October 30, 2018

When Spacecraft Die (Source: Space Review)
Two NASA spacecraft are in the final days of operations as they run out of fuel, while a rover on Mars remains silent nearly five months after a dust storm swept across the planet. Jeff Foust reports on the impending demise of Dawn and Kepler and the last-ditch efforts to restore contact with Opportunity. Click here. (10/30)
 
Making Peace with the SLS (Source: Space Review)
Since its introduction more than seven years ago, some space advocates have openly fought against the Space Launch System, beleving it to be a flawed, expensive vehicle. A.J. Mackenzie argues it’s time for those advocates to end futile political battles and instead focus on developing alternatives for when the arguments about SLS can be reopened. Click here. (10/30) 
 
Putting Astrobiology at the Heart of NASA Science (Source: Space Review)
Astrobiology has gained increasing prominence in space science in the last 25 years thanks to better understanding about the potential habitability of worlds inside and outside our solar system. Jeff Foust discusses a recent report from the National Academies that examines how NASA should build upon its existing activities in astrobiology. Click here. (10/30)

Why China’s Artificial Moon Probably Won’t Work (Source: Astronomy)
To step outside on a moonlit night is to see the darkness pushed back. The reflected sunlight from our natural satellite during a nearly full moon is enough to limn the nighttime landscape in silver and allow even human eyes to penetrate the gloom. But we can always do better, right? If one moon is good, surely two is even better. One Chinese researcher thinks so, at least. Wu Chunfeng, head of the Tian Fu New Area Science Society, wants to use a satellite like an artificial moon, reflecting sunlight back to targeted areas of the Earth at night.

The reflector would orbit above a city, providing enough illumination to replace lights on the ground with a steady glow and potentially saving on electricity costs. He imagines a shiny satellite unfurling in space about 300 miles above the ground and orienting itself toward cities on the ground. One would be enough to light up around 20 square miles, he says, according to China Daily, and several working in concert could brighten up to 4,000 square miles.

The plan might not be all that sound, though, according to satellite experts. Based on the scant details available, in fact, the satellite would probably never work, says Ryan Russell, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. The biggest flaw? A satellite flying low enough to deliver that much light wouldn’t be able to stay in one place. Satellites that stay over a fixed point on the Earth, what’s called a geostationary orbit, sit much further away: about 22,000 miles. At that distance, the reflective surface would need to be massive to deliver enough light for humans to see back to Earth. (10/29)

Russia Plans to Disassemble Soyuz in Search for Assembly Flaw (Source: Sputnik)
Engineers plan to partially disassemble a Soyuz rocket before its launch next month to look for any issues similar to the one that failed earlier this month. A Russian industry source said that workers will remove the four side boosters of the Soyuz-FG rocket currently scheduled to launch a Progress cargo spacecraft to the ISS in mid-November. The failure of one of those side boosters to separate properly, possible because it was improperly installed, is speculated to be a cause of the Soyuz launch failure earlier this month. (10/30)

Epps Still Unsure Why She Was Removed from ISS Mission (Source: Space News)
A NASA astronaut removed from the crew of an International Space Station mission early this year says she still doesn't know why she was taken off the flight. Jeanette Epps was scheduled to fly to the ISS this summer, but was replaced by another NASA astronaut, Serena Auñón-Chancellor, in January. Speaking at an event in Washington Monday, Epps said that she's "not quite sure of the reasons" for her removal, noting it had nothing to do with her health. She also said she had good relations with Russians while training for the flight, making her skeptical they had any role in her reassignment. (10/30)

Fleet Gets Ride on Rocket Lab Manifest (Source: Innovation Aus)
Fleet has joined the manifest for Rocket Lab's next launch. Fleet, an Australian company planning a constellation of small satellites for Internet of Things applications, said it will launch two cubesats on Rocket Lab's next Electron mission, dubbed "It's Business Time" and scheduled for November. Flavia Tata Nardini, the CEO of Fleet, said her company built the satellites in just a month after learning about the launch opportunity. The company has other satellites awaiting launch on Falcon 9 and PSLV missions. (10/30)

Kymeta Seeks New CEO (Source: Space News)
The founder of flat-panel antenna maker Kymeta is stepping down as CEO next month to make way for someone with more experience running a business. The Seattle company said Monday night that Nathan Kundtz, a physicist and electrical engineer who developed the key technology behind Kymeta's metamaterial  antennas, will continue to advise the company. Kymeta's CFO will assume day to day activities while the company conducts its CEO search. (10/30)

Air Force Seeks Innovation for Space Situational Awareness (Source: Space News)
The Air Force is offering cash prizes for new tools to visualize the space environment. The Visionary Q-Prize, or VQ-Prize, competition will run through Jan. 15 and offer up to $100,000 to those who create augmented reality or virtual reality tools to enhance military space operators' understanding and awareness of satellites and other objects in space. The Air Force hopes to attract nontraditional vendors in this competition, including small businesses, universities and even individuals. (10/30)

Reuse and Sustainability in Deep Space Exploration (Source: Space News)
Before starting SLS development, NASA anticipated the SLS flight rate would be as low as one flight per year. Under these conditions, sustainability necessitates streamlined production for affordability, a steady level of activity to maintain critical skills over the life cycle of the rocket for reliability, a stable industrial base, and the ability to incorporate product improvements as needed. NASA selected an expendable rocket architecture as the best design to meet their mission objectives and overall sustainability needs.

Like the original expectations for space shuttle, there are proposals for large reusable launch vehicles with a life expectancy of up to 100 flights. However, a reusable vehicle used at a low flight rate is counterproductive to sustainability. The combination of reusability and low flight rates creates production gaps between builds, discontinuities in workforce and loss of critical skills.

The production gaps also pose additional challenges to attracting and maintaining a healthy supply chain. During the space shuttle program, suppliers were unable to provide parts later in the program due to loss of tooling, technology or processes that became obsolete due to the long gaps since their original production. For human space exploration to be affordable, sustainable and therefore to succeed, every possible advantage to reduce cost must be studied and understood. (10/29)

China Launches Joint Earth Science Mission with France (Source: GB Times)
Another Chinese rocket successfully launched a joint Sino-French Earth science mission. The Long March 2C rocket launched from Jiuquan at 8:43 p.m. Eastern Sunday night and placed the China-France Oceanography Satellite (CFOSat) orbit. That spacecraft, a joint venture with the French space agency CNES, will study ocean waves and their interaction with surface winds. The launch also carried several smallsat secondary payloads. (10/29)

Japan Launches Environment Monitoring Satellite (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
A Japanese rocket launched a greenhouse gas monitoring satellite and an Emirati Earth-observation satellite. The H-2A lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center at 12:08 a.m. Eastern Monday and placed into orbit GOSAT-2, also known as Ibuki-2. That Japanese satellite will be used to measure levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Also on the rocket was KhalifaSat, a high-resolution Earth-imaging satellite built in the United Arab Emirates. Several other smallsats were on the launch, including Diwata-2B from the Philippines. (10/29)

Space Force Approach Could Reduce Bureaucracy (Source: Space News)
One Pentagon official sees a new office linked to the proposed Space Force as a means of reducing, not growing, bureaucracy. Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan said that the Space Development Agency, a planned organization that would handle procurement of space systems, could consolidate duplicative space projects pursued by individual services. Shanahan also argued that creating the Space Force will not result in a "huge budget hit" for the Air Force, although he said the White House seeks to cap total national security spending at $700 billion in 2020, compared to earlier plans of a $733 billion budget. (10/29)

FAA COMSTAC Supporting Launch Regulatory Reform (Source: Space News)
The commercial launch industry will look for updates on regulatory reform efforts at two meetings this week. The FAA is developing revisions to existing launch regulations as part of a streamlining effort called for in Space Policy Directive 2, with a deadline of publishing a draft version of the revised rules in February. Companies are hoping that the FAA will provide more details on those efforts at a meeting of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee this week in Washington. A conference also scheduled for this week will examine efforts to improve the integration of launches and reentries into the national airspace system, a topic that has attracted more attention, and concern from the aviation industry, as launch activity increases. (10/29)

New Ideas on Mars Methane Mystery (Source: Nature)
Scientists believe they're getting a better understanding of what causes seasonal variations of methane in the Martian atmosphere. At a conference last week, researchers said that the seasonal changes in methane concentrations are likely caused by heat spreading down into the surface, liberating more methane. That would explain the variations in methane measured by the Curiosity rover, although doesn't explain what creates the methane. More data from an instrument on ESA's Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft should be published in the near future. (10/29)

Auction House Made False Claims About the "Moon Puzzle" it Sold (Source: Space Daily)
On Friday, October 19th, in a widely publicized sale, a buyer spent $612,500 on a meteorite described by the internet auctioneer RR Auction as "The Largest Known Complete Lunar Puzzle." It was neither the largest nor was it complete. Other attributes were also falsified.

A group of scientists and meteorite experts called the false claims that RR Auction's "Moon Puzzle" was "One of the most important meteorites available for acquisition anywhere in the world today and, perhaps, the most significant example of the Moon ever offered for sale in the history meteorite science," utter lunar-cy.

Cosmochemist Dr. Alan Rubin at the University of California, Los Angeles said, "As lunar specimens go, NWA 11789 [its real name] is not among the most scientifically significant examples of the Moon. It is a common feldspathic breccia-the most common type of lunar meteorite. More than 60% of lunar meteorites are classified as the same type of rock as NWA 11789." (10/29)

Can Stratolaunch Carry On Paul Allen's Space Dreams? (Source: Aviation Week)
At first blush, the $28 million investment Paul Allen made to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize, awarded in 2004 for the first privately funded human spaceflights, did not make financial sense. For starters, Allen split the prize with business partner Burt Rutan and the Mojave, California-based Scaled Composites team. Second, Allen passed on commercializing SpaceShipOne—an air-launched, winged, hybrid-motor spaceplane equipped with a rotating tail boom to change the vehicle’s shape and ease atmospheric reentry.

But between the prize money, fees to license the technology to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which is testing a commercial SpaceShipTwo vehicle, and tax write-offs for donating SpaceShipOne to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, Allen came out with a “net positive return,” the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft wrote in his 2011 memoir, Idea Man.

Making money was not Allen’s primary motivation for signing an agreement in 2000 to develop what would become SpaceShipOne. “I wanted to do something in rocketry that no one had done before,” Allen wrote. The original single-passenger design was modified to meet the X Prize rules for a three-person ship, though for all six of SpaceShipOne’s powered flights, including three forays into suborbital space, only one pilot was aboard. (10/26)

Number of Habitable Exoplanets Found by NASA's Kepler May Not Be So High After All (Source: Space.com)
The tally of potentially habitable alien planets may have to be revised downward a bit. To date, NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope has discovered about 30 roughly Earth-size exoplanets in their host stars' "habitable zone" — the range of orbital distances at which liquid water can likely exist on a world's surface. Or so researchers had thought. New observations by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia spacecraft suggest that the actual number is probably significantly smaller — perhaps between two and 12, NASA officials said. (10/28)

Dusty Pseudo-Satellites Spotted Orbiting Earth (Source: New Atlas)
The Earth is far from alone on its journey around the Sun. Our most visible companion is the Moon, but there are also the thousands of artificial satellites orbiting our home planet, and the odd space rock that we drag along for the ride. Now, Hungarian astronomers have spotted two new pseudo-satellites – in the form of clouds of dust – caught in the gravitational tug-of-war between the Earth and the Moon.

The interplay of gravity between objects is more complicated than it may seem at a glance. When one large object orbits another – say, the Moon orbiting the Earth – the gravitational pull of both creates five positions, called Lagrange points, where those forces are just right to capture smaller objects. Pseudo-satellites trapped in these positions remain relatively stable in relation to each other and the larger bodies. (10/28)

SpaceX Confirms Initial BFR Spaceship Flight Tests Will Occur in South Texas (Source: Teslarati)
SpaceX has confirmed that the two large propellant tanks now present at its Boca Chica, Texas facilities will likely to be the last major ground tanks needed to enable the first test flights of the upper stage of its next-gen BFR rocket, known as the Big Falcon Spaceship (BFS). Expected to begin as soon as late 2019, SpaceX executives have recently reiterated plans for a campaign of hop tests for the first full-scale spaceship prototype.

In a comment provided to a number of local outlets, SpaceX Communications Specialist Sean Pitt stated this about the recent arrival of a second large propellant storage tank at the company’s prospective South Texas test and launch facilities. While there may have been some slight uncertainty before, this official statement confirms beyond the shadow of a doubt that SpaceX is actively and rapidly preparing its South Texas property for a future of BFR-related tests, spaceship hops, and perhaps even launches.

Unlike Falcon 9’s Grasshopper and F9R reusability development programs, SpaceX’s BFS hop test campaign is likely going to be much more aggressive in order to gather real flight-test data on new technologies ranging from unfamiliar aerodynamic control surfaces (wings & fins vs. grid fins), all-composite propellant tanks (Falcon uses aluminum-lithium), a 9m-diameter vehicle versus Falcon’s 3.7m, a massive tiled heat-shield likely to require new forms of thermal protection, and entirely new regimes of flight (falling like a skydiver rather than Falcon 9’s javelin-style attitude) – to name just a handful. (10/29)

DoD Told to Take Cut with FY20 Budget (Source: Defense News)
The Pentagon has officially been told the national security top line for fiscal 2020 will be $700 billion, representing the first cut to defense spending under the Trump administration. Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan told reporters at the Military Reporters & Editors Conference on Friday that Office of Management and Budget head Mick Mulvaney directly told him the Department of Defense must aim for the $700 billion figure, first floated by President Donald Trump at a Cabinet meeting last week.

Notably, Shanahan indicated this will not be a one-year blip, but rather part of a flattening of budgets, saying “when you look at the $700 billion, it’s not just for one year drop down, [or] a phase, it’s a drop and then held constant over the” future years defense program, a five year projection included in every budget. The $700 billion figure represents a roughly 2.2% cut below the FY19 level of $716 billion, and a 4.5% cut below the projected $733 billion for FY20. However, the new figure still exceeds the $576 billion budget caps for discretionary defense spending, set under the Budget Control Act for fiscal 2020. (10/26)

NASA'S Gateway Faces Questions in Congress (Source: Politico)
NASA anticipates it will spend nearly $3 billion between fiscal 2018 and fiscal 2024 on the program. Last fall, it awarded initial contracts to Lockheed Martin, Sierra Nevada Corp., Boeing, Space Systems Loral and Orbital ATK (now Northrop Grumman) to study how to build the Gateway’s first segment, the power and propulsion element, which is expected to launch in 2022.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle want more information. “I’ve been on the science committee for four years and really we haven’t talked about the Gateway a lot,” says Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Colorado Democrat on the space subcommittee. “I don’t think it has really developed a constituency in favor of it or a group against it.” (10/26)

Air Force Explores Space-Based Cargo Operations, Confirms Talks with SpaceX (Source: Defense News)
The U.S. Air Force is exploring the logistics of space-based cargo operations under the purview of Air Mobility Command, even as the impact of a new Space Force on the mobility community remains to be seen. “I don’t know how it will affect mobility, but most of you know space affects mobility every day,” Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday at the 2018 Airlift/Tanker Symposium outside Dallas, Texas.

“Whatever the Space Force is or does, it has to protect our national interest in space,” he said, adding that GPS is critical to the air mobility community. As for what space cargo operations could look like, the previous head of Air Mobility Command, Gen. Carlton Everhart, espoused the possibility of moving cargo using rockets during a Defense Writers Group breakfast in August. “Think about this. Thirty minutes, 150 metric tons [and] less than the cost of a C-5,” he said at the time. Apart from cargo operations, such a focuses space presence could help with pre-positioning equipment and supplies in orbit, ready to be dropped to Earth. (10/26)

Space Will be Tokenized: SpaceFund Launches the World’s First Space Security Token to Fund the Opening of the High Frontier (Source: SpaceFund)
The world’s first space security token was announced today at the Crypto Summit, by SpaceFund Inc., a Texas based venture capital firm focused on using new blockchain technology to fund ‘frontier enabling’ space technology startups.

“SpaceFund’s goal is to support the development and profitability of amazing new space startups around the world,” said Rick Tumlinson, founding partner of SpaceFund, co-founder of several leading space initiatives, and space industry thought leader. “With Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and others investing billions into a space economic infrastructure, a revolution is underway in space. We want to allow more visionary people to get involved, to support the entrepreneurs opening space to humanity, and to share in the wealth it will create. This offering is both a giant leap and a first step in that direction.”

Security tokens are simply a digitized form of asset ownership, utilizing the reliability of the immutable shared ledger system, or blockchain, that is currently revolutionizing the world of finance. Essentially ‘digital stock,’ security tokens are a new form of digital financial technology replacing paper share certificates and providing significant benefits in how assets are held, traded, and audited. Security tokens also have built-in compliance, preventing unauthorized trades before they ever happen. (10/29)

SLS Contractor Gets Real, Says Program Needs to Focus on “Affordability” (Source: Ars Technica)
Annually, NASA spends nearly $4 billion on development of its "exploration" hardware, including the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, the launch pad, and related facilities. This is a large amount of money, comprising nearly half of the space agency's expenditure on human spaceflight activities. Development has been ongoing since 2011, and NASA hopes to finally fly the vehicles together in 2020.

The exploration program spreads those funds around to four principal contractors who once played a key role in the space shuttle program and now supports the SLS rocket and Orion. Senior representatives of all four of these companies, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, appeared last week for a panel discussion at the American Astronautical Society's Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

For the most part, the presentations went as usual for these kinds of events—corporate vice presidents talking about the progress they were making on this or that component of the rocket and spacecraft. Although the Space Launch System rocket is going to launch three years later than originally planned, and its program is over budget and was recently admitted by NASA's own inspector to be poorly managed, you would not have known it from these presentations. (10/29)