November 15, 2019

Inspector General Report Says NASA Risks Losing Access to the ISS in 2020 (Source: Space News)
NASA’s inspector general warned in a new report that, because of commercial crew delays, utilization of the International Space Station will drop sharply in 2020 and that NASA runs the risk of losing access entirely by next fall. The Nov. 14 report by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) concluded that, because of continuing delays by both Boeing and SpaceX, neither company is likely to be certified by NASA for regular flights to the station before the summer of 2020.

Official commercial crew program (CCP) schedules reviewed by the OIG state that SpaceX will have its final certification review for its Crew Dragon spacecraft in January 2020, while that review for Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner is scheduled for February. Those reviews, though, would take place only after the successfully completion of both companies’ crewed test flights, which are unlikely to take place before then. (11/15)

LeoSat Suspends Operations (Source: Space News)
Broadband satellite constellation startup LeoSat has suspended operations. Mark Rigolle, CEO of LeoSat, said the company laid off its 13 employees after earlier investors Hispasat and Sky Perfect Jsat declined to put more money into the company in order to complete a $50 million Series A funding round. LeoSat still exists as a legal entity, Rigolle said, and its founders continue to look for new funding, but otherwise the company has effectively ceased operations. LeoSat proposed a constellation of 78 to 108 satellites to provide broadband services and had commitments from potential customers worth up to $2 billion, but could not convince investors to fund the $3 billion constellation. (11/14)

No Guarantee of Space Force Inclusion in Defense Authorization (Source: Space News)
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee says there's no guarantee a final version of a defense authorization bill will establish a Space Force. Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) told reporters Wednesday that negotiations with the Senate to reconcile their separate versions of the National Defense Authorization Act were going "reasonably well." However, he expressed doubts the final version would include language authorizing a Space Force. The Space Force, he said, was a "higher echelon" issue that is proving divisive, even as the House and Senate make progress on lesser issues. Smith said a central concern on both sides is not knowing how much a Space Force will cost and the details of how it will be organized. (11/14)

NASA Authorization Bill Moves Forward (Source: Space News)
The Senate Commerce Committee approved a NASA authorization bill Wednesday. The committee approved the bill, introduced a week earlier, on a voice vote as part of a package that included nearly 20 amendments that made minor changes to the bill. The act's key provisions, including authorizing an extension of the International Space Station to 2030, remained intact. The committee also approved a separate bill renaming NASA's Plum Brook Station in Ohio after Neil Armstrong. (11/14)

India Considers Another Lunar Lander (Source: PTI)
India's space agency ISRO is reportedly considering flying another lunar lander mission in as soon as a year. ISRO sources claim that the agency is considering launching a stand-alone lander mission as soon as November 2020, although there are no details on how the lander could be built so quickly or how much it would cost. A report into the failed landing in September of the Vikram lander, part of the Chandrayaan-2 mission, is ready for final approval by the Indian government, with the expectation the report will then be released to the public. (11/14)

Air Force Funds "Launcher" Small Launcher (Source: Space News)
An Air Force contract is helping another small launch vehicle company. Launcher received $1.5 million from the Air Force during the Space Pitch Day competition in San Francisco earlier this month. That funding will help accelerate development and testing of the company's E-2 rocket engine that will power its small launch vehicle. The company's Rocket-1, scheduled for first flight in 2024 and using five E-2 engines, is designed deliver 773 kilograms to low Earth orbit. (11/14)

China Tests Mars Lander (Source: AP)
China tested the lander it plans to fly to Mars next year. The test Thursday at a site outside Beijing demonstrated the lander's ability to avoid obstacles and land on the Martian surface. The test used a rigging system to simulate the lower gravity on Mars. China plans to fly a lander, carrying a rover, on a mission launching in mid-2020 that will also include a Mars orbiter. (11/14)

Space Contributing Growth to New Zealand Economy (Source: Stuff)
New Zealand's space economy is small but growing. A report prepared by Deloitte for the New Zealand government released Thursday concluded the country's space industry contributed 1.69 billion New Zealand dollars ($1.08 billion) to the country's economy in the last year. That industry is led by Rocket Lab, which builds and launches rockets in the country, but the report also highlighted the role many small businesses play in the overall economy. (11/14)

Martian Methane Mystery Continues (Source: ESA)
The mystery of Martian methane continues. ESA said that its two orbiters, Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, failed to detect any methane in the Martian atmosphere even as NASA's Curiosity Mars orbiter detected its strongest burst of methane yet at the surface. Scientists think the methane burst measured by Curiosity lasted less than a day and was mixed into the atmosphere before the orbiters could pass over the site. (11/14)

Why Dark Matter's No-Show Could Mean a Big Bang Rethink (Source: New Scientist)
We see its effects in how stars move within galaxies, and how galaxies move within galaxy clusters. Without it, we can’t explain how such large collections of matter came to exist, and certainly not how they hang together today. But what it is, we don’t know. Welcome to one of the biggest mysteries in the universe: what makes up most of it. Our best measurements indicate that some 85 per cent of all matter in our universe consists of “dark matter” made of something that isn’t atoms.

Huge underground experiments built to catch glimpses of dark matter particles as they pass through Earth have seen nothing. Particle-smashing experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, which we hoped would create dark matter, haven’t – at least as far as we can tell. The hunt for dark matter was never supposed to be easy. But we didn’t expect it to be this hard.

Dark matter’s no-show means that many possible explanations for it that people like me favoured just a decade ago have now been ruled out. That is forcing us to radically revisit assumptions not only about the nature of dark matter, but also about the early history of our universe. This is the latest twist in a long-running saga: our failure to detect the particles that make up dark matter suggests that the beginning of the universe may have been very different from what we imagined. (11/13)

NASA OIG Report Criticizes NASA Payment Increase to Boeing for Commercial Crew (Source: Space News)
A report Thursday by NASA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) criticized additional payments made to Boeing for commercial crew work. The report said that NASA paid Boeing $287.2 million for "additional flexibilities" in scheduling future CST-100 Starliner missions, in part because of concerns of a gap in crew access. The report concluded that the majority of that additional payment was unnecessary, since NASA could take other steps to mitigate any gap in ISS access. The report also argued that NASA officials felt the additional payments were necessary to keep Boeing in the commercial crew program. Both NASA and Boeing defended the payments, and Boeing said it never considered withdrawing from the program. (11/15)

"Space Domain Awareness" a New Watchword for Air Force (Source: Space News)
For the U.S. Air Force, "space situational awareness" has been replaced by new terminology. A memo last month says that "space domain awareness" (SDA) is the new term the service will use to identify and track objects, reflecting a new mindset that sees space as a domain of warfare. That memo formally defines SDA as "identification, characterization and understanding of any factor, passive or active, associated with the space domain that could affect space operations and thereby impact the security, safety, economy or environment of our nation." (11/15)

Loft Raises $13 Million for Small Satellite Services (Source: Space News)
Loft Orbital has raised $13 million as the startup seeks to expand its "condosat" smallsat services. The company's Series A round was led by Foundation Capital with participation from several other funds, bringing the total raised to date to $20 million. Loft Orbital is developing smallsats that can carry multiple payloads for customers who don't want to operate their own smallsats. The company's first satellite, YAM-2, will launch by the middle of 2020 carrying payloads for five customers. (11/15)

House Committee Hearing Airs Doubts About Artemis (Source: Space News)
A House committee raised doubts about NASA's current approach to returning humans to the moon by 2024. At a hearing this week by the House Science Committee's space subcommittee, members of both parties questioned the agency's existing plans and noted the lack of funding for them so far. Republican members in particular argued for an approach that makes greater use of the SLS over commercial launch vehicles, saying it would be simpler and increase the odds of mission success. The hearing's two witnesses, former astronaut Tom Stafford and retired executive Tom Young, endorsed that alternative, and argued against "experiments" on contracting for the program, like the purchase of commercial services for lunar landers. (11/15)

EchoStar Purchases Smallsats for IoT (Source: Space News)
EchoStar is buying two smallsats to jump-start an Internet of Things (IoT) constellation. The satellites, to be built by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, will be used for an S-band IoT system EchoStar obtained through its acquisition of Helios Wire last month. EchoStar acquired Helios Wire for $26 million and will spend less than $10 million to build and launch the two new satellites. With Helios Wire newly under its control, EchoStar still hasn't decided on how many satellites will be in that constellation, the company's president said recently, as it instead works to secure S-band spectrum rights. (11/15)

A Black Hole Threw a Star Out of the Milky Way Galaxy (Source: New York Times)
There are fastballs, and then there are cosmic fastballs. Now it seems that the strongest arm in our galaxy might belong to a supermassive black hole that lives smack in the middle of the Milky Way. Astronomers recently discovered a star whizzing out of the center of our galaxy at the seriously blinding speed of four million miles an hour. The star, which goes by the typically inscrutable name S5-HVS1, is currently about 29,000 light-years from Earth, streaking through the Grus, or Crane, constellation in the southern sky. It is headed for the darkest, loneliest depths of intergalactic space. (11/14)

New Name Solves a Nasty Problem (Source: TIME)
There was a lot of happy high-fiving on Jan. 1, 2019 when the New Horizons spacecraft flew by the Kupier Belt object known as MU69, which, at 6.6 billion km (4.1 billion miles) from Earth, is the most distant body ever reconnoitered by a spacecraft. The object was nicknamed Ultima Thule, or "beyond the known world," which describes it well and, not insignificantly, sounds kind of cool.

Only it's not. Indeed, it's deeply uncool. Ultima Thule turns out also to be the name of the mythical world that the early 20th-century German group known as the Thule Society claimed was the origin of the Aryan people. And the Thule Society later flowed directly into the German Workers' Party, which later became known as the Nazi party. So: not good. NASA thus wisely (and quickly as these things go), announced that it was changing the official name of MU60 to Arrokoth, or sky in the language of the Native American Powhatan language. A sweet name—and a wise move. (11/15)

Bones on Mars (Source: TIME)
Fossil hunters have been digging up remains of extinct species on Earth for centuries. Now the work is about to begin on Mars. A paper just published in the journal Icarus announced the identification of a ring of mineral deposits in the Jezero crater, which will be the landing site of the Mars 2020 rover, set for launch next year. The ring is rich in carbonates, the stuff of fossils and sea shells. The deposits could wind up being nothing but carbonates—or they could be a whole lot more. We'll know soon enough. (11/15)