June 29, 2021

A Satellite’s Impending Fiery Demise Shows How Important it is to Keep Space Clean (Source: LA Times)
Three engineers were out in Joshua Tree in the middle of the night last week. They’re part of a team exploring a possible solution to space congestion: a device that would help satellite owners clean up after themselves. Their goal that night? To track the impending fiery demise of a small satellite. Alchemy — the name of the satellite soon to face its doom — was built by Millennium Space Systems to test a technology that would help drag spacecraft lower into the atmosphere to burn up after the craft’s mission is complete.

Alchemy was launched in November with its twin, Augury, which will serve as the control, demonstrating how much longer Alchemy would hang around as space junk without the new tech dragging it further down into the atmosphere. The program running this experiment has a tongue-in-cheek name: Dragracer. The Dragracer program’s Alchemy satellite is testing the efficacy of Terminator Tape, a box about the size of a DVD case that contains more than 220 feet of a folded-up film with an aluminum coating.

One end of the film is attached to the inside of the box, the other end is attached to the box’s lid, and the box is connected to the satellite. When the satellite stops being useful, it’s the box’s time to shine. Activated either by a person on the ground or by a timer, a release mechanism kicks out the box lid, unfurling the film. The film creates extra drag on the satellite, which accelerates the craft’s fiery return into the atmosphere. (6/27)

China Uses Mythologies to Brand its Space Program Elements (Source: Space Daily)
China's makes a concerted efforts to establish a unique "Chinese space culture" alongside the country's advances in space technology. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the naming of these programs after China's traditional roots. The name Tiangong translates as "Heavenly Palace". This was the residence of the deity who holds supreme authority over the universe in Chinese mythology, the Celestial Ruler. The name is particularly fitting for a Chinese space station, which acts as a home in the heavens for the country's taikonauts.

The meaning of Shenzhou, the missions that take taikonauts to space, is "Divine Vessel", which is also a homophone for an ancient name for China, "Divine Land." China's lunar exploration missions, meanwhile, are named after the legendary Moon goddess Chang'e. The tale goes that Chang'e flew from Earth to the Moon after stealing the elixir of immortality from her husband, Hou Yi. According to Chinese mythology, Chang'e continues to live on the Moon with her rabbit companion, who spends its time pounding the elixir of immortality in a mortar for the goddess.

The rabbit is known as Yutu, or "Jade Rabbit". China's two lunar rovers, the second of which became the first to land on the far side of the Moon in 2019, are named after it. A key component of this lunar landing mission was Queqiao, a communication relay satellite. This was named after the myth of the "Magpie Bridge", which joins the "Cowherd" and the "Weaver Girl" across the stretch of the Milky Way in a romantic folktale. The satellite acted as a vital bridge of communication between the Chang'e mission components and China's mission control center. (6/29)

AIA Rocketry Challenge Overcomes Pandemic's Hurdles (Source: AIA)
After being sidelined in 2020 due to the global coronavirus pandemic, the American Rocketry Challenge returned this year, organizing launch competitions across 10 locations while maintaining safety procedures. "We always want to protect the health and safety of our entire community, but still honor all the hard work and perseverance our students embody, which makes them future leaders of the aerospace and defense industry," said Jeremy Davis of the Aerospace Industries Association. (6/28)

New Air Force Electromagnetic Warfare Wing Established at Eglin AFB (Source: Military.com)
The U.S. Air Force has a new unit devoted to competing in electromagnetic spectrum, or EMS, warfare. The brand-new 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing is now ready to execute "maintenance, operational and technical expertise for electronic warfare in support of the combat Air Forces," Air Combat Command announced. The new wing will be temporarily based at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. A permanent location is expected to be named in 2022 after the service concludes a required environmental analysis. (6/28)

Northrop Grumman Delivers Bus for Space Force’s Experimental Navigation Satellite (Source: C4ISRnet)
Northrop Grumman has delivered a bus for Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3), ensuring that the experimental positioning satellite is on track for launch in 2023. As one of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s four Vanguard programs — initiatives that are expected to deliver transformational technologies to the war fighter — NTS-3 is being developed to demonstrate new positioning, navigation and timing capabilities that could improve GPS satellites in the future.

For example, the experimental satellite will feature steerable beams for regional coverage and a reprogrammable software-defined payload that can be updated on orbit. While the satellite won’t impact the GPS satellites expected to launch in the next few years, it could lead to improvements in the GPS IIIF satellites, such as space vehicles 14, 15 and 16 which will go on orbit in the late 2020s. (6/28)

Astroscale Preparing for Demonstration Mission (Source: Space News)
Astroscale is working with four ground station operators for its first orbital debris removal mission. The company plans to use 16 ground stations in total to support its End of Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration (ELSA-d) mission, which launched in March and will begin debris removal tests in late July. The tests require ground stations to be in constant contact with the spacecraft for up to 20-30 minutes, far longer than typical communications passes with low Earth orbit satellites, hence the need for more ground stations from several companies. ELSA-d will use ground stations from Atlas Space Operations, KSAT, Swedish Space Corporation and Viasat. (6/29)

Raytheon Developing Ground Station for Tactical Data Collection (Source: Space News)
Raytheon is working with seven aerospace and data analytics companies to develop a ground station for the U.S. Army. The tactical intelligence targeting access node, or TITAN, is designed to collect data from satellites and airborne assets to support troops in the field. Raytheon, along with Palantir, won $8.5 million contracts from the Army in January to develop TITAN prototypes. (6/29)

Korean Air to Develop Launch Vehicle Propellant Tanks (Source: Space News)
South Korea's largest airline is getting into the launch vehicle component business. Korean Air announced it will develop common bulkhead propellant tanks for small launch vehicles as part of an industry and academic consortium. Korean Air will manage the risk and quality assurance system as well as testing and evaluation for certification. The effort is part of the Ministry of Science and ICT's "Space Pioneer" project to strengthen the global competitiveness of the domestic aerospace industry by reducing dependence on overseas products. (6/29)

Europe Considers Human Spaceflight Capability (Source: Space News)
A surge of astronaut applications is stoking discussions in Europe about developing a human spaceflight capability. ESA received more than 22,000 applications in its latest astronaut selection round earlier this month, far more than expected. That interest comes as the head of ESA, Josef Aschbacher, suggests Europe should develop its own capability to launch astronauts, rather than relying on international partners, warning that Europe can't be considered an economic and political world power if it can't fly humans into space.

The French space agency CNES is studying concepts for crewed spacecraft that could be launched on the Ariane 6 as soon as 2030, a project that would cost several billion euros. The issue could be a topic at a European "space summit" planned for next spring. (6/29)

India Pushing for 2021 Crewed Spacecraft Test (Source: PTI)
India is racing to perform a first test flight of a crewed spacecraft before the end of the year. The Indian space agency originally scheduled a first uncrewed test flight of its Gaganyaan spacecraft by the end of this year before the pandemic slowed work on the project. ISRO is now trying to make up for lost time in order to keep that mission on schedule. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi set a goal in 2018 of performing the first crewed launch by August 2022 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of India's independence, but ISRO says that schedule is uncertain now. (6/29)

Venus Clouds May Be Too Dry for Life (Source: Space.com)
The clouds of Venus may be too dry to support life. Potential detections of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus suggested that life could exist there, particularly in the upper atmosphere where temperatures are more hospitable. However, a new study found that water vapor concentrations there are far too low to support even the "most resilient" terrestrial organisms, scientists said. The same study, though, found sufficient levels of water vapor in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. Scientists cautioned that the finding doesn't mean there is life in Jupiter's atmosphere, only that there is enough water vapor to support it. (6/29)

When A City-Sized Star Becomes A Black Hole's Lunch, The Universe Roils (Source: NPR)
A black hole swallowing a neutron star — a star more massive than our sun but only about the size of a city — has been observed for the first time ever. Each of these space monsters is among the most extreme and mysterious phenomena in the universe. The new find shows how the very fabric of the universe gets roiled when the two come together. Researchers actually found not just one, but two black holes making snacks of neutron stars. Their noshing happened about a billion years ago, but was so intense that it shook space-time and sent out ripples that only recently hit the Earth, triggering giant detectors built to sense these waves. (6/29)

Are We Missing Other Earth-Sized Planets? (Source: Space Daily)
Some exoplanet searches could be missing nearly half of the Earth-sized planets around other stars. New findings from a team using the international Gemini Observatory and the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory suggest that Earth-sized worlds could be lurking undiscovered in binary star systems, hidden in the glare of their parent stars. As roughly half of all stars are in binary systems, this means that astronomers could be missing many Earth-sized worlds. (6/29)

Turkey Invites Russia to Take Part in Construction of Country's Spaceport (Source: Sputnik)
Earlier this year, media reported that Ankara was planning to build a spaceport in Somalia as part of a $1 billion investment in the nation's nascent space program. Turkish authorities did not confirm this information, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did announce in February that Turkey would make a hard landing on the Moon by the year 2023. Russia is invited to participate in the development and construction of a Turkish spaceport in an as-yet unspecified equatorial country, Turkish Space Agency chief Serdar Huseyin Yildirim said. (6/18)

Astronauts May Get Their Spleen Removed Before Long-Distance Flights (Source: Sputnik)
Radiation is considered one of the main issues facing space agencies in their bid to send a manned flight to Mars, according to Russian scientists from the Institute of Biomedical Problems. Researchers from Russia and the US have been debating whether it will be necessary to remove the spleen - the organ which primarily removes old or damaged red blood cells from the body - from astronauts before they embark on long-distance space flights, the head of the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBP) Oleg Orlov said. (6/18)