June 1, 2021

German Startup Raises Funding for Wildfire Monitoring Satellites (Source: Space News)
A German startup has raised an initial funding round that will enable it to begin launching a constellation of satellites to detect wildfires. Orora Technologies, or OroraTech, announced June 1 it closed a Series A round worth 5.8 million euros ($7.1 million). Findus Venture and Ananda Impact Ventures led the round, with contributions from Apex Ventures, Bayern Kapital and several angel investors.

Munich-based OroraTech will use the funding to develop and launch the first of its constellation of small satellites equipped with thermal infrared imagers. The company has an agreement with Spire to include its imager on a 6U Spire cubesat launching in December, but is also working to build and operate its own satellites. (6/1)

ESA's Space Environment Report 2021 (Source: Space Daily)
Imagine driving down a road which has more broken cars, bikes and vans lining the street than functioning vehicles. This is the scene our satellites face in Earth orbit. In fact, since the start of the space age there has been more debris, "space junk", in orbit than operational satellites. So how do we clean up this mess?

In 2002, a major step was taken to create some rules for our space highways. The Inter-Agency Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) published the Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines, which have since served as the baseline for space policy, national legislation, and technical standards. Click here. (5/31)

Living Creatures Need Water. But Could They Make Do With Sulfuric Acid? (Source: Air & Space)
One of the big questions in astrobiology is whether life can use solvents other than water to facilitate biochemistry. We know how critical water is for life on our planet, and how all biological activity—starting with processes in the cells of microbes, plants, and animals—depends on the availability of water. Yet water as a solvent also has drawbacks. Especially problematic is how life could originate in water, because it makes organic synthesis more difficult and requires energy.

However, because liquid H2O is so abundant on our planet, life found a way to work around its more challenging properties. And because it’s also abundant in the Universe, most life elsewhere would also be expected to find water a convenient solvent. But could other liquids work as well? Scientists looked into the possibility of concentrated sulfuric acid as a potential solvent for life. That substance, as most high school chemistry students are well aware, is known for its ability to dissolve organic compounds.

The scientists modeled the stability of a wide range of organic compounds exposed to sulfuric acid, in concentrations similar to what we think exists in the Venusian clouds. Their results were sobering. Two-thirds to three-quarters of terrestrial biochemicals are unstable at any altitude in the Venusian clouds, with half-lives of less than a second! In other words, they start to dissolve instantly. Only synthetic chemicals and certain silicon compounds were found to be relatively stable. This means that the chemical compounds thought to be instrumental in the origin of life on Earth would not work in concentrated sulfuric acid. (5/27)

First Evidence of Cell Membrane Molecules in Space (Source: Astronomy)
The origin of life is one the great unanswered questions in science. One piece of this puzzle is that life started on Earth 4.5 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the formation of the Solar System, and involved numerous critical molecular components. How did all these components come to be available so quickly?

One potential explanation is that the Earth was seeded from space with the building blocks for life. The idea is that space is filled with clouds of gas and dust that contain all the organic molecules necessary for life. Indeed, astronomers have observed these buildings blocks in interstellar gas clouds. They can see amino acids, the precursors of proteins and the machinery of life. They can also see the precursors of ribonucleotides, molecules that can store information in the form of DNA.

But there is another crucial component for life – molecules that can form membranes capable of encapsulating and protecting the molecules of life in compartments called protocells. On Earth, the membranes of all cells are made of molecules called phospholipids. But these have never been observed in space. Until now. Scientists have made the first detection in space of ethanolamine, a crucial component of the simplest phospholipid. The discovery suggests that the interstellar medium is brimming will all the precursors for life. The group made their discovery by analyzing light from an interstellar cloud of gas and dust called Sagittarius B2. (5/28)

NASA Evaluating Schedule, Launch Date Forecasts for Artemis 2 (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
NASA is currently forecasting that Artemis 2 will be ready to launch no earlier than (NET) September 2023, but similar to attempting to forecast when Artemis 1 will be ready to launch, there is also uncertainty in when Artemis 2 might fly. The second joint test flight of NASA’s Orion and Space Launch System (SLS) vehicles will be the first to fly a four-person crew after Artemis 1 goes on an uncrewed lunar orbit mission. The timing for both is uncertain, and the Artemis 2 schedule depends on when Artemis 1 launches because some Orion flight hardware is planned to be used for both missions.

Assembly, integration, and testing of the Artemis 2 Orion and SLS flight hardware continues in the U.S. and Europe independently of Artemis 1 for now, but some Orion hardware from Artemis 1 is still expected to be needed for reuse. The global COVID pandemic is also still having an effect on production activities, which could also affect when Artemis 2 is ready to launch.

All the flight hardware for Artemis 1 is staged in different locations around the Kennedy Space Center launch site, where Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) is handling launch processing. The final stacking sequence is expected to pick up in early-June with the mating of the SLS Core Stage to its twin Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs), but the Artemis 1 launch readiness date itself also depends on how smoothly the first-time integrated testing and checkout proceeds; recent estimates place readiness for launch anywhere between November 2021 and March 2022. (5/31)

Laying the Groundwork for Super Heavy amid Raptor Ramp Up (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
Concluding the Starship high altitude tests via SN15’s success allows for a focus on the next major milestone of pushing the vehicle into space. This test objective had already been cited in documentation as involving Super Heavy BN3 and Starship SN20 “with a goal to get to orbit by July 1”. While that date will be ruled out by the huge amount of groundwork required to be in a stance to launch, the potential of such a test flight before or around the Fall would be a massive achievement.

All the elements are currently in play, with sections of Starship SN20 – should that be the vehicle to conduct the test – already spotted several weeks ago, along with the BN3 sections that are now being stacked behind SN16 in the High Bay. With BN1 fully stacked as a pathfinder before being dismantled, BN2 and BN2.1 sections were classed as test sections and were never set to become more than test tanks, as opposed to fully stacked Super Heavy vehicles. The BN2.1 Test Tank is currently residing in the Mid Bay. As such, BN3 will be the second Super Heavy to be fully stacked in the High Bay, likely resulting in Musk calling it “Booster 2”.

The complete Super Heavy Starship stack will reside at the OLS instead of the suborbital site utilized during the initial test program. As with most of the facilities at Starbase, construction has proceeded at pace, highlighted by the raising of the Launch Integration Tower. A third section was added to the tower this past week, with several additional prefabricated sections yet to be added. The tower will eventually become the tallest structure in the South Padre Island region. (5/30)

Here’s the Arctic Station That Keeps Satellites Connected (Source: New York Times)
Arrayed across a plateau on an island in the high Norwegian Arctic, the 100 geodesic domes of the Svalbard Satellite Station look like abstract mushrooms sprouting from the snowy landscape. From outside, there seems to be little going on. But each dome shelters a dish antenna, that whirs to life throughout the day and night, precisely aiming at satellites as they rise above the horizon and staying locked onto them as they arc across the sky. In the minutes before the satellite dips below the opposite horizon, software commands may be sent up and data is almost certainly sent down.

SvalSat, as the station is known, is a crucial, behind-the-scenes workhorse supporting scientific research. Located just outside the town of Longyearbyen in the Svalbard Archipelago, it is 800 miles from the North Pole, making it the northernmost satellite station in the world. It is also one of the largest. The 100 antennas at the station, some as large as 42 feet in diameter, track more than 3,500 passes each day by several hundred satellites, including many Earth-observing ones that are essential for studying the impacts of climate change. (5/31)

New Zealand Signs Onto Artemis Accords (Source: Space News)
New Zealand is the latest country to join the Artemis Accords. The New Zealand government announced Monday that it signed the NASA-led agreement regarding principles for safe and sustainable space exploration. The country is the 11th to join the agreement, signing less than a week after South Korea joined. New Zealand said it's particularly interested in refining the language in the accords regarding utilization of space resources, a topic that is expected to come up at meetings this week and next of a United Nations committee. (6/1)

India Still Hopes for 2021 Test of Crewed Spacecraft (Source: Times of India)
India still hopes to perform a test flight of a crewed spacecraft before the end of the year. Restrictions caused by the latest wave of the pandemic have slowed work on many projects by the Indian space agency ISRO and delayed launches, such as the Aditya solar science mission. However, ISRO officials said they want to keep on schedule an uncrewed test flight of the Gaganyaan spacecraft currently planned for December. The ability to do so, officials said, will only be known once current lockdowns and other restrictions end. (6/1)

Artemis 2026: Celebrating America’s 250th With the Next Humans on the Moon (Source: Space News)
On July 4, 2026, the United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of its independence. America should commemorate this historical milestone in 2026 by landing humans on the moon for the first time since 1972. Sending humanity back to the moon in 2026 is not only technically feasible, but it also fits squarely in the projected timeline for NASA’s already existing plan to return astronauts to the lunar surface — the Artemis program.

NASA, in 2018, proposed a crewed launch to the moon by 2028. In early 2019, then-Vice President Mike Pence challenged the agency to accelerate the mission by launching “the first woman and the next man” to the lunar surface by 2024. Based on statements from President Biden, and recently confirmed NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, the current administration is tentatively embracing Artemis and the 2024 timeline, while also enhancing the nod to America’s diversity with the goal now to send “the first woman and the first person of color” to the lunar surface in 2024.

With all due credit to both the Trump and Biden administrations for their enthusiasm to return to the moon, an already ambitious goal of launching in 2024 has been made even less practical by pandemic-induced personnel constraints at NASA and technical delays with the Space Launch System (SLS), which will propel the crew and their life support systems up to Earth’s orbit and beyond to the moon. Perhaps we should just focus on returning to the moon as soon as possible instead of attempting to establish concrete timelines for complex space missions that involve so many variables and unknowns. What better way to celebrate 250 years of American independence than by setting 2026 as the year that the USA finally returns humanity to the moon? (5/26)

The Earth’s Rotation is Changing Speed: Should We Be Worried? (Source: Science Focus)
We define a day as 86,400 seconds, or 24 hours – the time it takes for Earth to rotate once. However, the Earth doesn’t rotate perfectly uniformly. Usually, the Earth’s rotation is actually slowing down so that the length of the day increases by about 1.8 milliseconds per century, on average. This means that 600 million years ago a day lasted only 21 hours.

The variation in day length is due to several factors, including the tidal effects of the Moon and Sun, core-mantle coupling inside the Earth, and the overall distribution of mass on the planet. Seismic activity, glaciation, the weather, the oceans and the Earth’s magnetic field may also affect the length of the day. In 2020 scientists made a startling discovery. They found that, instead of slowing down, the Earth has started to spin faster. It is now spinning faster than at any time in the last 50 years. In fact, the shortest 28 days on record all occurred during 2020.

As yet, scientists are not entirely sure what is causing this increase in Earth’s rotation rate, but some have suggested it could be due to the melting of glaciers during the 20th Century, or the accumulation of large quantities of water in northern hemisphere reservoirs. However, experts predict that this speeding up is a temporary effect and the Earth will start slowing down again in the future. (6/1)

NASA Launches Program to Support Future Single-Aisle Commercial Aircraft (Source: Flight Global)
NASA aims to launch a program to advance technologies needed to support development of a “next-generation single-aisle” transport aircraft that is 25% more efficient than jets flying today. Called the “Sustainable Flight National Partnership” (SFNP), the effort will include development of a “full-scale technology demonstrator X-plane, to test and validate integrated systems and their benefits”, according to recently released NASA budget documents.

The agency aims for the demonstrator to make first flight by fiscal year 2026. NASA released the budget documents as President Joe Biden issued his 10-year budget proposal. Biden’s budget requests $24.8 billion for NASA in FY2022, up 6.6% from FY2021. The SFNP broadly “aims to accomplish the aviation community’s aggressive climate change agenda and enhance America’s global leadership in aviation”, budget documents say. (5/28)

Quantum Communication in Space Moves Ahead (Source: Space Daily)
Keeping information secure in today's interconnected world is becoming ever more important, so ESA is supporting efforts to ensure that future communications are kept confidential. A new generation of supercomputing power, delivered by quantum computers, is currently being developed that will be almost unimaginably powerful at cracking the most complex problems upon which encryption is based.

ESA has formed a Partnership Project with Arqit - a leader in the quantum encryption field, based in the UK - to keep information safe in a world where quantum computers are becoming commonplace. ArQit recently announced that it was merging with a subsidiary of Centricus, a global investment firm, in a transaction expected to provide Arqit with up to euro 330 million in gross proceeds. The deal fully finances Arqit's endeavours to develop state-of-the-art satellites for quantum key distribution - dubbed QKDSat - through its key provision platform. (5/28)

Satellites Show How Earth's Water Cycle is Ramping Up as Climate Warms (Source: Space Daily)
By gauging the mass change of water between the oceans and the continents, the researchers determined that evapotranspiration's rate of increase is up to two times higher than previous estimates. This is important because evapotranspiration represents a critical branch of the global water cycle - a cycle that creates the conditions for life on land. While it is known that a warming climate should increase the rate of evapotranspiration, accurate global measurements have, until now, been elusive.

"Our study found that evapotranspiration has increased by about 10% since 2003, which is more than previously estimated, and is mostly due to warming temperatures," said Madeleine Pascolini-Campbell, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, who led the study. "We hope that this information about the water cycle will help to better inform the development and validation of climate models." (5/31)

China's Beidou-Related Industry Estimated to Top $156 Billion by 2025 (Source: Space Daily)
The value of industries related to China's homegrown BeiDou Navigation Satellite System is estimated to exceed 1 trillion yuan (about $156.4 billion) by 2025, said an official with the country's satellite navigation administration. The figure was revealed by Yang Jun, deputy director of China's Satellite Navigation System Management Office, at the three-day 12th China Satellite Navigation Conference that opened Wednesday in Nanchang, capital of East China's Jiangxi province.

China has fostered a complete and independent industrial chain for developing BDS and has exported BDS-powered products to more than 120 countries and regions, Yang said. He added that based on BDS's performance index in the first half of this year, the system is functioning well with a signal-in-space accuracy of less than 0.5 meters. (5/28)

DoD Agencies to Invest More Than $1 Billion in Low-Earth Orbit Space Technologies (Source: Space News)
The Biden administration’s defense budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 seeks more than $1.2 billion  for military space systems in low-Earth orbit. According to budget documents released May 28, nearly $900 million of that investment is for the Space Development Agency’s communications network in low-Earth orbit (LEO) known as the Transport Layer. The Missile Defense Agency is seeking about $300 million for space sensors, and DARPA is requesting $42 million to deploy experimental satellites in LEO under the Blackjack program. Many of the LEO technologies developed by SDA, MDA and DARPA are expected to transition into larger Space Force programs. (5/30)

China to Send 3 Male Astronauts to its Space Station in June (Source: ABC)
A three-man crew of astronauts will blast off in June for a three-month mission on China’s new space station, according to a space official who was the country's first astronaut in orbit. The plans for the station’s first crew were confirmed to state television by Yang Liwei, the manned space program’s deputy chief designer, as an automated spacecraft was launched with fuel and supplies for the Tianhe station.

The Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony, is the third and largest space station launched by China’s increasingly ambitious space program. Its core module was launched into orbit April 29. The Shenzhou 12 capsule carrying the crew will be launched from the Jiuquan base in China’s northwest next month. They will practice spacewalks and conduct repairs and maintenance as well as scientific operations. (5/30)

SpaceX's Offshore Launch Platform - 'Deimos' - is Under Construction for Launch Next Year (Source: Business Insider)
Elon Musk said that SpaceX's ocean spaceport, called Deimos, is under construction and could begin launch operations next year. Musk tweeted about the offshore launch platform, which is part of the forthcoming Starship rocket system, on Sunday in response to a rendered image shared by a fan. The platform is intended to be used as a launch and landing platform for the SpaceX Starship, a spacecraft that Musk intends to send to Mars. SpaceX purchased two oil rigs off the coast of Texas earlier this year to serve as "floating" launchpads for the Starship. The platforms have been named Deimos and Phobos, after Mars' moons. (5/31)

New NASA Student Challenge Offers Hands-On Tech Development (Source: Space Daily)
NASA will initiate a new competition for the 2021-22 school year, providing student teams a chance to design, build, and launch experiments on suborbital rockets and high-altitude balloon flights. NASA and Future Engineers, the challenge administrator, will offer a series of virtual events for educators to hear from agency experts and learn more about this exciting opportunity for students.

The NASA TechRise Student Challenge will begin accepting entries in August. Teams of sixth- to 12th-grade students can submit ideas for climate or remote sensing experiments to fly on a high-altitude balloon, and space exploration experiments to fly aboard a suborbital rocket. The winning teams each will receive $1,500 to build their payloads, as well as an assigned spot on a NASA-sponsored commercial suborbital flight. Balloon flights will offer more than four hours of flight time, while suborbital rockets will provide around three minutes of test time in microgravity conditions. (5/28)

Nelson Shows How Sausage Making Will Take America Back to the Moon (Source: The Hill)
Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA, attended a hearing of a House Appropriations Subcommittee on the subject of the space agency’s fiscal 2022 budget. His testimony was a master class on how sausage making is going to take America back to the moon. It also demonstrated the wisdom of once again naming a politician as the chief of NASA. A look at how the subcommittee hearings proceeded is a master class on the unseemly side of how laws, in this case NASA funding, are made.

Much of the hearings consisted of various members of the subcommittee complaining about how SpaceX got the sole contract for the lunar Human Landing System (HLS) that will take the first Americans to the lunar surface in over 50 years. The theory is that, just as with the Commercial Crew program, two providers are better for the redundancy they provide. Nelson, several times, had to explain that the reason NASA was not able to contract for two lunar landers was that the previous Congress was excessively stingy in funding the HLS, granting just $850 million for the current fiscal year instead of the $3.4 billion that NASA had requested.

Fortunately, as Space News reported, Nelson offered a way for Congress to correct its mistake. He noted that the Biden administration and Congress are debating the content and scope of an infrastructure bill, which Nelson and members of the committee were careful to call a “jobs bill.” The NASA chief suggested that it would be a good idea if Congress could give the space agency about $11.6 billion of that bill. (10/30)

Nelson Supports $10B Boost for Moon Landing (Source: Space Daily)
NASA needs about a 40% boost -- $10 billion -- in its budget to foster competition that could aid future astronaut missions to the moon, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. The Biden administration is seeking $24.8 billion for NASA in fiscal 2022, which would be a 6.6% increase from 2021, Nelson said during a press conference on Friday. But there's an amendment to the 2021 budget pending in Congress to boost moon landing budgets this year. The amendment would allow NASA to offer a contract to a second company -- in addition to SpaceX -- to build a spacecraft that would land humans on the moon. (5/28)

SpaceX Increases Starship Engine Count, Ramps Up Raptor Factory (Source: Teslarati)
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that Starship’s Super Heavy booster will have at least one more engine than expected after hardware spotted at its Boca Chica, Texas factory indicated as much. Simultaneously, Musk revealed that SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California factory and headquarters is now producing Raptors at a rate that will likely make it the company’s most numerous product (outside of Starlink) in the near future.

Musk says that Super Heavy boosters will “initially” have 29 Raptor engines instead of 28 engines and could even be upgraded to 32 engines down the road. In 2020, the vehicle’s design was updated, dropping from 31 to 28 engines for unknown reasons before SpaceX began work on the first real Super Heavy hardware. Known as BN1 or booster number 1, that rocket was stacked to its full ~70m (~230 ft) height but ultimately turned into a manufacturing pathfinder (i.e. practice) after Super Heavy’s design changed once again.

Who or what has been causing those seemingly endless design changes is unclear but SpaceX is finally at a point where any more major changes will explicitly delay plans for Starship’s inaugural spaceflight – deemed an “orbital test flight” by the company. It remains to be seen if SpaceX will actually attempt to recover the first booster(s) after those initial quasi-orbital test flights but we now have a better idea of what those Super Heavies might look like. (5/31)

Virgin Galactic Sued by Investor Over SPAC’s Accounting Issues (Source: Bloomberg)
Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. was sued by an investor who claims he lost money when the space-tourism company announced that it would restate its results due to regulatory guidance about the accounting treatment of warrants. The New Mexico based company said on April 30 that it would have to restate its 2020 results because of accounting guidance of regulators related to special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. The next trading day, its shares fell 9%. The company combined with Social Capital Hedosophia, run by former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya, and went public in October 2019.

The Securities and Exchange Commission set forth new guidance in April that warrants, which are issued to early investors in the deals, might not be considered equity instruments and may instead be liabilities for accounting purposes. In a SPAC, early investors buy units, which typically includes a share of common stock and a fraction of a warrant to purchase more stock at a later date. They’re considered a sweetener for backers and many companies treated them as equity instruments for accounting purposes. (5/28)

Investors Seeking Cosmic Themes Could Find Space ETFs Fall Short (Source: Financial Times)
Investors hoping to gain exposure to the commercial possibilities of outer space with exchange traded funds will soon be offered their first European-listed opportunity when HANetf’s newest vehicle launches in early June. But although entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are spending billions of dollars in competing developments that could eventually help humans travel beyond the moon, industry observers caution that space ETFs often have only tenuous links to the overall theme.

“Space is very loosely defined when you look closely at the holdings of these ETFs. Only a few of the constituent companies are linked exclusively to the space economy and some of the holdings are small, illiquid stocks,” said Peter Sleep, a senior portfolio manager at 7IM, a wealth manager of the existing products on the market. The best-known is ARKX, the actively managed Space Exploration and Innovation ETF from Ark Invest, which has built assets worth around $645m since it started trading at the end of March.

Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood has described ARKX as a vehicle to invest in a range of technologies including rockets, mobile connectivity, 3D printing, robotics, sensors and artificial intelligence. But the ETF made headlines at its launch when it transpired that one of its top holdings was Ark’s 3D Printing ETF which still has a weighting of more than 6 per cent, a cross holding that some analysts have flagged as a potential concern for investors. (5/30)

South Korea to Rev Up Space Development After Lifting of US Missile Restrictions (Source: Korea Herald)
South Korea's science minister said Monday the country will expand investment and focus on the development of its space program after the United States lifted all restrictions on the country's missiles. During a bilateral summit on May 21, South Korea and the US agreed to scrap the restrictions on South Korean missiles, which was first put in place in 1979 and had limited Seoul's development of even non-military space projectiles.

The guidelines, which have undergone revisions over the years, had restricted Seoul's development of solid-fuel space rockets until last year. The latest decision to terminate the guidelines ensures complete autonomy for South Korea's space launch vehicle developments, the Ministry of Science and ICT said in a statement. "The South Korea-US summit and subsequent measures have presented South Korea an opportunity to become a leading country in the space industry," said Science Minister Lim Hye-sook during a meeting with space industry companies and institutes. (5/31)

UK Spaceport Boss Foresee Space Tourism From Southerland 'In Our Lifetime' (Source: The National)
Captain Roy Kirk , the project director from Space Hub Sutherland who delights in being called Captain Kirk, on account of a Territorial Army background, is excited at how fast the sector is growing in Sutherland and across Scotland. He said: “We’re very proud and supportive in the space sector here of Prestwick. It’s a great facility and they are moving forward, these things take time and could be the first place in the UK to put space tourists into space. It might take several years but that’s a real possibility.” (5/30)