January 15, 2020

TriSept Buys Orbex Launch (Source: Space News)
Satellite integrator TriSept has purchased a launch of an Orbex rocket. That deal, announced Tuesday, covers the launch of an Orbex Prime small launch vehicle from the spaceport under development near Sutherland, Scotland, in 2022. TriSept's rideshare mission is likely to send up to 20 cubesats and microsatellites into orbit. Orbex Prime, designed to place up to 150 kilograms into a sun-synchronous orbit, is scheduled to make its first launch in late 2021. (1/15)

China Launches Smallsats on Long March 2D (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
China launched several smallsats Tuesday night. A Long March 2D rocket lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 9:53 p.m. Eastern, carrying as its primary payload the Kuanfu-1 remote sensing satellite, part of a constellation called Jilin-1. The rocket carried several other satellites, including two imaging satellites for Argentine company Satellogic. (1/15)

Pentagon: Space Force Creation Won't Slow Ongoing Space Acquisitions (Source: Space News)
A Pentagon official said Tuesday the creation of the U.S. Space Force should not slow down space-related acquisitions. Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said that while it may take some time to create the new service's acquisition bureaucracy, she did not expect major programs to slow down as a result of those changes. The defense authorization bill enacted last month calls for a breakup the office of the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition and for the transfer of space programs to a new organization led by a principal assistant to the secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration. (1/15)

Length of Satellite De-Orbit Rule Debated (Source: Space News)
The current 25-year rule for deorbiting satellites is still useful provided operators are willing to comply with it. Many in the space industry have called for reducing that guideline to as little as 5-10 years because of the growing number of satellites in low Earth orbit. However, in a conference presentation Tuesday the chief scientist for NASA's orbital debris office said that models of the orbital debris population show that changing that guideline alone would do little to limit the growth of orbital debris. A bigger factor is increasing the compliance to the existing 25-year guideline, which today less than 50% of all satellites in low Earth orbit adhere to. (1/15)

Blue Origin, OneWeb, SpaceX Lead Space Funding Race (Source: CNBC)
Space companies raised a record amount of funding in 2019. A report Tuesday by investment firm Space Angels concluded that companies in the industry raised $5.8 billion in nearly 200 rounds last year. That dollar amount is dominated by funds raised by Blue Origin, OneWeb and SpaceX, but the report found nearly three-fourths of all the rounds went to smaller early-stage investments, accounting for $686 million. Chad Anderson, CEO of Space Angels, said he expects several "pure-play" space companies to go public this year, but declined to name any likely candidates to do so. (1/15)

SpaceX Plans Next Starlink Launch NET January 20 (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
SpaceX is planning another launch of Starlink satellites next week. The company could launch another set of 60 Starlink satellites on a Falcon 9 as soon as Jan. 20, just two weeks after the previous Starlink launch and two days after the company launches another Falcon 9 on an in-flight abort test of its Crew Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX officials have previously discussed conducting as many as 24 Starlink launches in 2020 as the company seeks to accelerate the deployment of that system and begin initial commercial services. (1/15)

Rocket Lab to Open California Headquarters Soon (Source: Rocket Lab)
Rocket Lab will open a new U.S. headquarters in Long Beach, California. The company announced Tuesday it is building that facility now, and expects it to be completed in the second quarter. The new headquarters facility will host production of Electron rockets and their Rutherford main engines, as well as satellites based on its Photon bus announced last year. Long Beach is already home to another small launch vehicle company, Virgin Orbit. (1/15)

OneWeb's Florida Factory Now Produces Two Satellites Per Day (Source: OneWeb)
OneWeb Satellites, a joint venture between OneWeb and Airbus Defence and Space, has reached a production rate of two satellites per day from the company’s Florida factory. OneWeb Satellites said it has 34 satellites ready for launch from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome. Arianespace, OneWeb’s primary launch provider, plans to conduct 10 Soyuz launches for OneWeb this year — two from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana, four from Baikonur and four from Russia’s new Vostochny Cosmodrome. The first launch is scheduled for February. (1/15)

The Cold War Plan to Build Earth's Largest Telescope (Source: Supercluster)
Tucked away in the rolling foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, Sugar Grove, West Virginia is a picture-perfect small American town. Stroll down the tree-lined main street and you’ll find a daycare center and a bowling alley. A few blocks away there’s a gymnasium lined with pennants and a hobbyshop for woodworking. The houses have freshly painted clapboards and white picket fences. The town is textbook Americana—and for the last four years it’s been entirely deserted.

Sugar Grove didn’t always seem like it was plucked from a Twilight Zone episode. If you visited the town 50 years ago, you’d have found it to be a hive of activity. You see, Sugar Grove was always a military facility. It was built in the 1950s to house the families of soldiers working on a top secret project just up the road. Here, in a secluded clearing of dense national forest, Navy personnel were toiling away on what would have become the largest radio telescope ever built. At the time, the project was conceived as an unprecedented piece of intelligence infrastructure that would enlist the moon itself as an ally in the struggle against Soviet communism.  

Today, there is little evidence the Sugar Grove telescope ever existed. Most documents pertaining to its plans remain classified by the National Reconnaissance Office. As for the telescope itself, the only clues that construction ever began are a few steel struts rising from an anonymous concrete pad. (1/13)

Aeolus Winds Now in Daily Weather Forecasts (Source: Space Daily)
ESA's Aeolus satellite has been returning profiles of Earth's winds since 3 September 2018, just after it was launched - and after months of careful testing these measurements are considered so good that the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is now using them in their forecasts. The decision to include new measurements in weather forecasts is never taken lightly; it takes a lot of work to understand the data properly and ensure that they are of good quality.

It is extremely unusual for a completely new type of satellite data to be ready for practical use in forecasts so soon after launch. Nevertheless, this extraordinary satellite has surpassed expectations and, as of today, Aeolus will be improving our forecasts, from one-day forecasts to those forecasting the weather more than a week ahead. (1/13)

Russian Satellites to Monitor Iran After Attack on US Bases, Plane Crash (Source: Sputnik)
Russian space agency Roscosmos is planning to use its satellites to monitor the situation in Iran following its recent missile attack on US bases in Iraq and the Ukrainian Boeing crash, according to a statement published on the organization's website on Thursday. The statement, which gives updates on Roscosmos' satellite monitoring operations, also said that the agency planned to monitor the Australian bushfires, and floods in Indonesia, Israel, and the Italian city of Venice, among other natural disasters.

The tragic crash involved a Ukrainian Boeing 737-800, bound for Kiev, and happened on Wednesday near Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport shortly after take-off. All 176 people on board were killed. On the same day, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps started an operation to retaliate against the US for killing one of its top generals, Qasem Soleimani, in Iraq, launching dozens of missiles at the country's Ain Al Asad and Erbil airbases. The attack caused no casualties. (1/10)

'Space Unites us': First Iranian-American Astronaut Reaches for Stars (Source: Space Daily)
Jasmin "Jaws" Moghbeli earned her fierce nickname during her time as a decorated helicopter gunship pilot who flew more than 150 missions in Afghanistan. The Marine Corps major, MIT graduate and college basketball player can now add another accomplishment to her burgeoning resume: the first Iranian-American astronaut.

Speaking to AFP after graduating in NASA's latest cohort, the 36-year-old immigrant said she hoped her example might help inspire others from similar backgrounds. "I would love for everyone to be able to be inspired by everyone, but it is a little easier to be inspired by someone who looks like you or has something in common with you, so I do hope there is that influence," she said. She and her brother were born in Germany to Iranian parents, architecture students who had fled their native country after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. (1/12)

Collaboration on Development of Next-Generation Rapid Launch Space Systems (Source: Space Daily)
The Air Force Research Laboratory and ABL Space Systems are collaborating to develop and test rocket propulsion elements for use in launch vehicles thanks to a 3-year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) both organizations have agreed to. The CRADA, which was finalized July 10, 2019, focuses on research and development collaboration efforts that will transform the standard methods for rocket testing and launch operations and mature the technology base for more dynamic, robust and rapid launch operations.

Members from AFRL's Rocket Propulsion Division at Edwards AFB, California, and ABL, a privately-owned corporation in El Segundo, California, agreed on the collaborative effort with the final signatures of Dr. Shawn H. Phillips, chief of AFRL's Rocket Propulsion Division, and Harrison O'Hanley, Chief Executive Officer of ABL. AFRL will now be able to evaluate the test data provided by ABL as well evaluate rapid launch capability for current and future Air Force mission needs. In this collaboration, AFRL will be able to mature responsive launch operations with test data and studies that can be used for vehicle trajectory, sizing, payload performance and the overall launch system capability. (1/10)

The Best Way to Make a Profit as an Aerospace Company is to Fail (Source: Quartz)
Americans haven’t gone to outer space on American-made rockets for almost a decade—since July 8, 2011, to be precise. NASA has paid up to $81.7 million per seat to get American astronauts into orbit onboard Russian Soyuz capsules. Meanwhile, China has moved ahead on its plans to dominate space and the vast resources beyond our atmosphere by 2049, which happens to be the 100th anniversary of the revolution that put China’s Communist Party in power. As international political analyst Namrata Goswami has pointed out, China has met every one of its space program’s target dates.

For years, the space military industrial complex, or SMIC—a hugely profitable coalition called the Space Exploration Alliance, made up of a handful of American defense companies including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing, among other suppliers—has promoted and funded programs that have guaranteed Americans cannot get to space using American vehicles. The SMIC is also making it nearly impossible for Americans to follow up on something they accomplished 50 years ago: Getting Americans to the moon, that centrally resource-rich frontier on which China threatens to outpace us in its claims. Click here. (1/13)

Space Force First “Pitch Day” at Patrick Air Force Base on March 4 (Source: Space News)
Patrick Air Force Base is hosting the first Space Force “Pitch Day” on March 4, focused on technologies and services for the 45th Space Wing. The wing operates the Eastern Range on the Florida Space Coast. Areas of interest include weather forecast and alert systems, business systems and information technology that facilitate spacelift missions. Click here. (1/14)