May 12, 2021

Smithsonian Features X-Wing Fighter for ‘Star Wars’ Exhibit (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
You could say a giant movie star of sorts has arrived at the famous Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Margaret Weitekamp, a Smithsonian curator who normally handles space-related pop culture items, like a “Neil Armstrong For President” button or action figures, hadn’t worked with something so big before — a full-size X-wing Starfighter with a 37-foot wingspan used as a prop in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”

The movie’s production company, Lucasfilm, shipped the X-wing, taken apart in about a half-dozen large pieces. The wings were off, and the pieces laid out in a Virginia complex for the Smithsonian crew to start cleaning it before it gets reassembled and publicly displayed next year at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. (5/11)

Eutelsat Expects Revenue Upswing (Source: Space News)
Eutelsat says its full-year revenues should look better than expected despite a decline in its latest quarter. The satellite operator said Tuesday that quarterly revenues were down by 5.9% compared to the same quarter a year ago because of declines in broadcast and mobile connectivity revenues. Despite the drop, Eutelsat said full-year revenue should come in higher than previously forecast when it completes its fiscal year June 30. The company now forecasts between 1.2 and 1.22 billion euros in revenue for the full fiscal year. It sees fixed broadband as a driver of growth, and says that its deal to acquire nearly one quarter of OneWeb will further increase that segment of its business. (5/12)

Senate Chairman Wants Review of Space Command HQ Decision (Source: Space News)
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee wants another review of the decision to move the headquarters of U.S. Space Command. In a letter Tuesday to President Biden, committee chairman Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), along with Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), argue that the Trump administration rushed to recommend the move of U.S. Space Command from Colorado to Alabama without fully considering the impact on the intelligence community (IC) that works hand-in-hand with the military to protect U.S. satellites from threats. They asked the president to review the decision in such a way "to ensure IC equities are fully considered." The relocation decision currently is being reviewed by the Defense Department's inspector general and the Government Accountability Office. (5/11)

FAA Rejects Momentus Payload Application (Source: Space News)
The FAA dealt Momentus a setback in efforts to launch its first space tugs. Momentus said Tuesday that the FAA rejected a payload review application the company filed for its Vigoride-1 and -2 tugs, which the company planned to launch on a SpaceX rideshare mission in June. The FAA told the company that an interagency review concluded "the launch of Momentus' payload poses national security concerns associated with Momentus' current corporate structure." Momentus has taken steps to address its foreign ownership, and the FAA left the door open to reconsidering that payload review application once those efforts are completed. The news comes as Stable Road Acquisition Corp., the SPAC seeking to merge with Momentus, is making a final effort to round up votes for a three-month extension to complete the deal. (5/11)

45th Space Wing Becomes Space Launch Delta 45 (Source: Space News)
The Space Force has formally renamed the 45th Space Wing. The service announced Tuesday that the wing, which operates the Eastern Range, will now be called Space Launch Delta 45. The 45th Space Wing was stood up in November 1991 and has since supported nearly 800 military, civil and commercial space launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and from the Kennedy Space Center. The renaming is part of creating a new identity for the Space Force, which calls its units "deltas" rather than wings or squadrons. (5/11)

Vandenberg Becoming Space Force Base (Source: KEYT)
Vandenberg Air Force Base will also soon be renamed. The base will become Vandenberg Space Force Base during a ceremony Friday. That event will also rename the 30th Space Wing, based there, to Space Launch Delta 30. The Space Force previously renamed its Florida facilities to Patrick Space Force Base and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. (5/11)

Space Force Seeks Bids for Rocket Engine Testing and Space Transportation Technologies (Source: Space News)
Space Force is seeking industry proposals for space transportation technologies. The service issued Tuesday three requests for industry proposals for next-generation rocket engine testing, launch vehicle upper stage enhancements and capabilities to maneuver in space. The projects will be co-funded by the government and the private sector under other transaction authority agreements managed by the Space and Missile Systems Center's Space Enterprise Consortium. The projects will deliver technologies for the next phase of the National Security Space Launch program, called Phase 3. (5/11)

BlackSky Demonstrates Growth and Scalability with Planned Launch of Additional Satellites (Source: Parabolic Arc)
BlackSky, a leading provider of real-time geospatial intelligence and global monitoring services that recently announced a planned business combination with Osprey Technology Acquisition Corp., today revealed it expects to launch two satellites on Rocket Lab’s twentieth mission, “Running Out of Toes.” The launch, which is scheduled to take place no earlier than May 15, 2021, will deploy BlackSky’s eighth and ninth Earth observation satellites.

“BlackSky is expanding and scaling through a regular cadence of launches so we can consistently increase capacity to deliver first-to-know insights for our customers,” said Brian E. O’Toole, CEO of BlackSky. “Our established practice of rapid deployments and advanced commissioning process ensures customers can trust and rely on our network for access to real-time global intelligence.” (5/12)

Orbite Offers Astronaut Training in France and Florida (Source: Space News)
A startup is offering a training program for prospective space tourists. Orbite announced Wednesday its three-day "Astronaut Orientation" program, which will include classroom training as well as flights in high-performance and microgravity aircraft. The company sees the program as a way to help prepare potential space tourists for what they can expect from such flights and, if they are interested, direct them to companies offering suborbital or orbital flights. The program, with a price of $29,500 per person, will be offered this August in France and in November and December in Florida. (5/11)

Blue Canyon to Build University Cubesats (Source: Space News)
Blue Canyon Technologies has won a contract to build a pair of space science cubesats. The University of Illinois selected Blue Canyon to build two 6U cubesats for the Virtual Super-resolution Optics with Reconfigurable Swarms (VISORS) missions, which will study the sun's corona. The mission, supported by the NSF, is scheduled for launch in 2023. (5/11)

Nigeria Considering Starlink Service (Source: The Vanguard)
SpaceX is in discussions with the Nigerian government to offer Starlink services there. Company officials met recently with the Nigerian Communications Commission, discussing how the Starlink system could help the Nigerian government meet goals in providing broadband services in underserved parts of the country. Government officials said they will review SpaceX's license application but did not commit to a schedule for approving it. (5/11)

Bill Nelson Lays Out His Vision for NASA (Source: Washington Post)
While in the Senate, Bill Nelson held enormous sway over NASA, helping guide its budget and priorities — from picking who the NASA administrator would be, to overseeing the end of the space shuttle era, to paving the way for what was to follow. As a member of the House, he even flew to space on the shuttle in 1986.

Now, as NASA administrator himself, Nelson will continue to guide and shape an agency he adores — this time from the inside. But to achieve the goals he is beginning to lay out for the agency — landing the first astronauts on the moon in more than 50 years, launching the James Webb space telescope, continuing safe and reliable astronaut flights to the space station as well as planning for its successor — he will need the help and support of Congress and the members he used to call colleagues.

For years, conventional wisdom was that the NASA administrator needed to be an engineer or a scientist, someone who deeply understood orbital dynamics and planetary science. Nelson, who was sworn in by Vice President Harris last week, is at his core a politician, like his predecessor, Jim Bridenstine, who was a member of Congress before leading the space agency under President Donald Trump. Click here. (5/11)

Blue Origin Investing in Local Space Workforce at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Florida Today)
There’s one problem with the current space boom: It’s happening at the same time skilled technicians are aging out of the workforce both locally and nationwide. According to John Blankenship, the director of manufacturing at Blue Origin, the average age of  a tool and die maker, a special class of machinist, is 57 years old. Blankenship is feeling the pressure to find the skilled workers they need to pull it off.

“We only have a few years left to bring in a new generation and transfer the vital knowledge that is needed to continue to be strong in manufacturing.” Taking on that challenge is where the Space Coast Consortium Apprenticeship Program comes in.  The group is made up of advanced manufacturing companies in the area that have joined with Eastern Florida State College to offer an apprenticeship program modeled after the success of similar programs in Germany. By mixing classroom learning with on-the-job training, students will graduate with a state Apprenticeship Certificate and EFSC machinist certificate credits that can count toward an Associate Degree in Engineering Technology from the college. (5/12)

Planet-Forming Disks Around Stars May Come Preloaded with Ingredients for Life (Source: Science News)
The chemistry leading to life may start before stars are even born. In the planet-forming disk of gas and dust around a young star, astronomers have detected methanol. The disk is too warm for the methanol to have formed there, so this complex organic molecule probably originated in the interstellar cloud that collapsed to form the star and its disk, researchers report. This finding offers evidence that at least some organic matter from interstellar space can seed the disks around newborn stars to provide potential ingredients for life on new planets. (5/10)

'Oddball' Star Shocks Scientists with Strange Supernova (Source: Space.com)
A massive star's "oddball" violent death has scientists puzzled. In a new study, an international team of researchers used images from the Hubble Space Telescope to document the demise of a giant star 35 million light-years from Earth. The cool, yellow star had no hydrogen in its outer layer. "We haven't seen this scenario before," lead study author Charles Kilpatrick, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University in Illinois, said in a statement.

"If a star explodes without hydrogen, it should be extremely blue — really, really hot," Kilpatrick explained. "It's almost impossible for a star to be this cool without having hydrogen in its outer layer. We looked at every single stellar model that could explain a star like this, and every single model requires that the star had hydrogen, which, from its supernova, we know it did not. It stretches what's physically possible." (5/10)

A SpaceX Booster Now Trails Only 4 Space Shuttles in Flight Experience (Source: Ars Technica)
SpaceX crossed a significant milestone on Sunday morning with yet another launch of 60 Starlink Internet satellites. These Starlink launches have become routine—and dare we say it, a little boring?—as SpaceX builds out its constellation to deliver broadband Internet around the world from low Earth orbit. However, the rate at which SpaceX has begun to reuse its Falcon 9 first stages is decidedly not monotonous.

This particular first stage went to orbit for the first time on March 2, 2019, for the first demonstration mission for NASA's commercial crew program. During this flight, a Crew Dragon spacecraft docked with the International Space Station for about five days, paving the way for the first crewed flight in May 2020. This first stage has also been used to launch two commercial satellites and seven Starlink missions.

It is now approaching historic status. B1051 trails only NASA's Discovery, Atlantis, Columbia, and Endeavour space shuttle orbiters in terms of spaceflights. Three of those shuttles are now in museums. Columbia was lost in a fatal accident in 2003. In flying 10 times since early March 2019, this single booster has now flown nearly as many missions as SpaceX's primary US launch competitor. Since the first flight of B1051, United Launch Alliance has flown a total of 11 missions with expendable rockets—two Delta IV launches, two Delta IV Heavy missions, and seven Atlas V rockets. (5/10)

How Humanity Will Return to the Moon: The Future of Lunar Exploration (Source: Science Focus)
For almost 40 years, our nearest cosmic neighbour, the Moon, was left alone as we looked elsewhere in the Solar System. That changed in 2013, when China’s Chang’e 3 lander touched down on the lunar surface. Since then there’s been an explosion of interest in the Moon. NASA, China and even private companies are racing back to it, with dozens of robotic and human missions being planned. Things are set to get a lot more crowded on the lunar surface over the coming decade, but this time, we’ll be staying.

“We know the Moon has potential resources that will be useful for space exploration,” says Ian Crawford, a professor in planetary science from Birkbeck, University of London. “Particularly water ice trapped in the very dark shadows of craters at the poles.”

Unlike Earth, the Moon’s axis isn’t tilted at a large angle, so the Sun is constantly overhead when you’re at the lunar equator. If you’re at the lunar poles however, the Sun’s always on the horizon, creating long, permanent shadows in the surrounding craters. Hidden from the Sun for billions of years, temperatures in those craters are low enough that water ice has been able to survive in them and it’s this that’s captured everyone’s interest. Click here. (5/11)

Sun's Biggest Outburst this Cycle is Sending Solar Storms to Earth and Mars (Source: Room)
Space weather experts are predicting that two violent eruptions of solar radiation blasted out from the sun 9 May, are heading to Earth and Mars in what is being called the largest solar flare of Solar Cycle 25 yet. The Earth-bound eruption has been classed as weak compared to its Mars-directed counterpart but could result in an aurora at high latitudes on 12 May. It could also interfere with high frequency radio communications and GPS reception in regions such as Iceland, Brazil, Alaska and areas near to the UK.

The solar storm heading to the Red Planet is expected to arrive early on 11 May. This is in addition to a minor radiation storm that was also launched from the Sun at the same time. It will likely bathe Ingenuity and Perservance in a shower of radiation before the solar storm hits. The solar storms have been captured on camera by the Large Angle and Spectrometric COronagraph (LASCO) instrument housed on the joint NASA/ESA SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft. (5/10)

New Book Details Bezos' Envy of SpaceX (Source: Ars Technica)
By as early as the fall of 2016, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had already started to worry deeply about the progress—or lack thereof—being made by his rocket company, Blue Origin. Although the business had begun to successfully launch its suborbital vehicle, New Shepard, Bezos watched with increasing envy as SpaceX landed its much larger Falcon 9 rocket on ocean-based drone ships. He saw, too, this surging new-space competitor winning launch contract after contract from NASA and the US Department of Defense.

And so, in response, Bezos invited a succession of executives from Blue Origin to his office in Seattle for one-on-one lunches. During these meetings, the executives complained about poor internal communication, long meetings, and questionable spending decisions. One engineer described the company as a Potemkin village—with a dysfunctional culture concealed beneath an industrious façade. After the fall 2016 meetings, Bezos informed company President Rob Meyerson that he would hire a chief executive officer for Blue Origin for the first time.

This process included an inquiry to SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell. Shotwell, who had worked for SpaceX almost from the beginning of its founding in 2002, quickly turned down the opportunity. Following a yearlong search, Bezos selected Bob Smith, a senior manager at Honeywell Aerospace. (5/11)

Axiom and NASA Agree on Janauary Commercial Mission to ISS (Source: Tech Crunch)
Houston-based startup Axiom Space and NASA unveiled more details Monday about the forthcoming Axiom Mission 1 (AX-1), the first fully private human mission to the International Space Station. The Axiom Mission 1 spaceflight mission will ferry four private astronauts to the International Space Station in January 2022. The eight-day mission will be launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida using a SpaceX Crew Dragon. While in space, the crew will be living and working in the U.S. segment of the ISS.

NASA will be paying Axiom $1.69 million for services associated with the mission, such as transporting supplies to the ISS, though that does not include other reimbursable agreements between the two entities. There’s a “high degree of confidence in the late January date” for the launch, Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini said. (5/10)

Virgin Galactic Shares Fall After Another Quarterly Loss, No Date Set for Next Spaceflight Test (Source: CNBC)
Virgin Galactic delivered first quarter results after the market closed on Monday, announcing that it has yet to set a target date for its next spaceflight test, which the company previously planned for this month. The space tourism company reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $55.9 million, down from a loss of $59.5 million in the previous quarter. The stock has fallen 24% year to date – having dropped more than 70% from highs above $60 a share hit in February. (5/10)

Getting Serious About the Office of Space Commerce (Source: Space News)
In the absence of an active push, attempts to create organizational change and improvement tend to revert to the way things used to be. After three years of an active push to increase the role of the Office of Space Commerce (OSC) in promoting and enabling commercial space activities, that vision is beginning to revert to the way things used to be. Immediate intervention is needed by the new leadership at the Department of Commerce to prevent a complete loss of progress and yet another delay in reshaping U.S. efforts to support and leverage the burgeoning commercial space sector.

Over the last few years, OSC has emerged as a key agency supporting the U.S. commercial space sector. Current U.S. law and national space policy designates OSC as the lead agency for representing and promoting commercial perspectives within interagency discussions, developing a civil space situational awareness pilot program that improves our ability to detect and prevent on-orbit collisions, modernizing the regulation and oversight of commercial space activities, and promoting the U.S. commercial space sector globally.

There has been strong bipartisan support over the last two administrations that we need to modernize the way that the U.S. government supports and oversees commercial space activities. Increasing the promotion of commercial perspectives within interagency discussions and globally, developing civil space situational awareness capabilities, and laying the foundation for space traffic management are key elements of this modernization. OSC has made significant strides toward implementing these new roles and we cannot afford more delays. (5/10)

NASA’s Voyager 1 Spacecraft Detects ‘Gentle Rain’ Of Vibrating Interstellar Plasma (Source: Forbes)
Nearly a decade after NASA’s Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space, the robotic spacecraft has detected the faint, but persistent vibrating hum of interstellar gas, says a Cornell University-led team of astronomers. The researchers note that since crossing into the very local interstellar medium, the spacecraft has detected almost constant plasma vibrations over a three-year period. That corresponds to a distance traveled by the spacecraft of about 10 astronomical units (AU) or Earth-Sun distances, the authors note. (5/10)

Book Signing at American Space Museum on May 29 (Source: American Space Museum)
The American Space Museum will host a book signing Saturday, May 29 with the authors of “Bringing Columbia Home,” writer Jonathan Ward and Space Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach. “Mike and Jonathan are good friends of the museum and stand behind our efforts to preserve space history and inspire the next generation,” said Karan Conklin, Executive Director. (5/10)