June 11, 2020

The Space Force’s Real Mission: Wasting Taxpayer Dollars (Source: The American Conservative)
Space Force leaders want to create budget lines for broad mission categories rather than allocated funding for specific programs. In practice, this would mean that instead of asking Congress for funding for a single communications satellite program, as is the current practice for virtually all acquisitions, the Space Force would have a block of money allocated for all communications programs. So Space Force bureaucrats would be able to shift money from one program to another without Congress’s approval.

The real reason the Space Force was created was to make it easier for contractors to sell things to the government. This acquisition program supports that effort. We’ve seen this before—it is precisely the same reason that the United States Air Force gained its service independence from the Army in 1947. The airmen of that day and their allies in the aviation industry hated having to gain the approval of the non-flyer Army leaders before they could undertake pet projects. Having a separate service meant they had control over their own budget.

The last thing the American people need is another bureaucracy in Washington draining our tax dollars. There are legitimate military concerns in space and they must be properly addressed. But the key thing to remember is that, much like aviation, space operations by themselves are not decisive in war. It is how they impact operations at sea and on the ground that really matter. To that point, numerous critics now believe Space Force leaders will use their new proposed authorities to buy equipment that is incompatible with the gear used by the other services. (6/9)

What A Trump Loss In November Would Mean For NASA’s Lunar Return (Source: Forbes)
Any chances NASA seems to get to make good on its long-held promises to return crews to the lunar surface seem to get inexplicably stymied; this time by a double black swan —- the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic and unforeseen civil unrest. Both of which spell disaster for President Donald Trump. To his credit, the President seems to have embraced the idea of revitalizing NASA’s crewed program, finally getting us back on the lunar regolith. But who could have foreseen what now looks to be a coming defeat for the President come November? And what would this actually mean for NASA’s Artemis program which calls for sending a crew to the lunar South Pole by 2024?

Nothing good, I can assure you. Let’s suppose that former Vice President Joe Biden becomes president next January with the intention of continuing the Artemis program. Given the unprecedented mountain of debt the U.S. Treasury has run up in trying to mitigate a full-scale economic meltdown, Congress will not be in a mood to support NASA in meeting this 2024 deadline. Congress will be looking to cut NASA budgets to the bone in the wake of burgeoning national debt and decreasing tax revenues.  And much of the country will still be grappling with a moribund national economy well into next year. (6/10)

Money and the Moonshot (Source: Euromoney)
From a funding standpoint, the process that took Americans to orbit and then the Moon was all about the state. It had to be: for all its visionary ideals, the space race with the Soviet Union was an extension of the Cold War, pure and simple, and so the state, and ultimately the American taxpayer, footed NASA’s bill. The private sector was essential, no question.

North American Aviation built the command modules, IBM the computer complex. Everything from the Apollo Guidance Computer (Draper) to the lunar rovers (General Motors) to the miserable freeze-dried food the astronauts moaned about (Whirlpool) was made by private-sector enterprise; of the 400,000 people responsible for putting Armstrong and Aldrin on the Moon in 1969, the majority of them were out there in the corporate workforce, not in government agencies. But they were there as contractors, not as investors, given specific mandates and commissions, and paid for that work from a national budget. (6/10)

Yes to Space Exploration. No to Space Capitalism (Source: Jacobin)
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have a vision of space that serves the narrow interests of capitalists. But we don’t want to be indentured servants on a Martian colony — we want solar exploration that benefits humanity as a whole. As Tesla CEO, Musk has a long history of opposing the unionization of workers, presiding over a high rate of worker injuries (which the company tried to cover up), and even having a former worker hacked and harassed after he became a whistleblower.

Meanwhile, Bezos has a similar history of abusing Amazon workers. Amazon’s warehouses are known for having higher injury rates than the industry average, the company has fought unionization, and the stories of the terrible conditions experienced by workers are legendary. During the pandemic, that has continued, with the company failing to enforce social distancing or provide adequate protective equipment until workers began walking out, refusing to be open about infection information, and firing workers who dared criticize the company, all while Bezos’s wealth has increased by more than $30 billion. But it goes beyond that, because the worldviews of these billionaires began to be formed long before they started the empires they currently lord over. (6/8)

Testing for Ireland's First Satellite (Source: Space Daily)
Preparatory testing for Ireland's first space mission, EIRSAT-1, seen taking place at ESA's Hertz antenna test chamber. Educational Irish Research Satellite 1, or EIRSAT-1 for short, is being built by students and staff of University College Dublin, who are participating in ESA Education's Fly Your Satellite! program. At just 22 by 10 by 10 cm, the miniature EIRSAT-1 is smaller than a shoebox but is still equivalent in complexity to a standard space mission. (6/11)

AAC Clyde Space to Develop Next-Gen Satellites With Grant from Scottish Enterprise (Source: Parabolic Arc)
AAC Clyde Space Glasgow will develop, manufacture and gain in-orbit heritage on its next generation nano and small satellites having secured financial support from Scottish Enterprise (SE). With a standardized and modularized design, the satellites will combine cutting edge technology with constellation ready productization. An SE research and development grant of up to GBP 2.3M (approx. SEK 27M) will finance 50 % of AAC Clyde Space’s costs for developing the next generation of satellites. The grant will be paid out over a three-year period starting July 2020 and will support activities related to R&D, new equipment acquisitions and the creation of new jobs. (6/11)

Marine Corps Satellite Communications System Exceeding Performance Expectations (Source: Space Daily)
Marine Corps Systems Command is updating its tactical satellite system that provides increased communication on the battlefield. Based on field user evaluations, the upgraded technology is performing beyond expectations. The Mobile User Objective System is a next-generation, narrowband satellite communication capability that enables Marines to connect to SATCOM networks. It encompasses updated firmware to the AN/PRC-117G radio system and one of three antenna kits that help users simultaneously access these networks. (6/10)

Astrobotic Awarded $199.5 Million Contract to Deliver NASA Moon Rover (Source: Astrobotic)
Astrobotic has been selected by NASA to deliver the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, to the south pole of the Moon in 2023. Astrobotic will provide an end-to-end delivery for VIPER on board the company’s Griffin lunar lander through a $199.5 million contract awarded under the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS. Griffin’s delivery of VIPER will be Astrobotic’s second CLPS delivery, following the company’s Peregrine lander delivery in 2021. In addition, Astrobotic’s MoonRanger rover was previously selected by NASA for delivery to the Moon in 2022 on the lander of another CLPS partner.

The Griffin lunar lander is Astrobotic’s medium capacity lander product line, and is capable of delivering up to 500 kg of mass to the lunar surface. Griffin uses many of the same subsystems and approaches employed by the Peregrine lander, which will fly two years before VIPER. Both lander product lines put a heavy emphasis on safe and reliable delivery of customer payloads to the Moon. (6/11)

Space Florida, Israel Innovation Authority Announce Seventh-Round Winners of Innovation Partner Funding (Source: Space Florida)
Space Florida, the aerospace and spaceport development authority for the State of Florida, and the Israel Innovation Authority, an independent, publicly-funded agency created to address the needs of the local and international innovation ecosystems, are pleased to announce the seventh-round winners of industrial research and development funding tied to the Space Florida-Israel Innovation Partnership Program.

In October 2013, Florida and Israel established a $2 million recurring joint fund to support research, development, and commercialization of aerospace and technology projects that benefit both Israel and Florida. For this Call for Projects, 15 joint proposals were submitted by teams of for-profit companies in Florida and Israel. Four teams have been selected for this seventh round of awards. Click here. (6/11)

JWST Launch Delayed Beyond March 2021 Target (Source: Space News)
NASA confirmed Wednesday that the James Webb Space Telescope won't launch as planned next March because of the coronavirus pandemic. At a meeting Wednesday, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, said JWST "absolutely" won't be able to meet that March 2021 launch date because of a slowdown in work during the pandemic. NASA plans to perform a schedule assessment next month to identify a new likely launch date for the flagship astrophysics mission, and Zurbuchen said he still expected the mission to launch later next year. (6/11)

DARPA Picks Blue Canyon and SA Photonics for Blackjack Satellites (Source: Space News)
DARPA announced this week it has awarded contracts for its Blackjack satellite program to two companies. Blue Canyon Technologies won a $14.1 million contract for satellite buses, while SA Photonics received a $16.3 million contract award for Blackjack payloads. Both companies already had been selected as part of a pool of Blackjack satellite bus and payload suppliers and had received study contracts. These latest contracts are to produce hardware for the demonstration. The Blackjack program is an experiment to show the military utility of low Earth orbit constellations and mesh networks of low-cost satellites. (6/11)

Mars 2020 Launch Date Slips Due to Atlas GSE Issue (Source: Space News)
Next month's Mars 2020 launch has slipped three days because of a launch vehicle processing "hiccup." NASA said it's now targeting July 20 for the launch of the rover mission after an issue with ground equipment used for processing of the Atlas 5 launch vehicle caused a three-day delay. The overall launch window for the mission extends through Aug. 11. Mars 2020 will land a rover named Perseverance on Mars to collect samples that will be returned to Earth on later missions. (6/11)

China Launches Ocean Monitoring Satellite (Source: Space News)
China launched an ocean observation satellite Wednesday. A Long March 2C rocket lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 4:31 p.m. Eastern and placed the Haiyang-1D satellite into orbit. Haiyang-1D is a 442-kilogram satellite that carries instruments for global ocean color and water temperature monitoring. The launch was the first from Taiyuan since mid-January. It is unclear what impact, if any, the pandemic had on operations at the center. (6/11)

Germany's Exolaunch Arranges Two Smallsat Launches on Falcon 9 (Source: Space News)
German launch services provider Exolaunch will launch two Loft Orbital smallsats on a Falcon 9. Under a contract announced this week, Exolaunch will handle mission management, deployment and integration services for Loft Orbital, a San Francisco startup planning to establish a constellation of standard microsatellites to fly payloads, sensors and experiments for customers. Exolaunch announced in April it would arrange rides for multiple small satellites on SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare missions, and Loft Orbital is its first customer. (6/11)

India's Crew Spacecraft Test Delayed by Pandemic (Source: Times of India)
The pandemic will likely delay an uncrewed test flight for India's human spaceflight program that was to take place this year. Officials with the Indian space agency ISRO said a test flight of the Gaganyaan spacecraft that had been scheduled for launch in December will likely be postponed to some time in 2021. That test flight will be the first of two uncrewed flights of the spacecraft before India attempts a launch with astronauts on board. That crewed launch is still expected to take place in 2022 to coincide with the 75th anniversary of India's independence. (6/11)

Titan's Orbit Shifting Outward From Saturn (Source: Space.com)
Saturn's largest moon is drifting away from the planet faster than expected. Measurements of the orbit of Titan show that the moon is spiraling away from Saturn 100 times faster than predicted, at a rate of about 11 centimeters per year. Scientists say that faster drift could be explained by one model of gravitational interactions between Saturn and Titan. (6/11)

The US Didn't Send the First Black Person Into Space (Source: Business Insider)
NASA did not launch the first Black person into space — the Soviet Union beat the US space agency by three years. Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, a Cuban of African descent, launched to space with a Soviet cosmonaut crewmate on September 18, 1980. NASA missed an opportunity to make Captain Ed Dwight the first Black astronaut 20 years earlier — and put him in the running for an Apollo moon-landing mission. Ultimately, Guion Bluford, who flew on the eighth space shuttle mission in 1983, was the first Black NASA astronaut to reach orbit. (6/11)

Thailand Team Wins UN Access to ESA’s Hypergravity Centrifuge (Source: ESA)
ESA and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs have selected a team from Mahidol University, Thailand to carry out research using ESA’s hypergravity-generating Large Diameter Centrifuge. The team will see how watermeal – the smallest flowering plant on Earth, even smaller than the more familiar duckweed – responds to changing gravity levels to assess its usefulness for space-based life support systems.

The team, composed of five members, including two women scientists, teaching or studying at Mahidol University, wants to investigate the high-protein aquatic plant as a food and oxygen source for space exploration and on other planets that may have higher gravity than Earth. The team members bring a variety of academic backgrounds to the project, including physics, bio-innovation, biochemistry and electrical engineering. (6/9)