September 14, 2019

SpaceX May Deploy Satellite Broadband Across US Faster Than Expected (Source: Ars Technica)
SpaceX says it plans to change its satellite launch strategy in a way that will speed up deployment of its Starlink broadband service and has set a new goal of providing broadband in the Southern United States late next year. In a filing on August 30, SpaceX asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to "adjust the orbital spacing of its satellites." With this change, each SpaceX launch would deploy satellites in "three different orbital planes" instead of just one, "accelerating the process of deploying satellites covering a wider service area."

"This adjustment will accelerate coverage to southern states and US territories, potentially expediting coverage to the southern continental United States by the end of the next hurricane season and reaching other US territories by the following hurricane season," SpaceX told the FCC. The Atlantic and Pacific hurricane seasons each begin in the spring and run to November 30 each year. (9/12)

Innovative Model Created for NASA to Predict Vitamin Levels in Spaceflight Food (Source: Space Daily)
A team of food scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has developed a groundbreaking, user-friendly mathematical model for NASA to help ensure that astronauts' food remains rich in nutrients during extended missions in space. The new research, published in the journal Food Chemistry, gives NASA a time-saving shortcut to predict the degradation of vitamins in spaceflight food over time and more accurately and efficiently schedule resupplying trips. The investigation was funded with a $982,685 grant from NASA.

The researchers painstakingly prepared and stored 3,000-plus pouches of spaceflight food according to the exact NASA recipes, thermal processing and storage specifications that are used for astronauts' meals on the International Space Station. Xiao and colleagues showed for the first time how thiamine (vitamin B1) degrades over two years in three crew menu options: brown rice, split pea soup and beef brisket. Xiao says it was "quite surprising" to find that while the brown rice and split pea soup stored at 20 C demonstrated resistance to thiamine degradation, the thiamine in beef brisket was much less stable, retaining only 3 percent of the vitamin after two years. (9/13)

Research Redefines Lower Limit for Planet Size Habitability (Source: Space Daily)
In a recent paper, Harvard University researchers described a new, lower size limit for planets to maintain surface liquid water for long periods of time, extending the so-called Habitable or "Goldilocks'' Zone for small, low-gravity planets. This research expands the search area for life in the universe and sheds light on the important process of atmospheric evolution on small planets.

Generally, planets are considered habitable if they can maintain surface liquid water long enough to allow for the evolution of life, conservatively about one billion years. Astronomers hunt for these habitable planets within specific distances of certain types of stars - stars that are smaller, cooler and lower mass than our Sun have a habitable zone much closer than larger, hotter stars. The inner-edge of the habitable zone is defined by how close a planet can be to a star before a runaway greenhouse effect leads to the evaporation of all the surface water. But, as Arnscheidt and his colleagues demonstrated, this definition doesn't hold for small, low gravity planets. (9/12)

Natalie Portman Joins Hollywood Space Race with 'Lucy in the Sky' (Source: Space Daily)
NASA may have grounded its space shuttles, but more Hollywood A-listers than ever are exploring the final frontier, with Natalie Portman launching one of two astronaut movie premieres at Toronto's film festival. "Lucy in the Sky" opens with Portman drifting through space in her astronaut suit, begging her bosses for a few more moments to gaze at the cosmos before returning to the humdrum reality of life on Earth.

Eva Green's character in French movie "Proxima" also portrays the immense challenge of life as an astronaut -- an elite club, still more so for women -- but focuses on the grueling build-up to lift-off. The actresses follow a string of marquee stars donning spacesuits in recent years including George Clooney and Sandra Bullock ("Gravity"), Matt Damon ("The Martian"), Matthew McConaughey ("Interstellar"), Ryan Gosling ("First Man") and Brad Pitt in the upcoming "Ad Astra." (9/12)

Roscosmos to Build Cheap Soyuz-2M Rocket for Commercial Satellites Launch Service (Source: Sputnik)
Russian state space corporation Roscosmos is working on a cheaper version of the Soyuz rocket to cut launch costs for commercial satellites, Russian space travel operator Glavkosmos (GK) Launch Services CEO Alexander Serkin said. Serkin noted that the GK Launch Services, in partnership with Roscosmos, is working on ways to reduce the Soyuz rockets' costs. According to the CEO, a modification of the Soyuz-2M rocket is being developed for this purpose on the basis of the Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle, but without the Frigate upper stage.

The cost of launching the Soyuz-2M will be about $30 million, and it will be able to take 2-3 tonnes of payload into sun-synchronous orbit. "The price has gone down in the past few years. It's a trend that will continue," Serkin said. In October 2018, GK Launch Services announced that the cost of the commercial launch of the Soyuz-2 rocket with the Frigate upper stage was $48.5 million, and $35 million without it. (9/13)

Space Elevator to the Moon Could Be Doable — and Surprisingly Cheap (Source: NBC)
The idea of space elevators isn’t new; spaceflight visionaries have been talking about them at least since 1895. But Zephyr Penoyre and Emily Sandford envision a system that would be used not to ferry humans and cargo from Earth’s surface to Earth orbit — the goal of so-called classical space elevator concepts — but to provide transportation to and from the moon.

In a study published Aug. 25 on the online research archive arXiv, the students contend that it’s technologically and financially feasible to build such a "lunar space elevator," which was first publicly detailed by Jerome Pearson at a conference in 1977 and by Yuri Arsutanov in a separate paper published in 1979. “It shocks me how cheap it could be,” says study co-author Penoyre, a graduate student in astronomy at the University of Cambridge, adding that the $1 billion it might take to build such an elevator “is within the whim of one particularly motivated billionaire.”

Its central element is a cable that would be anchored to the moon and span more than 200,000 miles to a point above Earth's surface — perhaps an orbit about 27,000 miles from our planet. (The cable of a lunar space elevator couldn’t be anchored to Earth’s surface because the relative motions of the moon and our planet wouldn't permit it.) The simplest version of the Spaceline cable might be barely thicker than the lead in a pencil and might weigh about 88,000 pounds — within the payload capacity of a next-generation NASA or SpaceX rocket. It could be made from Kevlar or other existing materials rather than the exotic and hard-to-make carbon-based materials that have long been seen as the key to building a classical space elevator. (9/13)

Space Development Agency Chief Makes Its Case (Source: Politico)
Derek Tournear, the acting head of the Space Development Agency, says he is focused on carrying out the nascent Pentagon agency's vision to rapidly acquire new military space technologies after the abrupt departure of his predecessor and amid an ongoing battle to convince Congress to start ponying up some funding.

Only then can it advance the eight capabilities laid out in the Pentagon’s August 2018 report on space organization, including global surveillance and missile tracking. ”Our mission is to answer all of those eight capabilities, but to work with everyone else to make sure that they get built out, not necessarily do it all on our own," he tells us in an exclusive interview.

Yet the new office has struggled to recruit. The 27-person outfit stood up in March is divided into eight “cells” to align with the eight capabilities but key positions remain vacant. Employees need to be willing to work at a fast pace and if they are coming from industry take a pay cut, Tournear, who took over as acting director in June, says. "We are a startup and as a startup you're going to have some hiccups along the way," he adds. Tournear also spoke about the plan to base small groups of SDA staff at outposts across the country, beginnin in Los Angeles, home of the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center. (9/13)

Space Not Yet an Issue for 2020 Candidates, But Florida Primary Coming Soon (Source: Politico)
Space policy again got no love in the third Democratic presidential debate on Thursday night in Houston, home of the nation’s astronaut corps. Historically, space rarely comes up during presidential primaries with a few notable exceptions: In 2012, when former Speaker Newt Gingrich floated the idea of a moon base, and more recently in 2016, when President Donald Trump made a campaign promise to revive the National Space Council. President Barack Obama also promised on the campaign trail to increase NASA’s budget, according to Space.com.

So when might we hear about space on the campaign trail? The lead up to primaries in states with a large space presence like Florida could prompt candidates to talk about their plans and how they would impact the local workforce. “The Florida primary on March 17 will likely be the biggest hook there is for talking about space,” predicts Phil Larson, a former space adviser in the Obama White House. (9/13)