April 18, 2020

FAA Proposes Supersonic Standards (Source: Aviation Week)
Responding to a congressional directive to exercise leadership in enabling the return of supersonic air travel, the FAA has proposed noise certification regulations for new supersonic aircraft. the proposed rules cover landing and takeoff noise and would not lift the current prohibition on civil supersonic flight over land. "The FAA has indicated this is an initial step," says Boom Supersonic. The proposed rules would cover most of the proposed supersonic concepts presented to the FAA. (4/16)

Russia Ready to Talk Hypersonic Weapons with US (Source: Space Daily)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday that Moscow is open to holding talks with the United States on the development of advanced weapons, including hypersonic missiles. He said any discussions on the matter would include talks about the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and on weapons in outer space. "We are willing to engage in talks about new types of weapons, including hypersonic weapons, within the context of taking into account ... all the factors that have a bearing upon strategic stability," he said. (4/16)

Scientific Machine Learning Paves Way for Rapid Rocket Engine Design (Source: Space Daily)
"It's not rocket science" may be a tired cliche, but that doesn't mean designing rockets is any less complicated. Time, cost and safety prohibit testing the stability of a test rocket using a physical build "trial and error" approach. But even computational simulations are extremely time consuming. A single analysis of an entire SpaceX Merlin rocket engine, for example, could take weeks, even months, for a supercomputer to provide satisfactory predictions.

One group of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin is developing new "scientific machine learning" methods to address this challenge. Scientific machine learning is a relatively new field that blends scientific computing with machine learning. Through a combination of physics modeling and data-driven learning, it becomes possible to create reduced-order models - simulations that can run in a fraction of the time, making them particularly useful in the design setting. The goal of the work is to provide rocket engine designers with a fast way to assess rocket engine performance in a variety of operating conditions. (4/17)

Moon Dust and 3D Printing Will Be Standard for Future Lunar Operations (Source: Space Daily)
Can 3D Printers support extra-terrestrial colonisation in Space? One of the major challenges related to space exploration is the development of production technologies capable of exploiting the few resources available in extra-terrestrial environment. Laser 3D printing of lunar dust may be the answer to such queries.

Reduction of elevated supply chain costs and times connected to space exploration were amongst the main drivers which brought to the joint investigation on behalf of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Aerospace Science and Technology of the Politecnico di Milano to on the feasibility of 3D printing a lunar regolith simulant (NU-LHT-2M).

Additive manufacturing or 3D printing systems may allow the realisation of components when required, employing locally available resources and through a direct conversion from the digital CAD geometry to the final object. 3D printing can thus enable the manufacturing of lightweight structures, with improved performance (heat exchange, impact resistance, etc.) and greater reliability due to significant reductions in the number of components. (4/17)

SpaceX Set to Capture the Flag with May 27 ISS Crew Launch (Source: NASA)
A new era of human spaceflight is set to begin as American astronauts once again launch on an American rocket from American soil to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will fly on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, lifting off on a Falcon 9 rocket at 4:32 p.m. EDT May 27, from Launch Complex 39A at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport, for an extended stay at the space station for the Demo-2 mission. The specific duration of the mission is to be determined.

As the final flight test for SpaceX, this mission will validate the company’s crew transportation system, including the launch pad, rocket, spacecraft, and operational capabilities. This also will be the first time NASA astronauts will test the spacecraft systems in orbit. (4/17)

SpaceX Plans Starlink Ground Station at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Florida Today)
SpaceX is in the early stages of building hardware at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station that will help manage Starlink, its effort to beam internet access from low-Earth orbit. The California-based company recently began submitting permitting documents for a ground station near its fairing processing facility, which is located on a patch of land on the Banana River just west of United Launch Alliance's Launch Complex 37. The plans appeared last week in documents filed with the St. Johns River Water Management District.

The documents show a 50-foot-by-50-foot patch of land that will host at least one satellite dish capable of communicating with the Starlink constellation. Future users of the network, however, won't need hardware near as large – in documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission, the company said customers can get access with a pizza box-sized terminal. The service could open on a limited basis as soon as the second half of this year. (4/17)

Pluto May Have Deep Underground Ocean (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
Two new studies of data collected by the New Horizons spacecraft during its 2015 Pluto flyby suggest the dwarf planet has a deep subsurface ocean that may have been present all 4.5 billion years of Pluto’s existence. Sputnik Planitia, the left side of Pluto’s famous heart feature, was formed by a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) that impacted Pluto in the early years of the solar system. Lines visible on the opposite side of Sputnik Planitia may have been produced by shock waves from that impact and suggest ancient Pluto had an underground ocean at least 93 miles (150 km) thick. (4/17)