January 6, 2019

Space Club Award to Recognize National Security Space Achievement at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: NSCFL)
The National Space Club, Florida Committee, will honor Air Force 1Lt.  Andrew Carrigan of the 45th Space Wing's 5th Launch Squadron with the annual Forrest S. McCartney National Defense Space Award during a January 15 luncheon at Cape Canaveral. The event will also feature Air Force Col. Thomas Ste. Marie, Vice Commander of the 45th Space Wing. RSVP online by January 9. Click here. (1/6)

Rubio Urges DOD To Headquarter US Space Command in Florida (Source: Sen. Rubio)
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) urged U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis to headquarter U.S. Space Command (USSPACECOM) in Florida, given the extensive history the state has as the U.S. gateway to the stars. Rubio also expressed his support for the reestablishment of USSPACECOM, which will be essential to U.S. national security and to deter adversary attacks against U.S. space systems. (12/21)

L3 (Harris) Chooses St. Petersburg for Aviation Unit Headquarters (Source: Tampa Bay Times)
Downtown St. Petersburg will be the new headquarters of the commercial aviation solutions unit of L3 Technologies, one of the nation's biggest government contractors. What that means: up to 250 employees, many of them engineers testing flight data recorders, black boxes and other products in the heart of what an L3 executive calls a ''fantastic'' city.

"We were looking for somewhere that was modern,'' Alan Crawford, president of L3 Commercial Aviation Solutions, said Thursday. "We thought downtown St. Pete was very attractive, both for our current employees and the future type of employees — the young professionals — we want to attract.'' Crawford added that he and his wife had moved from London to St. Petersburg a year ago and settled in the trendy Edge District. "So I've bought into St. Pete myself,'' he said. (1/3)

Astronaut Sparks Panic After Accidentally Dialing 911 From Space Sending NASA Into a Frenzy (Source: Fox News)
An astronaut has told how he accidentally called 911 from space, sending security teams at NASA's Houston base into a frenzy. André Kuipers missed out a number when making a call through HQ back on Earth — and ended up connecting to U.S. emergency services. The astronomical blunder sparked panic at the Johnson Space Centre in Texas and a security team was scrambled to the room where the call was put through.

He had been orbiting Earth in the International Space Station when he tried to make the call. The 60-year-old spaceman explained how he had pressed 9 to make an outside call. He then tried to phone internationally by pressing 011, but mistakenly left out the zero. Oblivious to the chaos he caused, the Dutchman said he only realized his error when he received an email the following day. (1/4)

Our Universe Could Be An Expanding Bubble in an Extra Dimension (Source: Live Science)
Like a bit of froth on the crest of an ocean wave, our observable universe may be nothing more than a sliver sitting within the edge of a bubble that's constantly expanding into a higher dimension. While this mind-boggling idea might sound like something out of a physicist's fever dream, it is in fact a new endeavor to reconcile the mathematics of string theory with the reality of dark energy, a mysterious, all-pervading cosmic force that acts in opposition to gravity.

In the early 2000s, researchers realized that string theory allowed for as many as 10^500 (that's the number 1 followed by 500 zeroes) unique universes to exist, creating a multiverse landscape in which our particular universe was just a tiny subsection. But earlier this year, researchers dealt a blow to string theory by suggesting that not a single one of the nearly countless universes it describes actually contains dark energy as we know it. The basic problem, Ulf Danielsson said, is that the equations governing string theory say that any universe with our version of dark energy in it should quickly decay away and vanish. "Our idea is to turn this problem into a virtue," he said.

Along with his colleagues, he constructed a model in which the process causing these dark-energy-permeated universes to decay actually drives the inflation of bubbles made from many dimensions. We live within the boundary of one of these expanding bubbles and "dark energy is … induced in a subtle way through the interplay between the bubble walls on which we are living and the higher dimensions," Danielsson wrote in a blog post describing the new theory. (1/4)

Earth Is Drifting Away From The Sun, And So Are All The Planets (Source: Forbes)
Earth's orbital path doesn't remain the same over time, but spirals outward. This year, 2019, our perihelion was 1.5 centimeters farther away than it was last year, which was more distant than the year before, etc. It's not just Earth, either; every planet drifts away from its parent star. Here's the science of why. Whether you look at it in terms of Newton, where every mass attracts every other mass in the Universe, or in terms of Einstein, where mass-and-energy curves the fabric of spacetime through which other masses travel, the largest mass dominates the orbit of everything it influences.

If the central mass were unchanging, and were the only factor at play, the force of gravity would remain constant over time. Every orbit would continue in a perfect, closed ellipse forever, and would never change. Of course, that's not what happens. There are other masses present in every solar system: planets, moons, asteroids, centaurs, Kuiper belt objects, satellites and more. These masses serve to perturb the orbits, causing them to precess. This means that the point of closest approach — periapsis in general or perihelion for an orbit with respect to our Sun — rotates over time. (1/3)

NASA's Mars 2020 Rover Is Unique. And So Is Its Paint Job (Source: Space.com)
Before NASA's Mars 2020 mission is ready to launch toward the Red Planet, the agency has to paint the new rover — a task more challenging than it sounds. While a paint job may sound like an insignificant task, both the formulation and the process of painting a spacecraft like this have to be precise. And each spacecraft is unique.

In August 2018, engineers working on the rover's chassis (the frame of the spacecraft) started the first step in the painting process: taping. Parts of the rover must never be painted, such as places where electronics boxes will eventually go and where wiring harnesses and attachment points for hypersensitive science instruments that require bare metal surfaces will be placed. So the paint team first expertly and precisely tapes the spacecraft, so that no paint ends up where it's not supposed to be, but also so that no space that is supposed to be painted is left bare. Click here. (1/4)

Boom Raises $100M To Develop A Supersonic Airliner. It's Going To Need A Whole Lot More (Source: Forbes)
Boom Supersonic has raised $100 million from an array of Silicon Valley investors to help it build a supersonic airliner. It’s a large amount of money by tech industry standards but only a small step in aerospace down a road that will require billions of dollars more to realize Boom’s vision. The Series B round brings Boom’s total funding to $141 million. The round was led by Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective and includes the Y Combinator Continuity Fund, Caffeinated Capital and SV Angel, as well as unnamed founders and early backers of Google, Airbnb, Stripe and Dropbox. (1/4)

Trump NOAA Nominee Steps Down from AccuWeather (Source: AccuWeather)
AccuWeather, the world's largest and fastest growing weather media company as well as the leader in weather-related big data, business and predictive analytics, today announced that Chief Executive Officer Barry Lee Myers has stepped down as officer and director from AccuWeather and has sold all of his interest in the company and its subsidiaries and affiliated companies, effective January 1, 2019.

Myers is one of the world's leading authorities on the business of weather, and on the use and distribution of weather-related and similar information, and has been an integral part and a leading force on AccuWeather's executive management team for decades. He was nominated by President Trump to become the Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.   (1/4)

NASA Administrator Rescinds Invitation to Russian Counterpart After Backlash on Capitol Hill (Source: Washington Post)
Facing mounting criticism from Capitol Hill, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has rescinded an invitation to the controversial head of the Russian space agency to visit the United States. In an exclusive interview with The Washington Post, Bridenstine said that the invitation was an attempt to maintain relations with Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. But after the offer was blasted by some key senators, he said he decided to withdraw it. (1/5)

Space Station Leak Was Botched Repair Job of Man-Made Hole, Alexander Gerst Says (Source: Newsweek)
An astronaut who was commander on the International Space Station (ISS) for six months before he returned to Earth in December has dismissed claims that a hole in an attached module was created deliberately by crew members, suggesting that the fault originated in the manufacturing process. NASA has also blamed the leak—which was discovered in August inside the Russian-made Soyuz capsule, a spacecraft which transports astronauts to and from the ISS—on a manufacturing defect.

However, some commentators in the Russian media have suggested that the hole could have been created deliberately by U.S. astronauts in an act of sabotage. According to Alex Gerst: "It’s still pretty obvious that it was a man-made hole in the hull. In that case, the hole was there and it was just covered by a little glue, so the question is how did it get there?” (1/2)

No, China Isn’t Winning the Space Race (Source: Bloomberg)
With its moon landing, understandably, some Chinese scientists are taking a victory lap, with one going so far as to gloat to the New York Times that “We Chinese people have done something that the Americans have not dared try.” That cockiness speaks to the spirit of great-power competition animating the Chinese space program. China is open about the fact that it isn’t merely looking to expand human knowledge and boundaries; it’s hoping to supplant the U.S. as the 21st century’s dominant space power.

And, if this were still the 1960s, when the American and Soviet space agencies fiercely competed against one another, China’s deep pockets, focus and methodical approach to conquering the heavens might indeed win the day. But the truth is, thanks to the development of a dynamic, fast-moving American commercial space industry, China’s almost certain to be a runner-up for decades to come.

That doesn’t mean the People’s Republic isn’t making progress in its attempts to colonize the moon and turn it into the outer-space equivalent of its South China Sea outposts (an avowed goal of Ye Peijian, head of China’s lunar program). China will launch a mission to bring back samples from the moon later this year. Over the next decade, it plans to launch a space station, a Mars probe, asteroid missions and a Jupiter probe, while continuing to develop reusable rockets and other vehicles that will enhance its access to space. A human mission to the moon is targeted for 2030, and a permanent colony by the middle of the century. (1/3)

America Is About to Take Back Human Spaceflight, and It's a Lot More Than Just Flag-Waving (Source: Popular Mechanics)
There’s an American flag affixed to a hatch on the International Space Station, circling about 250 miles above the planet. The crew of the first space shuttle mission, STS-1, carried that very flag in 1981. The final shuttle flight, in 2011, left the flag behind in orbit to be claimed by the next crew to fly into space from U.S. soil. This is the year the flag comes home.

After years of radical invention, aerospace design, political feuding, and faith in ingenuity—and eight years since the shuttle retirement—the United States is on the cusp of recapturing the ability to reach space from U.S. soil. Two companies, Boeing and SpaceX, are assembling hardware for testing capsule launches, a dress rehearsal for future crewed flights. (1/4)

Many Tiny Satellites Can Create Image of a Giant Space Telescope (Source: Next Big Future)
Nanosatellites the size of milk cartons arranged in a spherical (annular) configuration were able to capture images that match the resolution of the full-frame, lens-based or concave mirror systems used on today’s telescopes. They created a miniature model with a circular-shaped display of sub-apertures to test an image’s resolution. The researchers then contrasted these images to those produced by direct imaging systems, which have similar dimensions of the whole aperture and are based on a layout of annular sub-apertures. Click here. (1/5)

A New Future For Space Exploration On The Blockchain (Source: Forbes)
A new company, Spacebit, is using blockchain technology to realize the dream of public space travel far faster than government agencies or large corporations can, and changing how we collectively think about space exploration.

By tokenizing commercial space missions around the world, Spacebit claims to be creating a new ecosystem for public involvement in space research, development, and travel. In the process, they are bringing together top technology companies and space travel experts to build the infrastructure of the coming space age. Spacebit’s internationally-acclaimed team not only aim to democratize access to space, but to also enable humanity to explore Mars and beyond.

Spacebit has partnered with Goonhilly Earth Station to build a unique ecosystem for ground-based elements of space missions, including radio communications, ground networks, and mission control components. The team is also preparing to launch two more offerings, Space Segment and Blockchain-Based GPS. (1/4)

Jonny Kim: Navy Seal, Doctor, And Now Astronaut! He’s Only 34! (Source: Joe for America)
Dr. Jonny Kim may well be one of the most successful Americans ever, accomplishing the top 3 major childhood dreams before he turned 35. Born in 84, Kim’s parents emigrated from South Korea in the 1980s. He enlisted in the US Navy as a Seaman recruit immediately after High School in 2002. Dr. Kim completed more than 100 combat missions during his time in the Middle East, earning a Silver Star and Bronze Star with Combat “V.” Dr. Kim served as a medic and sniper for SEAL Team Three. The Navy Times named him one of the Top 10 Navy sailors of all time, right above JFK

He is a graduate of both the University of San Diego, earning a degree in mathematics, and a Doctorate from Harvard Medical School. During Dr. Kim’s first combat tour, he lost a fellow SEAL. He decided on a career in the medical field. According to NASA, Dr. Kim received an officer’s commission in the Medical Corps following his graduation. In June 2017, he was one of 12 to be selected for the 2017 NASA Astronaut Candidate Class. The training will take up to two years to become a fully certified astronaut. He is months away. (1/4)