May 29, 2021

Ark Invest’s Space Exploration ETF Sells Its Last Few Shares of Virgin Galactic (Source: CNBC)
Ark Invest’s space exploration ETF sold its last remaining shares of Virgin Galactic. Cathie Wood’s firm sold 12 shares of Virgin Galactic from its ARKX fund, the tiny remaining piece of a position that was about 672,000 shares when the ETF began trading in late March. After selling nearly half of the position in April, Wood’s firm unloaded almost all of the ETF’s remaining stake in early May, when the stock traded down near $15 a share. (5/26)

Here's Why It Was So Hard to Track That Chinese Rocket That Fell to Earth (Source: Popular Mechanics)
Though the rocket stage ultimately broke apart over the Indian Ocean, its reentry caused quite a stir, because projections revealed there was a minuscule chance it could have landed in a densely populated region. (In a similar situation last year, the tumbling rocket stage of another Long March 5B rocket missed New York City by 30 minutes.)

While the U.S. Space Force's 18th Space Control Squadron and other entities do a great job of tracking these fast-moving objects, "what's very difficult is when an object is coming back down re-entering through the atmosphere in an uncontrolled fashion," said Carlos Niederstrasser, an aerospace engineer at Northrop Grumman. Analysts rely on a number of computer models to make predictions about where objects will land, but that's a tough task, even for those with access to sensitive information and high-tech equipment.

Niederstrasser likens generating reentry models to crafting a weather report: Not all models are equal, and there are a lot of uncertainties that, when compounded, could result in vastly different predictions. "On top of nature's variability, you have the unknowns of the rocket body itself," says Niederstrasser. And the more information analysts have about the rocket, the better. An object's size, shape and finish influence how it will reenter Earth's atmosphere. More massive objects are difficult to slow down. This means they'll likely stay in orbit a little longer. Smaller, less massive objects have an easier time re-entering Earth's atmosphere. (5/27)

ISS Canadarm2 Stays the Course After an Orbital Debris Hit (Source: Govt. of Canada)
While the utmost precautions are taken to reduce the potential for collisions with the ISS, impacts with tiny objects do occur. One such hit was noticed recently during a routine inspection of Canadarm2 on May 12. Experts from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and NASA worked together to take detailed images of the area and assess the impact, which occurred on one of Canadarm2's boom segments.

Despite the impact, results of the ongoing analysis indicate that the arm's performance remains unaffected. The damage is limited to a small section of the arm boom and thermal blanket. Canadarm2 is continuing to conduct its planned operations, including hoisting Dextre into position to replace a faulty power switchbox (Remote Power Control Module). (5/28)

As Space Junk Multiplies, Pentagon Is Stuck Tracking It for Civilians (Source: Defense One)
It’s been nearly three years since the U.S. Commerce Department was ordered to start keeping tabs on satellites and orbital debris — and to relieve the Pentagon of its duty to warn the world’s space operators of impending collisions. But the effort has stalled, even as orbits fill up and the danger grows.

Then-President Trump’s 2018 directive was meant to allow the Defense Department’s orbital trackers to go back to their original mission: using their sensors to protect national security assets in space. Commerce was supposed to build a more comprehensive tracking system that combined the U.S. military data with information from commercial tracking services and other governments. This new public database would notify civil and international operators when their satellites — or crewed spacecraft — were in peril.

But that handoff stalled amid staff turnover in the Office of Space Commerce and, later, the presidential transition. Now as the pace of space launches accelerates, the likelihood of collisions is high and rising — and so, some industry officials say, is the chance that America’s longstanding leadership in international space policy may slip away. Currently, the U.S. government’s space tracking mission is still handled by the Pentagon — specifically, Space Command — which collects data on orbiting objects and alerts companies and other governments when an accident is possible. (5/27)

Senator Kelly Shocked that China, Russia Hardly Engage on Space Debris (Source: Air Force Magazine)
A first-year senator may perceive the perils of space debris multiplying in low-Earth orbit from a more visceral vantage point than the Space Force or Defense Department officials who testified May 26 on threats to U.S. military activities in space.

“With regards to LEO [low-Earth orbit], in particular, do you—as we’re tracking relatively small objects [debris], there’s thousands of them—when you get a state vector on one of those and you can see that’s it’s going to approach not only our ally’s, but sometimes our adversary’s, satellites in orbit, … do you always share that information? Because there’s also benefit for us,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a former astronaut and a member of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces. Kelly said sharing such information gives any satellite operator, even an adversary, a chance to maneuver out of the way and not contribute more debris from a crash.

John Hill, who is performing the duties of assistant secretary of defense for space policy, added that while most space operators “are very glad to engage with us … there are two countries that often don’t pick up the phone or answer the email.” He later specified that he meant China and Russia. Kelly had assumed the DOD would have a “direct line” to a Russian agency, for example, in such an event. “So, they don’t respond when there’s a conjunction?” Kelly asked incredulously. (5/27)

Soyuz Rocket Launches Seventh Batch of OneWeb Satellites (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
The launch of OneWeb’s seventh batch of satellites took place on May 28 at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia. With this launch of 36 made-in-Florida satellites, the number of spacecraft for OneWeb’s orbital internet constellation is now 218 satellites. The system prepares to go live later this year for commercial service in regions above the 50th parallel north with global service to follow in 2022.

In July 2020, the UK acquired a significant equity share in OneWeb. The company had filed for bankruptcy in May 2020, blaming the COVID-19 pandemic for its inability to raise capital. The company had to lay off 85% of its 531 employees before filing for Chapter 11 relief. OneWeb’s remaining employees were left to manage the 74 launched satellites. The company’s headquarters is in the UK while manufacturing remains in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at this time. (5/29)

The Promise of the Artemis Accords (Source: TIME)
The full text of the treaty is available online, though like all such international pacts, it makes for eye-glazing reading. But that's O.K., because its substance is something else entirely. The Accords commit the partner nations to use the moon only for peaceful purposes, to render aid to other nations' astronauts in distress, to ensure that all hardware contributed by one nation has full interoperability with hardware contributed by other nations, and more. The point, in other words, is to join hands, to plant lunar flags again, but a whole rainbow of them this time—not just the stars and stripes. (5/28)

NASA Requests $24.8 Billion in 2022, Proposes to Cancel SOFIA Again (Source: Space News)
NASA released its fiscal year 2022 budget request May 28, asking for $24.8 billion to support a number of new and existing science and exploration programs but also proposing once again to cancel an airborne astronomical observatory. The detailed budget request of $24.801 billion is slightly higher than the $24.7 billion in an initial “skinny” budget request published April 9. That request included only highlights of the overall proposal, such as additional science and space technology funding. The request is more than $1.5 billion above the $23.272 billion the agency received for fiscal year 2021.

The $7.93 billion for NASA’s science programs is the largest ever, Nelson said, eclipsing the $7.3 billion the agency received in 2021. “The Biden administration is proving that science is back,” he said. “The record funding in the science area will help NASA address the climate crisis and advance robotic missions that will pave the way for astronauts to explore the moon and Mars.”

That budget features a $250 million increase for NASA’s Earth science programs, including $137.8 million to start work on a series of missions known as the Earth System Observatory and formally announced May 24. According to the budget request, NASA expects to develop four missions to implement “designated observables” in the Earth science decadal survey, launching between fiscal years 2027 and 2030. (5/28)

NASA Administrator Statement on President’s FY 2022 Funding Request (Source: NASA)
The Biden-Harris Administration’s fiscal year 2022 funding request is an investment in America’s future. Agency activities contribute to economies local and national, invest in the next generation through STEM education, and are essential to American leadership around the world. This budget request is evidence that NASA’s missions contribute to the administration’s larger goals for America: addressing climate change, promoting equity, and driving economic growth.

This FY 2022 budget, along with continued bipartisan support for NASA’s goals and missions, will empower NASA and the United States to lead humanity into the next era in exploration – an era in which government and the private sector partner to take us farther than ever before – to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond – and to expand science, economic growth, and well-being here on Earth. (5/28)

Astronaut's Rocket Plane and Space Shuttle Artifacts To Go On Display (Source: CollectSpace)
The rocket plane manual and space shuttle logs kept by the first astronaut to fly on two different winged vehicles into space will be showcased by a museum dedicated to the history of experimental aircraft. The Astronaut Joe Engle Archive Collection is set to open on June 4 at the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) Aviation Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The display comes a year after Joe Engle and his wife, Jeanie, donated their archives to the EAA Aviation Foundation in 2020.

The new exhibit will feature some of the flight gear that Engle used when piloting the North American X-15 hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft, including on three flights that soared above 50 miles (80 km), the U.S.-defined altitude separating Earth from space. The museum will also display artifacts from Engle's 20 years as a NASA astronaut, including his acceptance letter as a member of the fifth group of astronaut candidates in 1966. (5/25)

Astra to Launch Earth-Observing Satellites for Planet in 2022 (Source: Space.com)
Two Bay Area startups will work together to get satellites to orbit next year. San Francisco-based company Planet has tapped Astra, which is based in the East Bay, to launch some of its Earth-observing spacecraft in 2022. "We are thrilled to be working with Planet Labs on a multi-launch mission in 2022," Astra CEO and co-founder Chris Kemp wrote in a blog post last week, referring to Planet by another name that the company has used. (5/27)

Will the Next Space-Weather Season Be Stormy or Fair? (Source: New York Times)
The big news about the sun is that there is no big news. We are blessed, astronomers like to say, to be living next to a “boring star.” But the inhabitants (if there are any) of the planets orbiting the neighboring star Proxima Centauri are less fortunate. In April astronomers announced that a massive flare had erupted from its surface in 2019. For seven seconds, as a battery of telescopes on Earth and in space watched, the little star had increased its output of ultraviolet radiation 14,000-fold, in one of the most violent such flares ever seen in our galaxy.

Space weather on this scale could sterilize potentially habitable planets, and could augur bad news for the search for life beyond this solar system. Even mild space weather can be disruptive to creatures already evolved and settled; sunspots and solar storms, which wax and wane in an 11-year cycle, spray energy that can endanger spacecraft, astronauts and communication systems.

A new cycle of storms will begin any day now, and astrophysicists are divided on how active or threatening it will be. The sun may be about to set records for sunspot numbers and violent storms, or it may be sliding into a decline like the Maunder Minimum, from 1645 to 1715, when hardly any sunspots appeared — a period that became known in Europe as the Little Ice Age. (5/28)

NRO Taking Advantage of Commercial Launch Options for Lower-Risk Space Missions (Source: Space News)
The National Reconnaissance Office entrusts the U.S. Space Force to launch most of its spy satellites. But the NRO also is using other types of commercial contracts to send spacecraft to orbit, a practice that likely will continue, the agency said. NRO Director Christopher Scolese told lawmakers May 24 the agency will procure services outside the NSSL program  to launch missions on tight schedules or  to to deploy lower-cost research payloads. These are contracts usually awarded to satellite manufacturers for the spacecraft and the launch service. Delivery-in-orbit launches are funded separately from the NSSL program and the contract awards are not made public. (5/27)

Japan Will Send a Transforming Robot Ball to the Moon to Test Lunar Rover Tech (Source: Space.com)
Japan plans to deploy a baseball-sized rover to explore the moon's surface in 2022. The Japanese company ispace will deliver the small rover to the moon for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) using the commercial HAKUTO-R lander. JAXA will use the rover to snap pictures of the moon and collect data on lunar dust — a corrosive substance known to be tough on people and machines, the space agency said.

It appears JAXA's "transformable lunar robot" will be the second one carried on ispace's debut mission, as the company announced last month it would also deploy a rover from the United Arab Emirates, called Rashid. If the mission is successful, Japan and the UAE will join the small club of nations to successfully soft-land spacecraft on the moon, after the then-Soviet Union, United States and China. (5/28)

New Advances Inspire China's Deep Space Exploration (Source: Xinhua)
With news of achievements pouring in these days, China is pushing forward its deep space exploration, aiming to contribute its wisdom in humankind's peaceful utilization of outer space. On April 29, China sent into space the core module of its space station, kicking off a series of key launch missions that aim to complete the construction of the station by the end of next year. The successful launch of the Tianhe module marks that China's space station construction has entered the full implementation stage, which lays a solid foundation for the follow-up tasks.

China would implement multiple space missions, including Chang'e-6, Chang'e-7, Chang'e-8, asteroid exploration, Mars sampling returns, and Jupiter explorations in the future. It has completed feasibility studies of the fourth phase of its lunar exploration program and is expected to build an international lunar research station on the moon's south pole in the future. "China is willing to cooperate with relevant countries and international organizations to deliberate the basic capabilities for the initial construction of a lunar research station and test key technologies," said Wu Yanhua, vice administrator of the China National Space Administration (CNSA). (5/27)

Largest-Ever Map of Dark Matter (Source: Cosmos)
The Dark Energy Survey collaboration has just released 30 new papers from the first three years of their observing run, including the largest-ever map of the distribution of dark matter. We know that ordinary matter makes up just 5% of the universe, while dark energy (which forces the universe to expand at ever-increasing speed) comprises 70%, and dark matter (which holds galaxies together) comprises 25%. Both of these “dark” substances are invisible – but can be detected through their gravitational influence on other objects.

The goal of Dark Energy Survey (DES) is to understand dark matter and dark energy by studying how they shape the large-scale structure of the universe. The survey involved hundreds of nights of observations from the Víctor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile, where a powerful digital camera surveyed a large chunk of the sky and catalogued hundreds of millions of objects over six years from 2013 to 2019. (5/28)

NASA to Develop $2.5 Billion, Five-Satellite Earth System Observatory (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
The Biden administration announced this week that NASA will develop a series of five Earth science satellite missions over the next decade, part of a $2.5 billion program called the Earth System Observatory to collect climate and geological data identified as priorities in a 2018 decadal survey. The first Earth System Observatory project — the joint U.S.-Indian NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, or NISAR, mission — has been in development since 2014 and is scheduled for launch in January 2023.

The White House said the five-satellite program “will be a new architecture of advanced space borne Earth observation systems, providing the world with an unprecedented understanding of the critical interactions between Earth’s atmosphere, land, ocean, and ice processes. The announcement of NASA’s Earth System Observatory Monday came at the same time as the Biden administration said it will provide $1 billion through the Federal Emergency Management Agency to support states, local communities, tribes, and territories in pre-disaster hazard mitigation projects. (5/26)

Indian Startup Bellatrix Aerospace Successfully Tests Privately Built Hall Thruster (Source: YourStory)
In a first in India, spacetech startup Bellatrix Aerospace has successfully tested the country's first privately built Hall Thruster, a highly efficient electric propulsion system that's ideal for micro-satellites weighing 50-500 kg and can be scaled up for heavier satellites. Bellatrix is working towards flying this thruster on a satellite mission in the coming months, which it expects will open the space transportation company’s gateway to the commercial market by the end of this year, the startup said, adding that this thruster also forms a critical technology for the space taxi that it is developing. (5/28)

SpaceX, ULA Gearing Up for Intense Florida Rocket Launch Cadence in June (Source: Florida Today)
SpaceX and United Launch Alliance are gearing up for an intense cadence in June. Four SpaceX launches are planned, and one ULA Atlas V launch. Seventeen missions have flown from the Cape in 2021, a breakneck pace considering the halfway mark is still a month out. If the cadence holds, this year could handily top 2020’s 31 launches – a significant count that approaches the intensity seen during the early days of the U.S. space program. (5/27)

Outer Space Should Be Ours to Explore, Not Jeff Bezos’s or Elon Musk’s (Source: Jacobin)
We can't stand by while plutocrats like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos put themselves in charge of humankind's expansion to other worlds. The results would be more Blade Runner than Star Trek. Thanks in large part to the giant corporate PR machines now in the fray, the burgeoning contest for dominance of the twenty-first century space travel market tends to be perceived in the loftiest of terms: saturated with futurist mythology and defined by grandiose pronouncements about asteroid mining, multiyear voyages to Mars, and interstellar colonization.

But, as this week’s wrangling in Congress suggests, the accelerating rivalry between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is destined to play out in a decidedly less than utopian fashion. As the free market innovates its way to monopolistic control of the solar system by the Earth’s two richest men, it remains as yet unclear how far both technology and capitalism will actually allow the billionaire-dominated venture to go. Bezos and Musk, as you might expect, paint a utopian portrait of interplanetary colonies and abundant life flourishing off-world.

Investors in speculative companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, meanwhile, hope that the mining of precious metals from asteroids will unlock untold wealth and bring about a new industrial revolution. The most probable scenario for such efforts, of course, is also far more banal: a primary focus on control of vital infrastructure like satellites by large corporations and their billionaire owners. (5/27)

Mark Geyer Steps Down as Head of NASA's Johnson Space Center (Source: Houston Chronicle)
Mark Geyer took leadership of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the home of human spaceflight, at a critical time — when the U.S. was not launching its own astronauts into space. The agency was turning to private companies for the design, construction and operation of crewed spacecraft. And this was causing some stress. “That was a cultural shift,” said Geyer, who became director of the Johnson Space Center on May 25, 2018. “Not everybody was on the same page as to how that was going and whether we were going to be OK.” (5/27)

Spaceflight Inc. Preparing to Launch Satellites Into Orbit Aboard SpaceX Mission (Source: King5)
Spaceflight Inc.’s Auburn Integration Center is preparing its Sherpa Orbital Transfer Vehicles to launch 36 small satellites into orbit aboard the SpaceX Transporter-2 mission, which is scheduled to launch no earlier than June 2021. The launch will include spacecraft from seven different countries. The Orbital Transfer Vehicles, or OTVs, function like a rideshare or taxi cab and will deploy from SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. (5/27)

Who’s an Astronaut as Private Spaceflight Picks Up Speed? (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
As more companies start selling tickets to space, a question looms: Who gets to call themselves an astronaut? It’s already a complicated issue and about to get more so as the wealthy snap up spacecraft seats and even entire flights for themselves and their entourages. Astronauts? Amateur astronauts? Space tourists? Space sightseers? Rocket riders? Or as the Russians have said for decades, spaceflight participants?

NASA’s new boss Bill Nelson doesn’t consider himself an astronaut even though he spent six days orbiting Earth in 1986 aboard space shuttle Columbia — as a congressman. “I reserve that term for my professional colleagues,” Nelson said. Computer game developer Richard Garriott — who paid his way to the International Space Station in 2008 with the Russians — hates the space tourist label. “I am an astronaut,” he declared in an email, explaining that he trained for two years for the mission.

“If you go to space, you’re an astronaut,” said Axiom Space’s Michael Lopez-Alegria. There’s something enchanting about the word: Astronaut comes from the Greek words for star and sailor. And swashbuckling images of “The Right Stuff” and NASA’s original Mercury 7 astronauts make for great marketing. Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, is already calling its future clients “astronauts.” It’s auctioning off one seat on its first spaceflight with people on board, targeted for July. NASA even has a new acronym: PAM for Private Astronaut Mission. (5/28)

GM’s Newest Vehicle: Off-Road, Self-Driving Rover for Moon (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
General Motors is teaming up with Lockheed Martin to produce the ultimate off-road, self-driving, electric vehicles — for the moon. The project announced Wednesday is still in the early stages and has yet to score any NASA money. But the goal is to design light yet rugged vehicles that will travel farther and faster than the lunar rovers that carried NASA’s Apollo astronauts in the early 1970s, the companies said.

“Mobility is really going to open up the moon for us,” said Kirk Shireman, a former NASA manager who is now Lockheed Martin’s vice president for lunar exploration. The rovers used by the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 moonwalkers ventured no more than 4 1/2 miles from their landers. GM also helped design those vehicles. NASA last year put out a call for industry ideas on lunar rovers. Their initial rovers will be designed to carry two astronauts at a time, according to company officials. A brief company video showed a large, open rover speeding over lunar slopes, with more headlights in the distance. (5/28)