April 7, 2020

Hong Kong Aerospace Technology Group Prepares to Launch First Satellite (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Hong Kong Aerospace Technology Group (HKATG) announced it aims to launch the “Golden Bauhinia No.1” low-orbit high frequency satellite in June from China . The planned launch marks an important milestone in the company’s “Golden Bauhinia” space remote sensing project. The rapid development of international commercial aerospace makes it one of the most dynamic industries after the Internet, AI and 5G. According to the US Satellite Industry Association (SIA), commercial aerospace revenue was US$277.4 billion in 2018 and is expected to increase 10 percent per year. (4/5)

NASA Is About to Grab an Asteroid Sample and Bring it Home (Source: Air & Space)
A typical spacecraft, when it arrives someplace in our solar system, comes in hot. Screaming through the void at thousands of miles per hour, an orbiter or lander begins slowing down after rocket thrusters fire, parachutes and sky-cranes unfurl, and landing legs and airbags deploy. Despite meticulous planning, there is little elegance in all of this. A robotic explorer is rarely designed to hit an exact target: The best-planned missions aim for somewhere in an area the size of a small city. Space exploration generally involves a lot of large objects moving quickly and arriving loudly and messily.

None of this, however, will be true for Osiris-Rex. This spacecraft’s mission is to catch up with an ancient space rock 175,000,000 miles away and retrieve a piece of it for scientists to study on Earth. Thrusters will fire, sure. But Osiris-Rex is nothing like any of its predecessors. Whereas the average space probe is a cruise ship sailing through vast waters, Osiris-Rex is a kayak negotiating boulder-choked rapids. Where the typical spacecraft moves with an elephant’s deliberation and pace, Osiris-Rex is like a hummingbird, touching its target ever so briefly before flitting away. (4/6)

Forget Still Pictures, This New Observatory Will Make Astronomy Videos (Source: Air & Space)
It will be the world’s largest digital camera. It will weigh in at three tons and be the size of an SUV. The telescope that surrounds it would cover a tennis court. Its 3.2 billion-pixel array will produce a new picture of the whole southern sky every three nights, with unprecedented detail, over and over, for years on end.

We’re accustomed to telescopes getting bigger and better, viewing ever fainter and more distant objects at increasingly higher magnification. The Hale Telescope in California, the world’s largest mirror for much of the last century, begat Keck, twins that took over as largest with 10-meter mirrors in the 1990s. Keck begat the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, the current record holder with an 11.9-meter effective aperture. Designers of the next generation of telescopes strain themselves to come up with ever more over-the-top names. The Very Large Telescope. The Extremely Large Telescope. European astronomers once considered a concept called OWL, for Overwhelmingly Large Telescope.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will, in some ways, beat them all.  J. Anthony Tyson, a professor of physics at the University of California, Davis, and chief scientist for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, or LSST, which will be the observatory’s main job, has referred to it as “a form of celestial cinematography, the biggest movie ever.” (4/6)

Jet Propulsion Lab to Pay EEOC $10 Million for Alleged Age Bias (Sources: Bloomberg, Law360)
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory agreed to pay $10 million and revamp its employment practices to settle an EEOC lawsuit alleging the lab’s layoff and rehiring policies had an adverse impact on employees 40 and older when conducting layoffs and rehiring. The parties filed a proposed consent decree the same day the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed its lawsuit under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act on behalf of a “class” of similarly situated older workers.

JPL didn’t admit to liability on the EEOC’s allegations.  In addition to the $10 million that will be distributed to the former workers, the lab will have to hire a diversity director to help the lab retain and recruit individuals of all ages and a layoff coordinator to make sure that employment decisions are lawfully made. (4/7)

Imaginary Space Programs Are Always Better Than Reality (Source: Tor.com)
Yuri’s Night approaches. With it comes the inevitable cloud-shouting from persons my age about all the space habitats and Moon colonies we were promised and currently don’t have. Hold on, guys…some of this discontent might go away if we adopted a different perspective. Larry Niven’s 1973 “All the Bridges Rusting” is a problem story about rescuing an obsolete spacecraft with newer and incompatible space technology. It has a subplot that was, for me, quite eye-opening when I reread it some years ago. The rescue effort in the story will be expensive. Public support for the space program is lamentably low, or so the characters assert.

The complaint sounds familiar, but the context makes it illuminating: “All the Bridges Rusting” is set in 2035, by which time every planet in the system has been visited by spacecraft and not one but two crewed vessels have been dispatched to Alpha Centauri (the first in 2004, the next in 2018). By the standards of our timeline, the Bridges people have little to complain about. (4/7)

ULA Employee Contracts COVID-19 Infection (Source: ULA)
A ULA employee in Denver tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus on April 6. ULA is taking all necessary precautions to protect the health and safety of their teammates and facilities. The company is closing the floor of the building that has been exposed to the virus for ceaning and disinfection. (4/7)

SpaceX Coronavirus Cases Rise to Six Employees as Musk’s Company Continues ‘Mission Essential’ Work (Source: CNBC)
SpaceX has had six employees test positive for COVID-19 as of Monday, according to an internal company memo seen by CNBC. Elon Musk’s space company has limited the number of employees physically working at its facilities, like others in the industry. But SpaceX operations have continued after it was deemed “mission essential” by the Department of Defense. A Pentagon letter allows companies working national security contracts to continue work, even if state governments enforce shelter-in-place orders.

The SpaceX memo noted that one of the employees recently identified has self-isolated. The company has also previously directed employees who may have been exposed to self-isolate, a precautionary measure it took after the company’s first employee case last month. (4/6)

Myriota Raises $19.3 Million for IoT Constellation (Source: Space News)
Australian startup Myriota announced it raised $19.3 million to build out a satellite constellation for internet of things services. Australian investors Hostplus and Main Sequence Ventures led Myriota's Series B round, with participation from several other investors, including Boeing HorizonX and In-Q-Tel. The company has three cubesats under construction, and announced last week it is buying four small satellites, along with spectrum licenses and ground stations, from Canadian ship-tracking company exactEarth. Myriota plans to ultimately have a constellation of at least 25 satellites to provide connectivity for IoT devices. (4/7)

Report Critical of CASIS ISS National Lab Management (Source: Space News)
A report by an independent panel sharply criticized the management of the ISS National Lab. The report, released Monday, found fundamental issues with how the ISS National Lab was set up and how the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the nonprofit organization contracted by NASA to manage the ISS National Lab, was operated. That included a CASIS board compensated "much higher" than usual for a small nonprofit and with marketing responsibilities, as well as NASA managing its work with CASIS at several levels rather than through a single point of contact.

NASA and CASIS said they would implement a number of the report's recommendations, including changing how the CASIS board operates and establishing a single NASA program executive to serve as the liaison to CASIS. (4/7)

Air Force Academy Grads Heading to Space Force (Source: Space News)
Members of the Air Force Academy's graduating class this month will be commissioned as Space Force officers. Of the class of about 1,000 cadets who will be commissioned as lieutenants, 60 will join the U.S. Space Force. The class will graduate April 18, six weeks ahead of schedule and without spectators because of the coronavirus pandemic. Cadets said they're excited about joining the Space Force and "being part of a new and relatively unknown system where we can actually make a real impact," in the words of one. (4/7)

Court Finds Astronaut McClain Falsely Accused of Bank Fraud by Former Partner (Source: USDOJ)
NASA Astronaut  Anne McClain, a former U. S. Army pilot, was accused by her former partner of bank fraud while she was serving as crew on the International Space Station. A federal indictment has been unsealed against McClain's accuser for making false statements to federal authorities. A Houston federal grand jury returned the two-count indictment against Summer Worden. The charges allege Worden made false statements to NASA - Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). (4/6)

Coronavirus May Be Opportunity For Air Force Technology Chief Roper To Impact U.S. Industrial Base (Source: Forbes)
Dr. Will Roper, the U.S. Air Force’s top acquisition and technology official, is pressing his service to respond quickly and imaginatively to the stresses imposed on military contractors by the spread of coronavirus. Roper established a COVID-19 acquisition task force within the Department of the Air Force on March 25, and subsequently undertook a series of steps aimed at bolstering the resilience of key companies and their suppliers.

The measures include accelerated payment of prime contractors for work in progress, with the understanding that the primes will pass through much of their improved cashflow to suppliers—especially suppliers whose operations are threatened by the current crisis. Other military services are implementing similar initiatives to protect the defense industrial base, but Roper’s approach is informed by his belief that Air Force investment programs have a role to play in bolstering competitiveness beyond the narrow confines of military procurement. (4/3)

No ICBMs for Space Force (Source: Space News)
The Air Force last week unveiled a list of 23 organizations with space-related missions that will transfer to the Space Force. The 23 Air Force units are located at bases in Colorado, California, Nevada, Ohio, New Mexico and Maryland. Although they are transferring to the Space Force they will not be physically relocated.  These 23 organizations were not part of Air Force Space Command.

There was some speculation that the Air Force was considering moving to the Space Force the strategic missile wings that operate the Minuteman 3 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. It is not unusual for ICBM officers to be moved into space jobs because of a shortage of space officers. But there is no chance that ICBM units will move to the Space Force, several sources said. “The Space Force did not want the ICBM mission,” one source said. “It would take away from their congressional mandate to focus on space.” (4/7)

New Policy Rejects Moon Treaty (Source: Space News)
The White House is looking to build up international support for its approach to the use of space resources. An executive order signed Monday by President Trump directed the State Department to lead interagency efforts to encourage other countries to adopt the American position supporting "safe and sustainable operations for the public and private recovery and use of space resources."

The order reiterates the long-stated opposition to the Moon Agreement, which would set up an international regime for overseeing use of space resources but which only a handful of nations have adopted. A senior administration official said the executive order had been in development since last year, but was published now after NASA released its report last week outlining its long-term lunar exploration plans that envision the use of lunar water ice and other resources. The official also said that the administration's approach would have been discussed at meetings of the U.N.'s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, but those meetings have been canceled or postponed by the pandemic. (4/6)

China May Have Operational Anti-Satellite Program (Source: Sputnik)
Recent reports on global space threats suggest that at least one of China's direct-ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) programs may be operational and is expected to soon field launchers. The Secure World Foundation (SWF) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) both released new studies on Monday regarding China's development of ASAT programs - endeavors that have been viewed by the US as a threat to its satellites in low Earth orbit. (4/6)

NewSpace Philosophies: Who, How, What? (Source: Space Daily)
The world is enthusiastically watching the development of the space industry. Alpha launches from Firefly Aerospace and Orion are in the works, as well as Crew Dragon lift-offs with space tourists. Max Polyakov, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk are constantly investing money and resources into space exploration. They each espouse a different ideology and purpose - from the colonization of the Moon and space tourism to the salvation of all humanity. Who, namely, are the main drivers in today's space exploration race? Who among them has been lionized in books? Which of them is exploring Space? Click here. (4/6)

North Korea Highlights Space Program in State Media (Source: UPI)
North Korea is pursuing space development for peaceful purposes, and the regime's National Aerospace Development Administration is to take on more projects this year, state media reported Thursday. Pyongyang propaganda service Naenara said the state is actively pursuing space development in the national interest. "The purpose of the republic's space development is to adhere to the interests of the state and to use science and technology to solve scientific and technological problems essential to economic construction and people's lives," Pyongyang said.

North Korea has refrained from satellite launches in recent years as Kim Jong Un met with U.S. President Donald Trump and other world leaders. Tension began to rise again late last year, when North Korea ignored calls for denuclearization and accused the United States of not giving up its military interests in the region. Pyongyang has defended its satellite rocket launches for decades as "peaceful," but outside observers have said the space program is a fig leaf for weapons tests.

Under Kim, North Korea disclosed five-year plans for space development in 2012 and again in 2016. In 2020, the fifth and final year of Pyongyang's second five-year plan for space development, North Korea could be pursuing a major project before the end of the year, including a satellite launch, South Korean news service News 1 reported Thursday. (4/6)

Satellites Map the Global Flow of Oil (Source: ESA)
Demand for oil has collapsed due to the coronavirus pandemic just as supply is about to strengthen because of a dispute between Russia and Saudi Arabia. As a result, oil prices have sunk to levels not seen since 2002. As storage tanks around the world fill up, ESA-backed companies are using satellite data to map the flow of oil across the globe through shipping channels and pipelines in almost real time. The analysis allows producers, traders and governments to support the economy by taking informed decisions about the fuel that powers industry and heats homes.

Crude oil is pumped from underground reservoirs into storage tanks that can be seen from space. These cylindrical tanks have lids that float on top of the oil, to minimise any loss through evaporation and reduce the risk of toxic, flammable gases escaping. Earth observation satellites circle the planet carrying optical cameras that can spot these tanks and measure their diameters. (4/3)

Tracking Amazon Deforestation from Above (Source: NASA)
In the early 2000s, the Brazilian rainforest was losing more than 8,000 square miles per year, an area nearly the size of New Jersey. But beginning in 2004, following several years of particularly rapid deforestation, the tide abruptly turned. Within a few years of adopting aggressive new environmental regulations, large-scale deforestation dropped by roughly 50 percent. By 2012, forest clearing was down nearly 80 percent.

Strengthened satellite-based forest monitoring systems played a key role in the turnaround, explained Raoni Rajão, an expert in environmental policy at Federal University of Minas Gerais. For several years, Brazilian government scientists had tracked deforestation with a system based on Landsat data called PRODES, but the data was mostly kept within government labs and agencies. (4/7)