May 1, 2021

Troubling Findings About Space and Eye Health (Source: TIME)
Space flight is a miserable thing for the human body, with all manner of breakdowns in bones, muscles, the heart, the immune system and more occurring as a result of prolonged exposure to zero-g. Then too, there are the eyes. Doctors have long known that astronauts' eyeballs change shape the longer they remain aloft, and pressure on the optic nerve grows as fluids, which are usually distributed more or less evenly throughout the body, gather in the head.

Learning more about the human body—including the eye—was the key reason America's Scott Kelly and Russia's Misha Kornienko spent close to a year aboard the ISS from March 2015 to March 2016. Now, a new study in JAMA Ophthamology provides the most comprehensive look at both men's eye health after their marathon time aloft—and the results are troubling.

Among the changes the researchers observed: edema (swelling) at the back of the eyes, as cerebrospinal fluid rises and pools there, as well as folding in the spongy layer of blood vessels that feed the retina. The edema can resolve itself, but the folding doesn't vanish nearly so readily, leading to the possibility of vision damage. Making things worse, time spent during spacewalks can expose astronauts to radiation that can further damage eye tissue. (4/30)

NASA Freezes SpaceX’s Lunar Lander Cash Due to Protests from Blue Origin, Dynetics (Source: GeekWire)
NASA says it’ll hold up on its payments to SpaceX for developing its Starship super-rocket as a lunar lander while the Government Accountability Office sorts out challenges to the $2.9 billion contract award from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture as well as from Alabama-based Dynetics. Dynetics and a space industry team led by Blue Origin submitted their protests to the GAO this week, contending that the award unfairly favored SpaceX.

The three teams spent months working on proposals in hopes of winning NASA’s support for developing a landing system capable of putting astronauts on the moon’s surface by as early as 2024. The GAO has 100 days to determine whether the challengers’ complaints have merit, and if so, what to do about it. That 100-day clock runs out on Aug. 4. In the meantime, the space agency is suspending work on the Human Landing System contract. (4/30)

Space Force Sees Need for Civilian Agency to Manage Congestion (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Space Force is not too worried at this point that the growth of commercial space activity is creating safety issues. But things could change if space traffic and debris are not managed, said Gen. David Thompson, vice chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force. Commercial ventures such as space internet constellations and civil activities in low Earth orbit are positive developments, Thompson said. The military supports this growth, he said, but would like to see a civilian agency in charge of managing traffic and regulating unsafe activities. (4/26)

Space Coast Companies Push to Increase Racial, Gender Diversity (Source: Florida Today)
Brevard County — home to Fortune 500 defense manufacturers, NASA's Kennedy Space Center and decades of groundbreaking innovations — today lags behind the national average for diversity among top technical workers. According to CareerSource Brevard, 86.2% of engineers in Brevard were white in 2020, compared with 78.0% of all engineers nationwide in the same period. And the divide between men and women in the field locally is 60% of engineers were men and 40% were women in 2020, a breakdown unchanged since 2015.

But there is a significant corporate push going on to address the workforce imbalance, with companies like L3Harris Technologies Inc. and Northrop Grumman placing a high priority on diversifying their engineering staff, including dedication to achieving a greater mix of gender, race and ethnic variation. L3Harris and Northrop Grumman are among the largest employers in Brevard County— and are leading employer of engineers in the country. In recent years, the diversity of students graduating with STEM degrees is increasing and the effort appears to be paying off.

The percentage of Black engineers increased from 5.2% of all engineers in Brevard in the third quarter of 2015 to 7.9% of all engineers in the first quarter of 2020. The percentage of Asian engineers increased from 2.7% to 3.4% during that time period. The percentage of engineers who are in two or more race groups increased from 1.5% to 1.9% during that time period. A separate database of ethnicity indicates that 10.4% of Brevard's engineers were Hispanic or Latino on the first quarter of 2020, up from 7.6% in the third quarter of 2015. (4/30)

Germany’s Isar Aerospace Wins 11 Million Euros in Microsat Launcher Competition (Source: Parabolic Arc)
On April 30, 2021, the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Peter Altmaier, selected the winner in the “microlauncher competition” of the German Space Agency at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Isar Aerospace Technologies GmbH receives eleven million euros from the “BOOST!” Initiative in the “Commercial Space Transportation Services and Support” (C-STS) program of the European Space Agency ESA for the qualification and two demonstration flights of its carrier Spectrum. The first flight is to take place between 2022 and 2023 and transport small institutional payloads weighing up to 150 kilograms free of charge onto their orbits. (4/30)

Antarctic ‘Doomsday Glacier’ May be Melting Faster Than Was Thought (Source: The Guardian)
An Antarctic glacier larger than the UK is at risk of breaking up after scientists discovered more warm water flowing underneath it than previously thought. The fate of Thwaites – nicknamed the doomsday glacier – and the massive west Antarctic ice sheet it supports are the biggest unknown factors in future global sea level rise. Over the past few years, teams of scientists have been crisscrossing the remote and inaccessible region on Antarctica’s western edge to try to understand how fast the ice is melting and what the consequences for the rest of the world might be. (4/30)

Rocket Factory Augsburg Secures Launch Site in Andøya, Norway (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) has signed a contract with Norway’s Andøya Space, securing one of the most coveted launch sites in Europe. “This agreement secures launch capacity to cover the first years of operation for us. ...We have everything in place now from launch site, over customers to traction on the development program to get the first launch campaign going”, says Jörn Spurmann, Chief Commercial Officer of RFA. “Flexible access to space from continental Europe aids RFA in offering its customers the best and most cost-effective launch service for their payloads.” (4/30)

Dynetics HLS Protest Argues NASA Should Have Revised Competition After Budget Shortfall (Source: Space News)
NASA should have revised its approach to the Human Landing System (HLS) program or withdrawn the solicitation entirely once it was clear the agency didn’t have the funding to support two companies, one of the losing bidders argues in its protest of the award. Dynetics, who filed a protest April 26 with the Government Accountability Office over NASA’s decision to make a single HLS “Option A” award to SpaceX, argued NASA chose “the most anti-competitive and high risk option available” when it decided to proceed with a single award despite receiving only about one fourth of the $3.3 billion it requested for the program in fiscal year 2021.

“In light of this new budget constraint and schedule change, the HLS program as originally conceived and as set forth in the Solicitation is no longer executable,” Dynetics said in its protest. “Accordingly, NASA had several reasonable (and lawful) alternatives to choose from in connection with this acquisition.” (4/30)