October 23, 2018

Vector Signs R&D Agreement with Air Force (Source: Vector)
Vector today announced it has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the United States Air Force Space Command and Missile Systems Center’s Space Superiority Directorate. In addition to its nearly three-year partnership with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the CRADA with the Air Force highlights Vector’s continued efforts to develop critical technologies with the U.S Department of Defense.

Located at the Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo Calif., the Space Missile Systems Center will engage in collaborative research and development activities relating to Vector’s launch services and the Air Force’s technology and mission needs. The CRADA is effective for one year and includes provisions for protecting information by both the Air Force and Vector. (10/22)

How Many Space Stations Does This Planet Need? (Source: New York Times)
Mr. Bigelow says he is committed to having two B330s ready to launch in 2021, a step that could be a harbinger of the shift from a half-century of human spaceflight as a monopoly of government-run agencies like NASA to a capitalistic free-for-all. The Trump administration wants to accelerate that transition by ending direct federal financing of the space station after 2024.

“We also want numerous providers that are competing on cost and innovation,” Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator, said in an interview last week. “We would like to see NASA become one customer of many customers.” If commercial stations prove cheaper to operate, NASA will have more money to pursue other goals, like sending astronauts to the moon and Mars, Mr. Bridenstine said.

The possibility of retiring the International Space Station, part of the administration’s budget request, startled many. Companies like Bigelow are years from launching their space stations, and such expensive, cutting-edge projects often slip behind schedule. Critics worry that the International Space Station might be discarded before its successors are ready. A gap without space stations would disrupt NASA’s studies, as well as emerging commercial endeavors. Nouveau space station companies could go belly up if the hoped-for customers are slow to show up. Click here. (10/22)

NASA Brings a Hubble Gyro Back to Life After a Seven-Year Hibernation (Source: Ars Technica)
After NASA's Hubble Space Telescope entered "safe" mode about two weeks ago, its operations team has been scrambling to bring a balky gyroscope back online. Now, the space agency says it believes it has fixed the problem. Ground operators put the telescope into a stable configuration earlier this month after one of the three active gyros that help point the telescope failed. The gyro that failed last week had been exhibiting end-of-life behavior for about a year, and its failure was not unexpected.

Hubble has three pairs of two gyroscopes, with each pair consisting of a primary and back-up gyroscope. Moreover, in each pair, one of the gyroscopes is of an "old" design, while the other is an "enhanced" (or newer) design intended to last for a longer period of time.

After the failure this month, all three of the "old" design gyros have stopped working. This left NASA with two enhanced gyros that were functioning normally and one that had acted up more than seven years ago before being taken out of service at that time. The Hubble telescope can operate on just a single gyro, but three working ones are optimal for normal operations. (10/22)

Report Says NASA Lost Historical Artifacts Due to Lax Procedures (Source: Engadget)
NASA's Inspector General has released a report detailing shortcomings in how the agency manages its historical items. Over the years, NASA has apparently lost a number of assets, including a lunar soil collection bag, Apollo 11 command module hand controllers and even a lunar rover vehicle prototype. "NASA's processes for loaning and disposing of historic personal property have improved over the past 6 decades, but a significant amount of historic personal property has been lost, misplaced or taken by former employees and contractors due to the agency's lack of adequate procedures," notes the report.

"Reclaiming this historic property has proven challenging because of the significant effort required to find the property as well as the agency's reluctance at times to assert an ownership claim over the items. In addition, past efforts to recover historic personal property have been thwarted by NASA's poor record keeping and a lack of established processes for timely coordination of recovery efforts." Among the lost items is an Apollo 11 lunar collection bag with lunar dust, which was seized by the FBI from a former Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center CEO and then sold at a government auction. It was later resold for $1.8 million.

In another incident, a set of Apollo 11 controllers were taken by a NASA employee who had been told by a supervisor to throw them away. The agency attempted to obtain the controllers when they were put up for auction, but, according to the report, it stopped trying after three years. Additionally, the owner of a lunar rover vehicle prototype, which was spotted in a residential Alabama neighborhood and reported to NASA, expressed a willingness to return the vehicle to the agency. But after months of no activity on the part of NASA, the owner passed away and the vehicle was sold to a scrap yard owner who later sold it at auction. (10/22)

Mars Likely to Have Enough Oxygen to Support Life (Source: Al Jazeera)
Salty water just below the surface of Mars could hold enough oxygen to support the kind of microbial life that emerged and flourished on Earth billions of years ago, researchers reported. In some locations, the amount of oxygen available could even keep alive a primitive, multicellular animal such as a sponge, they reported in the journal Nature Geosciences on Monday.  

"We discovered that brines" - water with high concentrations of salt - "on Mars can contain enough oxygen for microbes to breathe," said lead author Vlada Stamenkovic, a theoretical physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, United States. "This fully revolutionises our understanding of the potential for life on Mars, today and in the past," he told AFP news agency. (10/22)