December 10, 2018

Russia's Crumbling Baikonur Spaceport is Earth's Only Launch Pad for Manned Flights (Source: ABC News)
The landscape approaching Russia’s spaceport in Baikonur is otherworldly. The yellow steppe of southern Kazakhstan where it is located is effectively desert, unbroken flatlands for hundreds of miles covered by a layer of scrub. In December, the freezing winds that blow across it encase the scrub plants in ice, making them look like silver coral sprouting out of the sand. Click here. (12/9)

Harris Corp. to Pour $125 Million into R&D in Florida: Florida Tech and UCF Will Benefit (Source: Florida Today)
Harris Corp., headquartered in Melbourne, announced Monday plans to invest more than $125 million in internal research and development in Florida this fiscal year, an outlay the company says will boost high-paying jobs and burnish its role as a global leader in high-tech aerospace and communications. The research and development primarily will take place at the company’s Central Florida locations and focus on areas such as electronic warfare, robotics, avionics and smallsats.

The Central Florida region will receive over a third of the company’s overall $300 million-plus annual internal R&D budget – representing an industry-leading 5 percent of company revenue. (The total excludes customer-funded R&D.) The internal R&D will support the company’s nearly 7,000 employees in Florida, including more than 3,300 engineers and scientists, as well as create new high-paying positions. The company pays an average salary of $95,000 in Florida and has about 375 openings in the state, primarily in engineering.

The news comes as Harris comes closer to finalizing its merger with L3 Technologies, expected to happen midyear 2019. That merger will create sixth-largest defense contractor with a market value estimated at $34 billion. “As the largest aerospace and defense company headquartered in Florida, Harris Corp plays an integral role in our state,” said U.S. Sen.Marco Rubio.  “With the announcement of this research and development, I’m pleased to see that they are continuing to invest in our state’s aerospace industry and economy as well as the future of U.S. national security,” Rubio said.

Brevard Schools Foundation Gets $120,000 Boeing Grant To Fund Expansion of STEM Initiatives (Source: Space Coast Daily)
Brevard Schools Foundation is the recipient of a $120,000 grant from The Boeing Company that will fund the expansion of STEM initiatives centered around the augmentation and expansion of the Destination Space program as well as the development and implementation of the new Destination Mars program and space exploration education curriculum.

The great “space race” is being revitalized with Mars in mind, and the monies provided by The Boeing Company will expand the curriculum surrounding the Destination Space Program (formerly known as Space Week) for sixth-grade students at Brevard Public Schools. A new program called Destination Mars will feature an innovative pilot program that extends Space Week with STEM activities and two competition days. Several BPS departments are collaborating to host a Destination Mars Innovation Day in February 2019 for students and teachers representing fourteen pilot schools. (12/8)

Forces of Darkness and Light (Source: Space Review)
The 1970s in space advocacy is primarily remembered for visions of space colonies. Dwayne Day discusses how those concepts were shaped by both concerns about resource depletion as well as fear of nuclear war. Click here. (12/10)
 
For the Small Launch Industry, Just Wait Until Next Year (Source: Space Review)
This year was supposed to be the year of the small launch vehicle, but some companies experienced delays that have pushed their first launches into 2019. Jeff Foust reports that, even as these new vehicle prepare to enter service, a reckoning is coming for the overall industry in the near future. Click here. (12/10)
 
Congress and Commerce in the Final Frontier (Source: Space Review)
There’s a long history of legislation by Congress addressing commercial space regulation, oversight, and promotion. Cody Knipfer, in the first of a two-part examination, explores the early history such legislation in the 1980s and 1990s. Click here. (12/10)

UCF Scientists are Mapping an Asteroid More Than 100 Million Miles Away (Source: WMFE)
A spacecraft arrived at an asteroid more than 100 million miles away with plans to collect a sample of dirt from the surface and send it back to Earth. It’s now up to planetary scientists at the University of Central Florida to map out the best landing site. OSIRIS-REx arrived at the asteroid Bennu earlier this month, snapping photos of the surface as it approached. Planetary scientists like UCF Professor Humberto Campins will collect all the images and create a layered map.

“We’re looking for areas that would have lose enough material that the spacecraft can actually sample, like gravel or dust,” said Campins. One of the challenges to accuratly mapping Bennu is its shape. The asteroid resembles a spinning top. Campins and the imaging team will have to project the two-dimensional images to get the best analysis. The imaging team will look at things like boulder density, temperature and composition of the regolith, or dirt, when making recommendations. (12/10)

The Race to Understand Antarctica’s Most Terrifying Glacier (Source: WIRED)
Few places in Antarctica are more difficult to reach than Thwaites Glacier, a Florida-sized hunk of frozen water that meets the Amundsen Sea about 800 miles west of McMurdo. Until a decade ago, barely any scientists had ever set foot there, and the glacier’s remoteness, along with its reputation for bad weather, ensured that it remained poorly understood. Yet within the small community of people who study ice for a living,

Thwaites has long been the subject of dark speculation. If this mysterious glacier were to “go bad”—glaciologist-­speak for the process by which a glacier breaks down into icebergs and eventually collapses into the ocean—it might be more than a scientific curiosity. Indeed, it might be the kind of event that changes the course of civilization. Satellites and airborne radar missions revealed that something worrisome was happening on Thwaites: The glacier was destabilizing, dumping ever more ice into the sea.

On color-coded maps of the region, its flow rate went from stable blue to raise-the-alarms red. As Anandakrishnan puts it, “Thwaites started to pop.” Many glaciers resemble narrow rivers that thread through mountain valleys and move small icebergs leisurely into the sea, like a chute or slide. Thwaites, if it went bad, would behave nothing like that. “Thwaites is a terrifying glacier,” Anandakrishnan says. Its front end measures about 100 miles across, and its glacial basin—the thick part of the wedge, extending deep into the West Antarctic interior—runs anywhere from 3,000 to more than 4,000 feet deep. (12/10)

Rumor Has It NASA Might Be About to Announce Huge Voyager 2 News (Source: Science Alert)
When it comes to prodding the very boundaries of the Solar System we all reside in, astronomers have had a notoriously tricky time of figuring out where those edges truly lie. For example, it took a whole year to officially confirm that Voyager 1 had reached the interstellar medium of space – the first spacecraft to ever do so. But we might be about to get a confirmation of its cousin busting through the heliopause and into the interstellar medium as well; right now, we're only at rumor level. (12/10)

LRO Available to Support Commercial Lunar Lander Needs (Source: Space News)
A NASA spacecraft built to support the Vision for Space Exploration is now aiding commercial and international lunar missions. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched in 2009 to scout potential landing sites for future NASA robotic and human missions, but the Vision for Space Exploration was canceled not long afterward. LRO has since focused on lunar science, but NASA is making the spacecraft available to support commercial lunar landers that are a part of the agency's new plans to return to the moon. LRO may also observe the landings of upcoming Indian and Israeli lunar lander missions. (12/10)

NOAA's GOES-17, With Cryocooler Fixed, Ready for January Activation (Source: NOAA)
NOAA's newest weather satellite won't be operational until January. NOAA said last week the GOES-17 spacecraft suffered a problem with the cryocooler for its main instrument that was the result of a software issue it has since corrected. That problem is unrelated to the problem with loop heat pipes in the instrument that has degraded its performance at some wavelengths. NOAA says it now expects to declare GOES-17 operational as the GOES-West satellite in January, about a month later than previously planned. (12/10)

Orion Span Tries Crowdfunding for Commercial Space Station (Source: GeekWire)
A startup is turning to crowdfunding to raise money for a commercial space station. Orion Span started the crowdfunding investment campaign Friday, looking to raise $2 million to start working on its Aurora module, which the company plans to offer to space tourists. While the company raised more than $150,000 in the "first hours" of the 50-day campaign, as of early Monday the total raised to date remains at less than $160,000. (12/10)

InSight Lander Captures Sounds of Mars Wind (Source: Washington Post)
NASA's InSight Mars lander has captured the sounds of the wind on Mars. The seismometer on the spacecraft detected vibrations created when the wind passed over the spacecraft's two large solar panels. The rumbling is at the lower end of the human hearing range. Scientists described the detection as an "unplanned treat" from the seismometer, which will be placed onto the surface of the planet in the coming months. It will then be covered with a shield to prevent it from detecting wind noises in order to better detect the planet's seismic activity. (12/10)

Delta 4 Heavy Aborts Launch with Seconds to Go at California Spaceport (Source: CBS)
A Delta 4 Heavy launch of a classified satellite suffered a scrub just seconds before liftoff Saturday night. The countdown for the launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base was halted just 7.5 seconds before the planned 11:15 p.m. Eastern launch. Flares intended to burn off excess hydrogen had already ignited at the pad at the time the countdown was stopped. United Launch Alliance said "an unexpected condition during terminal count" caused the launch scrub, but has not set a new launch date. The NROL-71 mission is carrying a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. (12/10)

Iridium Slips Final Batch of 10 Satellites to January 7 Launch (Source: Space News)
Iridium said Friday the final launch of its next-generation satellites will slip into early 2019. That launch, of the last batch of 10 satellites, was scheduled for Dec. 30 on a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg, but Iridium said they're now planning a Jan. 7 launch for the mission. A two-week delay in the previous SpaceX launch from Vandenberg, of 64 smallsats for Spaceflight Industries, contributed to the postponement. The upcoming launch will complete the Iridium Next constellation of 66 operational satellites and nine on-orbit spares. (12/10)

SpaceX Commercial Crew Test Moves to Jan. 17 (Source: NASA)
NASA has rescheduled the launch of SpaceX's first commercial crew test flight to Jan. 17. NASA said Friday the 10-day slip will move the mission to after the return of a cargo Dragon mission currently scheduled to depart from the station in early January. The announcement came after both SpaceX and NASA officials said they believed the mission, which will test the Crew Dragon spacecraft but without astronauts on board, would still take place in January even if it slipped from that Jan. 7 date announced last month. (12/10)

2019 Spending Bill Could Set NASA Funding Next Week (Source: Space News)
The departing chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA is optimistic a final 2019 spending bill will be completed by next week. Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) said Friday he thought there was a good chance that spending bill would be done before the continuing resolution funding much of the government expires Dec. 21. Culberson, who lost reelection last month, said he is departing Congress satisfied with his work to "lift all boats" for space science and exploration funding, and added he believed Congress will continue to fund missions to Europa, the potentially habitable moon of Jupiter whose exploration Culberson has been the leading advocate for. (12/10)

New Chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee Gets Space (Source: Space Daily)
Republican Senator Jim Inhofe's appointment as Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee bodes well for the future of space. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently appointed Senator Inhofe chairman following his stint as acting chairman of the committee while John McCain fought cancer in 2018. Previously, Senator Inhofe was a ranking member of the Armed Services Committee from 2013 to 2015.

Inhofe said that the Pentagon is winning him over to the idea of a Space Force and that hearings on the proposal would likely precede the Senate's work on the fiscal 2020 defense authorization bill. "If we're gonna have [Space Force]," Inhofe said, "let's go ahead and get on with it." As a fellow Oklahoman, Inhofe was an early supporter of Rep. Jim Bridenstine's nomination to lead NASA. Administrator Bridenstine has been a vocal advocate for aligning civil and national security space investments, and with him as Administrator and Senator Inhofe as the new Chair of SASC, we hope to see some policy initiatives on such collaboration. (12/7)