July 12, 2020

Companies Support Lunar Lander Student Competition (Source: Houston Chronicle)
Students from around the world spent four weeks scrutinizing springs that would work in lunar gravity, components that would withstand extreme temperatures and grips that would keep their 11-pound race car from bouncing off course when speeding along the lunar surface. It’s accomplishing this through a partnership with Houston-based Intuitive Machines, one of the companies selected by NASA to develop a lunar lander to carry science, technology and now tiny race cars to the moon.

On Monday, teams from Argentina, China and the U.S. were named winners of the Moon Mark competition. This competition, created to inspire homebound students during the global COVID-19 pandemic, was only for the vehicle’s design. Next year, the Reno, Nev.-based company will host another competition to help students actually build, launch and race vehicles on the moon. (7/6)

Northrop Grumman to Provide Extended Life Capability for Perseverance Mars Rover Mission (Source: Northrop Grumman)
This summer, Northrop Grumman is playing an important role in a historic phase of Mars exploration. Northrop Grumman’s LN-200S inertial measurement unit (IMU) will provide extended life inertial navigation for NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL) Perseverance Mars Rover, a mission that will seek signs of ancient life on the Red Planet.

The design life of the Perseverance Rover mission is about 1,071 Earth days (1.5 Mars year); however, NASA JPL required Northrop Grumman’s technology to be rigorously tested to double that time. This is a performance threshold the company felt confident it could meet after the success of the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which launched in 2003 and featured the LN-200S. Both missions had a 90 Earth day design life, but the Opportunity rover ended up stretching to almost 15 Earth years (8 Mars years). (7/10)

Satellite for US Air Force Successfully Launches as Part of L3Harris’ Responsive Constellation Contract (Source: L3Harris)
L3Harris Technologies launched the latest in a demonstration series of end-to-end small satellites as part of a U.S. Air Force constellation the company is responsible for developing. As the prime contractor for the firm fixed-price development space mission, L3Harris is designing, developing, building, testing and deploying the satellites. The company will task, command and control the satellite system, as well as perform on-board processing of data to deliver imagery products directly to warfighters on tactical timelines. (7/6)

Former Spaceport America Official Accuses CEO of Abusing Authority (Source: Las Cruces Sun-News)
A whistleblower complaint alleges that Spaceport America CEO Dan Hicks pressured the former chief financial officer to circumvent internal financial controls and accounting protocols. Hicks is also accused of trying to monitor the CFO's communications with state Economic Development Director Alicia Keyes. Hicks has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation. The complaint was made by Zach De Gregorio, who has since resigned as CFO.

De Gregorio alleges Hicks' efforts to "bend the accounting rules" go back to when Hicks started on the job in 2016, but intensified in the past six months as the board leadership of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority changed and Keyes assumed the position of chair. Hicks allegedly interfered with De Gregorio's communications with Keyes and the board in order to control what financial information the board receives, particularly with respect to bids for contracts. The CFO said Hicks wanted to approve formal requests for proposal without board approval.

In April, De Gregorio said that Hicks attempted to send out requests for proposal for master planning with a scope of work significantly different than what Keyes had been shown, and that De Gregorio and Hicks had an angry phone call after De Gregorio contacted Keyes independently to notify her the RFP's scope had changed, and Keyes ordered the RFP be held. (7/11)

How Small Satellites are Radically Remaking Space Exploration (Source: Ars Technica)
At the beginning of this year, a group of NASA scientists agonized over which robotic missions they should choose to explore our Solar System. Researchers from around the United States had submitted more than 20 intriguing ideas, such as whizzing by asteroids, diving into lava tubes on the Moon, and hovering in the Venusian atmosphere.

Ultimately, NASA selected four of these Discovery-class missions for further study. In several months, the space agency will pick two of the four missions to fully fund, each with a cost cap of $450 million and a launch late within this decade. For the losing ideas, there may be more chances in future years—but until new opportunities arise, scientists can only plan, wait, and hope.

This is more or less how NASA has done planetary science for decades. Scientists come up with all manner of great ideas to answer questions about our Solar System; then, NASA announces an opportunity, a feeding frenzy ensues for those limited slots. Ultimately, one or two missions get picked and fly. The whole process often takes a couple of decades from the initial idea to getting data back to Earth. (7/11)

FCC Chief Seeks Conditional Approval for Amazon’s Project Kuiper Broadband Satellite Network (Source: GeekWire)
The FCC’s chairman, Ajit Pai, says he’s proposing approval of Amazon’s plan to put more than 3,200 satellites into low Earth orbit for a broadband internet constellation known as Project Kuiper … with conditions. The full commission would have to vote to approve the Project Kuiper application, which has been in the works for the past year. But support from Pai, who was chosen by President Donald Trump to lead the five-member commission in 2017, serves as a strong sign that conditional approval will ultimately be granted. (7/10)

Iridium Publicly Threatens Lawsuit To Overturn FCC’s Ligado Vote (Source: Breaking Defense)
Iridium is considering legal action to block the FCC’s controversial approval of Ligado’s 5G mobile wireless network, which much of the federal government says will interfere with GPS. “From our perspective, the record is clear that the Ligado order adopted this spring is detrimental to satellite communications, users, [and] consumers, said Robert McDowell, former FCC commissioner under President George W. Bush and Barack Obama and a legal rep for Iridium.

Iridium operates a satcom constellation in Low Earth Orbit that provides worldwide voice, data, and navigation services (including in the classified arena) to commercial as well as DoD and Intelligence Community customers. McDowell noted that the firm just last year finished launching 75 new satellites (called Iridium-Next), worth $4 billion and serving 1.4 million subscribers. McDowell was quick to assert that the company is not a Ligado competitor. (7/10)

The Moon May Have Stopped the Early Earth From Being a Frozen Snowball (Source: New Scientist)
The sun is thought to have once been far fainter than it is today, which should have left Earth frozen as a global snowball. That it wasn’t, a discrepancy known as the faint young sun paradox, has long plagued astronomers, but now we might have an answer: the moon helped keep Earth warm. (7/10)

"Earth People" Snubbed at NASA JPL (Source: Independent)
At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, where I was based, those who worked on Mars science and those who worked on Earth science competed for attention and praise from management. During regular meetings, Mars People sat in the choice seats nearest the director, who saw Mars as exciting and prestigious and treated the Earth People like stepchildren. A Mars rover cost $2.5 billion, whereas an Earth orbiting satellite was around $400 million. Mars People snubbed Earth People. (7/10)

SpaceX Starship Site's Stunning Evolution In South Texas Beach Community (Source: Business Insider)
SpaceX has mustered about 1,000 workers to a remote, beachy, and muddy strip of land at the southeastern tip of Texas called Boca Chica. His staff there is frenetically constructing a growing and evolving complex of tents, buildings, cranes, launch pads, and even employee residences to support around-the-clock work. Providing a stark contrast to the rocket facility, however, is a small community of retiree-age people who live or overwinter adjacent to SpaceX, some of whom bought homes in the area decades before the aerospace company existed (and they don't much care for the occasional explosion of prototypes).

As interest in and use of the site has grown, the government has banned the use of drones, limiting overhead photography. Alphabet, which has invested in SpaceX, has also not updated satellite imagery of the region in about three years on Google Maps or Google Earth. However, aerial photos taken by plane are permissible, and Mauricio Atilano, founder of RGV (Rio Grande Valley) Aerial Photography, is now making almost weekly flyovers to satisfy the appetites of people interested in seeing more of SpaceX's site than photos taken from the ground could ever provide. Click here. (7/10)

OneWeb's Revival Changes Competitive Landscape for SpaceX's Starlink (Source: CNBC)
If OneWeb had vaporized into Chapter 7 [bankruptcy] and gone away forever, then SpaceX would have been number one, they would have had the ‘priority rights,’” Quilty said. “They’re no worse off than they were prior to OneWeb going bankrupt, but they lost an opportunity.” OneWeb’s return from bankruptcy means that it will retain the “priority rights” it has to the Ku-band of satellite spectrum, Quilty explained. Spectrum is managed by government regulators on a first-come-first-serve basis, Quilty said, so the company that “files first has priority rights” to that band of spectrum. While regulators expect companies to share use of the spectrum, he said the company with priority rights gets to essentially “set the rules” for how it uses the spectrum. (7/10)

DoD Awards $15 Million Defense Production Act Contract to LeoLabs (Source: Space News)
The Defense Department announced on July 10 it has awarded LeoLabs, a provider of space surveillance data services, a $15 million contract funded under the Defense Production Act to shore up domestic industries financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. LeoLabs, a startup based in Silicon Valley, tracks satellites and debris in low Earth orbit using ground-based phased array radars. (7/10)

Russia's Next ISS Research Module Passes Final Trials (Source: TASS)
The Nauka (Science) multi-functional laboratory module that Russia is planning to send to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2021 has successfully passed trials in a vacuum chamber and will be dispatched to the Baikonur spaceport on July 21-23, the State Space Corporation Roscosmos reported on Friday. Now Russia’s Energia Space Rocket Corporation will deal with pre-launch trials, it specified. "The delivery to the Baikonur is scheduled for July 21-23," Roscosmos explained. (7/10)

NASA Awards SETI Institute Contract for Planetary Protection Support (Source: NASA)
NASA has awarded the SETI Institute in California a contract to support all phases of current and future planetary protection missions to ensure compliance with planetary protection standards. The SETI Institute will work with NASA’s Office of Planetary Protection (OPP) to provide technical reviews and recommendations, validate biological cleanliness on flight projects, provide training for NASA and its partners, as well as develop guidelines for implementation of NASA requirements, and disseminate information to stakeholders and the public. The role of OPP is to promote responsible exploration of the solar system by protecting both Earth and mission destinations from biological contamination. (7/10)