November 17, 2019

Spacebit Unveils UK's Lunar Lander-Hopper (Source: Zawya)
A prototype of the UK’s first Lunar lander – the Spacebit ‘Lunar Lander-Hopper’ will be unveiled at the Dubai Airshow, which opens today at DWC’s airshow site. Built by Spacebit, one of the lunar economy’s brightest stars, the ‘Lunar Lander-Hopper’ is due to be developed in the UK, in cooperation with Ukraine's  Yuzhnoye. The Lander-Hopper prototype and a 3D model of the Spider Moon Rover will be displayed by Spacebit on the Yuzhnoye Design Buro stand at the airshow. (11/17)

Spaceport America Brings Promise of Economic Revitalization (Source: Santa Fe New Mexican)
New Mexico long has been dependent on income from oil and gas as a primary source of revenue, and while that has gone up and down over the years, the state is experiencing a tremendous windfall offering opportunities to make investments that will grow other sectors of the economy. Strategic investments will enhance the already thriving aerospace and commercial space industry in the state and create the infrastructure necessary to attract some of the billions projected to be invested in commercial space in the next several decades.

Space may not be the first “tradition” that comes to mind about New Mexico, but the state already has a long history of contributions to space flight. Robert Goddard, known as the “father of modern rocketry,” made his home in Roswell. A rocket testing facility, now called White Sands Missile Range, was created by the government in 1945, is still a major component of U.S. military and space research and testing, and includes a NASA test facility.

Investments in Spaceport America and other space-related infrastructure also will enhance the growth of the already substantial commercial space industry in New Mexico. A recent report by New Space New Mexico identified over 60 companies in the space industry that already make a home in the state. And an initiative called STEM Boomerang is going into its third year of helping young New Mexican professionals looking for good jobs in the tech industry connect with businesses, agencies and research institutions looking for employees. (11/17)

Sentinel for Sea-Level Rise Enters Testing (Source: BBC)
The next satellite tasked with maintaining the "gold standard" measurement of sea-level rise is about to enter final testing. Sentinel-6a will pick up from the long-running Jason series of spacecraft when it launches in November 2020. These missions track the height and shape of Earth's oceans with microwave altimeters. Since 1992, the orbiting instruments have observed sea level go up by an average of 3.2mm per year. This trend is accelerating, however. The most recent five-year period, from 2014 to 2019, has witnessed a 4.8mm/yr increase. (11/15)

Advanced Electric Propulsion System Passes Full-Power Test Milestone (Source: New Atlas)
Aerojet Rocketdyne and NASA's Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) thruster has passed a major milestone, completing its first full-power test. Designed to be used by NASA's Gateway lunar orbital outpost as well as manned and unmanned deep-space missions, the AEPS Hall thruster ran stably at power levels ranging from 4.2 kW to 12.5 kW at the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The AEPS will be a key component of the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) module of Gateway, where they will draw 25 kW from the roll-out solar array (ROSA) assembly, which is capable of generating up to 60 kW. Each of the engines consists of a Xenon Hall thruster, a power processing unit for controlling the electrical power feed, and a Xenon flow controller to throttle the engine's thrust. Backed up by chemical monopropellant thrusters, they will act as the main propulsion and maneuvering system for Gateway. Using 5,000 kg (11,000 lb) of xenon as a propellant, the thrusters are designed to have a service life of 50,000 hours. (11/14)

US Vice President to Boeing, SpaceX: You've Got Until the Spring (Source: Al Jazeera)
United States Vice President Mike Pence has announced that Boeing and SpaceX, the private US aerospace companies contracted to provide NASA's astronauts their ride to the International Space Station (ISS), would begin their Commercial Crew space transport operations within roughly four months. The vice president made his announcement on Thursday at the same time that NASA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a damning report depicting a space agency willing to accept serious delays and to pay Boeing hundreds of millions of dollars for cost overruns.

Pence told a crowd of engineers and scientists working at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, "After years of being out of the launch business, we're going to be back. And before spring arrives next year, we're going to send American astronauts on American rockets, from American soil, back into space. "We're going to have our own platforms to take us back, and we don't need to hitch a ride with the Russians any more," he said.

In light of the OIG report, Pence's deadline puts SpaceX - and more specifically Boeing - on notice that missed deadlines and cost overruns associated with NASA's Commercial Crew Program are no longer acceptable. The OIG report states that delivery of a reliable launch system - rocket and spacecraft - is already two years behind schedule. (11/15)

Blue Origin CEO On Rocketry, Space Tourism and the Relationship with Amazon (Source: CNBC)
Once super secretive, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has been steadily emerging from stealth. Founded in 2000, the space company has been simultaneously working on various initiatives that together speak to its broader vision: human space flight capabilities that will help establish the infrastructure for humanity to colonize space. Blue Origin, which has been almost completely funded by Bezos, has been gearing its suborbital New Shepard space tourism service, which will compete against newly public Virgin Galactic as soon as next year.

It's developing its orbital New Glenn rocket, targeting a first flight in 2021, that it hopes will win national security launch contracts, including the Air Force's already-contested Launch Service Procurement. The company also recently submitted its bid for NASA's lunar lander competition, partnering with well-established space heavyweights Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper, and spearheading the effort as the team's prime contractor. Click here. (11/12)

Scientists Find a New Way to Measure Gravity (Source: Big Think)
You drop something and it falls. That's how you know where is gravity, right? Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, improved upon this age-old test to find a new and potentially more useful way to measure gravity using lasers suspending atoms in midair. The usual approach to measuring gravity involves making something fall, preferably in a long shielded tube or tower, and then measuring it as it flies by with an instrument. While this age-old method connects to our everyday experience of gravity, it has limitations. For one, the opportunity to understand gravitational effects is very brief during such a test. There are also other forces, like magnetic fields, at play, possibly affecting the results.

The new technique developed by a team of researchers, led by physicist Victoria Xu, doesn't rely on making anything fall. Instead it pinpoints the differences in atoms in a superposition state. Superposition is the physics principle that says a system can be in multiple states until it's measured. What the researchers figured out is a process that starts by releasing a cloud of cesium atoms in a small chamber. Then they used flashing lights to split some of them into superposition states. Once the atoms were taken apart in this way, lasers were employed to keep them in fixed positions. (11/16)