December 11, 2019

High Speed Aerospace Transportation Workshop (HSAT) This Week at Midland TX Spaceport (Source: IFG Corp.)
The City of Midland and the Midland Development Corporation (MDC) will host the High Speed Aerospace Transportation (HSAT) Workshop for the second year in a row. The workshop is focused on the technology development of supersonic, hypersonic, and orbital aircraft and spacecraft and corresponding airports, spaceports and markets.

The December 12-13 workshop will host dozens of experts, scientists, academics, regulatory and trade associations, and industry leaders. Attendees will also include UTPB faculty, students, and existing and prospective tenants for the Midland Air and Spaceport Business Park. (12/10)

Space Club Invites Debus Award Nominations (Source: NSCFL)
The National Space Club Florida Committee is accepting nominations for its premier award, the 2020 Dr. Kurt H. Debus Award, for significant contributions to the advancement, awareness, and improvement of aerospace in Florida. The nominee must have made significant contributions to the space industry in Florida through either technical achievement, education, or the management of aerospace related activities.

The nominee must also have been either actively engaged in their working career or have retired from it since the most recently conferred Debus Award. The nominee must be recognized for having been actively engaged in community service as an advocate and supporter of space. The selection criteria and online nomination form are available by direct link on the NSCFL website. Click here. (12/10)

Flood Mitigation a Key Part of Spaceport’s First Phase (Source: Houston Chronicle)
Although Phase 1 of infrastructure construction at the Houston Spaceport at Ellington Airport is only 66 percent complete, one of its most important elements — the on-site detention basin — has already been tested. When Tropical Storm Imelda moved through the Houston area in mid-September, dropping buckets of rain, the basin held the stormwater then slowly released it into nearby Horsepen Bayou over the following 48 hours.

Houston Airport System engineer Devon Tiner said this type of flood mitigation will be important since nearly three-quarters of the 95-acre area for the $17.29 million construction project will be concrete when finished next July. “We’re putting in about 5,950 feet of roadways and utilities to support developers coming in; so at the end of the day that’s about 70 percent (of the site) that’s going to be impervious surface,” he said.

To ensure the surrounding area doesn't flood, the detention basin was built not to city of Houston standards, but to more stringent requirements from the Clear Lake Water Authority, which will service Spaceport. “We’re building a 13.5-acre pond that’s 10 feet deep,” Tiner said. “We designed it to (the water authority’s) standards, which is double what Houston requires.” (12/2)

America is Experiencing a Space Renaissance. And Florida is the Epicenter (Source: WJLA)
It’s been 50 years since NASA sent three men hurtling through space, bound for the moon. But in the decades that have followed, private innovators have found a way to make space exploration faster and cheaper, helping to fuel a space Renaissance in America. Apollo 11 was a giant leap for mankind and a step that cemented this country’s enduring fascination with traveling beyond the clouds. Dale Ketcham, Vice President of Space Florida's Government and External Relations says, "It’s in our DNA. The drive to explore, to look beyond the horizon is part of what makes Americans Americans. I hope it will stay that way."

While the drive to push beyond the horizon space hasn’t dulled over the decades, private industry is now leading the mission. No one knows that better than Tom Markusic, the CEO of Firefly Aerospace, a company some believe could one day be the FedEx of space. He told our Austin, Texas affiliate KEYE-TV, "Everything changed in the last 50 years. We thought it was going to be about governments doing it but it turns out it was going to be about private companies and private people doing it and that’s what’s so exciting about now."

Firefly, a Texas company, is one of several space minded innovators moving to Florida, helping to fuel an American space Renaissance. Markusic said, "In the next 25 years, space is going to be a multi-trillion-dollar business." And Cape Canaveral, with its historical ties and existing infrastructure, has emerged as the epicenter. Ketcham explained, "Before we were just a place. Stuff was built elsewhere, shipped here and we put it in space." Now he says it’s the hub for private companies to do it all themselves. Many have been lured there thanks to Space Florida, which has brokered big deals and brought millions in space development to an area effectively shuttered by the closure of NASA’s shuttle program in 2011. (12/9)

Satellite Mega-Constellations Stir a Debate Over Avoiding Catastrophic Orbital Crashes (Source:
The retired commander of the U.S. Strategic Command says the tens of thousands of satellites that SpaceX, OneWeb and Amazon are planning to put into orbit over the next few years will require a new automated system for space traffic management — and perhaps new satellite hardware requirements as well. Retired Gen. Kevin Chilton laid out his ideas for dealing with potentially catastrophic orbital traffic jams at the University of Washington on Friday, during the inaugural symposium presented by UW’s Space Policy and Research Center.

“We need to develop technologies that will improve space domain awareness, that will enable autonomous systems onboard satellites to automatically maneuver so as to avoid collision with another satellite, or with a known piece of man-made debris,” he said. The issue is expected to become increasingly critical as commercial ventures deploy more satellites into low Earth orbit, or LEO, to widen broadband internet access to the billions of people around the world who are currently underserved. An estimated 2,200 active satellites are in orbit today, but if all the plans come to pass, that figure could go beyond 45,000 in the years ahead. (12/7)

Fixing Broken Satellites in Space Could Save Companies Big Money (Source: The Verge)
When your satellite breaks in space, as DigitalGlobe’s did on Monday, there isn’t an easy way to repair it. Technology that’s currently on the horizon may change that, however, allowing satellite providers to staunch their financial losses and get more out of their investments. For DigitalGlobe, the loss was brutal: an Earth-imaging satellite called WorldView-4, which had clients that include Google Maps. A critical instrument needed to stabilize the spacecraft has stopped working properly. Now, the satellite can’t take decent pictures of Earth for DigitalGlobe’s customers, and there seems to be no way to fix the damage.

WorldView-4 generated $85 million in revenue for Maxar, DigitalGlobe’s parent company, in fiscal year 2018, and the spacecraft is insured for $183 million. (Maxar says it intends to seek all of that money.) But if a servicing company offered a way to repair the satellite in orbit, for tens of millions of dollars, Maxar wouldn’t be facing as big of a financial hole. WorldView-4 just needs a new working gyroscope to get things up and running again. As of now, there’s nothing to be done if a satellite fails in orbit and becomes inoperable. (12/10)

The Only Way Is Up – Matching Aspirations With Action in Space (Source: BFPG)
On the 20th November, NATO Foreign Ministers met in Brussels to prepare for last week’s NATO Summit in London. Much of the noise around the summit has been political – in the UK, it was focussed on how Boris Johnson would nullify the threat an often tactless Donald Trump might pose to his election campaign, and on how Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour could use the NATO visit to their advantage. Further afield, much has been made of a brewing France vs Germany fall-out, after Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly (albeit not directly) rebuked French President Emmanuel Macron for his claims that NATO was suffering from ‘brain-death.’

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the discussion of concrete NATO policy – and British foreign policy at all – has fallen by the way when it comes to the popular press – in favour of debate surrounding the long-term viability of NATO. The NATO Summit in London on the 3rd and 4th was dominated by coverage of the splits in the NATO family, from Trump vs Trudeau to Macron vs the world. In a world in which the international liberal order is fracturing, there are major big picture questions which need answering.

But key policy changes need addressing as well – and space is increasingly becoming an important aspect of foreign policy for NATO and its member states. Here in the UK, in particular, we’ve been dreaming big on post-Brexit space plans. The Conservatives have made a pledge to establish the UK’s first ‘Space Command’ in their manifesto, and several Ministers have made calls for the UK to embrace space as a ‘new frontier’ in foreign policy. Spaceports have been proposed, and plans for new satellite systems drafted – but the truth is that Britain must do even more to make our actions match our aspirations. (12/9)

SpaceX Announces Second Starlink Satellite Launch in Two Weeks (Source: Teslarati)
SpaceX has announced its second planned Starlink satellite in two weeks, sticking to a trend that could see the company launch more than a thousand communications satellites over the next 12 months. Barely two weeks after SpaceX opened media accreditation for Starlink-2, the second launch of finalized ‘v1.0’ satellites and third dedicated launch overall, the company has announced that that late-December mission will be followed by another Starlink launch in January 2020. This tracks almost exactly with SpaceX’s reported plans for as many as 24 dedicated Starlink launches in 2020, a feat that would singlehandedly break SpaceX’s current record of 21 launches performed in a single year. (12/10)