April 5, 2021

Turkey May Sign Space Cooperation Agreement with Russia Soon (Source: TASS)
Turkey may sign an agreement with Russia soon on cooperation in space, the chief of Turkey’s space agency Serdar Huseyn Yildirim told TASS in an interview ahead of the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s space flight. "We are building bilateral relations with countries and with international organizations, which we have identified in accordance with our national goals. We keep working on common conditions of cooperation with different countries, including Russia," said Yildirim. (4/5)

Russia Continues Discussions with China Toward Lunar Cooperation (Source: Space News)
A Roscosmos official said more discussions are planned with China regarding cooperation in lunar exploration. At a press conference Friday, Sergey Krikalev, executive director for human spaceflight at Roscosmos, said Russia and China were "ironing out certain details" about an agreement announced in February to cooperate on an International Lunar Research Station. Additional agreements between two countries could be announced in June at the Global Space Exploration Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia. That conference is proceeding with plans to take place in person despite the ongoing pandemic, with 600 to 700 people expected to attend. (4/5)

Sneaky New Bacteria on the ISS Could Build a Future on Mars (Source: WIRED)
In March NASA researchers announced that they’d found an unknown life-form hiding aboard the ISS. And they were cool with that. In fact, for an organization known for a sophisticated public communications strategy everyone was pretty quiet about this discovery. Almost too quiet. It’s true that the new life wasn’t, say, a xenomorphic alien with acid for blood. It was a novel species of bacteria, unknown on Earth but whose genes identified it as coming from a familiar terrestrial genus called Methylobacterium.

The researchers running the project named it M. ajmalii. Typically Methylobacterium like to hang out amid the roots of plants, not on the walls of space stations. Still, you’d think a probably-not-but-maybe-evolved-in-space microbe would merit a little more freaking out. Yet here we are. Nobody was exactly surprised—and the reasons why could define the future of human space exploration. It wasn’t even the first time these researchers found a new bacterium in space.

Odds are they hitched a ride on cargo, or on astronauts, and the microbe hunters only noticed them because they went looking. What’s more interesting, maybe, is figuring out which bacteria are zeroes on Earth but heroes in the rarified, closed-loop environment of a spaceship. This new ISS Methylobacterium might actually be useful. That genus is best known for things like helping with nitrogen fixation, turning complex nitrogen sources in soil into something a plant can use as a nutrient, which means it could help food grow on another world. (4/5)

LeoStella Hopes to Build DoD Satellites (Source: Space News)
Satellite manufacturer LeoStella is exploring options to do business with the U.S. government. The company is weighing options to compete for the Space Development Agency's next order, which is projected to be for about 150 satellites that will form a space communications layer in low Earth orbit. LeoStella, a joint venture of BlackSky and Thales Alenia Space, said the agency's approach to "pull satellites off a production line and repurpose them" for military applications is enticing to it. LeoStella now can produce 40 satellites a year but designed its factory floor space so it can increase capacity to 200 a year. (4/5)

NASA’s Spitzer, Not Hubble, Reveals Our Most Awe-Inspiring View Of The Universe (Source: Forbes)
Only by observing it can we know what the Universe is like. Looking in (mostly) visible light, like Hubble does, reveals wholly impressive sights. But Hubble’s views are fundamentally limited in two ways. First, this light can only reveal objects where intervening dust is absent. Second, Hubble’s views are deep, but are extremely narrow-field. As a result, only a few patches of sky possess deep, revealing views.

Only deep, wider-field views will provide a grander perspective. Infrared light — which is largely transparent to light-blocking dust — is ideal for this task. NASA’s Spitzer, which operated from 2003-2020, first revealed a full square degree to unprecedented depths. On large, cosmic scales, every point in these images represents its own galaxy. S-CANDELS, a follow-up to the original Spitzer Extended Deep Survey (SEDS), went even deeper.

Across 13 billion years of cosmic history, galaxies are clustered, rather than distributed randomly. It’ll require hundreds of James Webb observations, stitched together, to match S-CANDELS. (4/5)

Cosmonauts Identify Other Potential Air Leak Sites on Russian ISS Module (Source: Sputnik)
Russian cosmonauts have found three more potential air leaks in an ISS module. The three sites, all in one segment of the Zvezda module, were patched up Friday and Saturday by Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov. The cosmonauts have been working for months to track down the sources of a small but steady air leak in the module. (4/5)

SpaceX Rocket Debris Crashes Onto Washington State Farm (Source: GeekWire)
A tank from a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage landed on a farm in Washington state. The composite overwrapped pressure vessel survived a reentry seen in Pacific Northwest skies last month and landed on a farm in Grant County, in the central part of the state. SpaceX retrieved the tank last week, according to the country sheriff, who declined to say where exactly the tank landed. The pressure vessel, used to store helium for pressurizing the rocket's propellant tanks, is more likely to survive reentry than other components of the upper stage. (4/5)

Disney+ Cancels Right Stuff Series (Source: Deadline.com)
"The Right Stuff" didn't have the right stuff for Disney+. The streaming service has reportedly canceled the series about the Mercury 7 astronauts after one season. The series premiered on Disney+ last fall, but was only a "modest performer" for the service and got mixed response from critics. Warner Bros. Television, the studio producing the series, is looking for another streaming company to pick up the show for a second season. (4/5)

Is There an Ancient Black Hole at the Edge of the Solar System? (Source: New Scientist)
Beyond the giant planets of the outer solar system lies a vast wilderness. Most astronomers think it is inhabited by a population of small, icy worlds similar to Pluto, and several groups have dedicated themselves to tracking down these dwarf planets. In the process, some have come to suspect that something bigger is lurking out there: a planet several times the mass of Earth.

They believe that this hypothetical world, known as Planet Nine, betrays its presence by the way its gravity has aligned the orbits of a group of these small, icy bodies. The problem is that no one can imagine how a planet big enough to do that could form so far from the sun. “All we know is that there’s an object of a certain mass out there,” says Jakub Scholtz, a theorist at Durham University in the UK. “The observations we have can’t tell us what that object is.” But if not a planet, then what? Scholtz suspects it could be something even more exotic: a primordial black hole, one forged in the big bang.

If he is right, it would be a stunning discovery. Primordial black holes would give us a new window onto the early universe. They might even comprise dark matter, the mysterious substance that holds galaxies together. All of which explains why cosmologists have been scouring the universe for them. But no one had dared to dream we might find one in our own backyard. The question now is, how can we determine what the mysterious source of gravity lurking at the fringes of our solar system really is? (3/31)

UCF Student Researcher Uses Machine Learning to Understand Far Away Planets (Source: UCF)
Michael Himes is a fourth year doctoral candidate studying planets lightyears away (also called exoplanets) by using machine learning to better understand their atmospheres. This type of research could have big impacts on the future of understanding what is out in the universe, potentially including the remote detection of life.

Himes began harnessing the capabilities of machine learning at the beginning of his physics doctotal program while researching exoplanets and their atmospheres. Machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, enhances this kind of research as it can be used to clarify what is known about the exoplanet much faster than traditional methods. First the machine learning model must learn about exoplanets. To accomplish this, Himes inputs millions of data points about known exoplanet atmospheres including varying temperatures and compositions. By doing so he is teaching the computer model what different planetary atmospheres look like when observed from Earth. (4/5)

Why China's Space Program Could Overtake NASA (Source: CNN)
China has a good chance of becoming the dominant space power in the 21st century, and it's not just looking to copy NASA on the way to the top. Instead, the country is paying close attention to what innovative US companies like SpaceX are doing as well. To get ahead in space, communism is learning from capitalism. China's main space contractor revealed plans to develop the ability to reuse its Long March 8 booster, which is powered by kerosene fuel, the same type of power that fuels SpaceX rockets. By 2025, Chinese officials said, this rocket would be capable of landing on a sea platform like SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster.

And it is not just the Chinese government contractors that are emulating SpaceX. A growing number of semi-private Chinese companies have also announced plans to develop reusable rockets. Chinese firms such as LinkSpace and Galactic Energy have released schematics that seem to mimic SpaceX technology. (4/1)

Technology Race Against China a Key Concern for Pentagon Acquisition Nominee (Source: Space News)
Michael Brown, a veteran tech industry executive who has led the Pentagon’s commercial outreach office since 2018, is President Biden’s pick for the Defense Department’s top procurement job, the White House announced April 2. Brown was nominated to serve as undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. He is currently the director of the Defense Innovation Unit, based in Silicon Valley.

The Obama administration created the office in 2015 to build ties with startups and venture investors, and help transition technologies from the private sector to military programs. The technological competition with China has been a top concern for Brown during his time at DIU.  In 2018 he co-authored a paper on how Chinese venture investments are giving that country access to the “crown jewels of U.S. innovation.” (4/4)

Space Mining is Not Science Fiction, and Canada Could Figure Prominently (Source: The Conversation)
In this era of climate crisis, space mining is a topic of increasing relevance. The need for a net-zero carbon economy requires a surge in the supply of non-renewable natural resources such as battery metals. This forms the background to a new space race involving nations and the private sector. Canada is a space-faring nation, a world leader in mining and a major player in the global carbon economy. It’s therefore well-positioned to actively participate in the emerging space resources domain. (4/4)

ESA Invites Ideas to Open Up In-Orbit Servicing Market (Source: ESA)
ESA is seeking to open the way to a new era of in-space activities such as refuelling, refurbishment, assembly, manufacturing, and recycling. The Agency is now soliciting ideas for In-Orbit Servicing activities from European industry and academia. A first stage ‘request for information’ has been posted on ESA’s Open Space Innovation Platform, sponsored by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher. Respondents are invited to propose both a servicer spacecraft concept and identify a customer to be serviced, with the aim of putting forward a concept or concepts for ESA’s next Ministerial Council in 2022. (4/1)

Why I Have Paid $250,000 to Go to Space with Virgin Galactic (Source: The Telegraph)
Last summer, I got the first glimpse of what Virgin Galactic’s commercial passenger cabin would look like during an unveiling and virtual tour of the interior of the VSS Unity, which will be used later this year to shoot the first commercial passengers into space for a 90-minute extravaganza, including four minutes of weightless cabin roaming.

In May, the spaceship will take its next text flight with two pilots, followed by two more with full crews in the summer, the second of which will demonstrate the full private astronaut experience, with Richard Branson aboard. There will then be one more flight in the autumn, before the Future Astronauts begin their journeys next spring.

This week, Virgin Galactic unveiled VSS Imagine, its second spaceship model, which feels symbolic because coupled with VSS Unity, it’s the beginning of a ‘fleet’ and given the company’s plan to take tens of thousands of commercial customers into space, a fleet they will need. They invited ‘Future Astronaut’ Dee Chester, to witness it being towed out of the hangar at Spaceport America in New Mexico for the first time. She is one of the first six hundred people to buy a $250,000 ticket for a trip to space with Virgin, joining its Future Astronaut community. “I watched Alan Shepard blast off in an 83-foot missile 1961 and just said ‘I want to do that.’" (4/3)

Opposition grows to putting Space Command HQ in Alabama (Source: AL.com)
 Senators from California, New Mexico and Nebraska have joined Colorado in putting pressure on the Pentagon’s decision to locate the permanent headquarters of the U.S. Space Command in Alabama, according to a report this week. The senators are asking why and how the Pentagon “sidelined” a 2019 competition and relied on a new process to evaluate the finalists in 2020, according to a report in The Hill. The signees were Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM). (4/2)

Reaching Out to Aliens is a Terrible Idea (Source: Guardian)
Soon we’ll have the Webb telescope up in orbit and we’ll have thousands of planets to look at, and that’s why I think the chances are quite high that we may make contact with an alien civilisation. There are some colleagues of mine that believe we should reach out to them. I think that’s a terrible idea. We all know what happened to Montezuma when he met Cortés in Mexico so many hundreds of years ago. Now, personally, I think that aliens out there would be friendly but we can’t gamble on it. So I think we will make contact but we should do it very carefully. (4/3)

DLR Creates the Rocket Fuel of the Future (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Sustainability and environmental compatibility are also increasingly important standards in space travel. To achieve this, scientists at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Lampoldshausen are developing fuels for next-generation space applications. The focus is on application-relevant properties such as improving environmental compatibility, safety, behavior at different temperatures and reducing fuel costs. (4/3)

BWXT Awarded Additional Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Work for NASA (Source: BWXT)
BWX Technologies is continuing its groundbreaking Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) design, manufacturing development, and test support work for NASA. NTP is one of the technologies that is capable of propelling a spacecraft to Mars, and this contract continues BWXT’s work that began in 2017. Under the terms of a $9.4 million, one-year contract, BWXT will focus primarily on nuclear fuel design and engineering activities. Specifically, BWXT will produce fuel kernels, coat the fuel kernels, design materials and manufacturing processes for fuel assemblies, and further develop conceptual reactor designs, among other activities. (4/1)

NASA Aims to Wow Public With Artemis Lunar Videos (Source: Space Daily)
NASA has started intense planning to capture public attention with high-definition video, photos and possible live streaming from the moon during upcoming Artemis missions. Grainy delayed footage -- sometimes only in black and white -- was a hallmark of the first Apollo moon landing in 1969. But even that captured 650 million viewers around the globe.

Artemis moon missions will feature images more like the heart-pounding video of the Mars rover Perseverance parachuting and blasting its way to the Red Planet's surface on Feb. 18, Artemis astronaut Scott Tingle said. NASA intended to land astronauts, including the first woman moon walker, by 2024, but that is likely to be delayed due to a lack of congressional funding. (4/2)

Extra-Terrestrial Particles Discovered in Antarctica Reveal Ancient Meteoritic Impact 430,000 Years Ago (Source: SciTech Daily)
Research led by the University of Kent’s School of Physical Sciences has found new evidence of a low-altitude meteoritic touchdown event reaching the Antarctic ice sheet 430,000 years ago. A research team of international space scientists, led by Dr. Matthias van Ginneken from the School of Physical Sciences‘ Centre for Astronomy and Planetary Science, has found new evidence of a low-altitude meteoritic touchdown event reaching the Antarctic ice sheet 430,000 years ago.

Extra-terrestrial particles (condensation spherules) recovered on the summit of Walnumfjellet (WN) within the Sør Rondane Mountains, Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica, indicate an unusual touchdown event where a jet of melted and vaporized meteoritic material resulting from the atmospheric entry of an asteroid at least 100 m in size reached the surface at high velocity. (4/4)

What's Up With This Weird Green Rock on Mars? (Source: Space.com)
Perseverance's laser hasn't yet penetrated the mystery of a strange Martian rock near the rover's new digs. NASA's rover is waiting for its companion, the Ingenuity helicopter, to make the first-ever powered flight on another planet. Meanwhile, its instruments targeted a greenish-looking rock on the Red Planet's surface that has the science team "trading lots of hypotheses," according to the rover's Twitter feed — but please don't pick aliens as one of them. Click here. (4/2)

Private Companies are Working Hard to Create Space Stations (Source: SlashGear)
Private companies are now rushing to design space stations to grab their part of the hundreds of millions of dollars NASA is offering. The agreement would have NASA helping to support the companies as they develop space stations and carry out the preliminary design review. The preliminary design review is a critical technical assessment of what it would take to get the space station flying by the end of fiscal year 2025.

Several companies have already announced that they will design space stations as requested by NASA. Those companies include Sierra Nevada Corporation and Axiom Space. Axiom is working to build its commercial space station and will have a module attached to the ISS before its space station can launch. NASA believes that partnering with private companies has saved it vast sums of money. Partnering with private companies and becoming a user of orbiting space stations rather than the owner will save it even more money in the future.

Saving money is critical to keeping NASA operating as budgetary issues are always a concern. Currently, there is no real ETA on when any of these private space stations may be ready to go into orbit, but we are likely multiple years away from that. (4/4)

Perseverance Places Ingenuity Helicopter on Mars (Source: Space Daily)
NASA's Ingenuity mini-helicopter has been dropped on the surface of Mars in preparation for its first flight, the US space agency said. The ultra-light aircraft had been fixed to the belly of the Perseverance rover, which touched down on the Red Planet on February 18. Ingenuity had been feeding off the Perseverance's power system but will now have to use its own battery to run a vital heater to protect its unshielded electrical components from freezing and cracking during the bitter Martian night. (4/4)