March 4, 2019

EELV is Now NSSL, Ditching "Expendable" in the Age of Reusable Systems (Source: Space News)
The Air Force formally changed the name of its major launch services program Friday. The Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program is now known as National Security Space Launch, a name change required by Congress in its 2019 defense authorization bill. The change is intended to reflect the fact that the program now includes vehicles, like SpaceX's Falcon 9, that reuse stages, a development not anticipated when the EELV program started in the 1990s.

The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center issued a draft request for proposals for the next phase of that program last month, planning to select two companies to provide up to 25 launches over a five-year period. That procurement takes a "best value" approach to awarding launches, with technical performance emphasized over other criteria, including price. (3/3)

Hubble Instrument Goes Offline After Software Issue (Source: NASA)
An instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope is offline after a software problem. NASA said that controllers suspended operations of the Advanced Camera for Surveys late Thursday after detecting an error that indicated that the instrument's software has not loaded correctly. Engineers are studying the problem, but NASA didn't indicate when it thought the instrument could be returned to service. The telescope itself and its three other instruments are continuing normal operations. (3/3)

InSight Drill Hits Mars Rocks En Route to Five Meter Depth (Source: Space.com)
A Mars InSight instrument burrowing into the Martian surface is being slowed by subsurface obstacles. The Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package instrument, dubbed the mole, drilled between 18 and 50 centimeters into the surface during an initial four-hour session last week, according to the instrument's principal investigator.

The mole ran into at least two stones below the surface, pushing them aside as it hammered deeper into the surface. The instrument is designed to be able to work around obstacles like that, although that can be time consuming. Scientists hope to get the mole as deep as five meters below the surface to measure the flow of heat from the planet's interior. (3/3)

D-Orbit Signs With Firefly to Sell Aggregate Launch Capacity to European Customers (Source: Firefly)
D-Orbit S.p.A. signed a multi-year framework agreement with Firefly Aerospace to purchase launch capacity of the Firefly Alpha launch vehicle. The agreement grants D-Orbit the status of a preferred launch aggregation partner for the European market, allowing D-Orbit to purchase, market, and resell launch vehicle capacity, and to provide logistics support and integration activities at its operational premises in Italy.

“Capitalizing on the capabilities of ION CubeSat Carrier, our free-flying CubeSat deployer, we are expanding our launch services portfolio and taking an additional step in our roadmap to offer the New Space market an innovative launch transportation solution," said Pietro Guerrieri, D-Orbit Chief Strategic Officer. The agreement is for up to 15 launches over five years.

Alpha is the first of a series of launchers being developed by Firefly for the needs of the small satellite market. The first Alpha launch is scheduled for the end of 2019, with frequent launches in 2020 and beyond. Firefly will have launch sites at Vandenberg Air Force Base and the Cape Canaveral Spaceport, enabling missions to polar, SSO and lower inclination orbits. (3/3)

Neutrinos Entangled in the Cosmic Web May Change the Structure of the Universe (Source: Live Science)
Like flies trapped in a silken spider web, ghostly particles known as neutrinos are entangled in a cosmic web of galaxies. They have almost no mass. They pass like subatomic apparitions through other matter, barely interacting with it. And yet, these mysterious particles have fundamentally altered the course of the universe, new research reveals.

Looking at more than 1 million galaxies, scientists determined how neutrinos' gravity subtly affected the locations where galaxies first coalesced after the Big Bang. Shortly after the Big Bang, the universe was a soupy mess of neutrinos, electrons, neutrons, protons and photons. One second in, neutrinos — the lightest and least interacting of the particles — were the first to separate from the rest of the matter, and zoomed out into the expanding space of the universe at nearly the speed of light. Scientists call this distribution of first neutrinos the cosmic neutrino background.

Because the neutrinos were first to leave the soup of particles and have hardly interacted with anything since, they wound up in slightly different locations than the clumps of atoms. This, scientists hypothesized, left a slight but visible effect on the structure of the cosmic web. By studying 1.2 million galaxies, the scientists confirmed that neutrinos' gravity slightly altered the structure of the web. (3/4)