October 10, 2021

With NASA Partnership, Orlando Begins Planning for Air Taxis, Flying Cars (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Orlando is preparing for when flying cars are an option for those who want to soar over congested highways or between nearby cities. And they may arrive far sooner than 2062, as The Jetsons predicted. The city has signed onto a partnership with NASA to develop strategies for welcoming electric oversized drones, which take off vertically from landing pads called vertiports. The city’s first vertiport, to be built by the German company Lillium, is planned for the Lake Nona area.

Though officials suspect the mode of transportation could take off in coming years, so far the Federal Aviation Authority hasn’t approved any such vehicles for use. But a recent study found that a piece of a projected $2.5-billion market could be in play for early adopters of the technology. Nancy Mendonca, a NASA official working with Orlando and other governments in the partnership, said the agency has heard from the FAA that companies are already applying for certifications for potential air taxis. (10/7)

NRO Opens Up to Industry with New Contract Vehicle (Source: FNN)
The National Reconnaissance Office is looking to more quickly take advantage of what it calls “an explosion” of commercial innovation in the space industry through a new, open-ended contracting vehicle.

Chris Scolese, director of the NRO, said the agency will release a new Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) in the next “month or so.” The move will allow NRO “to evaluate, leverage and even integrate new and emerging technologies and phenomenologies, like radar, hyperspectral and [radio-frequency] sensing as they become available,” Scolese said. (10/8)

NGA Ensuring Continuity for Global Navigation Systems Through New Competition (Source: FNN)
Here’s something new to worry about: Navigation systems depend on measurement of magnetic forces around the globe, and the satellites that take the measurements are about to age out. But the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is on it with a special funding program called the MAGQUEST Challenge. MAGQUEST didn’t start with, 'okay, we need someone to build us a satellite.' We asked what is the best way to collect this needed geomagnetic data? And that first phase of MAGQUEST was literally an idea phase. And we got all sorts of crazy ideas.

The current system that collects this magnetic data is the Swarm satellite constellation, put up by the Europeans in 2013. Obviously, the first question is, hey, are the Europeans going to do a Swarm follow-on? They had said no, we’re not planning on doing a follow-on system. So that fell to NGA to say, okay, this is potentially a problem if we don’t have a new collection system. That spawned MAGQUEST.

We got through to where we are now, which is an end of phase three and kicking off phase four. What ended up floating to the surface were small CubeSats. So we have three teams, each with a different CubeSat competing in MAGQUEST phase four. (10/8)

DOD Taking Action on Climate Change (Source: Air Force Magazine)
The Defense Department has confirmed the adoption of a Climate Adaptation Plan, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin citing climate change as an "existential threat to our nation's security." The plan will impact DOD operations and suppliers, with Austin noting that the US military will take "bold steps" that are "good for the climate and also good for our mission of defending the nation." (10/7)

NASA Spacecraft Will Crash Into an Asteroid at 15,000 mph. Will it Mmake a Dent? (Source: Space.com)
NASA has announced the launch date for an upcoming mission to punch an asteroid in the face with a high-speed spacecraft. The mission, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), is scheduled to launch at 7:20 p.m. EST on Nov. 23, and it could help the world's space agencies figure out how to divert potentially lethal asteroids from impacting Earth.

DART will test an asteroid defense plan called the kinetic impactor technique — essentially, shooting one or more large spacecraft into the path of an oncoming asteroid in order to change the space rock's motion. The target is a binary asteroid (two space rocks moving in tandem) called Didymos, which consists of one larger asteroid measuring about 2,600 feet (780 meters) in diameter and a smaller "moonlet" measuring about 525 feet (160 m) across. (10/8)

Hiber Abandons Plans for IoT Satellite Constellation (Source: Space News)
Dutch company Hiber is dropping plans to deploy an internet-of-things smallsat constellation, electing instead to provide similar services through a third-party system. In a Sep. 24 letter to the Federal Communications Commission, the company said it was surrendering its market access authorization, effectively a license to provide communications services in the United States. It is also surrendering a license to operate 10,000 terminals that would have used those satellites.

Hiber had been authorized to operate a 24-satellite system, with four launched to date. The first two launched in late 2018 as payloads on PSLV and Falcon 9 rideshare missions. A third launched on another Falcon 9 rideshare mission in January 2021 and the fourth as a secondary payload on a Soyuz-2 launch in March 2021. However, Hiber said in the filing that two of the four satellites are no longer operational. The other two, the company, have suffered technical issues that “prevent Hiber from deploying its anticipated commercial service.” (10/6)