November 20, 2018

Russia Interested in NASA's Lunar Gateway (Source: Tass)
Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos is interested in the US project to create an international lunar orbiter but the Russian side has its wishes and proposals on it, Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin said on Monday. "We view with interest the project of our US colleagues to create the international manned Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway and we, of course, will have our own proposals and wishes. We are already discussing the technical aspect of the creation of the manned station on the Moon in the foreseeable future," Rogozin said.

The plans to create a lunar orbital station were unveiled in the spring of 2016. TASS reported at the time, citing the documents of Russia’s Energia Rocket and Space Corporation, that preliminary work was underway with the US Boeing Company on the issues of creating the near-Moon infrastructure in support of the national space agencies’ future plans. (11/19)

NASA Launches Safety Review of SpaceX and Boeing After Musk Seen Smoking Pot (Source: Washington Post)
NASA has ordered a safety review of the two companies it has hired to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, a months-long assessment that would involve hundreds of interviews designed to evaluate the culture of the workplaces, the agency said.

The review, to begin next year, would look at both Boeing and SpaceX, the companies under contract to fly NASA’s astronauts, and examine “everything and anything that could impact safety” as the companies prepare to fly humans for the first time, William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration, said in an interview with The Washington Post.

The review was prompted by the recent behavior of SpaceX’s founder, Elon Musk, according to three officials with knowledge of the probe, after he took a hit of marijuana and sipped whiskey on a podcast streamed on the Internet. That rankled some at NASA’s highest levels and prompted the agency to take a close look at the culture of the companies, the people said. (11/20)

Russia's Security Agency Pulls Ambitious OneWeb Satellite Internet Venture Back To Earth (Source: Radio Free Europe)
It's been a bright spot for Russia's wobbly space industry: A contract, estimated at $1 billion, to launch 21 Soyuz rockets over the next two years carrying mocrosatellites  -- part of a U.S.-based company's plans to offer broadband Internet access over remote territories of the globe, including parts of Siberia. For the company, OneWeb, the effort was seen as a critical step in building out its "constellation of small satellites" and validation for investors who have put up nearly $2 billion.

For Russia's space agency, Roskosmos, the contract was both a crucial source of private revenue, and a foothold in the burgeoning global market for microsatellite launches. Now, just months before the planned maiden launch, it appears that the Federal Security Service (FSB) may put a stop to it entirely. The FSB has serious misgivings about the OneWeb venture. Citing unnamed government officials, the paper said the FSB feared that having an Internet provider whose signals would be transmitted via satellite would keep the agency from being able to filter and monitor Internet traffic.

Russian regulators have also moved to tighten technical controls, requiring major technology and Internet companies like Google or Facebook to physically house servers within Russia, giving Russian law enforcement a way to access them. That also includes use of a system known as SORM, which is essentially a filter -- a black box the size of an old video recorder -- that allows Russian security agencies to intercept or eavesdrop on Internet traffic. (11/19)

Musk Gives a Classic Name to His Mars Spaceship (Source: GeekWire)
First it was the Mars Colonial Transporter, or MCT … then it was the Interplanetary Transport System, or ITS … then it was the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR. Now it’s Starship. Tonight SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced the latest name for the spaceship that he says SpaceX aims to use to deliver a million people to Mars, send a Japanese billionaire and an assortment of artists around the moon and back, carry passengers on supersonic trips around the globe, and basically do everything big that needs to be done in space.

The name change comes just days after Musk tweeted that the design for the spaceship is being radically revised once again. “New design is very exciting! Delightfully counter-intuitive,” he wrote. Musk hasn’t yet shared details on the design, but he did discuss the new nomenclature for the upper-stage spaceship and its mammoth first-stage booster. (11/19)

Portugal Builds Spaceport in the Azores (Source: Space News)
One of the islands of the Azores archipelago, Santa Maria, may soon become a base for launching small satellites, unique in Europe (the spaceport will deal with launching only small satellites, unlike the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana). Currently, companies from eight countries are competing for the right to use the port.

Fourteen enterprises from the US, Russia, Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Portugal have submitted applications for the first stage of Atlantic International Satellite Launch Program. Regional Secretary for the Sea, Science and Technology Gui Manuel Machado Menezes explained to Sputnik: "At the moment, a senior officials committee is being gathered to consider the applications. After that, the committee will invite certain companies to participate in the second stage, where more concrete projects will be examined. The second stage will take place in January - February 2019." (11/20)

Hawaii’s Mars Simulation Base Could Re-Purpose for Lunar Sims (Source: The Atlantic)
There had been a power outage in the habitat, and some troubleshooting ended with one of the residents sustaining an electric shock. The rest of the crew was evacuated, too. There was some discussion of returning—the injured person was treated and released in the same day—but another crew member felt the conditions weren’t safe enough and decided to withdraw. The Mars simulation couldn’t continue with a crew as small as three, and the entire program was put on hold.

But the habitat on Mauna Loa was not abandoned. While officials at the University of Hawaii and nasa investigated the incident, the wealthy Dutch entrepreneur who built the habitat was thinking about how the dome could be put to use. Henk Rogers made his money designing computer games, but he is passionate about space exploration, and particularly the idea of constructing human settlements on other worlds. Life on Earth, just like his computers, needs a backup, he has said. It’s why he agreed to build the habitat, and why, when the latest Mars simulation came to an abrupt end, he saw an opportunity.

Under Rogers’s direction and funding, the hi-seas habitat will reopen this year—not as a Mars simulation, but a moon one. “It’s my habitat, for chrissakes,” Rogers told me in a recent interview. “I don’t want to see it sitting there empty and do nothing.” For him, a moon colony is the next logical step in human space exploration, and a necessary milestone before a Mars mission. (11/20)

NASA Studying Three-Stage Approach to Human-Class Lunar Landers (Source: Space News)
As NASA starts to build up details about its plans to return humans to the moon, the agency is studying concepts for “human-class” lunar landers that would involve three-stage vehicles whose individual components could be flown on a range of launch vehicles. At a pair of meetings last week, agency officials said their examination of concepts for crewed lunar landers, still in their earliest stages, is part of three “swim lanes” for lunar landers that include small commercial and mid-sized science landers.

The drawback with the single-stage approach, he said, is the mass of the spacecraft, which would exceed 50 metric tons. “They’re actually in excess of what our SLS is capable of,” he said. A two-stage approach, with an ascent module and descent stage, is more feasible, he said. However, the large mass of the descent stage, which he estimated to be between 32 and 38 metric tons, would be too large to be carried on commercial launch vehicles anticipated to be available in the next decade.

A three-stage approach involves the addition of a transfer stage, or tug, along with the ascent and descent modules. The transfer stage would move the lander stages from the Gateway to a lower orbit, reducing the amount of fuel they have to carry and thus making them smaller. “What’s interesting about this is that your per-element mass drops to 12 to 15 metric tons,” Crusan said. “This fits on a number of launch vehicles.” Those stages could also be co-manifested on SLS missions, while enabling more international partnership opportunities. (11/20)

A Dark Matter Hurricane is Headed Our Way (Source: CNN)
According to a recent paper, the Earth is caught directly in the crosshairs of a cosmic hurricane. A swarm of nearly 100 stars, accompanied by an even greater amount of dark matter, is aimed directly at our stellar neighborhood and there's nothing we can do to stop it; in fact, the vanguard is already upon us. But is it a danger? Well, actually, no. Not at all. But it's potentially incredibly fascinating, with lots of interesting scientific interconnections. So, what is really going on?

In galaxies like the Milky Way, the most common behavior is that the stars orbit the center of the galaxy in a manner broadly similar to the planets orbiting our sun. However, there are some stars that exhibit unusual motion. About a year ago, astronomers identified some "stellar streams" passing through our celestial neighborhood.

One of them, called S1 (for stream 1), consists of nearly 100 stars of similar age and composition, orbiting the Milky Way in a direction exactly opposite that of normal stars. It's kind of like a handful of cars driving the wrong way down the highway, except with a much greater distance between them and with no likelihood of a collision. These stars are spread out over a few thousand light years and they will pass through the solar system's neighborhood over the course of a few million years. (11/19)

NASA Chooses the Landing Site for its Mars 2020 Rover Mission (Source: TechCrunch)
Five years and 60 potential locations later, NASA has chosen the Jezero Crater as the landing site for its Mars 2020 rover mission. Slated to launch in July, the Mars 2020 rover mission will touch down at the Jezero Crater as NASA’s exploration of the Red Planet enters its next phase. The rover will be looking for signs of habitable conditions — and past microbial life — while also collecting rock and soil samples that will be stored in a cache on the Martian surface.

Alongside the European Space Agency, NASA is already studying future missions that will allow the agencies to retrieve the samples and return them to earth. According to NASA, this new landing is the first step of a planned decade-long exploration of Mars.

“The landing site in Jezero Crater offers geologically rich terrain, with landforms reaching as far back as 3.6 billion years old, that could potentially answer important questions in planetary evolution and astrobiology,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, in a statement. “Getting samples from this unique area will revolutionize how we think about Mars and its ability to harbor life.” (11/19)

A Historic Day for Chinese NewSpace (Source: Space Review)
Last month a private Chinese company made its first attempt to launch a payload into orbit. Chen Lan offers an eyewitness account of the event and explains why that launch, while a failure, was still a major milestone for the country’s emerging commercial space industry. Click here. (11/19)
 
Space, Fighting for Airspace (Source: Space Review)
As the US launch industry gets more active, it’s running into new problems regarding access to airspace and conflicts with the commercial aviation industry. Jeff Foust reports on how the two industries are trying to better understand each other and resolve those conflicts. Click here. (11/19)
 
Disruptive American “Astrologistics” (Source: Space Review)
A new era in American spaceflight requires a renewed emphasis on the ability to reliably and affordably transport cargo to and from the space. Mike Snead discusses what that means to him within the context of disruptive innovation. Click here. (11/19)

NASA Considers Selling Trips to Space Tourists (Source: Engadget)
The Jim Bridenstine-era NASA's efforts to privatize spaceflight could involve borrowing a page from Russia. The Washington Post notes the agency is mulling the possibility of offering seats to private tourists on the ships that take astronauts to the International Space Station, similar to how Russia has accepted space tourists in the past. It's just a proposal and would have to clear NASA's advisory council, but it already has the support of an advisory subcommittee.

The idea comes as part of a wider set of proposals that would expand the reach of private companies in NASA's operations. These include allowing astronauts to support private ISS activities, opening astronauts to endorsements and even letting companies name vessels. Like it or not, there's a real chance NASA could use its flights as opportunities to compete with the likes of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. (11/19)

Space Launch Firms Start Small Today To Go Big Tomorrow (Source: San Francisco Chronicle)
Behind Rocket Lab, a host of startup companies are also jockeying to provide transportation to space for a growing number of small satellites. The payloads include constellations of telecommunications satellites that would provide the world with ubiquitous internet access. The payload of this mission, which Rocket Lab whimsically named “It’s Business Time,” offered a glimpse of this future: two ship-tracking satellites for Spire Global; a small climate- and environment-monitoring satellite for GeoOptics; a small probe built by high school students in Irvine; and a demonstration version of a drag sail that would pull defunct satellites out of orbit.

Space Angels, a space-business investment firm, is tracking 150 small launch companies. Chad Anderson, Space Angel’s chief executive, said that although the vast majority of these companies will fail, a small group possess the financing and engineering wherewithal to get off the ground.

Each company on Anderson’s list proffers its own twist in business plan or capability: Vector Launch aims for mass production; Virgin Orbit, a piece of Richard Branson’s business empire, will drop its rockets from the bottom of a 747 at 35,000 feet up; Relativity Space plans to use a 3-D printer to make almost all pieces of its rockets; Firefly Aerospace will offer a slightly larger rocket in a bet that the small satellites will grow a bit in size and weight; and Gilmour Space Technologies is a rare Australian aerospace company. There’s also Astra Space, which is operating in stealth mode like a Silicon Valley startup, saying nothing about what it is doing. (11/16)

Finland Summons Russian Ambassador Over GPS Blocking Claims (Source: Space Daily)
Finland has summoned Russia's ambassador to answer allegations that Moscow was behind the jamming of GPS signals in Lapland during recent NATO exercises, the foreign ministry in Helsinki confirmed Saturday. Ambassador Pavel Kuznetsov "has been invited to the ministry on Monday to discuss the GPS issue," spokeswoman Hanna Paivarinta told AFP. Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila has said the jamming of GPS satellite signals in the Arctic region had put civil aviation at risk. (11/17)