December 23, 2019

The Year of Commercial Crew Comes to an End, Without Crew (Source: Space Review)
NASA entered 2019 hopeful that it would be able to start launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil before year’s end. Jeff Foust reports that, as the year comes to an end, commercial crew faces continued challenges, highlighted by the problems on the recent test flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner. Click here. (12/23)
 
Nuking Moscow with a Space Shuttle (Source: Space Review)
During the 1970s, the Soviet Union feared that the Space Shuttle could be used as a bomber to drop nuclear weapons on Moscow with little warning. Dwayne Day describes how a Russian researcher has turned up documents explaining how Soviet leaders came to that conclusion. Click here. (12/23)
 
What’s in a Name? (Source: Space Review)
NASA recently announced that the Kuiper Belt object that New Horizons flew by at the beginning of the year would be formally known as Arrokoth, after provisionally, and controversially, being called Ultima Thule. Andrew Rader discusses how this is only one of many challenges facing the naming of celestial bodies and features on them. Click here. (12/23)
 
The Rocketeer Who Never Was (Source: Space Review)
The first American to fly a rocket-powered aircraft was William Swan in 1931. Mark Wade examines the mysterious life of Swan, including a disappearance at the site of a present-day launch site. Click here. (12/23)

Space Florida Reflects on 2019 News and Successes (Source: Space Florida)
As 2019 draws to a close, Space Florida looks back on an extraordinary year of growth of the aerospace industry in Florida. And the Cape Canaveral Spaceport is emerging as the world’s premier space transportation hub and global leader in enabling commercial space industry expansion. Click here. (12/23)

Astronomers Have Found Another Earth-Size Planet Practically Next-Door to Us (Source: Science Alert)
Our neighborhood in space is turning out to be quite the populous planet precinct. Astronomers have found a new exoplanet just a little bit bigger than Earth, orbiting a red dwarf star just 66.5 light-years away. It's an excellent candidate, they say, to help fill our vast knowledge gap about the small, rocky planet population of our Milky Way galaxy. Our detection ability and knowledge of exoplanets has practically exploded since the first discovery was published in 1992. At time of writing, over 4,100 exoplanets have been confirmed in our galaxy, and we now have a much deeper understanding of planetary systems and how they form and evolve. (12/21)

Why Defense Contractor Leidos Is Spending $1.7 Billion for Dynetics (Source: Motley Fool)
Leidos Holdings, which has used M&A to build the defense industry's largest IT and services business, is on the warpath again, having agreed to buy privately owned Dynetics for $1.65 billion in cash. The deal should help Leidos keep pace with rivals who have been clawing closer in terms of revenue, and it opens intriguing new growth opportunities for the company.

The deal, priced at about 15 times EBITDA and more than 1.5 times sales, is not cheap, but Leidos is getting one of the crown jewels of defense R&D. Leidos, which in the last half decade has vaulted from the second tier of government services companies to an industry leader, is signaling to the markets that its ambitions go well beyond doing IT and engineering work. (12/21)

Apple Plans Integrating Satellite Comms Into Products (Source: Bloomberg)
Apple reportedly has a "secret" team working to build satellite communications technologies into its products. The company has about a dozen engineers working on ways to have devices like iPhones communicate with satellites, although it wasn't clear if Apple planned to develop its own satellite constellation or use systems from other companies. Apple hired two of the founders of the former Skybox Imaging in 2017, which led to speculation at the time that Apple would pursue its own satellite system. (12/22)

Companies Lobby Against Amazon Spectrum Request (Source: Motherboard)
SpaceX and other constellation companies are opposing Amazon's bid for spectrum. Amazon filed a request with the FCC earlier this year to waive rules so it can get access to spectrum for its Project Kuiper constellation after the FCC awarded licenses to nine other companies. Companies that have those licenses, including OneWeb and SpaceX, are lobbying the FCC to deny that petition. SpaceX, in one filing, said that allowing Amazon to circumvent the licensing process "would undermine confidence" in FCC procedures and have a "significant detrimental impact" on SpaceX. (12/22)

Canada's SAR Satellites Operational (Source: SpaceQ)
Canada's newest synthetic aperture radar satellites are now operational. The Canadian Space Agency announced last week that the three satellites of the Radarsat Constellation Mission are now fully operational. The satellites launched on June on a Falcon 9 and have since been moved to their final orbits while engineers completed tests of their radar imaging systems. The mission has a formal lifetime of seven years, but with an expectation that the spacecraft will operate for much longer. (12/22)

India Plans 2020 Test of Crew Capsule (Source: Times of India)
India plans to perform an uncrewed test of its human spaceflight system next year. Among the goals the Indian space agency ISRO has for 2020, chairman K. Sivan said, is a test flight of its Ganganyaan spacecraft that will be later used to fly people. Other milestones includes the launch of the Aditya L1 solar science mission, the first flight of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle and tests of reusable launch vehicle technology. (12/22)

SpaceX Cleared in Sea Turtle Deaths at Texas Site (Source: El Rrun Rrun)
Dr. Brian Stacy, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has jurisdiction over sea turtles in the Gulf  – and the top NOAA Fisheries veterinarian/sea turtle pathologist – says necropsies on scores of stranded green turtles found off Boca chica Beach are consistent with drowning, as expected with capture in gillnets and has so far ruled out SpaceX pressurization tests as the cause.

Image result for spaceX failureHe said that although investigation of the green turtle strandings in the Boca Chica Beach area is ongoing, necropsy findings thus far exclude chemical poisoning resulting from the November 20 failed SpaceX Mk1 Starship prototype pressurization exercise that resulted in chemicals carried over the beach by strong winds. More than 60 dead turtles were found stranded off Boca Chica and South Padre Island beaches after November 20, leading some to suspect that the failed SpaceX tests may have contribute to the killoff. (12/9)

The Return to Venus and What It Means for Earth (Source: NASA)
Venus could tell us something vitally important about our planet: what happened to the superheated climate of our planetary twin, and what does it mean for life on Earth? Venus isn't the closest planet to the Sun, but it is the hottest in our solar system. Between the intense heat (900 degrees Fahrenheit heat, or 480 degrees Celsius), the corrosive sulfuric clouds and a crushing atmosphere that is 90 times denser than Earth's, landing a spacecraft there is incredibly challenging. Of the nine Soviet probes that achieved the feat, none lasted longer than 127 minutes.

From the relative safety of space, an orbiter could use radar and near-infrared spectroscopy to peer beneath the cloud layers, measure landscape changes over time, and determine whether or not the ground moves. It could look for indicators of past water as well as volcanic activity and other forces that may have shaped the planet. NASA's Sue Smrekar, who is working on an orbiter proposal called VERITAS, doesn't think that Venus has plate tectonics the way Earth does. But she sees possible hints of subduction - what happens when two plates converge and one slides beneath the other. More data would help. (12/11)

Boeing Starliner Lands Safely in New Mexico After Mission Cut Short (Source: Space News)
Boeing's CST-100 Starliner commercial crew spacecraft landed in New Mexico early Sunday, ending a mission truncated by a timer problem. The spacecraft, on an uncrewed test flight, landed at White Sands Missile Range at 7:58 a.m. Eastern, a little more than two days after its launch from Florida. The spacecraft was scheduled to remain in space for more than a week, docking Saturday with the International Space Station, but that docking was canceled after the spacecraft suffered problems immediately after spacecraft separation caused by a mission elapsed timer that was not properly initialized prior to liftoff.

NASA and Boeing said that timer problem caused the spacecraft to think it was in the wrong phase of the mission and used up significant propellant firing attitude control thrusters. Other aspects of the mission, including the landing, went well, but NASA said it would take time to analyze the data from the mission before deciding if Boeing could proceed with a crewed flight test. (12/22)

Trump Signs Bill Creating Space Force (Source: Space News)
President Trump signed legislation Friday formally establishing the U.S. Space Force. Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act at a ceremony at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Among the bill's provisions is language formally establishing the Space Force within the U.S. Air Force by renaming Air Force Space Command as the U.S. Space Force. Air Force Gen. John "Jay" Raymond, the commander of U.S. Space Command, will serve as the first Chief of Space Operations, the chief of staff of the Space Force, and will become a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by next December. As many as 16,000 military and civilian personnel from Air Force Space Command will be assigned to the U.S. Space Force, but Congress did not authorize hiring new personnel. (12/21)

Air Force Bases Could Become Space Force Bases (Source: Space News)
That Space Force transition could include renaming some Air Force bases as Space Force bases. Gen. Raymond said the service does have a plan to rename Air Force bases principally involved in space operations, which could turn sites like Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado to Peterson Space Force Base. He noted that even if such bases are renamed, the Space Force will continue to heavily rely on the Air Force to operate and maintain them. The idea of renaming Air Force bases is one of several initiatives proposed by the Space Force Planning Task Force, a group of about 40 people who have spent the last eight months preparing to establish a Space Force if Congress authorized it. (12/20)

Ex-Im Bank Re-Authorized for Seven Years (Source: Space News)
Language in a spending bill signed Friday extends the authorization for the Export-Import Bank by seven years. That extension is the longest in the history of the bank, which saw its authorization lapse for a time in 2015 and only earlier this year regained a quorum of board members needed to approve large deals. The bill also enables the bank to keep lending in the absence of a full board of directors by allowing other government officials to temporarily fill vacancies in order to maintain a quorum. While export credit financing by Ex-Im and others had become a key part of the space industry in the first half of the decade, private bankers say export credit has since become less popular in the space industry because private capital has become more plentiful. (12/22)

China Readies Long March 5 Return-to-Flight (Source: Xinhua)
A Long March 5 rocket rolled out to the pad Saturday ahead of its long-awaited return to flight. The heavy-lift rocket moved out to the pad at the Wenchang Space Launch Center on the island of Hainan ahead of a launch expected late this week. The launch, carrying an experimental communications satellite, will be the third for the Long March 5 and the first since a failure in July 2017. (12/22)

Boeing’s Epic Bad Year Ends With Space Dud (Source: Bloomberg)
The launch of the first Boeing Co. Starliner started promisingly enough, with CEO Dennis Muilenburg on hand to cheer as a rocket blasted the capsule into the pre-dawn Florida sky to pioneer a new era in space flight. But as the unmanned spacecraft entered orbit, it was embarrassingly off course for a planned rendezvous with the International Space Station. While the Starliner made a successful landing in New Mexico on Sunday, its overall failure to reach the orbiting lab capped an atrocious year for Boeing and its embattled chief executive officer.

The Starliner’s mishap delivered the latest blow to Boeing’s century-old legacy of engineering prowess, adding to the pressure on the board as 2019 draws to a close. The flop came days after Muilenburg’s handling of the 737 Max disasters drew fire from three leading business publications, with the Wall Street Journal and Economist going so far as calling for his ouster. The Max was grounded in March after two of the planes crashed, killing 346 people. (12/21)

Boeing Fires C.E.O. Dennis Muilenburg (Source: New York Times)
Boeing on Monday fired its chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, whose handling of the company’s 737 Max crisis had angered lawmakers, airlines, regulators and victims’ families. The company said Dave Calhoun, the chairman, would replace Mr. Muilenburg on Jan. 13. Until then, Boeing’s chief financial officer, Greg Smith, will serve as interim chief executive, the company said.

The Boeing board made the decision on a call on Sunday, after a string of disastrous announcements for the company, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Mr. Muilenburg has stepped down effective immediately. Last week, Boeing said it would temporarily shut down the 737 Max factory. Mr. Muilenburg’s relationship with the Federal Aviation Administration was badly damaged after he was seen as pressuring the agency to return the planes to service. And on Friday, a Boeing space capsule designed for NASA failed to reach the correct orbit, a crushing blow to company morale. (12/23)

New Type of Explosion Spotted on Sun's Surface (Source: CNN)
Astronomers spotted a magnetic explosion on the surface of the sun unlike anything they've ever seen before. Although it was initially theorized about 15 years ago, this was their first direct observation of it thanks to NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. They witnessed the result of an eruption on the surface of the sun, flinging up a loop of material in the sun's corona, or upper atmosphere. This erupted material is known as a prominence. The prominence then fell back toward the sun, but collided with lines of magnetic field. This created the unprecedented magnetic explosion.

Lines of magnetic field snap and realign explosively, based on previous observations of behavior called magnetic reconnection. But this is the first time astronomers have seen this reconnection sparked by an eruption. Understanding this phenomenon could help scientists understand more about the sun's atmosphere as well as predict space weather. This new behavior has been dubbed forced reconnection. It's triggered by an eruption that causes plasma, or energized gas, to be pushed together with magnetic fields and forces them to reconnect. (12/18)

Bump on the Moon Like Nothing Ever Seen Before (Source: Weather.com)
A bump found inside a crater on the moon could help scientists understand more about the origin of life on Earth. Click here. (12/19)

Ethiopia Launches its First Satellite Into Space (Source: CGTN)
Ethiopia has launched its very first satellite into space. The nation's Chinese-backed maiden satellite is called ETRSS-1 and marks a historic moment for the sub-Saharan African country as it seeks to develop its space science sector. CGTN's Girum Chala reports from China's Taiyuan satellite launching center. (12/20)

Congress Greenlights NASA's Crewed Moon Lander — Sort Of (Sources: The Hill, Space Policy Online)
The good news is that the NASA spending bill for the current fiscal year, passed months late, has enough money to start the development of a crewed lunar lander. The bad news is that Congress is being stingy with the amount of money it is allowing the space agency to spend and has added conditions. The bill provides $600 million for lunar surface and cis-lunar space development, which includes lunar landers, less than half of what was requested. A

Also, NASA must provide a detailed timeline for implementing Artemis, the lunar landing program, which will include budget estimates and key milestones per fiscal years before funding above 40 percent of that total is released. A Space Policy Online article concludes, “The decision to provide less than half the request for the human lunar landers, a sine qua non for landing people on the Moon, already may seal the fate of that 2024 goal, a date tied to President Trump’s potential reelection.” (12/22)

NASA, Boeing, Upbeat About Truncated Starliner Test Flight (Source: Space Policy Online)
Despite a troubled start and early end of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner Orbital Flight Test (OFT), NASA and Boeing officials were upbeat at a press conference this morning after a “bull’s eye” landing in New Mexico. While none were willing to commit to next steps until all the data are in hand and analyzed, the mood suggested that a requirement to repeat this uncrewed test is unlikely and the Crewed Flight Test (CFT) will be next. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and the two NASA astronauts who will fly the CFT, in fact, argue that if a crew had been aboard Starliner, the mission might have been a complete success.  Starliner is designed to operate autonomously and no one was on this test flight. (12/22)