March 31, 2021

Researchers Discover New Type of Ancient Crater Lake on Mars (Source: Phys.org)
Researchers have discovered a previously unknown type of ancient crater lake on Mars that could reveal clues about the planet's early climate. The as-yet unnamed crater has some puzzling characteristics. The crater's floor has unmistakable geologic evidence of ancient stream beds and ponds, yet there's no evidence of inlet channels where water could have entered the crater from outside, and no evidence of groundwater activity where it could have bubbled up from below.

So where did the water come from? The researchers conclude that the system was likely fed by runoff from a long-lost Martian glacier. Water flowed into the crater atop the glacier, which meant it didn't leave behind a valley as it would have had it flowed directly on the ground. The water eventually emptied into the low-lying crater floor, where it left its geological mark on the bare Martian soil. (3/30)

China Launches Earth Observation Satellite (Source: Space News)
China launched an Earth observation satellite Tuesday. A Long March 4C rocket launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 6:45 p.m. Eastern and placed the Gaofen-12 (02) satellite into sun-synchronous orbit. The satellite is nominally part of the civilian China High-resolution Earth Observation System, for use in land surveys, urban planning, road network design and crop yield estimation, as well as disaster relief. The satellite, like some others in the Gaofen series, may also be used for national security applications. (3/31)

Relief at Biden Decision to Keep Space Council (Source: Space News)
The space community is relieved that the White House will retain the National Space Council. Industry groups had lobbied the Biden administration to keep the council, citing its benefits in coordinating policy among various government agencies. At a briefing Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the council "provides an opportunity to generate national space policy strategies." The decision is the latest sign the new administration will not make major changes to initiatives started during the Trump administration, such as NASA's Artemis program and the U.S. Space Force. (3/31)

Amazon Web Services Launches Space Accelerator for Final-Frontier Startups (Source: GeekWire)
Amazon Web Services is raising the curtain on AWS Space Accelerator, a four-week business support program that’s open to space startups seeking to use Amazon’s cloud computing services. AWS and Seraphim, a London-based investment group focusing on the space industry, will select 10 companies to participate in the accelerator program during the month of June. Applications are being accepted starting today, and proposals are due by April 21.

The industry sectors covered by the accelerator program can include, but are not limited to, Earth observation, electronics and robotics, spacecraft launch and delivery, spacecraft hardware and software, launch manufacturing and launch operations. Applications will be judged on the basis of the project’s level of innovation, the value that the team’s solution will bring to the industry, the creative use of AWS to address challenges and the team’s ability to deliver on the opportunities they identify. (3/30)

Starship Debris May Have Fallen Beyond Evacuation Zone (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
Videos from ground-based cameras did not capture the Starship’s descent, but imagery showed debris falling near the landing pad moments after SpaceX’s on-board video cut out. Photographers at Isla Blanca Park on South Padre Island, located about 5 miles (8 kilometers) north of the Starship launch base, reported light debris that may have come from the rocket. The park is located outside the evacuation zone around the Starbase facility, and is a popular viewing site for SpaceX fans, news media, and local residents.

An FAA spokesperson said the agency will oversee SpaceX’s investigation of the Starship SN11 failure. “The vehicle experienced an anomaly during the landing phase of the flight resulting in loss of the vehicle,” the FAA spokesperson said. There were no reports of injuries or public property damage after the Starship SN11 test accident Tuesday, and the FAA said it is “working with SpaceX to identify whether reports of light debris in the area is related to the mishap or other phases of the flight.” (3/30)

China's Geely to Set Up New Aerospace Company (Source: Reuters)
China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group plans to set up a commercial aerospace company to develop its satellite and communications technologies in the southern city of Guangzhou, local government said. Geely, which owns Volvo Cars and 9.7% of Daimler AG, will also work with other rocket companies in Guangzhou, the government said. Geely is building low-orbit satellites to meet demand for high-speed connectivity capabilities that can deliver fast software updates. From around 2025, Geely's cars will have more functions to connect to the satellites. (3/30)

Australia Extends Inmarsat Deal (Source: Space News)
Australian Defence Force (ADF) has extended a contract with Inmarsat. The $168 million extension of a contract originally signed in 2017 covers use of Inmarsat services to 2027. The extension now includes use of Inmarsat's full suite of managed services, enabling ADF to virtually track and assign bandwidth across the fleet in real-time. (3/31)

ESA Plans HydroGNSS Earth Science Mission (Source: ESA)
ESA has approved plans for a second Scout-class Earth science mission. The agency is starting negotiations with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. in the U.K. on a contract to build HydroGNSS, which will collect hydrological climate data through occultations of navigation satellite signals. The Scout program is a line of small Earth science missions at ESA intended to be built quickly and for no more than $35 million. (3/31)

ISS Has a New NASA Director (Source: NASA)
Robyn Gatens is the new director of the International Space Station program at NASA Headquarters. Gatens, who has 35 years of experience at NASA, had been serving as acting director for the last seven months, after previously being deputy director for the program. The ISS director leads strategy, policy, integration and stakeholder engagement for the program. (3/31)

China Accepting Proposals for Use of FAST Radio Telescope (Source: Xinhua)
China is opening the world's largest single-dish radio telescope to foreign astronomers. The Chinese Academy of Sciences said Wednesday it is now accepting applications from astronomers around the world to use the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), a radio telescope whose dish is 500 meters across. Chinese officials did not state how much observing time on FAST it will make available to astronomers outside China. (3/31)

Blue Origin Plans Another Expansion at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Orlando Business Journal)
A major expansion of Blue Origin's Space Coast manufacturing site is in the works that likely would create new high-wage jobs. The rocket company started by Amazon founder and world’s richest man Jeff Bezos plans to expand its Merritt Island manufacturing campus by 70 acres, according to plans filed with the state on March 26. The project is labeled as “South Campus Phase 2,” and it will rise just south of where Blue Origin previously launched a 90-acre expansion of its spacecraft production efforts.

This new expansion will equip Washington-based Blue Origin with new manufacturing and processing facilities to support its mission to build rockets and spacecraft that can take humans and supplies beyond Earth’s orbit. That likely would lead to further expansion of the company's workforce. In fact, Blue Origin has 27 Space Coast jobs listed on its website. Those positions include engineers and project managers. (3/31)

White House: Space is One Area Where Biden and Trump Agree (Source: Space Policy Online)
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed today what many in the space community have come to realize over the past two months — the space program is one area where President Biden and former President Trump actually share common ground. At today’s White House press conference, Psaki was asked if space policy is one of the areas where Biden and Trump agree.  She replied “that sounds accurate to me.” Once again it was Fox News reporter Kristin Fisher, daughter of astronauts Bill and Anna Fisher, who asked the question.

It is often said that space is a bipartisan issue and that is largely true, but the key is where it falls in budget priorities.  For Biden, that should become clearer later this week when his FY2022 budget request for NASA and DOD reportedly will be released. (3/30)

The Internet of Very Cold Things (Source: Lawfare)
State actors play an outsize role in the cyber threat picture for space and polar regions. States have occupied this unique role of preeminence in such environments for both political and financial reasons, but their near-monopolies have been eroding recently in both environments. Both space and the polar regions are currently the sites of frenzied geostrategic jockeying and competition for access to resources and political influence.

There is a clear need for any company or state operating in these environments to be concerned with strategic state-level cyber threat actors. This includes traditional threats like espionage, or having data or infrastructure attacked, but also encompasses additional concerns such as the misinterpretation of one state’s physical access or exploration of certain areas as a front for espionage or attack by another state.

Remote environments have seasonal (polar regions) and orbital or cosmic (space) changes in accessibility, with implications for both deployment and maintenance. It is key to effective risk management to incorporate such unique characteristics and the implications of those characteristics for risk. It is imperative to begin systematically assessing and mitigating these risks now, if only to prevent minor disruptions from cascading into interstate tensions in this highly contested, and highly challenging, environment. (3/31)

ZERO-G Offers Astronaut Experience From Florida (Source: ZERO-G)
The Astronaut Experience allows you to attend a ZERO-G Research Flight during which real experiments and research are being conducted. Our specially modified Boeing 727 G-FORCE ONE aircraft achieves weightlessness by flying aerobatic maneuvers called parabolas. Specially trained pilots perform these aerobatic maneuvers, which are not simulated in any way. ZERO-G passengers experience true weightlessness, which makes this an ideal testing and training environment for space research and exploration.

Since the Astronaut Experience includes many more parabolas than the standard ZERO-G Experience®, the risk of motion discomfort is a serious concern. All Astronaut Experience booking requests are considered on a case-by-case basis, and preference is given to returning customers in our frequent flyer group. Click here. (3/30)

Hunting Ghost Particles Beneath the World’s Deepest Lake (Source: New York Times)
A glass orb, the size of a beach ball, plops into a hole in the ice and descends on a metal cable toward the bottom of the world’s deepest lake. Then another, and another. These light-detecting orbs come to rest suspended in the pitch-dark depths down as far as 4,000 feet below the surface. The cable carrying them holds 36 such orbs, spaced 50 feet apart. There are 64 such cables, held in place by anchors and buoys, two miles off the jagged southern coast of this lake in Siberia with a bottom that is more than a mile down.

This is a telescope, the largest of its kind in the Northern Hemisphere, built to explore black holes, distant galaxies and the remnants of exploded stars. It does so by searching for neutrinos, cosmic particles so tiny that many trillions pass through each of us every second. If only we could learn to read the messages they bear, scientists believe, we could chart the universe, and its history, in ways we cannot yet fully fathom.

The Lake Baikal venture is not the only effort to hunt for neutrinos in the world’s most remote places. Dozens of instruments seek the particles in specialized laboratories all over the planet. But the new Russian project will be an important complement to the work of IceCube, the world’s largest neutrino telescope, an American-led, $279 million project that encompasses about a quarter of a cubic mile of ice in Antarctica. (3/30)

Final Passengers Selected for Billionaire’s Private SpaceX Flight (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
A billionaire’s private SpaceX flight filled its two remaining seats Tuesday with a scientist-teacher and a data engineer whose college friend actually won a spot but gave him the prize. The new passengers: Sian Proctor, a community college educator in Tempe, Arizona, and Chris Sembroski, a former Air Force missileman from Everett, Washington. They will join flight sponsor Jared Isaacman and another passenger for three days in orbit this fall.

Isaacman also revealed some details about his Inspiration4 mission, as the four gathered Tuesday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. He’s head of Shift4 Payments, a credit card-processing company in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and is paying for what would be SpaceX’s first private flight while raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee. Their SpaceX Dragon capsule plans to launch from the Space Coast no earlier than mid-September, aiming for an altitude of 335 miles. That’s 75 miles higher than the International Space Station and on a level with the Hubble Space Telescope. (3/30)

South Korea's Hanwha Systems to Launch 2,000 LEO Communications Satellites by 2030 (Source: Space News)
Hanwha Systems, the South Korean conglomerate that added a bankrupt phased-array antenna maker to its portfolio last year, is planning to build and deploy a constellation of 2,000 satellites in low Earth orbit by 2030 to provide connectivity to cargo-delivery drones and passenger airplanes. The defense and information technology arm of Hanwha will invest $440 million by 2023 to develop LEO communications satellites, ultrathin electronically steerable antennas and satellite control systems. (3/30)

From Spectator to Space Investor: How a Teen from Maine Became a Virgin Galactic Shareholder (Source: Space News)
It all started with Mr. V, my middle school teacher famous for the stock market game he ran each year for the eighth graders. As a seventh grader, I convinced Mr. V to let me play. I had no idea what I was doing or how to invest, but I became obsessed with the stock market. As a high school freshman, my father let me help him invest his money. I didn’t have much of a plan and my first year as a trader wasn’t very successful; however, I learned a lot.

Before the end of my sophomore year, I had developed an investment approach that included positions in high-growth, future-focused companies. I persuaded my father to buy several shares in Virgin Galactic (SPCE), the first publicly traded space tourism company. He purchased some initial shares in May when the stock was trading around $15 and added shares over the course of the year. I saw the opportunity for growth in this sector and wanted to make a long term bet on the success of space commercialization.

I eventually opened a Custodial Roth IRA and purchased my own shares of Virgin Galactic in November when the stock was trading around $26. I firmly believe in the potential of Virgin Galactic and the future prospects of the company despite its current status as an unprofitable business. Virgin Galactic wasn’t the only publicly traded space company when I opened my Roth, but it was one of the only opportunities for a small investor to back an exciting new space sector. (3/25)

What You Need to Know About China's Mars Rover (Source: IEEE Spectrum)
Tianwen-1, China’s first interplanetary expedition, successfully and spectacularly entered Mars orbit February 10. Consisting of both an orbiter and rover, the spacecraft has been circling Mars, preparing for its landing attempt. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has said the Tianwen-1 rover will land sometime in May or June. We know a lot about where and how the rover will land, and what it aims to do if the rover successfully sticks the landing.

The 1.85 meters tall rover is solar-powered and has a mass of around 240 kg, making it far smaller than the huge, 1,025-kg radioisotope-powered Perseverance but larger than NASA’s earlier Spirit and Opportunity rovers. It is notably roughly twice as massive as China’s own Yutu lunar rovers. The six-wheeled rover has a top speed of 200 meters-per-hour and carries six payloads for science.

Its four solar panels are designed in the shape of foldable butterfly wings. Solar power collection needs to be greater, with Mars receiving around 44% of the levels of sunlight that reach Earth. The rover’s design lifetime is 90 Sols, or 92.5 Earth days. However, Yutu-2, China’s lunar far side rover had a similar design lifetime, but is still going after more than 800 days. Click here. (3/29)