March 2, 2020

Made In Space CEO Says Manufacturing is the 'Missing Piece in Space Exploration' (Source: Jacksonville Daily Record)
Made In Space’s goal to “enable people to sustainably live and work in space” may sound lofty, but President and CEO Andrew Rush says efforts to make it happen are underway. Rush shared Made In Space’s vision Feb. 27 at an event celebrating the fifth anniversary of the company’s zero-gravity 3D printer.  In January, Made In Space announced it was relocating its corporate headquarters to Jacksonville from Silicon Valley. In July, it received a $73 million contract to demonstrate Archinaut, the company’s autonomous robotic manufacturing and assembly platform, on a flight mission.

Made In Space was founded in 2010 in Mountain View, California. Its Jacksonville headquarters is at 8226 Philips Highway. Space manufacturing, Rush said, is the next step toward people living and working in space. Several companies working to improve and make launch technology more accessible, like SpaceX and Blue Origin, but that won’t allow people to live and work in space sustainably. “This is going to be the enabler, the economic motivation that gets us off the planet,” he said. “We want to get to factories and factory workers in space, creating things that provide economic benefits to all of humanity wherever they are.” (3/2)

SpaceX's First Orbital Spacecraft Set to Smash Reusability Record on Last Launch (Source: Teslarati)
The first orbital spacecraft designed and built by SpaceX is set to smash a reusability record on its 20th and final ISS resupply launch, hopefully ending an exceptional career with yet another noteworthy achievement. After a rocket-related hardware issue forced a four-day delay, a flight-proven Cargo Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket are set to lift off Mar. 6 on NASA’s 20th and final SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-20) mission.

Although SpaceX’s final CRS1 launch, 20th mission milestone, flight-proven Dragon, and fairly quick Falcon 9 booster turnaround are all significant and exciting in their own ways, the most noteworthy technical aspect of CRS-20 can be found in the Dragon capsule that will soon be perched atop the tip of the rocket. Nearly half of all of SpaceX’s NASA CRS missions have featured flight-proven spacecraft, while several have also launched with flight-proven Falcon 9 boosters. Still, while extremely impressive that SpaceX has managed to convince the risk-averse space agency to fly several dozen tons of critical hardware on flight-proven rockets and spacecraft, Cargo Dragon capsule reuse has always been a comparatively lengthy and complex process. (3/2)

Under a DAPPER Moon: NASA Eyes Wild Radio Science Projects on the Lunar Farside (Source: Space.com)
NASA's quest to return humans to the moon could boost a field of research that might not seem particularly lunar in nature: cosmology. But the far side of the moon could be a powerful place to answer some of the most compelling questions about the universe — and NASA's push to bring humans back to the moon could cut the prices enough to make this science a reality. Even a scientist leading the push for NASA to investigate these missions admits it wasn't the most intuitive idea when he first heard about it. (3/2)

Scientists Are Starting to Take Warp Drives Seriously, Especially This One Concept (Source: Universe Today)
It's hard living in a relativistic Universe, where even the nearest stars are so far away and the speed of light is absolute. It is little wonder then why science fiction franchises routinely employ FTL (Faster-than-Light) as a plot device. Push a button, press a petal, and that fancy drive system – whose workings no one can explain – will send us to another location in space-time.

However, in recent years, the scientific community has become understandably excited and skeptical about claims that a particular concept – the Alcubierre Warp Drive – might actually be feasible. As Joseph Agnew explained, the theory behind a warp propulsion system is relatively simple. In layman's terms, the Alcubierre Drive achieves FTL travel by stretching the fabric of space-time in a wave, causing the space ahead of it to contract while the space behind it expands. In theory, a spacecraft inside this wave would be able to ride this "warp bubble" and achieve velocities beyond the speed of light. This is what is known as the "Alcubierre Metric". (3/1)

Russian Medium and Heavy Rockets to be Used to Deliver Cargo to the Moon (Source: TASS)
Beside super-heavy rockets, medium-and heavy-class launch vehicles would be used to deliver cargo to the Moon, says Energia Rocket and Space Corporation CEO Nikolay Sevastyanov. According to the CEO, the Oryol crewed spacecraft would be launched using super-heavy rockets. The lunar takeoff and landing complex and lunar orbital station modules would also require super-heavy launch vehicles. (3/2)

Russian Astronomers Complain of Starlink Light Pollution (Source: Newsweek)
Russia's Academy of Sciences will complain to the United Nations about the light reflected from the Starlink satellite system, saying it interferes with the work of astronomers. Batches of satellites continue to be sent up into orbit to work with ground transceivers with the aim of providing greater broadband internet access on Earth, especially in areas where connections are harder to get, or more expensive.

Lifted up on SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 rocket, the first Starlink launch took place on May 23, 2019, and the project is a key part of billionaire Elon Musk's cosmic plans. But Nikolai Samus, a researcher from the Russian academy, said the network of hundreds of satellites reflects light from the sun and can corrupt between 30 to 40 percent of astronomical images. (2/28)

Lunar Orbital Station to Allow Spacemen Stay on the Moon for 30 Days (Source: TASS)
Construction of the lunar orbital station would reduce the risks for expeditions and would allow lunar surface missions of up to 30 days, says Energia Rocket and Space Corporation CEO Nikolay Sevastyanov. Today, the scientific community looks into two types of lunar missions, he said. In the first one, spacemen would arrive to a low near-Moon orbit of only about 200 km, and then land on the Moon in a special landing module. According to Sevastyanov, this method would allow only for short-term missions to the lunar surface - "no more than 3 days."

"The second path is to have a lunar orbit station at a height of about 10,000 km. It is possible to bring along additional resources; it is also possible to deliver a [separate] takeoff and landing complex there, so that the crew can comfortably land on the Moon, complete its mission - which might in this case take up to 30 days - and then return to the orbit station, change to the spacecraft and return back to Earth," the CEO said, adding that this option significantly reduces the risks involved. (3/2)

SLS Launch Officially Moves to Mid/Late 2021 (Source: Space News)
A NASA official said Friday that the first launch of the Space Launch System is now expected in the second half of 2021. Associate Administrator Steve Jurczyk, speaking at a lunar technology event Friday, said the Artemis 1 launch will take place in mid to late 2021. NASA has not yet announced a new formal launch date for that mission, after agency leadership said in December that they no longer expected the launch to take place in 2020. Jurczyk also said NASA is "within weeks" of awarding initial contracts for development of human lunar landing systems, and that the agency will provide more details about its post-2024 lunar exploration plans in about a month. (3/2)

SpaceX Starship Prototype Blows in Texas Pressure Test (Source: Space News)
A second prototype of SpaceX's Starship launch vehicle was destroyed in a pressurization test Friday night. The tank section of the Starship SN1 vehicle burst at about 11 p.m. Eastern Friday night at the company's Boca Chica, Texas, test site while it was being loaded with liquid nitrogen for a pressurization test. A similar fate befell the first Starship prototype in November. SpaceX was preparing to perform a static-fire test of the vehicle ahead of planned suborbital test flights. (3/2)

Large Exoplanet Could Have the Right Conditions for Life (Source: Cosmos)
British astronomers say they have found that a well-known exoplanet more than twice the size of Earth is potentially habitable. A team from the University of Cambridge used the mass, radius and atmospheric data of K2-18b to determine that it could host liquid water at habitable conditions beneath its hydrogen-rich atmosphere. K2-18b is around 124 light-years away and orbits its star within the habitable zone, where temperatures could allow liquid water to exist. (3/2)

Failure of Aging Satellites Could Leave U.S. Partially Blind to Space Weather (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Tne failures of three aging satellites the United States relies upon to forecast space weather could leave the nation partially blind to electromagnetic storms that could severely disrupt electrical grids, communications systems, aviation and Global Positioning System (GPS) dependent navigation. “The observations that we rely on to provide alerts and warnings are critical. Should we lose some of the key spacecraft that we talk about, I won’t say we’re blind but we’re darn close. It will impact our ability to support this nation’s need for space weather services. And I don’t want to see that happen,” said NOAA's William Murtagh.

Murtagh made the remarks in recent testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. The committee held a hearing on the government’s effort to monitor space weather, track satellites and debris in Earth orbit, and defend the planet against asteroid and comet impacts. “We have no real capability to predict when those sunspots are going to occur,” Murtagh said. “So, we could be sitting today very quiet, and two days from now have a major sunspot cluster evolve. So, that’s a big drawback in our ability to predict this stuff.” The United States has three aging satellites capable of monitoring solar flare emissions and providing warnings to electrical grid operators and other industries that would be affected. (3/2)

NASA Authorization Bill Moves to Full Science Committee (Source: Space News)
The full House Science Committee is expected to mark up a NASA authorization bill in the coming weeks. In an interview Friday, Rep. Kendra Horn (D-Okla.), chair of the committee's space subcommittee, said she had been working to address issues about the bill raised when her subcommittee marked up the bill in late January. Those concerns included language about the development of lunar landers, which the bill states will be owned by NASA rather than companies. Horn said she still believes that "core components" of the space program should be government-owned in much the same way key military assets are. She emphasized that development of the bill continued to be done in a bipartisan manner. (3/2)

L3Harris Tapped for Space Force MOSSAIC Program (Source: Space News)
L3 Harris has won a 10-year $1.2 billion contract from the Space Force's Space and Missile Systems Center to maintain and modernize the military’s network of space surveillance sensors. The award is for a new program named MOSSAIC, short for maintenance of space situational awareness integrated capabilities, and replaces one that Harris, prior to its merge with L3 Technologies, had held since 2002 to maintain the Air Force's network of telescopes that track objects in GEO. MOSSAIC broadens the scope of the work to include space situational awareness, derived from government and commercial sensors, in support of the U.S. military's space surveillance and command centers in Colorado, California and Virginia. (3/2)

China Close to Finishing Beidou Nav Constellation (Source: Space News)
China will complete its Beidou satellite navigation constellation with two launches in March and May. The completed Beidou navigation satellite system consists of 27 satellites in medium Earth orbits, five in geostationary orbits and three in inclined GEO orbits, providing global coverage with enhanced service in the Asia-Pacific region. The navigation system was developed for both civil and military applications. (3/2)

Georgia County Administrator Challenged to Defend Spaceport Project (Source: Brunswick News)
A longtime critic of a proposed spaceport in Camden County has challenged county administrator Steve Howard to a debate so the public can decide if it’s time to abandon the project. Steve Weinkle, who lives less than 10 miles from the proposed launch site, extended the invitation to Howard as a way for the public to determine if the $8 million spent by the county has been a good investment of tax-dollars.

He’s already rented a meeting room for March 20 at the Camden County Recreation Center in Kingsland for an hourlong debate he’s scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. “It would attract a huge crowd,” Weinkle said. “People want to know what the plans are.” Howard, however, said he has no plans to accept the invitation, calling it a “publicity stunt.” (3/1)