May 30, 2021

Rocket Lab Ordered to Pay $100,000 for New Zealand Employee's Unjustified Dismissal (Source: RNZ)
Craig Owen joined the aerospace manufacturing company in early 2018 but his employment was terminated a year later over what the company says were performance issues, an authority decision said. Alleged failures include negligent record keeping, non-compliance with proper engineering processes, and mass disregard towards Rocket Lab's policies.

The Employment Relations Authority said it was a clear example of a company intentionally abusing its power to cause detriment to an employee. Rocket Lab, known for launching numerous satellites in space for commercial and government small satellite providers, then offered to pay him $10,000 to settle any claims he had against the company. Owen declined to sign the settlement agreement. The authority said his dismissal was unjustified and there were serious breaches of good faith. It has since ordered the company to pay Owen $65,000 of lost remuneration, $30,000 for distress and a penalty of $3000 dollars: A total of $98,000. (5/29)

Virgin Galactic Files Prospectus on $1 Billion Sale of Securities (Source: The National)
American space flight company Virgin Galactic filed a prospectus on the sale of $1 billion in mixed securities and up to 2.7 billion shares of common stock, according to its filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company will use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, it said on Friday. "Assuming the exercise of all outstanding warrants for cash, we will receive an aggregate of approximately $30.7m," the company said in the prospectus. The company's planned sale of securities comes following its successful manned test flight to the edge of space last week. (5/29)

Newly Announced Houston Spaceport Project to Include a Startup Incubator (Source: Innovation Map)
Amajor aerospace company recently announced its new campus at the Houston Spaceport — and the company is dedicating a chunk of the new space to startups. Collins Aerospace — a Charlotte, North Carolina-based company owned by Raytheon Technologies — announced its plans to build a new eight-acre, 120,000-square-foot campus for human space-related activity. And of that new campus, 10,000 square feet will be dedicated to an incubator supporting aerospace startups.

The city of Houston approved the deal last week, and the company will receive up to $25.6 million in financing from Houston Airports for capital improvements, according to a news release. Jimmy Spence, senior business development specialist at the Houston Spaceport, says the campus will be space flight focused and even include manufacturing of communication parts. It's be a project that's been a long time coming, he says. (5/28)

NASA Budget Goes All-In on Science, Stays the Ccourse on Moon Lander (Source: Ars Technica)
As part of the federal budget rollout on Friday, NASA released details of the funding it hopes to receive from Congress in fiscal year 2022. The president's budget request seeks $24.8 billion for the coming fiscal year, a nearly 7 percent increase over the $23.3 billion in funding NASA received for the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30. Congress will ultimately decide funding levels, of course, but this budget request is indicative of White House priorities.

The Biden Administration has placed a strong emphasis on science during its first four months, and that focus is reflected in this budget request. The White House is seeking $7.9 billion for NASA's science programs, including Earth science and missions to explore the Moon and other planets. This represents a nearly 9 percent increase over last year's budget for science programs, with Earth science and planetary science receiving the most significant increases. (5/28)

Space Force Budget Prioritizes R&D Replacing Vulnerable Systems (Source: National Defense)
The still relatively new Space Force received a $2 billion bump in the Biden administration’s 2022 budget request. Proposed funding for the Space Force, which remains under the Department of the Air Force, is $17.4 billion in the request sent to Congress on May 28. Some of that total includes the transfer of funds from the Departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force and comes to a 13.1 percent increase over fiscal year 2021.

About half of the increase came from funding transferred from the other services, said Air Force Deputy Assistant Secretary for Budget in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management and Comptroller Maj. Gen. James D. Peccia III. Another $800 million of the increase came from classified accounts, he added.

Some $2.8 billion of the proposal includes procurement of new spacecraft, terminals, ground control systems, launch services and related communications and training products, Air Force budget documents stated. The $2.8 billion figure for procurement is significantly smaller than the $11.3 billion being requested for research, development, test and evaluation. (5/28)

Space Force’s 2022 Budget Adds Satellites, Warfighting Center, More Guardians (Source: Air Force Magazine)
The Space Force is asking for $17.4 billion in its 2022 budget request—more than 10 percent of the Department of the Air Force’s $173.7 billion “blue” budget and a $2 billion increase from 2021. It would grow the service to 8,400 Guardians, pay to transfer satellites from the Army and Navy to the new service, and fund more than $800 million in new classified programs. That’s less than half of the $39 billion in “non-blue” funding that passes through the Department of the Air Force’s budget but is not controlled by the department.

A “large chunk” of the extra $2 billion is for the operation and maintenance of USSF facilities that are still being paid for under the Air Force’s budget in fiscal 2021, said Air Force Maj. Gen. James D. Peccia, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for budget, during a May 28 budget roll out at the Pentagon. He estimated that the transfer of satellites and space missions, such as the Army’s transfer of the Defense Wideband Enterprise SATCOM System and the Navy’s transfer of the Mobile User Objective System, amount to about half of the increase. He referred to those as a “a couple of examples from a long list” of items transferring.

Peccia characterized the 2022 request as having “a lot of plus-ups in the unclassified programs, but there are well over $800 million in classified programs that went to the Space Force this year for new programs.” (5/29)

Tuberville Blitzes Air Force Nominee on Keeping Space Command in Alabama (Source: Washington Examiner)
One thing is certain about former President Donald Trump’s last-minute preference for Alabama over Colorado for the permanent headquarters of U.S. Space Command: Football-coach-turned-senator Tommy Tuberville is not going to let up on the offense. In the confirmation hearing for President Joe Biden’s pick for Air Force secretary, nominee Frank Kendall was asked by the freshman senator if he would support the service's assessment that led to the choice of Huntsville, Alabama.

Redstone Arsenal won the bid over the command's temporary home in Colorado Springs, among a slimmed-down field of six candidates. The process that led to the decision by then-Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett has been called into question and is under investigation by both the Defense Department inspector general and the Government Accountability Office. Still, Tuberville was insistent that Alabama keep the pressure up to hold its apparent lead.

“The Air Force analysis showed the location at Redstone saves taxpayers millions of dollars, which we all look forward to,” Tuberville told Kendall and Susanna Blume, Biden’s nominee for DOD director of cost assessment and program evaluation. Tuberville began his questioning of the nominees by thanking them for “staying by the date of the decision to put Space Command in Huntsville.” ... “My colleagues seem to continue to fight that for some reason,” he said. (5/27)

Congress Asks GAO to Investigate NASA Cybersecurity (Source: Space News)
The bipartisan leadership of the House Science Committee has asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate NASA’s cybersecurity activities amid growing concerns about hacking of government computer systems. In a May 27 letter, the top Democrats and Republicans of the committee requested the GAO investigate the “cybersecurity risks to the sensitive data” associated with major NASA programs. That includes comparing NASA’s activities to leading cybersecurity practices and identifying additional practices the agency should adopt. (5/28)

Rarest Thing Ever Detected –“One Trillion Times Age of the Universe” (Source: Daily Galaxy)
The XENON Collaboration runs XENON1T, a 1,300-kilogram vat of super-pure liquid xenon shielded from cosmic rays in a cryostat submerged in deep water and located 1,500 meters beneath the Gran Sasso mountains of Italy. The researchers search for dark matter by recording tiny flashes of light created when particles interact with xenon inside the detector. And while XENON1T was built to capture the interaction between a dark matter particle and the nucleus of a xenon atom, the detector actually picks up signals from any interactions with the xenon.

Researchers announced that they have observed the radioactive decay of xenon-124, which has a half-life of 1.8 X 10^22 years. “We actually saw this decay happen. It’s the longest, slowest process that has ever been directly observed, and our dark matter detector was sensitive enough to measure it,” said Ethan Brown, an assistant professor of physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute about a process that takes more than one trillion times longer than the age of the universe. “It’s amazing to have witnessed this process, and it says that our detector can measure the rarest thing ever recorded.” (5/28)

NASA Remembers Flight Director John Hodge (Source: NASA)
John Dennis Hodge, NASA’s second flight director, died Wednesday, May 19, at his home in Northern Virginia. He was 92. Hodge became NASA’s second flight director for the final solo flight of the Mercury Program, Mercury-Atlas 9, in which astronaut Gordon Cooper flew his Faith 7 spacecraft for 22 orbits of the Earth, setting the stage for the two-person crews of Gemini and the three-person crews of Apollo. As “blue flight” director, Hodge also became the first lead flight director other than Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. (5/28)

NASA Awards Laser Air Monitoring System and Spacecraft Avionics Contracts for Orion (Source: Parabolic Arc)
NASA has awarded Dynetics Inc. of Huntsville, Alabama, a contract to produce a Laser Air Monitoring System (LAMS) for the agency’s Orion spacecraft beginning with the Artemis III mission. NASA has also selected Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to provide development and operations support for the avionics software suite that will guide the agency’s next generation of human rated spacecraft on missions beyond low-Earth orbit. (5/29)

Measuring Moon Dust to Fight Air Pollution (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Moon dust isn’t like the stuff that collects on a bookshelf or on tables – it’s ubiquitous and abrasive, and it clings to everything. It’s so bad that it even broke the vacuum NASA designed to clean the Moon dust off Apollo spacesuits. With NASA’s return to the Moon and its orbit, it will need to manage the dust, which is dangerous for people too. The first step is knowing how much is around at any given time. Efforts to do just that are already paying off on Earth, in the fight against air pollution.

Sensitive tissues such as the lungs and corneas can be damaged by lunar dust trapped inside a habitat. While air filtration can remove a great deal of the tiny particles, an air-quality sensor is necessary to ensure the controls are effective. This was one focus of NASA’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) program.

Through NextSTEP, the agency issued a series of documents detailing specific needs for a future lunar habitation and inviting private industry to help overcome obstacles to future lunar missions. One of these needs was for air revitalization and monitoring, including a way to measure lunar dust in surface and orbiting habitats. Lunar Outpost Inc. was founded in Denver in 2017 with the goal of developing technologies for lunar exploration and then adapting them for use on Earth. Based on the specifications laid out in NextSTEP documents, the company developed an air-quality sensor it called the Space Canary. (5/29)