December 18, 2019

Space Florida Enters Joint R&D Agreement with Bpifrance (Source: Space Florida)
Today, Space Florida and OneWeb Satellites jointly hosted Mr. Philippe Etienne, the French Ambassador to the United States, at the OneWeb Satellites Manufacturing Facility. At the event, Space Florida and Bpifrance signed a Florida–France Innovation Partnership Agreement. Space Florida President and CEO Frank DiBello and OneWeb Satellites CEO Tony Gingiss and CFO Romain Winzelle welcomed Ambassador Philippe Étienne and a French delegation to Exploration Park for the signing and formal announcement.

The Florida-France Innovation Partnership will allow for more cooperative partnerships and research opportunities in the aerospace and aviation industries between the State of Florida and the Republic of France. As the official representative of the French Government, Ambassador Philippe Étienne was present at the event to witness the signing between Space Florida and Bpifrance. Currently, France’s Aerospace, Defense and Space Sectors are prospering, and a new record year has demonstrated significant growth in international exports. Leading this growth is Airbus Defense & Space, which is the largest European Space Company. (12/17)

Original Firefly Shareholders Sue Firefly’s Markusic, Polyakov Alleging Fraud (Source: Parabolic Arc)
A group of original shareholders in the defunct Firefly Space Systems have accused co-founder and CEO Tom Markusic of fraudulently conspiring with Ukrainian billionaire Maxym Polyakov to force the rocket company into bankruptcy in 2017 and reconstitute it under a nearly identical name without giving them any stake in the new venture.

Markusic “betrayed the trust of his original co-founders and investors and committed fraud to cut them out of his aerospace company. Instead of managing the operations of the Original Firefly, a revolutionary rocket company with endless potential, Markusic schemed with co-defendants Maxym Polyakov and Mark Watt to rob Plaintiffs of their investments and form a new company called Firefly Aerospace, Inc. (the ‘New Firefly’),” the plaintiffs said in a lawsuit.

Firefly Space Systems co-founders Michael Blum and P.J. King filed the complaint on Dec. 5 with fellow investors Steven Begleiter, Lauren McCollum, Green Desert NV, Swing Investments BVBA, Bright Success Capital Ltd., and Wunderkind Space Ltd. The lawsuit accuses Polyakov of aiding and abetting Markusic’s alleged fraud. Their co-defendants include Firefly Aerospace and Polyakov’s investment company, Noosphere Venture Partners. (12/17)

Leidos to Buy Dynetics for $1.65 Billion (Source: Space News)
Leidos announced Tuesday it is acquiring space systems company Dynetics for $1.65 billion. Under the all-cash deal, Dynetics will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Leidos and will bolster the company's presence in Huntsville, where Dynetics is headquartered. About a quarter of Dynetics' revenue comes from work in space systems and hypersonics, including building a stage adapter for the Space Launch System, performing qualification testing for ULA's Vulcan rocket and supplying the propulsion system for Astrobotics' Peregrine lunar lander. (12/18)

Soyuz Launches Rada Reconnaisance Satellite at Kourou Spaceport (Source: Space News)
A Soyuz rocket launched a radar imaging satellite and exoplanet observatory early Wednesday. The Soyuz-Fregat rocket lifted off at 3:54 a.m. Eastern after a one-day delay because of a software issue with the rocket. The rocket's primary payload, the first of the second generation of Cosmo-SkyMed dual-use radar reconnaissance satellites, was released from the rocket 23 minutes after launch. Four other payloads, including ESA's CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite, or CHEOPS, spacecraft to study exoplanets, deployed over the next few hours. The launch was the ninth and final mission for Arianespace in 2019 and the third Soyuz launch from Kourou this year. (12/18)

DARPA Chief Departs in January (Source: Space News)
DARPA Director Steven Walker will leave the agency next month. DARPA announced Tuesday that Walker will resign Jan. 10 to take an unspecified job in the defense industry. Walker has been credited with reinvigorating the agency's hypersonic weapons and space efforts, and was a champion of the Blackjack project to develop a distributed low Earth orbit satellite constellation. DARPA Deputy Director Peter Highnam will assume the role of acting director until a permanent director is appointed. (12/18)

FY2020 Spending Bill Further Study of Space Traffic Management Roles (Source: Space News)
The final fiscal year 2020 spending bill highlighted issues Congress has with the Commerce Department's plans to take over space traffic management work. The report accompanying the bill retained language from the Senate's version of the bill directing the department to commission an independent study of which agency is best suited to handle civil space traffic management work and the various regulatory, funding and other issues associated with that transfer of responsibility from the Defense Department.

The Senate report had expressed frustration with the unwillingness of Commerce Department officials to testify on that topic as well as plans for the Office of Space Commerce. The spending bill rejected a proposal to combine the Office of Space Commerce with a separate office that handles commercial remote sensing licensing, keeping the two offices separate and within NOAA. (12/18)

Russia Working on Means to Destroy Dangerous Asteroids (Source: Sputnik)
Russian scientists are researching technologies which could allow humanity to counteract the threat of dangerous space rocks, Igor Bakaras, head of the Information and Analytical Center for Ensuring the Safety of Space Activities in Near-Earth Outer Space at Rosocosmos's TsNIIMash rocket and spacecraft scientific center, has said.

According to the official, the research includes a variety of proposals on how to destroy or change the orbit of threatening celestial objects, including work involving the concept of kinetic impact, using satellites to move an asteroid out of a dangerous trajectory by using a method known as 'gravitational tug', and the use of various technological solutions for these purposes, including rocket engines and solar sails. (12/13)

Kazakhstan to Upgrade Baikonur Pad for Soyuz-5 Rocket (Source: TASS)
The government of Kazakhstan says it will spend $233 million to upgrade a launch facility at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Askar Zhumagaliev, the Kazakh government minister responsible for aerospace, announced Wednesday the government would commit that funding for the Baiterek project. That effort will modernize existing Zenit launch facilities for use by the new Soyuz-5 medium-class rocket. Baiterek is scheduled to be completed by 2023. The project dates back to 2004, originally to host launches of the Angara rocket. (12/18)

Maxar Counsel Joins Virgin Galactic (Source: Bloomberg)
The former general counsel of Maxar Technologies has joined Virgin Galactic. Michelle Kley will be the general counsel, executive vice president of legal, and corporate secretary of Virgin Galactic Holdings, the publicly traded company established when Virgin Galactic merged with Social Capital Hedosophia earlier this year. Kley had previously been chief legal officer and general counsel for Maxar Technologies, and before that worked for major law firms Morrison & Foerster and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. (12/18)

NASA Again is Nation's Best Agency for Workers (Source: NASA)
NASA is the best place to work in government for the eighth year in a row according to a new survey. The Partnership for Public Service ranked NASA as the best large agency in the federal government based on surveys of its employees. NASA's score of 81.5 in the index was its highest to date and put it well ahead of the second-place large agency, the Department of Health and Human Services. (12/18)

NASA's Plan For A 2024 Moon Landing Just Got Way Less Likely (Source: BuzzFeed)
NASA's proposal to land astronauts on the moon by 2024 faces a 58% funding shortfall in the federal spending bill passed in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, kneecapping space agency plans for a sprint back to the lunar surface. As part of NASA's larger $22.6 billion budget, lawmakers cut the $1.4 billion the space agency had requested to build a lunar lander down to $600 million. The shortfall complicates plans to land NASA astronauts on the lunar surface by 2024, an idea first proposed by Vice President Mike Pence in March.

The NASA budget includes almost exactly the same amount of money as the administration requested, noted Space Policy Online, "but with different priorities than the Trump Administration. Landing astronauts on the Moon by 2024 does not seem to be one of them." In congressional testimony this summer, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said not receiving funding for a lunar lander would be devastating to the moon landing mission called Artemis, which would land the first woman astronaut on the moon. (12/17)

Extra-Solar Systems Get Named (Source: New Scientist)
More that 100 solar systems have new names, thanks to an exoplanet naming contest. The contest, run by the International Astronomical Union, allowed countries to run competitions to name an exoplanet and the star it orbited. A total of 112 countries participated, with winning names selected from mythology, history and geography, among other themes. Ethiopia named its star Buna, after the Amharic word for coffee, and its planet Abol, the name of the first of the three rounds of coffee in traditional coffee ceremonies. The winning star and planet names from the U.S. were Nushagak and Mulchatna, two rivers in Alaska. (12/18)

General Dynamics Awarded $300M to Support Trident Missile Systems for U.S., Britain (Source: UPI)
General Dynamics received a $300 million contract to support Trident missile systems for the United States and Britain. The contract funds work on American and British Trident II fleet ballistic missile submarines, guided missile submarines attack control systems and support equipment rework facilities for the missile systems, according to the announcement. The Trident II D5 missile, first deployed in 1990, is a submarine-launched fleet ballistic missile. It is currently deployed aboard Ohio-class U.S. submarines and British Vanguard-class subs. (12/17)

SpaceX Scraps First Starship Prototype to Make Way for New and Improved Rockets (Source: Teslarati)
A bit less than a month after SpaceX’s first full-scale Starship prototype was partially destroyed during testing, the damaged rocket has been almost completely scrapped to make way for new and improved Starships. On November 20, SpaceX effectively tested the Starship Mk1 – the first full-scale prototype – to destruction, pressurizing the rocket’s tank section (lower half) until it quite literally popped its top. The pressure wave that failure created damaged almost every internal component of the massive vehicle, all but guaranteeing that SpaceX would have to scrap the vehicle and move on to new prototypes.

Those future prototypes will take advantage of the many, many lessons learned from Starhopper’s two test flights and several additional grounded tests, as well as the many learning experiences presented through Starship Mk1’s pathfinder manufacturing, assembly, and test campaign. As is SpaceX’s signature, the company is choosing to learn by building actual hardware and making the inevitable mistakes that come hand in hand with such an eccentric and ambitious program. (12/18)

NASA Selects Jacobs to Continue Environmental Engineering Support Services at Marshall Space Flight Center (Source: Jacobs)
Jacobs was selected by NASA as the sole provider to continue architect-engineer (A-E) environmental engineering services at the Marshall Space Flight Center and other NASA centers and installations. Jacobs has been providing environmental services to the MSFC since 1987. One of ten NASA field centers, MSFC has been the lead for the Space Shuttle main propulsion and external tank; payloads and related crew training; International Space Station design and assembly; computers, networks, and information management; and the Space Launch System. (12/17)

Amazon is Moving its Project Kuiper Satellite Operation to Huge Facility in Redmond (Source: GeekWire)
Amazon announced today that its Project Kuiper satellite operation has outgrown its current office space and is leasing and renovating 219,000 square feet of space in Redmond, Wash. — the same city where one of its chief rivals, SpaceX, has its own satellite operation. The new headquarters facility, spread across two buildings, will include offices and design space, research and development labs and prototype manufacturing facilities, Amazon said today in a news release.

“Renovations on the facility are already underway, and the Kuiper team will move into the new site in 2020,” Amazon said. For what it’s worth, Kuiper HQ will be within a few minutes’ drive from Microsoft’s world headquarters, and within an hour’s drive (on a good day) from the growing HQ for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ other big space venture, Blue Origin, south of Seattle in Kent, Washington. (12/18)

The Largest Scientific Structure Ever Powers Up in Africa (Source: WIRED)
This dish antenna rises seven stories above an ancient seabed in the Karoo, a remote semidesert in South Africa. Later this year it will start scanning the universe for radio waves emanating from charged particles billions of light-years away, probing some of science's deepest questions: Was Einstein right about gravity? What are the origins of magnetism? Are we humans alone?

The 50-foot-wide dish, though, will have friends. It's among the first of up to 3,000 dishes that will eventually spread from South Africa into eight additional African countries. That spiraling array of mid-frequency dishes will join up to 1 million much smaller low-frequency antennas planned for Australia. Combined, they'll form a single observatory called the Square Kilometer Array, the largest scientific structure on the planet, to gather 10.8 million square feet of radio waves. (12/18)

China's Xichang Set for 20 Space Launches in 2020 (Source: Xinhua)
The Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province will host around 20 launch missions in 2020, including two satellites of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), according to an official from the center. Wang Zemin, deputy director of the launch center, made the remarks after China successfully sent two BDS satellites into space from Xichang on Monday. The BDS is a global navigation satellite system independently constructed and operated by China. So far, all BDS satellites were launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. (12/17)