December 22, 2018

China Launches Experimental Satellite for Broadband Communication (Source: Xinhua)
China launched a tech-experimental satellite as part of the Hongyun Project, a low-orbit broadband communication satellite system on Saturday morning. A Long March-11 rocket carrying the experimental satellite blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 7：51 a.m.. It successfully entered its preset orbit. It was also the first satellite of the Hongyun Project. The successful launch signifies the substantial progress of China in mapping the low-orbit broadband communication satellite system, said developer China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC). (12/22)

Wild 'Tunnelbot' Designs Could Crack Secrets of Icy Jupiter Moon Europa (Source: Space.com)
The icy shell encasing Jupiter's moon Europa is both a promise and a problem: It increases the plausibility of life floating through the ocean that scientists think hides below it by blocking damaging radiation, but it also blocks scientists from getting a good look at what's going on under the ice. That's why scientists have begun to dream up specialized probes that would carry instruments below the ice. Andrew Dombard, a geophysicist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is one of those scientists, and he presented two possible designs for a "tunnelbot" at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union last week.

The team premised their work on the assumption that by the time the tunnelbot was ready for its journey, they could bring some sort of station to set up on Europa's surface that could survive for the three years or so the tunnelbot would take to burrow through the icy shell. That's a big requirement: NASA's next planned mission to the moon will only orbit Europa, and even if the much-discussed Europa Lander mission concept becomes a reality, the lander would last just three weeks. (12/21)

Here's Why Space Travel Will Be Even More Amazing (and Important) in 2019 (Source: Fox News)
Today, the biggest change I see in manned space exploration is this: the nail-biting space race of my youth between the United States and Russia is now a hard-fisted, corporate competition between high-rolling entrepreneurs. NASA, the iconic government-funded agency of my childhood, is now a bit player in the unfolding drama, a mere vendor to billionaire, profit-seeking space junkies such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson.

Almost certainly, what’s to come in 2019 is that Unity will begin ferrying civilian passengers into space. Branson’s company Virgin Galactic – think of it as the Pan Am of commercial space carriers – has a growing list of 600-plus people ready to fork over $250,000 for the quick jaunt. Former Shuttle astronaut Andy Thomas thinks Branson will be taking them for a ride all right – one that won’t come close to living up to Branson’s hype. “It's true that he [the passenger] will fly to the edge of space but he can't stay there. He falls right back down. It's really just a high-altitude airplane flight and a dangerous one at that." (12/21)

DeFazio Succeeds in Killing Space Frontier Act (Source: Space Policy Online)
The surprise defeat of the Space Frontier Act in the House yesterday can be traced to Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon), the likely incoming chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee. The bill, S. 3277, was brought before the House under a procedure that requires a two-thirds majority to pass. It did not achieve that threshold after DeFazio circulated a memo warning that it could negatively impact the safety and efficiency of the National Airspace System (NAS).

DeFazio is currently the Ranking Member of the House T&I committee.  The House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee has recommended that he chair the committee when Democrats take control of the House on January 3. The bill, S. 3277, was defeated 237-137, with 57 not voting. Bills brought up under suspension of the rules require a two-thirds aye vote and it failed to get that.  Suspension of the rules is a streamlined process that avoids the need to get a rule from the House Rules Committee, but requires a two-thirds vote to pass instead of a simple majority.

Of the no votes, 130 were Democratic and 7 were Republican.  The no votes can be traced at least in part to DeFazio’s memo. Some view DeFazio’s effort to derail the bill as an indication that he plans to try to assert more authority over commercial space launch issues in the new Congress. The T&I committee has held few hearings on these issues over the years, but its Aviation Subcommittee did have one this summer addressing the specific topic of commercial space launches and the NAS. (12/22)

SpaceX’s Starlink Eyed by US Military (Source: Teslarati)
In a reasonably predictable turn of events, SpaceX has been awarded a healthy $28.7M contract to study, develop, and test possible military applications of its prospective Starlink internet satellite constellation. The US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) spoke with AviationWeek about plans to experiment with the potential capabilities offered by a flurry of proposed low Earth orbit (LEO) internet satellite constellations, including the likes of SpaceX’s Starlink, OneWeb, a Telesat network, and others.

What has not been established, however, is how exactly any of the proposed constellations – especially Starlink – can go from paper to orbit. In other words, the reasonable question to ask of any company pursuing such an endeavor is how they plan to fund the acquisition of capital-intensive manufacturing infrastructure and launch services.

Ultimately, SpaceX will receive $19.1M of the full $28.7M sum from the DoD in FY2019 (Oct 1, 2018 to Sept 30, 2019). This absolutely dwarfs all other contracts awarded thus far under the AFRL’s Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet (DEUCSI) program, which began in August 2017 and has since awarded $2.5M and $5.6M contracts to Iridium and L3, respectively. In the grand scheme of things, ~$30M is a pittance in the face of the extensive investments SpaceX needs to make if it hopes to mass-produce high-performance satellites at a truly unprecedented scale. (12/21)

Marshall Leads the Way to a New Era of Deep Space Exploration (Source: NASA)
In 2018, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, continued to lay the groundwork for our nation’s future in space. Discoveries in space exploration, science and technology at Marshall are transforming our understanding of ourselves, our planet, our solar system and our universe.

Flight hardware was completed and major components were tested for NASA's Space Launch System, built to carry astronauts and cargo to the Moon, Mars and beyond. For the first time, Marshall's Payload Operation Integration Center team exceeded 100 hours of science research in a single week.

Through our partnerships with government and industry, Marshall helped the agency accomplish missions to places once thought impossible for mankind to reach. In 2018, Marshall continued to innovate and advance the technologies to take us to these deep space destinations while inspiring and engaging the next generation of engineers and scientists. Click here. (12/21)

Holiday Asteroid Imaged with NASA Radar (Source: NASA JPL)
The December 2018 close approach by the large, near-Earth asteroid 2003 SD220 has provided astronomers an outstanding opportunity to obtain detailed radar images of the surface and shape of the object and to improve the understanding of its orbit. The asteroid will fly safely past Earth on Saturday, Dec. 22, at a distance of about 1.8 million miles (2.9 million kilometers). This will be the asteroid's closest approach in more than 400 years and the closest until 2070, when the asteroid will safely approach Earth slightly closer.

The radar images reveal an asteroid with a length of at least one mile (1.6 kilometers) and a shape similar to that of the exposed portion of a hippopotamus wading in a river. They were obtained Dec. 15-17 by coordinating the observations with NASA's 230-foot (70-meter) antenna at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California, the National Science Foundation's 330-foot (100-meter) Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Arecibo Observatory's 1,000-foot (305-meter) antenna in Puerto Rico. (12/21)

Editorial: Launch Gets New Mexico a Step Closer to That Final Frontier (Source: Albuquerque Journal)
Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, and thus New Mexico’s Spaceport America, are back in the lead in the race to space. Last week, seasoned pilots Mark “Forger” Stucky and Frederick “CJ” Sturckow took Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo to the edge of space and back again – a place Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boeing all have yet to go with a manned flight.

A mother ship launched from the company’s spaceport in Mojave, Calif., took SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of about 43,000 feet and released it. After a free fall, the pilots ignited the engine, broke the sound barrier and hit a top speed of Mach 2.9 and height of 51.4 miles before descending and landing safely. Virgin Galactic says this latest milestone in the modern space race means it is that much closer to launching from Spaceport America, the futuristic launch facility southeast of Truth or Consequences that New Mexico taxpayers have helped finance with $225 million. More than 600 people have already plunked down $250,000 to catch such a ride. (12/22)

Latest Shutdown to Curtail NASA Activities (Source: Space News)
A partial government shutdown that started Dec. 22 will once again force NASA to halt most of its non-essential activities and could hinder coverage of spaceflight events planned for the end of the year. NASA is among the agencies whose funding lapsed at midnight Eastern time Dec. 22 when a continuing resolution (CR) that had been funding them expired. NASA is funded by the commerce, justice and science appropriations bill, one of seven yet to be passed by Congress. Five other bills, including for the Defense Department, have been passed, and those agencies are not affected by the shutdown.

According to the updated shutdown plan, NASA has identified 437 full-time staff who will be excepted from the shutdown as well as 664 employees excepted on a part-time basis, out of a total workforce of 17,586. An additional 2,189 employees will be “on call” for any emergency needs. The rest of the agency’s civil servant workforce will be furloughed for the duration of the shutdown. The duration of the shutdown remains uncertain. (12/22)

Shutdown Impacts Kennedy Space Center (Source: Spectrum News 13)
As far as impacts at Kennedy Space Center, of the 2,013 employees, only 196 employees would be exempt from the furloughs. NASA just revised its shutdown plan this week and says only employees who are key to protecting life or property can stay on during a government shutdown. There is some uncertainty on how the shutdown will impact SpaceX, which is finishing work on its Crew Dragon spacecraft at KSC. The first test flight of the Crew Dragon, without anyone on board, is set for Thursday, January 17, and that could be delayed if the shutdown lingers. It's unclear how long a shutdown would last. (12/21)

Workers, Parks, NASA to Bear Brunt of Shutdown (Source: Houston Chronicle)
Furloughed would be all but about 200 of the 3,055 workers at Johnson Space Center in Houston, which will be closed to the public, a NASA spokesperson said. Several hundred more could be on call, according to a NASA memo submitted to the White House last week. The workforce will be enough to monitor the International Space Station, but not to offer tours and other visitor attractions inside the center. Meridyth Moore, a spokesperson for the separate nonprofit Space Center Houston, said Friday that it’s still “business as usual” for her organization. (12/21)

Federal Shutdown Would Bring NASA Ames to a Standstill (Source: Mountain View Voice)
NASA officials expect to furlough nearly 17,000 employees and contractors across the space agency’s facilities. At the Ames Research Park near Mountain View, this would mean just under 1,200 workers would be put on unpaid leave. An updated NASA shutdown memo drafted earlier this week notes that a baseline of staff would be kept on hand to monitor critical fuctions involving space operations and security. About 44 employees would remain on the job at Ames, according to the work plan. (12/22)

Space Force Will Have Seat On Joint Chiefs, Not Full Independence; Costs TBD (Source: Breaking Defense)
The Air Force has eked out a victory in the Pentagon’s latest proposal for a Space Force. While many in the Air Force would prefer to keep their current preeminent role in space operations and not create a new service at all, the current plan — to be submitted by year’s end for inclusion in the 2020 budget request — keeps the Space Force under the Air Force Department, rather than making it fully independent.

The plan calls for the force to be led by a chief of staff who would also serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, giving space operations a major seat at the table in strategic deliberations by the powerful chiefs. Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has said he wants the command to remain lean, with a small staff pulled from existing offices across the armed services, in order to spend as much money on technology — and as little on overhead — as possible.

Whatever it costs, the Space Force will need to find room in a defense budget that itself is very much in flux. The Pentagon’s original plan for  a $733 billion budget was reduced in October to $700 billion by the White House, until President Trump was convinced by outgoing Defense Secretary Jim Mattis this month to push it back up to $750 billion. It’s unclear what impact Mattis’ resignation on Thursday, submitted as protest to Trump’s announcement of troop withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, will have on the administration’s thinking. (12/21)

Huge Martian Crater 'Korolev' Appears Topped With Miles Of Pristine Snow (Source: NPR)
New images of Mars show an enormous crater that measures nearly 51 miles across and is filled with ice year-round, the European Space Agency reported. Known as the Korolev Crater, located near the Martian north pole, it's topped by "what appears to be a large patch of fresh, untrodden snow – a dream for any lover of the holiday season," said a statement by ESA, which released the images Thursday.

But the space agency noted that the red planet is "a little too distant for a last-minute winter getaway." (Mars is about 140 million miles from Earth, according to NASA. The distance can vary considerably, because each planet moves in its own orbit around the sun.) The Martian crater was named after Sergei Korolev, the chief architect of the Soviet space program. Korolev, who died in 1966, worked on missions to the moon and Mars, and the launch of Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite.

The floor of the icy crater is more than a mile below its rim, which helps create a phenomenon called a cold trap, keeping the ice stable and permanently frozen, ESA said. Christmas Day will mark 15 years since the Mars Express spacecraft began orbiting the planet. Also on Dec. 25, 2003, the Beagle 2 lander was released from the spacecraft and touched down safely on the planet's surface, but failed to fully operate. (12/21)

David Beckham’s Bizarre New Project (Source: News.com.au)
David Beckham is in secret talks to become the first footballer to get blasted into space. The former England ace, 43, has been approached by space travel firms, believed to include Virgin Atlantic, The Sun reports. The possibility of the space fanatic kicking a ball up in the celestial heavens has also been discussed. Father-of-four David has been mulling it over for some time, pals say, and is understandably nervous. (12/22)