November 23, 2018

Australia’s First Sub-Orbital Rocket with Commercial Payload Launched (Source: Ferret)
Australia’s first sub-orbital rocket launch with a commercial payload took place today in Queensland, demonstrating the capability of the state’s advanced manufacturing sector. The Logan-based company Black Sky Aerospace successfully tested their Sighter190 rocket in Westmar, five hours west of Brisbane. Using the company’s Rapid Deployment Sounding Rocket (RDSR) technology, the four-meter-long rocket was launched to an altitude of around 17,000 feet and reached 1.2 times the speed of sound at top speed.

“Black Sky Aerospace is proof Queensland can play a leading role in designing and manufacturing rocket and satellite technologies, including for projects like data collection for the communications, farming and mining industries,” said Queensland’s state development, manufacturing and infrastructure minister Cameron Dick. (11/22)

Dick Rutan, Mike Melville inducted into California Aviation Hall of Fame (Source: Mojave Desert News)
Two American record-setting aviation legends who are regular fixtures at the Mojave Air and Space Port were inducted into the California Aviation Hall of Fame last Thursday in a ceremony held at the Santa Monica Airport. The honorees were Lt. Col. Dick Rutan (USAF Ret.), and the first commercial astronaut ever, Mike Melville (SpaceShipOne, Scaled Composites). Both of their stories are as famous as the men who lived them. (11/22)

Pint-Sized Space Race: Miniature Rockets Are Starting To Crowd Launch Pads (Source: Forbes)
The trend of miniaturizing satellites is driving a new space race: one to build small rockets to launch the new breed of small satellites. Backed by investors including Richard Branson and the late Paul Allen, rockets that clock in at less than a quarter of the weight and size of heavyweight peers are carving out a new frontier in commercial space. Companies like Rocket Lab, which last week sent its third small rocket into space, are filling a demand by satellite customers that want to control when and where their launch happens. Click here. (11/21)

Big Test Coming Up for Tiny satellites Trailing Mars Lander (Source: WECT)
A pair of tiny experimental satellites trailing NASA's InSight spacecraft all the way to Mars face their biggest test yet. Their mission: Broadcast immediate news, good or bad, of InSight's plunge through the Martian atmosphere on Monday. Named WALL-E and EVE after the main characters in the 2008 animated movie, the twin CubeSats will pass within a few thousand miles (kilometers) of Mars as the lander attempts its dicey touchdown. If these pipsqueaks manage to relay InSight's radio signals to ground controllers nearly 100 million miles (160 million kilometers) away, we'll know within minutes whether the spacecraft landed safely. Click here. (11/22)

Discovery of Hotspots Circling Milky Way Black Hole Has Astronomers Excited (Source: Space.com)
The discovery of  wobbling "hotspots" circling the drain of a massive black hole offers exciting new evidence for the behemoth that lies at our galaxy's center — and the astronomer who first worked on this theory shares how 13 years of observations have finally paid off. The new study, involving the work of by Avery Broderick, an astronomer from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, revealed three flares, or visual hotspots, emanating from the Milky Way's central black hole, also known as Sagittarius A.

The team detected a wobble of emissions coming from the flares, allowing the scientists to detect the accretion disk — a growing mass of orbiting gas and debris — surrounding the black hole itself. In turn, the researchers were able to use the emissions to map the behavior of Sagittarius A*, Broderick said. Broderick's black hole theory built on earlier research by two teams that studied the galactic center of the Milky Way in near-infrared. This included the work of multiple other scientists. At the time, their work revealed that the center of the Milky Way wasn't steady, but instead would drastically brighten about once a day for about 30 or 40 minutes, Broderick said.

Researchers think supermassive black holes exist at the center of most, if not all, large galaxies. Therefore, in 2005, while working alongside researcher Avi Loeb at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Broderick argued that a periodic brightening observed at the heart of the Milky Way, also known as a bright infrared flare, was the result of an incredibly massive object such as a black hole. (11/21)

One of NASA's Mars Exploration Tools Has a Glitch That Created The Illusion of Water (Source: Science Alert)
We've arrived at a sad realization. A handful of pixels in about 90 percent of the images taken by one of the major instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are showing things that just aren't there. Researchers uncovered the error after searching for better signs of moisture-absorbing materials on the Martian surface. Not only did they turn out to be a mirage, doubts have now been raised over the precise distribution of water across the planet.

The orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) is an eye-in-the-sky tasked with identifying minerals on the planet's surface that could help pinpoint where water might accumulate. It does this by measuring waves of infrared and visible light that correspond to different chemical structures, and mapping them to pixels that represent an area of around 100 to 200 meters (330 to 660 feet) across. (11/22)

One of the TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanets Might Have an Ocean (Source: BGR)
Ever since astronomers announced the discovery of seven exoplanets around the star called TRAPPIST-1, researchers have been diving into the data in an attempt to determine what the planets are like. Early on, the prospects for potentially habitable worlds seemed good, but subsequent models suggested that the star at the heart of the system may have burned off any atmosphere the planets once had.

Now, a new study claims to offer a slightly more optimistic scenario that gives at least one of the planets, TRAPPIST-1e, the chance at sustaining an ocean on its surface. The TRAPPIST-1 system is incredibly special because it’s packed with seven planets, and three of them are near what we consider to be the habitable zone of the central star. However, scientists think the star had an extremely intense early phase that would likely have scorched the planets, stripping their atmosphere and moisture away long ago.

In studying each of the individual planets, the fourth most distant from the star caught the attention of scientists. Using advanced models to predict the fate of each world, the research team arrived at the conclusion that TRAPPIST-1e may have escaped the fate of its peers and could still support an ocean on its surface. (11/21)

New China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite to Launch in H2 2019 (Source: GB Times)
China and Brazil will launch a new joint Earth resources satellite next year, a senior official within the Chinese space program has stated. The China-Brazil Earth Resource Satellite-4A (CBERS-4A) will be launched in the second half of 2019, according to Li Guoping, secretary-general of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Thursday. Li assumed the role from Tian Yulong in September, and works under Zhang Kejian, who became CNSA administrator in May 2018. (11/23)

Racist Hackers Tried to Ruin Girls' Chances in a NASA Competition. Six months Later, They’re Undeterred (Source: Washington Post)
The three D.C. high school seniors had a whirlwind of a summer. First, they had a private meeting with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Or was it Microsoft chief Satya Nadella? They can’t quite remember. But they know they loved it all. Google sent them to Flint, Mich., to distribute clean water. They traveled to Seattle to participate in a computer programming event, and to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

They received fan mail from Girl Scouts. They met black female scientists who offered career advice. Colleges called, swaying them to apply to their campuses. And Lester Holt featured them on “NBC Nightly News.” Their story tread an all-too-familiar path in our epoch: from inspiring to dismaying and back to inspiring. “A lot has transpired,” said Bria Snell, one of the high-schoolers.

Mikayla Sharrieff, India Skinner and Snell — all 17 years old and students at Banneker High — were finalists in a prestigious NASA high school competition. The trio were the only all-black, female team to make it that far. But during the online voting portion of the competition, users on 4chan — an anonymous Internet forum where users are known to push hoaxes and spew racist and homophobic comments — tried to ensure the students wouldn’t win. They hacked the voting system, erasing votes, and told others not to support the teens because of the color of their skin. (11/21)

Microbes in Space: Concerns Raised About Bacteria in the ISS (Source: Cosmos)
Five strains of the bacterium Enterobacter recovered from areas on board the International Space Station (ISS) have been identified, with researchers urging further careful research to determine whether continuous exposure to microgravity could induce potentially dangerous mutations. In a paper published in the journal BMC Microbiology, a team led by Nitin Singh and Daniela Bezdan from the Biotechnology and Planetary Protection Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology, US, detail genomic analyses of Enterobacter gathered from the toilet and gym areas of the space station.

The bacterial genus is widespread on Earth, and associated with a range of sometimes serious human conditions, including septic arthritis, osteomyelitis, skin and soft tissue damage and lower respiratory tract infections. Some strains exhibit multiple antibiotic resistance. (11/23)

Space Race Hits Warp Speed Among Investors (Source: Politico)
Establishing a set of players in the Pentagon focused solely on buying space assets could help the Defense Department tap into some of the smaller, innovative and oftentimes cheaper space startups, one space investor says. “Having a dedicated group of people who look at this sector all the time who are aware of the new companies and capabilities...they can say, 'Hey, instead of just going to one of the big incumbents, we should cut in some of these new guys,'” said Chad Anderson, the CEO and founder of Space Angels.

Anderson, who previously managed a $50 billion real estate portfolio for JP Morgan, founded Space Angels in 2007 for both practical and aspirational reasons. He saw SpaceX tear down the barriers to entry in a lucrative field and knew there would soon be opportunities for more entrepreneurial space companies to grow. He also said space provides “the greatest opportunity for impact” because of both the critical technology that comes through space, like communications networks, and the so-called “overview effect,” in which people who visit space are often more determined when they return to Earth to solve conflicts. (11/21)

Young Stars Push Back to Keep the Universe ‘Vibrant’ (Source: Cosmos)
Deep in the Large Magellanic Cloud lies the Tarantula Nebula. Deep within that lies R136, a cluster of young and dense stars – and deep within that lies the most massive star so far detected in the universe. The cluster has recently been the focus of intense research by a team led by astronomer Roland Crocker. By using data gathered by NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope the scientists have been able to answer a fundamental question of cosmology: How come planets potentially suitable for the emergence of life develop?

The question might best perhaps be framed differently: what acts to balance the otherwise destructive force of gravity in the development of young stars? “If star formation happened rapidly, all stars would be bound together in massive clusters, where the intense radiation and supernova explosions would likely sterilize all the planetary systems, preventing the emergence of life,” says Crocker. “The conditions in these massive star clusters would possibly even prevent planets from forming in the first place.”

The researchers demonstrate that the newly formed stars themselves generate another force that works to counterbalance gravity. The stars coalesce from clouds interstellar dust and gas. As they do so, they radiate both ultraviolet and optical light. This collides with the remaining dust, causing the scattering of infrared light – which exerts pressure against gravity. (11/21)

It Will Soon be Possible to Send a Satellite to Repair Another (Source: The Economist)
Jet packs for satellites. According to Daniel Campbell, the boss of Effective Space, the British and Israeli firm which is building them, that is the way to think of the robotic spacecraft his company plans to start launching in 2020. The purpose of Effective Space’s devices, which it calls space drones, is to prolong the lives of communications satellites (com-sats) that would otherwise be decommissioned for lack of fuel for station-keeping—in other words, for maintaining their proper orbits.

At the moment, about two dozen big geosynchronous com-sats (those with orbits exactly 24 hours long, which thus hover continuously over the same spot on Earth) are retired each year, most commonly because of fuel exhaustion. Mr Campbell proposes to do something about that. In partnership with Israel Aerospace Industries, a government-owned firm, he plans to build the first two space drones in Tel Aviv, for launch in 2020.

Next year SpaceLogistics, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman, an American engineering giant, will launch its first such “mission extension” spacecraft. mev-1, as it is named, will handle station-keeping for Intelsat-901, a big com-sat that is currently low on fuel. SpaceLogistics reckons its docking system can clamp onto 80% of today’s geosynchronous satellites. (11/22)