August 18, 2021

Spire Shares Close Down on First Trading Day (Source: Space News)
Spire Global started trading on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday after completing its merger with a SPAC. Shares in the satellite constellation company closed down 5.2% on its first day of trading after closing its merger with NavSight. Spire operates a constellation of more than 100 Lemur cubesats that provide weather data and maritime and aviation tracking. The company raised $265 million in the SPAC deal, significantly less than the $475 million expected when it announced the merger in March. (8/18)

Space Proliferation Requires Global Partnerships to Ensure Safety (Source: Space News)
Proliferating activities in Earth orbit could threaten access to space and freedom to navigate there, a report warns. The study by the Space Foundation and the consulting firm KPMG, released Tuesday, concluded that military forces, than being the dominant players in space, will have to partner with allies and with civilians to ensure space remains safe for everyone to use. Gen. Jay Raymond, head of the U.S. Space Force, says in the report that ultimately "space is going to become the most vital domain for national security, surpassing air, land and sea." (8/18)

Boeing Developing SES mPOWER Constellation Satellites (Source: Space News)
Boeing expects the first SES mPOWER satellites to be ready for launch this year. The company said that despite COVID-related impacts, the first three should launch around the end of the year on a Falcon 9. The mPOWER constellation includes 11 satellites that will be launched on four Falcon 9 rockets through 2023. SES announced that Microsoft will be a customer of the system, using the broadband satellites for its Azure cloud computing platform. (8/18)

Chinese Astronauts Plan Second Spacewalk at Space Station (Source: Xinhua)
Chinese astronauts will soon perform the second spacewalk from the country's new space station. Chinese officials said Tuesday that a spacewalk from the Tianhe core module will take place in the "next few days," but didn't announce a specific date or other details about the EVA. Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo performed the first spacewalk in early July. (8/18)

Virgin Orbit's VOX Space Hires Baird (Source: Space News)
The Virgin Orbit subsidiary that works with national security customers has a new president. VOX Space announced Tuesday it hired Mark Baird, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general. He is a former deputy director of the NRO and also served as director of space acquisition for the office of the secretary of the Air Force. Baird replaces Mandy Vaughn, who stepped down as president of VOX Space earlier this year. (8/18)

Firefly Hires Lyons (Source: Space News)
Firefly Aerospace hired a former SpaceX and Blue Origin engineer as its new COO. Lauren Lyons will lead company efforts to shift from development to operations and production of its Alpha launch vehicle, Blue Ghost lunar lander and other products. The company's first Alpha rocket is at its Vandenberg Space Force Base launch site. Firefly has not announced a launch date other than to say the launch is "getting close." (8/18)

Bolden Joins Ligado Board (Source: Ligado)
Former NASA Administrator Charles Bolden is joining the board of Ligado Networks. Ligado said Tuesday that the company plans to use Bolden's experience at NASA and in the Marine Corps to support its development of a 5G network using L-band spectrum. Some government and industry officials oppose Ligado's plans because they believe the network will interfere with GPS signals in a neighboring spectrum band. (8/18)

NRO to Access Black Sky Imagery Through On-Demand Subscription (Source: Black Sky)
The NRO has awarded a contract modification to BlackSky for imagery. The company said Thursday it will provide the NRO on-demand satellite imagery through a monthly subscription. BlackSky operates a growing constellation of high-resolution imaging satellites. (8/18)

Core of Saturn Comes Into Focus: It's Fuzzy (Source: Sky & Telescope)
The core of the planet Saturn is "fuzzy." A study published this week used waves visible in the planet's rings as a probe of the planet's interior. Scientists concluded that, rather than having a core with a sharp boundary, there is a gradual transition from rock and ice in the center of the planet to hydrogen and helium in its atmosphere. There is also more helium towards the core of the planet than in the outer parts of the atmosphere. (8/18)

New Shepard’s 17th Flight to Space Planned Aug. 25 (Source: Blue Origin)
New Shepard’s next mission will fly a NASA lunar landing technology demonstration a second time on the exterior of the booster, 18 commercial payloads inside the crew capsule, 11 of which are NASA-supported, and an art installation on the exterior of the capsule. Liftoff is currently targeted for Wednesday, August 25, at 8:35 am CDT. (8/18)

NASA's Office of Small Business Programs Picks Industry Award Winners (Source: NASA)
The Small Business Industry Awards (SBIA) recognize the outstanding Small Business Prime Contractor, Small Business Subcontractor, Large Business Prime Contractor, and Mentor-Protégé Agreement that support NASA in achieving its mission. The Small Business Prime Contractor of the Year is Business Integra Technology Solutions. The Small Business Subcontractor of the Year is Coherent Applications Inc. The Large Business Prime Contractor of the Year is Jacobs Technology Inc. 

The Mentor-Protégé Agreement of the Year winner is KBR Wyle and JES Tech. The KSC Center-Level winners are A-P-T Research Inc., Ivey's Construction, and Jacobs Technology. (8/18)

CFC Ban Bought Us Time to Fight Climate Change (Source: BBC)
A worldwide ban on ozone-depleting chemicals in 1987 has averted a climate catastrophe today, scientists say. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, banning chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons, has now simulated our "world avoided". Without the treaty, Earth and its flora would have been exposed to far more of the Sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called it "perhaps the single most successful international agreement".

Continued and increased use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) would have contributed to global air temperatures rising by an additional 2.5°C by the end of this century, the international team of scientists found. Part of that would have been caused directly by CFCs, which are also potent greenhouse gases. But the damage they cause the ozone layer would also have released additional planet-heating carbon dioxide - currently locked up in vegetation - into the atmosphere. (8/18)

Space Coast Airmen Claim USSF Maintainer Awards (Source: USSF)
Three Airmen at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, responsible for supporting missions valued at more than $5 billion, were selected as the top maintainers in the U.S. Space Force for 2020. The trio, all from the 5th Space Launch Squadron, were recognized as Space Operations Command Space Launch Maintainers of the Year (MOY), the highest honor a maintainer can receive in the USSF. The 5th SLS also swept every award category in the competition. (8/18)

Exos Aerospace Developing Air-Launch System (Source: ShoutOut DFW)
At Exos Aerospace our mission is not just to build and fly Low Earth Orbit capable air-launched reusable rockets but rather, to enable other brilliant minds to change the world for the better by leveraging the thousands of ISS research experiments using Exos “on-demand” flights for previously impossible product development in space. Oh, and by the way, we can launch your 550kg LEO and SSO Satellites too.

I am most proud and excited about our team’s demonstrated ability to rapidly Design Build Test and Iterate, failing fast and often. I believe that will serve us well as we proceed to construct our Air-Launched reusable Orbital Vehicle. We are taking the best of SpaceX (reusability) and the best of Virgin Galactic (Air Launch) and putting it together in a new way! Click here. (8/17) https://shoutoutdfw.com/meet-john-quinn-founder-and-ceo/

Leidos Awarded $270M Contract for NASA Ames Mission Support Services (Source: GovConWire)
Leidos has secured a potential five-year, $270 million contract to provide program and project management services to NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. The company will help Ames personnel develop instruments, modernize technology and implement missions for biosciences flight projects, the space agency said Tuesday.

Virginia-based Leidos will also support collaborative science and aeronautics research efforts at the center. Work under the contract’s two-year base period of performance will commence on Sept. 1 with a 60-day phase-in period. NASA may exercise up to three single-year option periods to extend the work. (8/17)

SES Constellation to Support Microsoft Cloud Business (Source: Space News)
Microsoft is pivoting from being a partner to also a customer of SES’ next-generation O3b mPOWER broadband constellation, which SES said remains on schedule despite an ongoing threat of supply chain disruption from COVID-19. SES previously partnered with Microsoft’s Azure cloud business, and other cloud providers including AWS and IBM, to ensure O3b mPOWER customers can access their services remotely without first going through local servers and infrastructure on the ground.

The deal announced Aug. 17 sees Microsoft buy managed services from SES for Azure, and will also support the software giant’s Azure Orbital ground station solutions business. Microsoft will use SES’ current satellites in medium Earth orbit (MEO), before the network is upgraded next year with significantly faster broadband speeds from O3b mPOWER satellites. (8/17)

NASA Benefits From KSC-Based Lunar Regolith Simulant Testing (Source: Space Daily)
To safely reach the Moon, a lunar lander must fire its rocket engines to decelerate the spacecraft for a soft touchdown. During this process, the engine exhaust stirs up regolith - the dust and rocks on the lunar surface - creating a host of potential challenges, from destabilizing the lander to damaging instruments and reducing visibility.

To dig into this problem, a team from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is preparing 16 tons of a regolith simulant called Black Point-1 (BP-1) for use in experiments to better understand plume surface interaction - the behavior and effects of rocket exhaust plumes during landing. Unlike the rocks or sand on Earth, which have undergone weathering and generally have rounded edges and corners, the dust and dirt particles on the Moon are irregularly shaped crushed rocks with many sharp angles. This makes lunar regolith very abrasive, and a good simulant on Earth must have similar properties.

The BP-1 simulant comes from the Black Point lava flow in northern Arizona. NASA has been using the volcanic site as a stand-in for the surface of the Moon since the Apollo Program, and later for simulating the surface of Mars. The simulant is currently in use at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, where researchers are conducting tests in a vacuum chamber. Later tests using even larger rocket plumes and a bigger vacuum chamber are planned at the NASA's Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio. Another use for BP-1 is testing robots in a large enclosure in the Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations (GMRO) lab, part of Swamp Works at Kennedy Space Center. (8/18)