spaceport Moves Forward with Plans for Control Center (Source: Jacksonville Business Journal)
A Florida airport that is an FAA-licensed spaceport has released plans for spaceport-related infrastructure. The Jacksonville Aviation Authority, which operates Cecil Airport, has applied for funding to develop a new control tower that will include a spaceport control center to allow launch operators to control their missions. Cecil Airport has had an FAA spaceport license for several years but has yet to host a launch. Generation Orbit, a company developing air-launched rockets, plans to start operating from the spaceport as soon as late 2019. (9/5)

Honeywell's New Multi-Axis Motor May Have Space Applications (Source: AirInsight)
Honeywell has introduced the world’s first commercially-available multi-axis electric motor – the Spherical Motor. Every complex motion in a UAV requires multiple motors to get the job done. Hoenywell has shifted everything we know about movement. Honeywell’s revolutionary spherical motor is one motor that does the work of several – improving the agility, performance and freedom to move efficiently. This ground-breaking technology is a tightly integrated motion control device that moves about two axes independently or simultaneously. We expect to hear a lot more about this motor as OEMs figure out how they can be deployed. It looks rather disruptive. Click here. (9/5)

SECAF Supports Space Force (Source: Space News)
Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson said she supports the president's call to create a Space Force. Speaking at a conference Wednesday, Wilson said she expects the Pentagon's fiscal year 2020 budget proposal to include creation of a "Department of Space" within the Defense Department to enable to creation of a separate Space Force. She added that she wanted to avoid "half measures" in establishing a Space Force: "If we are going to do this we should do it right." Congress would have to approve establishing a Space Force, and Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said at the conference that whether the Space Force should be a separate service is "up for debate." (9/5)

Kepler Back After Thruster Problem (Source: Space News)
NASA's aging Kepler spacecraft is back in operation despite a thruster problem. The spacecraft resumed science observations last week, the agency said Wednesday, after engineers decided not to use one of its eight thrusters because of unreliable performance. Kepler had been in safe mode since downloading data from its previous observation campaign in early August. Kepler relies on the thrusters to maintain its orientation, and the spacecraft is expected to exhaust its remaining hydrazine fuel in the coming months. (9/5)

Soyuz Leak May Have Started at Launch Site (Source: TASS)
Investigators are examining if a Soyuz spacecraft that suffered an air leak last week was damaged at the launch site. A Russian space industry source suggested that the small hole in the Soyuz's orbital module could have been made at Baikonur while the spacecraft was being prepared for its launch to the International Space Station, and not just during manufacturing at RSC Energia's plant. The source suggested that "some sloppy worker" made a mistake and tried to cover it up by filling the hole with a "special glue" that later fell out, causing the air leak. Roscosmos has not commented on that claim. (9/5)

France to Support India's Human Spaceflight Ambition (Source: PTI)
India's plans to launch its first human mission will get support from the French space agency CNES. An agreement announced Thursday between CNES and India's space agency ISRO will establish a working group of experts from the two countries, and could include advice on topics ranging from space medicine to orbital debris protection, as well as training of Indian astronauts at French facilities. The agreement was announced during a visit by the head of CNES, Jean-Yves Le Gall, to India. (9/5)

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) 

Trump Adds Physicist Will Happer, Climate Science Critic, to White House Staff (Source: Science)
William Happer, a physics professor and vocal critic of mainstream climate science, has joined the White House as a top adviser. Happer, 79, told E&E News in email that he began serving yesterday on the National Security Council as the senior director for emerging technologies. NSC officials confirmed Happer's new role but declined to provide further detail about the appointment, which CNN first reported.

When asked about his new NSC role, Happer said he would do his best to ensure that federal policy decisions "are based on sound science and technology." An emeritus physics professor at Princeton University and a former Energy Department official under former President George H.W. Bush’s administration in the 1990s, Happer is well-known for his public criticism of mainstream climate modeling and his ties to the Trump administration. (9/5)

Experts Urge NASA to Build Huge New Space telescope to Look at Alien Earths (Source: GeekWire)
NASA should add a large, technologically advanced space telescope to its lineup to capture direct images of Earthlike planets beyond our solar system, astronomers say in a congressionally mandated report. The report, published under the aegis of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, also calls on the National Science Foundation to invest in the next-generation Giant Magellan Telescope and the Thirty Meter Telescope.

The GMT is being built in Chile, with completion set for 2025. The TMT is also due to go into service in the mid-2020s, although the current plan to build it on the top of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano has run into controversy. But the report makes clear that the search for alien planets will have to focus down on direct images of planets, as well as detailed analysis of exoplanet atmospheres, in order to address questions about the existence of life beyond our solar system. (9/5)

Indonesian Space Agency Wants Spaceport (Source: SpaceTechAsia)
Indonesia's space agency LAPAN wants to have a domestic launch capability to send payloads up to 1,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit by 2040. The agency is considering a launch site in Indonesia's North Maluku province and another in Papua New Guinea. LAPAN's plan involves a gradual increase in launch capability, starting with 50 kilograms to low Earth orbit using solid-fuel rockets from 2019 to 2020, and scaling up to higher masses with liquid-fueled propulsion over the next decade. Today the agency launches sounding rockets on a regular basis, including one, Rukmini, that uses liquid propulsion. (9/5)

America's Spaceport Boom is Outpacing our Need to Go to Space (Source: WIRED)
“The first mile is free,” Colorado’s governor, John Hickenlooper, says into a microphone. He’s smiling from a stage in Denver’s air and space museum, backed by a giant American flag that hangs near the bay doors of this repurposed military hangar. His audience has gathered to celebrate the FAA’s recent approval of a new Colorado spaceport, located a mile above sea level.

Sending things to space is theoretically what happens at a spaceport, though business has been less than bustling. From Colorado's shiny new station, located at the Front Range Airport in Adams County, and the 10 other spaceports in the US, private companies hope to launch rockets and spaceplanes that will carry rich astro-tourists and satellites.

But the launch industry hasn’t matured as quickly as those companies had predicted. Which means there's no real need for all these spaceports right now. Of the 90 orbital launches last year, for example, just 29 took place in the US—a load easily handled by the existing sites. Yet cities keep sprouting spaceports. The FAA had already licensed ports in Texas, Florida, California, Alaska, Virginia, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, before this Colorado one came along. The problem? Of the 10 active sites last year, only three launched anything at all. Click here. (9/5) 

Russian Space Chief Vows to Find “Full Name” of Technician Who Caused ISS Leak (Source: Ars Technica)
Last week, a pressure leak occurred on the International Space Station. It was slow and posed no immediate threat to the crew, with the atmosphere leaving the station at a rate such that depressurization of the station would have taken 14 days. Eventually, US and Russian crew members traced the leak to a 2mm breach in the orbital module of the Soyuz MS-09 vehicle that had flown to the space station in June. The module had carried Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev, European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, and NASA's Serena M. Auñón-Chancellor.

“We are able to narrow down the cause to a technological mistake of a technician. We can see the mark where the drill bit slid along the surface of the hull,” Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, told RIA Novosti. “We want to find out the full name of who is at fault—and we will.” The spacecraft was manufactured by Energia, a Russian corporation. A former employee of the company who is now a professor at Moscow State University told another Russian publication that these kinds of incidents have occurred before at Energia.

“I have conducted investigations of all kinds of spacecraft, and after landing, we discovered a hole drilled completely through the hull of a re-entry module," the former Energia employee, Viktor Minenko, said in Gazeta.RU. "But the technician didn't report the defect to anyone but sealed up the hole with epoxy. We found the person, and after a commotion he was terminated,” said Minenko. NASA spokesman Dan Huot, based in Houston where the space station program is managed, deferred all comment on the issue to Roscosmos. (9/4)

Pressure Mounts on Commercial Crew as Russia Plans to Stop flying U.S. Astronauts to ISS (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
Amidst worsening conditions between the United States and Russia, the contract that provides U.S. astronauts with transportation to and from the International Space Station - is a few months away from expiring. The close of this agreement coincides with the time that NASA and its commercial partners hope to conduct the first test flights of so-called "space taxis" to the orbiting lab.

The current timeline of when the two commercial companies that NASA has awarded $6.8 billion to, Boeing and SpaceX, has the manufacturers slated to carry out the first crewed test flights in mid-2019 and April of the same year. April is the same month that the contract NASA has with Roscosmos expires. At present, SpaceX is eyeing an April 2019 launch date for its crewed test flight (dubbed Demo-2) to the ISS with Boeing hoping to match that feat some time later in the year (Boeing has encountered technical issues with Starliner’s Aerojet Rocketdyne-produced abort engines). The budgetary and technical issues NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) has encountered, have provided Russia with a monopoly on access to the station.

The suggestion that a Russian Soyuz attached to the ISS was sabotaged has been raised by Roscosmos’ head, Dmitry Rogozin. A report appearing on The Guardian noted that officials with Roscosmos stated that a “wavering hand” had drilled the hole discovered on the MS-09 spacecraft. This suggests that the hole was either caused by human error – or sabotage. This troubling event has made the first flights of the Commercial Crew Program all the more important. (9/5)

Exos Aerospace Launches Rocket at Spaceport America (Source: Las Cruces Sun-News)
Spaceport America and Exos Aerospace Systems & Technologies announced a successful test launch of a suborbital autonomous rocket with guidance system (SARGE) at the spaceport on Aug. 25. In a statement, Exos said the first test flight for the rocket reached an altitude of approximately 28 kilometers (about 17 miles) and demonstrated the SARGE system’s reusability, as the vehicle was recovered with damage only to sacrificial components. The test also demonstrated the capability of the autonomous control system among other milestones. (9/4)

Hulu’s New Series About a Human Mission to Mars Feels Pretty Real (Source: Ars Technica)
So when I began watching The First, Hulu’s forthcoming drama series about a human mission to Mars, I was intrigued by the premise that NASA had funded a private company to send its astronauts to Mars. The fictional company is not named SpaceX, but rather Vista. Its chief executive officer isn’t Elon Musk but a similarly determined woman named Laz Ingram (if you scramble the letters in her name, you get Ilan Margz. Close enough).

I won’t divulge any spoilers, even though there are some big ones about halfway through the first episode. But as the space editor for Ars Technica, I do have to pick a few nits with the rockets I saw. Click here. (9/5)