February 27, 2021

Space is Critical to Climate: If You Can't Measure It, You Can't Manage It (Source: The Hill)
Satellites in space are essential to successfully confronting the challenges we face from climate change. Spacecraft built and launched by America's commercial industry provide remote sensing data that allow scientists to better understand our changing planet and enable informed climate-related decision making by governments, industries, and individuals around the world.

The commercial space industry is encouraged by the Biden administration's and Congress's renewed efforts to address climate change and it strongly supports policies and legislation that harness the continued innovation from the commercial space sector, particularly in the remote sensing community. These commercial capabilities should be fully leveraged across the public sector to measure, record, coordinate and disseminate climate change data across government, researchers, and state and local authorities.

Without space-based data, scientists cannot adequately observe and understand the impact of changes to Earth's climate and policymakers won't be able to formulate effective strategies to respond to those changes. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, president of the United Nations General Assembly at the COP 24 in Katowice Poland, stated of space investments, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." (2/26)

Iceberg the Size of Los Angeles Breaks off Antarctica (Source: AccuWeather)
The British Antarctic Survey observed massive cracks at Antarctica's Brunt Ice Shelf on Feb. 16. On Feb. 26, it broke off the continent and became a 490-square-mile iceberg. (2/26)

Mars Is a Hellhole (Source: The Atlantic)
Musk reads from Sagan’s book: “Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate.” But there Musk cuts himself off and begins to laugh. He says with incredulity, “This is not true. This is false––Mars.”

He couldn’t be more wrong. Mars? Mars is a hellhole. The central thing about Mars is that it is not Earth, not even close. In fact, the only things our planet and Mars really have in common is that both are rocky planets with some water ice and both have robots (and Mars doesn’t even have that many). Mars has a very thin atmosphere; it has no magnetic field to help protect its surface from radiation from the sun or galactic cosmic rays; it has no breathable air and the average surface temperature is a deadly 80 degrees below zero. Musk thinks that Mars is like Earth?

For humans to live there in any capacity they would need to build tunnels and live underground, and what is not enticing about living in a tunnel lined with SAD lamps and trying to grow lettuce with UV lights? So long to deep breaths outside and walks without the security of a bulky spacesuit, knowing that if you’re out on an extravehicular activity and something happens, you’ve got an excruciatingly painful 60-second death waiting for you. (2/26)


NASA Picks Astra to Launch TROPICS Mission to Study Storm Processes (Source: NASA)
NASA has selected Astra Space Inc. to provide a launch service for the agency’s Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity with a Constellation of SmallSats (TROPICS) mission. The TROPICS mission consists of a constellation of six CubeSats that will increase the scientific community’s understanding of storm processes.

The launch service contract for the TROPICS mission is a firm fixed-price contract valued at $7.95 million. NASA’s Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will manage the launch service. Astra Space will launch the CubeSats on the company’s Rocket 3 from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands with three separate launches over a 120-day period. The TROPICS mission is targeted for launch between Jan. 8 and July 31, 2022, under an FAA launch license.

The CubeSats, each the size of a shoebox, will provide rapid-refresh microwave measurements that can be used to determine temperature, pressure, and humidity inside hurricanes as they form and evolve. The TROPICS mission’s high-revisit imaging and sounding observations are enabled by microwave technology developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory. These observations will profoundly improve scientists' understanding of processes driving high-impact storms. (2/26)

Automaker Geely Gains Approval for Satellite Constellation for Self-Driving Cars (Source: Space News)
Chinese private automaker Geely has got the green light to begin manufacturing satellites for navigation, connectivity and communications needed for self-driving cars. China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) approved a license for a new facility Taizhou, Zhejiang province, in which Geely is based, to begin manufacturing earlier in February.

Geely announced plans for the $326 million Taizhou project in March last year and now plans to begin production in October. The facility will have an estimated production output of over 500 satellites per year. The satellite constellation will provide Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to X-(V2X) communications to realize full autonomous self-driving. (2/26)

Lockheed Martin to Upgrade GPS Satellites for In-Orbit Servicing (Source: Space News)
Lockheed Martin is redesigning the bus used for Global Positioning System satellites so they can be upgraded with new hardware on orbit. Eric Brown, senior director of military space mission strategy at Lockheed Martin, said this is significant because the thinking today is that “once something was on orbit you were done with it.” He said this will change as capabilities for in-space servicing and logistics become available in the years ahead. The redesigned LM2100 commercial bus will be used in the future version of GPS 3. Lockheed Martin expects the third satellite of the GPS 3F line will have the upgraded bus. (2/26)

The U.S. Put a Man on the Moon. But it Might Be Harder To Do the Same on Mars (Source: Washington Post)
As occurs intermittently, the air is filled with bold predictions of a revived U.S. human spaceflight program, with Mars as its goal and the moon as its staging area. I hope it happens. A national commission I co-chaired a few years ago concluded that, for reasons tangible (scientific discovery, economic spinoffs, national security) and intangible (inspiring of young talent to scientific pursuits, national morale and prestige, the elevation of human aspiration and imagination), a resumption of our attempts to reach beyond low Earth orbit was justified.

If and when humankind reaches that next frontier, though, there are reasons to doubt that it will be a U.S. government space project that leads us there. Ironically, the society that put a man on the moon may be just the wrong one to succeed in this next great endeavor, at least through a grand national project like Apollo.

It will be exponentially harder for humans to fly safely to Mars, establish a sustained presence and survive to return to Earth. To do so, our commission concluded, would require making the goal a central, single-minded priority of the U.S. space program; a relentless, unswerving multi-decade commitment to a pre-agreed path to reach the goal; and constant investments in amounts well above the rate of inflation. American democracy is not very good at any of those things. (2/25)

L3Harris Technologies Awarded Second Year of Space Object-Tracking Modernization Contract (Source: L3Harris)
L3Harris has been awarded $89 million for option-year two of a U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command contract to continue maintaining and modernizing infrastructure to track objects in space. The Maintenance Of Space Situational Awareness Integrated Capabilities (MOSSAIC) program has an estimated contract value of $1.2 billion over 10 years. (2/25)

Space Force Focused on Commercial Industry, International Partnerships (Source: National Defense)
This year, the Space Force will prioritize collaboration with the commercial space industry and partners around the world, the service’s chief of operations said Feb. 25. These types of partnerships have and will continue to allow the United States to lead the world in space, Gen. John “Jay” Raymond said.

Earlier this year, the service established SpaceWERX, a technology accelerator program that works with companies in the space industry. The technology areas of focus for the program will be announced in coming weeks. The service will also grow partnerships with allies this year, Raymond noted. Strengthening norms of behavior for space operations alongside international partners will improve safety, he said. (2/25)