October 26, 2019

US Customers Accept 2nd Batch of Russian-Made RD-180 Rocket Engines (Source: TASS)
US customers accepted the 2nd batch of RD-180 space rocket engines produced in Russia, Energomash Research and Production Association said. "The commission for the acceptance of a new batch of RD-180 engines produced at the enterprise has successfully completed its work at Energomash. Representatives of Pratt & Whitney, United Launch Alliance and RD AMROSS signed certificates for three commercial engines," the statement says. (10/25)

New VIPER Lunar Rover to Map Water Ice on the Moon (Source: NASA)
NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, is a mobile robot that will roam around the Moon’s south pole looking for water ice in December 2022. The VIPER mission will give us surface-level detail of where the water is and how much is available for us to use. This will bring us a significant step closer towards NASA’s ultimate goal of a sustainable, long-term presence on the Moon – making it possible to eventually explore Mars and beyond. (10/25)

An Asteroid the Size of a Skyscraper Just Flew by Earth (Source: Space.com)
An enormous asteroid flew by Earth today (Oct. 25), and you can watch it zip by in a video from the Virtual Telescope Project. Asteroid 1998 HL1 was 3.86 million miles (6.21 million kilometers) away from Earth — about 10 times the average distance to the moon — when it makes its closest approach at 1:17 p.m. EDT, according to NASA. (10/25)

Bill Nye: It's Space Settlement, Not Colonization (Source: Space.com)
As we prepare to expand our reach in the solar system, we should pay attention to the language we use to describe that endeavor, Bill Nye said. Nye, the former TV "Science Guy" who heads the nonprofit Planetary Society, thinks we should frame our coming exploration activities in a positive linguistic light. "In the planetary community, we discourage the use of the verb 'colonize.' We prefer 'settle,'" Nye said. "Colonizing has gotten a bad rap, understandably." (10/25)

UAE Plans to Expand Astronaut Corps (Source: Space News)
On the heels of the first flight of an Emirati in space, the United Arab Emirates’ space agency expects to soon expand its small corps of astronauts in anticipation of future missions in the next several years. Salem Al Marri, assistant director general and astronaut program manager at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre, said the UAE Space Agency was considering a second astronaut selection round to add to its two-person team. (10/25)

NASA Likely to Buy Soyuz Seats, Defer Japanese Astronaut Flight (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
With lingering uncertainly about when new commercial crew spaceships will be ready to launch humans, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Thursday the space agency will replace a Japanese astronaut with a U.S. space flier on the next Russian Soyuz launch to the Space Station. He added that it remains in NASA’s interests to pay Russia for one or more additional Soyuz seats next year to ensure the station remains continuously staffed with at least one American.

Bridenstine said ensuring U.S. astronaut access to the space station is paramount as NASA navigates an uncertain transition from relying on Russian Soyuz vehicles for crew transportation to having a mixed fleet of three human-rated spacecraft — Russia’s Soyuz, Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. The last confirmed Soyuz seat under NASA’s control will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a mission in April 2020, with a landing scheduled next October. Akihiko Hoshide, a Japanese astronaut, was training for the launch on the Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft

Bridenstine said a U.S. astronaut is now expected to take that seat, which would have allowed Hoshide to be on the station during next year’s Summer Olympics in Tokyo. NASA arranges transportation for European, Japanese and Canadian astronauts to the space station, with each partner receiving crew access commensurate with their financial investment in the program. “It’s an American seat,” Bridenstine said. “Of course, we have a great partnership with JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and we would love to be able to have JAXA with us there, but because we haven’t had commercial crew ready yet, we want to make sure that we don’t de-crew. (10/25)

NASA Highlights Woman on the Moon with New Artemis Program Art (Source: Space.com)
NASA has drawn a woman on the moon to represent its effort to land the first American woman on the moon. The space agency on Wednesday (Oct. 23) revealed new artwork symbolizing its Artemis program to send the first humans to the moon since the Apollo astronauts 50 years ago. In Greek mythology, the goddess of the moon, Artemis, was the twin sister of Apollo.

"The Artemis logo looks, quite frankly, like a modern version of the traditional Apollo logo," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, speaking to an audience of young professionals and college students as part of a panel discussion at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC on Wednesday. "The new Artemis logo came from that inspiration and if you look at the [Apollo] logo, you can tell we are going from the Earth, in fact, to the moon." Click here. (10/25)

The World’s Largest 3D Metal Printer Is Churning Out Rockets (Source: IEEE Spectrum)
In October 2018, I stood in a small room and watched a massive robotic arm move elegantly around a large metal shape, which was rapidly growing larger as I gazed at it. The arm precisely deposited a stream of liquid aluminum to build up the structure, layer by layer, while two other arms waited, with finishing tools at the ready. I was standing in the Los Angeles headquarters of the upstart rocket company Relativity Space, staring in awe as a piece of its first launch vehicle, the Terran 1 rocket, came into existence.

I had only recently arrived at Relativity as the first engineer hired for its avionics department. Relativity offered quite a change of scenery from my prior jobs, even though the other companies I’d worked for also built rockets. But they did so in massive rooms, measuring thousands of square meters, enough to hold ranks of bulky manufacturing tools such as metal rollers, dome spinners, and friction-stir welding machines. At Relativity, though, most of the launch vehicle is built inside the small room where I was standing, which measures just 9 meters across.

The room contained Stargate, the largest metal 3D printer in the world. Relativity invented the Stargate printer for the audacious purpose of 3D printing an entire rocket that’s intended to fly to low Earth orbit. We hope our rockets will eventually fly even farther. Perhaps one day we’ll ship our 3D printers to Mars, so rockets can be constructed on the Red Planet. From there, who knows where they’ll go. (10/25)

SpaceX President on Blue Origin: ‘They Have a Billion Dollars of Free Money Every Year’ (Source: CNBC)
SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell knocked competitor Blue Origin in candid comments on Friday, giving her take on why Elon Musk’s rockets have launched hundreds of spacecraft while Jeff Bezos’ has not. “They’re two years older than us, and they have yet to reach orbit,” Shotwell said during the Baron Fund’s annual investment conference at the Metropolitan Opera House. “They have a billion dollars of free money every year from [Bezos].”

Billionaire investor Ron Baron asked Shotwell why Blue Origin, which is owned and funded almost entirely by the Amazon founder, hadn’t accomplished what SpaceX has. Baron’s mutual fund owns about $150 million in SpaceX shares and manages over $30 billion in total assets. Bezos and Musk both founded their respective companies in the early 2000s to explore space and push the limits of rocketry. SpaceX has sent three different rocket designs to orbit, each multiple times, and is building a fourth.

Blue Origin, on the other hand, has only flown suborbital rocket flights of at altitudes of a few hundred thousand feet. It’s in the early stages of assembling its first rocket capable of reaching orbit. Baron pointed out that Bezos, as the world’s wealthiest man, has more than enough money, asking Shotwell, “So why hasn’t he done this?” “I think engineers think better when they’re pushed hardest to do great things in a very short period of time, with very few resources. Not when you have twenty years,” Shotwell said. “I don’t think there’s a motivation or a drive there.” (10/25)