May 28, 2019

SpaceX Starlink Satellites Dazzle But May Cause Headaches for Astronomers (Source: CNET)
The first batch of satellites were launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and deployed to orbit by a Falcon 9 rocket on May 23. Each contains a single solar array, which both captures and bounces sunlight off the satellites and, as a result, can sometimes be seen from Earth. In time, the satellites will drift apart and head to specific orbits so that satellite internet coverage can be beamed to every corner of the globe.

However, as the unusual display in the night sky quickly gathered steam across social media, some astronomers began to point out the potential problems the satellite system may pose for astronomy. At present, only 60 satellites are moving into their orbit, but eventually that number will reach 12,000, and a megaconstellation will encircle the Earth. Practically overnight, our view of the sky has changed.

Starlink would triple the number of satellites orbiting the Earth. If thousands of satellites are sent into orbit, our view of space changes. Will we find ourselves in a position where it's impossible to investigate the cosmos from the ground? Potentially. Bright, reflective surfaces pose a problem because they obstruct our view of the universe. More satellites equals cloudier vision, and Starlink plans to launch more satellites than ever. (5/28)

Russian Space Sector Plagued by Corruption (Source: Space Daily)
With millions of dollars missing and officials in prison or fleeing the country, Russia's space sector is at the heart of a staggering embezzlement scheme that has dampened ambitions of recovering its Soviet-era greatness. For years, Moscow has tried to fix the industry that was a source of immense pride in the USSR. While it has bounced back from its post-Soviet collapse and once again become a major world player, the Russian space sector has recently suffered a series of humiliating failures.

And now, massive corruption scandals at state space agency Roscosmos have eclipsed its plans to launch new rockets and lunar stations. "Billions (of rubles) are being stolen there, billions," Alexander Bastrykin, the powerful head of Russia's Investigative Committee -- Russia's equivalent of the FBI -- said in mid-May. (5/28)

Suborbital Space Tourism Nears its Make-or-Break Moment (Source: Space Review)
After years of delays, both Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are preparing to start carrying paying customers on suborbital spaceflights starting as soon as later this year. Jeff Foust reports both have made progress but still have work to do before entering commercial service. Click here. (5/28)
 
Secret Apollos (Source: Space Review)
Among the contingency plans developed by NASA for the Apollo program were those where missions had to remain in Earth orbit because of an upper stage malfunction. Dwayne Day describes how NASA’s proposals for alternative work for those missions put it in conflict with the national security community. Click here. (5/28)
 
Crew Safety During an Early Lunar Return (Source: Space Review)
Accelerating a return to the Moon brings with it risks for the astronauts who will make those first missions. John Strickland discusses how vehicles can be developed to increase the safety for those crews. Click here. (5/28) 

Blue Origin, Boeing and Other Ventures Lay Out Ideas for Commercial Space Stations (Source: GeekWire)
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has laid out a plan for building a commercial habitat for future space travelers and sending it into Earth orbit atop its New Glenn rocket. The concept is one of a dozen studies that NASA released today as part of a project to assess how crewed space operations in low Earth orbit, or LEO, could be commercialized within the next six years or so.

NASA commissioned the studies last summer to investigate commercial alternatives to the International Space Station, in line with the current plan to move away from government management and operation of the space station’s U.S. segment by 2025. Each of the 13 teams was tasked with providing a study at a cost of no more than $1 million, with the total price tag for the study project estimated at $11 million. Click here. (5/28)

Virgin's LauncherOne Engine Aces Full Duration Test (Source: Virgin Orbit)
Virgin Orbit completed perhaps the most challenging, most important, and most successful test in the history of our LauncherOne program: Last week, we lit up our Mojave site with our final full duration, full scale, full thrust – hell, full everything – test firing of LauncherOne’s main stage. That’s more than three minutes of controlled rocket thrust, using all of the same equipment we’ll use on our actual flights to orbit later this year. Here’s one fun way to think about it: the data proved that if this stage wasn’t physically bolted down, it had the oomph to make the journey into space. (5/24)

India Launches RISAT-2B Radar Imaging Satellite (Source: Parabolic Arc)
India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C46) today successfully launched RISAT-2B satellite from Satish Dhawan Space Center (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota. This was the 72nd launch vehicle mission from SDSC SHAR, Sriharikota and 36th launch from the First Launch pad. PSLV-C46 lifted-off at 05:30 Hrs (IST) from the First Launch Pad and injected RISAT-2B into a orbit of 556 km, about 15 minutes and 25 seconds after lift-off. (5/24)

SpaceX Raises Over $1 Billion Through Two Funding Rounds (Source: Space News)
SpaceX has raised over $1 billion in new capital this year as it embarks on the deployment of its Starlink broadband constellation, according to regulatory filings published Friday. The launch provider turned satellite operator raised $486.2 million in one round, and $535.7 million in another, the company said in May 24 filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filings show SpaceX sold all but $18.8 million of the shares available between the two rounds. The company raised $1.022 billion in total.

SpaceX is currently building two capital-intensive projects — the fully reusable Super Heavy booster with its Starship upper stage, and the Starlink broadband megaconstellation of up to 12,000 satellites. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in 2017 that the plan for funding Starship and Super Heavy — then called the Big Falcon Rocket — involved replacing SpaceX’s current Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets with the new launch system. In a call with reporters last week, Musk said SpaceX believes it can also use Starlink revenue to fund the new launch system. (5/24)

Astronauts Are Heading Under the Sea Off Florida's Coast to Test Moon Mission (Source: Space.com)
An astronaut-led crew will go underwater to get ready for human moon missions. The 10-day NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 23 expedition is scheduled to begin June 10 and will test technologies NASA will use for lunar missions that could come as soon as 2024.

Among the crew goals is testing scien8)ce instruments and tools for work on the moon, including items that will help get "core samples" — a cylindrical cross-section of the moon's geology just below the surface — NASA officials said in a statement. Apollo astronauts who did lunar missions (between 1969 and 1972) obtained several core samples using a special device called the Apollo Lunar Surface Drill.

The mission also includes work that is useful for a variety of deep-space destinations, including tracking sleep and using augmented reality to train crewmembers in navigating their habitat. Astronauts will live and work in the Aquarius laboratory, which is located 62 feet (19 meters) below the ocean surface near Key Largo, Florida. They will also venture outside the habitat to explore the nearby underwater environment. (5/28)

Space Tactics Internship Inspires Creativity Among Operators (Source: Air Force Space Command)
Space operations groups from across Air Force Space Command have collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory on a Space Tactics Internship that allows space operators to work with scholastic experts in a research environment. The program accepts 15 total AFSPC operators a year from the 21st Space Wing, the 50th SW at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, and the 460th SW at Buckley AFB, Colorado. (5/28)
 
UFOs Exist and Everyone Needs to aAdjust to That Fact (Source: Washington Post)
The term “UFO” automatically triggers derision in most quarters of polite society. One of Christopher Buckley’s better satires, “Little Green Men,” is premised on a George F. Will-type pundit thinking that he has been abducted by aliens, with amusing results. UFOs have historically been associated with crackpot ideas like Big Foot or conspiracy theories involving crop circles.

The obvious reason for this is that the term “UFO” is usually assumed to be a synonym for “extraterrestrial life.” If you think about it, this is odd. UFO literally stands for “unidentified flying object.” A UFO is not necessarily an alien from another planet. It is simply a flying object that cannot be explained away through conventional means. Because UFOs are usually brought up only to crack jokes, however, they have been dismissed for decades.

One of the gutsiest working paper presentations I have witnessed was Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall presenting a draft version of “Sovereignty and the UFO.” In that paper, eventually published in the journal Political Theory, Wendt and Duvall argued that state sovereignty as we understand it is anthropocentric, or “constituted and organized by reference to human beings alone.” They argued that the real reason UFOs have been dismissed is because of the existential challenge that they pose for a worldview in which human beings are the most technologically advanced life-forms. Click here. (5/28)

Everything You Need to Know About Blue Origin's New Glenn Rocket (Source: Axios)
New Glenn is one of two key rockets that are a part of Blue Origin's arsenal. Jeff Bezos' private space company wants to use the rocket to drive down the cost of bringing large payloads to orbit. Click here. (5/28)

Lightning Strikes Russian Rocket During Satellite Launch (But Everything's Fine) (Source: Space.com)
A bolt of lightning struck a Russian Soyuz rocket during a satellite launch Monday (May 27), but did not hinder the booster's trip into space, Russian space officials said. The lightning strike occurred during the launch of a Glonass-M navigation satellite from Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome. In a statement, officials with Russia's space agency Roscosmos announced that the rocket successfully reached orbit. "The on-board systems of the Glonass-M spacecraft are functioning normally." (5/27)

Here's How Scarily Accurate NASA's Long-Term Climate Predictions Have Been So Far (Source: Science Alert)
Every year, NASA partners with the NOAA to update the global temperature. They use temperature data dating back to 1880 from land and sea surface measurements, combined with more modern measurements from over 6,300 weather stations research stations, and ships and weather buoys around the world. Using all this data, the pair of organizations concluded that 2018 was the fourth-warmest year on record, and that 2016 was the warmest.

NASA scientists analyzed the GISTEMP data to see if past predictions of rising temperatures were accurate. They needed to know that any uncertainty within their data was correctly accounted for. The answer: Yes they are. Within 1/20th a degree Celsius. This is scientific rigour at its finest. And they acknowledge, like all scientists should, any weakness in their own data and then seek to quantify it. The NASA analysis ferreted out four sources of uncertainty, however miniscule, in the GISTEMP data.

The first is how temperature measurement changed over time, and it contributes the most uncertainty. Second was weather station coverage. You can't have a weather station at every point on Earth, so you have to interpolate the data. That interpolation is the third largest source of uncertainty, though it's contribution to uncertainty was tiny. Lastly was how the collected data was standardized over different time periods in history. (5/28)

SpaceX Raised $1 Billion+ for Starlink (Source: Space News)
SpaceX disclosed Friday it has raised more than $1 billion this year as it embarks on capital-intensive programs. In filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it raised $1.022 billion in two separate offerings. That funding will likely support development of SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellite constellation, whose first 60 satellites were launched last week, along with the Starship/Super Heavy next-generation launch vehicle. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a call with reporters earlier this month that SpaceX had enough money from capital raised, as well as launch revenue, to get Starlink to an "operational level" of satellites. (5/28)

Boeing CST-100 Starliner Crew Capsule Passes Major Propulsion Tests (Source: Space News)
Boeing has completed tests of the thrusters on its Starliner commercial crew spacecraft, nearly a year after suffering problems during a similar set of tests. Boeing said Friday that it completed hot-fire testing of the spacecraft's entire propulsion system, including launch abort engines and smaller thrusters housed in a "flight-like" model of the Starliner's service module. That propulsion system suffered an anomaly during a similar test last June when valves failed to close completely. The tests allow the company to proceed with a pad abort test this summer and an uncrewed test flight slated for launch in mid-August. (5/28)

Senate Bill Directs DoD to Maximize Use of Commercial Spaceports, Small Rockets (Source: Space News)
The Senate version of a defense authorization bill includes several provisions regarding the use of small commercial launch vehicles. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) included the amendments into the version of the bill approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee in a closed markup last week.

The provisions require the Defense Department to lay out a plan for how it could make greater use of commercial spaceports to launch small satellites and to develop a strategy to integrate commercial capabilities into DoD space operations. The provisions, if they make into the final version of the bill, would address longtime concerns of commercial small launch providers about integrating military launch requirements into their business plans and ensuring launch facilities can support those demands. (5/28)

Air Force Set to Award Launch Contracts (Source: Space News)
It's crunch time for the companies competing for Air Force launch contracts. The Air Force has given United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Northrop Grumman and Blue Origin until Aug. 1 to submit their bids to become one of just two launch providers that will be entrusted to carry high-value national security payloads to orbit in the decade ahead.

The Air Force will select two companies, with a 60-40 split, to launch as many as 34 national security missions from 2022 through 2026. The company winning the larger share of launches will be the one the Air Force determines offers the "overall best value," but companies say the request for proposals gives the Air Force ample discretion to determine what "best value" means. (5/28)

This New Space Industry ETF is Already Beating the Market—Here Are its Main Drivers (Source: CNBC)
Call it the 21st-century space race. A new exchange-traded fund that launched last month is already outperforming the market — up nearly 5% versus the S&P 500′s almost 2% loss over the same period — and it’s intent on profiting from a rapidly developing theme: outer space.

The Procure Space ETF, which began trading on April 11 on the New York Stock Exchange, tracks companies within the space industry that are involved in high-growth areas like big data, 5G and the internet of things. Believe it or not, those seemingly earth-bound themes are key drivers for this space-based fund, which trades under the ticker UFO, says Andrew Chanin, the fund’s creator and the co-founder and CEO of ProcureAM.

“If you look at what is really driving the space industry right now, we’re talking about some of these transformational technologies, things like 5G, cloud computing, internet of things and connected devices,” he said Monday on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.” “If you believe in those industries, you’re saying there is going to be a massive increase of data, and these satellite companies are actually the backbone and the toll operators for this road that transfers data.” (5/28)

SpaceX Continues Cleanup After Explosion at Landing-Pad Test Site (Source: Florida Today)
SpaceX is continuing to clean up the Cape Canaveral site where a Crew Dragon spacecraft exploded during a propulsion test last month. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection said SpaceX has completed initial steps of the cleanup at Landing Zone 1, including clearing the area of debris from the April 20 explosion.

The company is scheduled to perform soil sampling at the site in June to determine the degree of contamination from the hypergolic propellants used in Crew Dragon's propulsion system. The company hopes to be able to be able to use the site for landing the twin side boosters of its Falcon Heavy rocket on its next launch, scheduled for June 22. (5/28)

Space Florida Signs Agreement With Israeli Space Agency (Source: Florida Politics)
Space Florida has signed a cooperative agreement with the Israeli Space Agency. The agreement covers potential relationships in research, development and education, such as Earth sciences research. Space Florida also signed an agreement with the Israel Innovation Authority for collaboration on commercial space and other areas. The agreements were signed during a trade mission to Israel by Florida officials, including Gov. Ron DeSantis. (5/28)

SpaceX Wants to Offer Starlink Internet to Consumers After Just Six Launches (Source: Teslarati)
SpaceX will conduct 2-6 dedicated Starlink launches – carrying at least 60 satellites each – in 2019 alone. In other words, a best-case satellite deployment scenario could mean that SpaceX will be able to start offering Starlink service to consumers “in the Northern U.S. and Canadian latitudes” as early as this year, while commercial offerings would thus be all but guaranteed in 2020. A step further, SpaceX believes it will be able to offer coverage of the entirety of the populated world after as few as 24 launches (~1500 Starlink satellites). (5/28)