May 24, 2019

NASA Chief Rules Out SpaceX Rockets for 2024 Moon Mission (Source: C/Net)
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said Thursday there's only one way to get the first female astronaut to the moon's south pole by 2024, and it won't involve Elon Musk's help. "I want to be clear about SLS and Orion... SLS and Orion is the only system that gives us any chance of getting there in 2024," he said. "We've looked at everything, we've considered everything and SLS and Orion, that is the system. And once it's developed, we will use it over and over and over again." (5/23)

Astronaut Landings in Utah? Very Likely, and Soon (Source: KSL.com)
For decades, Utah workers played a major role in building rockets that lifted more than 800 space shuttle astronauts into orbit. But when it comes to landings, Utah has always been on the sidelines as various spacecraft burned through the atmosphere and headed for splashdowns in the Pacific Ocean or touchdowns in Florida and California. That’s about to change.

Some people in Utah may have a front-row seat for astronaut landings — perhaps as soon as the end of this year or perhaps sometime next year. “I think it’s very likely,” said Louis Atchison, chief of launch and recovery for the Boeing company’s new Starliner space capsule. Utah’s Dugway Proving Ground is one of five potential target zones for the new spaceship. The vast Army base in the western desert could host the first astronaut landing in Utah history and many more after that.

“We’re looking about between 35 and 45 percent chance that we’d end up at Dugway,” Atchison said, explaining there are similar odds of a Utah landing each time the Starliner flies. Boeing expects Starliner missions once or twice annually for many years to come, assuming upcoming test missions are successful. (5/23)

5G Spectrum and the Potential Weather Forecasting Apocalypse (Source: Axios)
A struggle is brewing between the nation's weather and climate agencies and the wireless industry concerning 5G spectrum and the reliability of our weather forecasts. Why it matters: The tug-of-war over a key swath of airwaves underscores the increasingly intense battle for coveted airwaves that power not only our smart phones but also other equipment critical for public safety, including weather forecasting.

Radio spectrum, a finite resource, will only become more scarce and sought after as demand for wireless technologies continues to explode.
The gritty details: In March, the FCC began auctioning off spectrum in the 24 gigahertz (GHz) band of radio frequencies, which are high-frequency microwave licenses to be used in delivering the 5G services all the nation's carriers are vying to deploy. (AT&T, T-Mobile and Cox were among the pre-approved bidders.)

These 24 GHz license are appealing to national carriers because they include more densely populated areas.  In 2014, the FCC sought feedback from other agencies and airwave users about the plan to sell off the 24 GHZ spectrum for 5G. In 2017, FCC engineers set the baseline interference limits — in other words, limits on the amount of "noise" devices are allowed to emit without interfering with neighboring users. The problem: These auctioned airwaves are near those used by NOAA equipment, including specialized sensors, designed to see through the clouds to understand what is happening inside weather systems. These sensors operate at a frequency of 23.8 gigahertz. (5/23)

The Pentagon Finally Admits it Investigates UFOs (Source: New York Post)
The Pentagon has finally uttered the words it always avoided when discussing the possible existence of UFOs — “unidentified aerial phenomena” — and admits that it still investigates reports of them. In a statement provided exclusively to The Post, a Department of Defense spokesman said a secret government initiative called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program “did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena.” And while the DOD says it shut down the AATIP in 2012, spokesman Christopher Sherwood acknowledged that the department still investigates claimed sightings of alien spacecraft. (5/22)

Russia Continues Thinking About Moving Sea Launch (Source: Interfax)
Roscosmos is in discussions with S7, the owner of Sea Launch, about moving the system to Russia. The Sea Launch vessels remain in port in Long Beach, California, but have not carried out a launch since S7 purchased Sea Launch from Energia. Dmitry Rogozin, head of Rocosmos, said he's talked with S7 about moving the vessels to a port in Russia'a Far East and also developing a modified version of the upcoming Soyuz-5 rocket that, launched from Sea Launch's floating pad on the Equator, would have a payload performance similar to the Falcon 9. (5/23)

Mega-Constellation Satellites Will Need 'Rapid Disposal' (Source: BBC)
The operators of proposed satellite mega-constellations can greatly mitigate the risk of future collisions by rapidly de-orbiting their spacecraft at the end of service. On the other hand, doing only the bare minimum required by international "clean space" guidelines could significantly endanger the environment. This is the take-home from a new study led from Southampton University, UK.

It urges operators to dispose of old satellites within five years. At the moment, best practice just calls for redundant hardware to come out of the sky within 25 years. There is increasing concern about the growth in space debris, or junk. Sixty years of orbital activity have littered the sky with millions of objects, ranging in size from flecks of paint to old rocket stages. These now pose a threat to current and future missions, particularly as the skies are set to get even busier. (5/24)

SpaceX Launches 60 Starlink Satellites at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Space News)
SpaceX successfully launched the first set of 60 Starlink communications satellites Thursday night. The Falcon 9 carrying the satellites lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 10:30 p.m. EDT, releasing the satellites into low Earth orbit a little more than an hour later. The rocket's first stage, which had launched and landed two previous times, landed again on a droneship in the Atlantic. The 60 satellites mark the beginning of SpaceX's deployment of a global internet megaconstellation intended to generate more revenue to fuel the company’s interplanetary ambitions. (5/24)

NASA Picks Maxar to Develop Lunar Gateway Power/Propulsion Element (Source: Space News)
NASA awarded Maxar Technologies a contract to build the first element of its lunar Gateway. The $375 million fixed-price contract covers the development, launch and in-space testing of the Power and Propulsion Element, which will provide electrical power for the Gateway and move it through cislunar space using solar electric propulsion. Maxar will base the spacecraft on its 1300-series bus that it also uses for commercial communications satellites. NASA said it selected Maxar over several other companies because of its technical capabilities and "abundant value to NASA" at the stated price. Maxar has Blue Origin and Draper as partners for development of the element, but has not yet selected a launch provider. (5/23)

Sirangelo Departs NASA as Congress Rejects Moon-to-Mars Reorganization (Source: Space News)
A former space industry executive brought in to guide development of NASA's lunar exploration architecture has left after just a month and a half. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a memo Thursday that Mark Sirangelo had "opted to pursue other opportunities" after Congress rejected a proposal to reorganize the agency and create a Moon to Mars Mission Directorate. Sirangelo came to NASA last month as a special assistant to the administrator and was considered a likely choice to lead that new directorate if established. However, there was criticism of the proposed directorate both inside and outside the agency, with some questioning the need for it and other worried it would be disruptive. (5/24)

Senate Committee Backs Restructured Space Force Plan (Source: Space News)
A Senate committee has backed the formation of a Space Force, but in a different form than proposed by the Pentagon. The Senate Armed Services Committee voted 25–2 to advance a defense authorization bill to the full Senate, which may vote on it in mid-June. The bill tries to shrink the cost and ease the growing pains of establishing a new service by making the commander of Air Force Space Command also the commander of the U.S. Space Force. As part of the first year transition, the commander of the U.S. Space Force also would serve as the commander of U.S. Space Command. The Space Force initially would only rely on existing Air Force personnel and would not be allowed to hire new military or civilian personnel. (5/23)

Chinese Launch Confirmed as Failure (Source: Space News)
The Chinese government confirmed Thursday that a launch of a reconnaissance satellite the day before failed. A report by the state-run Xinhua news agency said that the first two stages of a Long March 4C rocket that launched Wednesday from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre worked as planned, but that the third stage malfunctioned. That kept the Yaogan-33 satellite from reaching orbit. It was the first Chinese government launch failure since July 2017, when the second Long March 5 suffered a first stage issue. (5/23)

China to Launch Six to Eight BDS-3 Satellites This Year (Source: Xinhua)
China will send six to eight new satellites of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) into space this year, according to the ongoing tenth China Satellite Navigation Conference on Wednesday. Two to four BDS-3 satellites will be launched in 2020 when the BDS-3 system will be fully completed, said Ran Chengqi, director of the China Satellite Navigation Office. BDS will have the functions of short message communication and international rescue, as well as a satellite-based augmentation service covering China and surrounding areas, said Ren. (5/22)

Amazon Starts Ground Station Operations (Source: Space News)
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has started operations of its ground station business. Ground stations in Ohio and Oregon mark the first two of a planned 12 stations spread out globally to enable communication with satellites through the new AWS Ground Station service. The other 10 will be complete by the end of the year. AWS is locating ground stations near its data storage centers, which provide customers with quick access to Amazon's cloud services. AWS, in its announcement Thursday, highlighted eight customers of AWS Ground Station, but declined to say how many customers it has overall. (5/23)

NASA Chief Says Planned Lunar Landing Mission Will Bring the Space Coast to ‘Another Level’ (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine unveiled Thursday a major piece of the agency’s accelerated efforts to return humans to the surface of the moon by 2024, highlighting the Space Coast’s future as a central hub for the planned moonshot. “This is a significant step in bringing the Space Coast to another level,” Bridenstine said. “And this administration is very committed to the long-term exploration of space in ways that I think are going to be magnificent for this area and the state of Florida in general.” (5/23)

Musk Says Bezos’s Plan to Colonize Space ‘Makes No Sense’ (Source: Market Watch)
Jeff Bezos talked to a Washington, D.C., crowd earlier this month about his futuristic vision of huge space colonies that would provide sustainable homes for a trillion people. “These are very large structures, miles on end, and they hold a million people or more each,” Bezos explained in his presentation. The concept harkens back to the one envisioned decades ago by physicist Gerard O’Neill, who taught at Princeton at the same time Bezos went there. Elon Musk, however, isn’t buying it: "Makes no sense," he tweeted. "In order to grow the colony, you’d have to transport vast amounts of mass from planets/moons/asteroids. Would be like trying to build the USA in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!" (5/23)

NASA Leads Effort to Develop traffic Control System for Urban Air Taxis (Source: Aviation Week)
The Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management project, led by NASA, has reached its final testing stage using sites in Nevada, Texas and North Dakota. The technology for managing urban air taxis will be turned over to the Federal Aviation Administration. New air traffic management (ATM) constructs are taking shape around drones, commercial spacecraft and urban air mobility (UAM) vehicles, known collectively, at least for now, as “nontraditional” entrants into the airspace.  The NASA-led Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) project to develop a low-altitude traffic management system for drones started its final phase of testing in May. (5/21)

How Start-Up Astrocast is Writing a New Page to Swiss Space History  (Source: CNN)
Astrocast’s first satellite was launched from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and now the Swiss start-up is developing a nanosatellite network for the Internet of Things. The EPFL spin-off has been nominated for a Swiss Economic Award this week, and its founder Fabien Jordan tells Tanya König about the worldwide potential of its low-cost technology. Click here. (5/21)

NASA Plans Latest Undersea Astronaut Training Mission Off Florida's Coast (Source: Space Daily)
NASA will join an international crew on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean this summer to prepare for future deep space missions during the 10-day NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 23 expedition slated to begin June 10. NEEMO 23 will focus on both exploration spacewalks and objectives related to space missions such as the International Space Station and future deep space missions to the Moon and Mars. As an analogue for future planetary science concepts and strategies, marine science also will be performed under the guidance of Florida International University's marine science department. (5/23)

New Studies Increase Confidence in NASA's Measure of Earth's Temperature (Source: NASA)
A new assessment of NASA's record of global temperatures revealed that the agency's estimate of Earth's long-term temperature rise in recent decades is accurate to within less than a tenth of a degree Fahrenheit, providing confidence that past and future research is correctly capturing rising surface temperatures.

The most complete assessment ever of statistical uncertainty within the GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP) data product shows that the annual values are likely accurate to within 0.09 degrees Fahrenheit (0.05 degrees Celsius) in recent decades, and 0.27 degrees Fahrenheit (0.15 degrees C) at the beginning of the nearly 140-year record.

This data record, maintained by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, is one of a handful kept by major science institutions around the world that track Earth's temperature and how it has risen in recent decades. This global temperature record has provided one of the most direct benchmarks of how our home planet's climate has changed as greenhouse gas concentrations rise. (5/23)