October 19, 2018

Astronomers Catch Red Dwarf Star in Superflare Outburst (Source: ASU)
New observations by two Arizona State University astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have caught a red dwarf star in a violent outburst, or superflare. The blast of radiation was more powerful than any such outburst ever detected from the Sun, and would likely affect the habitability of any planets orbiting it. Moreover, the astronomers say, such superflares appear more common in younger red dwarfs, which erupt 100 to 1000 times more powerfully than they will when they age. (10/18)

How American Space Launch Left Europe in the Dust (Source: Popular Mechanics)
The United States space industry is booming, and not everyone is excited about it. The Europeans, who dominated commercial spaceflight before the rise of American upstarts like SpaceX, are suddenly worried that the America's effort “now represents a further strong challenge to European competitiveness and freedom to act in space.”

That hand-wringing comes from a new report by a leading European space advocacy group. ASD-Eurospace fears that Europe has not only lost its comfortable lead in commercial spaceflight, but also is falling far behind the curve and won’t have the launch hardware and spacecraft to keep up. “U.S. commercial actors are seen as the 3rd pillar of the U.S. national space enterprise strategy [aside from NASA and the Pentagon] and fully participate as such in the comprehensive approach to U.S. space dominance,” reads the ASD-Eurospace report.

As the U.S. launch market expanded, with spaceports opening up to accommodate research and operations, the European market stayed fairly stagnant. As SpaceX proved that innovation could drive down costs, the European launch provider Arianespace accelerated its own plans to introduce a small rocket launcher, the Italian Vega-C (due in 2019), and a new heavy lift rocket called the Ariane 6 (expected in 2020). Click here. (10/18)

NASA Seeks Payloads to Populate Lunar Landers (Source: Space News)
As NASA evaluates proposals for commercial lunar lander payload services, it's putting out a call for payloads for those missions. NASA issued Thursday a request for proposals for "Lunar Surface Instrument and Technology Payloads" to perform scientific or technology demonstration work and fly on commercial lunar landers NASA is in the process of procuring rides on. NASA expects to select 8 to 12 payloads next year for launch no earlier than 2020. Some scientists are worried that, given the lack of technical information about the potential landers, it could be difficult for scientists to propose experiments that would be compatible with those rides. (10/18)

China's Landspace Plans First Orbital Commercial Launch (Source: GB TImes)
Chinese company Landspace has scheduled its first orbital launch for Oct. 27. The company says its Zhuque-1 rocket should be ready for launch that day from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, carrying a small satellite for China Central Television. The launch would be the first by a private Chinese company. Landspace has plans for a larger rocket, the Zhuque-2, that, unlike the solid-fueled Zhuque-1, would have engines powered by methane and liquid oxygen. (10/18)

Autonomous Ships an Emerging Market for Satellite Operators (Source: Space News)
Satellite operators see autonomous ships as an emerging market for their services. Satellite communications providers are establishing partnerships to offer enhanced ship-to-shore communications links for today's ships and to prepare to support autonomous vessels. While fully autonomous ships may still be well into the future, shipping companies are looking at increased remote operations of existing vessels. Many remote applications are now possible because new generations of satellites offer far more capability than their predecessors. (10/18)

Russia Has Fixed its Troubled Launch Pad at Vostochny (Source: Interfax)
Russian officials say they have corrected structural problems with the launch pad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome. Engineers had discovered voids in the concrete foundation of the pad, and filled them with a "special solution," according to the Russian organization responsible for the spaceport. The pad, used for Soyuz rockets, is ready for future missions. (10/18)

Ansari Takes Reins of X Prize Foundation (Source: GeekWire)
A former space tourist and prize benefactor is taking over the X Prize Foundation. The foundation announced Thursday that Anousheh Ansari will be its new CEO, with founder Peter Diamandis remaining as executive chairman. Ansari and her family provided the funding for the foundation's first competition, the Ansari X Prize for suborbital spaceflight, won by SpaceShipOne 14 years ago. She flew to the International Space Station as a tourist in 2006 on an 11-day trip. While the X Prize Foundation had its roots in a space prize, it has since branched out into a wide array of prize competitions and currently does not have a funded space-related prize. (10/18)

China's Commercial Aerospace Companies Flourishing (Source: Sputnik)
Many new companies have entered the commercial aerospace industry in China, supported by the government. Most of the CEOs come from government aerospace agencies or national scientific institutions. These companies still have a long way to go to catch up with Elon Musk's SpaceX. The aerospace industry used to be a battleground for superpowers. Space agencies were all sponsored by governments. However, commercial upstarts have joined the competition since the beginning of this century. Now, commercial aerospace companies can produce cheap and market-friendly spaceflight products at a fast speed. As of the end of 2017, three-quarters of the global production value in the aerospace industry was from commercial aerospace companies. (10/19)

Launches of Russian Rokot-2 Rocket May Begin Again in 2021 (Source: Sputnik)
The launches of the Russian Rokot-2 light carrier rockets may begin again in 2021 which would allow achieving annual incomes of over 8 billion rubles ($120 million) if the decision to resume the project is made this year. "The launches of Rokot-2 may begin in 2021 if the decision to resume the project is made in 2018. The positive money flow from the implementation of the project before 2025 is estimated at around 500 million rubles, while the annual income from the implementation of the project will increase from 2 billion rubles in the year when the first launches are held to 8.8 billion rubles by 2024-25," the source said.

The investment in the project was estimated at 4 billion rubles, the source pointed out. In August, Russia's space agency Roscosmos announced that the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center was developing Rokot-2 carrier rocket with a Russian-made control system. The current model of Rokot carrier rocket is using a Ukrainian-made control system. (10/19)

Russian Investigators Identify Workers Potentially Responsible for Failed Soyuz Launch (Source: Sputnik)
Members of a Roscosmos commission and investigators have identified those who could be responsible in the damage to one of the sensing devices on board the Soyuz-FG carrier rocket, which could have led to the failed launch of the Soyuz MS-10 manned spacecraft, a source at the Baikonur space center told Sputnik. "The responsibility of certain employees is being established. The responsible [for the incident] are not only those who did something wrong but also their managers and supervisors as their task was to prevent any wrong actions," the source said.

Earlier in the day, a source at the spaceport told Sputnik that the state commission investigating the incident tended to believe that an "unintentional error" occurred during the assembly of the carrier rocket at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. However, the source added that it was still "an open question why the mistake had not been noticed by the inspectors." Editor's Note: Russia's tendency to criminalize culpability for its launch failures probably is not a healthy approach for an industry struggling to attract talent and maintain its competitiveness. (10/19)

Putin Heralds End of U.S. Hegemony (Sources: Financial Times, Foreign Policy)
Russian president Vladimir Putin hailed the end of a US-dominated unipolar world. “Empires often think they can make some little mistakes . . . because they’re so powerful,” he said. “But when the number of these mistakes keeps growing, it reaches a level they cannot sustain...A country can get the sense from impunity that you can do anything...This is the result of the monopoly from a unipolar world . . . Luckily this monopoly is disappearing. It’s almost done.”

Giving his annual foreign policy address on Thursday, Mr. Putin stressed Russia’s military clout and offered a range of handouts to Moscow’s allies. He said his country was always ready to talk despite a mounting list of accusations of impropriety against his regime from western countries. “Building up tension and hysteria is not our way . . . We are not creating problems for anyone,” Mr Putin said. Western sanctions against Moscow that have been broadened since in response to its military actions in Syria, its alleged meddling in the US presidential election, and its alleged use of a chemical weapon to attack a former spy in the UK.
 
Meanwhile, global opinion of U.S. President Donald Trump has sunk so low that the world now appears to have more confidence in the leadership of Russian President Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of some 26,000 people across 25 countries. The survey showcases the sharp decline in America’s image and standing abroad since Trump took office nearly two years ago and began a series of unilateral trade wars and a campaign of harsh criticism of global institutions, including the United Nations. (10/18)

Vector Speeds Toward Orbital Launch Capability with $70M in New Funding (Source: TechCrunch)
The market for small satellites in low Earth orbit is expanding faster than the gas in a thruster nozzle, and Vector aims to be the go-to launch platform for companies looking to put a bird in the air on short notice. The company just raised a $70 million B round and aims to take its first payload into space early next year.

Smaller launch systems are already helping bring down the cost of going to orbit, but there’s still a huge amount of room to improve. Satellites and experiments are still waiting for years, or at least more than a few months, for their chance to get to LEO. Vector is hoping to be the company they come to when they want to launch on the scale of weeks.

The company has already done sub-orbital proving flights of its launch system, and the first orbital launch is scheduled for December. They’ll be taking off from the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska — date TBD. Once orbital launch capability is established, Vector will be getting a lot of calls, so some of the money will go toward sales and marketing personnel, which should roughly double its presence in Silicon Valley. (10/19)

Gates Leads Global Call to Accept Realities of a Warming Planet (Source: New Scientist)
It is not enough to try to limit further global warming – we must also do far more to ensure we survive it. That’s the message from a coalition of global figures, including former UN head Ban Ki-moon and billionaire Bill Gates. They are part of the Global Commission on Adaptation launched this week, which says that the impact of global warming is being felt much sooner and more powerfully than expected. (10/18)

NASA and Roscosmos Trying to Avoid an Empty Space Station (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
How quickly the commission can conclusively determine the cause of the failure and the corrective action needed to return the Soyuz-FG rocket to flight will be the driving factor in determining the space station’s fate. In an ISS status briefing the day of MS-10’s launch, ISS manager Kenny Todd stated that NASA hopes to avoid de-crewing the station.

Whether this can be accomplished relies not only on how quickly Soyuz-FG can return to flight, but how long the MS-09 spacecraft currently docked to the station can stay there. Soyuz spacecraft have an on-orbit lifetime of approximately 200 days. This lifespan is limited by the Hydrogen Peroxide used by the Descent Module’s RCS thrusters. Extended time on orbit means the Hydrogen Peroxide becomes decomposed into gaseous Oxygen and Hydrogen, which create bubbles within the liquid-fueled thrusters.

The MS-09 spacecraft, launched in early June, will reach the end of its lifespan in late December. Prior to the MS-10 launch, MS-09 was scheduled to depart the station with the crew of Expedition 57 on December 13, a week ahead of the MS-11 launch on December 20. This would have left Hague and Ovchinin the sole occupants of the station for one week. Now, with Hague and Ovchinin still on the ground, there are a limited number of scenarios which avoid an empty space station. (10/18)

Extraterrestrials Might Look Like Us, Says Astrobiologist (Source: Forbes)
Maybe they’re not alien doppelgangers—mirror images of us. But extraterrestrial life—should it exist—might look “eerily similar to the life we see on Earth,” says Charles Cockell, professor of astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Alien adaptations, significantly resembling terrestrial life—from humanoids to hummingbirds—may have emerged on billions of worlds. “Life on Earth might be a template for life in the universe,” he says.

Physical laws are the same everyplace. (Gravity, for instance, is omnipresent, not exclusive to our solar system.) Restrictions are everyplace. (Organic molecules, on Earth or elsewhere, still disintegrate at high temperatures, deactivate at low ones.) Certain ingredients, most everyplace, are indispensable for life. (Carbon is the optimal element to assemble burgeoning life; water is the ideal solvent to shuttle it.) (10/18)

As NASA's Prized Telescopes Falter, Astronomers Fear Losing Their Eyes in Space (Source: LMT Online)
America's Great Observatories - the Hubble, Chandra, Compton and Spitzer space telescopes - have peered into the unknown and made breakthrough discoveries about newborn stars, dark matter and the age of the universe itself.

But these telescopes, whose era began in 1990, are aging, if not already dead, and there is no budget or political will to replace them. This sobering reality was underscored this month when two were beset by technical problems, including the Hubble Space Telescope, that temporarily halted their science.

Shrinking budgets and delayed projects means astronomers will lose some of their key eyes in the skies before NASA can launch new telescopes. It will make some research impossible. (10/18)

Paul Allen’s Passing Leaves Unfinished Business on Stratolaunch’s Space Frontier (Source: GeekWire)
Seattle billionaire philanthropist Paul Allen’s death comes just as his Stratolaunch space venture is counting down to the first flight of the world’s biggest airplane — and lifting the veil on a wide range of space applications. Now it’s up to the Stratolaunch team to make good on the high-flyingest idea from the self-described “Idea Man,” who succumbed to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 65.

Heading that team is President and CEO Jean Floyd, who spent decades as a manager and executive at Orbital Sciences Corp. (now part of Northrop Grumman) before joining the venture in 2015. Like many of the other executives in Allen’s wide-ranging operation, Floyd confined his comments about his boss’ death to a Twitter tribute: “We deeply respect and admire Mr. Allen’s vision. His legacy will be honored,” Floyd wrote. (10/16)

Paul Allen Made Space Investment Worth Doing (Source: Quartz)
Over a billion dollars will be invested into startup space companies this year as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists plot business plans in orbit. Paul Allen, who died Oct. 15 at age 65 from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, was one of the first investors to prove that space schemes weren’t mere folly.

He passed on several ill-fated ventures, including BlastOff, a moon-focused tech bubble startup from the team behind WebVan, and a company called Rotary Rocket that combined a helicopter’s rotors with rocket propulsion. However, Burt Rutan, a legendary airplane designer, convinced Allen that he had a design that could win the Ansari X-Prize, a contest that promised $10 million to the first team that could fly the same spaceship, carrying a human being, into space twice in two weeks. (10/18)

Unlike the US, China Seeks to Cooperate with Other Nations in Space Exploration (Source: Global Times)
Unlike the space race during the Cold War, nations are looking forward to working together to explore the moon and Mars. As the US attempts to build a Space Force and develop Martian colonies on its own, European nations and Russia are likely to join hands with China in the field of space exploration, a field in which China is experiencing a golden age, analysts say.

"China has its own space program, and it moves at its own pace, but it's also open to collaboration," said Pascale Ehrenfreund, who heads the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Jan Woerner, director general of the European Space Agency (ESA), said the ESA is also discussing using China's manned Shenzhou spacecraft to send European astronauts into space in the future. The director said several of their astronauts are learning Chinese to prepare for the mission.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) said in April that China intends to have wider international cooperation in with lunar and deep space exploration and had talked with Russia  and the European Space Agency about it, Xinhua reported. (10/16)

Spaceport America Ignores Lawsuit Seeking Financial Information (Source: NMPolitics.net)
More than two months after NMPolitics.net sued to try to win the release of financial documents and other records being withheld by the N.M. Spaceport Authority, that state agency has failed to respond in court to our lawsuit, even though a response is required. So on Friday, our attorney filed a motion for default judgment, which is a request that District Judge Manuel I. Arrieta set a hearing, rule in our favor and award damages and attorney’s fees.

In the meantime, the Spaceport Authority has released some of the information I sought last year as I spent months examining Spaceport America’s status. And the agency refunded a $292 fee the state’s attorney general says I was improperly charged for records. But the agency is still withholding some information without providing an updated explanation for doing so. (10/16)

X-37B Military Space Plane Wings Past 400 Days on Latest Mystery Mission (Source: Space.com)
The latest mystery mission of the U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane has now passed the 400-day mark. This mission — known as Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-5) — was rocketed into Earth orbit on Sept. 7, 2017, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. The uncrewed space plane is carrying out secretive duties during the X-37B program's fifth flight. (10/18)

S7 Space Claims Progress in Zenit Production (Source: Russian Space Web)
On October 16, the Russian company S7 Space published a press-release about a recent trip to KB Yuzhnoe and to the Yuzhmash machine-building plant in Ukraine. The visit had assessed the current status of three Zenit rockets ordered by the company and included a review of the available hardware in the shops of the production plant. "Production is ongoing in accordance with established schedules and within quality control requirements," the press release said.

According to S7, its representatives also met with the officials from the Ukrainian space agency, GKAU, to discuss the oversight and control over the production of the Zenit rockets and proposals for further cooperation within the Sea Launch project. According to industry sources, S7 wanted to have its permanent representative at the plant to oversee the production on a daily basis.

The press-release was accompanied by a number of photos showing the components of the Zenit rocket and its engines, including a pair of the RD-120 engines and four combustion chambers for RD-8 steering thrusters for Zenit's second stage. The very fact that a team from Russia was able to make an official business trip to Ukraine and even advertise it is remarkable by itself under the current political climate, but whether it can translate into a workable cooperation between Russia and Ukraine on the development of such a complex system like Zenit remains to be seen. (10/18)

SpaceX Attempts Second Falcon Fairing Drop Test With a Helicopter and Mr Steven (Source: Teslarati)
Following a few days of rest in port, SpaceX fairing recovery vessel Mr Steven has continued a likely campaign of controlled drop tests with a second fairing recovery attempt, using a helicopter, spotter plane, and support vessel to pick up a Falcon fairing and drop it, theoretically allowing it to paraglide into Mr Steven’s net.

While it’s nearly impossible to determine what happened without line-of-sight visual confirmation or an official announcement from SpaceX, it appears that Mr. Steven kicked off real catch attempts on October 11th, evidenced by his close interaction with a Blackhawk helicopter over the course of an hour or so. Another similar attempt occurred today, October 17th, and culminated with Mr Steven returning once more to Port of San Pedro with the same test-focused fairing half on board, albeit not resting in his retracted net. (10/18)