June 8, 2021

Peeking Behind the Iron Curtain: National Intelligence Estimates and the Soviets Space Program (Source: Space Review)
During the Cold War, the CIA produced a regular series of reports on the Soviet space program, which are now being gradually declassified. Dwayne Day examines what is new in a pair of such reports that went through a second declassification review. Click here. (6/7)
 
Venus is Hot Again (Source: Space Review)
Last week, NASA selected proposals for two Venus spacecraft as the next in its Discovery program of planetary science missions. Jeff Foust reports on how exploration of the planet is making a comeback after a long hiatus. Click here. (6/7)

Woman in Motion Tells Story of How Star Trek’s Uhura Changed NASA Forever (Source: Ars Technica)
Actress Nichelle Nichols will forever be remembered for playing Uhura in Star Trek: The Original Series—one of the first Black women to play a prominent role on television—as well as engaging in the first interracial kiss on scripted television in the US. Less known is her equally seminal role as an ambassador for NASA in the 1970s, working tirelessly to bring more diversity to the agency's recruitment efforts. That work is highlighted in Woman in Motion, a new documentary directed by Todd Thompson that is now streaming on Paramount+.

Thompson himself was not a hardcore Star Trek fan growing up, although he had seen most of the movies and was certainly familiar with Nichols' portrayal of Uhura. His producing partners were fans, however, and when they told him about Nichols' contributions to NASA, he decided it was a story that had to be told. Over the course of production, he interviewed dozens of people about how Nichols inspired them and also spent a considerable amount of time with the actress herself, now 88. (6/7)

What Counts as a Journey Into Space? (Source: The Economist)
Jeff Bezos, the owner of Blue Origin, a rocket maker, announced that on July 20th he would be one of the first people to ride into space in the RSS First Step, the company’s reusable space capsule. Mr Bezos, who is in the process of stepping down as CEO of Amazon, a retailer, will thus become the first of the billionaires currently building spaceflight businesses to enter the realm himself. But the New Shepard rocket which will send First Step on her way will not give it anything like the speed required to get into orbit. Indeed, the vessel will not leave the Earth’s atmosphere. So how, exactly, is this a journey into space?

The answer is its altitude. The thinner the atmosphere, the faster a winged aircraft must move if it is to stay aloft. In the 1950s a pioneering aeronautical engineer, Theodore von Kármán, pointed out that there must be an altitude at which the air is so thin that the speed needed for aerodynamic flight of that sort was higher than the speed needed to go into orbit—that is, for the combination of its forward momentum and the Earth’s gravitational attraction to keep the vehicle going round and round the planet. Calculations suggested that this disjuncture—now known as the von Kármán line—sat around 100km above the Earth. (6/7)

Space Race: Branson Aims to Fly to Space Before Bezos (Source: Parabolic Arc)
It looks like Richard Branson could beat fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos to space next month. Virgin Galactic is working on a plan to send Branson on a suborbital flight aboard the VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo rocket plane over the July 4 holiday weekend, according to a source who requested anonymity. The flight is contingent upon obtaining an operator’s license from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Branson’s flight would take place about two weeks before Bezos, his brother Mark and the winner of an online auction are scheduled to board Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle for a suborbital flight on July 20. It will be the first crewed flight of New Shepard, which has flown 15 times with no one aboard. Virgin Galactic has not responded to a request for comment. (6/8)

Investors Sue Virgin Galactic Over Financial Restatement (Source: Las Cruces Sun-News)
Virgin Galactic is facing a prospective class-action lawsuit by investors, alleging the company made false and misleading reports about its finances and accounting. The federal complaint, filed in New York's Eastern District, states that Virgin Galactic's stock prices dipped by 9 percent after the company announced on April 30 that it would need to restate its financial results for the first quarter of 2021.

The aerospace company and anchor tenant for New Mexico's Spaceport America said the restatement was due to guidance issued by the SEC pertaining to special purpose acquisition, known as SPACs, including Virgin Galactic. Initial investors in SPACs purchase units, which may combine stock shares with warrants, described in the complaint as "instruments that allow investors to buy additional shares at a fixed price." The SEC announced that, in some circumstances, warrants should be accounted as liabilities instead of part of a company's equity.

Days later, Virgin said it would restate its consolidated financial statements due to the accounting of outstanding warrants of Social Capital Hedosophia at the time of the merger. As of April 30, the company reported approximately 2.7 million warrants were outstanding. Investor Shane Levin and other unnamed plaintiffs claim in their complaint that Virgin Galatic CEO Michael Colglazier, former CEO George Whitesides, CFO Doug Ahrens and former CFO Jon Campagna knowingly presented incorrect financial statements to inflate the company's stock price and entice buyers. (6/7)

Relativity Has a Bold Plan to Take On SpaceX, and Investors are Buying It (Source: Ars Technica)
Relativity Space announced Tuesday morning that it has raised an additional $650 million in private capital and that this money will fuel an ambitious agenda of 3D printing large, reusable rockets. The new funding will accelerate development of the "Terran-R" launch vehicle, Relativity Chief Executive Tim Ellis said in an interview. This large orbital rocket will be about the same size as SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.

However, Ellis said, the entire vehicle will be reusable—the first and second stages, as well as the payload fairing. And it will have the capacity to lift 20 tons to low Earth orbit in reusable mode, about 20 percent more than a Falcon 9 booster that lands on a drone ship. With the Terran-R vehicle, therefore, Ellis said Relativity Space aspires to not just match the remarkably capable Falcon 9 rocket but to exceed its performance.

Powered by seven main engines, the Terran R vehicle will initially launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Relativity has set a goal to launch in 2024, and Ellis said the company has signed a binding contract for multiple launches with an "anchor customer" he declined to name. Relativity has not publicly released a price for a launch. (6/8)

Experts Weigh In on Pentagon UFO Report (Source: Scientific American)
Produced under the auspices of a Pentagon group called the UAP Task Force, an unclassified version of the report is expected to be released later this month. Upon establishing the task force, the DOD released an accompanying statement explaining the justifications for its existence: “The Department of Defense and the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously and examine each report. This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as UAP when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing.”

Citing anonymous senior officials familiar with the report’s contents, the story said that the assessment has come up short of explaining what UAPs are and that it provides no evidence to link them with any putative alien visitation—despite reviewing more than 120 incidents from the past 20 years. The report’s firmest conclusion, it seems, is that the vast majority of UAP happenings and their surprising maneuvers are not caused by any U.S. advanced technology programs.

The final report includes a “classified annex” of information deemed unsuitable for public release—leaving more than enough room for die-hard UFO advocates to remain convinced that the U.S. government is hiding the truth. Skeptical science writer Mick West has taken on the chore of analyzing the spate of UAP videos released by DoD, steadfastly investigating how some of the incidents could merely be mirages from flaws in newly deployed radar systems, as well as various sorts of well-understood visual artifacts regularly seen in cameras. Despite his work to debunk the recent claims, West maintains that reports of mysterious aircraft stalking military assets should be taken quite seriously. Click here. (6/8)

Blue Canyon Names New CEO (Source: Spaced News)
Smallsat manufacturer Blue Canyon Technologies has named a new CEO. The company, a subsidiary of Raytheon, named CTO Stephen Steg as its new CEO Tuesday. He succeeds George Stafford, who will remain with the company in an advisory capacity. Steg is a co-founder of Blue Canyon who has served as CTO since 2008. The company develops cubesats and other smallsats for a range of government and commercial customers. (6/8)

Shenzhen City Offers Millions to Attract Space Business (Source: Reuters)
The Chinese city of Shenzhen is offering incentives to attract space companies. The city, a technology hub, will offer up to $47 million per project related to satellite development and applications. The initiative is part of broader efforts by Shenzhen to become a "smart city" that leverages artificial intelligence and big data technologies. (6/8)

China Releases Mars Rover Image (Source: Xinhua)
China has released an image of the landing site of its Zhurong Mars rover. The image, taken by the Tianwen-1 orbiter, shows the landing site, along with where the rover's heat shield and parachute landed. China's space program has released few details about the status of Zhurong since its landing more than three weeks ago, with just a handful of images confirming that the rover has rolled off its lander and onto the surface. (6/8)

Juno Spacecraft Flies By Ganymede (Source: Space.com)
NASA's Juno spacecraft made a flyby of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, on Monday. Juno passed about 1,000 kilometers from the surface of Ganymede during the flyby, the first close approach to the moon by any spacecraft since Galileo in 2000. The flyby is the first in an extended mission for the Jupiter orbiter that also includes a flyby of Europa in 2022 and two flybys of Io, the innermost large moon of Jupiter, in 2023 and 2024. Data from the Ganymede flyby will be returned to Earth in the next several days. (6/8)

Aerospace Corp. Recommends National Dialogue on Environmental Satellites (Source: Space News)
An Aerospace Corporation study recommends a "national dialogue" about future environmental satellite programs. The study, published Tuesday, noted U.S. government plans to develop environmental monitoring satellites are not coordinated well across agencies that acquire these systems and the users of data collected by weather satellites. The Defense Department and NOAA share data and coordinate investments but their efforts should be more broadly discussed at a higher level, the study's authors recommend. (6/8)

Russia: Sanctions Relief Will Determine ISS Departure (Source: TASS)
The head of Roscosmos said continued Russian participation in the International Space Station program will depend on whether U.S. sanctions remain in place. Dmitry Rogozin told Russian legislators Monday that it is up to the United States to end sanctions on the Progress Rocket and Space Center and TsNIIMash. "Either we are working together and then sanctions should be lifted immediately, or we won’t work together and then national systems will be deployed," he said, referring to proposals by Russia to develop a national space station. (6/8)