March 11, 2020

Sharp Increase in High-Throughput Satellite Capacity Projected (Source: Euroconsult)
The supply of high-throughput satellite capacity is projected to increase twelvefold by 2024 from where it was in 2019, according to a new report by research firm Euroconsult. Broadband megaconstellations from SpaceX and OneWeb are major contributors to that increase as both companies place large numbers of high-throughput satellites in low Earth orbit. Euroconsult estimates $15 billion will be spent on broadband constellations outside of geostationary orbit through the end of 2024. The research firm projects $85 billion in global HTS revenues from 2019 to 2028. (3/11)

Astrocast Attracts New Investment for IoT Cubesat Constellation (Source: Astrocast)
Astrocast, a company developing a constellation of 100 cubesats for Internet of Things connectivity, received a strategic investment of undisclosed value from Marine Instruments, a company specialized in building buoys. Marine Instruments will be able to connect its buoys in all weather conditions using L-band connectivity from Astrocast, according to the satellite startup. Astrocast has booked launches for 30 of its 100 satellites with Spaceflight, and has satellites launching this year and in 2021. (3/11)

NanoAvionics Opens Illinois Facility (Source: NanoAvionics)
Lithuanian cubesat builder NanoAvionics has opened a second facility in the U.S. The office, located in Columbia, Illinois, benefits from nearby universities and a low cost of living, according to the company. NanoAvionics’ first U.S. facility is at the Midland Air and Space Port where its parent company AST & Science is based. NanoAvionics said it recently received a contract from a U.S. customer for two 6U cubesats, reinforcing the need for a larger U.S. presence. (3/11)

Atlas AEHF-6 Launch Delayed (Source: ULA)
The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket launch carrying the AEHF-6 mission for the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center is delayed due to an off-nominal valve reading during launch vehicle processing. Additional time is needed for the team to replace and retest the valve. Launch is now scheduled for no earlier than March 26. (3/10)

Launch Industry Puts Emergency Plans In Place for Coronavirus, but Missions So Far Remain On Schedule (Source: Space News)
Defense Department and NASA launch provider United Launch Alliance is implementing emergency measures in response to the coronavirus outbreak but continues to support upcoming missions, the company’s CEO Tory Bruno said. “We are limiting the size of meetings and we are limiting non essential business travel but that doesn’t include launch and rockets obviously,” said Bruno. “Our teams have to travel to launch sites to make that happen, that’s business essential.”

Other measures include screening all visitors who come into ULA facilities and having employees self quarantine if they believe they were exposed to the virus, Bruno said. “Our general policy is similar to what other companies and government agencies are doing,” he said. “We’re all comparing notes.” (3/10)

Burgeoning LEO Belt (Source: Aviation Week)
Ground based radar systems are tracking more than 23,000 objects in Earth orbit larger than 4 inches in diameter.Only about 2,200 of those objects are active satellites. NASA estimates the population of particles betwen 0.4-4 inches is approximately 500,000. According to Space Policy Directive #3 (June 2018): in addition to updating the country's orbital debris mitigation policy, protocols are needed for the operation of large satellite constellations, rendezvous and proximity operations, small satellites and other classes of space operations. (3/10)

DOD Seeks New Satellite Communications Prototypes (Source: Air Force Magazine)
The Defense Department wants satellite operators, including smallsat start-ups and other innovative companies, to offer visions of a new seamless communications system for the U.S. military. A contract solicitation issued on March 3 launched a four-phase prototyping effort that will lead to “a new architecture that looks nothing like the current one” for command, control, and communications, said Doug Schroeder, oversight executive of DOD’s Joint Capability Technology Demonstration. The idea is that, eventually, the new architecture would allow “any user using any terminal anywhere to seamlessly connect to any other user using any other terminal” anywhere, he said. (3/10)

Satellite Companies Worry Their Launchers May Become Their Competitors (Source: Space News)
Satellite operators are worried that launch companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX may become competitors. Executives from SES and Eutelsat said at the Satellite 2020 conference Tuesday they are watching as SpaceX deploys its own Starlink constellation of broadband satellites, which could make SpaceX one of their competitors. Blue Origin could also become a competitor if it launches Amazon's Kuiper broadband constellation, as Blue Origin is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. A Blue Origin executive said the company is not guaranteed to launch Amazon's constellation and will have to compete for that business. (3/10)

First Commercial Crew Flight Targeted for May (Source: CNBC)
SpaceX is targeting May for the launch of its Crew Dragon spacecraft on a test flight carrying two NASA astronauts. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell gave that schedule estimate Tuesday, but said both the company and NASA have work to do to achieve that date. The length of that mission is still to be determined, she said, as NASA considers the possibility of an extended stay at the International Space Station because of the limited crew on the station. While SpaceX originally planned to fly each Crew Dragon spacecraft only once, Shotwell said the company is considering reuse of spacecraft and doesn't anticipate any issues with NASA if it does so. (3/10)

Draft Space Force Legislation Delayed (Source: Air Force Magazine)
The Space Force has postponed completion of proposed legislation. Lt. Gen. David Thompson, vice commander of the Space Force, had expected the proposed legislation to be done within days late last month, but said Tuesday it would be completed "soon." The proposal, which the Pentagon hopes will be included into the next defense authorization act, will address issues such as transferring personnel to the Space Force and acquisition changes. (3/10)

Commercial Imagery Companies Face Challenge Gaining Wide Use Within Agencies (Source: Space News)
Commercial geospatial companies face challenges winning business from government agencies. Industry officials say that even if companies working on innovative geospatial products win initial contracts from agencies like the NRO or NGA, they have to cross a "valley of death" to get those products widely used within those agencies and thus create more sustained business opportunities. U.S. government agencies, they said, face many challenges in ingesting commercial data sets related to funding, information technology and cybersecurity. (3/10)

China Seeks Human Lunar-Landing Technology (Source: Aviation Week)
After almost two decades of rumors and semiofficial reports, the latest evidence of China's ambition to put its astronauts on the Moon comes from... Ukraine. The Chinese space industry has solicited help from Ukrainian engineers at KB Yuzhnoye to study seveal engine designs that could softly land a very large vehicle on the Moon's surface. (3/10)

JWST Testing Enters Home Stretch (Source: Aviation Week)
NASA says it is still "pressing" toward launching the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on schedule in late March 2021 as prime contractor Northrop Grumman enters an extended final round of environmental and deployment tests on the complex spacecraft. A May review is planned for making the launch decision. (3/10)

ESA and European Commission Preorder Four More Ariane 6 Launches (Source: Space Daily)
Arianespace told SpaceDaily that it has received a preorder from the European Space Agency (ESA), on behalf of the European Commission (DG Grow), for four launches using the Ariane 6 rocket. Planned to start in January 2022, these launches will orbit eight satellites from Batch 3 to support the final deployment of the Galileo constellation and the replacement of certain satellites.

These four launches reserved for Ariane 62 will be confirmed after the European Commission finalizes its budget for the period 2021-2027, which covers these launches. The terms and conditions of this order have already been approved by ESA and the European Commission, and an initial payment has been made for this preorder. (3/11)

US Space Force Eyes Launch On Demand (Source: Aviation Week)
The U.S. Space Force has a new launch goal, dubbed "Set the Pace for Space," which aims to make launch on demand available for commercial and military customers. (3/10)

Backbone of Trump’s Moon Mission Could Cost a Staggering $50 Billion (Source: Washington Post)
The rocket and spacecraft NASA plans to use to get astronauts to the moon could cost $50 billion, according to a government watchdog report released Tuesday — far more than the space agency had said it would need to meet a White House mandate to return to the lunar surface by 2024.

The report, by the NASA Inspector General, painted another grim picture of the troubles that have long plagued the Space Launch System rocket as Boeing, NASA’s prime contractor on the rocket, struggles to get the unwieldy program under control. It said that more schedule delays were likely and that the space agency might not be able to meet the goal of landing people on the moon by 2024 or orbiting Mars by the 2030s.

It was the second time in less than a week that Boeing’s work for NASA has been criticized. On Friday, NASA officials said an investigation of the marred test flight of the company’s Starliner spacecraft in December, when the spacecraft was unable to dock with the International Space Station, had identified major problems with Boeing’s testing procedures. Officials said the investigation led to 61 corrective actions and identified 49 gaps in Boeing’s testing procedures. NASA also determined that it would need to embed its own software experts with Boeing’s team to more rigorously oversee its work and testing. (3/11)

Aerojet Rocketdyne Building New RS-25 Engines for Recertification Testing (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
Aerojet Rocketdyne (AR) is delivering new RS-25 rocket engine hardware from its U.S. facilities to certify its new production process and is getting ready for the next phase of testing.  More than a decade after production was discontinued, the engine maker is setting up assembly lines for major engine components at facilities in California and Florida and working towards delivery of six new flight engines for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS).

The parts will be shipped to the AR facility at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where the engines are fully assembled in and subsequently test-fired in the nearby, single-engine A-1 Test Stand. The second of four series of development test-firings is scheduled to begin in June on a ground test engine currently being retrofitted with over half of its major components constructed using modern manufacturing methods.

In addition to restocking engines for the expendable SLS Core Stage, a primary goal of the production restart program is to deliver new units of the high-performance engines for less cost while maintaining the reliability of the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) design. While Aerojet Rocketdyne is re-establishing a production line to deliver new engines, they are also supporting the critical, first-time tests of the SLS Core Stage mounted in another test stand at Stennis. (3/10)

NASA Can’t Send Commands To Voyager 2 Until 2021 (Source: Forbes)
Voyager 2 doesn’t have to take orders from its human bosses anymore. The only radio antenna on Earth that can transmit to Voyager 2 is shutting down for 11 months of repairs and upgrades. Until it’s back online, Voyager 2 can send messages to Earth, but NASA can’t reply. NASA JPL is replacing transmitters and other parts in a 70m (230ft) wide radio antenna in Canberra, Australia. The antenna is called DSS43, and it’s part of the Deep Space Network (DSN), the collection of radio antennas NASA uses to communicate with its interplanetary spacecraft. (3/10)

Space Force Needs Acquisition Leadership (Source: National Defense)
The Space Force needs leadership in acquisition to unify the Pentagon’s space capabilities under one umbrella, the secretary of the Air Force said. “What we have to do with the Space Force is to logically bring things together, [and] develop an umbrella under which there will be specialized, professional, talented leadership for space," Barbara Barrett said.

“That is going to require, especially, leadership in acquisitions so that we can acquire new systems and build better systems and have a common architecture when a common architecture makes sense.” The new service — which was stood up in December — needs to begin building systems that are networked together and can benefit from all the armed services, Barrett said. In tight budgetary environments both now and in the future “we aren’t going to be able to fund duplicative programs,” she said. “We're going to have to de-conflict things.” (3/11)

Where Space Law Begins (Source: The Spinoff)
“I think where you’d start from with Musk,” University of Auckland professor and head of physics Richard Easter says, evenly, “is that it really does is show how the innovation has gotten ahead of regulation as far as the use of space is concerned. The regulatory environment didn’t anticipate that people were going to launch these giant constellations.” (3/11)

Space Startups Raised $5.7 Billion in Financing in 2019 (Source: Axios)
Space-focused startups raked in $5.7 billion in financing in 2019, far surpassing the $3.5 billion raised in 2018, according to a new report from Bryce Space and Technology. Why it matters: The report and others like it show investors still see the industry — buoyed by investor interest and new international companies — as ripe for investment.

There are still major questions about where the space industry and investment in it will go from here, including when companies might become profitable. Last year also saw a number of high-profile exits from the industry — including Vector Space's bankruptcy — that are spurring fears there might be a slowdown for industry investment in the near future. (3/10)

Don’t Blast Off With Virgin Galactic Stock Yet (Source: Investor Place)
Investors love new industries and concepts. There’s nothing better than getting in on the ground floor of a life-changing new product or technology. And Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE) stock certainly checks that box. We’ve never had a chance to put money directly into space travel like this before. Sure, there are companies that make components such as engines for space shuttles. But that’s simply been inputs into the government’s space vehicles. SPCE stock is the first publicly traded company fully devoted to commercial-scale human space travel.

Unfortunately, it appears that Virgin Galactic isn’t ready for the prime-time. It’s lacking basic things — such as a reassuring safety track record and revenues — that you’d expect from a public company. It also came public by a disreputable type of transaction that should make you do a double take. (3/10)

Boeing Halts Hiring, Limits Overtime as Coronavirus Poses ‘Global Economic Disruption’, Shares Down 13% (Source: CNBC)
Boeing on Wednesday told employees that it was immediately suspending hiring and implementing other measures to preserve cash as the rapid spread of coronavirus roils the air travel industry. Boeing is already reeling from the damage of two fatal crashes of its 737 Max and the worldwide grounding of the planes, which hits the one-year mark on Friday.

“On top of the work of safely returning the 737 MAX to service and the financial impact of the pause in MAX production, we’re now facing a global economic disruption generated by the COVID-19 coronavirus,” Boeing’s CEO Dave Calhoun and CFO Greg Smith wrote in a note to employees on Wednesday. The company is laying off workers at this time, a Boeing official told CNBC. (3/11)