December 12, 2019

German Launch Startup Raises $17 Million With Help From Airbus Ventures and an Ex-SpaceX Employee (Source: Space News)
Isar Aerospace, a German startup developing a small launch vehicle, has raised $17 million in a Series A round led by Airbus Ventures and Earlybird Venture Capital. Munich-based Isar Aerospace is developing Spectrum, a two-stage, liquid-fueled rocket designed to launch 1,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit. One of the company’s advisers and investors is Bulent Altan, the co-chief executive of German laser communications startup Mynaric who worked at SpaceX from 2004 to 2014 and returned in 2016 for two-year stint working on SpaceX’s Starlink broadband constellation. (12/12)

Buyer of Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch is Secretive Trump Ally (Source: GeekWire)
The new owner of Stratolaunch, the space venture started by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is Steve Feinberg, a secretive billionaire with close ties to President Donald Trump. In October, Stratolaunch announced that it had transitioned ownership from Allen’s holding company, Vulcan Inc., but did not identify who had bought the company. Now business filings obtained by GeekWire show the new owner to be Cerberus Capital Management, a controversial private equity firm specializing in distressed companies.

Cerberus’ holdings have included GM’s finance division, defense contractor DynCorp and Bushmaster, a manufacturer of AR-15-style rifles. Feinberg, the firm’s co-founder and CEO, donated nearly $1 million to then-candidate Trump in the last week of the 2016 presidential campaign. Eighteen months later, Trump named Feinberg to chair the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, an intelligence oversight panel with access to some of the country’s most closely held secrets. (12/11)

Reborn Stratolaunch Targets Hypersonic Testbed Role (Source: Aviation Week)
Recently revived Stratolaunch has expanded its workforce sevenfold since October when it changed owners, and has announced plans to become a high-speed testbed provider. The company, which has restarted work on the twin-fuselage rocket launching carrier aircraft at its facility in Mojave, California, has grown to 87 employees from 13 only two months ago, company President and CEO Jean Floyd says. (12/11)

Northrop Grumman Plans 2021 OmegA Launch at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Northrop Grumman)
Northrop Grumman announced that Saturn Satellite Networks has selected the OmegA space launch vehicle to launch up to two satellites on the rocket’s inaugural flight scheduled for spring 2021. OmegA will launch from Launch Complex 39B at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport and insert the SSN satellites into a geosynchronous transfer orbit.

Last October, the U.S. Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman a $792 million Launch Services Agreement to complete detailed design and verification of the OmegA launch vehicle and launch sites. “Northrop Grumman designed OmegA to use the most reliable propulsion available—solid propulsion for the boost stages and flight proven RL10 engines for the upper stage—to ensure exceptional mission assurance for our customers,” Precourt added. “Northrop Grumman’s technical expertise is both broad and deep, and we bring unmatched experience, stability and a strong customer focus to every partnership.” (12/12)

Rocket Lab Plans First US Launch at Virginia Spaceport in Mid 2020 (Source: Rocket Lab)
Rocket Lab has today officially opened Launch Complex 2, the company’s first U.S. launch site, and confirmed the inaugural mission from the site will be a dedicated flight for the U.S. Air Force. Located at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia, Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2 represents a new national launch capability for the United States. Construction on the site began in February 2019, with the site completed and ready to support missions just 10 months later.

Designed to support rapid call-up missions, Launch Complex 2 delivers responsive launch capability from home soil for U.S. government small satellites. The ability to deploy satellites to precise orbits in a matter of hours, not months or years, is increasingly important to ensure resilience in space. The U.S. Air Force’s Space Test Program has been announced as the first customer scheduled to launch on an Electron vehicle from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2. The dedicated mission will see a single research and development micro-sat launched from the site in Q2 2020. (12/12)

Blue Origin Launches New Shepard with Experiments, Gets Closer to Crewed Flights (Source: Space News)
Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital vehicle made its first flight in more than seven months Wednesday. The vehicle lifted off at 12:53 p.m. Eastern from the company's West Texas site, reaching a peak altitude of about 105 kilometers on the ten-minute flight. The vehicle carried a number of research and educational payloads, from science experiments to postcards contributed by children. The flight was the first since May for the vehicle, and Blue Origin, which once planned to start flying people this year, acknowledged it will need "a couple more flights" before it's ready to begin crewed flights. (12/12)

Blue Origin Launches Florida Suborbital Payloads (Source: Space News)
The payloads on New Shepard include eight experiments that are part of NASA’s Flight Opportunities program that provides access to suborbital vehicles. Those experiments range from one from the University of Florida to study changes in gene expression in plants during microgravity to the Orbital Syngas Commodity Augmentation Reactor, or OSCAR, from the Kennedy Space Center to test converting trash into a mixture of gases.

Other payloads were more educational in nature. The vehicle carried two student art projects selected in a competition run by Blue Origin and rock band OK Go. It also hosted thousands of postcards submitted by students through the company’s nonprofit arm, Club for the Future, an effort to encourage students to pursue science and engineering careers. The space-flown postcards will be returned to the students after the flight. (12/11)

Busy Week Ahead with ULA and SpaceX Launches at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Florida Today)
SpaceX is targeting no earlier than next week for the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket and communications satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, according to a warning issued to pilots and mariners on Tuesday. The Air Force's 45th Space Wing issued a Launch Hazard Area, or region of the Atlantic Ocean that boats and aircraft will need to vacate, for Monday, Dec. 16. The restricted area around the Cape will be in effect from 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. An exact launch window within that timeframe was not made available.

A launch on Monday would tee up an action-packed week for the Eastern Range: Boeing and United Launch Alliance are targeting no earlier than 6:36 a.m. that Friday for the launch of an uncrewed Starliner capsule on its maiden flight to the International Space Station. If successful, its eight-day stay at the ISS will pave the way for a crewed flight sometime next year. (12/10)

House Bill Authorizes Space Force as Members Warn Air Force to Stay In Line (Source: Space News)
The House passed a defense authorization bill Wednesday as backers of the bill's Space Force provisions issued a warning to the Air Force. The House approved the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by a 377—48 margin, sending the bill on to the Senate. Earlier in the day, the two leading proponents for the Space Force, Reps. Jim Cooper and Mike Rogers, cautioned that the passage of the NDAA is only the first step of a long road, and warned that the Space Force could face significant growing pains. They worry that the Space Force will be vulnerable in its early days when political enemies could try to undermine it, and said they will "watch it like a hawk" as the Air Force moves ahead with the reorganization needed to establish the service. (12/12)

Capella and HawkEye Win NRO Contracts (Source: Space News)
Capella Space and HawkEye 360 have won data integration study contracts from the National Reconnaissance Office. The contracts examine how data from private companies could be incorporated into the government’s geospatial intelligence architecture. Capella Space provides synthetic aperture radar imagery and HawkEye 360 provides radio frequency remote sensing. Those contracts follow four commercial imagery studies previously awarded by the NRO to BlackSky, HySpecIQ, Maxar Technologies and Planet. (12/12)

NASA Plans to Buy Commercial Earth Science Satellite Data (Source: Space News)
NASA intends to buy more commercial Earth observation data. NASA announced plans in 2018 to purchase Earth science data from Maxar, Planet and Spire so that scientists could evaluate its usefulness. The imagery and data were useful but restrictive licenses were a sticking point, agency officials said this week, limiting the ability of researchers to share the data and collaborate with others. NASA plans to purchase additional data under standard scientific use licenses that will allow for more collaboration, but will cost the agency more. NASA is also establishing a process to bring additional vendors into the Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition program. (12/12)

OSTP Seeks Improved Coordination of Earth Science Data Use (Source: Space News)
A plan released this week by the Office of Science and Technology Policy calls for improved coordination of the use of Earth observation data. The U.S. Group on Earth Observations, a subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council, delivered the 2019 National Plan for Civil Earth Observations to Congress this week. Through the plan, the group seeks to improve coordination of activities, including satellite missions and in-situ observations. It calls for greater engagement with the private sector and efforts to assess the value of Earth science data. (12/12)

We Know We’re Made of Stardust. But Did it Come From Red Giants? (Source: Universe Today)
We’ve all heard this one: when you drink a glass of water, that water has already been through a bunch of other people’s digestive tracts. Maybe Attila the Hun’s or Vlad the Impaler’s; maybe even a Tyrannosaurus Rex’s. Well, the same thing is true of stars and matter. All the matter we see around us here on Earth, even our own bodies, has gone through at least one cycle of stellar birth and death, maybe more. But which type of star?

Advances in measuring techniques allow scientists to detect the material the planets formed from, and to determine its origin. It all comes down to isotopes. An isotope is an atom of a given element with the same number of protons in its nucleus, but a different number of neutrons. For example, there are different isotopes of carbon, like C13 and C14. While all carbon isotopes have 6 protons, C13 has 7 neutrons while C14 has 8 neutrons. The mixture of different isotopes in a planet—not just of carbon but of other elements too—is like a fingerprint. And that fingerprint can tell scientists a lot about a body’s origins.

Over the years, scientists have been studying these fingerprints on Earth and in meteorites. Comparisons between the two reveal how long-dead red giant stars have contributed matter to the formation of Earth and everything on it. Including us. Their model shows that even though everything in our Solar System was created from stardust, one type of star contributed most to Earth: red giants, or asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars. These are stars in the same mass range as our Sun which expand into red giants when they deplete their hydrogen. Our own Sun will become one of these in about 4 or 5 billion years. (12/11)

Experts Think There's a Black Hole in Our Solar System (Source: Business Insider)
In 2016, astrophysicists Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown noticed unusual gravitational activity in the outer solar system. They speculated this activity was from a ninth planet situated in the Kuiper belt. But now, astrophysicists James Unwin and Jakub Scholtz propose Planet 9 isn't a planet but actually a primordial black hole. Click here. (12/7) 

Microgravity Will Change How We Make Everything (Source: Bloomberg)
Microgravity can be used to unlock old materials and make new ones in ways that can’t be replicated on Earth. Private companies know this, and are leading the charge toward the next gold rush. But can they turn low Earth orbit into a home for the next industrial revolution? Click here. (10/24)

Spaceflight Inc. Closes 2019 with 3 Successful Launches in One Week Across Three Continents (Source: Space Daily)
Spaceflight, the leading provider of mission management and rideshare integration services, reports it has successfully executed nine missions in 2019, the most rideshare launches the company has performed in one year, representing a 300 percent growth from the previous year. The company ended last year with its historic dedicated rideshare mission, SSO-A, and continued to execute many more firsts in 2019. This includes the most recent accomplishment of manifesting and managing three rideshare launches in one week on three continents.

The final missions of 2019 were SEOPS-2 (ISS SpX-19/NG-12) launched in the U.S., RL-2 (Rocket Lab's "Running Out of Fingers") launched in New Zealand, and PSLV-C48 launched in India. The nine missions in 2019 were executed across four different launch vehicles, including the ISRO PSLV, SpaceX Falcon 9, Rocket Lab Electron and Northrop Grumman Cygnus. (12/12)

Craig Technologies and AstroGrams are “All Systems Go” to the International Space Station (Source: Craig Technologies)
AstroGrams and Craig Technologies have signed an agreement to facilitate and develop payloads to be delivered to the International Space Station. AstroGrams will make use of Craig’s on-orbit external experimental facility hosted on the NanoRacks ISS External Platform. The agreement also covers joint marketing initiatives moving forward. Moonwalker and Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke commented that “We are delighted to have signed this MoU with Craig Technologies, an innovative and proven company, to deliver our payloads to the ISS." (12/11)

NASA Finds Water Ice Just Below the Surface of Mars (Source: Engadget)
To explore the solar system beyond our planet, one important factor is the ability to locate water which can be used for drinking and for creating rocket fuel. To assist in the hunt for water on neighboring Mars, NASA has released a "treasure map" of potential ice locations on the red planet. Researchers created the map of the Martian surface which shows where water ice (so-called because other chemical compounds can freeze) is believed to be located. In some places, the ice is as little as 2.5 centimeters below the surface, making it easily accessible to future visitors. Cool colors represent ice closer to the surface, while warm colors are ice deeper down. (12/12)

India Launches Radar Imaging Satellite (Source: PTI)
India launched a radar imaging satellite and several smallsats early Wednesday. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at 4:55 a.m. Eastern, the second PSLV launch in as many weeks. The rocket placed into orbit its primary payload, the RISAT-2BR1 radar imaging satellite, as well as nine secondary payloads. Those secondary payloads included four smallsats for Spire and a radar imaging microsatellite for Japanese company iQPS. (12/11)

Russia Launches Glonass Navsat (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
Russia launched a Glonass navigation satellite on a Soyuz-2 rocket Wednesday. The Soyuz-2.1b rocket launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia at 3:54 a.m. Eastern carrying a Glonass satellite. The launch, delayed a day for unspecified reasons, was the first from Pad 3 at Site 43 at Plesetsk since a 2002 Soyuz launch failure there. (12/11)

SECAF Sets Up Planning Effort for Space Force Transition (Source: Space News)
The Secretary of the Air Force said the service will "move out smartly" on the establishment of a Space Force. In a statement Tuesday, Barbara Barrett said she was encouraged by the provision in the final version of the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that would create a Space Force within the U.S. Air Force. The service has set up a "launch room," a planning cell where efforts are coordinated with regard to the Space Force organization, public rollout plan and countless other issues that the Air Force will have to sort through as it moves to stand up a separate service. (12/11)

Bridenstine Calls B.S. On Boeing Exploration Upper Stage Claim (Sources: Washington Post, NASA Watch)
In the Senate version of the NASA authorization bill for next year, lawmakers included language dictating that the agency "continue development" of the upper stage so that it could be ready for the third flight of the SLS, or Artemis III, which would be in time to land humans on the moon by 2024. While there is no House version of the bill, or an appropriation, Boeing's early success at pushing a compliant Congress to mandate the new upper stage for the third flight, instead of a later one, as is now planned, could upend NASA's lunar landing plans and put Boeing in the position of redirecting policy that had been set by NASA's leaders, engineers and scientists who have something other than profits as their priorities.

In an interview, Bridenstine said that while the upper stage will be a great asset for NASA some day, he said "any plan that requires an EUS to be ready by 2024 is a plan that reduces the probability of success. It's just not going to be ready... All of our contractors lobby Congress to achieve what is in their best interest even though it may not be in the best interest of the nation," Bridenstine said in an interview. "This is another example of that. My job as NASA administrator is to make sure we do what's right for the country, and for the taxpayer." (12/11)

NASA Negotiating Long-Term Production of SLS Vehicles (Source: Space News)
As NASA marks completion of the first SLS core stage, it's working on a long-term contract it believes will reduce the cost of future vehicles. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said this week the agency is in negotiations with Boeing on a long-term production contract that will seek to lower the cost of future vehicles. Bridenstine said in one interview that while the SLS currently costs $1.6 billion each, the goal is to reduce that cost to about $800 million. While SLS prime contractor Boeing is optimistic about quickly increasing SLS production rates to two vehicles per year, Bridenstine said he was not counting on having that increased production in place by 2024. (12/11)

NASA Plans Use of Small Launchers for Earth Science Missions (Source: Space News)
NASA's Earth science division expects to make greater use of low-cost launch options for future missions. At a town hall meeting during the AGU Fall Meeting this week, NASA officials said they plan to use vehicles like Rocket Lab's Electron for future Earth science smallsat missions, as well as rideshare options and deployment of satellites from the International Space Station. Lowering launch costs for cost-capped small Earth science missions, they noted, frees up funding to buy down risk on the mission itself and increase its science. (12/11)

Russia Plans Two ISS Spacewalks in 2020 (Source: Sputnik)
Russia is planning two spacewalks at the ISS next year, including one delayed from this year. The first spacewalk is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 15 to perform work on the exterior of the Zarya module, while the second is scheduled for October to plan for the removal of the Pirs module, which will be replaced by the new Nauka module late next year. The January spacewalk has been scheduled for last October. (12/11)

OneWeb to Add Grapple Fixtures to Satellites To Allow Servicing and De-Orbit (Source: OneWeb)
OneWeb says it will add a grapple fixture to its satellites to make it easier for them to be serviced or deorbited. OneWeb said it will add a grapple fixture called DogTag from Altius Space Machines on its satellites so that future servicing vehicles can easily grab them while minimizing the chances of producing debris. OneWeb said the decision to add the grapple fixture is part of its broader "Responsible Space" initiative to address concerns about the role satellite megaconstellations will play in the growing population of orbital debris. (12/11)

Second SpaceX Droneship Moved to Florida Port to Support Growing Falcon Launch Manifest (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
A second droneship has joined SpaceX's fleet in Florida. The ship "Just Read the Instructions" arrived at Port Canaveral Tuesday, where another droneship, "Of Course I Still Love You," is based. "Just Read the Instructions" had been based on the West Coast, but moved to Florida after undergoing maintenance in a Louisiana shipyard to support an anticipated increase in launches from Cape Canaveral, such as for the company's Starlink constellation. (12/11)

Kratos Awarded $39 Million Sole-Source Contract for 24-Hour Space Based RF Signal Communication Services (Source: Kratos)
Kratos Defense & Security Solutions has been awarded a $39 million sole-source contract for Geolocation Global Support Services. The award is a five year contract that includes a base year and four one-year options, for a total value of up to $39 million. Work on the initial $7.7M base year contract began on December 1, 2019. Kratos will provide continuous RF monitoring services for government leased bandwidth on commercial satellites and bandwidth on military satellite communications; including bandwidth identified by the Combined Space Operations Center, or CSpOC. (12/6)

This Is Who Congress Wants In Charge of New Hypersonic-Tracking Sensors (Source: C4ISRnet)
Congress wants the Missile Defense Agency to take the lead on developing a space-based sensor layer capable of tracking hypersonic weapons, despite a number of objections made by the Trump administration earlier this year. The administration claimed in a Sept. 4 letter that selecting a lead agency for the sensor layer this early “would limit DoD’s ability to establish the most cost-effective missile defense architecture for the nation,” but the conference committee apparently brushed those concerns aside to place the project squarely in the hands of the MDA in their report on the annual National Defense Authorization Act, released Dec. 9. (12/10)

A New Radar to Track Space Objects is Almost Ready (Source: C4ISRnet)
A new ground-based radar built to detect and track tens of thousands of objects in space has entered a trial period, the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center announced Dec. 10. The move puts the system one step closer to being officially accepted by the Air Force for regular use. Located on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, Space Fence will use advanced solid-state S-band radar technology to track objects as small as small as 10 centimeters in low and medium earth orbit. With that increased capability, the new system will be able to closely follow space objects, maneuvers, launches and more. (12/11)

SpaceWorks Developing RED Phoenix for Hypersonic Testing (Source: SpaceWorks)
SpaceWorks is developing a versatile, recoverable hypersonic test platform called RED-Phoenix under US Air Force AFWERX funding. RED-Phoenix is a test platform for maturing hypersonic technologies, ranging from materials to structures, and advanced sensors. This unique new product leverages the entry systems expertise attained within our Terminal Velocity Aerospace (TVA) brand. Click here. (12/11)

New Horizons Science Instrument Detects Slowing of Solar Wind (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
NASA’s New Horizons‘ Solar Wind at Pluto (SWAP) instrument detected a slowing of the solar wind, the stream of charged particles flowing outward from the Sun, while traveling through the outer solar system. The spacecraft is currently almost 47 AU (astronomical units, with one AU equal to the average Earth-Sun distance) from the Earth and on track to become the fifth probe to leave the solar system, after Pioneers 10 and 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2.

Traveling at supersonic speeds, the solar wind encompasses the heliosphere, a section of space that includes not just the planets but also the outer region of the solar system beyond them. In the outer heliosphere, it interacts with neutral materials from interstellar space and ionizes them, causing them to acquire positive or negative charges. SWAP was put on the spacecraft to measure the strength of the solar wind at Pluto and beyond. It measures and collects data on the solar wind and the ions, known as “interstellar pickup ions,” studying their flux in unprecedented detail. (12/12)

Speculating on North Korea's Next Satellite (Source: Space Daily)
North Korea hasn't launched a satellite since February 2016, and no North Korean satellite has ever functioned properly in orbit. Space analysts have been waiting a long time for another launch attempt, but the only rockets flying from North Korea in recent years have been ballistic missile tests. North Korea has upgraded the infrastructure at its Sohae spaceport and recently conducted an engine test there. Clearly, the stage is set for more activity in the future. But exactly how and when North Korea will continue its space program is a mystery.

One explanation for the lack of activity in recent times is diplomacy. North Korea has been heavily engaged in summitry and other forms of negotiations, including the widely-reported meetings with US President Donald Trump. Putting the space programme on pause during this time could be seen as a gesture of peace, given the controversy generated by every North Korean satellite launch. It also gives North Korea the option of staging a satellite launch as a political gesture when negotiations break down.

But there could also be technical reasons. As previously noted, North Korea has never managed to get any of its satellites to work. None have sent telemetry to Earth. This surely indicates some serious problems with the design and manufacturing of the satellites. It's also possible that North Korea's satellites experienced severe damage due to vibrational and acoustic forces during launch. At least one payload fairing from a North Korean satellite launch has been retrieved by foreign forces. Observers noted that the fairing lacked the sort of acoustic baffles that could protect a satellite from damage during launch. (12/10)

Short-Sighted Mars Colonists Could Find Sex with Earth-Based Humans Lethal (Source: Inverse)
The first colonizers to Mars could forge a schism in the species — one that makes sex with Earth-based humans lethal. “I don’t think there has been nearly as much discussion about what would become of the people that are living in these colonies generations later,” said Scott Solomon, a professor at Rice University. Indeed, Solomon believes that humans could lose their immune systems in the sterile environments of Mars’ colonies. As the divide between Mars-humans and Earth-humans develops, the species experiences a possibly irreversible rift. (12/8)

Space Development Proposed on Mauritius (Source: SpaceLand)
30% shares of SpaceLand City’s 400% return-in-5 years are available to investors, with further benefits from the low-tax regime of OECD-white-listed Mauritius, within the strategic corridor between Africa and South-East Asia. Such revenues will derive from the unique business, with an EBIT of more than $40 million in 5 years, of the first “Space-themed eco-system” with its low-gravity-STEM-inspired research, educational and commercial high-end services.

Its new holistic work & lifestyle will unfold in a dream location with futuristic habitation and work environments eco-friendly matched with tropical forests, sandy beaches and crystal-clear lagoons: designed by senior engineers with chairs in prestigious universities, led by Italian architect Celeste Petraroli (former Olympics media building design supervisor), the City’s NZEB technologies implement state-of-the-art thermal-stabilizing vertical-green facades beautifully coupled with the in-situ reddish stones recalling the beautiful colors of Mars.

The local Martian-like soil is also functional to generate red-planet analogs with amazing testing and educational equipment for the City’s Center of Excellence for Low-G Research, Education and Training. This breath-taking “town of the future”, at 30 minutes from the airport, will also facilitate the preparation of people and hardware for weightless R&D flights and aerospace tourism, including the Indian Ocean islands’ first astronauts to board SpaceLand sub-orbital research flights led by ESA Zero-G Flight Veteran Doct. Carlo Viberti (ASI sub-orbital astronaut-engineer nominee, ASI Prot. CE-CE-2008-132). Click here. (12/11)

IBM and Airbus Send Upgraded Floating AI CIMON To International Space Station (Source: CBR)
“CIMON-2 can, if required, switch from being a scientific assistant to an empathetic conversation partner.” Following a successful trial of IBM and Airbuses space faring AI companion CIMON, an upgrade version of the free floating AI has been launched aboard a rocket bound for the International Space Station, where it will assist the crew in their experiments.

Developed in a collaboration between Airbus and IBM, Crew Interactive Mobile Companion or CIMON is a round device, weighing 11 pounds with IBM’s artificial intelligence Watson technology integrated. The structure is made out of metal and plastic that has been created using 3D printing. CIMON is capable of facial and voice recognition, as well as orienting itself in zero gravity. (12/6)

X Marks the Spot: NASA Selects Site for Asteroid Sample Collection (Source: NASA)
After a year scoping out asteroid Bennu’s boulder-scattered surface, the team leading NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission has officially selected a sample collection site. The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-Rex) mission team concluded a site designated “Nightingale” – located in a crater high in Bennu’s northern hemisphere – is the best spot for the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to snag its sample.

The OSIRIS-REx team spent the past several months evaluating close-range data from four candidate sites in order to identify the best option for the sample collection. The candidate sites – dubbed Sandpiper, Osprey, Kingfisher, and Nightingale – were chosen for investigation because, of all the potential sampling regions on Bennu, these areas pose the fewest hazards to the spacecraft’s safety while still providing the opportunity for great samples to be gathered. (12/12)