May 22, 2019

Is the Space Force Viable? Personnel Problems on the Final Frontier (Source: War on the Rocks)
The Trump administration’s proposal for the United States Space Force will not produce the agile and innovative organization that advocates hope it will. Instead, it will create an organization that is expensive, top-heavy, and bureaucratic. Space force advocates have ignored this problem in their enthusiasm to create a new institution but, with the proposal now before Congress, it can no longer be evaded.

The proposal envisions the space force operating like the other military services, but it will be too small to be viable. In trying to produce the number of senior military officers needed to staff all the high-level functions expected of an independent military service, it would end up with one general for every 270 servicemembers — five times the rate of the rest of the department — and no enlisted troops. The entire force would be officers, a problem compounded when we consider the reserve components associated with the proposed new service.

This raises the broader question: Why does a space force need to be military, anyway? It does not deploy to accomplish its mission. Its members mostly sit in front of computer screens, and no one shoots at them. If the administration wants a separate space organization, it should establish it as a defense agency that can leverage the more flexible civilian personnel system, which has fewer restrictions on age and health and no requirement for rank progression, military skill training, or leadership development. Click here. (5/14)

Viasat Selected to Develop Military 'Link 16' Communications Satellite in Low Earth Orbit (Source: Space News)
Viasat received a U.S. Air Force contract to build a small satellite equipped with a Link 16 military communications terminal that will operate in low Earth orbit. Link 16 is an encrypted radio frequency widely used by the U.S. military and NATO allies to share information across the battlefield. Link 16 terminals are deployed aboard aircraft, land vehicles and ships to facilitate the exchange of data in standard message formats. The $10 million pilot program will test the use of a Link 16 terminal on a small satellite in low Earth orbit as a network relay. (5/22)

From Airport to Spaceport: £2 Million Available to Develop Horizontal Spaceflight in the UK (Source: UKSA)
Future spaceports can apply for a share of £2 million to support plans for small satellite launch from aircraft and sub-orbital flight from the UK, Science Minister Chris Skidmore announced today. Sites such as Newquay in Cornwall, Campbeltown and Glasgow Prestwick in Scotland, and Snowdonia in Wales are already developing their sub-orbital flight, satellite launch and spaceplane ambitions. The £2 million strategic development fund, opened by the UK Space Agency, will help sites like these accelerate their plans further. (5/22)

House Bill Restores Funding to Earth Science and Astrophysics Missions (Source: Space News)
House appropriators restored funding to several NASA science missions in its proposed spending bill and criticized the agency for abandoning "legacy" science and education efforts. The report accompanying the spending bill, released Tuesday, states that appropriators decided to reverse proposed cancellations of the PACE and CLARREO Pathfinder Earth science missions and the WFIRST astrophysics mission. The report, like the bill, was silent on NASA's request for an additional $1.6 billion for accelerating its plans for a human return to the moon. The full House Appropriations Committee will mark up the spending bill this morning. (5/22)

GAO Warns of Continued GPS Ground Segment Delays (Source: Space News)
A GAO report Tuesday warned of further delays for the troubled ground segment of the GPS 3 system. The report said the OCX next-generation operational control system has already used up most of the additional schedule provided to deal with previous problems, putting the program at risk of further delays should it run into new issues. Since 2012, the schedule for OCX has more than doubled and the costs have grown by approximately 68 percent. Raytheon, the prime contractor for OCX, dismissed the GAO report as inaccurate and "likely based upon partial and stale information," arguing that the program has remained on budget and schedule since September 2017. (5/22)

India Launches SAR Satellite on PSLV (Source: Hindustan Times)
India successfully launched a radar imaging satellite Tuesday night. A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center at 8 p.m. Eastern, placing the RISAT-2B into orbit about 15 minutes later. The satellite will provide synthetic aperture radar imagery for civil and likely military uses. The Indian space agency ISRO announced after the launch that its next launch will be of the Chandrayaan-2 lunar mission in July. (5/21)

Pentagon Unit Accelerates Innovative Tech Contracting (Source: Space News)
A Pentagon office is seeking to accelerate the award of contracts, including for space projects. Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), an agency created in 2015 to accelerate the adoption of commercial technology to solve national security problems, is trying to reduce the time it takes to award contracts from 90 days to 60 days. DIU has several space priorities, from responsive launch to reconnaissance and communications. DIU also is interested in reducing the amount of time required to task satellites, obtain data and deliver data to military users. (5/21)

Launch Industry Wants More Time to Review FAA Regulatory Changes (Source: Space News)
The commercial launch industry wants more time to review proposed regulation to streamline launch and reentry licensing. The FAA issued a notice of proposed rulemaking in mid-April, starting a 60-day comment period on the proposed rules. The length of the proposal, and concerns about its content, have led organizations like the Commercial Spaceflight Federation to seek an extension so they can provide their input, concerned that there may not be another opportunity to reform those regulations for the foreseeable future. (5/21)

U.S. Launch Companies Not Worried About Chinese Competition (Source: Space News)
Some U.S. launch companies are downplaying any competitive threat from Chinese vehicles. Several Chinese companies are working on small launch vehicles, leading to worries that they could undercut prices from American and other Western vehicles. But in a panel discussion Tuesday, some company executives believed that they could still compete with Chinese vehicles on price, while raising questions about the reliability of Chinese rockets and spacecraft. (5/21)

Space National Guard a Possibility (Source: Air Force Magazine)
The Defense Department is not ruling out creating a Space National Guard as part of standing up a Space Force. The Pentagon's proposal for creating the Space Force did not include National Guard or reserve components, but Lt. Gen. Scott Rice, head of the Air National Guard, said the DoD is "all in" on creating them at a later date. The Air National Guard currently has 1,500 members working in space operations, with plans to establish two more squadrons in the Pacific for space control work. (5/21)

Giant Telescope on Sea Floor Will Study Neutrinos from Space (Source: Space Daily)
Curtin University researchers are part of an international project that will use a huge underwater neutrino telescope at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea to help explain some of the most powerful and mysterious events in the universe. Located at two sites at depths of up to 3,500 meters, the KM3NeT telescope will occupy more than a cubic kilometer of water, and will comprise of hundreds of vertical detection lines anchored to the seabed and held in place by buoys when complete. (5/22)

Arianespace to Launch Spanish Remote Sensing Satellite on Vega (Source: Space Daily)
Arianespace and ESA announced the signature of a launch services contract with a Vega launcher for SEOSat (Spanish Earth Observation SATellite) for Spain's Center for Development of Industrial Technology. SEOSat/Ingenio is a high-resolution optical imaging mission of Spain - the flagship mission of the Spanish Space Strategic Plan. It will be launched along with the French CNES space agency's TARANIS satellite aboard a Vega launch vehicle in the first semester of 2020 from the Guiana Space Center. (5/21)

Tethers Unlimited Developing Satellite Servicer for LEO Missions (Source: Space News)
Tethers Unlimited is designing a satellite servicing vehicle that would leverage technologies developed for the U.S. Defense Department and NASA to service spacecraft in low Earth orbit. Tethers Unlimited already has many of the technologies needed for the servicer either completed or in development under Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants, CEO Robert Hoyt said.

By combining these technologies, the company hopes to have a servicer called LEO Knight in orbit within three to four years, he said. The servicer would support on-orbit assembly, refueling for small satellites and other functions, he said. Tethers Unlimited is focusing on the small satellite market in low Earth orbit, targeting spacecraft too small to be economically serviced by robotic spacecraft like the one being developed under DARPA's Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) program. (5/21)

Formation of the Moon Brought Water to Earth (Source: Phys.org)
Planetologists at the University of Münster (Germany) have now been able to show, for the first time, that water came to Earth with the formation of the Moon some 4.4 billion years ago. The Moon was formed when Earth was hit by a body about the size of Mars, also called Theia. Until now, scientists had assumed that Theia originated in the inner solar system near the Earth. However, researchers from Münster can now show that Theia comes from the outer solar system, and it delivered large quantities of water to Earth.

The Earth formed in the 'dry' inner solar system, and so it is somewhat surprising that there is water on Earth. To understand why this the case, we have to go back in time when the solar system was formed about 4.5 billion years ago. From earlier studies, we know that the solar system became structured such that the 'dry' materials were separated from the 'wet' materials: the so-called 'carbonaceous' meteorites, which are relatively rich in water, come from the outer solar system, whereas the drier 'non-carbonaceous' meteorites come from the inner solar system.

The scientists' results show, for the first time, that carbonaceous material from the outer solar system arrived on Earth late. But the scientists are going one step further. They show that most of the molybdenum in Earth's mantle was supplied by the protoplanet Theia, whose collision with Earth 4.4 billion years ago led to the formation of the Moon. (5/21)

Lunar Gateway or Moon Direct? (Source: Space News)
The Gateway project may be compared to a deal in which you are offered a chance to rent an office in Thule, Greenland, on the following terms: 1. You pay to construct the building. 2. You accept a 30-year lease with high monthly rents and no exit clause. 3. You agree to spend one month per year there for the next 30 years. 4. You agree to fly through Thule whenever you travel anywhere from now on. Few would find such a proposition attractive. The lunar Gateway project is no better.

It will cost a fortune to build, a fortune to maintain, and it will add to the cost, risk, and timing constraints of all subsequent missions to the moon or Mars by adding an unnecessary stop along the way. To understand just how suboptimal a plan the lunar Gateway is, we need to contrast it with what would be done as part of a well-conceived effort to get the job done as swiftly and as potently as possible. The plan to do lunar exploration this way is called Moon Direct. Click here. (4/17)

Strange Seismic Waves Rippled Around Earth - Now We May Know Why (Source: National Geographic)
On May 10, 2018, the geologic beasts of the tiny island of Mayotte began to stir. Thousands of earthquakes rattled the French island, which is sandwiched between Africa and Madagascar. Most were minor shakes, but they included a magnitude 5.8 event, the largest yet recorded in the region's history. In the midst of this seismic swarm, a strange low-frequency rumble rippled around the world, ringing sensors nearly 11,000 miles away—and baffling scientists.

Now, researchers may have at last found the source of the unexpected activity: the birth of a submarine volcano off Mayotte's eastern shore. Sitting about two miles underwater, the baby volcano stretches nearly half a mile high and extends up to three miles across. The observations came after French scientists launched a multi-pronged mission to get a better grip on the origin of the ongoing seismic swarm. In November, the curious low-frequency rumbles began their global spread, sticking around for more than 20 minutes. Too low of a frequency for humans to feel, only one person noticed the curious waves, an earthquake enthusiast spotted the unusual zigzags on the U.S. Geological Survey's real-time seismogram.

Perhaps the earthquake swarm was the result of magma squishing through the subsurface, and the low-frequency rumble was caused by waves resonating in a collapsing magma chamber. The link to volcanic activity gained further support from a preprint study posted to the EarthArxiv server in February 2019. That research pinned the swarm on a massive magma chamber starting to drain, in what could be the largest off-shore submarine volcanic event yet documented. (5/21)

Former Ambassador Barbara Barrett Tapped to Replace Heather Wilson as Air Force Secretary (Source: Space News)
President Donald Trump announced he will nominate former U.S. ambassador and Arizona gubernatorial candidate Barbara Barrett to be the next secretary of the Air Force. In 2008 and 2009, Barrett was U.S. ambassador to Finland under President George W. Bush. She also served as senior adviser to the U.S. Mission to the UN, is a former chairman of the State Department's Women's Economic Empowerment Working Group, U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy and U.S. Secretary of Commerce's Export Conference. (5/21)

House Appropriators Suggest Navy and Air Force Should Merge Satellite Communications Programs (Source: Space News)
Is it time for the Navy to turn over the Mobile User Objective System to the Air Force? The House Appropriations Committee is calling on the leaders of the services to consider such a move. In the current fragmented ecosystem of military satellite communications, the Navy supplies narrowband connectivity via the MUOS constellation. The Air Force supplies the wideband communication provided by the Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) system. The Army is the military’s largest user of satcom services and is responsible for developing the user terminals that troops use in the field. (5/21)

Reckless Behavior Provides China with Competitive Advantages in Space Launch (Source: Space News)
The framework first established by the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 has provided startups and investors with defined processes and licensing regimes that are workable for business while ensuring public safety. The generally effective and forward thinking work of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST), the Federal Communications Commission and more recently the Office of Space Commerce have actually attracted foreign founders and investors to set up shop in the United States. Space has been a rare case of American regulatory competitive advantage.

China has recently made it clear it intends to contend aggressively over this important industry and it is worth noting that extremely lax regulation has often played a critical role that nation’s ability to undercut other U.S. industries. On April 20, China launched the 100th mission of its highly successful Long March-3 rocket series. While the powerful 3B/G2 (CZ-3B) variant successfully lofted a navigation satellite, designated as Beidou-3I1Q, toward its geosynchronous orbit, it also littered the Chinese landscape with a collection of dangerous rocket boosters leaking toxic fuel.

The safety standards used in Chinese space launch would leave American regulators apoplectic. As is the case in many global industries, this lax approach to environmental standards and human safety promises to provide China with a significant cost advantage over more responsible and highly regulated American firms. Photos on the Sina Weibo microblogging site show debris from the recent launch lying alongside a farm as well as in a river. The blog reports that the government had “the propaganda in place” and that villagers “were satisfied,” presumably with not having been simply crushed by any of the plummeting space junk. (5/20)

Turkey Plans Cost-Effective Small Launcher (Source: Aviation Week)
With a new space agency in the offing, Turkey is now investing in a launch capability. An indigenous smallsat launcher is planned in 2025, while a more capable system, able to lift perhaps 10-15 more payload, is anticipated later. Roketsan, which has led the development of Turkish missiles since 1988, is leading work on the Microsatellite Launch System (MUFS), a 3-stage vehicle designed to launch 100-kg satellites into a 400-450-km low Earth orbit. The first two stages will be solid propellant while the third, upper stage, will use more environmentally friendly liquid fuel. (5/20)

Space Rockets Spark Property Boom on Florida Coast (Source: Wall Street Journal)
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are racing to send people into outer space and eventually to the moon and Mars. They are already improving the fortunes of a coastal Florida city that is home to their budding space ambitions. Cocoa Beach, which sits south of Cape Canaveral, was hit hard by the 2009 recession and the subsequent end to NASA’s space shuttle program. The economic downturn and space program’s demise led to large-scale layoffs and a reduction in tourism. But now Cocoa Beach is in the middle of a resurgence as the private space industry brings back jobs and visitors. (5/21)

The Most Famous Women in NASA History (Source: Insider)
Women have played crucial roles in NASA's history of space exploration, from performing calculations to sending astronauts to the moon to launching into space themselves as mission specialists and commanders. Here are 15 women who became famous for their contributions to the science of space travel. Click here. (5/21)

The Mystifying Case of the Missing Planets (Source: WIRED)
While NASA’s newest planet-hunting telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), steadily tallies more exoplanets, a mysterious gap in their sizes, first identified in 2017, has persisted. The gap shows that scientists need some new ideas to explain how planets are made, both in the broader cosmos and in our backyard.

Astronomers have used TESS to find hundreds of possible planets around the nearest stars since its launch in April 2018, including 24 confirmed worlds so far. The galaxy seems to host a lot of small planets, especially ones measuring between two and four times the size of Earth and others in Earth’s ballpark. But for some reason, planets with radii between 1.5 and two times that of Earth are rare.

The paucity of planets in that range, known as the “Fulton gap” after the lead author of the paper that pointed it out, first appeared in the findings of the Kepler Space Telescope, which hunted exoplanets for nearly a decade before passing the torch to TESS. While TESS doesn’t yet have enough planets in its statistics bin to confirm or disprove the Fulton gap, the trend has continued, and astronomers say they don’t expect the gap to disappear. (5/21)

NASA is Going Green, in Space (Source: NASA)
A small spacecraft the size of a mini-refrigerator is packed with cutting-edge “green” technology. NASA’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission, or GPIM, will prove a sustainable and efficient approach to spaceflight. The mission will test a low toxicity propellant and compatible systems in space for the first time.  This technology could improve the performance of future missions by providing for longer mission durations using less propellant. (5/20)

A New Space Age Demands International Cooperation, Not Competition or ‘Dominance’ (Source: WPR)
Fifty years after Apollo 11 astronauts first walked on the moon, the world is entering a new Space Age. Outer space, a domain once reserved for the great powers, is democratizing. New “space-faring” nations and private corporations are entering the final frontier, taking advantage of breakthrough technologies and lower financial barriers. The possibilities for humanity are immense.

They include new opportunities for communication, for observing and understanding the Earth’s natural systems, for exploring the solar system and the heavens beyond, for exploiting space-based resources, and for constructing planetary defense systems to protect the planet from catastrophic collisions with near-Earth objects—asteroids, comets—and other celestial hazards. Realizing these objectives, however, will require a broad international commitment to maintaining outer space as a stable, open and rule-bound commons. Sovereign countries must collectively manage the dilemmas of growing interdependence and agree to keep their geopolitical rivalries in check.

As the Earth’s orbit becomes more congested, the world urgently needs a more robust regulatory regime to manage space traffic, mitigate space debris, regulate dual-use technologies like laser arrays, and maintain a sufficient radio frequency spectrum for satellite use. The primary challenge is to construct such a system without stifling private sector innovation. The second overriding objective is to ensure that intergovernmental collaboration on common space issues trumps zero-sum strategic competition. (5/20)

New Launch Pad to be Constructed at Alaska Spaceport (Source: Kodiak Daily Mirror)
The Alaska Aerospace Corporation is building a new launch pad at the Pacific Spaceport Complex - Alaska for one of its commercial customers. At a Spaceport Planning Advisory Group Meeting on Wednesday, AAC outgoing-President and CEO Craig Campbell and interim-President and CEO Mark Lester spoke about the new “Launch Pad B,” as well as their projections for numbers of launches in the coming years and some of the other elements involved in creating AAC’s 10-year Master Plan.

PSCA occupies 3,700 acres of state-owned land, on which AAC has built a number of different structures and support buildings over its 21-year history. From 1998 to 2014, all launches conducted at the facility were for the government, including the botched August 2014 operation that damaged Launch Pad-1 and the Payload Processing Facility. Now, the AAC is looking to provide its services primarily to commercial small-satellite launch firms, which means it is building more infrastructure. (5/20)

New ULA Vulcan Rocket to be Built in Decatur Alabama (Source: WHNT)
The new Vulcan rocket, designed by United Launch Alliance, will be built in Decatur, the company announced Monday. ULA announced the rocket has finished its final design review, and development is still on schedule with the first flight coming in 2021. The design review took a week and the company said Air Force representatives were included as part of its certification program. The company plans to re-use much of the existing Atlas hardware, including the payload fairing, upper stage engines, avionics, software, and solid rocket motors. (5/21)

SpaceX Starship Prototypes Under Development in Texas (Source: The Monitor)
The first Starship prototype, dubbed “Starhopper,” was constructed at Boca Chica. The first tethered test firing of the non-orbital prototype’s single Raptor rocket engine took place on April 3. A follow-up test took place late on April 5, a brief video posted by Musk clearly showing the hopper lifting off the pad a few feet to tether limit. A second Starship prototype, this one with orbital capability, according to Musk, is under construction at SpaceX’s Boca Chica yard, about a mile and a half inland from the launch site.

The company is moving quickly to develop its Starship and Super Heavy (formerly Falcon Spaceship and Big Falcon Rocket, respectively), with the ultimate goal of getting humans to Mars. In addition to gearing up for more Starhopper testing at Boca Chica and making progress on an orbital prototype, SpaceX has poured a large concrete slab for a second hangar-sized metal building, under construction, at the Boca Chica yard. (5/21)

Canadensys Selects Astrobotic to Deliver Payload to the Moon in 2021 (Source: SpaceQ)
Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh announced that it had been contracted by Toronto area company Canadensys to deliver payloads to the surface of the moon. According to Astrobotic they will fly “a lunar science and technology payload that promotes STEM for Canadensys in 2021. Additionally Astrobotic said this is only the first in a series of payloads they’ll fly for Canadensys. Details on the STEM payload will be released at a later date. The payloads are likely to be delivered to the moon through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program of which Astrobotic is one of nine potential providers. (5/21)

All the Buzz About NASA’s New Fleet of Space Bees (Source: Popular Science)
Robots bearing the bee name could help spacefaring humans save precious time. On Friday, NASA astronaut Anne McClain took one of the trio of Astrobees out for a spin. Bumble and its companion Honey both arrived on the ISS a month ago, and are currently going through a series of checks. Bumble passed the first hurdle when McClain manually flew it around the Japanese Experiment Module. Bumble took photos of the module which will be used to make a map for all the Astrobees, guiding them as they begin their tests there.

A robot that’s too hard or heavy or that flies too fast could injure an astronaut or damage equipment by accident. “You want it to have enough thrust that it can actually move around a reasonable sized payload, and yet not be so powerful that it would break a window if we ran into it,” says Bualat. The design they came up with is padded on the corners and powered by impeller fans that lightly pressurize the cube, allowing it to navigate the space station by releasing little puffs of air out of two nozzles located on each of its sides. (5/20)

Gas Insulation Could be Protecting an Ocean Inside Pluto (Source: Hokkaido University)
Computer simulations provide compelling evidence that an insulating layer of gas hydrates could keep a subsurface ocean from freezing beneath Pluto’s icy exterior. Because of its location and topography, scientists believe a subsurface ocean exists beneath the ice shell which is thinned at Sputnik Planitia. (5/20)

Could Blockchain Tech Launch Spacefaring Nations Into a Data-Sharing Frontier (Source: Space.com)
Spaceflight is among the industries that could use a form of cryptography called blockchain, which links blocks of data together. Each piece of data is associated with a unique identifier, which also marks that data's position in the chain — making it easy to see if a piece is missing or has been altered. Security remains a challenge in sharing data in spaceflight, he said — which, to be fair, is also true of many other industries. That's why, he argued, Russia, China and the United States all have separate GPS systems for navigation on Earth; it's because these countries do not trust one another.

In space, sharing data this way could improve navigation, especially in locations, such as Mars, that are remote and have little satellite coverage. He likened this situation to self-driving cars on Earth collectively sharing information about navigating an obstacle on the road. In space, satellites or spacecraft could provide relative navigational information to each other and thus improve the accuracy of their navigation or space-based positioning. (Pinpointing a satellite's location in space is important for missions such as Gaia, which precisely tracks the movements of stars.) (5/20)

Space Force: It’s Not Dead, But… (Source: Breaking Defense)
It’s not dead yet, but House appropriators took a stand against full funding for the Space Force which highlights the Trump Administration’s shaky ground as it tries to get the new service off the ground. The House Appropriations Committee’s (HAC) version of the fiscal 2020 budget, released ahead of tomorrow’s mark-up, approves only $15 million for DoD to study the idea. No funding to create it. Not a dime.

The draft bill does not specify that no 2020 funds can be spent on the Space Force, one former DoD official who supports the White House proposal pointed out, so that leaves room for the Pentagon to reallocate funding. If it chooses to. But it will have to take that money from other pots. “The $15 million could simply be the opening bid for how much we will spend in 2020 on establishing the Space Force. Authorizers are the key here, and I think they are going to endorse,” the former official said. (5/20)