July 5, 2019

Soyuz Launches Weather Satellite, 30 Smallsats (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
A Soyuz rocket launched a weather satellite and more than 30 smallsats early Friday. The Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East at 1:41 a.m. Eastern this morning. The primary payload for the Soyuz was the Meteor M2-2 weather satellite, a replacement for one lost in a Soyuz launch failure in November 2017. Also on the rocket were 32 smallsats for various customers, including Iceye, NSLComm and Spire. (7/5)

DoD Space Development Agency Seeks Ideas (Source: Space News)
The Pentagon's new Space Development Agency (SDA) released its first request for information this week despite turmoil surrounding it. According to the solicitation, the SDA is looking for "ideas, methodologies, approaches, technologies, and systems related to the development of an agile, responsive next-generation space architecture." The Pentagon established the SDA for the rapid development of space systems, but the first director of the agency, Fred Kennedy, abruptly stepped down last month. (7/5)

Trump Talks Mars in Independence Day Speech (Source: Time)
President Trump predicted America would land humans on Mars "someday soon" in his Fourth of July speech. Trump, after noting the upcoming 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 and the presence of flight director Gene Kranz among the guests at the Lincoln Memorial speech, said, "Gene, I want you to know that we're going to be back in the moon very soon and, someday soon, we will plant the American flag on Mars." Trump also mentioned Gus Grissom and Buzz Aldrin in the address. His comments come less than a month after, in a tweet, he appeared to criticize NASA for emphasizing a return to the moon rather than human missions to Mars. (7/5)

New Zealand Pulls Telescope Investment (Source: Physics World)
New Zealand has pulled out of a radio observatory project, concluding its costs were not worth the benefits. The New Zealand government said this week it no longer plans to participate in the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) as an associate member in the international venture. The government's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment concluded that the cost to the government, in the tens of millions of dollars, was not worth it. SKA will ultimately develop arrays of radio telescopes in South Africa and Australia, but has suffered significant delays and cost increases. (7/5)

NASA Adopts 'Double Blind' Approach to Telescope Time Allocation (Source: Nature)
NASA is adopting a new approach to allocating time on space telescopes that it believes will be more equitable. The new "double-blind" approach means that neither those who submit proposals for observing time on space telescopes nor those who review the proposals will know who each other are. NASA adopted it after finding that the process, used for the Hubble Space Telescope, eliminated a gender bias that, in the past, led to a higher success rate for men versus women. (7/5)

Astronomers Are Baffled by the Most Bizarre Star Yet (Source: Scientific American)
Within the bounty of information from the Kepler space telescope, a now-retired exoplanet-hunting observatory, astronomers have spotted a peculiar star whose characteristics defy many of their preconceived notions. After staring at the data about it for more than a year, the team who discovered the strange object, named HD 139139, still does not know what to make of it.

Volunteer citizen scientists combing through the Kepler catalog contacted Andrew Vanderburg and told him to check out HD 139139, a sunlike star roughly 350 light-years away. "When I got that e-mail, I looked more closely and said, 'okay, this definitely looks like a multiplanet system. But I can't find any [planets] that appear to line up,'" he recalls.

The star had 28 distinct dips in its light, each of which lasted between 45 minutes and 7.5 hours—and none of which seemed to repeat. The patterns looked more like noise than signal, and at first the team thought it might be some kind of instrument glitch. Yet after careful reanalysis, the data seemed to check out as real. (7/3)

Scientists Scramble to Build Payload for 2021 Lunar Landing (Source: Space Daily)
Scavenging spare parts and grabbing off-the-shelf hardware, University of California, Berkeley, space scientists are in a sprint to build scientific instruments that will land on the Moon in a mere two years. NASA selected 12 scientific payloads to fly aboard three lunar landing missions within the next few years. One of them will be the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment (LuSEE), which will be built under the direction of Stuart Bale, a UC Berkeley professor of physics and a veteran of several past NASA missions, including the Parker Solar Probe that was launched last August.

Bale and his colleagues at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory have less than $6 million to cover the costs, which means they will be co-opting spare parts originally built for the Parker Solar Probe and other spacecraft, including STEREO, which launched in 2006 and is still providing stereo views of the Sun, and the 2013 MAVEN, which is still orbiting Mars. The LuSEE will make comprehensive measurements of electromagnetic phenomena on the surface of the Moon and erect a simple radio telescope - the first operational telescope on the Moon. (7/3)

Scientists Attempting to Open Portal to a Parallel Universe (Source: The Independent)
Could 2019 be the year humans open the first portal to a shadowy dimension which mirrors our own world? Scientists in Oak Ridge National Laboratory in eastern Tennessee hope so, and have completed building equipment they are to test this summer which may allow us the first glimpse of a parallel universe which could be identical in many ways to our own, with mirror particles, mirror planets and possibly even mirror life.

That is according to Leah Broussard, the physicist behind the project, who described the attempt to reveal a hidden shadow world as “pretty wacky” in an interview with NBC last week. The discovery of a concealed mirror world may sound like science fiction from the Stranger Things series, but it has been repeatedly suggested by physicists as a tempting means of explaining anomalous results. However, as yet, hard evidence such a realm exists has refused to manifest itself. (7/4)

Commerce Dept. Getting Ready for Space Traffic Mission (Source: Politico)
Congress has not yet approved President Donald Trump's 2018 directive placing the Commerce Department in charge of sharing data with the public about the locations of orbiting spacecraft and debris. But that's not stopping the Commerce Department from taking over parts of the nation’s space traffic management mission, says Kevin O’Connell, the agency's director of the Office of Space Commerce.

It has hired space traffic management experts. It is working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology on orbital debris standards. And it has identified a Commerce Department representative -- to be announced publicly soon -- to be based at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where the Pentagon currently tracks objects in orbit. (7/3)

Air Force Wants to Utilize Commercial Satellites for Nuclear Command, Control (Source: National Defense)
The U.S. military is eyeing commercial satellites for nuclear command and control. "The work that we're doing in connecting the force and building a networked force across the services in the conventional side has got equal application to the nuclear command-and-control side,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said.

“One of the areas that I think we're going to be able to leverage significantly is ... the rapid and exciting expansion of commercial space and bringing low-earth orbit capabilities that will allow us to have the resilient pathways to communicate,” he added. The Air Force operates two of the three legs of the United States' nuclear triad, to include the bomber force and ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. Meanwhile, the Navy deploys ballistic missile submarines for the strategic deterrence mission. (6/26)

Orange Fireball Lighting Florida Sky was Chinese Space Junk (Source: AP)
Conspiracy theorists took to social media in a flurry of excitement Wednesday after a mysterious flying object resembling an orange fireball streaked across the Florida sky. The American Meteor Society reported two dozen sightings from Jacksonville to Key West after midnight and tweeted there’s “no real explanation yet.”

Even the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office joined in on the fun after receiving reports about the mysterious lights, posting on social media that “we were not invaded last night by Martians, but we appreciate the level of confidence you have of us to stop intergalactic invaders.” Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell at the Center for Astrophysics has a more logical explanation for the unusual flashes of light, with a not-so blockbuster finale. He said they were just pieces of a Chinese rocket as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. (7/3)

Rocket Crafters Tests Continue for Rocket with 3D Printed Motor (Source: WESH)
An innovative small rocket company got a little further Wednesday with a test of what could be the cheapest rocket engine ever made – if it works. Cheap rockets could mean more space business, jobs and launches. Engineers put together what might be called the craziest rocket engine you ever saw. "We're literally burning laughing gas and Legos with this motor," Rocket Crafters President Rob Fabian said.

The rocket motor wasn't built, it was printed on a 3D printer. The Rocket Crafters test rocket started during a test, then stopped because of a seal failure, making it a partial success. That follows a test last week in which it never really started at all, producing nothing but a little smoke. This kind of engine has been successfully fired dozens of times, but has had aborts when reporters were invited to watch. If there is an abort, the rocket can be turned off, unlike a solid fuel rocket, which would blow up. (7/3)

US Embassy Shares Space Deal That Luxembourg Ministry Kept Secret (Source: Luxembourg Times)
A space exploration deal between Luxembourg and the US – so far kept secret – was made public on Wednesday evening at a US embassy reception. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed in May by Luxembourg deputy prime minister Étienne Schneider and US secretary of commerce Wilbur Ross, but the details on what the text actually said were kept confidential. (7/4)

What the Founding of Manhattan Can Teach Us About Settling the Moon or Mars (Source: Slate)
Humans have a long history of establishing colonies in what, to those particular humans, was as alien and hostile a wilderness as one lacking oxygen. So it might be instructive to look at one of those experiences in order to get some insights into how a space settlement might be structured and what its needs might be. Why did these colonists decide to go? How did they plan? What did they expect and fear? How unsettling was the experience of settlement? Click here. (7/4) https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/manhattan-new-amsterdam-history-settling-space.html

The Rise of Astrotourism Could Potentially Be Its Downfall (Source: Conde Nast Traveler)
Plenty of people questioned my decision last year to fly from New York City to Salt Lake City, then to Boise, and then drive nearly three hours to Sun Valley, Idaho, all for “some stars.” But at 2 a.m., sitting on the hood of my rental car a few miles into Sawtooth National Forest, I felt like I could see the entire breadth and depth of the Milky Way. My contacts were drying out, as I couldn’t bear to close my eye for risk of missing one of the scores of meteors crossing the sky during August’s annual Perseid meteor shower. These weren’t just “some stars,” these were all of the stars (at least in the northern hemisphere).

I hadn’t picked rural Idaho out of a hat: In late 2017, the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) named a 1,416-square-mile area in Central Idaho an official dark sky reserve. Founded in 1988, the IDA protects nighttime by fighting to keep the dark sky, well, dark. It created a sliding scale of awards, which acknowledge swaths of private and public land based on their level of legal protection and size.

Now, 22 dark sky communities and more than 70 dark sky parks exist around the world—along with 10 dark sky sanctuaries, places so remote that they’re dark by proxy (like the Pitcairn Islands). The toughest designation of all is the dark sky reserve, which is reserved only for places that offer “exceptional or distinguished quality of starry nights and nocturnal environment that is specifically protected” because of its stars, the IDA reports. (7/3)

How Humans Will Bring the Internet to Space (Source: Vice)
Anyone who has experienced a spotty connection when their router is in the same room might be skeptical of this vision to build a functional internet in outer space. But since the 1990s, NASA researchers have been developing something called a Delay/Disruption-Tolerant Network (DTN) that could link spacecraft, rovers, and landers all over the solar system to Earth.

“The DTN protocols do for the solar system what internet protocols did for the Earth,” David Israel, a space communications architect at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a phone call. “Internet protocols allowed us to take existing phone lines, in the beginning, and start to network systems together.” The DTN will offer the same networking advantages to space devices, he explained. Click here. (7/3)

Utah Has a Place in Space (Source: Salt Lake Magazine)
Space travel began when humans first looked up into the night sky. Utah offers access to more dark sky than anywhere else in the country and we’re  encouraging more, helping all the movers and shakers understand the value of dark skies and the problem of light pollution. And the Space Dynamics Laboratory a nonprofit research corporation operated by USU, was founded in the era of pocket-protectors, just as U.S. Space programs really got off the ground. Since then, Space Dynamics Laboratory has created sensors for more than 400 payloads ranging from aircraft to rocket-borne experiments that traveled in the Space Shuttle and to the International Space Station. (7/3)

San Jacinto College Launches The EDGE Center at Houston Spaceport (Source: San Jacinto College)
San Jacinto College, along with partners from the Houston Airport System, Houston City Council, the FAA, and community and project partners gathered on June 26 to celebrate the groundbreaking of the Houston Spaceport at Ellington Airport. Work is already underway at the development site, which will sit on 154 acres at Ellington Airport. The Houston Spaceport is the 10th commercial spaceport license in the United States awarded by the FAA. The project scope includes providing streets, water, wastewater, electrical power distribution facilities, and fiber optic and communications facilities necessary to attract future development.

As the official education training partner for the Houston Spaceport, the San Jacinto College EDGE Center will offer four initial training programs: composites manufacturing and repair technician, aerospace electrical assembly technician, aerospace structures technician, mechatronics and industrial automation technician. In addition to these programs, San Jacinto College will also offer customized and individualized training based on the needs of the spaceport partners. (7/3)

Babin Reintroduces Commercial Space Bill (Source: Space Policy Online)
Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) has reintroduced the American Free Enterprise Space Commerce Act. It is identical to a bill he introduced in the last Congress that passed the House by voice vote, but was never voted on by the Senate. Instead the Senate passed a different bill, the Space Frontier Act, but it was defeated in the House. That has left congressional action on a range of commercial space issues such as modernizing existing regulations and deciding which Cabinet Department should be assigned new regulatory responsibilities in limbo.

Babin said the bill is identical to what passed the House last year “without opposition” and “with widespread support from stakeholder groups.” Babin also introduced a House Resolution (H.Res. 473) that declares that space launch is a developmental activity, not a form of transportation, and a process exists for investigating commercial space launch reentry activities. Click here. (7/3)