April 17, 2020

Researchers Warn Commercial Satellite Boom May Threaten US National Security (Source: Space Daily)
The mass building and deployment of commercial satellites is likely to bring about serious threats to the US' national security and global interests, as fellow countries quickly work to expand their stakes in space, a new study published by researchers with the Institute of Defense Analyses (IDA) has revealed. Published in the National Defense University's Joint Forces Quarterly, the study noted that while the spike in satellites will help to better inform US service members across the board during military operations, the build-up will also have some drawbacks.

"The effects of proliferated constellations will not be confined to the commercial sector. The exponential increase in the number of satellites on orbit will shape the future military operating environment in space," reads the study. "These trends will also create new challenges as adversaries ranging from Great Power competitors to hostile nonstate actors gain cheap access to space capabilities and the emergence of space-based Internet reshapes the cyber battlespace."

Referencing various satellite projects by China, such as the 156-satellite Xingyun and 300-satellite Hongyan low Earth orbit constellations, IDA researchers Matthew Hallex and Travis Cottom speculated that such "systems could pose a significant threat to US interests" as a result of "China's willingness to allow for commercial dealings with countries hostile to the United States." (4/13)

Space Business: Buck Stops? (Source: Quartz)
Past experience suggests that there will be a period of belt-tightening ahead. After the 2008 financial crisis, we saw NASA’s budget grow in 2009, thanks to an infusion of stimulus spending enacted under Barack Obama to battle the effects of the recession. But as battles over debt reduction played out in Washington, the agency’s budget fell for the next five consecutive years, from $19 billion in 2009 to $17 billion in 2014. Those cuts are one reason, though not the only one, that NASA is three years behind and counting in its effort to develop new spacecraft that can carry humans to space.

Before our current crisis, lawmakers were already leery of signing over the $35 billion or so that NASA says it needs over the next five years to again reach the moon’s surface. Now, that may prove an even tougher sell. Similar debates are likely to take place in Europe, China, Russia and India, which all have ambitious space programs.

For the US, it may all come down to the framing, who is in political power after the 2020 elections, and also at what point the world figures out how to effectively treat and eventually vaccinate against coronavirus. Money for NASA, relying more than ever on commercial partners, could be pitched as part of a high-tech stimulus package. Or a return to the moon could be cast as optional or pushed back to the original 2028 target date. Budget pressure could also force hard choices about how NASA will go to the moon, incentivizing more reliance on cheaper commercial partners. (4/16)

Undergraduate Space Training Evolves to Tackle Space Threats (Source: USAF)
The training of new military space operators is evolving to meet the challenges in the space domain.  A revamped initial skills training course now gives new space warfighters an early advantage in being ready to meet the unique demands of operating satellites and other space systems in a contested, degraded and operationally limited space domain.
 
For more than 60 years, U.S. space systems were operated in a largely uncontested environment. Because potential adversaries have introduced man-made threats in, and extending to, an already complex and dynamic environment, United States Space Force partnered with Air Education and Training Command to overhaul Undergraduate Space Training. (4/15)

Defense Leaders in Congress Ask Trump to Stop Ligado Plan (Source: C4ISRnet)
Three leaders from congressional defense committees increased pressure on the Federal Communications Commission to deny a license that Pentagon leaders fear could harm the Global Positioning System and sent a letter April 15 asking President Donald Trump to prevent the agency from moving forward with the plan.

The letter, signed by Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-OK., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, D-RI, the committee’s ranking member, and Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-TX, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, follows a recent report by C4ISRNET that the FCC appears poised to approve the application from Ligado Networks after years of delays. Privately held Ligado Networks, formerly known as LightSquared, hopes to use spectrum in the L-band frequency that is near where GPS satellites operate. More than 10 federal agencies have opposed the application, led by the Pentagon. (4/15)

SpaceX’s Recent Starship Testing Challenges Don’t Worry Elon Musk (Source: Teslarati)
In his latest burst of tweets, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he isn’t all that worried about a duo of recent Starship prototype failures and talked next steps for the next few Starships.

Aside from SpaceX’s South Texas rocket factory, Musk also touched on progress being made on the cutting-edge Raptor engine set to power Starships and their boosters, revealing a small production milestone in the process. The CEO says that SpaceX has already begun building its 26th Raptor engine, a sign that Raptors may actually be waiting on Starships in a turn of events. Back when SpaceX was busy testing its low-fidelity Starhopper testbed, the ship actually had to wait several months for the full-scale Raptor engine’s design to mature enough to support 15-30+ second hop tests.

Now, Musk’s Raptor SN26 reveal implies that SpaceX is slowly but surely ramping up production of the new engine back at its Hawthorne, California headquarters. From August to December 2019, SpaceX completed one Raptor engine every ~17 days, on average. With Musk’s confirmation that SpaceX is currently building (or already testing) SN26, the company is completing an engine every 12-14 days – an overall improvement of 20-40%. (4/16)

Neutrinos May Help Us Understand How Matter Prevailed Over Antimatter (Source: Ars Technica)
Everything we can see in the Universe is made of matter, and we wouldn't exist without it. For physicists, this is actually a problem. From the perspective of the physics that describes the behavior of particles, matter and antimatter are equivalent. As far as the Standard Model of particles is concerned, there's no reason we shouldn't see equal amounts of matter and antimatter—or, more correctly, just the photons left behind after they meet and annihilate each other.

For there to be the sort of difference between the two that makes our Universe possible, something has to break the apparent symmetry between them (technically termed charge-conjugation and parity-reversal symmetry, or simply CP symmetry). And we have identified some cases of CP symmetry violations; they're just too small to account for all the matter in the Universe.

Now, nearly a decade of data from the world's leading neutrino observatory has found an indication that these particles display hints of a CP symmetry violation that's potentially much larger. While the data doesn't reach the level where physicists are willing to call it a discovery, it definitely warrants follow-ups as additional detectors come online. Click here. (4/15)

Space Dynamics Lab Operators are Flying NASA Spacecraft From Their Homes (Source: Cache Vallley Daily)
Satellite operators from the Space Dynamics Lab (SDL) in Cache Valley are flying NASA spacecraft from their homes, in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19. A half dozen of them have been trained to operate either one of two spacecraft. Tim Neilsen, program manager at SDL’s Commercial and Civil Space Division, said there aren’t many opportunities every day when the spacecraft fly over the ground station dish in Virginia.

”It does limit us to about four or five overpasses per space craft,” Nielsen said. “There really is a limited number of overpass opportunities for each spacecraft, each one only lasts about 15 minutes.” He said the first satellite, known as HARP, is equipped with a wide-field fisheye lens that looks back at the earth to capture images of the ground and of the cloud cover. (4/16)

‘Spacefarers’ Predicts How Space Colonization Will Happen (Source: Science News)
Drawing on the science and history of space exploration, Wanjek paints scenes of future human activity across the solar system. “A two-week trip to the moon [would] be much like an African safari was 150 years ago,” he writes. “Initially for the wealthy, with a tinge of danger, and certainly not for the kids, at least not at first.” On Mars, too far for a weekend getaway, self-sufficient colonies could serve as a pit stop between Earth and minable asteroids and as the frontier of the outer solar system. Wanjek expects a permanent human presence on Mars in the 2050s and visits to Jupiter’s moons by 2100.

Wanjek tempers these far-out ideas with frank discussions about the perils of space travel. There are oft-cited worries, like the fact that, as Wanjek puts it, “living in microgravity sucks.” Weightlessness weakens bone and muscle, and Wanjek is not convinced that the International Space Station diet and exercise regimen is enough to keep astronauts fit for the long haul to another planet. Then there are less obvious concerns, like how a Mars colony growing light-sensitive crops underground is supposed to restock LED bulbs. (4/15)

SLS at Home: Program and Contractors Adjusting to Telework (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
With key worksites closed and activity suspended to protect their workforce from the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) Program is working on what it can from home. The program’s headquarters at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, are closed in response to the uncontained virus outbreak.

The New Orleans area was especially hard hit by the outbreak and as a result of the situation the Green Run test campaign on the first SLS Core Stage at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi was paused in mid-March, as was production of the second Core Stage at the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in New Orleans at the same time.

The SLS Program and its prime contractors, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, are continuing other work around the program and around the country with almost the entire workforce working from home under the agency’s response framework, orders from some states, and guidelines issued by the U.S. federal government. Assembly and processing work continues on booster and liquid engine hardware at contractor facilities from California to Utah to Florida, and development, analysis, and planning for upcoming missions and future designs are being done via telework. (4/15)

Weird Mystery of Watery Plumes on Europa May Hint at 'Stealth Particles' (Source: Space.com)
In 2012, the Hubble Space Telescope caught a glimpse of a faint plume of material at the southern pole of Jupiter's moon, Europa. Since then, the moon has provided faint glimmers of plumes, hinting that material from its icy interior ocean could be jetting into space. Now, a new study thatcombed images of the moon to hunt for signs of material on the Europanlandscape, only to find no obvious indications of the eruptions.

In 1995, NASA's Galileo mission arrived at the Jupiter system and began a detailed probe of the gas giants and its moons, including Europa. Europa was also visited by NASA's Voyager and New Horizons spacecraft on their way out of the solar system. By using data collected by all three missions, Paul Schenk, a researcher at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, was able to hunt for signs of changes that could indicate erupting material had fallen back onto the surface. The plumes themselves could help to reveal information about the ocean hidden deep beneath the ice. (4/15)

NASA Funds Proposal to Build a Telescope On the far Side of the Moon (Source: Space.com)
NASA is funding an early-stage proposal to build a meshed telescope inside a crater on the far side of the moon, according to Vice. This "dark side" is the face of the moon that is permanently positioned away from Earth, and as such it offers a rare view of the dark cosmos, unhindered by radio interference from humans and our by our planet's thick atmosphere.

The ultra-long-wavelength radio telescope, would be called the "Lunar Crater Radio Telescope" and would have "tremendous" advantages compared to telescopes on our planet, the idea's founder Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay, a robotics technologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote in a proposal. NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program is awarding $125,000 for a Phase 1 study to understand the feasibility of such a telescope, Bandyopadhyay told Vice.

The telescope — designed as a wire mesh — would be deployed into a 2- to 3-mile-wide (3 to 5 kilometers) crater on the moon's far side. The 0.62-mile-diameter (1 km) wire-mesh telescope would be stretched across the crater by NASA's DuAxel Rovers, or wall-climbing robots, according to the proposal summary. (4/15)

Moscow, Washington Agree to Create Working Group on Space (Source: Sputnik)
Moscow and Washington have agreed to create a working group on outer space, and Russia is expecting to get a response to its proposals on the agenda of the dialogue in the coming weeks, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Saturday. "In practical terms, the composition of the group has not yet been agreed on. We are at the stage of coordinating the agenda, that is, the topics based on which the work will be carried on," Ryabkov said.

"I can say that the immediate task is to agree on the agenda, after that a lot will become clear. But in any case, it's a matter of weeks and months in the worst case, that is, it is the nearest foreseeable future. We would like to hear from the Americans a concrete reaction to those ideas and considerations on the agenda that we have recently passed on to them," Ryabkov noted. In January, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and US Acting Undersecretary of State Christopher Ford held talks on strategic stability in Vienna. Back then, Ford said that it was possible that Moscow and Washington could launch a dialogue on space and create a working group. (4/14)

August ISS Conference Canceled Due to Pandemic (Source: ISSNL)
An ISS research conference has been canceled by the pandemic. The ISS National Lab, the nonprofit that runs the part of the ISS designated a national lab, said Thursday it was canceling its annual conference, which was to take place in early August in Seattle. The organization is considering "alternative avenues to feature content slated for the conference," but has not yet announced specific plans for virtual sessions or other alternatives. (4/17)

Planet Wins NASA Earth Imagery Contract (Source: Space News)
Planet has won a NASA contract to provide imagery for use in research. The $7 million contract option gives NASA access to PlanetScope, the three-meter resolution global imagery captured daily by a constellation of more than 130 cubesats called Doves. Planet was one of three companies that received NASA contracts in 2018 to purchase commercial imagery as part of a pilot program to study the use of such imagery in research. (4/17)

World View Delays Project, Furloughs Staff During Pandemic (Source: Space News)
Stratospheric ballooning company World View has delayed a new initiative and furloughed staff because of the pandemic. The company announced in March it would start flying later this year a series of its Stratollite high-altitude balloons in a "racetrack" that goes over parts of North and Central America, providing imagery at resolutions higher than those from satellites. But with the pandemic closing nonessential businesses, the company said this week it's delaying those plans and has furloughed an unspecified number of employees so that it has a "cash runway" to survive until conditions improve. (4/17)

Soyuz Returns ISS Crewmembers to Earth (Source: CBS)
A Soyuz spacecraft returned three people form the International Space Station early Friday. The Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft landed in Kazakhstan at 1:16 a.m. Eastern, more than three hours after undocking from the station. The spacecraft returned to Earth NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka. Meir and Skripochka spent 205 days in space while Morgan spent 272 days off the planet. The pandemic reduced the size of the recovery team greeting the crew, and also changed the way Meir and Morgan will get back to the United States. (4/17)

FCC Prepared to Approve 5G Plan Despite DoD Opposition (Source: Space News)
The FCC is prepared to approve Ligado's 5G network despite opposition from the Defense Department and others. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai released a draft order Thursday authorizing Ligado's system, to be taken up by the commission at a future meeting. That proposal has faced strong opposition by the Defense Department, as well as industry and members of Congress, because of concerns the system will interfere with GPS signals in a nearby spectrum band. Pai said that the draft order imposes "stringent conditions to prevent harmful interference," such as a 99.3% reduction in signal power and introduction of guard bands. (4/17)

NASA Human Lunar Lander Selection Before May (Source: Space News)
NASA now expects to announce awards for human lunar landers later this month. An agency spokesperson said Thursday that the Human Landing System (HLS) awards will be announced later in the month, but did not disclose a specific date. Proposals for the HLS program were due to NASA in November, and the most recent procurement update, in February, stated that awards would be made in late March or early April. NASA hasn't disclosed the reason for the delay, but the agency has been working to refine its architecture for getting humans back to the moon by 2024. (4/17)

Bold Moves Needed to Protect DoD Space Industrial Base Amid Pandemic Downturn (Source: Space News)
An Air Force official said Thursday that the service needs to make "bold" moves to help space industry startups. Department of the Air Force acquisition executive Will Roper said he fears many startups will go out of business during the pandemic because of a decline in private investment, including those working on small launch vehicles and low Earth orbit constellations. Specific actions will be discussed at the next meeting of the Space Acquisition Council as early as two weeks from now, he said. (4/17)

Space Force Opens Doors for Formally Transfer Personnel From Other Services (Source: Space News)
The Space Force will start accepting applications next month from service members who want to transfer to the new branch. The initial window for applicants starts May 1 and only lasts for 30 days, officials said during an online town hall event Thursday. The Space Force anticipates that current airmen working as space operators or in other space-related jobs will be the first to volunteer to transfer. But members of any of the U.S. armed services can apply on the condition that his or her leadership chain of command is informed of the decision. (4/17)