September 26, 2019

Space Coast Companies Hiring Like Crazy as We Compete in Country's 'Talent Wars' (Source: Florida Today)
The campaign is called "Live Big Space Coast." The slogan, "Better Gigs. Sunny Digs." Its promotion video opens with a group of athletic men, apparently in their 30s, bike riding along the Indian River Lagoon. It then transitions to a young couple paddleboarding near the Cocoa Beach pier. The woman then changes into a United Launch Alliance polo shirt and heads to work at a rocket facility. You might have seen the billboards advertising the Space Coast's tourism attractions along highways. Now, our region is trying to market itself to prospective employees in our tech, aeronautics, defense and space industries.

The "Live Big" campaign, which you can find on Facebook, is an effort by the Economic Development Commission of Florida's Space Coast to ensure we're not lagging behind in the country's talent wars. The purpose is to market our region mainly through social media to young professionals who aren't familiar with Brevard County. I say "talent wars" because that's truly what they are.

At the same time we're facing historic low unemployment rates, Brevard's space, defense and technology sectors are booming — and they need the most qualified workers. The search for talent is twofold: On the one hand, companies are looking for highly skilled engineers and tech workers. On the other, they need technicians and manufacturing workers to build things like rockets and defense and aviation equipment. Not only are our local employers — from L3 Harris Technologies to Northrop Grumman, to SpaceX to even Florida Tech — competing with each other, but they are also competing with the rest of the nation for talent, including tech hubs in places like California and Texas. (9/26)

Cave Exploration Program Prepares Space Explorers for Planetary Missions (Source: ESA)
Astronauts from five space agencies around the world are taking part in ESA’s CAVES training course – Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising human behaviour and performance Skills. Click here. (9/26)

Blue Origin Gets Ready for Next Spaceflights But Might Delay Flying People Until 2020 (Source: GeekWire)
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is laying plans for two more uncrewed tests of its New Shepard suborbital spaceship, but may have to delay its plans to put people on board until next year. The potential for shifting the start of test flights with people came up on Tuesday when Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith met with reporters in Washington, D.C.

Blue Origin has filed plans with the Federal Communications Commission for at least two more New Shepard test flights from its test and launch facility in West Texas. These would be the 12th and 13th flights of the New Shepard test program. On Tuesday, Blue Origin sought reauthorization of the next test flight for a six-month period running from Nov. 1 to next May. The existing authorization is set to expire on Dec. 1, which suggests that the company wants to reserve more time to prepare for the test.

Blue Origin has repeatedly pushed back its predictions for the start of New Shepard flights with people on board. Less than a year ago, for example, Smith told GeekWire that the first crewed flight would take place during the first half of 2019. (9/25)

Hubble Spots a Football-Shaped Planet Leaking Heavy Metals Into Space (Source: Astronomy)
Astronomers just used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to take the temperature of an exoplanet called WASP-121b and discovered that the world is so hot that heavy metals actually leak behind it as it whips about its central star. It’s the first time scientists have seen such a phenomenon.

Since the beginning of the exoplanet era, when astronomers began finding planets outside our solar system, these so-called hot Jupiters have demanded attention. They’re as big or bigger than our planet Jupiter, made of mostly gassy hydrogen and helium, and orbit shockingly close to their stars. These monster planets can take mere hours or days to orbit. And as a result of their clinginess, they can be heated to thousands of degrees.

But WASP-121b is extreme even for its class. The planet has an upper atmosphere some 10 times hotter than any other world yet measured. Astronomers think that intense heat is what’s causing the metals, in addition to lighter materials, to puff up and stream away from the planet. (9/25)

AIA Report Finds Continued Growth for Aerospace, Defense (Source: AIA)
A report from the Aerospace Industries Association highlights the 4.2% growth of the aerospace and defense sector last year, totaling $929 billion. "On the commercial side, experts estimate that production will steadily increase due to a strong backlog," according to AIA. "For defense products, a rise in geopolitical threats has resulted in increased spending on a global scale as allies in foreign markets continue to procure cutting-edge American technology." (9/26)

Soyuz Launches Three to Crowded ISS (Source: CBS)
A Soyuz carrying three people arrived at the International Space Station six hours after its launch Wednesday. A Soyuz rocket carrying the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 9:57 a.m. Eastern. The spacecraft, on a four-orbit approach to the ISS, docked with the station's Zvezda module at 3:42 p.m. On board the Soyuz were Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka, American astronaut Jessica Meir and Emirati astronaut Hazza Ali Almansoori, the first person from the United Arab Emirates to go to space. Their arrival temporarily brings the station's crew to nine. Almansoori will return to Earth Oct. 2 with current ISS crew members Alexey Ovchinin and Nick Hague. (9/25)

Spire Raises $40M for Business Expansion (Source: Space News)
Spire has raised more than $40 million in a new funding round to develop analytics products and enter new markets. The company said the funding came from a mix of strategic partners, including Japanese companies Itochu and Mitsui, and new and existing financial investors. Spire, which operates a constellation of more than 80 satellites that collect weather and tracking data, will use the funding to develop analytics products based on that data, such as weather forecasts tailored to specific industries, as well as move into the Asia-Pacific market. The company expects to be profitable within the next two years and in a position to conduct an IPO. (9/26)

Eutelsat and Clyde Space and Loft Space Plan Cubesat Constellation for IoT (Source: Space News)
Eutelsat is working with AAC Clyde Space and Loft Space on a smallsat constellation for Internet of Things services. AAC Clyde Space will build two 6U cubesats for launch in 2021, while Loft Space will include two Eutelsat payloads on its "condosat" smallsats scheduled for launch in 2020. The satellites and payloads will cost no more than $1.1 million each, Eutelsat said. The satellites will be part of the Eutelsat LEO for Objects system, with a goal of 25 satellites in orbit by 2022. (9/26)

Russia Launches Military Satellite on Soyuz Rocket (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
Russia launched a military satellite on a Soyuz rocket early Thursday. The Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia at 3:46 a.m. Eastern, placing the EKS 3 satellite into an elliptical Molniya orbit. The satellite is part of a series also known as Tundra for missile warning activities. (9/26)

US and Japan Affirm Desire for Collaboration on Lunar Exploration (Source: Space News)
NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA reiterated their desire to cooperate in the exploration of the moon. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, visiting Japan this week, signed a joint statement of cooperation, outlining JAXA's intent to participate in the lunar Gateway and develop lunar surface systems, such as a pressurized rover, for future crewed missions. NASA will also participate in upcoming Japanese robotic lunar missions. JAXA is particularly interested in providing a habitation module for the Gateway as well as logistics support using an advanced version of its HTV cargo spacecraft. (9/26)

Momentus Tests Water Plasma Thruster in Space (Source: Space News)
Momentus has successfully tested its water plasma thruster system in space. The company launched a demonstration satellite, El Camino Real, earlier this year to test the technology it plans to use on its future on-orbit tugs. The company's CEO said the microwave electrothermal plasma technology, which uses water as propellant, is working well on the satellite, although the company will conduct several more months of tests. (9/26)

2nd Interstellar Visitor to Our Solar System Confirmed and Named (Source: CNN)
An unusual object detected streaking across the sky last month was a comet that originated outside our solar system, observations have confirmed, becoming only the second observed interstellar object to cross into our solar system. It has been named 2I/Borisov by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center. And it's anywhere between 1.2 and 10 miles in diameter, astromoners say. Observations by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Solar System Dynamics Group have supported that this comet has the most hyperbolic orbit out of the thousands of known comets. (9/24)

Second Yunhai-1 Lofted by Chinese Long March 2D (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
China launched a new meteorological satellite on September 25 using a Long March-2D launch vehicle. Launch of the second Yunhai-1 satellite took place from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. This was the fifth Chinese orbital launch in less than a month. The Yunhai-1 are a series of meteorological satellites built by Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), possibly based on the CAST2000 platform. According to official information, the satellites are used for observation of atmospheric, marine and space environment, disaster prevention and mitigation, and scientific experiments. (9/24)

First UAE Astronaut Lifts Off With US and Russian Space Station Crew (Source: CollectSpace)
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has now become the 40th country in history to see one of its citizens fly into space with the launch of a crew bound for the International Space Station. Hazzaa AlMansoori, a spaceflight participant flying under a contract between Russia's space agency and the UAE's Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC), lifted off with cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos and astronaut Jessica Meir of NASA on Wednesday (Sep. 25). The three launched on board Russia's Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft at 9:57 a.m. EDT (1457 GMT or 6:57 p.m. local time) atop a Soyuz FG rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. (9/25)

We Need This Futuristic Tech if We're Going to Get Through Deep Space Alive (Source: SyFy Wire)
Sending humans into deep space, even the moon, isn’t as easy as launching a spacecraft and waiting for a call to Houston. You have to figure out how to keep said spacecraft afloat, and said humans alive.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft will be taking off on the space agency's SLS to fly us to the moon for the first time since the Apollo era on upcoming Artemis Missions (is this going to be the Artemis era?). The moon isn’t Orion’s final destination, because it will venture beyond the moon to what NASA says is a distance 1,000 times farther from Earth than the International Space Station. Make that farther than any spacecraft carrying humans, period. That means it needs tech as advanced as its sci-fi-sounding missions. Click here. (9/24)

Dark Matter Mystery: CERN Results Hint at ‘Evidence of New Physics’ (Source: Express)
Dark matter accounts for approximately 85 percent of all the mass density in the known Universe. The elusive substance is “dark”, meaning scientists cannot detect or interact with it in any meaningful way. Now an experiment conducted at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), demonstrates a landmark new technique for capturing and measuring the extremely rare decay of a sub-atomic particle. And their results indicate how precise measurements of this process could hint at new physics, beyond the Standard Model developed in the 1970s. Click here. (9/25)

NASA Wants to Test New Moon Spacesuits on the Space Station in 2023 (Source: Space.com)
If NASA is ever going to send astronauts back to the moon by 2024, it's going to need new spacesuits for lunar exploration.  But before astronauts ever don those suits on the moon, they'll test "walk" them on the International Space Station in 2023, according to the engineer backing the program. NASA's Artemis moon program aims to land the first astronauts at the south pole of the moon in 2024, but the agency's current spacesuit design — called the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or EMU —  is designed for floating spacewalks (also known as extra-vehicular activities or EVAs), not clambering around a rocky, lunar surface. (9/24)

Putin Reveals He Offered to Sell Trump Russia's Hypersonic Missiles (Source: Sputnik)
Earlier, in August, the US officially withdrew from the INF treaty and conducted a ground-based medium-range missile test just a few weeks after. Russian president Putin then ordered the Defence Ministry to formulate an appropriate response to the testing. Vladimir Putin revealed during the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok that he offered to sell Russia's newest weapons to Donald Trump, including a hypersonic missile system, when they met in June this year in Japan. "I told Donald, 'if you want, we'll sell them to you and that's how everything will be balanced right away." (9/6)

Bolton Says Russia 'Stole' US Hypersonic Technology (Source: Space Daily)
The senior White House official made the highly contentious claims while commenting on the recent explosion at a military facility in Russia's Arkhangelsk region involving the testing of an unspecified "new piece of armament," which the US has alleged was a new Russian nuclear-powered cruise missile. Russia's new hypersonic glide vehicle and hypersonic cruise missile systems are "largely" a rip-off of American technology, US National Security Advisor John Bolton has claimed. (8/16)