March 13, 2019

Budget Proposal Boosts Lunar Gateway (Source: Space News)
NASA's proposed new budget helps provide new momentum for the lunar Gateway. The budget requests $821 million for the Gateway, supporting continued work on the Power and Propulsion Element and other aspects of the human-tended facility in lunar orbit. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, in a speech Monday unveiling the budget, said there was strong international interest in the Gateway, including from existing space station partners who are considering providing elements of the facility. The ISS Multilateral Coordination Board, which oversees management of the station, released a statement endorsing the Gateway this month. (3/12)

China's OneSpace Plans to Launch This Month (Source: Space News)
OneSpace is on track to be the first private Chinese company to place a payload into orbit. The startup said it has completed assembly and testing of its OS-M rocket and is now preparing to transport the vehicle to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center for a launch attempt late this month. The OS-M vehicle has three solid-propellant stages and one liquid-propellant stage and can place up to 205 kilograms into low Earth orbit. Another Chinese startup, iSpace, is preparing for the first orbital launch of its Hyperbola-1 small launch vehicle as soon as April. (3/12)

Russia to Launch Japanese Smallsats (Source: Glavkosmos)
Glavkosmos has signed a contract with Japanese company Axelspace for the launch of three smallsats. The GRUS-1B and GRUS-1C satellites, along with the Fukui Prefectural Satellite, will launch on a Soyuz-2 rocket from Baikonur in 2020. The three satellites are part of Axelspace's planned AxelGlobe constellation of imaging satellites. Axelspace launched its GRUS-1A satellite on a Soyuz rocket in December. (3/12)

Scottish Spaceport Site in Dispute (Source: Aberdeen Press and Journal)
Local disputes led Scottish officials to consider moving the site of a proposed spaceport. At a December meeting, representatives of Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the U.K. Space Agency discussed moving the launch site from its current location in Sutherland in northern Scotland amid debates among local landowners about whether they would allow the project to proceed. The space agency said that moving the site could face legal constraints and keep it from being completed by a 2021 deadline. Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the agency helping fund the spaceport, said it is committed to the original site and that negotiations to lease the land for it are "well advanced." (3/12)

Square Kilometer Array to Include Expansive Infrastructure in Australia and South Africa (Source: Nature)
Several nations have signed a formal agreement governing development of a new radio telescope. Seven nations involved in the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) signed the agreement Tuesday creating the SKA Observatory, the organization that will oversee development of the project. SKA is designed to eventually feature up to a million antennas in Australia and thousands of radio dishes in South Africa. The initial stage of the project, costing $760 million, calls for placing 130,000 antennas in Australia and adding more than 130 dishes to the existing MeerKAT array in South Africa. (3/12)

Toyota to Develop Pressurized Lunar Rover (Source: Asahi Shimbun)
The Japanese space agency JAXA will partner with Toyota on the design of a pressurized lunar rover. The two organizations announced an agreement Tuesday to accelerate an ongoing joint study of the rover with an eye towards developing the vehicle by the end of the 2020s. The rover, powered by fuel cells, would be able to travel up to 10,000 kilometers on the lunar surface and carry two astronauts. Neither JAXA nor Toyota disclosed how much money they were spending on this phase of the project, or the projected overall cost of the rover. (3/12)

Microlaunchers to Grow Europe’s Economy (Source: ESA)
A flourishing small satellites market is driving demand for new ways to access space. Recent industry feasibility studies backed by ESA for new microlauncher services, are creating new business opportunities. ESA intends to strengthen European industry by fostering a globally competitive European space sector with increased industry participation in launcher development.

As part of this, ESA’s Future Launchers Preparatory Program (FLPP) funded five proposals from industry for an economically viable, commercially self-sustaining microlauncher, without public funding in exploitation. A microlauncher can place a small satellite of up to 350 kg – typically small commercial or experimental satellites into low orbits, starting from the ground or from an aerial platform.

ESA’s support allowed these companies to bring their ideas to a basic level of maturity, creating value in the market and networking possibilities with other businesses. The five companies presented their results at a workshop and networking opportunity organised by ESA in Paris, France. It was attended by more than 150 participants, and more than 100 business-to-business meetings took place. Click here. (3/10)

Iceye and Audacy Consider Constellation Collaboration (Source: Space News)
Space communications startup Audacy is studying potential cooperation with radar satellite constellation company Iceye. The companies said they signed a memorandum of understanding to see how Audacy's planned data relay satellite system could support Iceye's constellation of SAR satellites. That cooperation would focus initially on using Audacy's satellites to relay tasking commands to the Iceye constellation, but could later expand to transmitting radar imagery from the Iceye satellites. (3/11)

New Congressional Caucus Will Promote GPS Issues (Source: Space News)
A new bipartisan caucus in Congress will promote the GPS satellite system. The GPS Caucus, announced Monday by Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Joni Ernst (R-IA), seeks to bring a central focus to GPS-related issues that are handled by a variety of congressional committees. Several other members of the House and Senate joined them in introducing a resolution recognizing the contributions and importance of the GPS constellation, which generates an estimated $68.7 billion to the U.S. economy.(3/11)

India and China Space Talks Break Down (Source: Hindustan Times)
India and China discussed cooperation in lunar exploration, but the talks fell through. India proposed flying a payload on China's Chang'e-4 spacecraft, which landed on the far side of the moon in January. The Chinese space agency CNSA said that China was unable to fly the unnamed payload due "to the different nature of the missions of the two sides." India's space agency ISRO declined to comment on the discussions. Chang'e-4 did carry experiments from several other nations. ISRO is planning to launch its own lunar lander mission, Chandrayaan-2, this spring. (3/11)

Raptor Engine Shipped to Texas Launch Site for Starship (Source: Teslarati)
A Raptor engine has arrived at SpaceX's South Texas launch site for integration with a Starship prototype vehicle. A SpaceX spokesman said the engine will be mounted on the vehicle, initially for static fire tests and then tethered test flights. The "hopper" vehicle will later perform low-altitude test flights as part of the overall test program for SpaceX's next-generation launch system. (3/11)

Spire Satellites to Host KeyW Payloads (Source: Space News)
Spire has signed a deal to host payloads from a defense contractor on its cubesat constellation. Spire said that it will fly intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance payloads on its cubesats from KeyW, a company that primarily does work with the intelligence community. Terms of the agreement, including number of payloads and cost, were not disclosed. Spire has offered to fly payloads from commercial or government customers on its cubesats. (3/11)

Houston Pitched for Possible Space Force Headquarters (Source: KTRK)
The governor of Texas wants the Pentagon to place U.S. Space Command headquarters in Houston. In a letter to President Trump earlier this month, Gov. Greg Abbott said that Ellington Airport, near the Johnson Space Center, is "no better location" for the headquarters for the new command. The airport is home to several military aviation units and is an FAA-licensed spaceport. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis previously requested that the White House select the Kennedy Space Center as the future headquarters for the Space Force. (3/11)

Apollo Moon Samples Ready for More Analysis (Source: NASA)
NASA has selected nine research teams to analyze samples from the Apollo missions that have been sealed for decades. Six of the nine teams, from NASA centers, universities and the Naval Research Laboratory, will look at samples from the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions that have never been exposed to the Earth's atmosphere, while the other three will look at "specially curated" samples from those missions. The samples were preserved from the Apollo era so that they could be studied using more advanced technology. (3/11)

UCF Class Spotlight: Space Law (Source: UCF)
Who owns an asteroid? What are the liabilities of creating a hotel in space? Is a Space Force necessary? These are questions students explore in this political science course. In the early years, there wasn’t a whole lot of general interest in the area because only nation-states were doing space exploration. Now with the commercialization of space, who can participate in and impact the solar system is rapidly changing. NASA is relegating some of the more operational side of things to companies like ULA and SpaceX while the space agency returns to its original mission, which is research. So there’s much more interest now and need for a wider audience examining space law. (3/11)

Trump's $4.7 Trillion Budget Headed for Rejection by Congress (Source: Bloomberg)
President Donald Trump is seeking one of the largest-ever cuts to domestic discretionary spending in a $4.7 trillion fiscal 2020 budget proposal that also boosts defense spending and adds $8.6 billion for building a border wall. The budget blueprint released Monday, which forecasts annual deficits extending beyond the next decade and rising national debt, represents a wish list for the president’s priorities that is certain to be ignored by Congress. It also raises the threat of a funding showdown that could trigger another government shutdown in the fall. (3/11)

NASA Criticized for Proposed Budget Cuts (Source: Space News)
NASA’s fiscal year 2020 budget request is facing scrutiny from nearly all quarters for its proposals to cut science missions and education programs as well as defer work on an upgraded version of the Space Launch System. The proposal, released March 11, offers $21.02 billion for NASA in 2020, a decrease of about $480 million over what the agency received in 2019 in an appropriations bill signed into law Feb. 15. Those cuts, though, are not distributed equally among the agency’s various directorates.

NASA’s science programs would receive $6.3 billion, a decrease of $600 million from 2019. That includes a 30% cut for NASA astrophysics programs excluding JWST. For the second year in a row, the budget proposes cancelling the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), the next large astronomy mission after JWST. For the third year in a row, it calls for cancelling two Earth science missions, the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) spacecraft and the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) Pathfinder instrument for the International Space Station. (3/13)

China Preparing for Space Station Missions (Source: Space Daily)
The China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) announced Monday that the core module of the country's space station, the Long March-5B carrier rocket and its payloads will be sent to the launch site in the second half of this year, to make preparations for the space station missions. China is scheduled to complete the construction of the space station around 2022. It will be the country's space lab in long-term stable in-orbit operation.

The space station will have a core module and experiment modules, which are under development and will be launched into space by the Long March-5B. Joint exercises will be carried out in the Wenchang Space Launch Center at the end of 2019 for the maiden flight of the Long March-5B. Programs to select and train astronauts are underway. (3/6)

Houston, We're Here to Help the Farmers (Source: Space Daily)
Farmers irrigating their crops may soon be getting some help from space. In 2018, scientists launched ECOSTRESS, a new ISS instrument to gather data on how plants use water across the world. "Technically, the instruments are measuring surface temperature, which reflects the heat stress of plants," explains Joshua Fisher, science lead on the ECOSTRESS mission. "By measuring the temperature, we are able to tell how much water plants are using. For example, if you have two plants and water one, the one that has more water will be cooler."

The temperature measurement can be compared to holding a hand over hot sand at the beach. Even without touching the sand, a person can tell it's hot. That's the kind of energy ECOSTRESS picks up. And the system is taking measurements at various times of day, thanks to the Space Station's unique orbit. That's important: Plants function differently throughout the day. (3/11)

Engineers to Start Building First X-60A Hypersonic Rocket (Source: Aerospace Testing International)
The US Air Force’s X-60A, an air-dropped liquid rocket being developed for hypersonic flight research, has completed its critical design review, a major milestone in the program that paves the way for its first test flight in March 2020. The completion of the review means that the program will move into the fabrication phase. The initial flight of the vehicle is scheduled to take place in 12 months from the Cecil Spaceport in Jacksonville, Florida.

The X-60A’s propulsion system is the Hadley liquid rocket engine, which uses liquid oxygen and kerosene propellants. The system is designed to provide affordable and regular access to high dynamic pressure flight conditions above Mach 5. A key feature of the X-60A program is that the Cecil Spaceport will provide a diversification in hypersonic flight testing to the usual flight test ranges used by the USA’s Department of Defense.

Additionally, this is the first Air Force Small Business Innovative Research program to receive an experimental “X” designation, in a long line of historical X-planes that includes hypersonic vehicles such as the X-15 and X-51A. The AFRL is developing the X-60A to increase the frequency of flight testing while lowering the cost of maturing hypersonic technologies. “While hypersonic ground test facilities are vital in technology development, we must also test those technologies with actual hypersonic flight conditions,” said the AFRL. (3/12)