May 20, 2021

Petro to Serve as KSC Acting Director (Source: NASA)
Janet Petro, Robert Cabana’s deputy at Kennedy Space Center, has been assigned as KSC's acting director after Cabana’s move to NASA Headquarters. Appointed to the deputy director position in April 2007, she shared responsibility with Cabana managing the KSC team of civil service and contractor employees, determining and implementing center policy and managing and executing KSC missions and agency program responsibilities. (5/19)

NASA Seeking More Than $10 Billion in Infrastructure Bill (Source: Space News)
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told House appropriators May 19 that the agency is requesting more than $11 billion in an upcoming infrastructure bill that would go for the agency’s Human Landing System program and upgrading center facilities. Nelson, testifying in a virtual hearing by the House Appropriations Committee’s commerce, justice and science subcommittee about NASA’s fiscal year 2022 budget proposal, said the agency has submitted to Congress requests for funding to be included in legislation to enact what the White House calls the American Jobs Plan, which has a total value of $2.3 trillion over 10 years.

He told members that NASA was seeking $5.4 billion for the Human Landing System to fund competition for future lander missions beyond the “Option A” award the agency made to SpaceX April 16. That award covers development of a lander based on SpaceX’s Starship vehicle and a single crewed landing. NASA plans to conduct a separate solicitation for future missions, which will be open to both SpaceX and other companies. (5/19)

IAC Event Planned in October (Source: Space News)
The International Astronautical Federation (IAF) is moving ahead with plans for its annual conference this October. The IAF said this week the International Astronautical Congress will take place this October in Dubai. The Congress is one of the largest space conferences of the year, attracting several thousand people. Dubai was to host last year's conference, but the event was moved online because of the pandemic. Organizers said that this year's conference will be an in-person event, with no remote participation expected. (5/20)

Microsoft and Ball Consider Ways to Handle Terabytes for Space Force (Source: GeekWire)
Microsoft is working with Ball Aerospace on ways to handle large amounts of data for the Space Force. The companies said they demonstrated how a cloud computing architecture could be used to process multiple satellite data streams, using simulated missile-warning data broadcast by a Telesat satellite to ground stations managed by Ball Aerospace. Microsoft's Azure cloud computing system then processed the data. The demonstration was supported by the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit. (5/20)

Nelson Congratulates China for Mars Landing, Warns Congress of China's Lunar Ambitions (Source: Space News)
Nelson also warned members that China's achievements on Mars are evidence of its lunar ambitions. Nelson, in a statement, congratulated China for the successful Zhurong rover landing, hours after China released the first images from the rover. However, he told House members that China's achievements on Mars should demonstrate that it is serious about sending humans to the moon, even though it's unclear exactly when China will attempt a human lunar landing. That milestone, he said, demonstrates "our need to get off our duff and get our Human Landing System program going vigorously." (5/20)

China Delays Space Station Module Launch (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
China postponed a launch of a cargo spacecraft to its new space station module Wednesday. The Long March 7 launch of the Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon from the Wenchang spaceport, but scrubbed for unspecified technical reasons shortly before the scheduled liftoff time. The launch has been rescheduled for no earlier than 1:09 p.m. Eastern today. (5/20)

UK's Horizon Space Technologies to Develop Cubesats for Maritime Tracking (Source: Space News)
A British company has secured funding for a constellation of maritime monitoring spacecraft. Horizon Space Technologies, a recently established subsidiary of Horizon Technologies, is developing a cubesat signals intelligence program called IOD-3 Amber for the British government to enable tracking of ships even if they do not have Automatic Identification Systems transponders.

The first of those satellites, supported by Satellite Applications Catapult, is scheduled to launch this summer from the International Space Station after delivery there on a cargo mission. The company has secured funds to launch two more Amber satellites next year, part of an initial constellation of six satellites. The company declined to say how much money it raised, but an industry source described it as single-digit millions of dollars. (5/20)

Virgin Galactic Plans Weekend Flight Test (Source: Virgin Galactic)
Virgin Galactic will attempt its next SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceflight this Saturday. The company announced Thursday morning that it is proceeding with a powered test flight of its VSS Unity vehicle from Spaceport America in New Mexico after completing maintenance reviews of its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft. The company said last week its test flight schedule was uncertain after discovering issues with the plane that might require additional maintenance. The flight will have two pilots on board, as well as payloads for NASA's Flight Opportunities program. [Virgin Galactic]

Firefly to Send Blue Ghost Lander to Moon Aboard SpaceX Rocket (Source: Firefly Aerospace)
Firefly Aerospace has awarded a contract to SpaceX to launch its Blue Ghost lunar lander in 2023. Blue Ghost will be carrying 10 payloads for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) task order 19D mission, in addition to separately contracted commercial payloads. Firefly was awarded the CLPS 19D task order by NASA in February 2021 and has since made rapid progress on the Blue Ghost program. The team has key long lead items on order, production underway, and is conducting regular vision navigation test flights at Firefly’s one-acre Briggs, Texas lunar landscape site.

Blue Ghost (named after the rare Phausis reticulata firefly) will land at Mare Crisium in the Moon’s Crisium basin and operate on-board payloads through lunar transit, during lunar orbit, and on the lunar surface for a complete lunar day (about 14 Earth days) and well into the freezing dark of lunar night. (5/20)

Russia to Sell Soyuz Space Module (Source: Space Daily)
Russia has put up for sale one of its space modules, which in 2018 returned a Russian and two Americans from the International Space Station (ISS). "Descent module No. 738 of the Soyuz MS-08 mission is available on the Glavcosmos web portal for purchase," read a statement issued late Tuesday by Glavkosmos, a subsidiary of Russia's Roscosmos space agency. Glavcosmos director Dmitry Loskutov said he did not rule out in the future selling "other shuttles, once their mission is completed." (5/19)

Suborbital Space Tourism: Coming Soon? (Source: Quartz)
Suborbital tourist flights have been just around the corner since 2004, when a team led by American engineer Burt Rutan won the first X-Prize for launching a privately built rocketplane on two short flights past the Kármán line that denotes the border with the final frontier. British tycoon Richard Branson then started a company, Virgin Galactic, to commercialize the technology and began selling tickets for $250,000 a pop, building up a manifest of several hundred future fliers. Seventeen years later, Virgin Galactic is a public company that aims to fly its first passengers this year, and says that future tickets will cost more than the initial quarter-million.

Over the same period, Blue Origin developed its own six-passenger suborbital vehicle, the New Shepard. Blue has flown the New Shepard 15 times successfully since its debut in 2015, and will fly its first passenger on July 20. Blue Origin had been tight-lipped about what rocket fare might come to. When it comes to comparisons, space tourism analysts look to super-luxury vacations that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or to multi-day trips to the ISS that cost tens of millions of dollars. Neither one quite fits the bill.

You might start with the cost of operating the vehicle. Blue Origin remains privately held and unforthcoming about the accounting, but Virgin Galactic says each of its rocketplanes flies at a marginal cost of just over $400,000. The New Shepard’s costs might be in the same ballpark. And we also have a rough idea of how much money it can earn flying without people: Last year, based on prices for research cargo, I estimated that Blue could pull in perhaps a million dollars with one fully-loaded launch of the New Shepard. (5/20)

More Than 3,000 Jobs Created as Space Sector Grows Across the UK (Source: Space Daily)
The UK's space sector has seen growth in jobs and income while investing more in research and development, leaving it well-placed to grow strongly as we recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, Science Minister Amanda Solloway announced. Findings from the latest 'Size and Health of the UK Space Industry' report, commissioned by the UK Space Agency and delivered by know.space, show the sector supports a highly skilled and productive workforce that's growing across the country.

The statistics show that in 2018/19, compared to the previous survey from 2016/17: Income has risen from 15.6 billion pounds to 16.4 billion pounds, representing growth of 5.7% (or 2.8% per annum) in real terms. Employment is up by 3,200 from 41,900 to 45,100. R&D investment now sits at 702m pounds, up 18% and 5 times the national average intensity. Scotland's thriving sector sees 31% increase in space companies, up from 132 to 173. (5/20)

A Study of Earth’s Crust Hints That Supernovas Aren’t Gold Mines (Source: Science News)
A smattering of plutonium atoms embedded in Earth’s crust are helping to resolve the origins of nature’s heaviest elements. Scientists had long suspected that elements such as gold, silver and plutonium are born during supernovas, when stars explode. But typical supernovas can’t explain the quantity of heavy elements in our cosmic neighborhood, a new study suggests. That means other cataclysmic events must have been major contributors.

The result bolsters a recent change of heart among astrophysicists. Standard supernovas have fallen out of favor. Instead, researchers think that heavy elements are more likely forged in collisions of two dense, dead stars called neutron stars, or in certain rare types of supernovas, such as those that form from fast-spinning stars. (5/13)

Pangea Aerospace to Test Aerospike Rocket Engine (Source: Space Daily)
The world first Methalox 3D printed aerospike engine The European space start-up Pangea Aerospace raised euro 3 million to close its seed round. The capital raised will be used to additively manufacture and test the first engine of this kind and work towards a commercial-ready aerospike engine with higher thrust. Pangea Aerospace develops space propulsion systems based on the aerospike nozzle and a disruptive recovery system for microlaunchers.

Pangea Aerospace is developing the long sought-after aerospike nozzle for rocket engines. This type of engine can radically transform space propulsion thanks to its higher efficiency (up to 15% than currently used rocket engines), reusability capabilities and very low-cost and rapid manufacturing. The company uses the latest metallic 3D printing techniques and materials to achieve this technological prowess. Additionally, the engine uses green propellants such as liquid oxygen and liquid methane. (5/20)

Space Tourist Yusaku Maezawa Wants Ideas for What to Do in Space (Source: CollectSpace)
What would you want to do on a 12-day trip into outer space? A Japanese billionaire who is set to fly to the International Space Station wants your ideas. In fact, he wants 100 of them. Yusaku Maezawa, who will soon begin training for his planned flight on Russia's Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft in December, has turned to the public to suggest what activities he should try to do while aboard the space station.

"I want this experience to be for everyone, not just me, and so I came up with this plan. What should I do in space? What should I bring to space?" Maezawa wrote on his website for the mission. "I need your ideas!" Those ideas can be silly or serious, the soon-to-be-spaceflight participant (or "space tourist") said. He plans to select 100 of them to try out while being filmed for his YouTube channel while in orbit. (5/18)

Bidding for the First Journey on Blue Origin’s Suborbital Spaceship Exceeds $2 Million (Source: GeekWire)
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has begun unsealing the bids for an open seat on its New Shepard suborbital spaceship, and the high bid hit the $2.8 million mark with more than three weeks to go in the online auction. Blue Origin says the auction has drawn out more than 5,200 bidders from 136 countries. Bidding started on May 5 and will conclude with a live auction on June 12. Proceeds from the sale will be donated to Blue Origin’s educational foundation, the Club for the Future.

The winner will fill one of the six seats on New Shepard’s first crewed flight to the edge of space from Blue Origin’s West Texas spaceport, currently scheduled for July 20, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The other seats will presumably be set aside for Blue Origin employees or VIPs. (5/19)

Voyager 1 Has Detected a Mysterious Cosmic Hum In Deep Space (Source: Secrets of the Universe)
Voyager 1 spacecraft has detected a mysterious cosmic hum in interstellar space. Voyager 1 is the farthest spacecraft from Earth. The probe's latest discovery has questioned our perception of the emptiness of the deep space out there. Voyager 1 has detected a steady hum of plasma waves in interstellar space at a low frequency of 3 kHz. Also called the fourth state of matter, plasma is the most abundant state in the universe. Stars are magnetized balls of plasma. It is a hot and ionized gas composed of electrons stripped away from their parent atoms.

The movement of electrons in plasma leads to thermally excited plasma oscillations. Thanks to its plasma wave system, Voyager 1 is well equipped to measure plasma vibrations in the interstellar medium. Since 2012, Voyager 1 has detected about eight distinct plasma oscillation events, ranging in length from a couple of days to a full year. This newly detected signal is strange because it is narrower than the plasma oscillation events and has held itself steady at about 3 kHz. Another weird thing about this signal is that it has persisted for nearly three years, which is the most prolonged continuous plasma signal recorded by Voyager 1 so far. (5/11)

Sierra Space Signs in-space Manufacturing Agreement with Red Wire (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Sierra Space, the new commercial space subsidiary of Sierra Nevada Corp., announced a joint agreement with Redwire aimed at leveraging Sierra Space capabilities for a range of in-space services and manufacturing. The MOU in the emerging In-Space Manufacturing (ISM) industry is among new commercial agreements for Sierra Space across multiple industries – including space-enabled manufacturing, biopharma research, on-orbit satellite servicing assembly and manufacturing, and microgravity research. (5/19)

Startup Agnikul Raises $11M in Series A Round (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Indian launch startup Agnikul has raised $11 million in a Series A funding round, making it the largest funding round for a private space technology company in India. The funds will be deployed to strengthen the technology infrastructure, expand ground testing and build a world class team to help Agnikul become India’s first private player to launch satellites in space. (5/19)

NASA Eyes Moon's Fa Side for Astronomy, New Telescopes (Source: Space Daily)
NASA scientists, as well as astronomers around the world, plan to install lunar observatories in the next few years to peer into the universe's ancient past - just after the Big Bang. Science equipment headed to the moon already includes a spectrometer built for launch in early 2022, known as ROLSES, which will study how sunlight charges the slight lunar atmosphere. The acronym includes the word "sheath," which refers to a field of energy created by sunlight reflecting from the bright lunar surface.

And NASA scientists are formulating plans for observatories on the far side of the moon, where darkness and clear sightlines could yield new discoveries about the universe before stars existed. (5/19)

NASA AI Could Speed Up Fault Diagnosis Process in Spacecraft (Source: Space Daily)
New artificial intelligence technology could speed up physical fault diagnosis in spacecraft and spaceflight systems, improving mission efficiency by reducing down-time. Research in Artificial Intelligence for Spacecraft Resilience (RAISR) is software developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. With RAISR, artificial intelligence could diagnose faults real-time in spacecraft and spaceflight systems in general. (5/19)

Euroconsult Opens Australian Office to Help Grow Local Space Industry (Source: Space Daily)
Euroconsult is opening a representative office in Australia to serve local and international clients in the fast growing Australian space sector, further expanding its global market reach. As part of recent work carried out on the Australian space market, including an assessment for Austrade on the development of potential Australian launch capabilities, Euroconsult had the opportunity to witness the dynamism and energy of Australia's space sector first-hand. (5/19)

NASA Suborbital Rocket Chases the Source of the Sun's Hot Atmosphere (Source: Space Daily)
After glimpsing faint but widespread super-heated material in the Sun's outer atmosphere, a NASA sounding rocket is going back for more. This time, they're carrying a new instrument optimized to see it across a wider region of the Sun. The mission, known as Extreme Ultraviolet Normal Incidence Spectrograph, or EUNIS for short, will launch from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The launch window opens on May 18, 2021. EUNIS will launch on a Black Brant IX sounding rocket to an altitude of about 200 miles before parachuting back to Earth for recovery. The EUNIS team expects approximately six minutes of observing time. (5/19)

NASA's Nelson Talks Rockets, Moon Plans, Partnerships (Source: The Verge)
He already faces some challenges. Last year, Congress gave NASA only a quarter of what it requested to fund its first ride to the Moon since 1972. The agency, hamstrung by a tight budget, ditched a plan to pick two companies and awarded Elon Musk’s SpaceX a lone $3 billion contract to tailor its budding Starship rocket for two initial test flights to the lunar surface, including the first astronaut landing in 2024.

That spawned a wave of opposition from the two losing companies that were also in the running for the contract, as well as pushback from Nelson’s old buddies in the Senate. They’re calling on NASA to reopen the competition. On Friday, May 14th, The Verge sat down with Nelson, virtually, to chat about his new duties as NASA administrator. Click here. (5/19)

Russia Plans Launches From Kourou Spaceport (Source: TASS)
Russia has plans for launches from the Kourou space center in French Guiana in the coming years, Dmitry Loskutov, the director general of Glavkosmos (part of the Roscosmos state corporation), said. "So far, I would like to say that there are plans for space launches from Kourou for the coming years," he said. In his words, Russia has good cooperation with its European and French partners regarding launches from the Kourou facility, which went into operation in 2011.

"Its estimated service period is 15 years, with 50 launches of the Soyuz-ST carrier rockets. Out of those 50, 25 have already taken place. When this period is over, Europeans will have to decide on whether the facility’s technological lifespan should be extended or not," Loskutov said. At the moment, Russia is in talks on the issue with its partners. (5/18)

Russia Continues to Work with Other States in Space Despite Sanctions (Source: TASS)
Russia continues to cooperate with foreign partners in the field of space, despite the indirect impact of sanctions, General Director of Glavkosmos (part of Roscosmos) Dmitry Loskutov said. "Our long-term partners are India, China, France, and others. We find an opportunity to interact with them even in these difficult conditions. We are also conducting targeted work in the Asia-Pacific region," Loskutov said. He noted that Russia is also working with the Middle East, North Africa, and a number of other regions.

Loskutov explained that so far the space sector is not an object of direct sanctions pressure, but experiences the indirect impact of sanctions. "We feel some indirect signs, our partners and our clients feel them. We proceed from the fact that it will remain this way, the methods of competition are sometimes unfair," he said. (Source: TASS)

Russia Has No Intention to Cede Space Tourism Market to US (Source: TASS)
Russia is capable of competing with the US on the market of space tourism in many respects, including safety, reliability and costs, said the CEO of Glavkosmos company (an affiliate of Roscosmos), Dmitry Loskutov. "We are in no mood of ceding this market. It goes without saying that we are competitive by such parameters as safety, reliability and costs. As far as safety is concerned, our emergency rescue system has already proved its effectiveness more than once. Also, we are quite competitive, when it comes to costs," Loskutov said.

He recalled that this decade a new generation spacecraft, Oryol, would become available for missions in low near-Earth orbits and also for flights to the Moon and into deep space. "Incidentally, it will be launched with a new generation heavy class rocket, Angara-A5. We are not stalled. But our good old workhorse Soyuz, will certainly stay in service for quite a while," he said. (5/18)

Australian Military to Set Up Space Division with $7 Billion Budget (Source: The Guardian)
Australia is assembling a new space division comprising military officers from the army, navy and air force to better protect satellites from attack. The space division will be established within the Royal Australian Air Force headquarters in Canberra early next year. The chief of the air force, Mel Hupfeld, said guaranteeing access to the “contested domain” of space was becoming increasingly important.

“However, this does not mean that defence encourages the militarisation of space,” Air Marshal Hupfeld said on Wednesday. “All space operations are conducted consistent with international and domestic legal obligations.” Defense will invest $7bn in space capabilities over the next 10 years. (5/19)

The FCC’s Big Bet on Elon Musk (Source: Vox)
Carelli’s cabin is truly off the grid — he told Recode that cell service (and the nearest grocery store) is 30 miles away, and the nearest landline is five. There are no power lines, no water lines, no sewer hookup, and no roads. Carelli has to hike about a mile just to reach his cabin, which he calls Wolf Lodge. He wanted that isolation, but he also wanted to be able to communicate with the outside world in case there was an emergency. When Carelli heard about Starlink’s so-called “better than nothing” beta program, he says he became “obsessed with everything Starlink.”

In February, he got his satellite dish: Dishy. (Yes, the company assigned a cutesy name to it. Dishy’s full name is Dishy McFlatface.) And it’s safe to say that Carelli certainly thinks Starlink is better than nothing. “The feeling I got from plugging in Dishy and receiving internet at my cabin is similar to what it must have been like for cavemen to discover fire,” Carelli said. “A feeling of ‘Wow, civilization is advancing!’”

One government agency has already decided that Starlink has enough promise to give it funding, so some of your money is riding on this. SpaceX was of the biggest beneficiaries of the FCC’s recent $9.4 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, winning nearly $900 million. It was a surprisingly large amount awarded to a company that was given a major break at the last minute, when the FCC decided that it qualified for the low latency tier. That gave SpaceX a huge advantage over the traditional satellite internet companies (Viasat got nothing; HughesNet got just $1.3 million) and even some terrestrial providers who needed more money to build out connections to underserved locations. (5/17)

Europa’s Icy Shell May Have Pockets of Water that Could Support Life (Source: New Scientist)
Pockets of liquid water trapped in the thick ice shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa may be much shorter-lived than previously thought, but they may still be present today and potential habitats for life. Europa, the fourth-largest moon of Jupiter, is believed to have a liquid water ocean tens of kilometres under its frozen surface. This water may be in contact with an ocean floor that provides the necessary mix of materials for life to arise. (5/17)