May 14, 2021

Japan's Axelspace Raises $23.8 Million for Additional Satellites (Source: Space News)
Japanese remote sensing company Axelspace raised $23.8 million in a Series C round. The Space Frontier Fund, managed by Sparx Innovation for Future Co., led the round with a number of other investors. Axelspace launched its first 100-kilogram satellite in 2018, the same year it raised $22.8 million in a Series B funding round. The company sent four more satellites into sun-synchronous orbit in March. With funds from the Series C round, Axelspace will manufacture, launch and begin operating five additional satellites in 2023. (5/14)

Momentus SPAC Deal Gets Three Month Extension (Source: Space News)
The SPAC seeking to merge with in-space transportation company Momentus secured a three-month extension to complete the deal. Shareholders in Stable Road Acquisition Corporation approved Thursday a proposal to extend a deadline for closing the deal to Aug. 13. The company just passed the threshold of 65% of shareholders supporting the extension needed for it to be approved. Had the vote failed, Stable Road would have been liquidated and the merger with Momentus called off. Momentus is still working on a number of regulatory issues, including national security concerns raised by the Defense Department regarding its foreign ownership. (5/14)

China's Galactic Energy to Offer International Commercial Launch Services (Source: Global Times)
Galactic Energy plans to offer a launch vehicle it is developing to international customers. The company signed a strategic cooperation agreement with China Volant Industry Co. to jointly market the Ceres-1 small launch vehicle, with a goal of making a first launch for a foreign customer in 2022. The rocket made its first orbital launch last November. (5/14)

Poll: Americans Believe in Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life (Source: CBS)
More Americans think there is intelligent life beyond Earth. A poll conducted in March found that 66% of Americans think there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe, up from 47% in 2010 and 56% in 2017. The poll also found that 60% of Americans think we will discover extraterrestrial intelligence at some point in the distant future, while 32% said it will happen in their lifetimes — or already has happened. (5/14)

China Mars Rover to Land Between Saturday and Wednesday (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
China says its Mars probe and accompanying rover are expected to land on the red planet sometime between Saturday and Wednesday Beijing time. The China National Space Administration said in a brief notice that the Tianwen-1 probe has collected a large amount of scientific data since entering Mars orbit on Feb. 10 and the window for setting down on an icy area of the planet known as Utopia Planitia was determined by “current flying conditions.” (5/14)

Japanese Tycoon Planning Space Station Visit, Then Moon Trip (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
The Japanese fashion tycoon who’s booked a SpaceX ride to the moon is going to try out the International Space Station first. “Going to the ISS before the Moon,” Yusaku Maezawa announced Thursday. Maezawa has bought two seats on a Russian Soyuz capsule. He’ll blast off in December on the 12-day mission with his production assistant and a professional cosmonaut.

“I’m so curious, ‘What’s life like in space?’ So, I am planning to find out on my own and share with the world,” Maezawa said in a statement. He’ll be the first person to pay his own way to the space station in more than a decade, according to Virginia-based Space Adventures, which brokered the deal. A Space Adventures spokeswoman declined to divulge the cost. The company has sent seven other tourists to the space station, from 2001 to 2009. Maezawa’s trip to the moon aboard Elon Musk’s Starship is tentatively scheduled for 2023. He’ll fly around the moon — not land — with eight contest winners. (5/13)

OneWeb Securing Approvals for International Service (Source: Space News)
OneWeb said it will work with Softbank to secure approvals to operate in Japan and other countries. The collaboration with SoftBank, which has invested in OneWeb, is an important step toward getting regulatory approvals and setting up ground stations in Japan for the startup's growing constellation. OneWeb said their alliance will promote their combined communications services, including platforms SoftBank is building to digitize company operations. (5/14)

Upgrades to Allow Improved Rocket Lab Recovery/Reuse (Source: Space News)
Rocket Lab will attempt to recover the first stage on an Electron launch scheduled for Saturday. The company said this week it made upgrades to the booster, particularly its heat shield at the base of the stage, after recovering a first stage from a launch last November. Rocket Lab is planning another upgrade after this launch, to be tested on a recovery mission before the end of this year, but hasn't yet set a date for starting to recover the boosters in midair and then reusing them. The launch, scheduled for a window that opens at 6 a.m. Eastern Saturday, will place two BlackSky imaging satellites into orbit under a contract arranged by Spaceflight. (5/14)

Sierra Nevada's Aggressive Space Plans (Source: Politico)
As Sierra Nevada gears up to spin off its space business into the wholly owned subsidiary Sierra Space, it is sharpening its aggressive plans to pioneer a low-Earth orbit economy. At the center is its Dream Chaser space plane, which will launch and land at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport, and the company’s inflatable space habitats. Janet Kavandi, who made three trips to the International Space Station herself and retired as director of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio in 2019, said Sierra is thinking outside the box. “We really want to accelerate the ability to create an integrated infrastructure in space, especially in the lower orbit regime,” she said.

At the center of Sierra Space's plans is its Dream Chaser space plane, which will land on NASA’s former space shuttle runway, and the company’s inflatable space habitats. The company offers a uniquely complementary pair of options. It’s ramping up production of the Dream Chaser, and Kavandi pegs the initial goal to be somewhere in the range of 10-15 reusable spacecraft. The plane is already under contract with NASA to resupply the ISS beginning in 2022.

But its independent orbiting habitats are where the action will take place. “They launch inside a regular spacecraft so whenever you get out there, you can inflate them to a three-story habitat,” Kavandi explained. “One launch you get the whole large volume, with power, solar arrays, radiators. You have the whole shebang there. It makes it much more efficient. Fewer launches, a lot more volume, some more bang for the buck.” (5/14)

ASGSR Announces Mr. Paul Secor as Executive Director (Source: ASGSR)
The American Society for Gravitational and Space Research Board of Governors is pleased to announce that Mr. Paul Secor will assume the role of Executive Director. Mr. Secor replaces Dr. Gale Allen who announced she would be retiring. Mr. Secor will be responsible for implementing the policies and vision of the Board of Directors. He will serve as the main public contact and spokesperson for the organization and will represent ASGSR and all professional business capacities. (5/12)

SPACE 3.0 Foundation Awards Grant to New Mexico Museum of Space History (Source: SPACE 3.0 Foundation)
The SPACE 3.0 Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, recently awarded a “One Small Step” grant to the New Mexico Museum of Space History for the digitization of more than a dozen space-related films from the 1960s. The films identified by the museum include those associated with Gemini and Apollo 202, 4, 9, 11, 14, 15, and 16. (5/12)

UK's Arqit Raises $400M in SPAC Deal (Source: Space News)
British quantum technology encryption startup Arqit is raising $400 million in the space industry’s latest SPAC deal, supporting the launch and construction of two satellites in 2023 to protect against hackers. The fundraising comes as the FBI investigates a ransomware attack that closed a U.S. pipeline providing gasoline and jet fuel to the East Coast. Arqit’s merger with Centricus Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), values the combined group at $1.4 billion.

That makes Arqit the first space company unicorn — a startup valued more than $1 billion — to emerge from the U.K., said Mark Boggett, CEO of venture capital firm Seraphim Capital. (Seraphim is an Arqit investor). Arqit satellites will be designed to secure communications links for networked devices against hacking, including attacks from quantum computers. (5/13)

Russian Actress, Filmmaker Cleared for Space Station Visits (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
Russian actress Yulia Peresild and filmmaker Klim Shipenko will join cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov for a Soyuz flight to the International Space Station on Oct. 5 to shoot scenes for an upcoming movie. “At the end of 2020, an open competition was announced for the lead role in the first feature film to be filmed in space,” Roscosmos said. Peresild, 36, and Shipenko, 37, were selected “based on the results of medical and creative selection.” Training will begin in June. “They will have to go through, among other things, tests on a centrifuge, a vibration stand, to make introductory and training flights on an airplane in zero gravity, to undergo parachute training,” Roscosmos said. (5/13)

Aerojet's 3D-Printed Engine Passes Test (Source: Air Force Technology)
Aerojet Rocketdyne's RL10C-X rocket engine, built using 3D printing technology, has passed a test that put the engine through the "rigors of the typical spaceflight mission," the company said. "Successfully completing this test series validates our approach to incorporating 3D-printing technology into the RL10 program in order to reduce cost while maintaining the engine's unmatched performance," said CEO Eileen Drake. (5/12)

NASA’s CAPSTONE Lunar Mission to Fly Later This Year (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
Later this year, NASA plans to launch a CubeSat to test a special orbit around the Moon to verify its characteristics in advance of sending the Lunar Gateway there as early as 2024. The 12-unit CubeSat is called “Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment,” or CAPSTONE, and it is designed to test the calculated orbital stability of a “near-rectilinear halo orbit” for the Lunar Gateway outpost, which is expected to be part of NASA’s Artemis program. NASA has contracted Rocket Lab to launch CAPSTONE aboard an Electron rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia, in 2021. (5/12)

Asteroid Impact Simulation Reveals Need for 5-10 Years' Warning, Not 6 Months (Source: Business Insider)
NASA simulated a scenario in which an asteroid was approaching Earth and would hit in six months. The experts determined that wasn't enough time to stop it. We'd need at least five years to deflect an asteroid. To have that much warning time, NASA needs a new space telescope that can spot asteroids. No existing technologies could stop the asteroid from striking, given the scenario's six-month window. There isn't a spacecraft capable of destroying an asteroid or pushing it off its path that could get off the ground and fly to the rock in that amount of time.

But scientists haven't identified most of the hazardous space rocks that pass near our planet, which makes the chances slim that we'd get a five- or 10-year warning period. In 2005, Congress attempted to address this issue by mandating that NASA find and track 90% of all near-Earth objects 140 meters (460 feet) or larger. At that size, asteroids could obliterate a city the size of New York. But to date, NASA has only spotted about 40% of those objects. "What that means is, for now, we are relying on luck to keep us safe from major asteroid impacts," Binzel said. "But luck is not a plan." (5/12)

Laser Communications: Empowering More Data Than Ever Before (Source: NASA)
Launching this summer, NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) will showcase the dynamic powers of laser communications technologies. With NASA’s ever-increasing human and robotic presence in space, missions can benefit from a new way of “talking” with Earth. Since the beginning of spaceflight in the 1950s, NASA missions have leveraged radio frequency communications to send data to and from space. Laser communications, also known as optical communications, will further empower missions with unprecedented data capabilities.

Located in geosynchronous orbit, about 22,000 miles above Earth, LCRD will be able to support missions in the near-Earth region. LCRD will spend its first two years testing laser communications capabilities with numerous experiments to refine laser technologies further, increasing our knowledge about potential future applications. LCRD’s initial experiment phase will leverage the mission’s ground stations in California and Hawaii, Optical Ground Station 1 and 2, as simulated users. This will allow NASA to evaluate atmospheric disturbances on lasers and practice switching support from one user to the next. (5/12)

Astronomers Use UV Light for First Time to Measure a Still-Forming Planet’s Growth Rate (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
In 2018, the exo-planet PDS 70b was observed using the Very Large Array.  It’s discovery instantly placed it at the top of observation requests and telescope time for one quite profound reason: the exoplanet was still forming. For the first time, a still-accreting planet had been discovered, providing astrophysicists a unique opportunity to study how planets form with real-time observations. 

But one pesky problem existed: PDS 70b was far too close to its parent star for the usual exoplanet observational techniques to allow researchers to measure the planet’s growth rate. Now, for the first time ever using UV-band observations, a group of astrophysicists working with the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 have produced the first measurement of PDS 70b’s current growth rate. (5/13)

SpaceX Signs Deal with Google Cloud for Satellite Broadband (Source: Space Daily)
SpaceX announced Thursday that Google would team up with its Starlink satellite internet service to deliver cloud computing services to business customers. Under the partnership, SpaceX will place its Starlink ground stations within Google data center properties, which can help the service support businesses requiring cloud-based applications. (5/13)