October 18, 2019

Russia Looks at January for Launch of New/Old ISS Module (Source: TASS)
Russia hopes to launch a long-delayed ISS module next year. Russian industry sources said the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module will be shipped to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in mid-January, with a launch expected in the summer. The module has suffered extensive technical delays in its development, including the discovery of metal shavings in its fuel system. The module will provide laboratory space on the station's Russian segment as well as life support equipment and a docking port for Progress and Soyuz spacecraft. (10/18)

Space Florida Secures $90M for Bridge and Road Infrastructure at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: WMFE)
Space Florida has secured funding for road improvements near the Kennedy Space Center. The agency said Thursday it finalized a $90 million Department of Transportation grant that will go towards the replacement of an aging bridge on the NASA Causeway leading to KSC. The funding will also go towards widening of the two-lane Space Commerce Way near the center, now home to companies like Blue Origin and OneWeb, and other improvements to address growing traffic in the area. (10/18)

Senate Recognizes NASA "Hidden Figures" (Source: House Science Committee)
The Senate approved Thursday legislation to award medals to some of NASA's "hidden figures." The Senate passed the Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act, with authorizes Congressional Gold Medals to Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan, Christine Darden and other women who supported work at NASA and its predecessor, NACA. Their contributions gained prominence in recent years with the book and movie Hidden Figures. The bill passed the House last month and now goes to the president for his signature. (10/18)

Astronomers Believe Earth-Like Planets Orbited in Ancient Solar Systems (Source: Space.com)
Astronomers studying the remains of ancient solar systems believe they had planets like the Earth. Astronomers observed several "polluted" white dwarfs, so named because their spectra includes heavier elements from planets that once orbited them. Those observations found similar abundances of oxygen as seen in the rocks on Earth and Mars, but not Mercury. "These findings enhance the prospects that there are Earth-like rocky bodies out there," said one of the scientists involved with the study, published Thursday. (10/18)

Political Headwinds Put Moon Plan At Risk, Former Astronaut Warns (Source: Politico)
The United States risks losing the space race if the political leadership in Washington keeps changing exploration goals every time a new Congress or administration takes over, warns a former NASA astronaut who has taken a leadership role in the space industry. “I worry about our ability to stick to a plan,” Sandra Magnus. “We should not keep changing our minds and slowing and starting and stopping and going because other countries -- and I'll talk freely about China -- are going to do these things. China will be going to the moon at some point and we will be ceding our leadership in space.”

"What I worry about is, regardless of whether you say it's 2020, 2024, 2028 or whatever, I worry about our ability to stick to a plan and execute the plan. That's really where my concern is regardless of the timeline, because we as a nation have got to stay committed to these goals. We should not keep changing our minds and slowing and starting and stopping and going because other countries -- and I'll talk freely about China -- are going to do these things." (10/18)

Work Continues at Virginia Spaceport for Rocket Lab Pad (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
Last month Rocket Lab announced the completion of a key milestone regarding the construction of their second launch site at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, which is known as Launch Complex 2 (LC-2). The 66-ton launch platform that supports the Electron rocket during the pre-launch countdown was successfully installed sometime in mid-September, therefore allowing for the installation of the 44-foot long strongback at a later date.

This work is just the latest at Rocket Lab’s newest launch site, which will begin hosting Electron launches from American soil in early 2020. Rocket Lab selected Wallops Flight Facility at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) as their first U.S. launch location in October 2018, and officially broke ground for LC-2 construction in February 2019. Wallops was picked in part due to its low orbital inclination launch abilities, as well as greater range availability for orbital flights.

In the few months since the beginning of construction at the site, over 1,400 cubic yards of concrete has been poured to create the pad on which Electron’s launch platform is currently mounted. LC-2 is intended to mirror Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1, which sees the Electron rocket transported horizontally along the launch ramp and lifted to vertical once at the pad. With the installation of the launch platform, all work at the site will be focused on the integration of the various pad systems that will support Electron launches, such as the propellant farms and electrical systems. Rocket Lab is looking to complete these activities by December 2019. (10/16)

Starlink Launch Will Set a Record for Falcon 9 Booster Reuse (Source: Teslarati)
SpaceX’s next launch will fly on a Falcon 9 Block 5 booster with three flights in its history, making the mission the first time SpaceX will launch the same orbital-class booster four times. Likely attributable to a number of launch customers all coincidentally not ready for flight, SpaceX is in the midst its longest lull between launches since September 2016, three years ago, when Falcon 9 suffered its most recent catastrophic failure. During the lull, Gwynne Shotwell noted that this is the first time in SpaceX’s history where the company is waiting on customers to launch, rather than the other way around. (10/16)

Alternative Earths (Source: Astrobiology)
Timothy Lyons heads up the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s “Alternative Earths” team, in which researchers are characterizing the Earth during different stages in its 4.5-billion-year existence. “We’re looking at Earth’s past to refine our ability to look for biosignatures [the chemical fingerprints of life] beyond our planet and Solar System,” he says. “It is extrasolar planets that interest us most.”

Currently, there are more than 4,000 known exoplanets and thousands more awaiting confirmation. Scientists are developing remote methods to see if those planets are potentially habitable and maybe even inhabited. The signatures of any distant life will most likely be found in the gases belonging to the atmosphere of an exoplanet. By combining data from the geology, chemistry, and biology of Earth’s continents, oceans, and atmospheres from different time periods, the Alternative Earths team is modeling what the atmospheres of these early Earths would have looked like based, in part, on relationships with life in the underlying oceans.

“For more than four billion years, Earth has had oceans, and we’ve had life for most of that time, yet Earth has changed so profoundly throughout its history,” says Lyons. Through the Alternative Earths research program, the team is able to “take this collected knowledge of the different states of our habitable and inhabited planet and extend this understanding higher – literally – to the atmosphere of a distant planet.” (10/15)

What's It Like To Live On The International Space Station? (Source: CNN)
When it comes to business travel, astronauts take the cake. The six space scientists and engineers who live and work in the International Space Station are traveling at a speed of five miles per second -- orbiting Earth once every 92 minutes. As far as we know, they don't earn frequent flyer miles, but they do get to spend an average of six months living and working with a multinational crew in what's arguably the coolest office in the solar system. So what exactly is the International Space Station? And what's it like to live and work 250 miles above the Earth? Click here. (10/18)

An Army of Tiny Robots Could Assemble Huge Structures in Space (Source: Universe Today)
There is the work being pursued by MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA). It is here that graduate student Benjamin Jenett and Professor Neil Gershenfeld (as part of Jenett’s doctoral thesis work) are working on tiny robots that are capable of assembling entire structures. This work could have implications for everything from aircraft and buildings to settlements in space.

Their work is described in a study that recently appeared in the October issue of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. The study was authored by Jenett and Gershenfeld, who were joined by fellow graduate student Amira Abdel-Rahman and Kenneth Cheung – a graduate of MIT and the CBA, who now works at NASA’s Ames Research Center. (10/17)

NASA Eyeing Inflatable Space Lodges for Moon, Mars and Beyond (Source: Reuters)
Dozens of NASA officials and veteran astronauts are wrapping up a review of five space habitat mockups built by different companies. The mockups offer the U.S. space agency ideas for an ideal Gateway - the planned research outpost in lunar orbit that will house and transfer astronauts to the surface of the moon. "The whole point is to define what we like and what we don’t like about these different habitats,” NASA astronaut Mike Gernhardt, principal investigator for the testing campaign, told Reuters.

He and his team were making a final inspection recently in Las Vegas, Nevada at the headquarters of Bigelow Aerospace. Bigelow’s B330 habitat, launched from Earth compacted inside a rocket, is made of a fabric-like material designed to shield inhabitants from deep-space radiation and high-speed space debris. Once docked alongside other Gateway modules in lunar orbit, the habitat unfurls into a two-story, 55-foot-long (16-meter-long) outpost that up to six astronauts could stay in. The lunar space habitat and colonization program is expected to cost over a billion dollars through 2028. (10/17)

China Launches Secret Satellite (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
China launched a secretive satellite Thursday. A Long March 3B lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 11:21 a.m. Eastern and placed the Tongxin Jishu Shiyan Weixing (TJSW) 4 satellite into orbit. Chinese media described TJSW-4 as an experimental communications satellite, but many Western observers speculate it has a military mission of some kind, ranging from missile early warning to signals intelligence. (10/18)

ESA Seeks $14B From Member States (Source: Space News)
The European Space agency will seek nearly $14 billion over the next three years from its member states next month. ESA Director-General Jan Woerner told a news conference Thursday that the proposed budget will be taken up by the ESA Ministerial Council at its meeting in late November in Spain. That budget will include funding for additional Orion service modules and a role in the lunar Gateway and potential funding support for the Ariane 6 and Vega C rockets. (10/18)

NASA Lander Probes Deeper Into Mars (Source: Space News)
An instrument on NASA's Mars InSight lander has made new progress burrowing into the Martian surface. NASA said Thursday that the probe, or "mole," for the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package instrument managed to dig about two centimeters deeper into the surface in the last several days. The mole, designed to go as deep as five meters below the surface to measure the planet's internal heat flow, had been stuck about 30 centimeters deep since March because of a lack of friction with the surrounding soil. (10/18)

Aerojet Rocketdyne and Firefly Announce a Cooperative Agreement (Source: Firefly)
Aerojet Rocketdyne and Firefly Aerospace will combine the capabilities of both companies to provide flexible, sustainable and highly competitive space access solutions. This collaboration will leverage Firefly’s new family of launch vehicles and in-space services with Aerojet Rocketdyne’s experience in propulsion development, additive manufacturing and mission assurance for commercial, national security and exploration missions. (10/18)

Search for Life Beyond Earth Requires Flexibility in our Understanding (Source: SpaceQ)
As space technology improves to look for life beyond Earth, a panel of experts urged that humanity keep itself open about what we might find out there – an important point as a new generation of life-searchers (ranging from Mars 2020 to the James Webb Space Telescope) embark on their cosmic journeys in the early 2020s. The group at the Montreal Space Symposium on Friday (Oct. 11) was a cross-disciplinary set of experts with specialties ranging in everything from education to astrobiology. And as educational consultant Dianea Phillips explained, proper scientific training begins with childhood. Click here. (10/17)

Planned New Rocket Carries Hope for China's Manned Lunar Landing Program (Source: Space Daily)
China's space engineers have made a key step in designing a new generation launch vehicle that could help start China's manned lunar exploration program, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). A pre-study for the carrier rocket, conducted by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) under the CASC, has passed a review by the China Manned Space Agency.

The research, started in 2017, has produced an initial blueprint for the rocket, which will be about 87 meters long and have a takeoff weight of about 2,200 tonnes. It could carry payloads of more than 25 tonnes to the lunar transfer orbit and would have a new escape system to improve astronaut safety. As well as the mature engine and the highly reliable flight control technologies of the Long March-5 and Long March-7 carrier rockets, production of the rocket would feature advanced manufacturing technologies and new materials. (10/17)

Hubble Observes First Confirmed Interstellar Comet (Source: Space Daily)
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers their best look yet at an interstellar visitor - comet 2I/Borisov - whose speed and trajectory indicate it has come from beyond our solar system. This Hubble image, taken on Oct. 12, 2019, is the sharpest view of the comet to date. Hubble reveals a central concentration of dust around the nucleus (which is too small to be seen by Hubble).

Comet 2I/Borisov is only the second such interstellar object known to have passed through the solar system. In 2017, the first identified interstellar visitor, an object officially named 'Oumuamua, swung within 24 million miles of the Sun before racing out of the solar system. "Whereas 'Oumuamua appeared to be a rock, Borisov is really active, more like a normal comet. It's a puzzle why these two are so different," said David Jewitt of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), leader of the Hubble team who observed the comet. (10/17)

UF Scientist at KSC Honored by NASA (Source: UF)
Congratulations to UF’s Dr. Anna-Lisa Paul on receiving the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal this past September! The prestigious award is reserved for individual efforts that are in line with NASA’s mission and have resulted in considerable scientific discovery or resulted in contributions of fundamental importance in their field or significantly improved the understanding of their field.

Dr. Paul is the Interim Director at UF ICBR and Research Professor in the UF Horticultural Sciences, and is also on the faculty of UF’s Program in Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology, and the Genetics Institute. Dr. Paul was recognized for her work suggesting that genetic manipulation can produce plant varieties better adapted to growth in microgravity by eliminating unnecessary environmental responses. For more information about Dr. Paul’s work and the UF Space Plants Lab, click here. (10/17) 

Giant Moon Based Telescopes Will Detect Alien Life and Measure Mountains in Other Solar Systems (Source: Next Big Future)
A 100-meter space telescope on the moon will let us directly observe the height of mountains on exoplanets. A giant moon telescope will let us answer three major questions in astronomy: 1) the detection of biosignatures on habitable exoplanets, 2) the geophysics of exoplanets, and 3) cosmology. Click here. (10/12)

Black Holes Might Not Crush You After All—They Could Be Even Weirder Than That (Source: SyFy Wire)
Just when you thought one of the most bizarre things in space was something that eats massive amounts of light and energy and would probably shred you with its gravitational forces, what if it was something even harder to imagine?

Black holes are supposed to have a singularity—a point that is so small and dense we can’t even fathom it—in the middle of all that swirling light and gas. But what if at least some cosmic phenomena that look like black holes are actually cosmic objects full of dark energy? That is what astrophysicists Kevin Croker and Joel Weiner of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa recently published in a study in The Astrophysical Journal that tries to prove these hypothetical Generic Objects of Dark Energy (GEODEs) exist.

If GEODEs really do exist, with dark energy (which we still don’t completely understand) throwing things everywhere and randomly ripping them apart, it could mean that the rapid expansion of our universe is a result of how mass and energy warp spacetime according to Einstein’s theory of general relativity. “It is now clear that general relativity can observably connect collapsed stars … to the behavior of the universe as a whole, over a thousand billion billion times larger,” Croker said. (10/17)

Mini Gravitational-Wave Detector Could Probe Dark Matter (Source: Discover)
“I think there is more interest in expanding the frequency range in the search for gravitational waves, particularly after the recent exciting LIGO discoveries,” says Andrew Geraci, a physicist at Northwestern and principal investigator on the new detector project. “These sources that are dark matter–related are a bit more speculative—the sources that LIGO found were pretty much expected to exist.”

To try detecting waves from such sources, the Northwestern project will use $1 million from the W. M. Keck Foundation, a U.S. charitable foundation based in Los Angeles, and additional support from the university. After two years of development, the meter-long prototype would operate for a preliminary year and potentially pave the way for a larger detector that could reach 10 meters in length.

Many researchers question whether anything has the energy to be a strong gravitational-wave source at such high frequencies—above 10 kilohertz—says Rana Adhikari, an experimental physicist at the California Institute of Technology, who is not involved in the levitated sensor project. But he adds that the hypothetical sources linked to dark matter could prove the exception: “We may be surprised by all of the exotica the universe produces in the ultrasonic gravitational-wave regime.” (10/1)