September 11, 2019

Water Found on a Potentially Life-Friendly Alien Planet (Source: National Geographic)
In a first for astronomers studying worlds beyond our solar system, data from the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed water vapor in the atmosphere of an Earth-size planet. Although this exoplanet orbits a star that is smaller than our sun, it falls within what’s known as the star’s habitable zone, the range of orbital distances where it would be warm enough for liquid water to exist on a planet’s surface.

The discovery, announced this week in two independent studies, comes from years of observations of the exoplanet K2-18b, a super-Earth that’s about 111 light-years from our solar system. Discovered in 2015 by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, K2-18b is very unlike our home world: It’s more than eight times the mass of Earth, which means it’s either an icy giant like Neptune or a rocky world with a thick, hydrogen-rich atmosphere. (9/11)

Senate Supports DOD Funding for Space Priorities, Including Space Force (Source: Space News)
Senate appropriators included funding for Defense Department space priorities in a spending bill marked up Tuesday. The Senate Appropriations Committee did not disclose full details about their bill, but it does include funding for Space Force operations as well as the $1.2 billion requested for the National Security Space Launch program. The bill also creates a new research, development, testing and evaluation line for "tactically responsive launch" aimed at supporting venture class launch services. The full Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to mark up the bill Thursday. (9/10)

Blue Origin Progressing With New Launch Complex at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
Blue began renovating the site by demolishing many existing facilities – including the launch pads themselves. The company stated that much of the concrete from the old pads would be recycled into new roadways at the complex. Unlike many launch companies at Cape Canaveral, Blue Origin has decided to build their own, clean-sheet launch pad for New Glenn.

Like many of their projects, Blue has been quiet about the pad’s construction progress. Its location – far away from any public viewing areas – has also contributed to the lack of updates. However, NOAA recently undertook a post-Hurricane Dorian aerial imagery campaign of the eastern Florida coast – which included much of Cape Canaveral. During the campaign, NOAA captured a high-resolution view of LC-36 – showing how far the complex has come in its construction.

Notably, the imagery revealed that Blue has started foundation work for the Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) at the complex. The HIF will be used to integrate and process New Glenn rockets before they are rolled out to the pad. Features around the launch pad itself are beginning to take shape. The foundation of the service structure is visible, along with those of the lightning mast and water tower. The tank farms – which store the propellants used by New Glenn – are also in the process of being installed. Click here. (9/11)

SpaceX Plans Dozens of Starlink Launches Before End of 2020 (Source: Space News)
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Tuesday the company could launch as many as two dozen Starlink missions next year. During a World Satellite Business Week panel discussion, Shotwell said the company plans to average two launches of Starlink satellites per month next year, and as many as four before the end of this year depending on which of the company's other customers are ready to launch. SpaceX has performed 10 launches so far this year and Shotwell estimates the company will do seven to eight more before the end of the year. (9/10)

Space Florida Offers $100K to Aerospace Startups (Source: WMFE)
The state’s aerospace business agency wants to award $100,000 to an early-stage company doing business in the sunshine state. Space Florida and Florida Venture forum, a group of statewide investors, are reviewing applications for the second annual Florida Aerospace Capital Conference. If selected, early-stage aerospace companies will get the chance later this year to present in front of investors and win the $100,000 award offered by Space Florida.

While it might not seem like a lot, the award money could be a big break for a new startup. “At the very early stage it can literally make the difference between life and death for a growing company,” said Florida Venute Form President and CEO Kevin Burgoyne. More successful early-stage companies in the aerospace industry will attract more investors to the state, spinning off more opportunities to grow the industry. (9/11)

Launch Companies Look to Government for Business in Uncertain Market (Source: Space News)
Launch companies are looking to government business to provide stability in an uncertain commercial launch market. Executives with several companies said they did not believe GEO satellite launches will return to past levels of 20-25 satellites a year, and expect only a few constellations to be successfully deployed. Government orders, both for European and American companies, can help reduce overall business risk, they said. Executives with three companies competing for a U.S. Air Force launch contract — Blue Origin, SpaceX and ULA — said they were hopeful they would win one of two awards, but had varying views of what would happen if they lost. (9/11)

GEO Satellite Market Concerns Satellite Makers and Launchers (Source: Space News)
Launch companies aren't alone in their skepticism about a rebound in the GEO market. Commercial orders of geostationary communications satellites have reached double-digits for the first time since 2016, with 10 ordered through the end of August. While optimistic about 2019's buying rate, experts say this year's uptick is more a reflection of how tough the last few years have been than an indication of a full market recovery. Others noted that just counting orders isn't an accurate reflection of the market, given the wide range of sizes of GEO satellites now being ordered. (9/11)

India Slow to Provide Status on Lunar Lander (Source: The Print)
The Indian space agency ISRO remains silent on the status of the Chandrayaan-2 lander. The agency has said little since it lost contact with the Vikram lander during its final descent to the surface, beyond a brief statement that the lander had been located in images taken by the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter. ISRO continues efforts to contact the lander, but likely only had until the end of next week before the solar-powered lander goes into a two-week lunar night. (9/10)

China's Heavy-Lift Rocket Could Fly Again This Year (Source: Space News)
China could return the Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket to flight before the end of the year. The rocket has not flown since its second launch in July 2017 ended in failure because of a malfunction of one of its first stage engines. If China does conduct a Long March 5 launch in 2019, it likely will be late in the year because of the time needed to transport the vehicle to the launch site and perform prelaunch preparations. The Long March 5 is needed for a number of major Chinese missions, including the Chang'e-5 lunar sample return mission and its first Mars lander, expected to launch in 2020. (9/10)

South Korea Delays Lunar Mission to 2022 (Source: Korea Herald)
South Korea has postponed its first lunar mission from 2020 to 2022. The country's science ministry said the lunar orbiter mission, previously scheduled for launch in December 2020, will now fly in July 2022. Mass growth in the spacecraft, to be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9, has been an issue. The South Korean government first proposed the lunar orbiter mission more than a decade ago, but its launch date has fluctuated from administration to administration since then. (9/11)

French Miitary Satellites Could Sell Access to Other Governments (Source: Space News)
Airbus and Telespazio will team up to sell excess capacity on future French military communications satellites. The two companies, working with the French defense procurement agency, said they will offer excess X-band and military Ka-band capacity on the Syracuse 4 satellites, launching in 2022, to allied governments. The companies did not disclose how much capacity could be offered, but said it could provide continuity for those governments currently buying excess capacity on British Skynet satellites that will be approaching end of life by the early 2020s. (9/11)

Flat-Panel Antennas Broaden Market for Broadband Satellite Services (Source: Space News)
Inexpensive flat-panel antennas could be a "game-changer" for satellite broadband services. Companies operating satellite broadband services say such antennas are needed for consumer applications as well as some Internet of Things services. Other markets, though, are less reliant on such antennas, including maritime and energy where more conventional antennas are sufficient. (9/11)

Launch Deal Increases Space Destinations Aboard A Single 3D-Printed Rocket (Source: Forbes)
Relativity Space's 3D-printed rocket will help send satellites to more zones in orbit through a new agreement announced Wednesday (Sept. 11) with Momentus. A Terran 1 rocket launch for 2021 will launch Momentus customers to space, and then Momentus' "shuttle service" will boost the satellites into various orbits to perform their missions.

If one imagines a rocket like the main city bus that gets passengers to a station near their destination, the Momentus platform is similar to the feeder lines that brings passengers within reach of their doorstep. Momentus will give small and medium satellites, which can't carry a lot of fuel on board, flexibility to reach many more types of orbits than a ride on Terran 1 alone would provide. (9/11)

Space Settlement Visionaries Update Plans (Source: GeekWire)
Fifty years ago, a Princeton physicist named Gerard O’Neill asked his students to help him come up with a plan for setting up settlements in space. Just a few years later, O’Neill published the resulting vision for freestanding space colonies as a book titled “The High Frontier” — a book that helped inspire Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ vision of having millions of people living and working in space.

Now the keepers of the “High Frontier” flame at the California-based Space Studies Institute are revisiting O’Neill’s original vision, with an eye toward updating it for the 21st century. One concept includes a rotating space hotel nearly 200 meters across that could host 400 people. The cost? $70 billion. Click here. (9/9)

Hundreds of Satellites are Watching From the Skies. Should You Be Concerned? (Source: The Telegraph)
High above your head, many miles in the air, are thousands of satellites. Some of them are creating maps for social media, some are spy satellites owned by foreign governments. You can’t see them and you don’t know what they’re up to. Sounds scary, right? The fact that we can’t see them makes satellites especially worrisome. An invisible “eye in the sky” watching everything you do is the stuff of an Orwellian nightmare.

As the cost of space has come down, scores of companies have begun launching scores of satellites, doing everything from communication signals to mapping. Many of them are taking increasingly high-quality images of the earth. Should we be worried about what they can see? Click here. (9/10)

Using Satellites to Advance Archaeology (Source: WGN)
Sarah Parcak talks about what a “space archaeologist” does, the advancement of technology and how it has helped improve her work, what got her interested in archaeology, how much more there is to discover, what she is looking for when she is on an archaeological dig, how crowdsourcing is helping archaeology and why she believes that we are in a golden age of archaeological discovery. Click here. (9/9)

Space Station Cargo Mission Grounded by Launch Pad Fire (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
Japanese officials called off the launch of an H-2B rocket and HTV space station cargo ship Tuesday after a fire broke out on the launch pad at the Tanegashima Space Center. The fire occurred at around 1805 GMT (2:05 p.m. EDT) Tuesday, or 3:05 a.m. local time Wednesday, around three-and-a-half hours before the H-2B launcher was scheduled to lift off with an automated supply ship bound for the International Space Station.

The cause of the fire was still under investigation when officials briefed reporters on the fire four hours after cameras first observed the blaze near the base of the 186-foot-tall (56.6-meter) rocket. The launch pad was evacuated at the time of the fire, and the rocket’s manufacturer, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, reported no injuries. (9/10)

It’s Showtime for Virgin Galactic’s Latest Cash Infusion Plan (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Sir Richard Branson’s $808 million deal to merge Virgin Galactic with venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya’s Silicon Valley investment vehicle faced a crucial vote of confidence on Monday. Would-be shareholders voted on whether to back the entry via investment vehicle Social Capital Hedosophia (SCH), or whether to withdraw their cash entirely.

SCH was formed in 2017 and already trades on the New York Stock Exchange. It plans to merge with Virgin Galactic, bringing the space travel venture onto the market in an unconventional move which would avoid the traditional risks of an Initial Public Offering. The deadline for this is fast approaching, and looks set to be missed, however, which would see SCH go into liquidation.

In that case, investors get back $712m (£578m) next week. They will vote tomorrow on whether to allow this to happen or whether to postpone the deadline for a merger until December and subsequently keep their cash in the Virgin Galactic float. Virgin Galactic and Social Capital Hedosophia announced the merger, actually a reverse acquisition, two months ago. The deal would see Palihapitiya become chairman of the company and Adam Bain join the board. Bain previously served as chief operating officer of Twitter. (9/8)

Virgin Galactic Merger Deal Moves Forward (Source: Parabolic Arc)
At a meeting on Monday, shareholders of Social Capital Hedosophia (SCH) gave approval to the public company to move forward with an $808 million merger deal with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. “Holders of 66,333,089 of the Company’s ordinary shares, which represents 76.9% of the ordinary shares outstanding and entitled to vote as of the record date of August 8, 2019, were represented in person or by proxy,” Social Capital said in a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The shareholders approved two resolutions. The first extends the date for completing the merger from Sept. 18 to Dec. 18, 2019. The second resolution “extends the date on which the Trustee must liquidate the trust account established in connection with the Company’s initial public offering” if the SCH and Virgin Galactic do not complete the merger by Dec. 18. Under terms of the deal, SCH would own up to approximately 49% of the combined space tourism company, which would be publicly traded. SCH founder Chamath Palihapitiya would become chairman of the board. (9/10)

No Digging Required: Space Mining on the Moon and Beyond May Be Solar Powered (Source: Space.com)
Off-Earth miners will probably leave their pickaxes at home. The best way to extract water from the moon and near-Earth asteroids involves hitting the stuff with sunlight or other forms of radiation, if three NASA-funded projects are any guide.

And getting at this water is vital if humanity wants to extend its footprint beyond Earth's orbit, mining advocates say. Water provides life support for astronauts, of course, but it can also be split into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket fuel. So, moon and asteroid mining could lead to the construction of off-Earth propellant depots, which would allow voyaging spacecraft to fill their tanks on the go. Click here. (9/4)