March 11, 2019

Musk's Security Clearance Issue Might Impact His Role in SpaceX (Source: Forbes)
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s security clearance is currently being reviewed by the Defense Department as a consequence of smoking marijuana on the Joe Rogan podcast last September, according to a report from Bloomberg. The review isn’t likely to change SpaceX’s relationship with the Air Force, with which it’s signed nine contracts, but it could change Musk’s role with the company he founded.

SpaceX declined to comment on the report, and the Department of Defense has yet to respond to a request for comment, though typically the Department does not comment on individual security clearances.

According to Tod Stephens, an attorney at Armstrong Teasdale who works on security clearance issues, smoking marijuana could put someone’s clearance at risk. “A security clearance holder who smokes marijuana is significantly endangering their security clearance, especially if the drug use was broadcast as entertainment,” he told Forbes in an email. “Marijuana use continues to be illegal at the federal level. The federal employees who grant and revoke security clearances will treat even one use of marijuana by a clearance holder as a serious concern.” (3/10)

NASA Budget Reveals Even More Reliance on Private Companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin (Source: CNBC)
The White House unveiled NASA’s 2020 budget on Monday and the $21 billion requested from Congress reveals new opportunities for private space companies to earn lucrative future awards, several industry analysts said. This is the first budget request under NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. On a reference basis alone, the budget uses the word “commercial” almost twice as much as last year. That is a boon to companies like SpaceX, as CEO Elon Musk has said his company wants to be a part of returning cargo and humans to the moon’s surface, as NASA aims to do.

“This is potentially good for SpaceX, given it looks like on the lunar side they’re emphasizing commercial companies more,” Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said. Jonas is widely followed due to his early call on electric automaker Tesla and helped form a team of analysts to focus on investment opportunities from the space industry at Morgan Stanley.

NASA wants to accelerate its plans to establish a permanent human presence on the surface of the moon. And Bridenstine plans to “increase the use of commercial partnerships” to do that, the budget said. “Everything to this point has put the moon first in this administration. It looks like they’re going all in,” Anderson said. NASA’s budget sets aside $363 million specifically to help companies develop “a large lunar lander” to take cargo and astronauts to the moon’s surface. (3/11)

Trump Budget Seeks Cuts in Science Funding (Source: Washington Post)
President Trump’s third budget request, released Monday, again seeks cuts to a number of scientific and medical research enterprises, including a 13 percent cut to the National Science Foundation, a 12 percent cut at the National Institutes of Health and the termination of an Energy Department program that funds speculative technologies deemed too risky for private investors. NIH would face a roughly $4.5 billion budget cut, according to an HHS document. Among the big losers, if Congress were to sign off on the budget request, would be the National Cancer Institute, dropping from $6.1 billion to $5.2 billion, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, going from $5.5 billion to $4.75 billion.

The NSF, which funds roughly a quarter of all federally supported basic science and engineering research in the U.S., would see its budget fall from $8.1 billion this year to $7.1 billion in 2020.

NASA faces a modest cut — 2.3 percent lower than the agency’s 2019 funding, which was approved last month by Congress. The $21 billion for NASA is more than the Trump administration asked for last year, as administrator Jim Bridenstine pointed out Monday in a statement describing the FY2020 budget as “one of the strongest on record for our storied agency.” Bridenstine said the budget keeps NASA on track for putting humans on the moon again by 2028. (3/11)

Mae Jemison: The Astronaut Plotting a Journey to Other Stars (Source: New Scientist)
Best known as the first black woman to go into space, Mae Jemison has done much more in her remarkable career as an engineer, doctor and science ambassador. Now, she is leading the 100 Year Starship project, an effort to drive forward the capability for interstellar travel within the next century.

Jemison grew up in Chicago in the 1960s. She always had a keen interest in science, but also wanted to be a professional dancer. She enrolled at Stanford University in California at the age of 16 and graduated in chemical engineering, then faced a difficult choice to study medicine or become a dancer. “My mother said you can always dance if you’re a doctor but you can’t necessarily doctor if you’re a dancer,” she said. Click here. (3/8)

FCC Publishes Draft Debris Mitigation Rules (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Citing new satellite constellations that plan to collectively launch thousands of new satellites into Earth orbit, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has decided to update its regulations on space debris for the first time in 15 years. “Proposed deployments of large satellite constellations in the intensely used LEO region, along with other satellites deployed in the LEO region, will have the potential to increase the risk of debris-generating events,” the FCC said in a notice in the Federal Register.

“New satellite and deployment technologies currently in use and under development also may increase the number of potential debris-generating events, in the absence of improved debris mitigation practices.” The proposal includes significant changes in current disclosure and operational requirements for satellite owners. (3/9)

Cut the Science Budget? Not So Fast (Source: New York Times)
The president proposes and Congress disposes. So goes the standard description of the constitutional process by which our republic is governed. Judging from the news headlines, you might think this process has not been friendly lately to the scientific community. Again and again, the Trump administration has proposed drastic cuts to the research budgets of the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, NASA and other agencies.

Quietly, however, Congress often has gone the other way and handed out increases. In February, the Congress passed, and President Trump finally signed, a spending bill for 2019, averting another government shutdown. Lost amid the collective sigh of relief and the hoopla about President Trump’s wall was the news that astronomers had won a key victory: A pair of cosmically ambitious telescopes were rescued from possible oblivion.

One of them, the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s long-promised successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, was designed to peer deeper into space and time than any optical eyes before it, to study the earliest stars and galaxies of the cosmos. But as of last year, it was deep in the red. The other telescope, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, or WFIRST, was designed to search for exoplanets, investigate the mysterious “dark energy” apparently speeding up the expansion of the cosmos and, perhaps, elucidate the fate of the universe. Click here. (3/11)

She Turns Elon Musk's Bold Space Ideas Into a Business (Source: CNN)
SpaceX has a booming business launching satellites to space, and 2018 was its busiest year yet. Now the company is pouring money into two audacious investments: a massive constellation of internet satellites and a rocket to Mars. The projects are the brainchild of SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Overseeing the day-to-day operations at SpaceX, however, falls on the shoulders of president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell. Shotwell is charged with turning Musk's bold visions into a sustainable business. She juggles the risk behind the scenes.

Launching rockets is high stakes by nature. Many millions of dollars are on the line each time SpaceX lights up one of its 230-foot-tall launch vehicles to send a payload to space. In 2018, Shotwell oversaw 20 flights of SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. It also debuted a new launch vehicle, the Falcon Heavy, which became the world's most powerful operational rocket. But its largest gambles are ahead. Click here. (3/10)

Red Moon Revisited (Source: Space Review)
The successful landing of the Chang’e-4 spacecraft on the lunar farside in January has triggered another round of speculation about China’s lunar exploration plans and a race with the United States. Dwayne Day argues that many Western observers see what they want to see in China’s space program and not what is really going on. Click here. (3/11) 
 
Time for a Compromise on Space Traffic Management (Source: Space Review)
Last summer, President Trump signed Space Policy Directive 3 that addressed space traffic management issues, but its implementation has been slowed by arguments regarding what agency should be in charge. Brian Weeden offers a potential compromise that would allow work on the issue to move ahead. Click here. (3/11)
 
The Beginning of the End of Commercial Crew Development (Source: Space Review)
The successful launch and docking of a Crew Dragon spacecraft a week ago was only a part of that test flight: a vehicle that carries astronauts to the space station also needs to be able to return them. Jeff Foust reports on the conclusion of that Demo-1 mission and the growing confidence the commercial crew program is ready to carry astronauts this year. Click here. (3/11) 

Two Continent-Size Mountains in Earth's Deep Mantle That Nobody Understands (Source: Space.com)
About halfway between your feet and the center of Earth, two continent-size mountains of hot, compressed rock pierce the gut of the planet — and scientists know almost nothing about them. Technically, these mysterious hunks of rock are called "large low-shear-velocity provinces" (LLSVPs), because seismic waves shuddering through Earth always slow down when passing through these structures.

A mesmerizing image, featured in an article on Eos (the official news site of the American Geophysical Union, or AGU), gives us one of the most detailed views yet of these rocky anomalies — which most scientists simply call "the blobs."  Geophysicists have known about the blobs since the 1970s but aren't much closer to understanding them today. (3/11)

5G Spectrum Allocation Could Impact NASA and NOAA Operations (Source: Space News)
NASA and NOAA are battling the FCC over a plan to auction spectrum for 5G services. In a Feb. 28 letter, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross asked FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to postpone an auction of spectrum between 24.25 and 25.25 gigahertz scheduled for March 14 out of concerns that use of that spectrum for 5G services could interfere with weather observations in a nearby band. Pai, in a response Friday, declined to postpone the auction, arguing there was no technical basis for those claims while also criticizing NASA and NOAA for "actively lobbying foreign delegations and key industry players" against the FCC's plans. Scientists are concerned that 5G signals could leak out of that band into neighboring frequencies, making it difficult to use them to measure atmospheric water vapor. (3/10)

Q&A with Virgin Galactic Chief Trainer Beth Moses (Source: Aviation Week)
As NASA’s extravehicular system manager for the International Space Station, Beth Moses spent most of her professional life designing equipment and operations for extreme environments. However, Moses wanted not only to train astronauts, but to become one herself. Now chief trainer with Virgin Galactic, Moses fulfilled that dream on Feb. 22, when she made a suborbital ride aboard SpaceShipTwo for the first inflight assessment of the passenger cabin. She tells Space Editor Irene Klotz about the ride. Click here. (3/8)

Europe's Ariane 6 Aims for 2020 Debut Launch (Source: Space News)
ArianeGroup says this year will be decisive for the Ariane 6 rocket amid concerns about the competitiveness of the rocket on the global market. The company expects to have all the propulsion for the Ariane 6 qualified this year, including a full test of the rocket's upper stage in December. That work is keeping the rocket on schedule for a debut in 2020. The company declined to comment on a recent report by a French auditor that concluded that the next-generation rocket is "at risk of not being sustainably competitive" against SpaceX's Falcon 9. (3/10)

China's Heavy-Lift Long March 9 Aims for 2030 Debut Launch (Source: Xinhua)
China says its heavy-lift Long March 9 rocket is on schedule for a first launch around 2030. Experts with the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology say they have made "significant progress" on unspecified key technologies for the vehicle, which is designed to place between 50 and 140 metric tons into low Earth orbit. That vehicle will be used to support human missions to the moon and other deep space exploration missions. (3/10)

Scotland Spaceport Launches Face Downrange Obstacles (Source: Aberdeen Press and Journal)
Rockets launching from a proposed Scottish spaceport could have to perform maneuvers to avoid overflight risks. A report said that rockets launching from the site in Sutherland in northern Scotland would have to carry out a dogleg maneuver to limit risks to residents of the Faroe Islands and offshore oil rigs. Such maneuvers would reduce the payload capacity of the rockets by a third. Such maneuvers would not be necessary if launches took place from an alternative launch site in the Shetland Islands, but backers of that site claim that Scottish officials kept it out of a competition for the first U.K. spaceport, instead backing the Sutherland location. (3/10)

SpaceX’s Starship Prototype Moved to Launch Pad on New Rocket Transporter (Source: Teslarati)
Over the last two or so weeks, SpaceX engineers and technicians have continued to make progress on the company’s first full-scale Starship prototype, intended to support experimental suborbital hop tests as early as March or April. That work reached a peak on March 8th when the massive Starhopper was transported from build site to launch pad on a brand new transporter that was delivered and assembled barely 48 hours prior.

Ahead of the suborbital prototype’s move, work has been ongoing to construct a replacement fairing for the partial-fidelity vehicle, although there is a chance that the new BFR-related stainless steel sections being assembled could be the start of the first orbital Starship prototype. Required after improper planning destroyed Starship’s original nosecone (or fairing) when it broke free from its insufficient moorings during high coastal winds, the replacement has sprouted from sheets of metal into a far more substantial structure in barely two weeks. (3/9)

Chinese Officials Say Their "Artificial Sun" Will Be Completed This Year (Source: Science Alert)
In November, Chinese researchers announced that the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor — an "artificial sun" designed to mimic the nuclear fusion process the real Sun uses to generate energy — had hit a milestone by achieving an electron temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius. Now, officials are saying they believe they'll wrap up construction on a new artificial sun this year, and they claim this device will be able to hit a milestone in ion temperature — putting us one step closer to harnessing the power of nuclear fusion.

"The artificial sun's plasma is mainly composed of electrons and ions," Duan said, "and the country's existing Tokamak devices have achieved an electron temperature of over 100 million degrees C in its core plasma, and an ion temperature of 50 million C, and it is the ion that generates energy in the device." This meets one of the three challenges to reach the goal of harnessing the nuclear fusion. (3/10)

An Interplanetary Internet Could Be Here Sooner Than You Think (Source: Axios)
Beginning in 2020, Hypergiant Galactic Systems and the nonprofit Arch Mission plan to deploy the first in a series of small satellites intended to serve as relay points in an eventual interplanetary internet. With humans looking to return to the Moon and push into deep space, there is increased demand for building up a telecommunications infrastructure in our solar system, similar to what exists on Earth. An interplanetary internet, which is an idea that NASA has researched and is based on open data protocols, could solve major communications and data transfer challenges that future explorers will face.

The satellites could also serve as data storage devices to back up information from Earth and provide it to deep space explorers or even intelligent life from other planets, should they exist, who may be seeking information about human civilization. The first satellite will be a cubesat launched to the LaGrange point between the Earth and the Moon. This is where the gravitational forces between the Earth and the Moon are balanced by the centrifugal force of a third, smaller body. At such a location, a spacecraft can be parked in place for a long period of time. (3/11)

China's Space Research Finds Microgravity Promotes iPS Cells' Regenerative Potential (Source: Xinhua)
Research findings from China's Tianzhou-1 Space Mission have shown that the microgravity environment in space promotes heart cell differentiation of mice induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, providing new perspectives on future human space travel. During space travel, the human body is in a state of weightlessness due to minimal gravitational pull from the earth, which is known as microgravity. Exposure to microgravity may have a profound influence on the physiological function of human cells.

Researchers from China's Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Tsinghua University and the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences took the opportunity of the Tianzhou-1 space mission, China's first cargo spacecraft launched in 2017, to investigate how spaceflight may affect cardiac differentiation of mice iPS cells. Pluripotency is from the Latin word pluripotentia which means the capacity for many things. In cell biology, pluripotent stem cells refer to stem cells that have the capacity to differentiate into other types of cells. (3/11)