June 18, 2021

Space Perspectives Flies Neptune One Space Balloon From New Florida Spaceport (Source: Space Perspective)
Space Perspective's Neptune One spaceship test vehicle successfully launched from the Space Coast Spaceport, located in Titusville adjacent to the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. The vehicle flew to its target altitude and traversed the Florida peninsula before splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico and being recovered. The historic 6 hour and 39 minute flight marks the first major step towards flying customers to space for an unrivaled experience and perspective of our world from space.

Neptune One launched at 5:23 am EDT from the Space Coast Air and Spaceport and reached its planned altitude of 108,409 feet. With this flight, Space Perspective became the first space launch operator to fly from the Space Coast Spaceport. “This test flight of Neptune One kicks off our extensive test flight campaign, which will be extremely robust because we can perform tests without a pilot, making Spaceship Neptune an extremely safe way to go to space,” said Taber MacCallum. This test flight flew a number of payloads, including ozone sensor instruments from the University of North Florida. (6/18)

New UK Facility Offers Cheaper and Greener Rocket Testing (Source: Space Daily)
The National Space Propulsion Test Facility (NSPTF) will allow UK companies and academics to test state-of-the-art propulsion engines which are used to move small satellites in space at a more affordable rate than having to go abroad. It will also allow new types of more sustainable propellants to be tested, such as Hydrogen Peroxide and Liquid Oxygen which are more environmentally friendly in sourcing, storage and combustion.

Based at the Westcott Space Cluster in Aylesbury Vale Enterprise Zone, the NSPTF, which received 4 million pounds in funding from the UK Space Agency, is the only facility of its kind in the UK. It is one of only 3 in the world and will create around 60 jobs. Until now, companies could test extremely small engines in the UK but had to go overseas to test bigger engines. The new facility will tackle this issue and help grow the UK's status as a leading space player, giving our space industry the resources it needs to expand. (6/18)

Future Florida Launch Competition? Georgia Spaceport Nears FAA Approval (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Even if approved, there’s no guarantee the Gerogia spaceport project will fire its first rocket anytime soon. Despite increased demand for commercial launches in the past decade, more than half of licensed U.S. spaceports have never held a licensed launch. Regardless, Steve Howard, Camden County’s government administrator, insists the community of 55,000 is seizing a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” not only to join the commercial space race, but to lure supporting industries and tourists.

“For us, it’s never been about the rockets. It’s about everything else,” Howard said. “The rockets and the spaceport are a catalyst. What we want is everything else around it: R&D, manufacturing, payload processing, STEM programs, tourism.” If the FAA grants Spaceport Camden a license, the county plans to buy 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) near the coast that during the 1960s was used to manufacture and test rocket motors for NASA.

Camden County would join 19 total U.S. sites available to launch commercial rockets. Five are U.S. government sites such as Cape Canaveral in Florida. Two private sites in Texas were built for the sole use of their owners, SpaceX and Blue Origin. Camden County would join the remaining dozen, which are essentially launch pads for hire by companies with their own rockets. According to the FAA, seven of those sites — in Florida, Texas, Colorado and Oklahoma — have never held a licensed launch. (6/17)

Santa Barbara Supervisors Learn of a Military-Commercial Development Scheme for Vandenberg (Source: Santa Barbara Independent)
Andrew Hackleman, a former Air Force officer best known for his recent effort to repurpose Pacific Gas and Electric’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant in Avila Beach, gave a presentation to the Santa Babara County Board of Supervisors. Every sixth word out of Hackleman’s mouth was “ecosystem,” as in “space ecosystem,” or “business ecosystem.” Clearly, it was selected for its soporific green-wash value. Hackleman emphasized the possibilities of “climate change data gathering,” for which Vandenberg — in actual fact — is ideally situated to become a world leader, if it isn’t already.

The proposal is that our county government teams up in some ill-defined fashion with UCSB, Cal Poly, NASA, the Department of Defense, and all the private money betting on outer space to grease the skids for a new public-private enterprise that will “rebrand” the Central Coast as the ultimate portal to military and commercial space launches on the planet. Space, Hackleman breathlessly ejaculated, is an already $4 billion per year industry in a big fat hurry to hit the trillion-dollar mark.

Back in the 1980s, Vandenberg and Lompoc had similar dreams, but they went up in smoke when the Challenger space shuttle exploded. In the late ’90s, Santa Barbara’s then-former Congressmember Andrea Seastrand tried to resurrect the dream by creating something called the California Space Authority. She was the wrong person for the job. On one occasion, Seastrand blamed California’s fires, floods, and earthquakes on feminism, Wicca, and divorce. On another, she suggested space would be a good place to send poor kids trapped in the ghetto. In 2010, the Space Authority shut its doors having never achieved liftoff. And now this. (6/16)

Intuitive Machines Will Build Houston Spaceport Facility, Vacate Existing Location (Source: Houston Business Journal)
Houston-based Intuitive Machines will expand its footprint at the Houston Spaceport as part of its effort to become the first private U.S. company to land a spacecraft on the moon. The company was the first tenant announced for the Spaceport, leasing 9,635 square feet in the Houston Aerospace Support Center located at 13150 Space Center Blvd., according to Houston City Council documents. There, Intuitive Machines has been developing and testing its lunar lander for deployment on the moon.

Based on its initial growth in aerospace operations, Intuitive Machines determined it needed to expand its operations at the Houston Spaceport with a new 125,000-square-foot facility on a 12.5-acre plot. "From a napkin in 2012, to moving to Spaceport Houston in 2018, we have grown up with Spaceport Houston," Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said.

Under a memorandum of understanding approved by the City Council on June 16, the city will contribute up to $40 million, including an initial $4 million appropriation from the Airports Improvement Fund, to cover the cost of capital improvements to build the facility. Those funds will be reimbursed by the Houston Airport System and charged back to Intuitive Machines. The memorandum of understanding will allow Intuitive Machines to enter into an initial 20-year ground lease for the 12.5-acre plot where the facility will be built. The lease agreement will be brought to City Council at a later date. (6/16)

ULA's Vulcan Rocket Debut Slips to 2022 (Source: Aviation Week)
The debut launch of ULA's Vulcan rocket is slipping to 2022 as customer Astrobotic needs more time to prepare its Peregrine lunar lander. "Covid presented a lot of problems for the entire space supply chain," CEO John Thornton tells Aviation Week. "We're just doing the best we can." Vulcan was previously slated for late 2021 launch, with Blue Origin BE-4 engines, now in pre-qual testing, the pacing item. "We like the performance—it’s better than I expected," says Tory Bruno. " We’re still going to drive toward having that rocket ready. In our business you always want the rocket waiting on the spacecraft and not the other way around.” (6/17)

Chinese Booster Crashes Downrange, Leaking Deadly Gas Plumes (Source: Twitter @AJ_FI)
After launching crew to the new Chinese space station on June 17, the Long March 2F rocket's first stage crashed downrange. Close-up video of the destroyed booster shows orange clouds of nitrogen tetroxide. Some road closures/evacuations were carried out, based on the calculated rocket stage drop zones. Click here. (6/18)

NASA Chief Calls for 'Rigorous' Space Rules Before Commercial Flights Take Off (Source: FOX Business)
NASA and the FAA are bracing for commercial space travel and reportedly in talks to create private-sector regulations. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told FOX Business exclusively that the organizations are working on rules "in order to achieve safety" when sending non-astronauts into space. He pointed out that space travel is already mirroring commercial air travel with Elon Musks' SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft completing a mission on the ISS.

NASA is looking to operate the ISS as a sort of vacation rental, with a day’s worth of freeze-dried food costing $2,000 per day. However, NASA and the FAA are looking at the increase in non-astronauts traveling to space as a national security concern. Nelson stressed that space travelers are "going to have to meet the same rigorous physical and psychological examination for any other professional astronaut." NASA is expected to work with Congress, the Department of Defense and the Space Force to craft these rules. (6/16)

China, Russia Aim for First Joint Astronaut Moon Landings in Next Decade (Source: The Verge)
China and Russia expect to put their first crews of astronauts on the Moon sometime in the next decade, representatives said on Wednesday. Already established plans for their International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) include a lineup of robotic lunar missions and coming up with a legal framework for exploring the Moon, an effort similar to the NASA-led Artemis lunar program.

Officials from the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, gave a joint presentation during the Global Space Exploration Conference in Russia on their three-phase plan to build a network of Moon bases and satellites in lunar orbit. The space agencies formally teamed up on the project in March. (6/16)

Space Tourism Sounds Fun But it Could Be Terrible for the Planet (Source: Mashable)
Space travel has environmental costs. For research, it might be worth it. To send Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and other wealthy tourists into orbit? That’s debatable. Rockets burn through an exorbitant amount of propellants to take off and land. Whether it’s the kerosene in SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, the methane in the Starship, or the liquid hydrogen in NASA’s massive new Space Launch System (SLS), burning that material impacts the Earth's atmosphere.

No matter which fuel is used, all launches emit a lot of heat that agitates nitrogen in the atmosphere to create disruptive nitrogen oxides, explained Eloise Marais, an associate professor of physical geography at University College London. Marais studies the impact of fuels and industries on the atmosphere. In the stratosphere, where ozone acts as a shield against ultraviolet radiation from the sun, that heat can eat away at ozone. In the troposphere closer to the ground, that heat can add ozone. Unfortunately, there it acts more like a greenhouse gas and retains heat.

Hydrocarbon fuels like kerosene and methane produce carbon dioxide, an infamous greenhouse gas, as well as black carbon, aka soot, that absorbs heat and further warms the Earth. Before launches even happen, the production of propellants take their toll on the environment. Methane may be obtained through fracking or other means of extraction, which come with a host of issues, and the procurement of super-cold hydrogen can produce greenhouse gas emissions, depending on the method used. If rocket launches become more common, their effect on the environment will grow. (6/16)

Did Betelgeuse Supernova, or Was it Just a Dusty Fart? (Source: Cosmos)
Between November 2019 and March 2020, the star Betelgeuse – the second closest red supergiant to Earth, and a star that’s slowly pulsing towards the end of its lifespan – dimmed visibly, sparking global speculation about the cause. For many in the astronomical community, it was thought at first that Betelgeuse might be about to supernova, its core collapsing before exploding outwards, ejecting elements and debris into space. According to a new study, the ‘Great Dimming’ was actually caused by a giant, cosmic outrush of dust and gas. (6/17)