December 15, 2019

Spaceport America Cup Joins Crowdsourcing Platform HeroX to Propel Student Innovation! (Source: Universe Today)
Beginning in 2017, the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA) and Spaceport America came together to launch a competition known as the Spaceport America Cup. This annual event sees academics and industry experts from around the world gather at the world’s first purpose-built spaceport to collaborate, compete, and inspire young people to become the next generation of aerospace engineers.

At the heart of the competition is the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC), where commercial and student teams build and launch-test rockets of their own design. This year’s competition is expected to be very exciting and will see 1,500 international students from over 70 institutions converge on Southern New Mexico this summer to ply their talents and compete for the prestigious Spaceport America Cup!

This will mark the fourth anniversary of the competition and the 15th anniversary of the IREC. It will also be the first year that HeroX – an incentive competition platform co-founded by Peter Diamandis (founder of the XPRIZE Foundation) – will be helping to promote the competition and assist applicants in bringing their skills to the table. (12/14)

The Next Gold Rush Will Take Place in the Cosmos (Source: Washington Post)
The California Gold Rush revealed the fundamental duality in the quest for natural resources; the promise of prosperity is balanced by the potential to unleash intractable problems. Over a century later, a new frontier has emerged as the next site for exploration, and the murky ethical questions that accompany it: space.

Celestial bodies are chock full of valuable materials. According to some estimates, a single asteroid can hold tens of billions of dollars in mineral assets. Today, public and private entities are hard at work trying to determine asteroid composition and figure out how to mine them. Yet these actors are largely working in isolation. What’s more, with few regulations in place, the potential for exploitation and political strife is cause for concern.

These issues mirror storylines in season 4 of the Amazon Prime Video original series The Expanse, which focuses on the social, political and human consequences of mining new cosmic environments. In the upcoming season, a new superhighway has opened allowing humans to travel to thousands of earth-like planets, inhabitable and resource-rich environs. Click here. (12/14)

SpaceX Set to Activate Additional Test Stands Ahead of Busy 2020 (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
SpaceX’s McGregor test facility is about to open two new test stands to accommodate increased Raptor engine production and a busy Falcon 9 manifest in 2020. Recent aerial images of the McGregor Texas-based facility show that both of the test stands are nearly ready for activation – with the first firings expected to occur this month.

The first test stand about to come online is the iconic tripod stand. NASASpaceflight.com reported in October that renovations were underway to modify the tripod which had been sitting idle for the past few years. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk then confirmed in a tweet that the stand was being converted to support vertical Raptor engine firings.

SpaceX has been using two horizontal Raptor test bays to support the engine testing at McGregor thus far. However, the Raptors are not orientated horizontally when the rocket launches. Additionally, “pump shaft wear and drainage” is better in the vertical configuration, according to Musk. Therefore, to increase Raptor performance and conduct tests that more accurately resemble flight, SpaceX is adding a vertical test stand. (12/13)

U.S. Space Policy: The United States Space Force (Source: Voice of America)
“Some people say: are we going to militarize space? And the answer is space has really been a military domain since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. They used, actually, a converted ICBM to do it. So space has been a realm of military activity really since the very beginning. It's been used for reconnaissance. It’s been used for communications. It’s used for navigation. ...

"What space has not been, has been a war-fighting domain. And, what's become different in the last few years, ever since the 2007 anti-satellite test that China conducted, where they destroyed one of their own weather satellites, we've seen a rapid and steady growth in anti-satellite weapons by Russia and China. Most of them ground based. … China and Russia have, of course, observed how dependent we are on space for our military activities, and therefore, they've been building weapons systems to place those capabilities at risk.” (12/12)

Why China’s Next Long March 5 rocket Mission Will Be About Restoring National Pride (Source: South China Morning Post)
A Long March 5 rocket is expected to blast off from a site in southern China this month carrying not only a next-generation communications satellite, but the hope that the mission will restore pride in the programme after a series of setbacks. One of the sources who confirmed the plan said that the atmosphere at Wenchang Space Launch Centre on the northern tip of Hainan Island was “so tense there seems to be a shortage of oxygen”.

The Long March 5 – also known as the CZ-5 – is the largest launch vehicle in China’s space fleet. It can carry 25 tonnes into low Earth orbit, typically 645-1,610km (400-1,000 miles) from the surface. Engineers designed the CZ-5 to carry up to 32 tonnes, but it has not been tested with such a payload. If it could lift off with 32 tonnes, the CZ-5 would carry more than the US’ Delta IV Heavy, Russia’s Proton, and Europe’s Ariane 5.

On its maiden mission in November 2016, the rocket failed to reach the speed required for the early phase of the flight; still, extra booster fuel burned in the final stage lifted its satellite cargo into orbit and allowed China to declare the trip a success. In the second flight a few months later, though, the main engine died minutes after take-off, and the rocket plunged into the sea. (12/14)

US Air Mobility Command Wants to Work With the Space Force. Just Don’t Expect Space-Based Cargo Ops (Source: Defense News)
U.S. Air Mobility Command is excited to work with the Space Force, the new, sixth armed service poised for approval by Congress, the command’s No. 2 officer said Tuesday. But AMC won’t operate from space any time soon. The fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act conference report, which awaits passage by the Senate and the signature of President Donald Trump, would stand up a Space Force by amending U.S. Code Title 10 to include the new branch.

Former AMC commander Gen. Carlton Everhart was enthusiastic about the promise of space, and saw the command as having a potential role in space, executing cargo transport operations there. Specifically, after visiting with SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, Everhart believed that low-cost, reusable rockets could be used to send, receive and protect cargo going to and coming from space within the next decade.

SpaceX executives “tell me that they can go around the globe in 30 minutes with a BFR,” Everhart said in August 2018, referencing the next-generation, reusable rocket under development by the company. “Think about this. Thirty minutes, 150 metric tons [and] less than the cost of a C-5.” But at this point, AMC is not pursuing that idea, Thomas said. “I see no momentum, though, towards looking at space launch as a transportation capability, and thus that becomes an air mobility [mission],” Thomas said. “You can call it cargo movement, but that’s about where the similarities begin to break down. (12/12)

The Next Big Customer Experience From Jeff Bezos (Source: The Atlantic)
If a Jeff Bezos company is in the headlines this time of year, it’s usually Amazon and its exhausting—even dangerous—rush to prepare hundreds of thousands of packages a day. But Bezos would probably prefer you read about a different company of his, the one that is doing, as he has put it, his “most important work”: Blue Origin, his space venture. Blue Origin this week launched a rocket to the edge of space and back, its 12th test flight. The New Shepard rocket—named for Alan Shepard, the first American to go into space—took off from a test site in the middle of the Texas desert, with a gumdrop-shaped capsule on its nose.

Next year, Bezos hopes, people will walk out of that capsule, grinning from ear to ear—the picture of satisfied customers. In the scheme of grandiose plans for space, this one is relatively small. But in 2020, it could make Blue Origin the first company to regularly ferry customers to space, an accomplishment that fits tidily into Bezos’s principle of “customer obsession,” which focuses on the consumer over the competition. And, as with Amazon, Blue Origin’s seemingly simple goal underlies a much more expansive vision. (12/13)

Prady Reunites With 'Big Bang' NASA Veteran for NBC Astronaut Comedy (Source: Hollywood Reporter)
The Big Bang Theory co-creator Bill Prady is returning to space. After collaborating with NASA veteran Mike Massimino on the CBS hit, Prady is looking to the former astronaut for a scripted comedy inspired by his life that has been set up at NBC. The untitled comedy explores what happens when the dream of following in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and becoming an American hero collides with the reality of a cynical world and the life of a divorced dad. NBC has handed out a script order to the half-hour project. (12/13)

Q&A: Vice President Mike Pence on Space Policy (Source: Politico)
Vice President Mike Pence is the Trump administration's point person for revitalizing the space program, including leading the charge for a Space Force, reforming cumbersome regulations and accelerating plans to return American astronauts to the moon by 2024. While Congress appears poised to establish the sixth branch of the military, the moon goal remains far from certain. Some Democrats, including the top House appropriator for NASA, do not support the estimated $30 billion plan, calling it a political ploy.

But Pence predicts they will change their tune once they see American astronauts again launching from American soil early next year aboard new spacecraft developed by Boeing and SpaceX. Click here. (12/13)

Vector Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy (Source: Space News)
Small launch vehicle company Vector filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Dec. 13 as part of an agreement that could see some of its satellite technology assets sold to Lockheed Martin. The company filed a voluntary petition for bankruptcy with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, the state where the company was incorporated. Garvey Spacecraft Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Vector, also filed for Chapter 11 in Delaware at the same time.

Vector had been one of the leading companies in the small launch vehicle market until August, when the company said that a “significant change in financing” led it to pause operations and lay off nearly all of its more than 150 employees. Jim Cantrell, Vector’s chief executive, also left the company at the time. That announcement came just two days after the company won an Air Force launch contract.

The company is currently being funded through “debtor in possession” financing from Lockheed Martin, according to a resolution by Vector’s board of directors included in the filing. Under a Nov. 20 agreement, Lockheed provided Vector with a $500,000 secured loan and proposed purchasing Vector’s assets associated with a satellite program called GalacticSky for no more than $2.5 million. While Vector was best known for its small launch vehicle development efforts, it undertook a separate project called GalacticSky to create software-defined satellites. (12/13)

Energy Department Emphasizing Roles in Supporting Space Industry (Source: Space News)
The Department of Energy, whose interaction with the space industry has largely been in nuclear power systems, is working to broaden its role by emphasizing its overall research capabilities. In a Nov. 21 speech at the SpaceCom Expo here, Paul Dabbar, the Undersecretary of Energy for Science, said the research labs of the department offered capabilities for the space industry that range from quantum computing networks to astronomy and planetary defense. (12/13)

NASA Looks for Ways to Keep Artemis On Track Regardless of Budget Outcome (Source: Space News)
As the fiscal year 2020 appropriations process approaches its endgame, NASA leadership says it will find ways to keep efforts to return humans to the moon by 2024 on track even if the agency doesn’t get all the funding it’s requested. Leaders of the appropriations committees in the House and Senate announced Dec. 12 what they called an agreement “in principle” on passing appropriations bills to fund the federal government through the rest of the 2020 fiscal year. The government is currently operating on a continuing resolution (CR), funding agencies at 2019 levels through Dec. 20.

The announcement offered few specifics about funding levels or even how the bills would be structured. There are 12 separate appropriations bills, such as the commerce, justice and science bill that includes funding for NASA; they could be bundled into a single omnibus spending measure or two or more smaller “minibus” bills.

NASA’s original fiscal year 2020 budget proposal sought $21 billion for the agency, and the administration followed that with an amendment requested an additional $1.6 billion in order to support the 2024 lunar return goal announced after the release of the original proposal. A House bill provided $22.3 billion for NASA, while a Senate bill funded the agency at $22.75 billion. (12/13)

Exos Aerospace Finds Cause of Launch Failure, Targets Next Liftoff for 2020 (Source: Space.com)
After refining its suborbital sounding rocket across multiple launches, Exos Aerospace has found the cause of its October launch failure, according to the company's co-founder. The Suborbital Autonomous Rocket with Guidance (SARGE) sounding rocket (which flies high in the atmosphere) crashed minutes after it lifted off from Spaceport America in New Mexico on Oct. 26. Now, we know what went wrong: A composite part just below the nose cone failed, causing the nose cone to slide down into the rocket, said John Quinn, Exos Aerospace's co-founder and chief operating officer. The booster then flew nearly horizontally, beyond any hope of recovery, he said.

"What's really interesting is, the component that failed was one that we replaced," Quinn said. The replacement was made based on data gathered during the company's third launch, which was successful. But engineers saw some moderate signs of stress in the composite part, so they decided to put in a new piece for the fourth launch. Clearly, that replacement didn't go according to plan. "We don't know whether it was a buckling failure or a weld crack; we don't have any data to prove it," Quinn said.

Exos Aerospace is starting with suborbital launches to manage the risk of flight, gaining direct "lived experience" from these missions before shooting for higher and more ambitious orbital flights. Despite the recent failure, the company is already targeting another launch date for the first quarter of 2020, depending on the progress of the redesign and certain external matters, such as the renewal of its government launch license. (12/14)

Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex Kicks Off Its Holidays in Space (Source: Florida Today)
On the 12th day before Christmas, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex kicked off its "Holidays in Space" to celebrate the end of this year and the past, present and future of human space exploration. Included with daily admission, which is $57 for adults and $47 for children, the event starts every day at 5 p.m. beginning Dec. 13 and lasts through the 31st. (12/13)