March 27, 2020

NASA's Orion Spacecraft Ready for Final Artemis I Launch Preparations (Source: Space Coast Daily)
NASA’s Orion spacecraft for Artemis I returned to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida this week after engineers put it through the rigors of environmental testing at NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Ohio. At Kennedy, the spacecraft will undergo final processing and preparations prior to launching on the first in a series of increasingly complex missions to the Moon that will ultimately lead to the exploration of Mars. The spacecraft – comprised of the crew module and service module – arrived in Ohio during the fall of 2019, where two phases of testing occurred inside the world’s largest space simulation vacuum chamber. (3/27)

Future Space Telescopes May Probe Titan-Like Exoplanets (Source: Space.com)
Saturn's huge moon Titan is one of the most intriguing worlds in the solar system. Titan boasts hydrocarbon rivers and seas that could potentially harbor "strange life," as well as a subsurface ocean of liquid water where Earth-like organisms might be able to make a living. Titan also has a thick, nitrogen-dominated atmosphere where complex chemistry — perhaps even the sort that leads to life — is known to occur. And now, researchers have determined that the smoggy haze of Titan-like exoplanets could be visible with the next generation of space telescopes.

While most exoplanet hunts focus on finding worlds similar to Earth, one team wanted to know if upcoming instruments could identify potentially habitable worlds dramatically different from our own. Using simulations, they modeled Titan-like worlds around a variety of star types. They considered worlds "Titan-like" if they were far enough from their star for methane to condense and had a high enough water-to-rock ratio to spew volatile compounds into the atmosphere that could create a haze. Between red dwarfs and sunlike stars are K-stars. Titan-like worlds around K-stars could feature hazes that form lower down, with smaller particles than those around sunlike stars, according to the new study.

LUVOIR is a proposed multi-wavelength space telescope under consideration by NASA as a future observatory. With the next generation of space telescopes, like LUVOIR, astronomers could probe the haze-rich worlds around all three types of stars. The insights they glean could reveal a great deal about these planets' atmospheres, helping researchers better understand a different type of potentially habitable environment than the more traditional Earth-like world. "If we get LUVOIR, we'll be able to characterize these planets," Felton said. (3/26)

Relativity: Spaceflight Imprinted With Flexibility (Source: Forbes)
Commercial space is booming and for many of today’s space enthusiasts the innovations coming out of entrepreneurial startups are more interesting than anything NASA or European Space Agency are flying. Earth orbit is already busy with commercial imaging satellites, commercial television and radio satellites and even commercial resupply flights to the International Space Station. This year we will see space tourism take off (literally) and the expansion of mega-constellations of communications satellites providing global Internet and messaging capabilities. This is an exciting time to be in Southern California, the historical center of aerospace development, even if we are under the coronavirus lockdown. I’m using my quarantine to look at cool local startups.

I’m proud to have been an adviser to SoCal’s Relativity Space since its founding. This Long Beach based startup 3D-prints orbital rockets and has its roots in the Viterbi School of Engineering’s Astronautical Engineering program. The founders, Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone were leaders in USC’s Rocket Propulsion Lab, an exciting USC student group that I covered in last week’s column. Ellis and Noone have developed uniquely dynamic manufacturing capabilities which differentiate Relativity from its peers in an increasingly competitive space launch market. While still in their early twenties, these two millennials scored seed investments from Mark Cuban and Silicon Valley’s prestigious Y Combinator accelerator. Since then, they have raised $185 million in venture funding. Relativity is well on its way to becoming a space unicorn! (3/26)

The Coronavirus Pandemic, as Seen From Space (Source: Axios)
Miles above Earth, the global effort to combat the coronavirus pandemic can be seen unfolding at a rapid and dramatic scale. Why it matters: Tracking the effects of the virus from space can help organizations understand the pandemic without sending people into harm's way, and it can promote transparency and accountability around efforts to combat the virus. What's happening: Planet — a company that operates more than 100 Earth-imaging satellites — has been snapping before and after photos of airports, bridges and other locations to show how social distancing efforts have cleared roads and tourist destinations around the world. Click here. (3/27)

The Pandemic Has Grounded Humankind (Source: The Atlantic)
Like many other workplaces, space agencies around the world have instructed employees to work from home. A European spaceport in South America postponed all upcoming launches. NASA halted testing on its next big space telescope, which is supposed to launch this time next year. The outbreak helped delay a joint project between the Russian and European space agencies that was supposed to send out a rover to investigate whether life ever existed on Mars. Earth and Mars reach their closest proximity only about every two years, so the rover must now sit in storage until 2022. Even if this world rights itself before then, we still have to wait for the rest of the cosmos to catch up before visiting another one.

Space-exploration delays are a tiny drop in the bucket of cancellations around the world. But they show how the pandemic has upended civilization more clearly than the postponement of important conferences or even the Summer Olympics have. Space exploration has long been seen as a marker of human ambition, a testament to our capacity to think beyond our earthly existence—and then actually loft ourselves toward the skies. As the threat of COVID-19 compels people to stay indoors, it also locks us in our own planet. The coronavirus is here, and we’re stuck with it. (3/26)

Hunting for Water on the Moon (Source: Parabolic Arc)
A map of possible water beneath the surface of the Moon’s South Pole, based on temperature data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. ESA is preparing a surface sampling payload that will prospect for lunar water among other resources. It is due to be flown to the Moon aboard Russia’s Luna-27 lander in 2025. Researcher Hannah Sargeant of the UK’s Open University has made Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 Europe 2020 Innovation list for her work developing an improved method of extracting lunar water in support of the project.

The overall payload is called Package for Resource Observation and in-Situ Prospecting for Exploration, Commercial exploitation and Transportation, or PROSPECT. A drill called ProSEED will extract samples, expected to contain water ice and other chemicals that can become trapped at the extremely low temperatures expected; typically -150 °C beneath the surface to lower than -200 °C in some areas. Samples taken by the drill will then be passed to the ProSPA chemical laboratory, being developed by an Open University team. These samples will then be heated to extract these cold-trapped volatiles and enable follow-up analysis. (3/27)

Pandemic Puts Pressure on Time-Sensitive Space Mmissions (Source: Houston Chronicle)
Lucy is in pieces: solar arrays, a telescope structure and various other components of the Jupiter-bound spacecraft are being built across the U.S. It’s a stage of development particularly susceptible to disruption — and right now, the novel coronavirus has disrupted the entire country. Had COVID-19 appeared in the fall of 2020, all of Lucy’s pieces would be in the hands of Lockheed Martin. Ready for assembly and integration. But with parts spread throughout the supply chain, Hal Levison, principal investigator for the Lucy mission, is keeping a close eye on the spacecraft.

It must stay on track for a narrow 21-day launch window that starts Oct. 21, 2021, to study the Trojan asteroids sharing Jupiter’s orbit around the sun. “Lucy is actually in a place that’s very vulnerable,” said Levison, chief scientist for Southwest Research Institute’s facility in Boulder, Colo., the team leading the NASA Lucy mission. Studying the realms beyond Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t make space missions immune to the troubles within it. Sick employees, social distancing precautions and economic uncertainty have placed many ambitions in limbo. Click here. (3/27)

SpaceX Wins Logistics Launch Contract for Gateway Supply (Source: NASA)
NASA has selected SpaceX as the first U.S. commercial provider under the Gateway Logistics Services contract to deliver cargo, experiments and other supplies to the agency’s Gateway in lunar orbit. The award is a significant step forward for NASA’s Artemis program that will land the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024 and build a sustainable human lunar presence. At the Moon, NASA and its partners will gain the experience necessary to mount a historic human mission to Mars.

SpaceX will deliver critical pressurized and unpressurized cargo, science experiments and supplies to the Gateway, such as sample collection materials and other items the crew may need on the Gateway and during their expeditions on the lunar surface. NASA is planning multiple supply missions in which the cargo spacecraft will stay at the Gateway for six to 12 months at a time. These firm-fixed price, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts for logistics services guarantee two missions per logistics services provider with a maximum total value of $7 billion across all contracts as additional missions are needed. (3/27)

OneWeb Collapses After SoftBank Funding Talks Fall Through (Sources: Financial Times, WIRED)
OneWeb, the satellite internet start-up, is preparing for bankruptcy and to lay off most of its staff, after failing to secure new funding from investors including its biggest backer SoftBank, according to people familiar with the situation. The company could file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US as soon as Friday, according to people involved in the preparations, putting most of its more than 500 employees at risk of losing their jobs.

OneWeb had been in talks with Softbank to raise as much as $2bn in fresh funding before the coronavirus outbreak roiled financial markets, according to people familiar with the discussions. As markets plunged, OneWeb and SoftBank could not agree terms for a potential bridge loan to give the start-up time to secure new investors. One person close to the discussions said that those talks collapsed on Saturday, just hours before OneWeb launched more than 30 “micro satellites” from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to a constellation that it had originally envisaged would total around 640.

It’s too early to tell what will become of OneWeb’s assets as it moves through bankruptcy protection, people familiar with the proceedings told WIRED. OneWeb will retain enough employees to continue operating the satellites already in orbit, but most of the company’s 500 staffers will be laid off. As for the satellites, there aren’t enough in orbit to provide anything close to global or even regional coverage. It’s unclear whether they will be kept in orbit and used for limited internet service or intentionally deorbited by the company. (3/27)

New Paper Suggests Life Could Be Common Across The Universe, Just Not Near Us (Source: Science Alert)
The building blocks of life can, and did, spontaneously assemble under the right conditions. That's called spontaneous generation, or abiogenesis. Of course, many of the details remain hidden to us, and we just don't know exactly how it all happened. Or how frequently it could happen. The world's religions have different ideas of how life appeared, of course, and they invoke the magical hands of various supernatural deities to explain it all. But those explanations, while colorful tales, leave many of us unsatisfied.

'How did life arise' is one of life's most compelling questions, and one that science continually wrestles with. Tomonori Totani is one scientist who finds that question compelling. Totani is a professor of Astronomy at the University of Tokyo. He's written a new paper titled Emergence of life in an inflationary universe. Totani's work leans heavily on a couple concepts. The first is the vast age and size of the Universe, how it's inflated over time, and how likely events are to occur. The second is RNA; specifically, how long a chain of nucleotides needs to be in order to "expect a self-replicating activity" as the paper says. (3/25)

Senate Pandemic Relief Bill Includes $10 Billion for DoD (Source: Space News)
The Senate passed a massive coronavirus relief bill Wednesday night that includes more than $10 billion for the Defense Department. The bill, approved on a 96-0 vote, provides $10.5 billion for the Defense Department, with $2.4 billion of that intended to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on suppliers. Among the other agencies included in the bill is NASA, which will receive $60 million to cover costs related to the pandemic. The bill, with an overall cost of $2.2 trillion, is expected to win passage in the House later this week. (3/26)

NASA Working to Aid Federal Pandemic Response (Source: Space News)
NASA is looking for ways to aid the federal government's response to the pandemic. In an online town hall with employees Wednesday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and other officials said that NASA "will be more and more involved as days go on" as it coordinates potential roles with other federal, state and local agencies. NASA will be soliciting ideas for potential contributions from employees, and will be part of an interagency meeting today about how it can assist in the production of ventilators. Bridenstine said that while he is thinking about how to get the agency back to normal operations "in an orderly way," he said the agency would take a cautious approach about reopening centers, taking into account conditions at each center. (3/26)

DoD's SMC Working to Support Contractors During Pandemic (Source: Space News)
The Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) is finding ways to help its contractors during the pandemic. Lt. Gen. John Thompson, commander of SMC, the U.S. Space Force's main procurement arm, said he had talked with local governments that issued stay-at-home orders to ensure that space companies are recognized as essential businesses and can remain open. SMC also intends to keep up the flow of contracts to small businesses during the crisis. Thompson said he was concerned foreign investors from nations considered adversaries of the United States will move in to rescue ailing space companies during this crisis and try to capture their technology. (3/26)

SpaceX Produces Hand Sanitizer and Face Shields for Hospitals (Source: The Verge)
SpaceX is producing hand sanitizer and face shields for hospitals. A team at the company that normally works on spacesuits and other equipment for crews is building face shields, donating 75 of them to a hospital in Los Angeles. The company, like many others, is producing its own hand sanitizer, and also plans to host a blood drive. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who earlier this month dismissed the coronavirus pandemic as "dumb," recently purchased 1,000 surplus ventilators from China to provide for California hospitals. (3/26)

Russia: Pandemic Won't Postpone ISS Crew Return (Source: TASS)
Roscosmos says the pandemic will not postpone the return of the current crew on the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka, are scheduled to return home April 17, a little more than a week after a new crew arrives at the station. While Kazakhstan, home to both Baikonur Cosmodrome as well as the landing site for Soyuz spacecraft, has imposed travel restrictions, Roscosmos said it is "interacting with partners and considering options" to allow launch and landing activities to continue as planned. (3/26)

Japan's New H3 Rocket Remains On Track for 2020 Debut (Source: Space News)
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) remains on track to launch the first H3 rocket by the end of this year. A company executive said that while the coronavirus pandemic forced it to adopt teleworking, MHI still expects to perform a static-fire test of the rocket's second stage in May or June and then start integrating the first H3 rocket for a launch around the end of the year. The H3 is designed to be less expensive than the existing H-2 so that MHI can remain competitive in the global launch market. (3/26)

ULA Atlas 5 Launches Satellite From Florida Spaceport for Space Force (Source: Space News)
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 successfully launched a military communications satellite Thursday afternoon. The Atlas 5 551 lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 4:18 p.m. Eastern, nearly 90 minutes later than planned after a problem with a ground system hydraulic pump controller halted the countdown in its final minute. The payload, the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) 6 satellite, was deployed from the rocket's Centaur upper stage several hours later. The Lockheed Martin-built satellite completes the AEHF system, which provides protected military communications. The launch also carried a cubesat secondary payload, TDO-2, with payloads that will test optical calibration and satellite laser-ranging technologies for space domain awareness. (3/26)

Italy's Avio Exempt From National Pandemic Lockdown (Source: Space News)
Italian launch vehicle company Avio has obtained an exemption to a nationwide lockdown that allows the company to remain in operation. Avio CEO Giulio Ranzo said in an earnings call Thursday that the current closure of the European spaceport in French Guiana shouldn't impact revenues of Avio, which builds the Vega rocket, as long as it reopens within two to three months. He added he believed that French officials share Avio's sense of urgency to restart spaceport operations, and that a Vega launch postponed by the shutdown could take place as soon as 10 days after the spaceport reopens. Avio, whose revenues fell 5% in 2019 but had a 5% increase in profits, did not issue financial guidance for 2020, saying the coronavirus pandemic has made forecasting futile for now. (3/26)

Iceye Offers 25 Centimeter Resolution Imagery (Source: Space News)
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) company Iceye says it can now produce satellite imagery with a resolution of 25 centimeters. Iceye produces the high-resolution SAR imagery with data acquired by a single satellite staring at a location for 10 seconds. The Finnish company plans to begin offering customers access to the 25-centimeter SAR imagery in mid-2020 from its current constellation of three SAR satellites. (3/26)

Slingshot Aerospace Secures $3 Million for Analytics (Source: Space News)
A startup has secured $3 million in government and private funds to accelerate the deployment of artificial intelligence-driven data analytics. Slingshot Aerospace received a $1.5 million SBIR award from the U.S. Air Force, matched by $1.5 million in investment by ATX Venture Partners and Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, two firms that previously invested in the startup. The company uses algorithms to analyze data collected by satellites and aerial drones for defense, disaster response and commercial applications. The funding will specifically support development of a system for use by the Air Force Special Operations Command. (3/26)
 
NASA Looks For Additional Orion Engines (Source: Space News)
NASA is seeking proposals for the production of a new main engine for the Orion spacecraft. NASA issued a request for proposals last week for the Orion Main Engine program to build a new main engine for the Orion spacecraft. The first five Orion missions will use engines originally built for the space shuttle's orbital maneuvering system. The new engines will be required to meet existing performance, interface and other standards for the Orion service module, rather than redesign the service module to accommodate an improved engine. (3/26)

GHGSat Satellite to Provide Methane Emission Data on Oil Fields (Source: SpaceQ)
GHGSat has a contract with Bloomberg to provide satellite data on methane emissions. The Canadian company said it started providing data to Bloomberg in February, focusing on the Permian Basin in West Texas, a major oil producing region. The data from GHGSat's satellite will be combined with other sources for a Bloomberg product that tracks emissions. GHGSat has two more satellites scheduled for launch later this year, and says it will announce more analytics deals in the coming weeks. (3/27)

New Old Data Found From Voyager Uranus Flyby (Source: Space.com)
Scientists reanalyzing Voyager 2 data found something missed during the spacecraft's flyby of Uranus more than 30 years ago. A new analysis of magnetic field data from Voyager 2 detected an "abrupt zigzag" in the magnetic field, lasting just a minute, that was missed in the original analysis of the data. Scientists believe that is a sign of a plasmoid, or a bubble of plasma, in the planet's magnetic field, possibly containing gas extracted from the planet's atmosphere. (3/27)

More Dark Matter Science (Source: Science)
The coronavirus pandemic hasn't stopped astrophysicists from engaging in one of their favorite activities: arguing about the nature of dark matter. A paper published in the journal Science this week concluded that so-called "sterile neutrinos," a type of neutrino heavier that classic ones, can't be the material that makes up the dark matter halo surrounding the galaxy. Physicists looked for predicted X-ray emissions from sterile neutrinos in areas of the sky that were otherwise devoid of X-ray sources, but saw nothing. Other physicists, though, argue that the analysis done in that paper was wrong, and that their own observations detected the X-ray signature expected from sterile neutrinos. (3/27)

Conservation Charity Objects to Scotland Spaceport Plans (Source: Press and Journal)
A leading conservation charity has objected to Britain’s first vertical launch spaceport planned for a remote part of Scotland. The Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland (APRS) has also written to Scottish Local Government Minister Kevin Stewart asking him to call in the application for the spaceport in Sutherland – but also all others in the country. Spaceports are also planned for Unst in Shetland and the Uists in the Outer Hebrides. (3/27)

Indian Startup Helps ISRO Set Up Satellites in a Cheap, Eco-Friendly Manner (Source: Better India)
India has come a long way from Aryabhatta, the first in the long line of satellites that the country has launched into space. Since then, our nation has placed into orbit 319 satellites for 33 different countries! This feat, however, wouldn’t have been possible without the existence of propulsion systems that help satellites maneuver in space and maintain a proper orientation once it is in the orbit.

“Just as cars need engines to move, satellites need propulsion systems to reach their dedicated orbits and to stay in these orbits by maintaining proper orientation. Propulsion systems form an integral part of all satellites,” says 27-year-old Rohan M Ganapathy, the co-founder of Bellatrix Aerospace, a research-driven company. Founded in February 2015, the Bengaluru based startup develops propulsion systems and orbital launch vehicles for satellites. (3/26)

Army Says Coronavirus Mitigation Efforts 'Have Proven Insufficient' As It Suspends Some Non-Critical Training (Source: CNN)
The US Army says mitigation efforts to blunt the spread of the coronavirus "have proven insufficient" within the service and it is suspending "non-mission essential functions," including some non-critical training of units in the field and physical fitness training involving large numbers of troops, according to an internal Army directive dated Thursday that was obtained by CNN.

"Mitigation measures taken by the Army to blunt the spread of COVID-19 have proven insufficient," the internal order said. The coronavirus "continues to spread geographically as the number of infected persons continues to rise," it added, saying "additional measures and actions are required to protect the force from further spread of COVID-19." (3/26)