December 20, 2018

Winning Ideas for New European Space Transport Services (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Imagine moving satellites to higher orbits, collecting space debris, and dedicated launches for small satellites. These are the winning entries of ESA’s call for ideas on new commercial space transportation services. This campaign aimed to foster open innovation and offer encouragement to those with new ideas within the privately-funded space sector.

It has given ESA a valuable insight into commercial space transportation proposals in Europe which will guide decisions on future space transportation programmes when the ESA Council at Ministerial Level meet at Space19+. All entries are receiving feedback from ESA’s panel of experts. One top-ranking idea was chosen from each category: In-orbit services, Return from orbit, and Light satellite access to space. Click here. (12/20)

How NASA Turned Steph Curry's Moon Landing Denial Into PR Gold (Source: Daily Caller)
When Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry denied that the moon landing ever took place, NASA could have been forgiven if it had ignored him. Much of what comes out of the mouths of celebrities, be they athletes, actors, or musicians, tends to be drivel. However, someone in the new media-savvy NASA correctly determined that the space agency had been handed an opportunity. NASA duly invited Curry to visit the Johnson Spaceflight Center to see some moon rocks and talk to astronauts and scientists about the moon landing and see that it had indeed taken place.

The conspiracy theory that the moon landing was faked in a TV studio is one of the most curious and easily disproven ones that are out there. The Mythbusters performed the definitive takedown of the idea in one of their classic episodes. The Steph Curry gaffe became viral, with media outlets such as ESPN covering it as well as NASA’s response. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine likely knew his agency had struck PR gold when TMZ ambushed him in a hotel where he was staying and interviewed him. Needless to say, neither ESPN nor TMZ are in the habit of covering the space program.

Perhaps taking a hint from Bridenstine, Curry is now claiming that he was indeed only joking when he suggested that the moon landing was faked. That walk back did not stop the Sacramento Kings from trolling Curry during a recent game by showing moon landing video before the opening tip off. The next time Golden State is in Houston to play the Rockets, Curry would be well advised to take NASA up on its offer and tour JSC. At the end, Curry could hold a press conference in which he could praise the great work NASA is doing, mentioning the current effort to send astronauts back to the moon. (12/18)

New Investments Are Needed to Sustain NASA’s Instrumentation and Facilities for Future Extraterrestrial Sample Analyses (Source: National Academies)
NASA’s investment in new instruments to analyze extraterrestrial samples is insufficient to provide for replacement of existing instruments, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. If NASA does not invest additional funds into the replacement of current instrumentation and development of new technologies, technical staff support, and training for the next generation of analysts, current capabilities cannot be sustained, and the full scientific impact afforded by returned samples might not be realized.

The United States possesses a treasure-trove of extraterrestrial samples brought to Earth by space missions over the past four decades. Today, there are two missions underway -- JAXA’s Hayabusa2 and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx -- that are expected to return samples in the 2020s from primitive asteroids, remnants from early in the formation of the solar system.  Having the instrumentation, facilities, and qualified personnel to undertake analysis of returned samples, especially from missions that take up to a decade or longer from launch to return, is of paramount importance if NASA is to capitalize fully on the investment made in these missions.

“Planetary science may be entering a golden era of extraterrestrial sample return,” said Roberta Rudnick, chair of the committee that wrote the report and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Now is the time to assess how prepared the scientific community is to take advantage of these opportunities.” Editor's Note: The SLS Lab (home to Space Florida and various tenants) at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport was built specifically for preparing experiments and samples going-to / and coming-from space. (12/20)

SpaceX Booster Went for a Swim and Came Back as Scrap Metal (Source: WIRED)
The Cape Canaveral Spaceport was a hub of activity this past week as SpaceX officials attempted to rescue a wayward booster that had fallen into the ocean just off Florida’s space coast. A crowd of onlookers showed up day after day to glean insights into the secretive company’s recovery efforts. Some people even booked helicopter tours in hopes of catching a glimpse of the booster.

On Dec. 7, the booster was towed into port and docked next to one of the company’s drone ships, named Of Course I Still Love You. SpaceX’s recovery crew still had to hoist the booster onto the deck and remove its deployed landing legs. (A much more difficult task when the booster is floating in the ocean versus standing on the deck of a ship). It took another four days for crews to remove the landing legs and the grid fins to properly assess the damage sustained by the booster.

For the most part, B1050 looked in pretty good shape considering the many days it had floated in corrosive, salty seawater. The interstage—a black portion that connects the rocket’s two stages—was badly damaged, and one of the rocket’s four grid fins was missing. After losing its legs, B1050 sat like a lonely piece of scrap metal on a dock for several days before finally being hauled into one of the company’s facilities, presumably to be dismantled. (12/20)

New Contracts Demonstrate Continued Strong Demand for Smallsat Rideshare Launch Services (Source: Space News)
A pair of new deals shows that, despite the growing number of small launch vehicles under development, demand from smallsat developers for rideshares on larger vehicles remains high. NanoRacks announced Dec. 19 that it had signed up its first customer for rideshares on India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). Spire, the San Francisco-based company operating a constellation of cubesats to collect weather data as well as track aircraft and ships, will launch four of its three-unit Lemur cubesats on a PSLV in March 2019 under a deal brokered by NanoRacks. (12/19)

Space Command an Interim Step Toward Space Force (Source: Space News)
VP Pence came to the Pentagon one day after announcing that President Trump directed the Defense Department to establish U.S. Space Command as a four-star combatant command. Speaking on Tuesday at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, Pence said Trump will also sign a new space policy directive in the coming days that will lay out plans and a timeline to create a U.S. Space Force as a sixth branch of the armed forces. “We’re working as we speak with leaders in both parties in Congress to stand up the United States Space Force before the end of 2020,” said Pence.

The new space policy directive, named SPD-4, is the fourth major space policy action by the Trump administration. According to sources, the directive is being finalized and could be signed by the president shortly after the new year. The policy memo would instruct DoD to submit a legislative proposal on how the new service would be organized and a budget request. The National Space Council, led by Pence, has been in back and forth coordination with DoD on the legislative proposal. (12/19)

ISS Crewmembers Return to Earth (Source: Space.com)
Three space station crewmembers are back on Earth after a successful landing of their Soyuz spacecraft last night. The Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station at 8:40 p.m. Eastern Wednesday night, landing in Kazakhstan at 12:02 a.m. Eastern. The spacecraft returned to Earth NASA's Serena Auñón-Chancellor, ESA's Alex Gerst and Roscosmos' Sergey Prokopyev, who had spent six and a half months in space. Anne McClain, David Saint-Jacques and Oleg Kononenko remain on the ISS, having arrived there earlier this month. (12/20)  

Soyuz Launches French Spysat (Source: Space News)
A Soyuz rocket launched a French spysat Wednesday in the final Arianespace mission of the year. The rocket lifted off from French Guiana at 11:37 a.m. Eastern and the CSO-1 satellite separated from the Fregat upper stage an hour later. The launch was delayed a day because of high upper-level winds. The launch was the eleventh and final mission for Arianespace in 2018, including Ariane 5, Soyuz and Vega launches; that total was the same as in 2017 but short of the goal of 14 launches planned for this year. (12/20)  

Senate Passes Short-Term Funding to Avoid (NASA) Shutdown (Source: Washington Post)
The Senate passed a continuing resolution (CR) Wednesday night that would prevent a partial government shutdown at the end of the week. The bill would fund those parts of the government that don't yet have fiscal year 2019 appropriations bills enacted, like NASA, through Feb. 8. Without the new CR funding for those agencies would expire Friday night. House leadership will meet this morning to discuss their plans for the bill, and President Trump has indicated that he would sign this CR despite earlier threats to shut down the government if Congress didn't approve funding for a border wall. (12/20)  

Blue Origin Suborbital Launch Delayed to Early 2019 (Source: Blue Origin)
Blue Origin is delaying its next New Shepard suborbital launch until early next year.  The New Shepard flight was scheduled Tuesday but postponed to no earlier than Friday because of a ground equipment issue as well as weather concerns. The company said Wednesday night it had pushed back the launch to early 2019 because "additional systems need to be addressed." The test flight will be the tenth for New Shepard, and the first since July. (12/20)  

NASA Says Hackers Stole Employee Information (Source: Bloomberg)
Hackers downloaded Social Security numbers and other personal information from an unknown number of current and former NASA employees, the agency told workers. NASA began investigating the intrusion of its servers on Oct. 23, according to a memo sent Tuesday by Assistant Administrator Bob Gibbs. Employees who were hired, transferred or left the agency from July 2006 to October 2018 may have been affected by the hack, he said. The agency has about 17,400 civil service employees. (12/19)

Dragon Shows Off Its New, Integrated Solar Arrays (Source: Ars Technica)
SpaceX may not have launched a rocket on Tuesday (it has yet to confirm a new launch date for the GPS 3 mission), but it did finally get a chance to show off its new Dragon spacecraft that will carry humans into orbit. Not only did Vice President Mike Pence visit the company's processing hangar at Launch Pad 39A on Tuesday, but the company also released new photos of the spacecraft and its Falcon 9 rocket.

The photos contain some interesting details. Notably, the standalone photo of Dragon and its "trunk" is shown in its on-orbit configuration. Unlike most spacecraft that deploy solar panels, the solar arrays are built into the trunk itself. "The Cargo Dragon’s deployable solar arrays have been eliminated to reduce the number of mechanisms on the vehicle and further increase reliability," SpaceX's then-director of crew operations, Garrett Reisman, explained before Congress. (12/19)

Billionaire Aims to Jump-Start Search for Alien Life and Rewrite Rules of Space Exploration (Source: NBC)
At a space summit in Seattle last year, the wealthy Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner wowed the audience with a radical plan to search for life beyond Earth. Rather than focusing on Mars, he proposed focusing on Enceladus, a small icy moon of Saturn. And rather than waiting to see if NASA might go there, he said he wanted to tackle the challenge himself through his nonprofit Breakthrough Starshot Foundation.

“We formed a little workshop around this idea: Can we design a low-cost, privately funded mission to Enceladus, which can be launched relatively soon?” Milner said. It would be the first private mission ever to deep space. Now the answer to Milner's question is taking shape. In September, Breakthrough quietly signed an agreement with NASA in which the space agency will provide access to its space-exploration expertise, “establishing a collaborative partnership and cooperating on Breakthrough’s implementation of its privately funded flyby Enceladus Mission.” (12/19)

Firefly Signs with Spaceflight to Sell Excess Capacity for Microsatellites (Source: Firefly)
Firefly Aerospace has entered into a Launch and Brokerage Services Agreement (LBSA) with Spaceflight, a provider of launch and mission management services. Through the LBSA, Spaceflight will offer dedicated rideshare launch opportunities on the Firefly Alpha launch vehicle and work with Firefly to manifest excess Alpha capacity. (12/20)

Arianespace, in Final Mission of 2018, Launches French Spy Satellite (Source: Space News)
European launch provider Arianespace completed its final launch of the year Dec. 19, sending the French spy satellite CSO-1 into orbit on a Soyuz ST-A rocket. The launch, delayed by one day due to high-altitude winds above the Guiana Space Center, took place at 11:37 a.m. Eastern, with satellite separation occurring one hour later. The year-end mission was the 20th Soyuz rocket to launch from the Guiana Space Center since Arianespace began offering a Europeanized version of the Russian workhorse rocket. (12/19)

Preserving Our Eyes in the Sky (Source: Space News)
In 1962, a high-altitude nuclear explosion called Starfish Prime increased the charged-particle radiation in near-Earth space to values easily 10 million times the “natural” radiation level. This caused over a dozen operating spacecraft of the time to fail over a several-week period. A dozen may not sound like a lot, but this was a large fraction of all the satellites in Earth orbit at the time.

Today, the threat has never been higher of a new round of above-the-atmosphere (“exo-atmospheric”) nuclear explosions. North Korea, Iran, and other players are rapidly developing the capability to explode powerful nuclear devices at high altitudes. Not only could such a weapon produce devastating electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effects to damage ground-based or seaborne electronic equipment, but it could once again load the near-Earth magnetic field with highly damaging ionizing radiation.

In order to be properly effective, the U.S. Nuclear Detonation Detection System stakeholders all need to work together closely and cooperatively. Each agency must understand (and agree to) its assigned roles in the overall program. Adequate budgetary authority needs to be assigned to each partner agency so it can play its proper part. Congress and its various oversight committees must work across agency and funding boundaries to ensure a smoothly and effectively functioning nuclear detonation detection program. (12/19)

How Will the Space Command Impact Huntsville? (Source: WAFF)
The Space Command is different from the Space Force which calls for creating a sixth branch of the U.S. military. That would require approval from Congress. "The announcement by the president and the Defense Department signals a new elevated priority on all things related to space and with that priority potentially, additional resources. Generally when there are additional resources involved, that may mean additional jobs,” said John Nerger, senior military adviser for the Huntsville-Madison County Chamber of Commerce.

The president plans to nominate a four-star general or admiral to lead the Space Command, along with a deputy commander. Both of those posts will require Senate confirmation. The White House is labeling the move as the precursor to the Space Force and it has us wondering what Huntsville, the Rocket City, could play in all of it. "We just don't know at this point. What we do know is this- Huntsville and Redstone Arsenal make up one of just a handful of the nation's premiere centers for aerospace, space exploration, space and missile defense. We will be a major play in a big way for many, many years to come," he said.

Many would like to see the Space Command headquartered at Redstone Arsenal. But Nerger thinks that's rather unlikely due to the cost. “There’s concern about keeping the cost of this new operation, this new command, down as much as possible so the Defense Department is likely to rely upon organizations and headquarters where they’re already located. We don’t have any Air Force assets here at Redstone Arsenal to speak of,” he explained. But he added that significant local space organizations will play a role in it. (12/18)

SES Borrows $457 Million (Source: SES)
SES closed a 400 million euro ($457 million) loan that keeps the company fully funded out to 2020. The company said Dec. 19 that the new loan will go towards general corporate purposes and refinancing existing debt maturities, including a $500 million bond that matures this March. BNP Paribas, ING Bank, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg and Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen jointly arranged the transaction. (12/19)