August 24, 2021

Blue Origin to Miss Engine Delivery Date to ULA, Pushing Back Key Vulcan Rocket Debut (Source: Denver Business Journal)
Blue Origin will be later than expected delivering the first set of flight rocket engines to ULA, pushing the company’s debut of its Vulcan rocket well into 2022. The engine delivery is weeks later than the late 2021 timeline that ULA had publicly predicted as recently as the start of August. “I will not get them before the end of the year,” said Tory Bruno, CEO of ULA. “It will be shortly into the beginning of the 2022 calendar year, and anywhere in there will support me being able to build up a rocket and have that Vulcan waiting on my customer, Astrobotic.”

The first flight of ULA’s methane-fueled Vulcan rocket is scheduled to launch Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology Inc.’s Peregrine moon lander. That NASA-backed mission had been targeting a late 2021 liftoff, but slowness in Astrobotic’s spacecraft development made it seem more likely to slip into 2022. Now that's a given, and the later launch adds pressure to ULA's schedule for other missions for the U.S. military. ULA is awaiting Blue Origin to deliver BE-4 engines nearly two years behind the timeline laid out when ULA and Blue Origin finalized their engine supply contract in 2018.

Two BE-4 engines will power the first stage of each Vulcan, a rocket ULA has been developing since 2015 to replace the company’s Atlas V and Deltas IV rockets. Vulcan is designed to handle the same missions and payloads that ULA’s two current rocket types fly, but to do so at a cheaper price that’s competitive against the reusable Falcon 9 rockets flown by SpaceX. The U.S. Space Force has contracted ULA to provide 60% of the military’s satellite and other space payload launches through 2027 in a contract based on Vulcan pricing. ULA is expected to launch its first U.S. military payload on Vulcan in a little over 12 months. (8/23)

Visioneering Underway for Space Force (Source: Space News)
The head of the U.S. Space Force says that while the new service has made major progress in the last 18 months, it has a lot more to do. In an interview, Gen. John Raymond said he is proud of what has been accomplished but recognizes the service still has to convince Congress it has a vision for the future, particularly on how it will acquire advanced technologies to compete with China and Russia. That includes, he said, defining what satellite constellations need to look like to operate in an "increasingly congested and contested" space environment. He said he is also focused on addressing concerns from Congress about the slow pace of acquisitions. (8/24)

Virgin Orbit to Use SPAC Proceeds for Satellite Constellation (Source: Space News)
Virgin Orbit plans to use the proceeds of a SPAC deal to expand its launch services and develop a satellite constellation. The company said part of the funds from the merger announced Monday would be used to scale up production of its LauncherOne rocket as well as upgrades to increase its performance and potentially recover and reuse its first stage. The company also plans to develop a "space solutions" business involving satellites with internet-of-things and imagery payloads. That line of business will account for more than 20% of the company's overall projected $2.1 billion in revenue in 2026. The company expects just $15 million in revenue this year, and won't be profitable until 2024. (8/24)

SPACs Can Be Risky Investments (Source: Space News)
Space industry SPAC deals can be risky for investors, according to a new report. The study by Avascent and Jefferies looked at space industry SPAC mergers and found widely varying valuations and projections of future growth. Because they use forward metrics, space SPACs can be a bargain for investors if companies hit their projections, but the report noted it's not clear what the right projections should be in this emerging industry. (8/24)

UK Options Kept Open for SatNav Services (Source: Space News)
The British government is keeping its options open for satellite navigation services. The U.K. government lost access to the secure signal of the European Union's Galileo constellation because of Brexit. After considering developing its own satellite navigation system, the U.K. Space Agency is now conducting a study of various alternatives, including approaches that may be very different from traditional satellite navigation constellations. OneWeb, whose owners include the British government, has also shown an interest in providing navigation services using a future generation of its constellation. (8/24)

SpaceX Ships 100,000 Starlink Terminals (Source: TechCrunch)
SpaceX has now shipped 100,000 Starlink terminals. Elon Musk tweeted the milestone Monday, noting that Starlink services are now in beta testing in more than a dozen countries. Additional countries are pending licenses from national regulators, he added. (8/24)

ESA Swamped with Astronaut Applications (Source: ESA)
The European Space Agency says reviewing astronaut applications is taking longer than expected. The agency announced Monday that the large number of applications, far more than expected, meant that it had fallen behind schedule in performing an initial review and selecting those that will move to the next step in the selection process. ESA promised it would contact all applicants about their status by the end of November. (8/24)

Boeing Opens Up Applications for New Startup Accelerator (Source: Aero)
Aerospace Xelerated, which is led by Boeing, has announced a new call for startup applications and aerospace innovations. Formerly the ATI Boeing Accelerator, the program is being led by industry partner Boeing for its third year with further industry partners to be announced. The program will be investing into startups building autonomous and AI solutions that advance the way aircraft are built, from the factory floor all the way to the passenger journey.

Startups accepted on the program will benefit from £100,000 equity investment from Boeing. They will also have access to strategists and technical experts from industry and support in developing proof of concept opportunities. Through Aerospace Xelerated, startups will be introduced to a network of angels, venture capitalists and the wider aerospace industry, throughout the 12-week program and wider ecosystem events. (8/23)

NASA Issues RFP for Mars Ascent Vehicle Project (Source: GovCon Wire)
NASA has asked industry for proposals to design, build and test multiple Mars ascent vehicles and related electrical and mechanical ground support equipment. The space agency will launch a full and open competition for the Mars Ascent Vehicle Integrated System program with plans to award a potential six-year, cost-plus-fixed-fee contract on Feb. 2, 2022, according to a request for proposals posted Aug. 16.

The MAV is part of the Mars Sample Return campaign meant to gather and send sample tubes of Martian rocks, atmosphere and regolith to Earth for detailed physical and chemical analysis. The vehicle will be a payload aboard the Mars lander vehicle and its mission objectives include receiving sample tubes on the red planet’s surface, launch them to a predefined orbit and releasing the samples into orbit. Work on the contract will be carried out NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and at the vendor’s facilities. (8/23)

Rocket Lab Moves Moon Shot to New Zealand (Source: Shore Daily News)
Rocket Lab has moved the launch of the CAPSTONE mission  from Wallops to their alternate launch site in New Zealand.   The mission was scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter this year. The move  from Complex 2 at Wallops to New Zealand was made necessary because the Flight Safety System at Wallops still needs to be certified which is expected to occur by the end of the year.

According to a statement from Wallops,  “NASA is developing, testing and certifying it’s NASA Autonomous Flight Termination Unit, a game-changing command and control system for small launch vehicle providers, for use at all U.S. launch ranges to ensure public safety during launch operations. The statement continues that NASA is actively working with the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Space Force, the FAA, and NASA’s Independent Verification and Validation Facility to ensure the system’s performance. (8/23)

OneWeb Constellation Nears 300 Satellites (Source: Space News)
The latest OneWeb launch represents Arianespace’s third mission in 23 days with three different launch vehicles. An Ariane 5 successfully launched the Star One D2 and Eutelsat Quantum communications satellites July 30 from Kourou, French Guiana, marking that rocket’s first flight in nearly a year. On Aug. 16, a Vega rocket launched the Pléiades Neo 4 imaging satellite from French Guiana. Arianespace plans to perform 10 more Soyuz launches for OneWeb through 2021 and 2022, enlarging its network to 648 satellites for global coverage. (8/22)

Japan's ispace Unveils New Larger Lunar Lander (Source: Space News)
Japanese lunar space transportation company ispace is developing its design for a larger lunar lander that will be built in the United States. The lander, being developed by the company’s U.S. office in Denver, will fly as soon as 2024 on the company’s third mission to the moon. A major difference in the new design is the payload capacity. While the lander ispace is building for its first two missions in 2022 and 2023 can carry 30 kilograms of payload to the lunar surface, the new lander will have a payload capacity of 500 kilograms to the surface. It will also be able to deploy an additional 1,000 kilograms of payloads to lunar orbit. (8/23)

Lamborn: The Fight to Keep U.S. Space Command in Colorado is Not Over (Source: Space News
The battle Space Command has taken a new twist following comments by former president Donald Trump who told al.com that he specifically directed that the command move to Redstone Arsenal. This contradicts Air Force statements that the selection process followed objective criteria used for military basing decisions.

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) said Trump comments are “an admission that the decision to move U.S. Space Command from Colorado Springs to Huntsville was based solely on politics and personal preference — not the Air Force’s basing criteria or national security. This proves that claims by the Department of the Air Force that the decision was ‘merit-based’ are completely false... This has been my concern all along, and calls into question the entire selection process.” (8/23)

Global Space Economy Swells in Spite of the Pandemic (Source: Space News)
The overall space economy expanded 4.4 percent to $447 billion in 2020 with more nations participating than ever before, according to the Space Foundation’s updated Space Report. Global government spending on military and civil space programs, however, declined slightly in 2020 compared with 2019. “Overall, there was the slightest decline, down 1.2 percent,” said Lesley Conn, Space Foundation senior manager in research and analysis.

Commercial activity continues to account for the lion’s share of the overall space economy with commercial space products and services claiming $219.44 or 49.1 percent of the money spent in the global space economy in 2020. Commercial infrastructure and support activities accounted for another $137.23, 30.7 percent of the total market. The U.S. government spent $51.8 billion on civil and military space in 2020, contributing 11.6 percent of the global space economy. All other governments contributed $38.4 billion or 8.6 percent of the total.

In spite of the COVID-19 pandemic, government spending on space rose in 2020 in the United States, China, Spain, France, Germany and for the European Space Agency. France’s domestic space budgets jumped 40 percent year over year. In contrast, government space expenditures fell in Russia, Italy, India and Brazil in 2020, compared with 2019. (8/23)

Thinking Outside the Cube: Aerospace Corp.’s Thin DiskSats (Source: Space News)
The Aerospace Corp., an early adopter of the cubesat standard, is proposing a new shape for small satellites, a thin plate called DiskSat that is designed to maximize volume and surface area. A DiskSat that is one meter in diameter and 2.5-centimeters thick could accommodate enough solar cells to produce 200 watts.

“To get 200 watts of solar cells on a cubesat, even a fairly large cubesat, you need deployable arrays,” said Richard Welle. A DiskSat also could accommodate a large-aperture antenna. “You can put that on a DiskSat without deployables, whereas to do that on a cubesat you have to figure out how to deploy your antenna,” Welle said. (8/23)

Collins Aerospace to Provide Life Support for Privately Run LEO Outpost (Source: Space News)
Collins Aerospace has been awarded a $2.6 million contract by an undisclosed customer to provide life support systems for a planned “privately owned and operated low Earth orbit outpost.” Collins Aerospace, a subsidiary of Raytheon, said the contract is for Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS), a suite of technologies that enable livable conditions outside of Earth’s atmosphere. These include air revitalization technologies and systems for controlling pressure and temperature in space. “A new era of commercial spaceflight is creating the need for Earth-like atmospheres at low orbit destinations,” said Dave McClure. (8/23)

Western Australia's First Satellite Set to Launch (Source: Perth Now)
Researchers say the deployment of Western Australia's first homegrown spacecraft will position the state as a leader in Australian space exploration. Weighing in at 1.5kg and made up of 10cm aluminium modules, the Binar-1 cube-shaped satellite is set to be launched into space on Saturday. It will be aboard a SpaceX rocket carrying supplies from Cape Canaveral in the United States to the International Space Station. Named after the Noongar word for fireball, Binar-1 was designed and built by students and engineers at Perth's Curtin University. (8/23)

To Solve Space Traffic Woes, Look to the High Seas (Source: MIT Technology Review)
Ruth Stilwell, the executive director of Aerospace Policy Solutions and an adjunct faculty member at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, has a suggestion for how we can better manage space traffic. She argues that we should look to the maritime laws and policies developed over hundreds of years to guide how ships and other vessels on the sea ought to behave.

All of the world’s international airspace is designated to a single entity state for the purposes of providing air traffic control services. So, for example, the US controls 5 million square miles of domestic airspace but 24 million square miles of international airspace. They are the sole authority to provide those air traffic control services in that airspace by virtue of the ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization].

Space doesn’t have anything like that. But the high seas don’t have that either. What the high seas have is a collection of agreed-upon rules of behavior and the authority over each vessel: the state under which the vessel flag is flown. There’s not a high-seas authority that says yes or no, you can operate here and you can’t operate here. Everyone has access to this shared resource, and the principles of freedom of the sea include the freedom of navigation, freedom of overflight, freedom to lay cables underneath, freedom of fishing. Within the maritime agreements, there is freedom to conduct commercial activities. This is different from airspace, which historically has been an area purely for transportation. Click here. (8/23)

Can SpaceX Help NASA Get Back to the Moon by 2024 After All? (Source: The Hill)
Elon Musk, who is preparing to send the latest version of the Starship into orbit on top of a Superheavy Rocket, seems to be taking the drama being caused by his rival in stride. The SpaceX CEO took to Twitter and quipped, “If lobbying & lawyers could get u to orbit, Bezos would be on Pluto.” Musk also made a couple of interesting promises that NASA needs to pay attention to. First, he suggested on Twitter that SpaceX could develop a 21st-century moon suit “if need be” by 2024. Musk also suggested that the lunar Starship would be ready to take Americans back to the moon “probably sooner” than 2024.

Many things must happen in a short time, with or without Musk’s help, for NASA to make the 2024 deadline. The technical problems of building and flying the lunar Starship, creating a lunar surface spacesuit, and making sure that the Orion/Space Launch System stack can fly to lunar orbit and back are serious but not insurmountable. However, all is dependent on the Biden administration and Congress not getting a sudden attack of ADD and getting stingy on funding. (8/23)

Lockheed Martin's Colorado Space Operations Soar (Source: Gazette)
Lockheed Martin’s Colorado operations in the last year saw the completion of a spacecraft that will be launched to an asteroid near Jupiter, the success of its “aeroshell” that protected a NASA Mars rover as it landed on the red planet, and its Osiris-REx spacecraft grab some space dirt from an asteroid 200 million miles away.

“All of that is coming out of this campus,” said Richard Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed’s space division, of the company’s Waterton campus southwest of Denver’s suburbs. “It’s important to the local economy."

It’s there about 6,000 employees of the space division work to design, test and build spacecraft integral to NASA’s future missions to the moon, Mars and long-range space exploration. There are about 9,000 space division employees, who work from locations in Boulder, the south metro Denver area and down to Colorado Springs. Lockheed has about 11,000 employees statewide. (8/23)

US Still Interested in Possibility of Having Astronauts Fly on Board Soyuz, Roscosmos Says (Source: Sputnik)
The United States may purchase a seat on the Russian Soyuz in the spring of next year, as a precaution, in case of any issues with commercial US spacecraft, Roscosmos Deputy Director General for International Cooperation Sergey Saveliev told Sputnik. "The Americans are leaving this opportunity [acquiring a Soyuz seat in the spring of 2022] as an option, counting on help and assistance from Russia, but I can’t say anything more particular yet," Saveliev said. (8/23)

Russian Tech Firm Develops New Radar for Safe Launch of Satellites (Source: TASS)
The Scientific Research Institute for Long-Distance Radio Communications (NIIDAR, part of the RTI Systems Group) has developed a radar system of space measurements to ensure the safe launch and operation of satellites in orbit, the RTI Systems press office said. "The system automatically tracks a carrier rocket from its launch at a spaceport to the delivery of a satellite into the designated orbit. The radar selects objects in the near-the-Earth space, separating the rocket’s spent parts from orbited satellites for their further monitoring," the press office said. (8/23)