June 10, 2021

Kepler Communications Raises $60 Million for IoT Constellation (Source: Space News)
Kepler Communications, a company developing a constellation for internet-of-things (IoT) services, has raised $60 million. The Canadian company announced the Series B round Wednesday, led by Tribe Capital. The funding enables Kepler, which currently operates 15 satellites, to expand its constellation toward a goal of 140 cubesats. These satellites provide IoT services for asset tracking and monitoring, as well as store-and-forward communications for large data files. Kepler will also establish a U.S. presence to bring it closer to U.S. customers and potential partners. (6/10)

China Readies for Next Crewed Launch (Source: Space News)
China's first crewed mission in nearly five years is nearing launch. The Long March 2F rocket carrying the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft rolled out to the launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday. China hasn't announced a formal launch date for the mission or its crew. Shenzhou-12, the first crewed Chinese mission since Shenzhou-11 in 2016, will dock with the Tianhe space station core module, performing a series of technical verification tasks of the module. The mission may last as long as three months, shattering the Chinese endurance record of 33 days set by Shenzhou-11. (6/10)

Momentus' Russian Co-Founders Divest (Source: Space News)
The Russian co-founders of Momentus have divested their stakes in the in-space transportation company as part of a national security agreement. Momentus announced Wednesday it signed an agreement with the Defense and Treasury Departments to resolve national security issues they had raised about Momentus' foreign ownership. Momentus said Mikhail Kokorich and Lev Khasis were now "completely divested" from the company, which is taking additional measures as part of that agreement. Momentus had lost opportunities to launch its first space tugs on two rideshare missions this year because the FAA denied its payload review application, citing national security concerns. (6/10)

Starlink Could Provide Airline In-Flight Connectivity (Source: The Verge)
SpaceX says it's in talks to provide in-flight connectivity services to several airlines using Starlink. A SpaceX executive said at a conference Wednesday that the company is working on an aviation product that it will offer to airlines that is based on its consumer terminal but with "obvious enhancements for aviation connectivity." Several FCC filings in recent months indicated SpaceX was working on mobility solutions for Starlink, including proposed tests on Gulfstream jets. Providing service on flights over the ocean, though, will require the deployment of a new generation of Starlink satellites with intersatellite links. (6/10)
 
China Expanding Government Guidance to Commercial Satellite Sector (Source: Space News)
The Chinese government is taking steps to provide regulatory clarity for satellite developers. The State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense published a notice last month on "promoting the orderly development of small satellites." The notice provides guidelines for companies seeking to enter the sector, similar to a 2019 notice on commercial launch vehicles. China has yet to implement a first national space law, although it was added to the national legislative agenda in 2013. (6/10)

Vandenberg Gets New Commander (Source: Noozhawk)
The main unit at Vandenberg Space Force Base is getting a new commander. Col. Robert Long will take over command of Space Launch Delta 30 from Col. Anthony Mastalir in a ceremony Friday at the base. Long is currently deputy commander of Space Delta 5, which oversees the Combined Space Operations Center at Vandenberg. Mastalir is going to a new assignment in Qatar. (6/10)

Blue Abyss Developing Huge UK Swimming Pool for Astronaut Training (Source: Space.com)
A British company says it's moving forward with plans to build the world's largest swimming pool for an astronaut training center. Blue Abyss is in negotiations with local government officials in Cornwall to purchase several plots of land near Cornwall Newquay Airport, also known as Spaceport Cornwall. The company proposes to build a commercial astronaut training center there that will include a pool holding 42,000 cubic meters of water with depths of up to 50 meters. The facility could open as soon as 2023, although Blue Abyss has not confirmed it's raised the more than $200 million it says is needed to build it. (6/10)

Psyche Asteroid May Not Be Heavy Metal (Source: Univ. of Arizona)
A heavy metal asteroid might be closer to light rock. Scientists had previously estimated that the asteroid Psyche in the main belt could be made of as much as 95% metal. A new study concluded that Psyche's metallic content is lower and that it may have a much higher porosity. Rather than be the intact core of a failed planet, Psyche could instead be a "rubble pile" asteroid. Psyche is the destination of a NASA mission of the same name currently under development. (6/10)

China Tests New Parachute System for Rocket Boosters (Source: Space Daily)
China tested a new rocket-booster parachute system during a recent launch from the southwest of the country, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said. The system was tested on June 3 when the meteorological satellite Fengyun-4B was sent into a geostationary orbit via a Long March-3B carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province.

Developed by an institute under the corporation, a 300-square-meter parachute helped the rocket boosters to land in a predetermined location, narrowing the range of the landing area by 70 percent. Unlike many countries' launch pads, which are typically located along coastlines, China's major launch sites are deep inland, which means the heavy boosters, once separated from the rockets, fly directly over densely populated areas. Therefore, after liftoff, rocket boosters and other debris threaten the safety of local communities as they fall back to the ground. (6/8)

Frozen Rotifer Reanimated After 24,000 Years in the Arctic Tundra (Source: Space Daily)
Move over water bears, rotifers are pretty tough too. According to new research, Bdelloid rotifers, a class of microscopic invertebrates, can remain frozen for thousands of years and survive. Recently, researchers at the Soil Cryology Lab -- part of the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science, located in Russia -- reanimated a Bdelloid rotifer that had been frozen in Siberian permafrost for 24,000 years.

Scientists described the feat in a new paper, published Monday in the journal Current Biology. "Our report is the hardest proof as of today that multicellular animals could withstand tens of thousands of years in cryptobiosis, the state of almost completely arrested metabolism," corresponding author Stas Malavin said. Scientists have previously revived nematodes and grown plants from seeds found frozen in 30,000-year-old permafrost. Now, scientists have evidence that rotifers are equally hardy. (6/7)

Two Giant Icy Balls in Space Could Change Our Understanding of Stars (Source: New Scientist)
Two mysterious, gigantic icy balls of gas have been discovered in space and they could alter our understanding of how stars form. Takashi Onaka at Meisei University in Japan and his team found the objects when analyzing data collected by the AKARI spacecraft, a Japanese observatory that examined the Milky Way in infrared from the 1980s until it suffered electrical failure in 2011. It is unclear exactly what the balls are, or even how far away they lie. (6/8)

Money Flows for Rocket Builders (Source: Quartz)
Tim Ellis knows how to talk to investors. When he co-founded Relativity Space in 2015, he convinced billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban to invest with a cold email. In the last 10 months, Ellis has raised $1.15 billion for the rocket-building firm. Quartz understands this week’s round, which raised $650 million, values Relativity at more than $4 billion. And it hasn’t even launched a rocket yet, though Ellis says the company has sold plenty of them. His investors, which include major players like Fidelity and Tiger Global, were impressed with progress toward the expected first flight of the Terran 1 rocket later this year.

Now, the new infusion of cash will allow Relativity to begin work on a much bigger rocket, Terran R—”it’s larger than [a SpaceX] Falcon 9 and more like a miniature Starship, if you will.” It’s a good time to be a capital-seeking rocket-maker. Besides Relativity, Rocket Lab and Astra are going public through SPAC transactions that will give them hundreds of millions in new capital to put toward their work. Firefly Aerospace took in $75 million in new capital last month, while the much younger Launcher raised $11 million last week. And then there’s SpaceX, which hit an eye-popping valuation of $74 billion after an $850 million round earlier this year. (6/10)

ULA Riding Turbulent Seas as Launch Industry Churns (Source: Quartz)
Private and public investors alike are being won over by the idea that rockets and the businesses they enable are worthy of investment. Which makes Boeing and Lockheed’s decisions about ULA over the last decade so bizarre, at least to an outside observer. In 2020, the value of ULA actually fell, per the annual reports of both companies. ULA isn’t entirely broken out, but at the end of 2020 the former rocket monopoly was worth about $1.5 billion; the year before, it was valued closer to $1.6 billion.

As recently as a decade ago, ULA was the leading rocket-maker in the US. Now, it is shrinking, and dependent on Blue Origin to build the most technologically sophisticated part of its next product, the rocket engines that will be used in the forthcoming Vulcan rocket. Boeing and Lockheed still take plenty of profit from ULA—about $284 million in 2020, a fairly typical haul.

ULA wasn’t designed to be an innovative company; it was a kludge intended to protect two important contractors and maintain the US military access to space. Still, I can’t help but wonder what might have happened had some of those millions over the years been diverted to internal bets on an expanding space economy. They might not have broken out of the contractor culture that is often a stumbling block for traditional space firms, but ULA might also be a more competitive firm today. (6/10)

PPG Products Used in ULA Atlas Rocket to Send Perseverance Rover to Mars (Source: Adhesives Magazine)
PPG recently announced that it provided aerospace sealants, coatings, and adhesives to United Launch Alliance (ULA) for the ATLAS V 541 rocket that launched NASA’s Perseverance rover to Mars in July 2020. The rover landed on Mars in February 2021 after its nearly seven-month journey through space. PPG’s application support center (ASC) in Atlanta, Ga., reportedly worked closely with ULA to supply the products and provide technical support. (6/8)