February 22, 2021

Bone Cancer Survivor to Join Billionaire on All-Civilian SpaceX Flight (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
After beating bone cancer, Hayley Arceneaux figures rocketing into orbit on SpaceX’s first private flight should be a piece of cosmic cake. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital announced Monday that the 29-year-old physician assistant — a former patient hired last spring — will launch later this year alongside a billionaire who’s using his purchased spaceflight as a charitable fundraiser.

Arceneaux will become the youngest American in space — beating NASA record-holder Sally Ride by over two years — when she blasts off this fall with entrepreneur Jared Isaacman and two yet-to-be-chosen contest winners on the mission SpaceX is calling Inspiration4. She’ll also be the first to launch with a prosthesis. When she was 10, she had surgery at St. Jude to replace her knee and get a titanium rod in her left thigh bone. She still limps and suffers occasional leg pain, but has been cleared for flight by SpaceX. She’ll serve as the crew’s medical officer. (2/22)

UK Space Business Accelerator Launches (Source: Space Daily)
The up to 10-week Business Accelerator programme, delivered in partnership with business growth experts from Entrepreneurial Spark and The University of Strathclyde, offers free virtual sessions to help companies with their sights set on space to make progress. Businesses that may not have previously considered the opportunities presented by the space industry can also benefit. Pre-launch activity already involves a nationwide targeting of relevant businesses to alert them to the possibilities for growth. The scheme, getting under way in early March, aims to find entrepreneurs from a wide range of sectors to strengthen the UK's space industry infrastructure. (2/19)

Measuring Photosynthesis on Earth From Space (Source: Space Daily)
As most of us learned in school, plants use sunlight to synthesize carbon dioxide (CO2) and water into carbohydrates in a process called photosynthesis. But nature's "factories" don't just provide us with food - they also generate insights into how ecosystems will react to a changing climate and carbon-filled atmosphere. Because of their ability to make valuable products from organic compounds like CO2, plants are known as "primary producers." Gross primary production (GPP), which quantifies the rate of CO2 fixation in plants through photosynthesis, is a key metric to track the health and performance of any plant-based ecosystem.

A research team with the U.S. Department of Energy's Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a product to accurately measure GPP: the SatelLite Only Photosynthesis Estimation Gross Primary Production (SLOPE GPP) product at a daily time step and field-scale spatial resolution. The team leveraged the Blue Waters supercomputer, housed at the U of I National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), in their research. Their paper was published in Earth System Science Data in February 2021. (2/17)

Russia to Team Up with UAE to Develop Supersonic Passenger Jet (Source: Russia Today)
Russia’s United Aviation Corporation and Mubadala, the investment fund of the United Arab Emirates, will create a joint venture for developing and manufacturing a supersonic business-passenger jet. The conceptual design of the new aircraft could be revealed as soon as at the end of the current year, according to Russia’s Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov, who stressed that the issue of equity participation hasn’t so far been discussed. The jet is expected to come in two versions, one with a passenger seat configuration of up to eight and the other of up to 30. “So far, we are optimistic [about the time frame for delivery being], until the end of 2021, but maybe the beginning of 2022,” the minister told journalists. (2/21)

NASA: SLS Could Still Launch Before 2022 (Source: Space News)
NASA says there is still a "reasonable chance" the first Space Launch System rocket will launch before the end of the year. At a briefing Friday, NASA officials said current schedules would allow the launch to take place as soon as October if everything goes well. They acknowledged that it's unlikely everything will go perfectly, but still said they were optimistic the launch will occur by the end of the year. NASA is preparing the SLS core stage for a second Green Run static-fire test, scheduled for Thursday. If that test goes as expected, the core stage will be ready to ship to the Kennedy Space Center in about 30 days. (2/22)

Panel Recommends NASA Strategic Plan for Staffing and Infrastructure (Source: Space News)
A NASA safety panel recommends the agency develop a strategic plan for its future workforce and infrastructure needs. At a meeting last week, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) said that NASA was currently making decisions "tactically" about staffing levels at the center level, and needed to take a more strategic view about the kinds of personnel and infrastructure needs for its human spaceflight programs as the mix of those programs, and how they are managed, change.

NASA Plans "Safety Culture Audit" of Boeing (Source: Space News)
NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) members expressed concern that NASA had yet to perform a "safety culture audit" of Boeing, one of the recommendations of an independent review last year after the first uncrewed flight of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. NASA said later it will perform that audit after the second uncrewed flight of the spacecraft this spring, and complete it before a crewed flight test this fall. (2/22)

China's Landspace Plans Orbital Launch Attempt (Source: Space News)
Chinese private firm Landspace is preparing for a first orbital launch attempt with a methane-fueled launch vehicle later this year. Landspace completed assembly of the four Tianque-12 liquid methane-liquid oxygen engines which power the first stage of the Zhuque-2 rocket in early February. The company is expected to attempt a first launch of the rocket, capable of placing up to 4,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit, later this year, but has not disclosed a target launch date. (2/22)

NOAA Plans Increased Satellite Radio Occultation for Weather Forecasting (Source: Space News)
NOAA plans to increase the amount of satellite radio occultation data it acquires from GeoOptics. Under a contract order Friday, NOAA is directing GeoOptics to supply 1,300 daily radio occultation soundings from March to September. As part of the latest order, NOAA is obtaining a license to share the data immediately with U.S. government agencies and to share it publicly after 24 hours. GeoOptics, along with Spire Global, won contracts in November to provide data, originally for 500 soundings per day. NOAA uses the data, which provide profiles of atmospheric temperature, pressure and water vapor, to refine weather forecast models. (2/22)