June 5, 2020

Canada in Negotiations With NASA to Send a Rover to the Moon (Source: SpaceQ)
In a presentation to the space community in late May, the Canadian Space Agency outlined some of its latest lunar plans, including announcing it was in negotiations with NASA to send a rover to the moon. The news came as the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) updated the space community in two virtual webinars hosted by CASI and SatCan.

Erick Dupuis, the Director of Space Exploration Development at the CSA prefaced the news in his SatCan presentation by saying “So here’s the scoop, drumroll …” and went on to say, “so what we intend to do underneath, is to fly a micro rover on a NASA CLPS (Commercial Payload Services) mission. That rover will host Canadian and US payloads. We are negotiating with NASA to secure a flight for that, hence the idea of hosting a US payload to be able to maximize the leverage that we’ll get for the Canadian investment.”

The news wasn’t unexpected as Canada has made no secret its desire to get a payload, and eventually a rover on the Moon. It is however, a confirmation that Canada intends to make this happen sooner rather than later, and likely within the current five year funded Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program (LEAP). Rover size and instrumentation will depend on the negotiations with NASA along with what the CSA can fit into its current $150 million LEAP budget. (6/5)

Higher Chance of Finding Young Earth-Like Planets Than Previously Thought (Source: SciTech Daily)
Research from the University of Sheffield has found that the chance of finding Earth-like planets in their early stages of formation is much higher than previously thought. The team studied groups of young stars in the Milky Way to see if these groups were typical compared to theories and previous observations in other star-forming regions in space, and to study if the populations of stars in these groups affected the likelihood of finding forming Earth-like planets.

The research, published in The Astrophysical Journal, found that there are more stars like the Sun than expected in these groups, which would increase the chances of finding Earth-like planets in their early stages of formation. In their early stages of formation these Earth-like planets, called magma ocean planets, are still being made from collisions with rocks and smaller planets, which causes them to heat up so much that their surfaces become molten rock. (6/5)

ESA Moves Ahead on Low-Cost Reusable Rocket Engine (Source: ESA)
ESA's Prometheus is the precursor of ultra-low-cost rocket propulsion that is flexible enough to fit a fleet of new launch vehicles for any mission and will be potentially reusable. At the Space19+ Council meeting in Seville, Spain last November, ESA received full funding to bring the current Prometheus engine design to a technical maturity suitable for industry. Developed by ArianeGroup, Prometheus is now seen as key in the effort to prepare competitive future European access to space.

By applying a design-to-cost approach to manufacturing Prometheus, ESA aims to lower the cost of production by a factor of ten of the current main stage Ariane 5 Vulcain 2 engine. Features such as variable thrust, multiple ignitions, suitability for main and upper stage application, and minimised ground operations before and after flight also make Prometheus a highly flexible engine. (6/5)

Spacecom, Space Force Officials Discuss Planetary Defense, Astronaut Launch (Source: Frontiersman)
It’s possible one day an asteroid may threaten the Earth and the threat would need to be mitigated — possibly by the U.S. military. It’s a scenario considered in a paper titled “Whither Space Power?” co-authored by two Air Force officers in 2002. “Whose job should it be to divert the threat, and how?” asked Air Force Maj. Gen. John Shaw — then a major — and his co-author, Air Force Brig. Gen. Simon Worden. “It is our view that an organization the people have placed their lives in the hands of for the past several centuries — the U.S. military — is best suited to provide protection from either natural or man-made threats.”

Today, Shaw is dual-hatted as commander of the Combined Force Space Component within U.S. Space Command, and also serves as commander of Space Operations Command within the newly created U.S. Space Force. (6/4)

Asia-Pacific Satellite Operators Still Assessing Pandemic’s Market Impacts (Source: Space News)
Three months after the coronavirus pandemic brought large swaths of the global economy to a near halt, Asia-Pacific satellite operators say they are still trying to identify a new normal. The most immediate impact for communications satellite operators has been a potentially long downturn in air and maritime transportation that’s resulted in a drop in broadband demand from those sectors. Other impacts from a global pandemic that’s decimated some businesses while sparing others are less obvious, however.

“There are opposing forces on the market that we observe,” Christian Patouraux, chief executive of Kacific, said during a June 2 webinar hosted by the Asia-Pacific Satellite Communications Council. Demand for broadband internet is “through the roof” as people work from home and spend free time indoors, he said. But some Kacific customers, such as those whose income is dependent on the Asia-Pacific’s tourism industry, are struggling to pay bills, he said. (6/4)

ULA On Track to Launch New Vulcan Rocket in Early 2021 (Source: UPI)
ULA is on schedule to launch its next-generation rocket, the Vulcan Centaur, in early 2021, CEO Tony Bruno said. The new rocket is designed to provide a more efficient, more powerful launch vehicle than ULA's workhorse rockets, Atlas and Delta, with engines produced in the United States. The company previously bought Russian rocket engines, which Congress outlawed in a bill passed in 2014. The work on Vulcan proceeds amid a recession and workplace restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "We decided at the beginning of March we were going to jump on this coronavirus prevention," Bruno told UPI. "We are not actually missing any milestones." (6/5)

Chinese Launch Companies Report Progress with Rocket Development (Source: Space News)
Chinese companies are making progress on a number of launch vehicle projects. Landspace and iSpace are reporting progress with methane rocket engines, while Galactic Energy is moving closer to launch of its Ceres-1 rocket, now expected in August or September. Another startup, Deep Blue Aerospace, announced Friday it had secured seed funding of more than $14.1 million that will be used for research and development, verifying vertical landing technology and testing kerosene-liquid oxygen engines.(6/5)

Private Investment Fuels China Commercial Space Sector Growth (Source: Space Daily)
In its latest research titled "China Space Industry Report," Euroconsult provides in depth analysis of how commercialization is driving both growth and technology advances in the Chinese space sector, with oversubscribed IPOs and a wave of private investment. China Satcom is now the world's highest valued pure satellite operator with a market cap of US$11 billion as of May 2020, while China Satcom parent company China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) reported record revenues of $37 billion in 2018.

With a deep-dive into the structure of the Chinese space industry, the report details the relationships between myriad space organizations and China's complex delineation between commercial and government entities. The Chinese government began to liberalize private investment into the space sector in 2014, and since then more than US$900 million in private funding has been invested. With nearly equal investment from government sources, commercial companies have raised a total of at least US$1.85 billion since 2014. (6/5)

Constellation Clutter Continues to Vex Astronomers (Source: Space News)
Astronomers who have spent the last year working with SpaceX to mitigate the impacts of the Starlink constellation say they're increasingly worried about other satellite systems. At a meeting this week of the American Astronomical Society, astronomers said SpaceX had spent "significant resources" addressing the brightness of the Starlink satellites, such as developing an experimental "VisorSat" launched earlier this week. However, astronomers said they've had little or no interaction with other companies working on satellite constellations, and called plans for megaconstellations like OneWeb's proposal for up to 48,000 additional satellites "a very serious problem." (6/5)

Momentus Signs OrbAstro for Cubesat Flight (Source: Space News)
In-space transportation company Momentus announced another customer Thursday. Momentus will fly a three-unit OrbAstro cubesat on a SpaceX Falcon 9 dedicated rideshare mission scheduled for launch in 2021, using its Vigoride system to transport the OrbAstro cubesat to a higher altitude after deployment from the Falcon 9. OrbAstro is a small United Kingdom company developing hardware and software to enable satellites to operate in flocks or constellations. (6/5)

Raytheon to Develop NOAA Geostationary Imager (Source: Space News)
Raytheon has won a NOAA contract to work on the design of a new instrument to collect imagery from geostationary orbit. The contract, valued at more than $410,000, will have Raytheon spend six months assessing an approach called step-and-stare imaging for the Real Time Imager instrument. That approach could improve the sensitivity of the instrument. The Raytheon award is one of a series of contracts NOAA is issuing to investigate potential instruments, spacecraft, business models and mission concepts for the space-based architecture to succeed the Joint Polar Satellite System and GOES-R series. (6/5)

Former NASA Astronaut Joins MDA (Source: SpaceQ)
A former NASA astronaut has joined Canadian space company MDA. Tim Kopra will be the vice president of robotics and space operations for MDA, overseeing work such as space operations on the ISS. Kopra, who left NASA in 2018, worked at private equity firm Blue Bear Capital before joining MDA. Mike Greenley, CEO of MDA, said one focus area for Kopra will be to support efforts to work with smaller companies to bring new products to the market. (6/5)

Planetary Resources' Assets Sold in Auction (Source: GeekWire)
A former asteroid mining company's assets were sold at auction this week. The auction of Planetary Resources equipment, ranging from a thermal vacuum chamber to electronics to an "Asteroids" video game, wrapped up Thursday. The company, which raised millions from private investors as well as the government of Luxembourg, ran out of money in 2018 and was acquired by a blockchain company, ConsenSys. It was rebranded for a time as ConsenSys Space, but in May ConsenSys announced it was giving away its intellectual property and spinning off a satellite tracking project, TruSat, while auctioning off the remaining assets. (6/5)

Senators Seek FCC Clarification on Ligado Decision (Source: Space News)
A bipartisan group of senators wants to hear the FCC's side of the story regarding the controversial Ligado system. Eight senators, mostly members of the Senate Commerce Committee, asked FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in a letter Thursday to provide a detailed account of how the agency arrived at the decision to approve Ligado's use of a portion of the L-band spectrum to build a 5G wireless network. The Defense Department and some other government agencies have sharply criticized that decision, saying the Ligado system will interfere with GPS signals. The letter suggests senators on the Commerce Committee are concerned that the negative reactions from the Pentagon and from the Senate and House Armed Services Committee have dominated the narrative and that the FCC has not told its side of the story. (6/5)

Trump Campaign Pulls Space Ad (Source: Space News)
The Trump campaign pulled a space-themed ad from YouTube that appeared to violate NASA media usage guidelines. The "Make Space Great Again" ad, posted on YouTube by the campaign Wednesday, used a mix of historical space footage along with that from the Demo-2 commercial crew launch, and included as a voice-over excerpts from a Trump speech to the National Space Council in 2018. The footage in the ad prominently featured the two astronauts on the Demo-2 mission and their families, along with SpaceX employees. Karen Nyberg, a former astronaut married to Demo-2 astronaut Doug Hurley, criticized that usage, calling it "disturbing," while NASA media guidelines notes that astronauts can't appear in commercial material. By Thursday night the campaign had removed the two-and-a-half-minute ad from YouTube. (6/5)

ISS Partners Discuss Lunar Cooperation (Source: TASS)
International Space Station partners will meet by videoconference next week to talk about cooperation in lunar exploration. According to a Russian industry source, the meeting Tuesday involving the heads of space agencies in Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States will discuss lunar exploration, including roles in the NASA-led Artemis program. Canada, Europe and Japan have all announced plans to participate in NASA's lunar Gateway through an extension of the ISS partnership, but Russia has yet to make a formal commitment. (6/5)

Florida's Cecil Spaceport On Track to Launch Orbital Flights by End of Year (Source: Florida Politics)
As Cape Canaveral garnered renewed world-wide attention for returning American-manned space flight to obit for the first time since 2011 last week, a Jacksonville operation has been quietly inching toward establishing a new space operation in Florida. Cecil Spaceport has had engine tests, is developing a mission control tower and is bringing on more contractors who want to use the facility to provide horizontal launches for orbital and sub-orbital space flight. Horizontal launches are similar to airplane takeoffs.

Since operations continued through the coronavirus pandemic with no layoffs of its modest staff of less than a dozen workers, Cecil Spaceport is on pace to see launches into space by the end of this year. “We are on schedule and it will happen this year, maybe multiple launches,” said Mark VanLoh, CEO of Jacksonville Aviation Authority which oversees Cecil Spaceport. (6/4)

SpaceX’s Orbital Starship Launch Debut Could Still Happen This Year (Source: Teslarati)
Despite the spectacular demise of a full-scale prototype just days ago, a senior SpaceX engineer and executive believes that Starship could still be ready for its first orbital launch attempt before the end of the year.

Even if the first launch attempt fails, that milestone – if realized – would be one of the single biggest upsets in the history of spaceflight, proving that Saturn V-scale orbital-class rockets can likely be built in spartan facilities with common materials for pennies on the dollar. Much like Falcon 1 suffered three launch failures before successfully reaching orbit, there’s a strong chance that Starship’s first shot at orbit will fall short, although each full-up launch failure would likely cost substantially more than the current prototypes being routinely tested to destruction in South Texas. (6/2)

Uncrewed ISS Trip Planned for Boeing Starliner Capsule in November (Source: Bloomberg)
Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will refly its uncrewed test mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in November of this year, while the first crewed flight is planned for April 2021, a space source said. "The second flight of the Starliner spacecraft to the ISS without crew is expected in mid-November 2020, while the first flight with crew - in April 2021", the source said. In April, Boeing announced that it was going to refly its uncrewed orbital flight test after problems during its first flight in December 2019. (6/4)

Petition Seeks to Stop Donald Trump Politicizing SpaceX and NASA Accomplishments (Source: Change.org)
Donald Trump recently made a presidential campaign video politicizing the accomplishments earned through many years of hard work by the NASA and SpaceX teams. This campaign video, created on June 3rd, implies that the return of crewed launch on U.S. soil is solely to the credit of his Administration. This implication is untrue; the NASA Commercial Crew Program has been around since the Obama Administration (started in 2011) in its current form, and its roots go back to the Bush Administration.

Further, NASA and the space industry as a whole have long tried to stay out of politics, and, until this Administration, that goal was at least partially attained. The implication that any one person was responsible for the SpaceX-NASA Crew Demo-2 launch is an insult to the work of the teams that meaningfully contributed to its success. I will not link the video here, but it even involves a variation his campaign’s well-known slogan: Make Space Great Again. This group of signatories stands for the position that it is wrong for this scientific achievement, as well as NASA and SpaceX video footage, to be used for political showmanship.  Click here. (6/4)

Pushback From Astronaut  After Being Featured in Illegal Trump Ad (Source: GeekWire)
The ad, titled “Make Space Great Again,” was paid for by the Trump campaign with the president’s approval. It interlaces video clips from past space missions and from the mission to send NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station with quotes from Trump about America’s space aspirations. One scene shows the astronauts’ families bidding farewell before the launch. “I find it disturbing that a video image of me and my son is being used in political propaganda without my knowledge or consent. That is wrong,” Karen Nyberg, who is a NASA astronaut as well as Hurley’s wife, wrote in a tweet flagged for the space agency and its administrator, Jim Bridenstine.

NASA generally makes its imagery freely available to the public, but it forbids the use of the names or likenesses of astronauts currently employed at the space agency in advertising or marketing materials. We’ve reached out to NASA for comment and will update this report with anything we hear back. (6/4)

GE Refines Affinity Supersonic Engine, Plans for 2020 Performance Tests With Aerion (Source: Flight Global)
GE Aviation has been making strides with its Affinity supersonic engine, planning for operational and performance tests later this year while keeping details of the design under wraps. The Ohio company is working closely with Aerion Supersonic, which selected the roughly 20,000lb-thrust (89kN) Affinity to power its in-development AS2, an eight- to 10-passenger supersonic business jet. Aerion’s timeline calls for the three-engined AS2 to complete first flight in 2024, followed by a 2026 service entry. (6/3)

JPL Mission Breaks Record for Smallest Satellite to Detect an Exoplanet (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Long before it was deployed into low-Earth orbit from the International Space Station in Nov. 2017, the tiny ASTERIA spacecraft had a big goal: to prove that a satellite roughly the size of a briefcase could perform some of the complex tasks much larger space observatories use to study exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. A new paper soon to be published in the Astronomical Journal describes how ASTERIA (short for Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics) didn’t just demonstrate it could perform those tasks but went above and beyond, detecting the known exoplanet 55 Cancri e.

Scorching hot and about twice the size of Earth, 55 Cancri e orbits extremely close to its Sun-like parent star. Scientists already knew the planet’s location; looking for it was a way to test ASTERIA’s capabilities. The tiny spacecraft wasn’t initially designed to perform science; rather, as a technology demonstration, the mission’s goal was to develop new capabilities for future missions. The team’s technological leap was to build a small spacecraft that could conduct fine pointing control – essentially the ability to stay very steadily focused on an object for long periods. (6/2)

Florida Senators Sponsor Companion to Posey/Crist Space Commerce Act (Source: Sen. Marco Rubio)
U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rick Scott (R-FL), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Roger Wicker (R-MS), and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced the bipartisan, bicameral American Space Commerce Act of 2020. At a time when the U.S. has steadily decreased its dependence on foreign rockets and launch infrastructure, the American Space Commerce Act would bolster U.S. leadership in the space industry, enhance public-private partnerships with American companies, and further increase U.S. innovation. U.S. Representatives Bill Posey (R-FL) and Charlie Crist (D-FL) introduced the House version of the legislation (H.R. 6783). The legislation is supported by the Aerospace Industry Association, Blue Origin, Boeing, Space Florida, SpaceX, and ULA. (6/3)

Trump Campaign’s SpaceX Launch Video Violates NASA Ad Guidelines (Source: Bloomberg)
President Donald Trump’s campaign has released a new video called “Make Space Great Again” that violates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s guidelines for advertising. The video, which opens with President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 speech declaring that America would go to the moon, features several recent images of NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. The federal agency doesn’t allow the astronauts it employs to have their likenesses displayed in any advertisements or marketing materials.

NASA was not aware of the ad until it became public, a spokesperson said. A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign said Wednesday the footage was collected from publicly available resources. The video ends with the disclaimer that it was paid for by the campaign and approved by Trump, which is required by the Federal Election Commission.

The 2 1/2-minute digital ad also includes a brief shot of Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and chief executive officer. The closely held company won a NASA contract in 2014 and beat rival Boeing Co. to the orbiting lab. Musk and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment on the ad, which also features several of the company’s employees. (6/4)