April 21, 2020

Lockheed Martin Beginning to Feel Impact of Pandemic (Source: Space News)
Lockheed Martin says it is starting to feel the effects of the coronavirus pandemic across all of its business units, including space, as its suppliers encounter difficulties. The aerospace giant, in its first quarter financial results released April 21, said that the pandemic “did not have a material impact” on the company’s results that quarter, which ended March 29. However, the company acknowledged that, as the financial effects of the pandemic extend and deepen, it is starting to see effects, particularly in its supply chain. (4/21)

Direct-Observed Planet May Have Been Asteroid Debris (Source: New York Times)
One of the few exoplanets that has been directly observed may, in fact, not exist. The Hubble Space Telescope imaged the exoplanet, Fomalhaut b, in 2004 and 2006. However, images of the star taken by Hubble in 2014 show no sign of the planet at its predicted location. Astronomers speculate that Fomalhaut b was instead a cloud of debris from two large asteroids that collided, and that cloud has since dispersed. (4/21)

OneWeb Suppliers Left Hanging with Bankruptcy (Source: Space Daily)
OneWeb's suppliers are looking for new customers after the satellite megaconstellation company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. When OneWeb filed for bankruptcy March 27 after launching just 74 satellites, it left suppliers in a state of limbo. Suppliers of components for OneWeb's satellites say they don't know what, if any, future opportunities remain with OneWeb, but that they are preparing for whatever happens next. Some companies say they can repurpose investments they made in increased manufacturing capability for other customers, but others may face difficulties making up for the lost business. (4/21)

NASA Updates LEO Commercialization Strategy (Source: Space News)
NASA is revamping its low Earth orbit (LEO) commercialization strategy and restructuring how it is managed. In a webinar Monday, Doug Loverro, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said a restructuring of his mission directorate will create a single office responsible for all commercial initiatives, including commercial cargo and crew. NASA has also appointed Alex MacDonald, the agency's chief economist, as the program executive for working with CASIS, the nonprofit that manages the ISS national laboratory. Loverro said NASA would work harder to communicate its vision for LEO commercialization to Congress, which provided just a tenth of the $150 million NASA requested for that effort last year. (4/21)

Palantir to Provide Data Services to Space Force (Source: Space News)
Data analytics company Palantir has won a contract to provide software and data services to U.S. Space Force units. The contract is for a project called Kobayashi Maru, an effort started last year by the U.S. Space Force's Space and Missile Systems Center to replace decades-old space command-and-control software with modern apps. Kobayashi Maru, named after a training program in Star Trek's Starfleet Academy, was created following a yearslong failed effort to develop a Joint Space Operations Center Mission System. (4/21)

Cosmonauts Begin 3D Bioprinting Experiment on ISS (Source: Sputnik)
Russian cosmonauts at the International Space Station (ISS) have started printing inorganic components of rat bone tissue as part of an experiment devised by Russian company 3D-bioprinting Solutions, managing partner Yusef Khesuani said on Saturday. "The experiment began in orbit as planned at 11:45 Moscow time on April 11," Khesuani said.

Prior to this, experiments on the printing of various tissues such as cartilage, bone, and muscle had already been carried out on the bioprinter developed by the company which is on the spacecraft. This time, the astronauts have to print only bone tissue for several days. The resulting samples will be returned to Earth, after which scientists will study them. (4/14)

ESA's Reassigns Proba-V Earth Monitoring Satellite (Source: ESA)
ESA has given its Proba-V spacecraft a new mission. Proba-V launched in 2013 to monitor global vegetation growth. With the Sentinel-3 satellites now handling that task, ESA will now use Proba-V for experimental applications, such as tracking drought conditions in Africa. The spacecraft, designed for a two-year mission, remains in good condition. (4/21)

The FCC’s Space Safety Order: We All Need to Mitigate Collision Risk (Source: Space News)
What a tragic irony if continued access to space is lost as a consequence of lower launch and spacecraft costs. The U.S. is the global space leader and has more to lose than any other nation from diminished access. That’s why the FCC on April 23 is about to adopt new space safety rules for non-geosynchronous orbit (NGSO) satellites that minimize that possibility. The Commission should be applauded for their thorough work and conclusions.

The essence of the new FCC rules extends a long-standing NASA standard on collision risk for individual spacecraft to an entire NGSO constellation. Notably, the FCC allows operators to manage this risk to acceptable levels by building and operating reliable spacecraft that can be maneuvered to avoid collisions for the duration of the license term. Ensuring spacecraft can reliably avoid collisions is important because a single collision can create large debris clouds of high-speed shrapnel in space that increase probabilities of even more collisions.

The timing of the new rules is critical in light of NewSpace investments focused on smaller, faster, cheaper space technologies. NewSpace can be transformational. Miniaturization and more frequent, lower cost launches enable disaggregating large, expensive mission functions into vast numbers of small, cheap, expendable satellites — aka megaconstellations. But NewSpace business models are still uncertain, while technology and investment capital have leapfrogged regulatory regimes. Market forces alone cannot manage collective collision risks, and current regulations are inadequate. (4/20)

Architects Building a Habitat to Live on the Moon, Going Into Total Isolation in Greenland for 3 Months to Test It (Source: Business Insider)
Two space architects in Denmark are working on a prototype that could be used for future habitation on the moon. Danish architects Sebastian Aristotelis and Karl-Johan Sorenson both attended the Royal Danish Academy School of Architecture and International Space University, where they won an award for a Mars habitat prototype. Now, their design firm SAGA, focuses on space and what they call "terra-tech," making space livable for humans. Click here. (4/19)

Russian Official at ISS Crew Launch Tested Positive for COVID-19 (Source: New York Post)
Fears over coronavirus reaching the International Space Station have emerged after a senior Russian official present at last week’s launch to the space lab has tested positive. Evgeniy Mikrin flew from Moscow to the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan alongside the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, in a Russian government plane.

Rogozin – the Kremlin’s most senior space official – was then seen close to the two Russian cosmonauts and one American astronaut as he supervised the launch. Mikrin, 64, deputy head of Energia Rocket and Space Corporation, has now tested positive for COVID-19 and is in isolation. Mikrin was seen sitting next to Rogozin when both men were separated by glass from the spacemen shortly before they blasted to orbit on 9 April. (4/17)

Scientists Say Interstellar Comet Has Led a Very Cold Existence (Source: Ars Technica)
Comets are essentially time capsules. Most formed during the early days of our Solar System, amid the disk of dust and gas around the Sun. The majority of this dust and gas coalesced into planets, but some of the leftovers—especially toward the outer edge of the disk—wound up in comets. Because comets spend much of their time in cold expanses far from the Sun, their interiors are relatively well preserved. Thus most comets offer scientists an unprecedented view of what conditions were like in the earliest days of the Solar System before planets formed.

To date, astronomers have studied hundreds of comets in our Solar System to understand its origin. But now, they've been able to look at the interior of an interstellar comet for the first time. In two new papers published in Nature Astronomy, scientists trained two of their most powerful observatories on 2I/Borisov, the first confirmed comet to enter our Solar System from elsewhere. Scientists learn about a comet's interior by observing gases produced in its coma, the envelope surrounding the nucleus where sublimation has occurred. So to understand 2I/Borisov, astronomers observed its coma as it passed through our Solar System at a relative velocity of 33km/s. (4/20)

NASA Preparing for Astronaut Launch in Middle of Pandemic (Source: WESH)
Preparing for lift off during a pandemic requires some changes to Mission Control. NASA spokesman Kyle Herring explains much of it has been done from a distance. "The technical teams have not really missed a beat. They've been doing a lot of video telecons," Herring said. "Getting everything to a point at least on the review side, technical side, the paper work, getting all of that done, while on the other side with people that are responsibly working with the real hardware," he added.

Herring said quarantine and medical clearance for the astronauts and employees who work closely with them has been a plan for years, even before the coronavirus. "The astronauts themselves, they're going to be going into quarantine well ahead of that launch date. There may be what we consider a soft quarantine, even ahead of that 14 days," he said. There is a change when it comes to others who would be on site at several locations around the country, working on the overall mission. (4/20)

Steps Taken to Protect Returning ISS Astronauts From COVID-19 (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Russian officials said they took stringent measures to protect the crew members amid the pandemic. The recovery team and medical personnel assigned to help the three out of the capsule and to perform post-flight checks were under close medical observation for nearly a month before the landing and were tested for the coronavirus. The crew members smiled as they talked to medical experts wearing masks. Following a quick checkup, they were flown by helicopter to Baikonur. From there, Skripochka will be taken to Moscow, while Morgan and Meir will be driven from Baikonur to Kyzylorda, 300 kilometers (190 miles) away, to board a NASA flight to Houston.

Restrictions on international flights imposed by Kazakhstan required the long drive, said Vyacheslav Rogozhnikov, a Russian medical official who oversaw the crew’s return. “A 300-kilometer ride after landing is quite a load on the astronauts,” he said, adding that Russia deployed its doctors to help the astronauts during the journey, if needed. Skripochka will spend three weeks under observation at a medical facility at the Star City cosmonaut training center outside Moscow. (4/17)