September 4, 2021

SpaceX All-Civilian Flight Clears Flight Readiness Review for Kennedy Space Center Launch (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
In less than two weeks, four civilians are looking to blast off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for the company’s first civilian flight of its Crew Dragon spacecraft. The Inspiration4 mission aims to take four passengers on a multiday orbital trip launching from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A on Wednesday, Sep. 15. Three days before liftoff, the company will narrow down the launch window to five hours based on weather conditions. There is a backup launch opportunity on Sept. 16.

The mission is slated to last three days and reach an altitude of 335 miles before returning to a yet-to-be-determined splashdown site off the coast of Florida either in the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX teams performed the flight readiness review on Thursday to evaluate the Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon spacecraft, ground systems, crew training and other check boxes for the planned launch.

The crew has been training since March 2021 performing simulations for Dragon and trying out weightlessness with Zero-G flights among other preparations. They spent time at Kennedy Space Center this past week to check out the hardware that will take them to space. (9/3)

The Universe Has Already Made Almost All the Stars It Will Ever Make (Source: Nautilus)
Despite doing a decent job at mathematically phrasing a long-recognized puzzle, Heinrich Olbers in 1823 failed to offer a good solution for why the celestial sphere was mostly dark, leaving room for none other than Edgar Allen Poe to put things onto the right track in 1848. Poe’s qualitative insight was that perhaps the cosmos was simply not old enough to fill the sky with light. The modern resolution to the paradox contains some subtleties, but it does indeed mostly come down to the fact that we do not live in an endless and unchanging universe.

Not only does the universe have a finite age, it has a complex history of making stars (with finite lifespans), and it is undergoing an expansion that dilutes the intensity of light that reaches us from distant places. Consequently, our sky is not uniformly bright to our eyes, and most of the cosmos is photon-starved compared to our everyday circumstances. While we have a pretty robust (although still incomplete) understanding of the basic physical drivers and processes that lead to the existence of individual stars or groups of stars, when it comes to entire populations of stars in galaxies things are rather trickier.

Research over the past 30 or so years has revealed that the formation of stars across the universe reached an extended peak of activity roughly 10 to 11 billion years ago. Since that epoch, while new stars are certainly still being produced, the rate of production has lessened dramatically. So much so that it appears that the great majority of stars that the universe will ever make—perhaps 95 percent of them—have already been made. The future is one of ever-dwindling numbers of stellar newborns, punctuated by occasional flurries as galaxies merge or other triggering events occur. (9/1)

SpaceX and OneWeb Evolutions: Collaborating for Safety, Augmenting with Alternative Services (Source: Quartz)
SpaceX likes to iterate quickly, testing its satellites on orbit—an effective strategy but one that has led the company to lose about 148 of its launched satellites for various reasons. OneWeb is building a smaller constellation, and tends to adopt a more traditional no-failures-on-orbit approach, with more emphasis on safety, like having grapple fixtures attached to each spacecraft in case they need to be disposed of in the future. Still, both companies have big incentives to collaborate and minimize potential collisions: “Our team and the SpaceX situational team are working on the phone, very constructively,” Ladovaz says. “The intention is making sure that we do things safely.”

Neither company has finalized the design of their spacecraft. SpaceX is planning a new iteration of its Starlink satellites that communicate with each other via in-space laser signals, a move that will allow them to rely less on ground downlink stations. SpaceX has also acquired Swarm, an internet-of-things satellite company with technology that could conceivably be carried by Starlink. For OneWeb, the next priority is to offer a guidance, navigation, and timing signal as a backstop and complement to GPS. “There will be other payloads in the future,” Ladovaz says. “Once you launch satellites in space, there are a lot of opportunities. The risk is we should avoid to make it a Christmas tree.” (9/2)

Solovyov on the Deteriorating State of Russia's ISS Modules (Source: TIME)
Vladimir Solovyov, a chief engineer for the Russian space program, gave a grim assessment of the six Russian modules that make up the 16-module station. The Zarya (meaning "dawn") module, launched in 1998, now has superficial cracks radiating through it, Solovyov warned—cracks that will slowly grow less superficial and more severe over time. Even worse, 80% of the systems in all of the modules are beyond their expiration date, a fact which, Solovyov says, could cause downstream disaster. "Literally a day after the [in-flight] systems are fully exhausted, irreparable failures may begin,” he told Russian state media in a candid interview. (9/3)

Relativity Shares Video of Progress Developing Cape Canaveral Launch Complex (Source: Relativity Space)
As we head into the long weekend, we are grateful for our world-class team at Cape Canaveral, as well as the entire Relativity team, for working hard and going above and beyond to make sure we are prepared for launch! Click here. (9/3)

BlackSky Secures Investment From Palantir (Source: Space Daily)
Palantir Technologies Inc. has committed to making an equity investment in BlackSky, which is scheduled to close after the completion of BlackSky's business combination with Osprey Technology Acquisition Corp. Following the successful completion of a joint pilot program between BlackSky and Palantir, this investment signifies the strengthening of a strategic collaboration that will enable BlackSky to further extend its capabilities and meet the increasing demand for global monitoring services from its and Palantir's customers.

Through the pilot project, BlackSky automatically delivered insights and intelligence to Palantir customers within minutes of collection, without any human interaction. The ability to quickly deliver worldwide intelligence that can inform proactive strategic decision-making introduces a significant advantage in time-sensitive operations. (9/2)

New Augmented Reality Applications Assist Astronaut Repairs to Space Station (Source: Space Daily)
Most often, communications delays between the ISS crew and ground are nearly unnoticeable as they are routed from one Tracking and Data Relay Satellite to another as the station orbits about 250 miles above Earth. As NASA prepares to explore the Moon, about 240,000 miles away, and eventually Mars, which averages about 245 million miles away, NASA is developing tools to increase astronaut autonomy to operate spacecraft or systems without assistance from the Mission Control Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center because communication delays from Earth will last longer.

The T2 Augmented Reality (T2AR) project demonstrates how station crew members can inspect and maintain scientific and exercise equipment critical to maintaining crew health and achieving research goals without assistance from ground teams. T2AR is the first in-space operational use of the HoloLens in combination with custom-built AR software, which enables an astronaut to perform unassisted maintenance and inspections on a major piece of crew support hardware. (9/3)

NASA's Deep Space Network Looks to the Future (Source: Space Daily)
When NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover touched down on the Red Planet, the agency's Deep Space Network (DSN) was there, enabling the mission to send and receive the data that helped make the event possible. When OSIRIS-REx took samples of asteroid Bennu this past year, the DSN played a crucial role, not just in sending the command sequence to the probe, but also in transmitting its stunning photos back to Earth.

The network has been the backbone of NASA's deep space communications since 1963, supporting 39 missions regularly, with more than 30 NASA missions in development. The team behind it is now working hard to increase capacity, making a number of improvements to the network that will help advance future space exploration. (9/2)

German Space Agency Chief to Discuss Lunar Base Project with Roscosmos (Source: Sputnik)
The head of the German Space Agency at DLR, Walther Pelzer, has told Sputnik he plans to discuss the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) initiative with Roscosmos in an upcoming meeting that he hopes will be attended by its head Dmitry Rogozin. In March, Russia reaffirmed its lunar exploration ambitions by signing a memorandum on cooperation with China's National Space Administration on the creation of the ILRS.

"I'm going to discuss it [ILRS] with Roscosmos. We already have an appointment as far as I know, and then we can go more into detail but right now we are not so far", Pelzer said. ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher earlier told Sputnik that European Space Agency (ESA) member states are discussing an offer made by Russia and China about possible participation on the ILRS, but that no decision has yet been reached. (9/3)