June 12, 2019

Aerojet Rocketdyne Opens State-of-the-Art Rocket Propulsion Facility in Huntsville (Source: Space Daily)
Senior Alabama officials joined Aerojet Rocketdyne's CEO Eileen Drake and Executive Chairman Warren Lichtenstein at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the company's newest state-of-the-art rocket propulsion Advanced Manufacturing Facility (AMF), marking the latest milestone in the company's ongoing expansion in the Rocket City.

Surrounded by company employees and Alabama state and local officials, including Governor Kay Ivey, Drake officially declared the AMF open for operation. The 136,000-square-foot AMF will produce advanced propulsion products such as solid rocket motor cases and other hardware for the Standard Missile-3, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, and other U.S. defense and space programs. (6/10)

ESA Unveiling Technologies for Future Launch Vehicles (Source: Space Daily)
ESA safeguards Europe's guaranteed access to space through its Future Launchers Preparatory Programme, FLPP. FLPP weighs up the opportunities and risks of different launch vehicle concepts and associated technologies. Its demonstrators and studies hone emerging technologies to give Europe's rocket builders a valuable head-start as they begin the demanding work of turning the chosen design into reality.

Based on a standardized scale of "Technology Readiness Levels" or TRL, technologies that have been demonstrated in a laboratory environment at Level 3, are further developed within FLPP and tested via integrated demonstrators to raise them to TRL 6. Once a technology has reached level 6, much of the risk linked to using a new technology in a space environment has been mitigated. It can be quickly transferred to a development up to flight (TRL 9) with optimised cost and schedule. Click here. (6/10)

NASA Looks to Australia for its First-Ever Private Commercial Launch Site (Source: Space Daily)
NASA is planning to sign its first-ever contract with a private commercial launch site - in Australia's remote Northern Territory. The space agency said it needs to conduct launches of suborbital sounding rockets in that region for astrophysics science experiments. The contract would be NASA's first with a private commercial launch site. The space agency historically has conducted 20 to 30 sounding rocket launches per year, from all around the world, but previously at government or military installations. Its last sounding rocket launch from Australia in 1995 was from a military facility closer to Adelaide. (6/10)

NASA Prepares to Launch Twin Satellites to Study Signal Disruption From Space (Source: Space Daily)
NASA's twin E-TBEx CubeSats - short for Enhanced Tandem Beacon Experiment - are scheduled to launch in June 2019 aboard the Department of Defense's Space Test Program-2 launch. The launch includes a total of 24 satellites from government and research institutions. They will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The E-TBEx CubeSats focus on how radio signals that pass through Earth's upper atmosphere can be distorted by structured bubbles in this region, called the ionosphere. Especially problematic over the equator, these distortions can interfere with military and airline communications as well as GPS signals. The more we can learn about how these bubbles evolve, the more we can mitigate those problems - but right now, scientists can't predict when these bubbles will form or how they'll change over time. (6/11)

African Space Industry Now Generating Over $7 Billion Annually (Source: Space Daily)
Space in Africa, the authority on news, data, and market analysis for the African space industry, has just released the African Space Industry Report- 2019 Edition. The report covers Africa's journey in space from 1998 through May 2019 and explains how the industry has already reached over USD 7 billion of annual revenues and is projected to grow at a 7.3% compound annual growth rate to exceed USD 10 billion by 2024.

Regional and national space programs and policies in Africa are becoming quite extensive.Already, 19 African countries have national space programmes and there is a booming emergence of commercial companies developing space technologies and offering services in Africa.

"Africa's space industry is currently undergoing a renaissance. All across Africa, governments are investing in elaborate space programmes, revving up the continent's capacity to see beyond pale clouds and harness the inherent power of space technologies. Modern space technologies have the ability to help Africa solve critical problems in agriculture, security, telecommunications and other sectors. Already, some countries have started to benefit. In Mali, satellites are helping nomadic herdsmen find water for their cattle; in Angola and Rwanda, satellites are used to connect rural classrooms to the internet and entertain millions with profitable TV programs across Africa." (6/12)

Students Boosting Technical Skills at NASA Wallops' Rocket Week (Source: Space Daily)
University and community college students will boost their technical skills as rocket scientists building experiments for space flight during Rocket Week June 14-21, 2019, at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Nearly 200 students and instructors from across the country will build and fly experiments on a NASA suborbital sounding rocket through the RockOn! and RockSat-C programs. (6/11)

Blue Origin Official: New Glenn Rocket Set to Launch in 2021 (Source: Spectrum News 13)
Tuesday at the National Space Club Florida luncheon, Blue Origin officials gave attendees an update on their new rocket and when can the Space Coast can expect their first launch. Their launch pad will be completed next year, and the New Glenn rocket is set to launch in 2021, according to Blue Origin. It's been years in the making since making the announcement in 2015, So far $2.5 billion has been invested in the New Glenn rocket. Test and Flight Ops Vice President for Blue Origin Scott Henderson says things look much different at the facility than it did three years ago. Click here. (6/12)

SpaceX Launches Three Canadian Satellites as First Stage Lands at California Spaceport (Source: Daily Mail)
SpaceX has blasted off a payload of three Tesla Roadster-sized satellites for the Canadian government, marking its seventh successful launch this year. Through a thick haze of fog, the white Falcon 9 rocket took flight from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 10:17 am (ET). About ten minutes after launch, the recycled rocket touched down without a hitch back on the landing pad. (6/12)

A Private Spaceflight Economy Could Leave NASA's Astronauts Behind (Source: Axios)
NASA's plans to create a robust economy in low-Earth orbit where private spaceflight companies can flourish could eventually leave the agency's astronauts stranded on Earth with nowhere to go. NASA hopes to play a lead role in developing a private spaceflight economy, including private sector astronauts. The agency sees this as a way to free it up to focus on farther afield goals like bringing humans back to the Moon and, eventually, to Mars.

But if private industry takes over human spaceflight destinations in low-Earth orbit and funding and political support for NASA missions to the Moon or Mars dissipates, there may be no point in having a government-sponsored human spaceflight program at all. By largely giving up control of human spaceflight in orbit, a region of key importance for Earth science and other discoveries, NASA risks that its human spaceflight program might be more heavily impacted by political whims. (6/11)

Blue Origin Investing More Than $1 Billion Into Space Coast to Build 'Road to Space' (Source: Florida Today)
If all goes according to Blue Origin's ambitious plan, the Space Coast will become the opening phase of a "road to space" for millions of people taking their livelihoods beyond Earth's fragile atmosphere. The Jeff Bezos-led company is investing more than a billion dollars into the region to transform infrastructure — old and new — into gateways for its upcoming New Glenn rocket, a towering vehicle slated to launch from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport no earlier than 2021. It will also be built, launched and refurbished here after landing on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

"New Glenn is all about millions of people living and working in space," Scott Henderson, Blue Origin's vice president of test and flight operations, said. "It sets the foundation for building an infrastructure required to get to space." Bezos believes the future will see industry and other Earth-based happenings move beyond the ground and into orbit, the moon and possibly even other planets. When he launched Amazon in 1994 most of what he needed was already there. That's not the case with Blue Origin.

Construction workers put the finishing touches on its New Glenn factory at the spaceport in late 2017, but that's just the first phase – the campus will nearly double in size in the coming years as land to the south is cleared for the second phase. The factory will also function as launch control center for New Glenn missions, which will take flight from 10 miles away. The reconstruction of Launch Complex 36, a pad formerly used for Atlas-Centaur rockets that Blue Origin now leases from the Air Force. Up to 600 people have been hired to build out the site, which already has some hardware, like propellant tanks, installed. (6/11)

Lockheed Martin Studies How to Use a Cloud of Satellites for Space Missions (Source: GeekWire)
More and more computing is being done in the cloud, but so far, the cloud-based approach hasn’t been applied in space. Lockheed Martin is thinking about changing that. The aerospace giant has already registered two trademarks for satellite cloud systems — HiveStar and SpaceCloud — and it’s considering how the approach can be applied to a range of space missions.

Yvonne Hodge, vice president and chief information officer at Colorado-based Lockheed Martin Space, lifted the curtain on the HiveStar project last week. “It’s not just about collecting the data and then sending it back to the ground for processing,” Hodge said. “It’s about analyzing the information in space … and then sending the knowledge, the intelligence back to Earth.”

One of the keys to the HiveStar architecture is Lockheed Martin’s recently announced SmartSat project, which will allow small satellites to be reprogrammed in orbit as easily as adding an app to a smartphone. A team of engineers at Lockheed Martin has been working on an arrangement that would knit small satellites like SmartSats into a network for in-space communications and data processing. (6/12)

A New Candidate for Dark Matter and a Way to Detect It (Source: Phys.org)
Two theoretical physicists at the University of California have a new candidate for dark matter, and a possible way to detect it. Many physicists believe that dark matter is made up of some particle yet to be discovered. For some time, the favorite candidate has been the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle or WIMP. But despite years of effort, WIMPs have so far not shown up in experiments designed to detect them. An alternative to the WIMP model of dark matter calls for a form of "dark electromagnetism" including "dark photons" and other particles.

Dark photons would have some weak coupling with "regular" photons. In their new paper, Terning and Verhaaren add a twist to this idea: a dark magnetic "monopole" that would interact with the dark photon. In the macroscopic world, magnets always have two poles, north and south. A monopole is a particle that acts like one end of a magnet. Monopoles are predicted by quantum theory, but have never been observed in an experiment.

The scientists suggest that dark monopoles would interact with dark photons and dark electrons in the same way that theory predicts electrons and photons interact with monopoles. And that implies a way to detect these dark particles. The physicist Paul Dirac predicted that an electron moving in a circle near a monopole would pick up a change of phase in its wave function. Because electrons exist as both particles and waves in quantum theory, the same electron could pass on either side of the monopole and as a result be slightly out of phase on the other side. (6/11)

SpaceX Sues the Government Over $2 Billion In Rocket Contracts (Source: Motley Fool)
Seven months ago, the Defense Department made a controversial call. In a trio of contracts announced on its daily digest of contract awards, the Pentagon announced it was awarding these rocket development contracts: a $967 million deal to ULA; a $791.6 million contract to Orbital Sciences, part of Northrop Grumman; and one worth $500 million to Blue Origin, financed by $1 billion worth of sales of his own Amazon stock annually.

That's right: SpaceX -- the company that led the charge in favor of freeing the U.S. from reliance upon Russia's RD-180 rocket engine back in 2015. The Air Force handed out more than $2.25 billion in contracts -- but not $1 of these awards went to SpaceX. Why not? Click here. (6/10)

Scientists Discover Previously Unidentified Mass Beneath Surface of the Moon (Source: CBS News)
A previously unknown deposit of an unidentified physical substance larger than the size of Hawaii has been discovered beneath the surface of the moon. Scientists at Baylor University published a study detailing their findings of this "anomaly" beneath the moon's largest crater, at its South Pole. They believe the mass may contain metal carried over from an earlier asteroid crash.

According to the study — "Deep Structure of the Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin" — which was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in April, the large mass of material was discovered beneath the South Pole-Aitken crater, an oval-shaped crater that is 2,000 kilometers (about 1,243 miles) wide and roughly 4 billion years old. According to Baylor University, the unidentified mass was discovered "hundreds of miles" beneath the basin and is "weighing the basin floor downward by more than half a mile."

"Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground. That's roughly how much unexpected mass we detected," said lead author Peter B. James, Ph.D., assistant professor of planetary geophysics in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences. (6/11)

Soyuz Spaceship's Hatch Too Tight for FEDOR Robot (Source: Interfax)
The shoulders of Russia's FEDOR humanoid robot, which is due to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) on board the Soyuz MS-14 spaceship in August, are being narrowed, a source in the aerospace industry said. "FEDOR is preparing to travel by Soyuz MS-14. It will be an unmanned, experimental mission, so the robot being sent to space as a crewmember seems reasonable," the source said. As the Energia Corporation said earlier, a Soyuz-2.1a rocket will propel Soyuz MS-14 into space in August 2019.

The flight will be unmanned, and a much bigger payload will be carried due to the absence of certain life-sustenance systems. The unmanned Soyuz-MS is not a new modification of the spaceship, Energia said. "It has passed the fit check and is being upgraded, considering that it can only squeeze through the hatch with difficulty. Cosmonauts will have to carry the robot from the spacecraft into the International Space System without any supporting devices in zero gravity," the source said. It appeared that the robot's "shoulders are too broad, so it will be modernized to fit the established parameters," he said. (6/7)

Little Girl Who Dreams of Being an Astronaut Writes Letter Begging Target to Make NASA Clothing for Girls (Source: Metro)
Lily Fogels has always wanted to be an astronaut. She’s been in love with all things to do with space since she can remember, and dreams of living at the international space station when she grows up. While she waits until she’s old enough to be an astronaut, Lily fills her room with planet posters, a miniature solar system, and any on-theme decorations she can find.

She’d also quite like to wear space themed clothing, and was disappointed to find that her local department store, Target, only stocked NASA T-shirts in boys’ sizes in the boys’ section. When she looked in the girls’ section, no NASA tops were to be found. That was the first time Lily pondered the idea that Space could be a ‘boys’ thing’ and not something for her to enjoy. So she set about writing a letter to ask Target to sort things out.

Lily wrote: ‘I am very upset right now because all your NASA clothing is only in the boys area in my Target and I am a girl. ‘I want NASA clothes in the girls area because girls like space too. It doesn’t need to be different styles just move some from the boys. ‘From Lily a girl who loves space.’ (6/11)

NanoAvionics Gets 10 Million euros for Global IoT Constellation Development (Source: Space Daily)
NanoAvionics, an international nano-satellite missions integrator, and the consortium partners KSAT (Kongsberg Satellite Services) and Antwerp Space have been awarded EUR 10 million funding by the European Commission's Horizon 2020, ESA's ARTES and private investors. The funding is for the first demonstration of the pre-cursor stage of the Global Internet of Things (GIoT) nano-satellite constellation with one or more IoT/M2M (machine-to-machine) service providers as pilot customers.

The consortium will not enter the IoT/M2M business directly. Instead it will offer a GIoT constellation-as-a-service in a B2B setup to existing and emerging IoT/M2M operators. The GIoT system combines the core strengths of the consortium's partners in a one-stop-shop offer, giving IoT/M2M service providers the means to be economical viable, globally scalable and competitive. (6/10)

NASA Spacecraft to use 'Green' Fuel for the First Time (Source: Space Daily)
A non-toxic, rose-colored liquid could fuel the future in space and propel missions to the Moon or other worlds. NASA will test the fuel and compatible propulsion system in space for the first time with the Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM), set to launch this month on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The mission will demonstrate the exceptional features of a high-performance "green" fuel developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

The propellant blends hydroxyl ammonium nitrate with an oxidizer that allows it to burn, creating an alternative to hydrazine, the highly toxic fuel commonly used by spacecraft today. Spacecraft love hydrazine, but it's toxic to humans. Handling the clear liquid requires strict safety precautions - protective suits, thick rubber gloves and oxygen tanks. GPIM promises fewer handling restrictions that will reduce the time it takes to prepare for launch. (6/11)

West Virginia University Takes Top Prize in NASA Test of Concepts to Extract Water on the Moon and Mars (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Teams of university students from across the country ‘drilled’ into technology challenges that NASA needs to solve before establishing a sustained human presence on the Moon as part of the agency’s Artemis program. Similar solutions could eventually be used on Mars. Since 2017, NASA has engaged students in exploring ways to harvest water from existing resources off Earth through its Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linages Special Edition (RASC-AL): Mars Ice Challenge.

As if designing, building and testing a system to extract water from Mars wasn’t difficult enough, the 2019 competition challenged teams to consider another difficult destination – the Moon. The new RASC-AL Moon to Mars Ice and Prospecting Challenge provided students with an opportunity to demonstrate their innovative technologies to extract water and perform prospecting maneuvers on simulated slices of extraterrestrial surfaces. (6/11)

Bigelow Reserves Four Dedicated SpaceX Launches to ISS (Source: Bigelow Aerospace)
On Friday, June 7, 2019 Bigelow Space Operations (BSO) announced that last September of 2018 BSO paid substantial sums as deposits and reservation fees to secure up to four SpaceX launches to the International Space Station (ISS). These launches are dedicated flights each carrying up to four people for a duration of one to possibly two months on the ISS.

BSO is excited about NASA’s announcements last Friday. BSO has demonstrated its sincerity and commitment to moving forward on NASA’s commercialization plans for the ISS through the execution of last September’s launch contracts. BSO intends to thoroughly digest all of the information that was dispersed last week so that all opportunities and obligations to properly conduct the flights and activities of new astronauts to the ISS can be responsibly performed. (6/10)

New Space Telescopes Could Look Like Giant Beach Balls (Source: WIRED)
If we ever have giant inflatable telescopes in space, you can thank Chris Walker’s mom. Years ago, Walker was making chocolate pudding when he had to interrupt his culinary undertaking to field a phone call from his mother. He took the pudding off the stovetop, covered it with plastic wrap, and placed the pot on the floor by his couch. When the call was finished, he was startled to find an image of a light bulb from a nearby lamp hovering over the end of the couch.

When he investigated the cause of this apparition, he found that a pocket of cold air formed as the pudding cooled, and that had caused the center of the plastic wrap to sag toward the pudding. This, in effect, formed a lens that was reflecting the light bulb. “I thought ‘Hey, this is cool, but I have no use for it now,’” Walker, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, says. But 30 years later, he used it as the basis for a proposal he sent to NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, a program that funds far-out aerospace ideas.

The subject of that proposal was essentially a way to turn a giant inflatable beach ball into a space telescope. This suborbital balloon reflector wouldn’t contend with as much atmospheric interference as ground-based instruments. Furthermore, it could be easily scaled up, opening vast swaths of the universe to observation without the hefty price tag associated with building large telescopes. (6/11)

ANA and Japan's Space Agency to Look Into Possibility of Using Satellite System to Find Optimal Flight Paths (Source: Japan Times)
ANA Holdings Inc. and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have joined forces to look into the feasibility of using a satellite system to find the best flight paths for airplanes by observing wind and other conditions, thus cutting fuel consumption and costs. The airline group and the space agency signed a contract in January and aim to conduct joint research with other parties, including Keio University, until next January.

The project is based on a proposal by Ayako Matsumoto, a 35-year-old ANA employee who won the top award with the idea at the 2017 S-Booster space business contest organized by the Cabinet Office in cooperation with JAXA, the airline and other companies. Some 100,000 flights are operated daily around the world and if airlines are able to reduce aircraft fuel consumption by just 1 percent, it would be possible to save 3.65 million tons of fuel annually, according to Matsumoto. Saving fuel will allow airlines to not only cut costs but also curb greenhouse gas emissions, she said. (6/10)

Here's What it's Like to Visit SpaceX's Boca Chica Site in Texas (Source: Business Insider)
SpaceX's launch site is unique — including the fact that a small village of people live inside it. Some residents can see this futuristic vision of spaceflight being built and tested from the windows of their homes. To gain a better understanding of the site and its future, Business Insider traveled to Boca Chica, met with residents, spoke to local experts, and took a look around. We even witnessed the very first "hop" of a stubby steel Starship prototype called Starhopper. Here's what SpaceX's south Texas launch site is like, what we saw there, and some of the things we heard. Click here. (6/8)

ESA: Radiation Will Make Mars Missions Deadly (Source: Futurism)
Astronauts on the International Space Station are subjected to 200 times the cosmic radiation as people are on Earth, according to ExtremeTech. On Mars, that number jumps up to 700 — scientists have even suggested that Martian settlers may rapidly mutate to adapt. “The real problem is the large uncertainty surrounding the risks,” said ESA physicist Marco Durante in the press release. “We don’t understand space radiation very well and the long-lasting effects are unknown.”

The ESA found that a six-month stay on Mars would expose astronauts to “60% of the total radiation dose limit recommended for their entire career.” Ongoing experiments suggest that lithium is a promising material for future spacecraft and radiation shields, according to the press release, but they haven’t reached the point at which space travel becomes safe. (6/5)

NOAA To Use COSMIC Constellation for Improved Forecasting (Source: Space News)
NOAA says data from a constellation of satellites to be launched this month will be valuable in improving forecasts. The six-satellite Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate-2 (COSMIC-2), a joint U.S.-Taiwan program, will launch as part of the Falcon Heavy STP-2 mission June 24. The radio occultation data the satellites collect help reduce forecasting errors, scientists said at a briefing Tuesday. COSMIC-2 was to include a second set of six satellites, but those were cancelled in 2017. NOAA says it will make up for those satellites with data from other missions as well as from commercial providers. (6/12)

China Sets Regulations for Commercial Lauchers (Source: South China Morning Post)
The Chinese government has issued new regulations for commercial launch companies in the country. The rules require companies to obtain government approvals before starting research, development and production of launch vehicles. The regulations include a "confidentiality system" for companies, which must also follow export control regulations if considering operating outside of the country. (6/12)

India Sets July 15 for Lunar Launch (Source: NDTV)
India has set a July 15 launch date for its next lunar mission. The launch of the Chandrayaan-2 mission is scheduled for the early morning hours of July 15 on a GSLV Mark 3 rocket. The spacecraft will take several weeks to reach the moon, entering orbit. A lander will separate from the orbiter and attempt a landing in the southern polar regions of the moon. (6/12)

Another UK Spaceport Planned (Source: Press Association)
A consortium announced plans Tuesday for another launch site in Great Britain. The proposed "Spaceport 1" is a vertical launch site that will be built on the Scottish island of North Uist. A local government council has agreed to spend 1 million British pounds to purchase the land for spaceport, which would be used by small launch vehicles. The project is separate from a similar site planned for the northern coast of Scotland, and comes a week after the British government said it would support development of spaceport facilities at an airport in Cornwall that would host Virgin Orbit missions. (6/12)

NASA HQ Gets New Address with Renamed Street (Source: NASA)
The street outside NASA Headquarters in Washington will formally get a new name today. A stretch of E Street SW will be named "Hidden Figures Way" after the book and movie Hidden Figures about the African American women who supported the early space program. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) will be among those at the 10 a.m. Eastern event. (6/12)

Union Lobbies for DoD Bill Amendment That Would Limit Launch Competition (Source: Space News)
A union representing aerospace workers is lobbying House members to reject language in a defense authorization bill regarding launch. A June 11 letter from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers calls on members of the House Armed Services Committee to support an amendment that would delete provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act that would add more competitors to the National Security Space Launch Phase 2 launch procurement and give SpaceX access to $500 million in infrastructure funding if it is selected.

The amendment by Reps. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) and Jason Crow (D-CO), to be offered when the committee starts marking up the bill, are in response to concerns of Northrop Grumman and Colorado-based ULA. (6/12)

Congressional Concerns That NASA Will Reallocate Other Money Toward Artemis (Source: Space News)
Scientists and the chair of the House Science Committee shared concerns at a hearing Tuesday that NASA's science programs could be cut to pay for the return to the moon. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), chair of the committee, said she was worried about a provision in NASA's budget amendment submitted a month ago seeking authority to transfer funds from other agency accounts to pay for the Artemis program.

"Starving science to fund human exploration is not the answer," she said. Scientists testifying at the hearing were also worried science could be cut to pay for the program. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has said a number of times that NASA would not "cannibalize" science to pay for the moon program. (6/12)

Can Artificial Intelligence Save Us From Asteroidal Armageddon? (Source: Forbes)
Even in this age of high-speed data analysis, a keen human eye normally can’t be beaten when poring over images of potential asteroidal impactors. But Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) could soon change all that. The El Segundo, Calif.-based Aerospace Corporation is now testing A.I. software designed to help astronomers speed up the process of identifying and tracking threatening Near-Earth Objects (NEOs).

NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office already uses numerous telescopes to find and monitor NEOs that might have the potential to impact Earth. But the non-profit Aerospace Corporation’s A.I. team is working with NASA on implementing software dubbed NEO AID (Near-Earth Object Artificial Intelligence Detection) to differentiate false positives from asteroids and comets that might be real threats.

Nightly, researchers at locations such as the Catalina Sky Survey on Mount Lemmon in Tucson, Ariz. pore over hundreds of images of star fields in search of fast-moving objects that need more scrutiny, says Aerospace Corporation. It’s here that Aerospace A.I. engineers used 100 terabytes of data to build and train an artificial intelligence model that is now capable of classifying NEO targets of interest. And by Aerospace Corporation’s calculations, this new A.I. tech has already increased the sky survey’s performance by 10 percent with room for development. (6/7)