May 31, 2021

Satellite Operators Near June 1 C-Band Clearing Milestone (Source: Space News)
As bitter legal disputes and billion-dollar price tags dominate headlines around C-band, work is frantically underway to clear the spectrum for U.S. terrestrial 5G wireless operators. Satellite operators Intelsat and SES, which stand to gain the most from clearing the frequencies in time, are nearing a June 1 internal housekeeping milestone for vacating part of the band this December.

They are eligible for more than $2 billion from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) if they hit the regulator’s Dec. 5 deadline for clearing 120 MHz of C-band. But they will lose 5% of that if they are a day late, and then 5% less every month all the way to zero if wireless operators still cannot use the spectrum without interfering with satellite systems. (5/28)

Titan Sample Return Mission Being Explored by NASA (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
Funded by a $125,000 grant from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, engineers and scientists are exploring a possible future mission to return samples from Saturn’s large moon Titan. NIAC, which funds research into innovative technology that could be used in future space missions, awarded the grant to researchers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

The only solar system world other than Earth with liquid lakes on its surface, Titan has a thick atmosphere with a high concentration of nitrogen and chemical compounds not found on Earth. It could potentially host microbial life, either in its surface lakes of methane and ethane, or in its subsurface ocean of liquid water, in spite of surface temperatures of approximately minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit. (5/30)

China Launches Tianzhou-2 Cargo Craft to New Space Station (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
Just a month after launching the first part of its multi-module Tiangong space station, China has sent a cargo spacecraft, Tianzhou-2, to the fledgling outpost.  Aboard the 9-meter-long spacecraft is nearly 5,000 kilograms of cargo for the Tiangong space station — about three months worth of cargo for the upcoming crewed Shenzhou 12 mission, slated to launch as early as June 10.

Shenzhou 12 is slated to carry three Chinese astronauts or “taikonauts” to the outpost for several months. Aboard is expected to be Nie Haisheng, Deng Qingming and Ye Guangfu. The cargo spacecraft is based on the design of the first two early Chinese space stations, which were called Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2. Tianzhou-1 launched and docked autonomously to Tiangong-2 in 2017 to test fuel transfer techniques. (5/29)

I’m a Physicist Who Searches for Aliens. U.F.O.s Don’t Impress Me (Source: New York Times)
There are excellent reasons to search for extraterrestrial life, but there are equally excellent reasons not to conclude that we have found evidence of it with UFO sightings. Let’s start with the Navy cases. Some of the pilots have told of seeing flying objects shaped like Tic Tacs or other unusual forms. The recordings from the planes’ cameras show amorphous shapes moving in surprising ways, including appearing to skim the ocean’s surface and then disappear beneath it. This might appear to be evidence of extraterrestrial technology that can defy the laws of physics as we understand them — but in reality it doesn’t amount to much.

For one thing, first-person accounts, which are notoriously inaccurate to begin with, don’t provide enough information for an empirical investigation. Scientists can’t accurately gauge distances or velocity from a pilot’s testimony. What a scientist needs are precise measurements from multiple viewpoints provided by devices that register various wavelengths (visual, infrared, radar). Perhaps the videos offer that kind of data? Sadly, no. While some researchers have used the footage to make simple estimates of the accelerations and other flight characteristics of the UFOs, the results have been mixed at best.

Skeptics have already shown that some of the motions seen in the videos (like the ocean skimming) may be artifacts of the cameras’ optics and tracking systems. But if the mission of these aliens calls for stealth, they seem surprisingly incompetent. You would think that creatures technologically capable of traversing the mind-boggling distances between the stars would also know how to turn off their high beams at night and to elude our primitive infrared cameras. There may be more prosaic explanations. For example, it’s possible that U.F.O.s are drones deployed by rivals like Russia and China to examine our defenses — luring our pilots into turning on their radar and other detectors, thus revealing our electronic intelligence capacities. (5/30)

AFRL Opens New Lab for Space Warfighting Research (Source: Space Daily)
The Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate held a ribbon cutting ceremony May 20 to celebrate the opening of its newest facility, the Space Warfighting Operations Research and Development, or SWORD, laboratory. Col. Eric Felt, the director of AFRL's Space Vehicles Directorate, hosted the event with AFRL commander, Maj. Gen. Heather Pringle as the presiding officer and keynote speaker.

The SWORD Lab is a 26,000 square foot, $12.8 million state-of-the-art facility, with office and laboratory space that will house the 65 scientists, engineers and support staff of the directorate's Space Control Branch to better integrate R and D programs focused on improving space warfighting capabilities. (5/27)

More Nations Joining Artemis Accords (Source: Space News)
More countries are expected to join the Artemis Accords in the coming weeks. While South Korea formally signed the accords last week, agency officials previously said they expected three countries to join in the coming weeks. NASA hasn't identified those other two countries, but industry observers believe Brazil and New Zealand are the most likely candidates. The accords outline a set of best practices for safe space operations in cislunar space, building upon the Outer Space Treaty. (5/28)

UK's Isotropic Systems Wins Government Funds for Flat Panel Antenna Business (Source: Space News)
British startup Isotropic Systems has unlocked more government funding for its flat-panel antennas. The company said this week it secured the final third of a previously unannounced 18.5 million euro ($22.5 million) contract from the U.K. Space Agency to help bring its flat-panel terminals to market early next year. The contract was awarded last year through a European Space Agency program. Isotropic believes its Ka-band antennas will enable multi-orbit operators to increase performance and reduce costs by combining their assets into a single integrated terminal. (5/28)

Lunar Rover Projects Proliferate (Source: Space News)
Several lunar rover projects, from small robotic ones to those that could carry astronauts, are in development. The Japanese space agency JAXA said Wednesday it will fly a small rover, the size of a baseball, on a commercial lander being developed by ispace and scheduled for launch next year. The Canadian Space Agency separately confirmed Wednesday its plans to develop a small robotic rover, carrying Canadian and NASA instruments, that will launch on a commercial lander in the next five years. Lockheed Martin said it is teaming with General Motors to design a rover for use by astronauts on Artemis missions later in the decade. The companies disclosed few details about that rover's design, but said they expect to bid on a NASA competition later this year to fund development of a rover. (5/28)

Space Force Picks Raytheon and Milennium for Missile Tracking Projects (Source: C4ISRnet)
Two companies won Space Force contracts to develop digital models of missile warning sensors. Raytheon and Millennium Space Systems won Missile Track Custody Prototype contracts, supporting work to validate designs of missile sensors being developed for future satellite systems. The contract is part of a digital engineering strategy by the Space Force's Space and Missile Systems Center. (5/28)

Atlas Space Operations Works to Revolutionize SatCom (Source: Politico)
If you’ve been around as long as we have, you’ll remember when mobile phone service was dependent on cell towers. And how if you weren’t in range, or connected to the right hardware, you were off the grid or at best paying a premium for service. Even in 2021, satellite transmissions still widely rely on a similar model. But Atlas Space Operations in Traverse City, Michigan, has been trying to change that since it was founded in 2015.

“The communications segment of the space industry, which is to say the ground communications piece of it, has just been stuck in the 60s,” CEO Sean McDaniel, told us. “ We came into this segment of the industry really with an eye towards modernizing the way satellites communicate to and from the Earth and how the data is distributed. You need a local, globally distributed network to pull this off. And it has to be fully automated. ...We’ve made the relationship between the satellite in orbit and the antennas on the ground agnostic to what hardware is at a given ground station.”

For most of the industry “they’re still back in nineteen dippity do,” analogous to “trying to figure out how to get a phone call made overseas without an echo,” says Mike Carey, Atlas’ chief strategy officer. “We’ve modernized that and people are catching on to it: the Air Force, the government, commercial entities.” The company is also capturing business in the UK and Japan and is also currently supporting the government of Rwanda in disaster response, the two Air Force veterans said. (5/28)

Ad Astra Hires Neal (Source: Politico)
Ad Astra, the Texas-based company that makes rocket components, has hired Erin Neal of Velocity Government Relations, a former aide to then-Sen. Bill Nelson, to lobby for space appropriations, according to a new disclosure we spotted this week. (5/28)

Asteroid TV Launched (Source: Politico)
The Asteroid Foundation is launching Asteroid TV next week ahead of Asteroid Day on June 30, the annual United Nations-sanctioned day to encourage public awareness of the risks of asteroids to humankind. What’s in store: a month-long schedule of programming featuring NASA scientists, industry experts and astronauts who are dedicated to advancing our knowledge of what big space rocks could be headed our way some day and how to prevent the unthinkable.

Asteroid Day was founded by astrophysicist and Queen guitarist Brian May; Apollo 9 Astronaut Rusty Schweickart; filmmaker Grig Richters; and B612 Foundation President Danica Remy. Since it began thousands of events have been held around the world to mark the day. (5/28)