February 20, 2019

Trump Signs Space Force Directive (Source: Politico)
President Donald Trump signed a directive on Tuesday to establish a new branch of the military dedicated to space but instead of being a fully independent department it will remain part of the Air Force to assuage concerns in Congress. The presidential directive, formally called Space Policy Directive 4, sets the groundwork for a subsequent legislative proposal for Congress, which will have the final say over what has been a signature military objective since Trump announced his intentions nearly a year ago.

The U.S. Space Force would be the first new military branch since the U.S. Air Force was established out of the Army Air Corps in 1947 — and it will be structured similarly to how the Marine Corps falls under the Department of the Navy. The initial startup cost for the Space Force is expected to be less than $100 million, the official said. It will include a four-star general as its chief of staff, who will also serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and its top civilian will be a new undersecretary for space. The approach falls short of Trump's earlier claims that the Space Force would be co-equal with the Army, Navy and Air Force. (2/18)

ShareSpace Foundation Donates 60 Giant Mars Map Packages to Schools around the World (Source: ShareSpace)
The Aldrin Family Foundation (AFF) ShareSpace Foundation has donated 60 Giant Mars Map packages to schools throughout the U.S. and two other countries to promote STEAM education and prepare the next generation of explorers. The donation is collectively valued at $300,000. “Giant Mars Maps are a means for sparking creativity in kids while they sit, stand, walk, play and learn together,” said Dr. Andrew Aldrin. “Our aim is to put maps into the hands of schools where we think they can do the most good, especially in underserved communities."

Map packages will be distributed to 58 American schools in 23 states, including: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Washington and West Virginia. Two international Department of Defense schools in Italy and Germany were also recipients.

Each package includes a 25 foot x 25 foot map, a robot, 10 Welcome to Mars books, the Mars Map Curriculum package developed in collaboration with Purdue University, and access to in-person and online program training from the ShareSpace Foundation. The value of each Giant Mars Map™ package is valued at $5,000. (2/18)

How to Dress Well on Mars (Source: Pacific Standard)
Creating a space suit calls for more than just a mastery of a vast swath of physical forces. It may be that no single manufacturable item requires a more skillful blend of practicality and fantasy. Aside from engineering tasks of the highest level, designers also work in constant dialogue with humanity's collective imagination. In this country, that means tangling with the closely held ideas about patriotism and identity inherent to American space travel. It also means shouldering the responsibility of shaping not just our attitudes in zero gravity but also how we think about the state of things on Earth.

Space suit design frequently involves the sort of innovation that calls for purloined football air bladders because its practitioners are seeking to solve problems not encountered in any other human context. For example, the suit that Shane Jacobs is helping develop for the Orion—a spacecraft designed to run missions outside of Earth's orbit, to the likes of the moon or Mars—must be able to withstand extended cabin pressure loss. So Jacobs and his colleagues first had to return to one of the oldest space suit design challenges: producing a suit that can withstand internal pressurization.

Jacobs' work on a suit for the Starliner—essentially a taxi to the International Space Station—is significantly different. A suit for low Earth orbit requires fewer heavy-duty contingency plans. But the Starliner will still be crowded, with as many as five passengers in a space of less than 400 cubic feet—about the size of a cement-mixer truck. So Jacobs and his colleagues instead focused on making the Starliner suit as light and compact as possible. Click here. (2/18) https://psmag.com/ideas/what-will-space-suits-look-like-in-the-future

Taiwan Announces New Phase of Space Program, Hopes for Moon Mission (Source: Space Daily)
Taiwan's Ministry of Science and Technology has announced that the nation's space program has reached its third phase, during which it hopes to launch 10 satellites - one every 18 months - one of which would orbit the moon. The ambitious project, expected to cost NT$25.1 billion ($814 million), would be headed by Taiwan's National Applied Research Laboratories and the National Space Organization (NSPO), Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee said Wednesday.

Six of the new generation of satellites will be high-resolution optical remote sensing satellites, which NSPO Director-General Lin Chun-liang boasted would increase the revisit rate on images from once every two days to two or three times per day. The remainder of the program includes two ultra-high resolution smart optics remote sensing satellites and two synthetic aperture radar satellites, the latter of which can use active radar to see through cloud cover. Lin further noted that the agency hoped to develop a satellite capable of orbiting the moon. (2/18)

IAU Names Landing Site of Chinese Chang'e-4 Probe on Far Side of Moon (Source: Space Daily)
Five sites on the far side of the Moon now have official names, including Chang'e-4's landing site. The names have significance in Chinese culture, reflecting the background of the probe's team. The IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature has approved the name Statio Tianhe for the landing site where the Chinese spacecraft Chang'e-4 touched down on 3 January this year, in the first-ever landing on the far side of the Moon.

The name Tianhe originates from the ancient Chinese name for the Milky Way, which was the sky river that separated Niulang and Zhinyu in the folk tale "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl". Four other names for features near the landing site have also been approved. In keeping with the theme of the above-mentioned folk tale, three small craters that form a triangle around the landing site have been named Zhinyu, Hegu, and Tianjin, which correspond to characters in the tale. (2/18)

Northwestern Study of Analog Crews in Isolation Reveals Weak Spots for Mission to Mars (Source: Space Daily)
Northwestern University researchers are developing a predictive model to help NASA anticipate conflicts and communication breakdowns among crew members and head off problems that could make or break the Mission to Mars.

NASA has formalized plans to send a crewed spacecraft to Mars, a journey that could involve 250 million miles of travel. Among the worldwide teams of researchers toiling over the journey's inherent physiological, engineering and social obstacles, Northwestern professors Noshir Contractor and Leslie DeChurch, and their collaborators, are charting a new course with a series of projects focused on the insights from the science of teams and networks.

In a multiphase study conducted in two analog environments - HERA in the Johnson Space Center in Houston and the SIRIUS mission in the NEK analog located in the Institute for Bio-Medical Problems (IBMP) in Russia - scientists are studying the behavior of analog astronaut crews on mock missions, complete with isolation, sleep deprivation, specially designed tasks and mission control, which mimics real space travel with delayed communication. (2/19)

Apollo Gave America a Reason to Dream (Source: Space Daily)
The Apollo program gave a nation reasons to dream, it inspired its generation and generations to come, in those years Space flight was the absolute symbol of American resolve, but interest in space flight at that intensity soon gave way to substantial budget cuts and a general loss of interest from the public.

The achievements and sometimes even technical know-how gained during this era has been forgotten or ignored. Some of the pioneers of the Apollo programs remember the feeling of inspiring a nation and generations to come and few better than the first female engineer to work in NASA's mission control, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Frances "Poppy" Northcutt. (2/19)

US-UK-Australia Funding to Improve Global Gravitational Wave Network (Source: Space Daily)
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is awarding Caltech and MIT $20.4 million to upgrade the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), an NSF-funded project that made history in 2015 after making the first direct detection of ripples in space and time, called gravitational waves.

The investment is part of a joint international effort in collaboration with UK Research and Innovation and the Australian Research Council, which are contributing additional funds. While LIGO is scheduled to turn back on this spring, in its third run of the "Advanced LIGO" phase, the new funding will go toward "Advanced LIGO Plus." Advanced LIGO Plus is expected to commence operations in 2024 and to increase the volume of deep space the observatory can survey by as much as seven times. (2/18)

Russia Sketches Out "Unpiloted Tourist Space Yacht" Concept That Would Graze Space (Source: Sputnik)
The development of a "space yacht" capable of taking off from ordinary airfields to deliver tourists to near-earth orbit, is conducted in Russia with the support of the National Technology Initiative's (NTI) AeroNet and SpaceNet working groups, chief designer of NPO Aviation and Space Technologies Alexander Begak told Sputnik.

"We have an opportunity to land on any airfield, the device lands like an airplane... We now calculate the optimal time for space travel, a comfortable flight path, because experience shows that people do not need to be in zero-gravity condition for as long as 10 minutes", Begak said. The development of a suborbital unpiloted spacecraft dubbed Selena Space Yacht began two years ago, he noted.

According to the designer's idea, the vehicle will enter space at a maximum speed of 3.5 mach (2.685 miles per hour) to a height of 120-140 kilometers and will return back into the atmosphere at a speed of 0.85 mach. A total of three "space yachts" will be created, with six passenger seats and one pilot seat each. Despite the fact that the spacecraft will be unpiloted, the pilot will still be present for convenience of passengers. (2/19)

Russia Mulls Offering US Upgraded Space Vehicle for Lunar Orbit Station Supplies (Source: Sputnik)
Russia is planning to offer the United States to deliver supplies to the future international lunar orbital station with the use of the modernized Progress-L cargo spacecraft. It was reported earlier that NASA, together with other countries, plans to build a manned LOP-G station (Lunar Orbital Platform - Gateway) in lunar orbit in the 2020s.

"It is planned to create a modernized Progress-L cargo spacecraft on the basis of the Progress space freighter flying supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). Russia intends to offer this spacecraft to the United States to deliver cargo to the international lunar orbital station", the source said. If these plans are approved, the launches of the Progress-L spacecraft will be carried out in 2026 and 2027 on Russia's Angara-A5 launch vehicles. (2/18)

New UCF Aerospace Engineering Doctorate to Support U.S. Space Program (Source: UCF)
As new commercial space ventures develop in Florida and around the nation, UCF’s new doctorate in aerospace engineering to begin next fall harkens back to one of the university’s original missions: provide support to the U.S. space program. The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering is offering the new degree to provide the workforce to new companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and others that have opened facilities in the state.

Plus, major research and development programs in the past few years have brought thousands of jobs to the region, such as Space Florida and Northrop Grumman. Students in the program will explore aerodynamics, propulsion, dynamics and control, structures and materials, and aerospace systems design. The curriculum will be interdisciplinary, including unique course offerings made possible by faculty collaborations between the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, its Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research, the College of Optics and Photonics, and the Townes Laser Institute. (2/16)

Scientists May Have Finally Found the Universe’s Missing Matter (Source: Futurism)
When scientists calculate how much matter ought to exist in the universe, their estimates always vastly exceeded the amount of matter that they’ve actually accounted for. The consensus, in fact, is that we’re missing about a third of the matter that should be out there. But thanks to a new technique for scanning the cosmos, scientists think they may have finally spotted all that missing starstuff.

scientists used NASA’s orbital Chandra X-Ray Observatory to scan for clouds of space gas surrounding a distant black hole. In those clouds, they found previously-unaccounted-for masses of oxygen. Extrapolating to the amount of similar gas clusters that are out there, the astronomers think that they can account for the entire difference between calculations and observations of the universe.

“We were thrilled that we were able to track down some of this missing matter” said Randall Smith, an astronomer from the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) who worked on the study, in a new press release. “In the future we can apply this same method to other quasar data to confirm that this long-standing mystery has at last been cracked.” (2/15)

After Nearly $50 Billion, NASA’s Deep-Space Plans Remain Grounded (Source: Ars Technica)
During the last 15 years, the US Congress has authorized budgets totaling $46 billion for various NASA deep-space exploration plans. By late summer, 2020, that total is likely to exceed $50 billion, most of which has been spent on developing a heavy-lift rocket and deep-space capsule that may carry humans into deep space.

In a new analysis that includes NASA's recently approved fiscal year 2019 budget, aerospace analyst Laura Forczyk found that, of this total, NASA has spent $16 billion on the Orion capsule, $14 billion on the Space Launch System rocket, and most of the remainder on ground systems development along with the Ares I and Ares V rockets. For all of this spending on "exploration programs" since 2005, NASA has demonstrated relatively little spaceflight capability.

The Ares I launch vehicle flew one time, in 2009, to an altitude of just 40km. (It had a dummy upper stage and fake capsule). The Ares project, as part of NASA's Constellation Program, would be abandoned the next year, as it was behind schedule and over budget. Later, in 2014, NASA launched an uncrewed version of its Orion spacecraft on a private rocket to an altitude of 3,600km. The first flight of the new SLS rocket, again with an uncrewed Orion vehicle, may occur in 2021. "SLS and Orion are political projects, not practical ones," Forczyk said. Click here. (2/19)

Falcon-9 To Carry Air Force Microsatellite (Source: Space News)
An experimental Air Force satellite is hitching a ride on a Falcon 9 launch this week. The S5 satellite from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) will be a secondary payload flying along with the Nusantara Satu communications satellite and SpaceIL's Beresheet lunar lander. Few details about the satellite have been released, but Blue Canyon Technologies won a contract for the 60-kilogram S5 satellite from AFRL in 2017, which it said would demonstrate the use of smallsats to collect space situational awareness data in geostationary orbit. The satellite's payload is from Applied Defense Solutions, now part of L3 Technologies. (2/17)

Thales Alenia and Spaceflight Open LeoStella Satellite Manufacturing Facility in Seattle (Source: Space News)
A joint venture of Thales Alena Space and Spaceflight Industries has opened its satellite manufacturing facility. LeoStella held a grand opening Friday for its factory in a suburb of Seattle, where the company wil be able to produce up to 30 smallsats a year. The initial customer for those satellites is BlackSky, which is creating a constellation of high-resolution Earth imaging satellites. LeoStella is looking for other customers, government and commercial, for the smallsats it will build there. (2/17)

Soyuz-2 Rocket Launcher Upgrade to be Completed in 2019 (Source: TASS)
Russian Aerospace Force intends to complete the upgrading process of Soyuz-2 rocket launcher this year, First Deputy Chief of the Russian Aerospace Force General-Major Igor Morozov said on the air with Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) radio station. The goal of such upgrade is to "launch the whole range of military and dual-purpose spacecraft exclusively from the territory of the Russian Federation," the general added. (2/17)

'Every Day Is A Good Day When You're Floating': Anne McClain Talks Life In Space (Source: NPR)
What do you eat in space? How do you sleep in space? And just what does one do all day long in space? Children from the Georgetown Day School in Washington D.C., recently had a chance to ask their most burning questions to NASA astronaut Anne McClain. They are roughly the same age that McClain was when on her first day of preschool she announced that she wanted to become an astronaut. By the time McClain was about 5 years old, she said she wrote a book about flying to space on the Soyuz vehicle.

Now she's floating around on the International Space Station, showing that sometimes childhood dreams do come true. "When you are finally in space and you're finally looking back at Earth and you realize for the first time in your life there's nothing standing between you and your dream, it's just so hard to describe the profound impact of that," McClain, now 39, told NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro. Over the course of the interview, McClain flew a quarter of the way around the world. Every day she flies around the world 16 times, seeing a sunrise and sunset every 45 minutes. But by far, she said she prefers watching the moon. (2/17)

U.S. Intelligence: Russia Tried to Con the World With Bogus Missile (Source: Daily Beast)
On Jan. 23, Russian military officials held a press conference showing off what they said was a cruise missile at the center of a years-long arms control controversy between Washington and Moscow. Except the presentation was essentially a hoax, according to a classified briefing prepared by U.S. intelligence. Neither the missile, nor its launch vehicle, nor the accompanying schematics were what Russia claimed them to be.

The alleged Russian misdirection came just days before the United States announced that it would withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty—the treaty that Russia violated, in the U.S. view. Almost nothing Russia showed off to support its claims at that press conference had anything to do with the missile the U.S. is most interested in, according to an assessment briefing put together by the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. (2/18)

Air Force's 'Rods From God' Could Hit With the Force of a Nuclear Weapon — With No Fallout (Source: Business Insider)
The 107-country Outer Space Treaty signed in 1967 prohibits nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons from being placed in or used from Earth's orbit. What they didn't count on was the US Air Force's most simple weapon ever: a tungsten rod that could hit a city with the explosive power of an intercontinental ballistic missile. During the Vietnam War, the US used what it called "Lazy Dog" bombs. These were simply solid-steel pieces, less than 2 inches long, fitted with fins.

There was no explosive: They were simply dropped by the hundreds from planes flying above Vietnam. Lazy Dog projectiles (aka "kinetic bombardment") could reach speeds of up to 500 mph as they fell to the ground and could penetrate 9 inches of concrete after being dropped from as little as 3,000 feet. The idea is like shooting bullets at a target, except instead of losing velocity as it travels, the projectile is gaining velocity and energy that will be expended on impact. (2/4)