April 14, 2020

The Mission NASA Doesn’t Want to Postpone (Source: The Atlantic)
As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the United States, SpaceX, on NASA’s behalf, is preparing to launch astronauts from the shores of Florida, a first in American spaceflight history. The mission, bound for the International Space Station, is currently scheduled for mid-to-late May. In this moment, an astronaut launch might seem to be the opposite of everything Americans have been instructed to do to protect themselves and one another: Flinging people outward doesn’t quite line up with a growing nationwide impulse to turn inward. The mission would unfold against a truly unprecedented backdrop; even wars and national strife, one space historian told me, haven’t posed a challenge to the U.S. space program like this pandemic has.

NASA’s administrator, Jim Bridenstine, recently acknowledged that the circumstances could eventually delay the launch, but at least for now, the agency is still pushing ahead. The country, Bridenstine believes, could really use this right now. “It’s going to uplift America,” he said in a recent CNBC interview. “We need that moment right now in American history.” The historic launch, the rationale seems to be, has taken on new importance during a difficult time.

Like many other people across the country, most NASA employees are working from home for the foreseeable future. The pandemic has already led the agency to pause development on several programs, including a massive rocket meant to return people to the moon and a giant space telescope designed to be more powerful than Hubble. But the operation of the ISS, as well as the effort to supply it with astronauts, has been deemed “mission essential.” (4/13)

Japan Plans to Launch Micro Probe Into Lunar Orbit Using Solid-Fuel Rocket (Source: Sputnik)
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is planning to launch a micro explorer to the Moon's orbit using a solid-fuel Epsilon rocket in the first half of the 2020s, the Kyodo news agency reported on Monday, citing an informed source. The use of solid-fuel rockets in space exploration is not common, but compared to liquid propellants, it can make the process easier and cheaper. Japan is trying to expand its presence in space and take part in lunar exploration by creating a simpler method to send a space probe. (4/14)

ISS National Lab Invites Proposals for Space Exposure Materials Science (Source: Space Daily)
The International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory has announced a Request for Proposals (RFP) in the fields of materials science, device testing, and other research and development areas that require external space exposure. Investigators are encouraged to propose flight concepts that will leverage the Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) Flight Facility from Alpha Space Test and Research Alliance, an in-orbit platform deployed externally onboard the ISS. Proposals will be accepted through 5:00 p.m. EDT on May 22, 2020. (4/14)

Air Force Awards STTR to SII and Florida Tech for Lunar Sensors Study (Source: SII)
Florida-based Space Initiatives Inc. (SII) was awarded a $50,000 contract by the Air Force (AFWERX) for a feasibility study of a lunar surface sensor network, and ballistic delivery system. This is a joint  STTR  (Small business Technology Transfer Research) award with Florida Institute of Technology. SII is a startup originally focused on developing 50-gram femtosatellites, as well as tracking devices for spacecraft and upper stages to improve space situational awareness in LEO. The AFWERX lunar network award could lead to populating the surfaces of small solar system bodies with sensor networks for scientific and navigational purposes. (4/13)

Exolaunch Signs Rideshare Launch Contract with SpaceX (Source: Space News)
German rideshare launch services provider Exolaunch has signed its first contract with SpaceX. Exolaunch said it will send multiple small satellites into orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission scheduled for December. Exolaunch, which has arranged launches for almost 100 smallsats on other launch vehicles, said working with SpaceX's smallsat rideshare program will give its customers cost-effective and reliable launch opportunities for missions launching from the United States. (4/14)
 
Starlink Launch Delayed at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Spaceflight Now)
A Falcon 9 launch of Starlink satellites scheduled for this week has been postponed. The launch was scheduled for Thursday afternoon from the Kennedy Space Center, but marine notices about the upcoming launch posted last week have been dropped. SpaceX did not disclose the reason for the delay or announce a new launch date for the mission. (4/14)

Economics Of Rocket Reuse Still Up In The Air (Source: Aviation Week)
Elon Musk wants a fleet of fully reusable spaceships to reduce the cost of colonizing Mars. The vision is shared by fellow tech entrepreneur Jeff Bezos. ULA may decide to recover and reuse just the BE-4 engines on Vulcan. The idea is for the engine compartment to disengage after launch and fall back through the atmosphere protected by an inflatable hypersonic shield. A helicopter would be positioned to snag the engine section midair as it makes a parachute descent. ULA calls the approach its Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology, or SMART.

“You don’t have to save fuel to fly home with,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno said. “You still get to burn up all your fuel, separate your engine, which is the most expensive piece, and recover it...  We have not really changed our assessment over the last couple of years because we have yet to see the other forms of reusability—flyback or propulsive return to Earth—demonstrate economic sustainability on a recurring basis,” Bruno says. “It’s pretty darn hard to make that actually save money... We’ve seen nothing yet that changes our analysis on that... As you make your rocket less expensive, and you make parts of your rocket less expensive, it’s harder to close a business case on reuse because the thing you’re recovering isn’t as valuable.”

SpaceX's Gwynne Shotwell defended her company's reusability approach. "If I have to build a couple of new ones every year, or 10 new ones a year, that adds to the fleet, and I don’t know that I’ll have to push a rocket more than 10 [flights.]” With regard to how much the company has been able to cut costs by reflying rockets, Shotwell would only say, “We save a lot of money.” Editor's Note: With SpaceX's growing fleet of ships and refurbishment infrastructure, it would be interesting to see their total cost per rocket for reuse, versus their cost for new rocket manufacture. (4/14)

NRO Open to More Commercial Imagery (Source: Breaking Defense)
The NRO is opening the door to buying imagery from more commercial providers. The agency said it plans to release a request for proposals for commercial imagery services later this quarter, and make "multiple" awards in the following quarter. It's unclear if the NRO will use funds already allocated to its existing EnhancedView contract with Maxar or if it will make use of additional funding. The NRO issued study contracts last year to Maxar as well as BlackSky and Planet regarding new commercial imagery capabilities. (4/14)

Inside NASA's Crash Effort to Help Fight Coronavirus (Source: Politico)
The NASA workforce that has designed robots to explore the solar system is now being asked to pitch in on combating the coronavirus pandemic. The space agency is soliciting ideas from its employees for much-needed personal protective equipment, ventilators and new ways to track the spread of the Covid-19 disease. And in just over a week, it has received more than 200 submissions, says Amy Kaminski, the prizes and challenges program executive at NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. (4/10)

Space Acquisition Council to Guide Aerospace Stimulus (Source: Space News)
The Space Acquisition Council will be enlisted to help figure out how to support the aerospace industry during the coronavirus pandemic and economic slowdown. The council will "identify how best to focus additional stimulus funding," according to Will Roper, the top acquisition executive for the Air Force. “Our aerospace industrial base is particularly at risk as commercial markets recede and defense markets slow during COVID-19 uncertainty,” said Roper. “The Space Acquisition Council will hold an emergency session to converge on a plan of action to stabilize our industrial base. Working with Congress, we can ensure of nation’s space superiority does not become a coronavirus victim.” (4/11)

OneWeb Bankruptcy Leaves Plans for Arctic Satellite Broadband In Limbo (Source: High North News)
OneWeb announced plans to bring reliable, low-latency high speed internet service to the Arctic in Sep. 2019. It had planned to provide 375Gbps of capacity above the 60th parallel North, increasing capacity more than 200-fold in the region. The company successfully demonstrated its system’s capability with the first six satellites in August 2019, followed by launching 34 satellites in February and another 34 spacecraft on March 21.

OneWeb, however, filed for bankruptcy at the end of March, after having launched 74 satellites and completing or breaking ground on about half of its 44 ground stations. OneWeb’s bankruptcy filing leaves up in the air the current status and future use of its satellites. It also remains unclear how or if its planned cooperation with the U.S. military to provide satellite-based communications in the Arctic will continue. OneWeb had announced this novel partnership between a private communications provider and the military earlier this year.

For this purpose the U.S. Northern Command had requested $130 million in funding for 2021. The plan involved using prototype terminals capable of uplinking to these new low earth orbit constellations consisting of hundreds of mass-produced small satellites. Similar plans for cooperation between the U.S. military and SpaceX’s Starlink satellites will continue as scheduled. OneWeb’s initial coverage was planned to be established by late 2020 with full-time 24 hour coverage provided by 2021. The company explained that it would bring high-speed internet to the 48 percent above the Arctic Circle. (4/14)

U.S. Should Think About the Space Economy as a Single Entity (Source: Space News)
Consider the space enterprise as a whole. Operating in space today and well into the future is not an either-or proposition. It isn’t heavy launch or small launch. It’s not large constellations or gold plated school buses. The most effective solution in any operational domain is a blended, robust, and dynamic portfolio. We need to have small, dedicated launch that flies alongside heavy-lift flight proven rockets.

Why? If we only invest in heavy-lift, small experimental payloads will sit at the end of the queue. At the same time, small dedicated rocket platforms are limited by physics and can’t put aloft the heavy exquisite satellites that some government customers need. Across the board, flight-proven hardware also dramatically reduces costs and increases flight tempo. If integrated properly, it could well increase the resiliency of the architecture by allowing rapid replenishment of degraded architectures.

Equally, we need to look at how various constellations talk to one another and integrate with critical ground components. The days of looking at space as launch or as satellites in a vacuum are long gone. We need to start talking about and thinking about the system as a whole and integration across and through the architecture, not just single points or nodes of the network. (4/13)