June 20, 2019

House Deal Would Support Ex-Im Bank Through 2026 (Source: Wall Street Journal)
An agreement reached in the U.S. House of Representatives June 18 could keep the Export Import Bank of the United States open until 2026. The bipartisan deal, led by House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), would ensure the bank stays fully operational for the next seven years. Ex-Im Bank’s current charter expires in September. Advocates for Ex-Im Bank, which helps finance satellite manufacturing and launch deals among other exports, recently suggested 10-year authorizations instead of the average timespan of three to five years. (6/19)

UK Export Finance Steps Up Space Sector Focus (Source: Space News)
U.K. Export Finance’s $325 million loan to Turkey this April is the most the agency’s has ever provided for a space industry deal. Britain’s export credit agency has long discussed more involvement in the satellite industry, but didn’t have any major deals to show for it until now. Adam Harris, head of civil, infrastructure and energy activity at UKEF, says the agency’s ability to support not just manufacturing but also launch and launch insurance has triggered increased demand for its financial services. (6/19)

Layoffs at Cubesat Builder GomSpace (Source: GomSpace)
Cubesat builder GomSpace is conducting another round of layoffs. The Danish company said June 18 it will cut up to 30 employees this month in an effort to reduce costs. The layoffs follow earlier cuts in November and January stemming from a missed payment by constellation customer Sky and Space Global. Despite the reduction in staff, GomSpace said it is “continuing to build up the engineering capacity” needed to support ongoing work with the European Space Agency across Denmark, Luxembourg and Sweden. (6/19)

NASA Builds New Launch Pads At KSC For Camden's Rockets (Source: SpaceportFacts.org)
NASA is moving ahead with plans to build Launch Complex 48 at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. LC-48 will make obsolete anything planned for Georgia's ever-shrinking Spaceport Camden. As was entirely predicted by spaceport opponents, the entire $7 million spent so far will be wasted. Before the end of 2019, NASA will add the first of two new pads in Florida capable of 52 to 104 annual launches. Georgia’s newly downsized Spaceport Camden will try to compete for the same launch operators.

NASA gets billions each year from Congress while Camden must raise property taxes to buy contaminated Union Carbide property. Now, small rocket launch companies can add 104 more launch slots from Florida: LC-48 is open to any American rocket company; the two planned pads handle eight times as many launches as Spaceport Camden; rockets will launch directly over the ocean so that insurance costs will be much lower; no EIS is required; no campers, tourists or park workers will be evacuated for launches from LC-48; local taxpayers won't subsidize the Florida launches; and no civilians lives are at risk from launches at LC-48.

The writing has been on the wall for a long time that there is no space business for Spaceport Camden. Although we have many, many wonderful assets, Camden cannot offer enough peripheral incentives to attract established space industries. That’s not something you can create out of a former industrial waste site. (6/19)

Georgia Space Alliance Dissolving by Year-End (Source: SpaceportFacts.org)
The Georgia Space Alliance announced it will dissolve before the end of 2019. The GSA has achieved no space business activity in Georgia. The GSA failed to influence the creation of a Georgia Space Authority to compete with Florida, New Mexico, Virginia, and Alaska. We’ve also paid more than $50,000 for Camden’s participation in the Commercial Spaceflight Federation with no benefit to Camden taxpayers.

The moral of this story is that when a traveling spaceport salesman comes knocking, don’t open the door. Just last summer, Andrew Nelson was all-in on Medium-large rockets for Spaceport Camden and even created new terms like "Authorized Persons" for the FAA hoping they would justify bypassing safety regulations. The FAA was forced to state immediately that Nelson’s safety exemptions were unacceptable.

Camden's Steve Howard now freely admits that Spaceport Camden will only launch “small” rockets. Camden should have called it quits after the FAA denounced Nelson’s fictitious “Authorized Persons.” Yet, tonight, after already sending Nelson more than $1,000,000, they renewed his contract. Like Nelson, I’ve never built a spaceport or launched a rocket, but I’m not paid to protect Camden taxpayers from bad advice. That’s our County Commission's job. (6/19)

Local Florida High School Shoots for the Stars with Student-Developed CubeSat (Source: NASA)
It took eight years and nearly 80 high school students participating in the project along the way, but the Merritt Island High School’s “StangSat” cube satellite – more commonly known as a CubeSat – is finally ready to launch. Named for the high school’s mascot – the mustang – StangSat will measure the shock and vibration of a launch to determine just how durable CubeSats must be built. StangSat is set to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket no earlier than June 24 at 11:30 p.m. EDT.

StangSat has a sister satellite, Launch Environment Observer (LEO), from California Polytechnic State University that required students to take two trips to California for testing to ensure the two satellites were compatible. While StangSat is made of more malleable and cost-effective materials, LEO is a more rigid satellite and, thus, more expensive to build. The goal is to collect data from both satellites to see how strong a CubeSat really has to be to withstand a launch and if there’s an opportunity to build them in a more cost-effective manner.

StangSat has been in development since 2011, as part of a Space Act Agreement between NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Brevard County schools. As part of the agreement, NASA provided mentors, hardware and knowledge, while the students actually built the CubeSat. Merritt Island High School was chosen by the school system as the ideal candidate due to its close proximity to Kennedy, where many meetings between students and mentors were held. (6/19)

Senators Get Classified Briefing on UFO Sightings (Source: Politico)
Three more U.S. senators received a classified Pentagon briefing on Wednesday about a series of reported encounters by the Navy with unidentified aircraft, according to congressional and government officials — part of a growing number of requests from members of key oversight committees. One of them was Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “If naval pilots are running into unexplained interference in the air, that’s a safety concern Sen. Warner believes we need to get to the bottom of,” his spokesperson, Rachel Cohen, said in a statement.

The interest in “unidentified aerial phenomenon” has grown since revelations in late 2017 that the Pentagon had set up a program to study the issue at the request of then-Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). Officials interviewed multiple current and former sailors and aviators who claim to have encountered highly advanced aircraft that appeared to defy the laws of aerodynamics when they intruded on protected military airspace — some of which were captured on video and made public.

The Navy had no immediate comment on Wednesday, and few details of the latest secret sessions were available. They come several days after President Donald Trump said that he, too, had been briefed on the reports. “I did have one very brief meeting on it,” he said. “But people are saying they’re seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particularly.” But several current and former officials with direct knowledge describe the Capitol Hill briefing as the latest for members of Congress and their staff representing the Intelligence, Armed Services and Defense Appropriations panels. (6/19)