September 26, 2021

How Many Satellites Are Orbiting Earth? (Source: The Conversation)
Many satellites that were put into orbit have gone dead and burned up in the atmosphere, but thousands remain. Groups that track satellite launches don’t always report the same exact numbers, but the overall trend is clear – and astounding. Since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik – the first human-made satellite – in 1957, humanity has steadily been putting more and more objects into orbit every year. Over the the second half of the 20th century, there was a slow but steady growth, with roughly 60 to 100 satellites launched yearly until the early 2010s.

But since then, the pace has been increasing dramatically. By 2020, 114 launches carried around 1,300 satellites to space, surpassing the 1,000 new satellites per year mark for the first time. But no year in the past compares to 2021. As of Sep. 16, roughly 1,400 new satellites have already begun circling the Earth, and that will only increase as the year goes on. The current total is 7,941 satellites orbiting Earth. (9/17)

After Loss of U.S. Space Command Headquarters, Florida Looks to Attract Space Force Training Site (Source: Florida Today)
Despite losing the high-profile competition for U.S. Space Command headquarters earlier this year, Florida officials haven't stopped trying to woo more operations related to the military's newest branch. Looking forward, Space Florida's Mark Bontrager said, Florida could be an ideal location for training facilities, or what are known as technical schools. Tech schools usually come immediately after basic training and prepare new military members – in this case, Space Force guardians – for their specific roles.

"About 16,000 of those people need to be trained and equipped from the very beginning of the time they raise their right hand and show up as a young enlisted or officer," Bontrager said. "That Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM) is going to be provisionally stood up in Colorado Springs as a temporary location...Florida is positioned to lean into and win," at least some of the activities related to STARCOM, he said. (9/24)

Thanks Florida: After Visit to State, Inspiration4 Commander and Family Quarantined with COVID-19 (Source: Reuters)
Days after completing his historic ride into space as part of the first all-civilian crew to reach Earth orbit, billionaire e-commerce mogul and mission commander Jared Isaacman is back at home, and unexpectedly back in quarantine. "I came back to Earth with a house full of COVID," Isaacman, 38, said from his home in Pennsylvania, five days after he and his Inspiration4 crewmates safely splashed down in the Atlantic.

Isaacman said his wife, their two daughters, aged 5 and 7, and his in-laws all came down with COVID-19 upon their return from Florida, where the family stayed in the days immediately before, during and after the spaceflight and were apparently exposed to the virus. So far, Isaacman said, he has yet to test positive. Florida has experienced some of the highest COVID-19 infection rates in the nation during a recent surge of cases driven by the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant. (9/23)

ULA Wants Blue Origin Engine By End of Year (Source: National Defense)
United Launch Alliance is hoping to receive Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine — which will be used as the engine for ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket for an upcoming national security space launch — before the end of 2021, the organization’s CEO said in August. ULA intended to fly its new Vulcan Centaur rocket for national security space launch mission USSF-51. However, the rocket is not on track to be certified by the Space Force to fly by the late 2022 deadline. One issue with the Vulcan rocket is its engine, the Blue Origin-built BE-4.

According to a report released by the Government Accountability Office in June, “Weapons System Annual Assessment: Updated Program Oversight Approach Needed,” the Vulcan has been “experiencing technical challenges related to the igniter and booster capabilities required.” Tory Bruno, president and CEO of ULA, said “I hope to have engines before the end of the year.” (9/24)

Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, SpaceX, ULA Win Space Force Contracts for Rocket Technology Projects (Source: Space News)
Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, SpaceX and ULA were selected to participate in technology development projects to advance rocket engine testing and launch vehicle upper stages, the U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command announced. The awards made by the Space Enterprise Consortium are for prototypes that will be jointly funded by the government and the contractors. 

The contracts were split between current national security launch providers SpaceX and ULA, and new entrants Blue Origin and Rocket Lab that might compete in 2024 for the next round of national security launch service contracts. Blue Origin will receive $24.3 million for cryogenic fluid management for its New Glenn rocket’s second stage. Rocket Lab gets $24.3 million for upper stage development of its future launch vehicle Neutron.

SpaceX gets $14.4 million for testing technologies for its next-generation Raptor engine: rapid throttling and restart testing; liquid methane specification development and testing; and combustion stability analysis and testing. ULA gets $24.3 million for uplink command and control for Centaur 5, the upper stage of the company’s new rocket Vulcan Centaur. (9/25)

‘Space? We Have a Lot To Do Here’: Bill Gates Explains Why He is Not ‘Trying to Escape Planet Earth in a Spaceship’ (Source: Hindustan Times)
“I have become obsessed with things like Malaria and HIV and getting rid of those diseases and I would probably bore people at cocktail parties talking about diseases. Space? You know, we have a lot to do here on earth,” Bill Gates said. What started as a casual joke with James Corden ended with a response from Gates, which the host called the “classiest burn.” Corden opened the talk by thanking Gates for being the “one billionaire who is not trying to escape planet earth on a spaceship at the moment.” (9/25)

William Shatner's Going to Space on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Rocket Ship (Source: TMZ)
Decades after he last played the role, William Shatner's going to become a real-life Captain Kirk ... because he's going to space ... on Jeff Bezos' rocket ship, TMZ has learned. Though he won't be boldly going where no man's gone before -- because Bezos and his Blue Origin crew already did it -- sources with direct knowledge say the 90-year-old actor is slated to be part of the second crew to take the space flight in the New Shepard capsule. That would make him the oldest person ever to be launched into space. (9/24)

Orbit Fab to Launch Propellant Tanker to Fuel Satellites in Geostationary Orbit (Source: Space News)
Orbit Fab, a startup offering a refueling service in space, will launch a propellant tanker to geostationary orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 lunar lander mission projected for late 2022 or early 2023. “Geostationary orbit is where most of our customers, especially the Department of Defense and intelligence community, are interested in,” said Orbit Fab CEO Daniel Faber.

The tanker will ride as a secondary payload with Intuitive Machines’ NASA-backed IM-2 lunar lander mission. The payload will get to geostationary orbit aboard a Spaceflight Sherpa-ES orbital transfer vehicle using a novel “lunar flyby” trajectory that takes it first around the back of the moon, Faber said. The mission was facilitated by Spaceflight and GeoJump, a new company offering small satellite rideshare services to the geostationary belt. The tanker is being designed to be able to store propellant for up to 15 years, he said. (9/24)

Immersion Tank Study Will Explore Impact of Space Travel on the Female Body (Source: Guardian)
It may sound like a prolonged spa break but when 20 women tuck themselves into a waterbed in the south of France for five days this week, it will be under the guise of a scientific study into the impact of space flight on the female body. The experiment, by ESA, will simulate the impact of microgravity on the musculoskeletal system, immune and cardiovascular health and hormone levels. With an increasing number of female astronauts participating in long-duration missions the immersion study is aimed at addressing a gender gap where the vast majority of space medicine research has been carried out on men. (9/24)

China Eyes Sending 1st Female Astronaut to New Space Station (Source: Space.com)
One of China's few women astronauts is expected to be named among the crew of the upcoming Shenzhou 13 mission to the Chinese space station. The next crew is expected to launch on Shenzhou 13 around Oct. 3 from Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert. While the crew has not been officially announced, Chinese media are openly discussing the inclusion of a female astronaut.

Wang Yaping meanwhile became the second Chinese woman in space in 2013 on Shenzhou 10, which visited Tiangong 1, a space lab which was designed as a testbed for the much larger Tianhe module. During the mission, Wang delivered a lecture to school children from orbit. Wang was part of the backup crew for Shenzhou 9; that backup lineup then got the go-ahead for Shenzhou 10. Wang is also known to have been in training earlier this year for space station missions. (9/24)

SpaceX Installs Mechazilla ‘claw’ on Starship Launch Tower (Source: Teslarati)
In the latest chapter of SpaceX’s Starship launch tower chronicle, the company has rolled a claw-like component to the pad and attached the device to the end of the tower’s newly installed Starship ‘quick disconnect’ arm.

A couple months ago, as SpaceX’s newest Starship prototype and first orbital-class vehicle first started to come together, it became clear that the company was implementing a significant design change starting with Ship 20 (S20). Contrary to five years of official Starship/BFR/ITS updates in which the ship (second stage) was expected to connect to pad ground systems (power, propellant, gases, communications) through the booster (first stage), Starship S20’s umbilical panel was instead conspicuously installed on the exterior of the ship’s hull.

That the move away from longstanding ship-to-booster umbilical plans was part of CEO Elon Musk’s latest crusade: moving parts and complexity from Starship and Super Heavy to the launch pad at any cost. As a result, rather than adding a little extra weight to Super Heavy and likely reducing total payload to orbit by a percent or two for an extremely simple, protecting umbilical solution, SpaceX would instead have to implement a massive swinging arm that would reach out from Starship’s launch tower to connect it to pad systems. (9/23)

Virgin Galactic Hires Aparna Chitale as Chief People Officer (Source: Virgin Galactic)
Virgin Galactic announced that veteran human resources executive Aparna Chitale will join the company as its Chief People Officer (CPO) on September 30, 2021. Chitale brings over 20 years of strategic experience at multi-national organizations, where she has scaled and led global teams at both public and privately held companies. Most recently, she served as Vice President of Human Resources at Disney Parks Experiences and Products. (9/31)

MIT, US Space Force to Explore Opportunities for Research and Workforce Development (Source: MIT)
Advancing human understanding and exploration in space is a long-standing pursuit of researchers and students at MIT. For the U.S. military, space technologies and discovery have wide-ranging implications on national security. With that history and context in mind, the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro) hosted an on-campus event on Aug. 31, marking a new research engagement between MIT and the United States Space Force (USSF) to explore mutual interests and identify opportunities in research and education. (9/23)

Nearly Two Months After Discovering a Problem With its Starliner Spacecraft, Boeing is Still Searching for Answers (Source: Washington Post)
Several days after Boeing discovered the latest problem with its Starliner spacecraft, it removed the capsule from the rocket and returned it to the factory where engineers have been playing detective, trying to figure out what went wrong. But now, some two months after it first discovered an issue with some of the valves in the spacecraft’s service module, the company still doesn’t know with 100 percent certainty what caused 13 of those valves to remain shut when they should have been open, the latest embarrassment for a program that has suffered a series of blunders. (9/24)