May 13, 2019

Bezos Is Promising the Moon — But There Are Plenty of Reasons to Doubt Him (Source: TIME)
For one thing, there’s the “this vehicle is going to the moon” part. It’s not. It can’t. That’s because it’s not a vehicle, but a mockup. It may go back to the prop shop where it was built, but that’s all. Bezos’ phrasing is no small thing, because the company’s own press material keeps echoing it, speaking of the spacecraft in the present, existing tense: “Blue Moon is a flexible lunar lander delivering a wide variety of small, medium and large payloads to the lunar surface.” No, but it might be one day. “The Blue Moon lander provides kilowatts of power to payloads using its fuel cells.” Not yet it doesn’t.

Much of the media echoed the be-here-now phrasing, which compounded the problem. NASA, for all of the dilatory drift of its post-Apollo era, is at least honest about the prospective nature of so many of its projects. Indeed, one good way to handicap the likelihood of any of the space agency’s ongoing projects actually reaching completion is to apply the Count the Conditionals rule: The more times a NASA press release describes what a planned spacecraft could or would do, the less likely it is that it will actually do anything at all.

Then there’s the business of Bezos’ supposed three-year head start on NASA: It’s a very good point, but only as long as you’re willing to overlook the 60-year head start NASA has on him. There’s a lot to be said for the confidence and even arrogance that made Amazon the behemoth it is, but building rockets is a whole lot harder than selling merch. When you’ve never launched a human being on so much as a suborbital flight, implying that you’ve got edge on an agency that sent 24 people to the moon is not a good look. Click here. (5/11)

Jeff Bezos Has Plans to Extract the Moon’s Water (Source: The Atlantic)
Robotic missions to the moon have found evidence in the past decade that water exists on the moon, in the form of ice. Pence, along with the NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, have insisted that exploiting that precious resource would make long-term outposts on the moon possible. It’s far easier than bringing along giant watercoolers from Earth. Future lunar explorers, they say, could feed the water ice into life-support systems, or split it into hydrogen and oxygen and turn it into rocket fuel. “Ultimately, we’re going to be able to get hydrogen from that water on the moon, and be able to refuel these vehicles on the surface of the moon,” Bezos said. (5/10)

Will Blue Origin Build Moon Lander in Brevard County? (Source: WESH)
A new moon-landing vehicle, unveiled Thursday by Jeff Bezos, could be built in Brevard County if the state space agency, Space Florida, gets its way. The moon lander could carry NASA astronauts to the moon in five years. Some of that road-building starts on the Space Coast, not only where the launch pads await, but where Bezos has built a rocket factory to create some of the largest rockets ever made. Blue Origin is a private enterprise, but at an invitation-only event Thursday, Bezos hinted it could all be part of NASA's five-year plan to get to the moon. (5/10)

How the Trump Administration is Helping Some Space Spy Tech Go Commercial (Source: Politico)
More space technologies that were long only available in the defense and intelligence communities are beginning to break into the commercial market -- in part because of the Trump administration’s willingness to consider such transfers, according to Melanie Corcoran-Freelander, the chief technology officer at Ursa Space Systems, which uses synthetic aperture radar to provide companies intelligence on things like ship movements or oil pipelines.

“In the last three years, [the administration has considered] things that they previously would have rejected flat out,” Corcoran-Freelander says. Ursa gets its images in part from foreign synthetic aperture radar satellites because the U.S. has no commercial satellites with this capability. That, however, is about to change. Corcoran-Freelander said there are at least five domestic companies preparing to launch SAR satellites. (5/10)

Russia Mulls Sending Anthropomorphic Robot to the Moon (Source: Sputnik)
Russia's lunar rover, which is projected to be delivered to the Moon by the Luna-29 spacecraft, will be controlled by an anthropomorphic robot, a space industry source told Sputnik. The launch of the Luna-29 mission is scheduled in 2028. Another source in the space industry told Sputnik on Saturday that the Luna-29 spacecraft with a 1.3-tonne lunar rover is planned to be launched from Russia's Vostochny Cosmodrome using the Angara-A5B launch vehicle with the oxygen-hydrogen booster.

"The lunar rover delivered by Luna-29 will be controlled by an anthropomorphic robot", the source said. According to the source, this idea had emerged quite recently. He added that in the future, such moon rovers will be controlled by cosmonauts. Russian space agency Roscosmos did not comment on this information. In 1971-1972, the United States brought astronaut-operated rovers to the Moon during manned flights of the Apollo-15, Apollo-16 and Apollo-17.  In 1970-1973, the Soviet spacecraft Luna-17 and Luna-21 delivered lunar rovers to the Earth's natural satellite. (5/12)

Space Tourism Steps Closer to Commercial Flight Reality (Source: Voice of America)
Billionaire Richard Branson is moving Virgin Galactic’s winged passenger rocket and more than 100 employees from California to a remote commercial launch and landing facility in southern New Mexico, bringing his space tourism dream a step closer to reality. Branson said Friday at a news conference that Virgin Galactic’s development and testing program has advanced enough to make the move to the custom-tailored hangar and runway at the taxpayer-financed Spaceport America facility near the town of Truth or Consequences.

Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said a small number of flight tests are pending. He declined to set a specific deadline for the first commercial flight. An interior cabin for the company’s space rocket is being tested, and pilots and engineers are among the employees relocating from California to New Mexico. The move to New Mexico puts the company in the “home stretch,” Whitesides said. The manufacturing of the space vehicles by a sister enterprise, The Spaceship Company, will remain based in the community of Mojave, California. (5/10)

Inmarsat Shareholders Back $3.4 Billion Takeover (Source: Reuters)
Investors in Inmarsat voted on Friday to sell the British satellite firm to a private equity-led consortium for $3.4 billion following a recommendation from the company’s board that the offer was fair and reasonable. Nearly 79 percent of shares voted supported a so-called scheme of arrangement for the takeover by a consortium comprising UK-based Apax Partners, U.S.-based Warburg Pincus and two Canadian pension funds, Inmarsat said.

Inmarsat’s board recommended the $7.21 per share cash offer in March, saying that although it was confident in the long-term prospects of the company, it would take time for the investment needed in its satellite networks to deliver returns. The consortium said it was attracted by Inmarsat’s long-term contracts to supply communications to governments and other customers, such as major shipping companies, and it saw considerable potential for Inmarsat’s growing business providing broadband connections to airlines. (5/10)

United Launch Alliance, UAW Employees Ratify New Contract (Source: ULA)
Centennial, Colo., (May 10, 2019) – United Launch Alliance (ULA) was notified today that employees represented by United Auto Workers (UAW) in Harlingen, Texas, have voted to accept the company’s new five-year contract offer. Represented employees at the Harlingen facility build structural components for the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets.

The collective bargaining agreement will take effect on May 13, 2019, and covers nearly 60 employees from UAW Local No. 2346 at ULA’s production operations facility. Negotiations began on May 6 and concluded on May 9, with the union voting May 10. The vote to ratify the collective bargaining agreement came roughly a week after ULA signed a five-year lease extension with the Harlingen Airport Authority for continued use of the manufacturing facility. (5/10)

Northrop Grumman, NASA test Cygnus-Derived Lunar Gateway Habitat (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (NGIS) and NASA have completed a series of tests on a full-scale mockup of NGIS’s proposed Deep Space Gateway habitat modules.  The test, conducted at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, comes as part of Northrop Grumman’s participation in the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships-2 (NextSTEP-2) program.

While the testing was conducted on mockups, the proposed modules at the Johnson Space Center were “outfitted with everything needed by an Orion astronaut crew to simulate Cislunar Gateway missions,” noted NGIS. To this end, the mockups were fitted with crew exercise equipment, life support systems, a toilet, a viewing window, a galley, sleeping quarters, science racks, a radiation shelter, robotics workstations, and an airlock/tunnel. These elements were located within three modules, including a 7 m x 4.4 m Habitat, a 6 m x 3 m Habitat, and the 2.5 m x 1 m Airlock. (5/11)

Women are Now in Charge of NASA's Science Missions (Source: Mashable)
When the next car-sized rover lands on Mars in 2020, the ultimate head of this extraterrestrial endeavor will be physicist Lori Glaze. She's leads NASA's Planetary Science Division. And she's not alone. For the first time in history, three of NASA's four science divisions are now run by women, a milestone announced by NASA on Friday.

"I am proud to say that for the 1st time in #NASA's history, women are in charge of 3 out of 4 #NASAScience divisions. They are inspiring the next generation of women to become leaders in space exploration as we move forward to put the 1st woman on the Moon," NASA's associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen tweeted Friday. If NASA is able to fulfill President Trump's ambitious (and still not funded) directive that the U.S. return to the moon by 2024, NASA has committed that the first women will land on the moon.

What's more, of the latest class of 12 astronauts, almost half, five, are women. Still, a woman has never led the entire space agency, as NASA's administrator. This is not surprising. Women still have a stark minority representation in the most powerful positions of U.S. government. Of the 21 members of President Trump's cabinet, four are women. Though females make up nearly 51% of the U.S. population, just 24 percent of Congress is represented by women. (5/11)

Blue Origin Kicks Off Kids' Space Club with Offer to Launch Postcards (Source: CollectSPACE)
The Amazon CEO and founder of Blue Origin on Thursday (May 9) announced that his private spaceflight company has created a new program to inspire today's youth to think about their future in space. To get them started, Bezos plans to launch and return 10,000 stamped postcards with students' visions for humanity beyond Earth.

"One of the things we have to do is inspire the future generations," said Bezos during a press event where he also unveiled his own far-reaching vision for space settlement, including Blue Origin's Blue Moon lunar lander. "So today, I am announcing that Blue Origin is founding the Club for the Future, whose mission is to inspire young people to build the future of life in space."

Billed as a "new kind of space club," Blue Origin's non-profit Club for the Future is open to students in kindergarten through high school, their parents and educators who are interested in efforts to preserve Earth and want to "unlock the potential of living and working in space." The Club will organize initiatives and campaigns that make use of Blue Origin's access to space. The Club's first activity is to send students' postcards on a suborbital flight aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket and spacecraft. (5/11)