August 9, 2021

NASA EGS, Jacobs Power Up Artemis 1 Vehicle for System Checkouts in the VAB (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
After stacking the stages of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for NASA’s Artemis 1 mission in June and July, EGS and TOSC powered up the Core Stage for the first time in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 6. The initial power up was a significant milestone in pre-launch processing, marking the beginning of the systematic checkouts of the vehicle and ground systems that will be used for the first launch on Artemis 1. (8/9)

Just prior to powering up the Core Stage, the four umbilicals that connect ground services from the Mobile Launcher were attached to quick disconnect plates on the stage’s three major equipment bays: the forward skirt, intertank, and engine section. The Integrated Operations team of EGS and Jacobs and the SLS prime contractors are working almost around clock in the VAB to get through all the installations, checkouts, and special tests in time for a launch no earlier than the end of 2021, but more likely in early 2022.

Beyond Earth Announces Major Space Solar Power US Policy Recommendations (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Today the Beyond Earth Institute (BEI) is pleased to announce the unveiling of a Space Policy Directive (SPD) recommended for consideration by the US National Space Council, chaired by Vice President Kamala Harris, to promote the advancement and development of space solar power. Full text of the SPD can be downloaded here. (8/9)

China is Working on a Lander for Human Moon Missions (Source: Space News)
China’s main spacecraft maker is developing a human landing system for lunar missions, according to an account of an official academic visit. The brief news report from Xiamen University names individuals leading projects pertinent to China’s human lunar landing plans and notably refers to the landing project as a “national strategy.” China is already known to be developing and testing new launch vehicles and a new-generation spacecraft capable of sending astronauts to the moon. A lunar landing and ascent system has one of the missing key components of a human lunar landing architecture.

No details of the lander were provided during the meeting, in which current progress and future plans for human moon landings were presented. A number of slides were published but were intentionally blurred out. An illustration from a September 2020 Chinese space conference provides information on one concept and was presented as part of a moon landing wider architecture. (8/9)

0-G Launch Enters Market for Parabolic Flights and Air-Launch (Source: Netcapital)
o-G aims to launch a global network of specially-modified 'Boeing Space Jets' for testing and development of technologies before they are launched to Space. They will be the first operator to provide both microgravity and air-launch services with the same vehicle. They also plan to provide zero-gravity flights for consumers globally, who will experience the amazing feeling of weightlessness, just like an astronaut would in space.

They envision deploying a global network of six company-operated aircraft serving various regions. They have signed Letters of Intent worth $42 million for early customers. Click here. (8/9)

JPL Director Michael Watkins to Return to Academia (Source: NASA JPL)
After having served five years as director of JPL, Michael Watkins will move to the Caltech campus as professor of aerospace and geophysics. Larry D. James becomes interim director of JPL. JPL Director Michael Watkins announced Monday he will step down from his position as the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to resume his academic and research career at Caltech as professor of aerospace and geophysics. His last day as JPL director will be Aug. 20. (8/9)

IBX Hires Former NASA Acting Administrator Steve Jurczyk as Executive VP of Space Operations (Source: Parabolic Arc)
IBX, an innovation and investment firm revolutionizing the space and energy sectors, announced today the addition of Steve Jurczyk as Executive Vice President of Space Operations. Jurczyk, who recently served as NASA’s Acting Administrator after a 33-year career at the U.S. space agency, will add his technical and leadership expertise to the IBX team, expanding efforts to explore market opportunities in space, technology, and energy to positively impact the world. (8/9)

AE Industrial Partners Partners With Boeing for HorizonX Ventures Investment (Source: Parabolic Arc)
AE Industrial Partners, a private equity firm specializing in aerospace, announced today a partnership with Boeing to manage and invest in HorizonX Ventures, Boeing’s venture capital fund. This partnership augments AEI’s capabilities by focusing on early-stage minority equity investments in transformative technologies and businesses that will define the future of AEI’s target markets through the development of new capabilities and an expansion of sustainable aviation. (8/9)

Exodus Orbitals Graduates From Moonshot space Incubator Program (Source: Exodus Orbitals)
Exodus Orbitals, a Canadian startup developing an innovative “satellites-as-a-service” platform, is one of five recent graduates from Australia’s first space-focused incubator program — Moonshot. Having successfully graduated from the 12-week Moonshot program, Exodus Orbitals aims to make space exploration more accessible for businesses across a wide range of sectors. They are building an ambitious solution for the challenges of the space industry, offering a way for customers to run their software payloads on a shared “satellite-as-a-service” platform.

 With Exodus Orbitals, businesses will no longer have to pay the price of a full satellite mission, instead saving money and time by booking time, sharing hardware and running their applications directly on the satellite on-board computer. This groundbreaking approach dramatically lowers cost for businesses and allows almost instant access for hundreds of application cases in Earth Observation, Communication and Surveillance domains. (8/9)

Marlink to Change Hands Again (Source: Space News)
Providence Equity Partners is in exclusive talks to buy a majority stake in maritime connectivity provider Marlink. Apax Partners, a French private equity firm that bought Marlink from Airbus in 2016 for an undisclosed sum, confirmed the talks. With headquarters in France and Norway, Marlink says it serves more than 130 countries and employs more than 1,000 people. Marlink acquired some VSAT assets from Anuvu, formerly known as Global Eagle Entertainment, as part of that company's Chapter 11 restructuring process. (8/9)

Eumetsat Buys Spire Weather Data (Source: Space News)
European meteorological agency Eumetsat is buying commercial satellite data for the first time. Eumetsat announced last week a pilot program with Spire to buy weather forecasting data from that company's satellite constellation. The three-year deal is worth up to $11 million. Eumetsat said that the pilot program, similar to one run several years ago by NOAA, will allow it to assess the benefits and costs of commercial data to assist its weather forecasting efforts. (8/9)

NASA Seeks Applicants for Mars Analog Mission (Source: AP)
NASA is offering four people the opportunity to go to "Mars" for a year. NASA said Friday it's seeking applications for a year-long Mars analog mission at a Johnson Space Center facility called Mars Dune Alpha. Four people will spend a year in the 1,700-square-foot 3D-printed habitat, with "spacewalks" onto simulated Martian terrain. The crew will test operations with limited communications and simulated equipment failures. The crew will have "ready-to-eat space food" and grow some plants — but sorry, Mark Watney, no potatoes. (8/9)

Perseverance Rover's First Sampling Attempt Fails (Source: Space News)
NASA is trying to understand why the first sampling attempt by its Perseverance Mars rover came up empty. NASA said late Friday that while the rover had drilled a rock and gathered a sample, that sample did not make its way into a sample collection tube as expected. Projects officials say that, for now, they think the problem is more likely because of unforeseen properties of the rock rather than a problem with the sample collection mechanism. Perseverance is designed to collect about three dozen samples that will be returned to Earth by two future missions by NASA and ESA. (8/9)

SpaceX to Acquire Swarm Technologies (Source: Space News)
SpaceX is acquiring satellite constellation company Swarm Technologies. In FCC filings Friday, Swarm disclosed it reached a deal last month to be acquired by SpaceX for an undisclosed sum. Swarm would continue to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX once the deal closes. Swarm operates 120 smallsats that provide internet-of-things services, and says the acquisition would give it access to SpaceX resources as well as synergies from SpaceX's launch and satellite manufacturing capabilities. SpaceX appears interested in Swarm's technology and personnel. Neither company has publicly disclosed the deal outside of the FCC filing, nor responded to questions about it. (8/9)

Boeing Investigating Starliner Valves Issue (Source: Space News)
Boeing is continuing to investigate the thruster issue that delayed the launch of its CST-100 Starliner last week. Boeing said engineers had been able to open some thruster valves that were unexpectedly closed during the Aug. 3 countdown. There is 'cautious optimism' that engineers will get to the root of the problem as Boeing considers "multiple launch opportunities" later this month. A delay beyond late this month could cause schedule conflicts with both a SpaceX cargo mission to the ISS scheduled for late August and the Atlas 5 launch of a NASA science mission planned for launch in mid-October. (8/9)

Space Station Incident Demands Independent Investigation (Source: IEEE Spectrum)
While the proximate cause of the incident is still being unravelled, there are worrisome signs that NASA may be repeating some of the lapses that lead to the loss of the Challenger and Columbia space shuttles and their crews. And because political pressures seem to be driving much of the problem, only an independent investigation with serious political heft can reverse any erosion in safety culture.

Let's step back and look at what we know happened: In a cyber-logical process still not entirely clear, while passing northwest to southeast over Indonesia, the Nauka module's autopilot apparently decided it was supposed to fly away from the station. The football-field-sized array of pressurized modules, support girders, solar arrays, radiator panels, robotic arms, and other mechanisms was designed to handle stresses both from directional thrusting and rotational torques with a comfortable safety margin, but a maneuver of this scale had never been expected.

How close the station had come to disaster is an open question. The bureaucratic instinct to minimize the described potential severity of the event needs cold-blooded assessment. Sadly, from past experience, this mindset of complacency and hoping for the best is the result of natural human mental drift that comes when there are long periods of apparent normalcy. Even if there is a slowly emerging problem, as long as everything looks okay in the day to day, the tendency is ignore warning signals as minor perturbations. (8/6)

Russia Says Faulty Guidance Algorithms Caused Nauka Incident (Source: TASS)
Roscosmos says that faulty guidance algorithms caused thrusters on the Nauka module to fire after docking with the ISS. Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, said problems with the guidance system algorithms in the module triggered thrusters to fire three hours after docking, causing the station to lose attitude control for nearly an hour. He added it was hard to predict how the system would behave but didn't elaborate. (8/9)

Rocket Lab Transfers Another Mission From Virginia Spaceport to New Zealand (Source: Space News)
A NASA lunar cubesat will launch from New Zealand and not from Virginia. Rocket Lab will launch NASA's CAPSTONE mission on an Electron rocket from its Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand later this year. When NASA awarded Rocket Lab the contract, it was to launch from its new Launch Complex 2 in Virginia. The company didn't explain the switch, but the company previously shifted another launch from Virginia to New Zealand because of NASA delays in certifying an autonomous flight termination system for Electron. CAPSTONE will test the stability of the near-rectilinear halo orbit that will be used by the lunar Gateway. (8/9)

Scientists Discover Huge Gas Structure in Milky Way (Source: The Byte)
A team of scientists recently discovered an unbelievably massive gas filament extending throughout the Milky Way galaxy that’s so big it’s almost hard to believe no one spotted it before now. The massive filament of space gas is so bafflingly large that the scientists who discovered it aren’t even sure what they’re looking at, according to research that’s been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and is available as a preprint in the meantime.

On one hand, it’s possible that the filament, dubbed the “Cattail” according to ScienceAlert, is some yet-undiscovered structure. But it’s equally possible that the Cattail is simply part of one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms — a confusion that illustrates how little we actually understand about our own little corner of the universe. (8/6)

A Failed Star Puzzles Astronomers (Source: WIRED)
Dan Caselden was running an automated search of NASA space telescope images when something bizarre popped into view. “It was very confusing,” said Caselden. “It was moving faster than anything I’ve discovered. It was faint and fast, which made it very weird.” Caselden emailed the astronomers he was working with as part of the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project. Once they ruled out the possibility that it was an image artifact, they realized they were looking at something unusual, an exceedingly faint object 50 light-years away blazing through the galaxy at 200 kilometers per second.

It was given the name WISE 1534-1043. Astronomers now think Caselden found a brown dwarf—a failed star that lacks the necessary bulk to begin nuclear fusion in its core. “It forms like a star,” said Sarah Casewell. “However, it never gains enough mass to fuse hydrogen into helium and start burning anything.” Despite being found in our local solar neighborhood--home mostly to young, metal-rich stars--it appears to be metal-poor. “We think this is probably an older brown dwarf, probably one that was created before the Milky Way had all the metal enrichment it does now,” said Davy Kirkpatrick. (8/3)

Two Florida Tech Students Named 2021 Astronaut Scholars (Source: Florida Tech)
Florida Tech seniors Brian Murphy and Brooke Hursh have been named 2021 Astronaut Scholars, the prestigious recognition from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation that signifies they are among the best and brightest STEM students in the country. This year ASF awarded 60 scholarships to students from 44 different U.S. universities. Astronaut Scholarships are awarded to students in their junior or senior year of college who are studying science, technology, engineering, or mathematics with the intent to pursue research or advance their field upon completion of their final degree. (8/6)

Permafrost Thaw in Siberia Creates a Ticking ‘Methane Bomb’ of Greenhouse Gases, Scientists Warn (Source: Smithsonian)
In recent years, climate scientists have warned thawing permafrost in Siberia may be a “methane time bomb” detonating slowly. Now, a peer-reviewed study using satellite imagery and a review by an international organization are warning that warming temperatures in the far northern reaches of Russia are releasing massive measures of methane—a potent greenhouse gas with considerably more warming power than carbon dioxide. (9/5)

A Hotter Future Is Certain, Climate Panel Warns, But How Hot Is Up to Us (Source: New York Times)
Nations have delayed curbing their fossil-fuel emissions for so long that they can no longer stop global warming from intensifying over the next 30 years, though there is still a short window to prevent the most harrowing future, a major new United Nations scientific report has concluded.

Humans have already heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century, largely by burning coal, oil and gas for energy. And the consequences can be felt across the globe: This summer alone, blistering heat waves have killed hundreds of people in the United States and Canada, floods have devastated Germany and China, and wildfires have raged out of control in Siberia, Turkey and Greece.

But that’s only the beginning, according to the report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of scientists convened by the United Nations. Even if nations started sharply cutting emissions today, total global warming is likely to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two decades, a hotter future that is now essentially locked in. (8/9)