October 22, 2021

US Conducts 'Successful' Test of Hypersonic Missile Technology at Virginia Spaceport (Source: Space Daily)
The United States successfully tested hypersonic missile technology, a new weapons system which is already being deployed by China and Russia, the US Navy said Thursday. The test, conducted Wednesday at a NASA facility in Wallops, Virginia, is a "vital step in the development of a Navy-designed common hypersonic missile," the navy said in a statement. (10/21)

Booster Rocket Failure Stops U.S. Hypersonic Weapon Test at Alaska Spaceport (Source: CBS News)
A booster rocket carrying a hypersonic glide body failed to launch Thursday morning during a test by the Defense Department's hypersonic weapons program. "The booster stack used in the test was not part of the hypersonic program and is not related to the Common Hypersonic Glide Body. The missile booster is used for testing purposes only."

The test took place at the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska in Kodiak, and was conducted to inform hypersonic technology development. Despite the setback, the department is still on track to fielding offensive hypersonic capabilities in the early 2020s, according to Gorman. (10/22)

Claims Court Backs Space Force's Decision To Nix $113M Eastern Range Contract Solicitation (Source: Law360)
A Court of Federal Claims judge handed the U.S. Air Force a win Thursday against Florida engineering consulting firm Yang Enterprises Inc.'s allegations that the agency arbitrarily canceled a solicitation for support services worth an estimated $113 million at a tracking station in the South Atlantic called Ascension Island. (10/22)

Intelsat CEO Plans Retirement After Bankruptcy (Source: Space News)
Intelsat CEO Stephen Spengler said Thursday he will retire once the satellite operator emerges from Chapter 11. Spengler, who has been at Intelsat for 18 years, including the last six and a half years as CEO, said now was the "right moment to make my retirement plans clear" so that the company can choose a new leader. Intelsat, which filed for bankruptcy protection in May 2020, has hoped to complete its restructuring by the end of this year, but that timeline is uncertain because of legal challenges. His announcement came one day after Eutelsat, another major satellite operator, said its CEO would be stepping down to take a job outside the industry. (10/22)

Nanoracks and Lockheed Martin Offer 'Starlab' Station (Source: Space News)
Nanoracks is joining forces with Lockheed Martin on a commercial space station project. The companies announced Thursday that they plan to develop Starlab, a station that could enter service as soon as 2027. Nanoracks will be the prime contractor and Lockheed the manufacturer, with Nanoracks' majority shareholder, Voyager Space Holdings, responsible for strategy and financing. The announcement came the same day that witnesses at a Senate hearing, including former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, warned of a potential "space station gap" should the ISS end before commercial stations are ready. Bridenstine recommended that NASA spend $2 billion a year to help develop those facilities. The agency requested $101 million for LEO commercialization in its fiscal year 2022 budget request. (10/22)

Space Force Endorsement Not Enough to Incentivize Debris Removal Industry (Source: Space News)
The Space Force's interest in commercial orbital debris removal services may not be enough to close the business case for those companies. Last month, a Space Force general said the service backed the development of such capabilities, but a report Thursday by Avascent said that endorsement alone is not sufficient. The Space Force says it wants to buy debris removal services, but if space traffic management moves to another agency it's not clear who would make those buying decisions, the report noted. It recommended measures such as changing insurance requirements and adopting a space sustainability metric. (10/22)

York Space Systems Expanding Satellite Manufacturing in Colorado (Source: Space News)
York Space System is once again expanding its satellite manufacturing facility. The company said Thursday it will start building satellites at the Denver Tech Center building, with the ability to produce 70 satellites simultaneously. The company announced in May its intent to build a "mega manufacturing facility" in Denver, whose plans are still being reviewed by city officials. (10/22)

Capella and Army Explore SAR Imagery Applications (Source: Space News)
Capella Space will work with the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Technical Center to study the Army's potential use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. Under an agreement announced Thursday, Capella and the U.S. Army Payload Development Lab will explore applications for SAR through simulation and testing. Capella executives declined to comment on whether any funding was associated with the agreement, the latest in a series of relationships the company has made with U.S. government agencies. (10/22)

Ukrainian Officials Support Canadian Spaceport (Source: SpaceQ)
Ukrainian officials will travel to Canada next month to help win approval for a launch site. The delegation, led by Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Uruskyi, will visit Nova Scotia, where Maritime Launch Services (MLS) is working to finalize plans for a launch site for Ukraine's Cyclone-4M rocket. MLS executives were in Ukraine this week to discuss the status of the project, which is still awaiting environmental approvals by the provincial government. (10/22)

‘Profoundly Talented:’ Space Coast Launch Photographer Hospitalized From Crash, GoFundMe Raises $50k (Source: Click Orlando)
The fundraiser to support a Brevard County rocket launch photographer critically injured in a head-on crash has exceeded its $50,000 goal with help from the space media community. Jenny Hautmann, 20, was on her way to photograph NASA’s Lucy mission launch early Saturday morning. As she was driving along State Road 407 near the Beachline Expressway, a U-Haul truck driving the opposite direction drifted into her lane and crashed head-on into her Tesla Model 3, according to Florida Highway Patrol. Hautmann was airlifted to the hospital where her family said she has since undergone five surgeries. (10/21)

DoD Preparing for Cislunar ‘Space Superhighway,’ Complete with Pit Stops (Source: Defense One)
U.S. Transportation Command and the U.S. Space Force see a future space superhighway system where the United States, commercial partners, and allies would be able to make repeat, regular trips to the moon or beyond by using multiple hubs where they could gas up, have maintenance done, and even throw out their trash.

Now they’re thinking about getting those orbiting pit stops up and running sooner rather than later. Because it’s not just about making the 238,855-mile lunar journey a little more comfortable. It’s about preventing China from building the hubs first. “There’s a first-mover advantage here,” Space Force Brig. Gen. John Olson said Wednesday at a panel with TRANSCOM at a National Defense Transportation Association seminar on space logistics.

A slide presentation shared at the conference showed how hub positions at low earth orbit, geosynchronous orbit and cislunar orbit would provide a supported route of travel to the moon. “Within this decade, probably by the middle of the decade, we'll start to see lunar surface operations happening,” said Sam Ximenes, chief executive officer of the Exploration Architecture Corporation, (XArc) who also spoke on the panel. (10/20)

Former Lead Virgin Galactic Test Pilot Takes New Gig at Blue Origin (Source: CNN)
Mark "Forger" Stucky, who for six years headed the test pilot program at space company Virgin Galactic before he says he was fired earlier this year, is taking a job with the company's chief competitor, Blue Origin. Stucky said he will join Blue Origin's "Advanced Development Programs" team, where he said in a statement to CNN that he will "do my best to contribute to [CEO Jeff Bezos'] amazing vision of humans not just having a continuous presence in space but truly becoming a space-faring species." Blue Origin confirmed Stucky's hiring in an email. (10/19)

Hague Institute's "Off-World Approach" Seeks Inclusive, Equitable Space Future (Source: Space Policy Online)
Ken Hodgkins, recently retired after two decades as the State Department's space policy chief, has joined with Sohair Salam Saber to create the Off-World Approach as part of The Hague Institute for Global Justice. Their goal is to bring together space experts from around the world to formulate solutions that ensure the future of space is peaceful, inclusive, and equitable. The two envision the Off-World Approach as a platform for finding solutions to space security and justice issues like space debris and space traffic management. (10/210)

NASA Accepts Nuclear Lifetime Achievement Award (Source: NASA)
Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA HQ in Washington, accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of NASA at The Observatory at the America’s Square on October 19 during the opening ceremony for Nuclear Science Week. National Museum of Nuclear Science and History Director Jim Walther, honored NASA and the Department of Energy with the 2021 Nuclear Lifetime Achievement Award for their work in nuclear science, space exploration, and discovery. (10/20)

SpaceX Begins Installing ‘Mechazilla’ Arms Designed to Catch Starship Rockets (Source: Teslarati)
After a busy few weeks spent attaching Mechazilla’s two rocket-catching arms to a carriage-like backbone, SpaceX has begun the process of installing the integrated structure on Starbase’s ~450 ft (~135m) tall Starship ‘launch tower’.

Once complete, SpaceX will have created a first-of-its-kind launch tower designed to stack and manipulate Starships and Super Heavy boosters in far worse conditions than cranes can tolerate and catch both rocket stages out of mid-air. Referred to internally as ‘chopsticks,’ the giant pair of steel arms will join a third ‘quick disconnect’ (QD) arm tasked with stabilizing Super Heavy during Starship installation and feeding the reusable upper stage power, comms links, and some 1200 tons (~2.65M lb) of propellant. (10/21)

Ten Years of Soyuz at Europe’s Spaceport (Source: ESA)
On 21 October 2011, the first pair of Galileo navigation satellites was launched by a Russian-built Soyuz rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The introduction of Russia’s Soyuz 2 rocket to Europe’s Spaceport was a milestone of strategic cooperation in the space transportation sector between Europe and the Russian Federation, and an exciting new opportunity for ESA.

ESA’s Ariane 5 rocket at the Spaceport met all requirements for launching large satellites, while ESA’s Vega rocket – still under development at that time – would serve the small satellite market. It was found that the reliable Russian Soyuz would consolidate European access to space for medium-sized satellites, thereby complementing the ESA developed launch vehicles, Ariane 5 and Vega, increasing the flexibility of launch services from Europe’s Spaceport.

Most of the Soyuz launcher-dedicated installations were like those of Baikonur and minimal modifications had to be made to the Kourou versions of the vehicle, Soyuz-STA and Soyuz-STB, to preserve the overall coherence within Europe’s Spaceport, conform to the safety regulations in force and to deal with environmental conditions. The main change made by Europe’s Spaceport to the operational procedures developed in Baikonur was the integration process, with the introduction of a mobile gantry protecting the rocket from the weather in the lead up to launch and enabling vertical integration of the upper composite. (10/20)

The Mission to Break Barriers to Space Travel for People with Disabilities (Source: The Verge)
When Sina Bahram shifted into weightlessness for the first time on Sunday, he could feel the air brushing past his skin as his body began to float into the air. As someone who’d longed to be an astronaut since he was four years old, he’d been waiting many years to have this exact feeling. Bahram was one of 12 people with a disability to experience weightlessness on Oct. 17, during a parabolic flight, which took off from Long Beach, California.

It was the first flight of its kind, arranged by a non-profit called Mission: AstroAccess, which has the stated goal of flying one or more of these flyers — called ambassadors — to space in the years ahead. Recently, the European Space Agency announced plans to select an astronaut with a physical disability through its Parastronaut Feasibility Project. (10/20)

Who Are the World’s Biggest Climate Polluters? Satellites Sweep for Culprits (Source: Wall Street Journal)
Satellites are emerging as a tool to fight climate change, exposing hidden sources of greenhouse gas emissions and allowing governments to monitor compliance with international pacts. Over the past three years, satellite images have been used to spotlight previously unreported leaks of methane—or to bump up estimates of known emissions—in Russia, Turkmenistan, Texas’ Permian Basin and elsewhere, in some cases triggering international scuffles. (10/19)

NASA to Launch Secretive US Military Payloads on 3 Suborbital Rockets at Virginia Spaceport (Source: Space.com)
NASA will launch three sounding rockets from coastal Virginia on flights that local observers may be able to spot in the sky. Details about the launches are scarce, as the rockets are carrying payloads from the U.S. Department of Defense. But the three rockets will take off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wednesday (Oct. 20) between 5 and 11 p.m. EDT. Should foul weather scuttle the flights, NASA has slated Thursday (Oct. 21) and Friday (Oct. 22) as backup launch dates. (10/20)