October 29, 2018

Work Picks Up at SpaceX Texas Launch Site After Lull (Source: Brownsville Herald)
In late 2015 the trucks started rolling, dumping more than 300,000 cubic yards of locally sourced dirt at the future SpaceX launch pad site where S.H. 4 dead-ends at Boca Chica beach. The technical term is “soil surcharging,” a process of compressing the underlying soil in order to stablize it — in this case to create a suitable foundation for launch-complex structures. That process now complete, the artificial mesa is currently being leveled by earthmovers.

Once that’s done, SpaceX will install a 95,000-gallon liquid oxygen tank and an 80,000-gallon methane tank that the company has taken delivery on in recent months. The tanks, stored for now at the SpaceX control center area a couple of miles west of the launch site, will be used to support propellant-loading operations during space vehicle tests beginning sometime in 2019. (10/27)

Pair Keep Watch on New Mexico’s Skies (Source: Albuquerque Journal)
An object from outside the solar system is moving in mysterious ways, leading some to think it’s artificial. A decaying Russian satellite is showing signs of crashing down to Earth. A NASA rocket launches from Spaceport America, about 100 miles away. Keeping track of those objects are all a part of a night’s work for astronomers Eileen and Bill Ryan, who operate the 2.4-meter telescope at the Magdalena Ridge Observatory at an elevation of 10,600 feet on top of South Baldy in the Magdalena Mountains.

“We are one of the largest telescopes in NASA’s network,” Eileen Ryan said. “Every clear night, we’re on sky looking at newly discovered asteroids and comets. There are about 25 to 30 new objects discovered each night.” A poster on the wall of the facility of the 1998 movie “Armageddon” starring Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck serves as a humorous reminder of one of the telescope’s missions.

“When objects get discovered, it’s a very short arc,” Bill Ryan added. “So their orbit is very uncertain. The point is, the Earth can be within the window of that immediate arc. That’s actually what we do here. We do the follow-up. We actually try to make that orbit more precise. And 99.9 percent of the time, we’ll eliminate it as a hazardous object.” (10/28)

Roscosmos Designers to Team Up Developing Super-Heavy Rocket (Source: TASS)
All design teams of the Russian state-run space corporation Roscosmos will have a hand in developing a super-heavy launch vehicle, Roscosmos Head Dmitry Rogozin wrote. "Roscosmos’ all design teams will take part in developing a super-heavy class carrier rocket, which will help Russia to launch a program of exploration and colonization of the Moon," Rogozin wrote.

On Saturday, a technical design of the new booster and a schedule of organizational events were considered at the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation, he added. According to designers’ plans, the Russian super-heavy carrier rocket should be able to deliver over 70 tonnes of cargo into low near-Earth orbit at the first stage. It will be developed to provide for deep space flights, specifically, to the Moon and Mars. (10/27)

Scientists Call for ‘Mega-Mission’ to Find Ancient Life on Mars (Source: The Guardian)
American rocket engineers are being urged to push their next Mars mission to the limits of technological performance. Space scientists have told Nasa they want the agency to “dream big” to ensure their new robot rover, scheduled for launch in 2020, visits a maximum number of sites to increase chances of uncovering signs of ancient life on Mars.

Rock samples – hopefully bearing fossils – would then be left in caches on the Martian surface, to be collected several years later and returned to Earth in a complex series of robot “sample return” missions costing more than $10bn.

For this investment, the scientific community says it wants to have the strongest possible chance of finding signs of ancient Martian life – hence its call for the next robot rover to the red planet to visit the largest possible number of places where it can collect rocks, hopefully rich in fossils. However, it acknowledges this mission will push the robot vehicle to the very limits of its performance. (10/27)

Alibaba Reaching for the Stars With Singles Day Satellite (Source: China Daily)
Alibaba Group has taken a fresh step into space with the launch of what it calls a mini space station and the planned launch of a communication satellite, as the e-commerce giant gears up for its annual shopping festival on Nov 11 and eyes frontier technologies.

Dubbed "Candy Tin", the mini space station, which was launched on Thursday from Taiyuan, Shanxi province, has been positioned in orbit and is powered by Commsat Technology Development Co, a Beijing-based small satellite constellation operator. The Tmall Global communication satellite, meanwhile, is scheduled for launch just days ahead of the Nov 11 shopping extravaganza, known as Singles Day.

The launches commemorate the 10th such 24-hour e-commerce spending spree, which was first held by Alibaba in 2009, and also mark 10 years since the first Chinese astronaut walked in space, said Jing Jie, president of Alibaba's Tmall shopping site. According to the company, one major purpose of the plan is to enhance customers' user experience during the gala, which clocked up 168.2 billion yuan ($24.2 billion) in sales last year. It said the space technology will better serve the integration of online and offline shopping interactions across the globe. (10/27)

This Designer Has Made a Career Re-Imagining Products for Outer Space (Source: Quartz)
Octave de Gaulle designs products for outer space, but he is best-known as the man who lost a race to Usain Bolt in zero gravity. They raced on a plane which simulates weightlessness by going into controlled freefalls. De Gaulle went into the race with a home-court advantage: unlike Bolt, he’d flown on multiple parabolic flights before. He still lost.  

Races aside, the plane has been used to develop a new kind of champagne bottle for Maison Mumm that can serve champagne in zero gravity. (Usain Bolt was aboard as Mumm’s “chief entertainment officer.”) Designing for zero gravity has its challenges. Parabolic flights only simulate zero gravity for 20-odd seconds at a time. That made for a “very stressful” product-testing experience, de Gaulle said, and an emotional one as well. Click here. (10/27)

Shanghai Company Launches World’s First Gene Bank Into Space (Source: China Daily)
A Shanghai-based technology company has launched an outer space gene bank as the first step to fulfilling its mission to create a new civilization for humankind. The bank contains the genes of eight Chinese individuals who come from different walks of life.

DSB-01, which is regarded as the world’s first outer space gene bank, was launched at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in China’s Shanxi province on Thursday, according to Shanghai ManWei Technology Company, Ltd, or MARVEL TECH, the company behind the project. Founded in 2018, MARVEL TECH specializes in life science research and space technology exploration.

The gene bank, which successfully entered an orbit 950 km above the earth, is attached to the Space Proving Platform (SPP) on the space exploration Long March 4 series rocket of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. The gene bank project, which is called DSPACE, aims to preserve genes in genetic lyophilized powder (GLP) that is stored in a capsule. These capsules are then placed on the SPP and launched into space. (10/26)