March 4, 2020

Coronavirus Epidemic Having Limited Effect So Far on Space Industry (Source: Space News)
The ongoing coronavirus epidemic has so far has only a limited effect on the space industry, with few cancellations or other major interruptions. In a brief interview here March 2 after a speech at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference, NASA Administration Jim Bridenstine said the agency was taking a “day-by-day” approach to addressing the disease, and that any responses may vary from one field center to another depending on the locations of outbreaks.

“We’re taking it at this point day by day. We have ten centers across the nation and every single one of them, as this continues to develop, is going to be affected differently,” he said. He said NASA was following a “tiered approach” to the coronavirus, starting with guidance and direction from government officials, tailoring that as needed for various centers. “More than everything, we need people to understand that we care about them individually and that there’s a lot of guidance out there as far as what needs to be done” to minimize the risk of infection, he said. (3/3)

Space Situational Awareness - the Situation So Far (Source: Libre Space Foundation)
With tens of thousands of objects being already in orbit and hundreds of thousands coming up in the near future, it is no secret that keeping track and predicting orbital attitude and position for those objects will become imperative for viable and sustainable space operations and explorations. Space Situational Awareness (or SSA for short) is a multi-million dollar effort undertaken by various agencies, governments, and organizations around the world many times combined with Space Weather and Near-Earth Objects tracking. Click here. (3/2)

Satellites Detect Decrease in Pollution Over Quarantined Chinese Cities (Source: NASA)
NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) pollution monitoring satellites have detected significant decreases in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) over China. There is evidence that the change is at least partly related to the economic slowdown following the outbreak of coronavirus. By January 23, 2020, Chinese authorities had shut down transportation going into and out of Wuhan, as well as local businesses, in order to reduce the spread of the disease. It was the first of several quarantines set up in the country and around the world. (3/4)

Protein Discovered Inside a Meteorite (Source: Phys.org)
A team of researchers from Plex Corporation, Bruker Scientific LLC and Harvard University has found evidence of a protein inside of a meteorite. In prior research, scientists have found organic materials, sugars and some other molecules considered to be precursors to amino acids in both meteorites and comets—and fully formed amino acids have been found in comets and meteorites, as well. But until now, no proteins had been found inside of an extraterrestrial object. In this new effort, the researchers have discovered a protein called hemolithin inside of a meteorite that was found in Algeria back in 1990. (3/3)

Large Asteroid Will Fly By the Earth Next Month, But Won't Hit Us, Reassures NASA (Source: CNN)
On April 29, an asteroid estimated to be between 1.1 and 2.5 miles wide will fly by Earth. But it's not expected to collide with our planet, thankfully. If it did, the asteroid is "large enough to cause global effects," according to NASA, back when the asteroid was first discovered. The asteroid is called 52768 (1998 OR2) and it was first spotted in 1998. It will pass within 3,908,791 miles of Earth, moving at 19,461 miles per hour.

The flyby is expected to occur on Wednesday, April 29, at 4:56 a.m. ET, according to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies. They track Near-Earth Objects that could collide with Earth. It's the largest asteroid expected to zip by Earth within the next two months, but it's not the largest ever. That honor belongs to the asteroid 3122 Florence (1981 ET3), which flew by and luckily missed colliding with Earth on September 1, 2017. (3/3)

Interference Testing for Orion Spacecraft Begins (Source: Space Daily)
Radio frequency testing has begun on the first Orion spacecraft that will fly around the Moon for the Artemis 1 mission, just two weeks after thermal and environmental tests were completed at NASA's Plum Brook Station in Ohio. Electromagnetic compatibility or EMC testing is routine for spacecraft. All electronics emit some form of electromagnetic waves that can cause interference with other devices. Think of the buzz that speakers give out right before an incoming call on a mobile phone. (3/4)

3D-Printed Thrust Chamber Passes First Tests for Vega Evolutions (Source: Space Daily)
The 3D-printed thrust chamber assembly of the methane-fuelled M10 rocket engine has passed its first series of hot firing tests. The M10 engine will power the upper stage of future Vega evolutions from 2025. M10 will improve propulsion efficiency and environmental sustainability by reducing emissions and combustion waste thereby increasing the competitiveness of European small launchers and lowering their cost. (3/4)

SETI@home Reaches End (Source: WIRED)
A project that for more than two decades allowed people to participate in a search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) project is ending. The SETI@home project at the University of California Berkeley announced this week that it will stop distributing data to participants at the end of the month. SETI@home started in 1999, using spare time on participants' home computers to analyze data collected in SETI searches at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. The project was one of the first and biggest distributed computing efforts, although it found no evidence of any signals from an alien civilization. The project, which now plans to perform an overall review of all the data from the Arecibo effort, may start again at a later date using data from other radio telescopes. (3/4)

WFIRST Passes Review Amid Budget Uncertainty (Source: Space News)
NASA's WFIRST astrophysics mission has cleared a major review even as it once again faces potential cancellation. WFIRST passed its Key Decision Point C review this week, NASA announced, with a projected cost through launch of $3.2 billion. WFIRST would launch by 2026, but NASA's fiscal year 2021 budget proposal once again seeks to cancel the mission, citing a lack of interest by the administration to pursue a flagship-class astrophysics mission given the delays and cost overruns of the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA's 2019 and 2020 budget requests also proposed to cancel WFIRST, but Congress funded the mission both years. (3/4)

Peraton Wins SatComm Contract for US Africa Command (Source: Space News)
Peraton won a $218 million contract to provide satellite communications services to the U.S. Africa Command after the company successfully protested an earlier award to Inmarsat. Peraton will provide Ku-band connectivity to U.S. Africa Command, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, for five years by combining satcom capacity from several satellite fleet operators. The contract was awarded last year to Inmarsat, but Peraton filed a legal protest with the Government Accountability Office and won. (3/4)

Florida-Based PredaSAR Raises $25 Million for SAR Constellation (Source: Space News)
A startup led by a retired Air Force general has raised $25 million to develop synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites. Florida-based PredaSAR, led by retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Roger Teague, is seeking to develop a constellation of at least 44 SAR satellites to serve government and commercial customers. PredaSAR was founded in 2019 by Marc Bell, an entrepreneur and investor who is the chairman and co-founder of Terran Orbital, which owns Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. PredaSAR has hired Tyvak to build its first two satellites. The company plans to launch its first satellite in early 2021, but did not disclose when its full constellation will be in orbit. (3/3)

A "Non-Traditional" Location for Space Command (Sources: Space News, Air Force Magazine)
The U.S. Space Force is willing to consider "nontraditional locations" as the headquarters for U.S. Space Command. At a House Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, Space Force Vice Commander Lt. Gen. David Thompson said the service had been directed to "open up the aperture" and consider a wide list of bases and other locations to be the permanent headquarters of the command. Space Command's current temporary headquarters is at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, which is on a shortlist of six sites in Alabama, California and Colorado that had been under consideration as the permanent headquarters.

This could open the door to SPACECOM facilities in Florida, which was left off the list of possible locations for the combatant command's headquarters. Florida hosts Patrick Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, as well as neighboring NASA facilities, but it wasn't in the running to become SPACECOM's home. Florida officials and politicians have been urging the Trump administration to have the state added to the list of potential sites.(3/3)

OSIRIS-REx Laser Fails (Source: SpaceQ)
A laser on NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission has failed permanently. NASA said last month that one of the lasers on the Canadian-built OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter had malfunctioned while the asteroid was passing close to a potential landing site on the asteroid Bennu, which affected images of the site that the spacecraft was making. That low-power laser cannot be repaired, the mission says, but the instrument's high-power laser is still working. (3/4)

Small Satellite to Aid Austrailian Wildfire Detection (Source: BBC)
Australian scientists are working on a small satellite to help spot wildfires in the country. The cubesat-class satellite will carry infrared sensors intended to identify regions with dry vegetation that are high-risk areas for new fires. Similar sensors are available on existing satellites today, like Europe's Sentinel-2 spacecraft, but the Australian satellite would be specifically tuned to monitor eucalyptus trees that constitute the majority of Australian forests. The satellite will be ready for launch in a couple years. (3/3)

Attack On US Satellites Focus Of Next ABMS Test (Source: Breaking Defense)
The next exercise of the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) will focus on a first: supporting Space Command (SPACECOM) through a simulated attack on US space assets, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein says. “We’re going to have three supported commanders, one for the very first time in history. The US Space Command Commander Gen. Raymond is going to be the supported commander for this activity,” Goldfein said. All the Joint Chiefs of Staff plan to attend this exercise.

US operational commands, called Combatant Commands, are broken down into two types: those covering ops in a geographic area, such as European Command, that are supported commands; and so-called functional commands that provide cross-regional capabilities, such as Cyber Command, that are supporting commands.

The April 8 exercise is the second of the ABMS family of systems being designed to enable the multi-service Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept to link every sensor to every shooter via a military Internet of Things. It will be much larger than the first so-called “ABMS OnRamp” exercise, held Dec. 16-18 in Florida. (3/3)

Rakuten, Vodafone Fund Mobile Satellite Network (Source: Mobile World Live)
Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten and Vodafone Group became lead investors backing a start-up project to launch the world’s first satellite network beaming mobile connectivity directly to smartphones, in a move to boost coverage. Vodafone and Rakuten invested in SpaceMobile, a low-latency LEO satellite network configured to connect directly to standard smartphones. It is being constructed by start-up Avellan Space Technology & Science (AST & Science).

In a joint statement, Vodafone CEO Nick Read said the satellite network will enhance coverage in core markets in Europe, Africa and rural areas, along with providing aid during natural disasters. Vodafone CTO Johan Wibergh said the network will be launched in a few years. He highlighted people will not have to buy satellite phones to use in remote areas and can use their 4G/5G smartphones in such places. Editor's Note: The US partner, AST & Science, has established its headquarters and manufacturing facility at the Midland Air & Space Port in Texas. (3/3)

Adidas Launches Boost Shoe Technology to the Space Station (Source: CASIS)
Shoe and apparel giant adidas is taking its Boost shoe technology off the ground—and into space—to help improve products for athletes around the world. adidas is partnering with the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory to explore the boundaries of product innovation, and the company’s Boost in Space investigation is set to launch on SpaceX’s 20th commercial resupply services (CRS) mission. This marks adidas’ second ISS National Lab-sponsored investigation. In their first project, which launched on SpaceX CRS-18 last July, adidas examined the behavior of free-flying soccer balls in microgravity to better study aerodynamic performance. (3/3)

Astra Alaska Scrub Cost Loss of $2 Million DARPA Prize (Source: Space News)
The DARPA Launch Challenge ended without a winner Monday when Astra scrubbed its last launch attempt less than a minute before liftoff. Astra's Rocket 3.0 vehicle was scheduled to launch from Pacific Spaceport Complex — Alaska, but controllers halted the countdown 53 seconds before liftoff because of "off-nominal" data from a sensor linked to the rocket's guidance, navigation and control system. The company could not resolve the problem before the launch window closed, and Monday was the last day in a two-week window for Astra to attempt a launch as part of the competition.

Astra will thus miss out on a $2 million prize had it successfully reached orbit on this launch, plus $10 million if it performed a second successful launch later in the month. Astra said it will likely try to launch again, outside of the competition, in "a week or two" after resolving the problem. Astra was the last remaining competitor in the DARPA Launch Challenge, which sought to demonstrate responsive launch capabilities. (3/3)

National Guard Chief Irked by Indecision on Space Guard (Source: Space News)
Proposed legislative amendments on the U.S. Space Force now being reviewed by DoD and the White House have caused a rift with the National Guard Bureau because they are not recommending the establishment of a Space National Guard. The proposed amendments — intended for the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act — were scheduled to be sent to congressional committees in late February but have been delayed due to disagreements over the Space Guard, according to multiple sources.

A draft of the Space Force legislative proposal for the 2021 NDAA was circulated in the Pentagon in early February and drew a strong rebuke from the chief of the National Guard Bureau Gen. Joseph Lengyel. In a Feb. 10 memo to the undersecretary of defense for policy, Lengyel blasted the proposal because it was not recommending the establishment of a separate Space National Guard to serve a reserve component of the U.S. Space Force. Currently about 1,500 Air National Guard troops support space operations.

According to Lengyel’s memo, the Pentagon’s draft proposal called for further study of the issue, including other ways to support the Space Force that would not require a separate Space National Guard. "Delaying Space reserve component establishment in order to study other manpower alternatives will orphan Air National Guard space units,” he wrote. Establishing the Space National Guard, said Lengyel, “is a cost neutral option that keeps units tied to their parent service.” (3/3)

Wastewater Recycling Project Could Someday Improve Human Space Flight (Source: ERAU)
When Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University student John Trzinski was a sophomore, he took two classes that cross-pollinated, resulting in an idea that won the first-place prize for individual projects in a recent Undergraduate Research Symposium — and could help solve a real-life problem. While studying the life support systems on the International Space Station, Trzinski learned that filtration of the station’s precious water is one of the station’s most “energy-draining and inefficient” systems, he said.

At the same time, Trzinski was taking a biology class, where he learned about how cells transport water — that is, through a passive, energy-neutral process known as osmosis. Trzinski figured “it’d be great if the astronauts on the International Space Station didn’t have to filter waste water mechanically.” He further wondered if wastewater could be put into one chamber of a filtration system, separated by a semi-permeable membrane from another chamber full of a high-concentration liquid.

By osmosis, Trzinski reasoned, water from the wastewater would flow to dilute the high-concentration liquid, leaving behind the contaminants in the wastewater. Trzinski’s research explores the effectiveness of using forward osmosis to remove urea from a synthesized form of urine. “In terms of real-world applications, this could greatly benefit people like soldiers or hikers since it could be used to convert urine into clean, safe drinking water,” said AJ McGahran, assistant professor of chemistry and chemistry lab manager at Embry-Riddle. “We are also hopeful that this would be useful for manned space missions." (2/26)

World View Stratollite Fleet to Provide High Resolution Imagery and Data Analytics in the Americas (Source: WorldView)
World View, the stratospheric data and information services company, has announced their plans to build and deploy a fleet of Stratollites, known as World View Orbits, over North and Central America starting this summer. After a series of successful test and development flights to sharpen vehicle flight and navigation capabilities, World View is in final preparations to offer customers high resolution imagery and associated analytics products from an integrated network of vehicles operating in the stratosphere for a variety of use cases. (3/3)

SES May Spin Off Some Business to Raise Capital (Source: Space News)
Satellite operator SES may spin off parts of its business as a means for them to raise outside capital. The proposed separation of its networks business, which includes the O3b satellite system, could include an initial public offering of stock for that business. Doing so would also put distance between that part of SES, which is seeing growth, from its declining video business, company executives said in an earnings call Monday. (3/3)

ESA Postpones ExoMars Parachute Tests (Source: Space News)
ESA has postponed critical parachute tests for its ExoMars mission. The parachute tests, which were scheduled to take place in December and February in Oregon, are now scheduled for late March. That parachute system had failed in past high-altitude tests, and mission engineers worked with experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to test changes in the design. ESA and Roscosmos, the main partner for the mission, will meet next week and hold a briefing on the status of the mission, currently scheduled for launch this summer. (3/3)

Space Force Budget Growth Projected to $2.6 Billion (Source: Space News)
The budget for the U.S. Space Force is projected to grow by $2.6 billion over the next five years, primarily for classified programs. Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett submitted a report to Congress last week on projected budgets for the Space Force over the next five years. That $2.6 billion in growth is in addition to funds that will be transferred from Air Force to Space Force accounts. The increase is mostly for the procurement of classified space systems, and very little is for personnel growth. (3/3)

NASA Studying Certification of Suborbital Vehicles (Source: Space News)
NASA is beginning to study how to certify commercial suborbital vehicles for flights by NASA astronauts. In a speech at a suborbital research conference Monday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said he is interested in funding ways to certify such vehicles, like Blue Origin's New Shepard and Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, for research and crew training by astronauts. NASA will look to adapt requirements created for the commercial crew program for suborbital vehicles, and use flight experience was a way to trade off some technical reviews. (3/3)

Chinese Automaker Plans Satellite Factory (Source: Reuters)
Chinese automaker Geely is getting into the satellite business. The company announced Tuesday it will spend $326 million to build a satellite manufacturing plant in China. That factory will produce satellites for a constellation intended to provide broadband connectivity and precision navigation services for its cars, particularly in support of autonomous driving technology. The company didn't disclose the size of the constellation but said the factory will be able to produce up to 500 satellites a year by 2025. (3/3)

DISCOVR Resumes Operations (Source: Space News)
The DSCOVR satellite has resumed operations, nine months after suffering a technical glitch. NOAA announced Monday that the satellite was back in service after engineers completed a software fix to the spacecraft to correct an attitude control system problem. DSCOVR, which had been in safe mode since late June, provides space weather data for NOAA and full-disk images of the Earth for NASA from its perch at the Earth-sun L-1 point. (3/2)

NASA Accepting Astronaut Applications (Source: Space.com)
NASA has started to accept applications for the next class of astronauts. The agency will accept applications through March 31. Applicants must be U.S. citizens and have a master's degree or equivalent educational experience and be able to pass a long-duration spaceflight physical. NASA has not disclosed how many astronauts it plans to select in this class, but picked 12 for the previous class in 2017 from 18,300 applicants. (3/2)

Life Beyond the Habitable Zone (Source: AAS Nova)
Whether or not a planet lies in its star’s habitable zone is commonly used to gauge its ability to host life. But what about non-habitable-zone planets that have sources of heat besides starlight? A star’s traditional habitable zone marks the range of distances at which an orbiting planet receives enough heat from its star to host liquid water on its surface. Since water (or another liquid) is generally considered a necessary ingredient for life to arise and survive, stellar habitable zones represent convenient boundaries within which to search for life beyond our solar system. Click here. (3/2)

They're All Good Space States (Source: Space News)
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine: "When you try to do it as a zero-sum game, where the budget is flat and now you put a new requirement to go to the moon, it's got to come from somewhere. So the history of NASA is, 'Well, we'll take it from the International Space Station,' which immediately gets the Texas delegation and the Alabama delegation and the Florida delegation against you. It's really hard to have a successful, sustainable program when you've got the most important space states opposed to you. (3/3)

Racing to Where/What/When/Why? (Source: Space Review)
It’s common today to see mentions of a new “space race” involving the United States and China. Dwayne Day argues that term doesn’t make sense, since there’s no agreement on where they are racing, when, or why. Click here. (3/3)

Handicapping the Megaconstellations (Source: Space Review)
OneWeb and SpaceX are shifting into high gear to deploy their broadband satellite constellations, with more systems proposed and in development. Jeff Foust reports on what industry expects think are the prospects for success for these systems, given the business and other challenges they face. Click here. (3/3)

EnVision and the Cosmic Vision Decision (Source: Space Review)
A Venus orbiter called EnVision is among the finalists for the next medium-class science mission by the European Space Agency. Arwen Rimmer explains why scientists, meeting at a conference in Paris last month, believe the mission is vital for ESA to pursue. Click here. (3/3)

From The Moon To Mars: NASA’s Project Artemis (Source: The 1A)
NASA is expected to move forward in the coming weeks with Artemis, a program designed to land the first woman on the moon in preparation for sending crews to Mars. “Our calling is to go farther into the solar system than ever before,” reads NASA’s Artemis website. “To prepare for Mars we must study and prove new human deep space capabilities on our Moon.”

No one has been to the moon since 1972 despite the federal government’s aim to do so by 2020. NASA had initially been working towards a moon landing in 2028, Vice President Mike Pence announced in 2019 that American astronauts would return to the moon in five years. That initial deadline was met with skepticism by those in the field. Now, however, NASA thinks it can meet its 2024 goal. What does a moon landing look like in the 21st century? And how far away are we from a human mission to Mars? Click here. (3/3) https://the1a.org/segments/from-the-moon-to-mars-nasas-project-artemis/

Relativity Space Has Big Dreams. Is the Company For Real? (Source: Ars Technica)
Tim Ellis worked full time at Blue Origin for two years, from 2014 to 2015, in the propulsion department. At the time the company had moved deep into testing the BE-3 engine and started preliminary work on the much larger BE-4 rocket engine. While at the company’s headquarters outside Seattle, Ellis looked for ways to bring additive manufacturing into the production process. “I started the metal printing program there,” Ellis said. “I was kind of a young, optimistic engineer. I thought printing was going to take off and replace the entire factory.”

It didn’t. By January 2015, Ellis and Noone were talking to each other most evenings on the phone, around 10pm, during their commutes home. Ellis lived in downtown Seattle, and Noone commuted from SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, to Pasadena. Both were just at the beginning of their careers, trying to establish themselves at companies already considered technology leaders in the space industry. Perhaps it was because they were young—neither was even yet 25 years old—but they felt as though things weren’t moving fast enough. Click here. (3/3) https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/relativity-space-has-big-dreams-is-the-company-for-real/

Space Coast Lands 10th in 'Best-Performing Cities' List, Buoyed by Job Growth, Tech Industry (Source: Florida Today)
The Space Coast area has made a list of the 10 best-performing cities in the U.S. The Milken Institute, a nonpartisan economic think tank, uses an index to grade communities on measures that include job growth, wage growth and growth of high-tech industries within metropolitan areas. The Space Coast shares 2020's top 10 list for big cities with major metros like San Francisco, Seattle and Austin, Texas.

The Space Coast jumped 47 spots from its 2018 ranking. This year, it ranked fifth for job growth over the past 12 months. In the report, the Milken Institute writes that the Space Coast's performance stems from its growing high-tech industries in the aerospace and defense sectors, along with its attractive weather and the location of Port Canaveral. However, the Space Coast is vulnerable because its some of its largest industries — defense, tourism and health care — are vulnerable to recessions, according to the report. (3/2)