December 16, 2019

The Race to Get SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Off the Ground (Source: Seeker)
Demo-2 is one of the most highly anticipated launches in SpaceX’s career because if all goes as planned, it’ll be the first private spacecraft to carry humans to low-Earth orbit. In 2014, Elon Musk’s SpaceX was given $2.6 billion as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew contract—a deal that would help NASA garner its independence from Russia and re-establish the United States as a contender in crewed spaceflight.

But since then, there have been some delays, financially and technically, that have prevented the SpaceX team from getting the Crew Dragon capsule ready for launch. SpaceX did have a successful unmanned demonstration mission, Demo-1, in March 2019 showing off the capsule’s capabilities to go to the International Space Station (ISS) and back. Click here. (12/9)

Magunpo Solid Rocket Motor Test Facility (Source: Beyond Parallel)
The Magunpo Solid Rocket Motor Test Facility is located a few kilometers west of the Hamhung-Hungnam area and along the east coast of North Korea.
December 6 imagery shows minor activity at the facility, including the presence of a small truck and some crates. Although no recent test appears to have taken place (i.e., absence of scarring in the exhaust deflector and healthy surrounding vegetation), the facility appears to be well-maintained and ready for solid rocket motor testing at any time.

A successful test of solid fuel propellant engine, particularly at the east test stand, would denote another major advancement in survivable nuclear weapons capability, and would presumably also be designed to put additional pressure on the U.S. to meet make concessions in negotiations. Increasingly provocative North Korean rhetoric during the past four months and the recent rocket engine test at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground has raised concerns of the likelihood of more aggressive ballistic missile or WMD related actions by North Korea during the next several weeks. Among those actions speculated about is the conducting of a large solid rocket motor test from the Magunpo Solid Rocket Motor Test Facility on the east coast. Click here. (12/13)

Astrobotic Plans New Lunar Logistics HQ in Pittsburgh (Source: Astrobotic)
Astrobotic proudly announces that it will open a new state-of-the-art headquarters for lunar logistics in May 2020. The 47,000 square foot facility in Pittsburgh’s North Side neighborhood of Manchester will house the company’s spacecraft integration cleanrooms, test facilities, lab spaces, rover test labs, payload operations room, and dedicated mission control. Astrobotic’s new headquarters is poised to become the epicenter for America’s return to the Moon. (12/12)

Super-Heavy Rocket's Launch Pad Construction at Vostochny Spaceport Starting in 2022 (Source: TASS)
Preparatory works for construction of the launch complex for a super-heavy carrier rocket at the Vostochny Cosmodrome will start in 2022, according to the presentation of Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin presented at a press conference at the cosmodrome on Monday. It is planned to employ from 1,900 to 4,900 people in the construction, the presentation said.

The assembly and testing facilities and pallet warehouse for the super-heavy rocket will be constructed in 2027, according to the presentation. Rogozin earlier said the Yenisei new super heavy-lift launch vehicle would be assembled using the principle of a technological building kit where each part of the launcher should be an independent flight element. (12/16)

US-India Space Cooperation: Moving Away From the Burden of the Past (Source: ORF)
The single most important factor that the afflicted bilateral relationship was nuclear non-proliferation. India, a non-signatory and an outlier of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and regime found itself locked in a highly frictional and disputatious relationship with Washington. Relations soured starting with the India’s first nuclear test on 1974, US-India cooperation suffered in a core strategic sector in the area civilian nuclear energy.

Space cooperation became a casualty following the launch of India’s first Space Launch Vehicle (SLV-3) in 1980. In 1987, the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) prohibited transfer of dual technologies targeting India as well as several other countries and a spate of sanctions and restriction from Washington’s end ensued. Through the course of the 1980s and the 1990s, India and the United States found themselves entrapped in a non-proliferation narrative. (12/16)

Blue Origin Will Fly Charity Auction Winner's Item of Choice to Space (Source: CollectSpace)
A charity auction is offering an out-of-this-world chance: launch something of yours into outer space. Charitybuzz's annual holiday auction, which offers celebrity encounters, vacation packages and sports experiences to benefit a wide variety of charitable causes, is now accepting bids to send your own chosen item on a suborbital spaceflight. (12/16)

SpaceX, NASA and Boeing Have a Common Problem: Making Sure Their Parachutes Work (Source: Florida Today)
“They seem simple in their design but the sequencing of the parachute, the inflation, their ability to counteract the load from the spacecraft coming in from orbit and the interaction with all of the aerodynamic conditions of the day gets to be very complex," said John Mulholland, Vice President and program manager for commercial crew at Boeing.

And just as engineers are trying to push against limitations in other space technology, parachutes are no different: the demand for lighter and cheaper is ever present. “It costs a lot of money to take something to space so if you can give a program manager or chief engineer 10 pounds back, you’re a hero,” said Ricardo “Koki” Machin, Chief Engineer for NASA's Orion Crew Module Parachute Assembly System.

It’s pretty simple: the lighter the load, the cheaper the flight because less fuel is required. And for commercial companies like SpaceX and Boeing that hope to make additional income by selling empty seats on their capsules to tourists for $50 million to $90 million a pop, every ounce counts. So engineers are testing how light they can make parachutes that are still capable of doing the job. Apollo parachutes were made entirely of nylon. Today’s parachutes are a combination of nylon and Kevlar making them much lighter. (12/16)

With Boeing's No-Bid, Northrop Grumman Wins ICBM Contract (Source: Space News)
Northrop Grumman has won the contract to build a new ICBM by default after Boeing declined to bid. The Air Force confirmed Friday it received only one bid for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program to develop a new ICBM. Northrop Grumman and Boeing were the two contenders, but Boeing said Friday it declined to bid after it concluded that Northrop Grumman's grip on the solid rocket motors market would give it an overwhelming pricing advantage it could not compete against. The Air Force said it would "proceed with an aggressive and effective sole-source negotiation" for a contract to be awarded next year. (12/16)

China Launches Two More NavSats (Source: Xinhua)
China launched another pair of Beidou navigation satellites early today. A Long March 3A rocket lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 2:22 a.m. Eastern and placed two satellites into medium Earth orbit. Chinese officials said they now have 24 Beidou satellites in medium Earth orbits, completing the core of the overall constellation. (12/16)

NASA Plans Artemis Work-Arounds If Budget Slips (Source: Space News)
NASA leadership says it will not use any funding shortfalls as an excuse for not meeting the 2024 goal for returning humans to the moon. In interviews last week, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and Doug Loverro, the NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, vowed to look for creative solutions should NASA not get all of the $1.6 billion in additional Artemis funding it sought in an amendment to its fiscal year 2020 budget request. One example Bridenstine stated was using the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, established for commercial delivery of payloads, as a means of supporting human-rated lander development. Congressional appropriators had been expected to release a final fiscal year 2020 spending package this weekend, but that has been delayed until at least later today. (12/16)

ExoMars Lander Has "50-50 Chance" of Being Ready for Launch Window (Source: The Observer)
The manager of Europe's ExoMars 2020 mission is raising doubts the mission will be ready for launch next summer. In an interview, Pietro Baglioni estimated there was only a "50-50 chance" the ambitious lander and rover mission could make its narrow launch window because of problems with the lander's parachutes. A new round of high-altitude parachute tests is planned for early next year that, if successful, would offer a "tight but plausible timetable" for launching the mission on time. Baglioni was more skeptical that ESA leaders who, in recent weeks, have said they were relatively optimistic the parachute problem would be overcome in time for a 2020 launch. (12/16)

Roscosmos to Begin Creating United State Space Program in 2020 (Source: TASS)
The chief of Russian space corporation Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, said on Monday that the creation of Russia's united state space program would begin in 2020. "Next year, we will move on to creating the united state [space] program," Rogozin told reporters at the Vostochny spaceport in Russia's Far East. He added that the new state program would be designed to unite several federal programs that determine the development of infrastructure, rockets and satellites, but are not linked to each other in terms of funding and timing, which "creates chaos in action." (12/16)

Launch Failures: Management (Source: Space Review)
Launch accident investigations often focus on the technical causes that prevented a rocket’s payload from reaching orbit properly. Wayne Eleazer explains why there are often fundamental managerial causes for many of those technical failures. Click here. (12/16) 
 
A Work In Progress (Source: Space Review)
NASA declared the core stage for the first Space Launch System rocket complete last week. Jeff Foust reports there’s still some more work to do on the core stage before it’s ready for launch, as well as work determining the future of that heavy-lift rocket. Click here. (12/16)
 
The Promise and Challenges of Starlink (Source: Space Review)
SpaceX’s Starlink broadband megaconstellation offers the prospect of improved Internet access worldwide, but also raises problems from orbital debris to impacts on astronomy. Namrata Goswami argues that even the challenges of Starlink can offer opportunities for both SpaceX and others. Click here. (12/16)

SpaceX's Shotwell Reaches Forbes Most-Powerful List (Source: Tesmanian)
Gwynne Shotwell is an admirable woman, she is an Engineer, President and Chief operating officer of SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk. She may well be, one of the best stories of success for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields over the last decade. These fields have a long history of lack of diversity and inclusion, even to this day. Determined against all odds she gained the opportunity to lead in the most innovative industry that will forever change humanity's future.

"You can’t be on the cusp of innovation and at the forefront of technology if you’re wearing blinders. If you don’t have an exploration programme where you’re exploring your world here on Earth, underwater, and in space, then you’re wearing blinders and handicapping yourself." -- Gwynne Shotwell

Shotwell's leadership has earned her a place in Forbes 2019's list of '100 Most Powerful Women,' she is listed as the 55th most powerful woman in the world. With great power comes even greater responsibility, she has worked at SpaceX since the early days in 2002, is responsible for day-to-day operations, and has a vital role in company growth. Under her leadership, SpaceX has grown from a rocket that almost didn't make it to orbit to developing the most technologically advanced orbital-class rockets that have lifted off and returned from space 46 times –a first in the history of space travel! (12/16)

Lunar Astronomy Proposal Takes Aim at Cosmic Dark Ages and Exoplanets (Source: Space.com)
The far side of the moon is an attention grabber for many reasons. A new mission idea capitalizes on those reasons in a project dubbed the Farside Array for Radio Science Investigations of the Dark ages and Exoplanets, shortened to this enlightened abbreviation: FARSIDE. The concept would place a low-radio-frequency interferometric array on the far side of the moon. Jack Burns of the University of Colorado Boulder and Gregg Hallinan of the California Institute of Technology have sketched out a way to execute the mission in a NASA-funded report published last month.

According to those materials, FARSIDE would enable near-continuous monitoring of the nearest stellar systems, letting scientists search for coronal mass ejections and energetic particle events at other stars. The instrument would also be able to detect magnetospheres of the nearest exoplanets that could be habitable. FARSIDE would be able to characterize similar activity in our own solar system as well, from the sun to the outer planets, including the hypothetical Planet Nine. (12/15)

NASA, SpaceX or a Former Astronaut: Who Will Build the Rocket That Takes Us to Mars? (Source: CBC)
It's easy to dream of putting humans on Mars, but designing the spacecraft to actually get there will be no easy feat. One of the open questions about how we'll do it is whether it will be with established rocket technology or something entirely new. Whatever spacecraft makes it to the Red Planet one day will need to be extremely large, able to carry lots of heavy equipment and capable of sustaining a crew for many months on end.

2020’s Industry Milestones: The Year Ahead for the Space Industry (Source: Euroconsult)
The satellite industry is experiencing significant changes that are part of a long term from a legacy GEO satellite-based broadcasting business to more data centric use cases through new satellite architectures. In Euroconsult’s 22th edition of Satellites to be Built and Launched by 2028, the company anticipates an average of 990 satellites will be launched every year, driven by the deployment of constellations and the necessary replacements of commercial GEO satellites, in addition to the introduction of new government space programs revolving around security, manned spaceflight and exploration needs.

As part of this general trend, several milestones are expected in 2020, marking significant progress over the past year. These shortterm events are either company / products related events or general milestones of on-going trends. However, the satellite industry — being no stranger to delays — should realize that several announcements could be subject to further delays and slip into 2021. Click here. (12/16)
 
Another Day, Another Exoplanet, and Scientists Just Can't Keep Up (Source: Space.com)
As finding alien worlds has gotten easier, learning every single detail scientists can has become, perhaps surprisingly, a bit of a waste of precious time of instruments and computers alike. To date, scientists have discovered 4,104 confirmed exoplanets. But for every confirmed planet that astronomers nail down, there are handfuls of maybe-planets in the data, whispers in the data that might come from stars hiccuping or pairs of stars dancing or would-be stars that didn't quite make the cut. And scientists no longer have the resources to analyze every potential planet's identity crisis. (12/16)

Russian Astronauts Will Face Weight Restrictions for Moon Mission Program (Source: Sputnik)
For the past decade, Russia has been working on its "Oryol" (Eagle) space ship intended for a lunar mission. The landing of Russian astronauts on the Moon is scheduled for 2030. Overweight Russian astronauts won't be able to take part in the country's lunar mission aboard the Oryol space ship due to restrictions on the total weight of cargo the spacecraft will deliver to our planet's natural satellite.

According to data provided by the 'Energia' Rocket and Space Corporation to the RIA news agency, the space ship will be able to lift only 420 kg, including 4 crew members and 100 kg of cargo. It means that the weight of each of the astronauts must not exceed 80 kg - with their spacesuits on. Taking into account that the new 'Sokol-M' spacesuit will have a weight of 10 kg, an astronaut cannot therefore be heavier than 70 kg. Currently, candidates for the Russian team of astronauts must have a weight of no less than 50 kg and no more than 90 kg. (12/16)