February 24, 2020

OneWeb Ships More Satellites From Florida to Baikonur (Source: TASS)
The next set of OneWeb satellites is on its way to Baikonur. An aircraft carrying 34 satellites built at the OneWeb Satellites factory left Florida Sunday night, headed for the Baikonur Cosmdrome in Kazakhstan. The satellites will be integrated with its Soyuz rocket for a launch scheduled for the second half of March. (2/24)

Russia Celebrates Accident-Free Year for Space Industry (Source: Interfax)
Roscosmos is celebrating its first accident-free year in more than a decade. Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, told space insurers at a meeting Friday that 2019 was the first time in 16 years that the agency had gone an entire year without a launch accident or failure of some kind. Rogozin said he was committed to a "policy of transparency" in dealings with insurers, including regular meetings to discuss launch and satellite plans. (2/24)

Space Foce Lists $1 Billion in Unfunded Priorities (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Space Force has $1 billion in priorities not funded in its fiscal year 2021 request. The "unfunded priorities" list for the service, released last week, includes $255 million for launching two GPS 3 satellites that are already under construction. The budget request includes $1.05 billion for three national security launches, but none are for GPS satellites. An additional $149 million would go toward for on-orbit tests of the fifth Space-Based Infrared System satellite and integration of the sixth and final such satellite. The Pentagon releases a list of unfunded priorities each year to identify programs to fund if Congress decides to allocation additional money. (2/24)

Crew Dragon Demo Launch Could Carry Astronauts for Longer-Duration on ISS (Source: Space News)
NASA appears to be preparing for a long-duration Crew Dragon test flight to the International Space Station. The agency released over the weekend photos of astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley doing spacewalk and robotics training, which would not be required if the Crew Dragon test mission they will fly, Demo-2, will stay at the station for only a short time. NASA said last month it's studying the possibility of a long-duration Demo-2 mission, which would require additional ISS training, because of the limited crew that will be on the station until regular commercial crew missions begin. NASA said last month it would make a decision on the length of the Demo-2 mission in the coming weeks. (2/24)

Parsons Cubesat Flying on Atlas AEHF Mission (Source: Space News)
A cubesat carrying multiple U.S. government payloads will hitch a ride on a military communications satellite launch next month. The 12U cubesat will be a secondary payload on the Atlas 5 launch of the AEHF-6 satellite scheduled for March 19. That cubesat was assembled by Parsons under a $100 million five-year contract from the U.S. Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC). More details on the specific payloads will be disclosed in the coming weeks, according to SMC. The satellite will be the second to fly under that Parsons contract, after a similar 12U cubesat on the AEHF-5 satellite launch last August. (2/24)

Spaceport America Hosts Racing Enthusiasts at Land Speed Racing Event (Source: KVIA)
Spaceport America invited dozens of racing enthusiasts Sunday, attracting business to Doña Ana and Sierra counties. Spaceport America, an FAA-licensed launch complex along with East Coast Timing Association, held the Spaceport Invitational, a land speed racing event that was closed to the public. "It's not like drag racing, it's not how quick am I, it is literally how fast can I go," said ECTA President Steve Strupp. (2/23)

Long Beach Pushes to Become Hub for Booming Space Industry (Source: Long Beach Post)
In a 180,000-square-foot former assembly plant in East Long Beach’s Douglas Park, technicians for Virgin Orbit build rockets designed to carry small satellites—some as tiny as a toaster. Across the street, small satellite company RocketLab is busy setting up its new corporate headquarters. And a half mile down the road, engineers for space startup SpinLaunch are working on secretive technology that could catapult small rockets into space. The company is planning to conduct its first flight tests in New Mexico this fall.

Southern California—and Long Beach—has long played a key role in the aerospace industry, but much of the industry has dwindled in recent decades as major companies, like Boeing and Northrop Grumman Corp., relocate to other regions. When Boeing shuttered its C-17 cargo plane production site in Long Beach in 2015, the Wall Street Journal called it the “end of Southern California’s jet age.”

But now, a new era is beginning, with major commercial space companies, like Virgin Orbit and SpaceX in Hawthorn, setting up roots. And Long Beach is taking note. The city, fueled by the new additions of Virgin, RocketLab and SpinLaunch in Douglas Park, is positioning itself as a hub for the booming space industry. Long Beach in recent years has developed a strategic plan to retain talent and lure top aerospace companies. (2/23)

Lockheed to Obtain Vector Satellite Assets (Source: Space News)
Lockheed Martin will acquire the satellite technology assets of Vector by default after a bankruptcy court received no qualified bids by a deadline last week. In a Feb. 24 filing in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, lawyers overseeing the bankruptcy proceedings for Vector said that they received no qualifying bids for the company’s GalacticSky software-defined spacecraft technology by a Feb. 21 deadline. (2/24)

Fresh Out of Stealth Mode, Astra Gearing Up for Orbital Launch From Alaska (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
Some time in the next few days, a California-based company that has quietly toiled to develop a new light-class satellite launcher since 2016 will attempt to send three CubeSats into orbit from Kodiak Island, Alaska, on the first of two missions scheduled before the end of March to win up to $12 million in prize money from the U.S. military.

Astra, which operated in stealth mode until earlier this month, is gearing up to launch its first orbital mission as soon as this week. If it succeeds, and can follow up with another successful orbital launch in March, Astra stands to receive a prize of $12 million from the DARPA Launch Challenge, an initiative set up by the U.S. military research and development agency. (2/24)

The United States is Losing its Leadership Role in the Fight Against Orbital Debris (Source: Space Review)
The US government released updated orbital debris mitigation guidelines in December, the first update to those guidelines in nearly two decades. Brian Weeden explains why the few changes in the new guidelines are disappointing and a sign that the US may no longer be a global leader in dealing with orbital debris. Click here. (2/24) 
 
Should NASA Send New Horizons To A Nearby Star For Its Final Mission? (Source: Forbes)
Of all the spacecraft ever launched, only five will ever exit the Solar System. Voyager 1 and 2, Pioneer 10 and 11, and New Horizons are the only ones to achieve escape velocity from our Sun. With data from ESA's Gaia mapping the Milky Way's stars, the trajectories of all nearby stellar neighbors can be determined.

Over the next million years, the Voyagers and Pioneers will approach numerous stars, but only at relatively large separations. The closest will be Pioneer 10, encountering HIP 117795 in ~90,000 years from 0.75 light-years away. But New Horizons, unlike the others, still has significant fuel remaining. After encountering Pluto and Arrokoth, it may yet target another object in the outer Kuiper belt. Subsequently, it will eventually enter interstellar space, but can be boosted to approach future stellar targets. (2/24)

Breaking the Color Barrier: Behind the Long Fight to Diversify Space (Source: Guardian)
Most children who rise through the American education system are familiar with the US space program – or at least the story of the program’s achievements: John Glenn’s orbit of the earth, John F Kennedy’s promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, the Apollo program, Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind. “In the end, the big takeaway we get is that America was first in everything,” the documentary film-maker Laurens Grant told the Guardian. There’s an assumption, in American history textbooks, films and the many commemorative specials on last year’s 50th anniversary of the moon landing, of Nasa’s inevitability to get it right, and to be great.

Less widely known, and far from inevitable, is what Grant calls “the forgotten chapter of the space”: the race between the Soviet Union and the US (and in America, the battle against its all-white, all-male space program leads) to put a person of color in space. Black in Space: Breaking the Color Barrier, out on YouTube (viewable below) and on the Smithsonian Channel in time for 2020’s Black History Month, tracks both countries’ efforts to diversify the burgeoning space corps from the beginning of the cold war through the Challenger disaster in 1986, which killed seven Americans, including Ronald McNair, who was black. (2/24)

Making the Funding Case for Commercial Space Stations (Source: Space Review)
NASA awarded Axiom Space an agreement in January that gives the company the opportunity to attach a commercial module to an International Space Station docking port. Jeff Foust reports that, despite this milestone, there’s still uncertainty about the business plans of such companies and NASA’s ability to provide financial support for them. Click here. (2/24)
 
Passive Space Debris Removal Using Drag Sail Deorbiting Technology (Source: Space Review)
Spacecraft engineers are studying a variety of approaches for deorbiting satellites at the end of their lives to minimize the growth of orbital debris. Rebecca Hill discusses one concept being studied that adapts solar sail technologies to bring down satellites. Click here. (2/24)
 
A Star's Auroras Light the Way to a New Exoplanet (Source: WIRED)
Jupiter’s moon Io—the solar system’s most volcanic world—has inspired a new way to find distant exoplanets. As the moon orbits Jupiter, it tugs on the planet’s magnetic field, generating bright auroras in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Even if we couldn’t see Io itself, the enormous auroras, pulsing to the beat of a hidden orbiting body, would tell us that something was out there.

Scientists have long suspected that a similar process might be at work with distant planets and the stars they orbit. Now, for the first time, astronomers say they have discovered an exoplanet by mapping the auroras of its host star, opening a new chapter in the quest to map the galactic menagerie of unseen worlds. Researchers used a collection of roughly 20,000 small radio antennas spread across Europe to detect the star’s telltale flares.

They concluded that the flares could only be produced by a rocky planet about the size of Earth that takes between one and five days to orbit the star. Such a planet would be right at the edge of the star’s habitable zone, where temperatures are right for liquid water. As with so many new techniques, this one promises more discoveries to come. “This could be a way of discovering more exoplanets than you can with the traditional methods,” said Jonathan Nichols. “It could be a way of probing the types of system that we usually find quite difficult to observe.” (2/23)

Hammers And Shakers Test NASA’s New Moon Rocket (Source: WMFE)
NASA’s next moon rocket is undergoing testing. For the first test, technicians are hitting the rocket with hammers. Electric motors called shakers also are testing the SLS rocket’s structure — verifying it can withstand the intense vibrations it will experience during launch. The motors were installed during manufacturing of the core stage booster. Technicians are using calibrated hammers to bang the top of the rocket, an area where the motors can’t reach.

The tests are part of a larger test campaign happening at a NASA facility in Mississippi called the Green Run. The campaign is pushing the brand new rocket’s fuel tank and engines to the max including a full 8 and a half minute firing of its four engines this summer. Once testing is complete, the rocket will travel to Kennedy Space Center before launching NASA’s Orion capsule on an uncrewed mission around the moon. (2/23)