September 9, 2019

India Finds Lunar Lander (Source: Space News)
ISRO Chairman K. Sivan told Indian media on Sunday that the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter had located its Vikram lander on the surface 500 meters from its planned landing site, but there were few details on the condition of the lander and no communications with it. ISRO hasn't formally commented on the status of the lander since shortly after the landing attempt. (9/8)

Boeing Unveils Small Satellite Line (Source: Space News)
Boeing announced a new line of small GEO satellites that offer high-performance payloads. The 702X series of satellites weigh 1,900 kilograms unfueled, using digital payload technology that reduces the mass of the satellites by half. The new platform is based on the O3b mPower spacecraft it is building for SES’s medium-Earth-orbit constellation of high-throughput satellites. Boeing is the latest company to offer small GEO communications satellites, some as small as a few hundred kilograms, intended for niche opportunities where faster fill rates, smaller geographic footprints, and lower costs are necessary for getting the business case to close. (9/9)

SES Picks SpaceX for Two Launches From Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: SES)
SES has selected SpaceX as a launch partner to deliver its next-generation Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellite constellation into space on board Falcon 9 rockets from Cape Canaveral. The two companies have disrupted the industry in the past when SES became the first to launch a commercial GEO satellite with SpaceX, and later as the first ever payload on a SpaceX reusable rocket. Their next launch, in 2021, will be another one for the records as the revolutionary terabit-scale capabilities of SES’s O3b mPOWER communications system disrupt the industry again. (9/9)

SpaceX Plans to Change Starlink Constellation Orbits (Source: Space News)
SpaceX is proposing a change in the design of its constellation of Starlink satellites. In an FCC filing, SpaceX proposed to increase the number of orbital planes for the constellation from 24 to 72, which the company said will increase launch efficiency and allow it to start services in the continental United States in perhaps half as many launches. SpaceX, which launched its first 60 Starlink satellites in May, said in the filing it expects to carry out "several" more Starlink launches before the end of this year. (9/9)

White House Pressures Congress to Advance Space Force (Source: Space News)
The White House is putting new pressure on Congress to accept its views on establishing a Space Force. The White House released a letter last week sent to leadership of the House and Senate armed services committees about its concerns with their versions of a defense authorization bill. The letter noted that the Senate bill in particular "does not provide the necessary legislative authority to establish the United States Space Force as the sixth branch of the Armed Forces." The letter seeks other changes in language about the Space Force, including removing restrictions on transfer of personnel. The White House also objected to a separate section that gives the Missile Defense Agency authority for new missile warning satellites, arguing that it undermines ongoing efforts by the Space Development Agency. (9/9)

Ross Threatened Firings at NOAA Over Sharpiegate (Source: Parabolic Arc)
The New York Times reports that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross threatened to fire top officials at NOAA unless they backed President Donald Trump’s claim that he was right when he tweeted about Hurricane Dorian threatening Alabama with worse damage than anticipated. Meanwhile, NOAA’s top scientist is investigating whether the statement backing Trump’s claim violates the agency’s scientific integrity rules.

Trump tweeted on Sept. 1 that Alabama would be one of the states hit by the Category 5 storm. The warning was quickly contradicted by the National Weather Service’s office in Birmingham, Alabama. Trump spent much of last week insisting he was right. While giving an update on the storm, Trump displayed a map on which someone had drawn a semi-circle in black ink on an official NOAA map that expanded Dorian’s expected path into Alabama. (9/9)

Satellite Industry Shifts Away From Export Credit Financing (Source: Space News)
Export credit financing, which less than a decade ago was a critical element of satellite industry business plans, has now largely faded from the market as private financing becomes more accessible and affordable. Export credit agencies, or ECAs, like the Export-Import Bank of the United States played a significant role in funding development of commercial satellites through the first half of the decade, particularly for systems that struggled to win financing without the guarantees that such agencies offered.

“The undertaking flat out could not have been accomplished without export credit finance,” said Tom Fitzpatrick, chief financial officer of Iridium, discussing the company’s $3 billion Iridium Next effort during a panel discussion at Euroconsult’s World Satellite Business Week conference here Sept. 9. The company’s financials at the time it started Iridium Next were not strong enough, he said, to support more conventional private funding. (9/9)

NASA Remixed an Ariana Grande Song to Promote its Mission to Put a Woman on the Moon (Source: CNN)
NASA is relying on a bit of star power to educate youth about space and promote its upcoming mission to the moon. Interns for the US space agency remixed Ariana Grande's "NASA," and rewrote the lyrics to promote NASA's work. "As we look forward to sending the first woman and the next man to the Moon by 2024 with our Artemis missions, interns working at NASA's Johnson Space Center remixed Ariana Grande's song 'NASA' to share their excitement for deep space exploration," the space agency said. (9/8)

Avanti to Delist From London Stock Exchange (Source: Space News)
Avanti shareholders approved a proposal to delist the stock of the satellite operator. Shareholders controlling 92% of Avanti’s stock voted in favor of delisting from the London Stock Exchange, well above the 75% threshold for approval. Avanti disclosed plans to delist last month, saying that complying with regulatory requirements imposed on publicly traded companies takes too much time and money without producing benefits. Avanti is the third satellite operator to withdraw from public trading this year, following AsiaSat and Inmarsat. (9/9)

Soyuz Cargo Craft Returns to Earth (Source: Space.com)
A Soyuz spacecraft with no humans, but instead a humanoid robot, returned to Earth Friday. The Soyuz MS-14 undocked from the International Space Station at 2:14 p.m. Eastern Friday, landing in Kazakhstan a little more than three hours later. On board the Soyuz was a humanoid robot known as FEDOR or Skybot F-850, which completed a series of tests on the station. Soyuz MS-14 launched last month to test the use of the Soyuz-2.1a rocket for future Soyuz crewed spacecraft launches. (9/9)

NASA May Wade Into Lunar Legal Debate (Source: Space News)
Increased interest in the moon has renewed debate about the legal regime for space resources. A committee of the NASA Advisory Council, meeting last week, worked on recommendations calling on NASA to work with other U.S. government agencies on views about legal rights to extract and use resources, citing the importance of lunar water ice to the agency's plans to return to the moon sustainably. A 2015 law gave American companies the rights to resources they extracted from celestial bodies, based on the interest in asteroid mining, but views in other countries about such rights are mixed. A United Nations committee will set up a working group next year to study what the legal regime should be for space resources. (9/9)

Xenesis Unveils Laser Comm Plan (Source: Space News)
Laser communications startup Xenesis announced a deal last week to sell optical transceivers. Under the four-year, $212.5 million deal, Hartwell Capitol will distribute Xen-Hub, Xenesis’ optical communications transceiver, in several countries. Xenesis emerged from stealth mode in 2018 with plans to sell a small optical transceiver developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory capable of speeds up to 10 gigabits per second from low Earth orbit satellites to the ground. (9/9)

Russia's RD-180 Engine Could Power NextGen Soyuz Rocket (Source: TASS)
Russia says it will use the RD-180 engine in a new version of the Soyuz rocket. Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin said the Soyuz-6, a medium-class rocket based on the Soyuz-5 already under development, will use RD-180 engine, but didn't state when that vehicle would be ready. The RD-180 currently powers the Atlas 5, which will be phased out in the 2020s as United Launch Alliance transitions to the new Vulcan rocket. (9/9)

Backing NASA's Human Spaceflight Program Could Help Democrats Win Back The White House (Source: Forbes)
You wouldn’t know the nation has a human spaceflight program to read the issue sections of Democratic candidate websites. That is not a good sign for people who believe humanity has a future in the cosmos. Although John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, launched the effort that first placed Americans on the Moon, human spaceflight just isn’t a concern for the party’s current crop of presidential contenders. But it should be, for practical political reasons.

Democrats aren’t likely to win the White House in 2020 unless they secure Florida’s 29 electoral votes, and the Sunshine State’s Space Coast is where every U.S. astronaut mission to orbit has originated. It is where future manned missions to the Moon will originate, and any that go on to Mars (a destination that both Obama and Trump have embraced, at least in principle). So Florida has a big stake in the human spaceflight program. NASA figures it contributes over $2 billion to the state’s economy, and that amount will grow if the Trump plan is carried out.

Supporting NASA’s human spaceflight program gets candidates votes in Florida—not just from over 100,000 aerospace employees in the state, but from suppliers, relatives, retailers and hospitality workers who depend on the Kennedy Space Center for their livelihood. But here’s the thing about Florida that makes it different from other states with a lot of votes in the electoral college: Florida is up for grabs. Statewide elections are often won by only 1% of the vote, meaning either party has a shot at carrying the state. It isn’t like California or Texas, where the state’s electoral college votes are pretty much locked up for one party. Florida is in play for 2020, and a relative handful of votes could decide who wins the state. (9/9)

Can Spaceflight Save the Planet? (Source: Scientific American)
The planet is warming, the oceans are acidifying, the Amazon is burning down, and plastic is snowing on the Arctic. Humanity’s environmental devastation is so severe, experts say, that a global-scale ecological catastrophe is already underway. Even those holding sunnier views would be hard-pressed to deny that our global footprint is presently less a light touch and more a boot stamping on Earth’s face. Against this dark background, one might ask if spending lavish sums to send humans to other worlds is a foolhardy distraction—or a cynical hedge against life’s downward spiral on this one.

Spaceflight, however, has the potential to be more than just a planetary escape hatch for eccentric billionaires. Whether in today’s Earth-orbiting spacecraft or the outposts that may someday be built on the moon and Mars, to exist beyond Earth, we must somehow replicate all of our planet’s life-giving essentials off-world. Technologies that recycle practically everything—that make water, air and food as renewable and self-sustaining as possible—are essential for current and future human spaceflight. (9/9)