October 28, 2021

NASA Wants to Buy SLS Rockets at Half Price, Fly Them Into the 2050s (Source: Ars Technica)
NASA has asked the US aerospace industry how it would go about "maximizing the long-term efficiency and sustainability" of the Space Launch System rocket and its associated ground systems. The request comes as NASA and its chief contractor for the rocket, Boeing, are nearing the launch pad after a long, arduous, and expensive development process that has lasted more than a decade. The heavy lift SLS rocket, carrying an Orion space capsule, should finally make its debut during the first half of 2022.

In its request NASA says it would like to fly the SLS rocket for "30 years or more" as a national capability. Moreover, the agency wants the rocket to become a "sustainable and affordable system for moving humans and large cargo payloads to cislunar and deep-space destinations." NASA sees itself as the "anchor tenant" of the launch system and procuring one crewed flight per year for the next decade or longer. Where appropriate, the agency said, industry will "market" the large launch vehicle to other customers, including the science community and other government and non-government entities.

How does one make a system that has been anything but affordable and sustainable into something that is affordable and sustainable? NASA says it wants to transition ownership of rocket production and ground services to the private industry. In return, this private contractor should build and launch the SLS at a substantial savings of 50 percent or more off of the current industry "baseline per flight cost." Notably, NASA has never publicly stated this baseline flight cost. (10/28)

China's Kuaizhou-1A Rocket Launches Satellite (Source: Xinhua)
A Kuaizhou-1A carrier rocket carrying the Jilin-1 Gaofen 02F satellite blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the northwest China, Oct. 27, 2021. The satellite was launched at 2:19 p.m. (Beijing Time) and entered the planned orbit. (10/28)

Shijian-21: Satellite Crusher or Space Debris Cleaner? (Source: Asia Times)
Just months ago China conducted not one, but two hypersonic missiles tests, both of which circled the earth before hitting their targets. The shock waves from these tests are still reverberating in the Pentagon and the White House, as fears of a new arms race looms. US Senator Angus King described the new weapon as a “strategic game-changer with the dangerous potential to fundamentally undermine strategic stability as we know it.”

Chinese officials said it was “a peaceful space experiment.” Adding fuel to that fire, China expanded that tech gap just a bit further this week as it launched a new satellite that analysts say can be used as a weapon capable of grabbing and crushing American satellites. The Shijian-21 satellite was sent aloft ostensibly for cleaning “space debris,” according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., Beijing’s state-run space company. The company stated that the satellite is “tasked with demonstrating technologies to alleviate and neutralize space debris.” (10/28)

Space Force Plans Joint Exercises with South Korea (Source: Space News)
Joint drills between the U.S. Space Force and South Korea's air force will focus on enhancing space situational awareness capabilities. Those drills, part of an agreement between the organizations announced in August, will help the South Korean air force improve its capabilities to monitor objects that approach its satellites, and to provide warnings of reentering objects. The two militaries are also working to cooperate on satellite navigation, as South Korea prepares to develop a regional satellite navigation system compatible with GPS. (10/28)
 
Former Canadian Astronaut Not Among Trudeau's New Cabinet Members (Source: SpaceQ)
The first Canadian in space is no longer part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet. Marc Garneau was not assigned a post when Trudeau formed a new government after recent elections. Garneau previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Transport. He is rumored to be under consideration to be Canada's next ambassador to France. (10/28)

German Astronaut Could Be 600th Person in Space (Source: Collect Space)
A German astronaut on Crew-3 will be the 600th person in space by one metric. Matthias Maurer is one of three first-time astronauts on Crew-3, but NASA is considering him the 600th person. Those statistics are based on counting people who have flown at least 50 miles high and thus eligible for astronaut wings by U.S. government agencies; that includes some people on suborbital flights that did not go above 100 kilometers, the Kármán Line used by international organizations as the demarcation of space. "Six hundred in 60 years, it makes for about 10 people a year, but I think in the next few years we'll see an exponential rise," Maurer said. (10/28)

Russia Launches Cargo to ISS (Source: Space.com)
A Progress cargo spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station after a launch Wednesday night. A Soyuz-2 rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 8 p.m. Eastern and placed the Progress MS-18 cargo spacecraft into orbit. That spacecraft, carryring more than 2,400 kilograms of supplies, is taking a traditional two-day approach to the ISS, with docking scheduled for Friday. (10/28)

NASA Still Studying Lucy Solar Panel Problem (Source: NASA)
NASA is taking more time to study the solar panel problem with the Lucy spacecraft. NASA said Wednesday that one solar array which did not latch into place after deployment appears to be between 75% and 95% deployed. The spacecraft is in a standard cruise mode and has performed several small maneuvers with no adverse effect on the partially deployed array. Engineers are studying options, including leaving the array in its current state, with no attempt to redeploy the array expected before mid-November. (10/28)

Dish Says FCC Ignored Evidence SpaceX Interfered With Satellites (Source: Bloomberg)
Dish Network Corp. is arguing in the D.C. Circuit that the Federal Communications Commission inappropriately ignored evidence in a proceeding to allow Space Exploration Holdings LLC to use the 12 GHz band. The FCC ignored unrebutted expert studies that show SpaceX’s satellites would exceed the band’s power limits, causing “unacceptable” interference with Dish’s satellites that serve more than 22 million families in the U.S., Dish said. Dish in May filed the complaint at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in response to an FCC order authorizing SpaceX satellites. (10/27)

OneWeb Working Toward Deal to Provide Coverage in Saudi Arabia (Source: Space News)
OneWeb is working with a Saudi company on a $200 million joint venture to provide services in the Middle East. OneWeb is colaborating with NEOM Tech & Digital Holding Company, a business entity Saudi Arabia created as part of an effort to develop a planned modern city and tourist destination in the northwest of the country. NEOM is spending $170 million to buy satellite capacity from OneWeb under a seven-year contract, and is investing $30 million in a joint venture with OneWeb that will resell the capacity in Saudi Arabia, the broader Middle East and neighboring East African countries. (10/28)

JWST Launch Preparations Underway (Source: Space News)
Launch preparations for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope are on track. During a panel discussion at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) Wednesday, NASA, ESA and Arianespace officials said they remain on schedule for the Dec. 18 launch of JWST on an Ariane 5. Reviews are taking place this week to confirm the Ariane 5 launched over the weekend performed as expected, and the formal launch campaign will begin next week. NASA has at least 11 days of schedule margin for JWST. (10/28)

Rogozin: Space Tourists Should be Kept Away From Astronauts (Source: The National)
Space tourists could “distract crews and cause disruptions” on orbital stations, Russia's space chief has said. Roscosmos director general Dmitry Rogozin said a dedicated area on space stations for such tourists was required to minimise disruption to proper missions. He said the Russian space agency would be adding a module for tourists to the next station it develops. His comments came as Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX take more VIP tourists into orbit. (10/27)

France's Spartan Space Plans Emergency Lunar Habitat (Source: The National)
Spartan Space, a French start-up, was displaying an inflatable lunar habitat. Called Euro Hab, the habitat could host up to four astronauts and is designed to offer a secondary shelter while their spacecraft is on the lunar surface. “Our goal is that it can be used as a safe haven if the primary habitat is failing,” Mohamed Makthoum, from Spartan Space, told The National.

“It would act like a shelter. For the lunar habitat like the Apollo era, the astronaut could only explore to a certain degree before the light support system on their suit failed, so they would have to come back again. “The purpose of this habitat is that you put something at the edge of their limit and the astronaut could explore without worries.” The balloon will be installed on the lander and inflate automatically once the command is sent. (10/27)

Terraforming: Why the Moon is a Better Target Than Mars (Source: Big Think)
At first glance, it might appear that Mars is much better suited for terraforming than the Moon. After all, Mars already has large quantities of water on it: in both the solid and gaseous phases. Mars had a past where liquid water was rife on the surface, and probably spent more than the first billion years of its existence with oceans and rivers throughout its surface. Mars is larger and more massive than the Moon; it has a higher gravitational acceleration than the Moon does at its surface; and its atmosphere, while thin, is rich in carbon dioxide.

But Mars also faces issues that the Moon doesn’t. For one, Mars is farther from the Sun, meaning that we receive less energy from the Sun on every square meter of area. For another, Mars’s atmosphere is a tremendous hazard, with high winds, routine sandstorms, and terrain that changes as readily as sand dunes do on Earth. Mars, having no protective magnetic field like Earth does, is also subjected to bombardment by solar wind particles.

By contrast, the Moon is a much more favorable environment by many metrics. A one-way journey to the Moon takes mere days, the same as it did in the Apollo era. Editor's Note: This article fails to acknowledge that the Moon is simply too small to maintain an atmosphere. Maybe the title should replace "terraforming" with "colonization". Click here. (10/27)

ULA Workers Protest Vaccine Mandate in Alabama (Source: WAAY)
Several protests against the federal COVID vaccine mandate were held outside the United Launch Alliance facility in Decatur this week. "I think it's not only one, a violation of our Constitutional rights to mandate our vaccine, but I think it's evil," ULA welder Hunter Creger said. "I think it's evil what they're doing to us."

It's honestly a lose-lose situation. On one hand, the company risks losing work; on the other, they'll lose their employees. In the last few weeks, ULA said, several of its contracts were modified with strict requirements to make sure all employees will be fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Protesters say forcing them to get the vaccine is un-American, but the company says it was done to keep them safe. (10/27)

ULA Worker Suspended Pending Further Investigation (Source: WHNT)
The organizer of the employee demonstrations in front of United Launch Alliance in Decatur is now facing backlash for his role. The group has been protesting both day and night against the plant’s vaccination mandate that they believe is wrong. Hunter Creger is now out of a job. Creger, an employee at ULA, was sent home suspended by the company, pending further investigation.

Creger, a Laser Weld Technician at ULA, reported for his day shift at the rocket parts manufacturing plant on Wednesday for the first time this week. On Monday and Tuesday, Creger organized a protest with other employees to raise their voices in unison over the company’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate. The mandate requires the federal workers at the plant to be vaccinated by Friday, October 29, or face termination. (10/27)

From NASA to Blue Origin, the Cutting-Edge Space Industry has Old Problems: Sexism and Harassment (Source: Florida Today)
The space industry, a cutting-edge field rife with romanticized goals of exploration, has an ancient problem: sexism and harassment. Organizations from private spaceflight companies to public agencies like NASA have been the subject of behavior accusations in recent months that range from the inappropriate to potentially criminal.

A group of former and current Blue Origin employees published an essay last month calling out sexism at Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company. Dozens have joined a Facebook group dedicated to offering support in dealing with inappropriate behavior on the job, leading some to make their stories public. NASA even changed its code of conduct for members of the media, potentially giving officials more leeway in enforcing bans of people caught behaving badly.

According to experts and whistleblowers, the idealistic nature of space exploration and sharp focus on "the mission" adds to a dangerous dynamic in which women, already a minority in the high-tech workplace, might be willing to put up with unacceptable behaviors to achieve success. If left unresolved, insiders are concerned this culture could someday extend to astronauts on assignment or deep space colonization efforts. Click here. (10/28)

Private Space Stations Will Soon Be In Orbit (Source: The Economist)
On October 21 a consortium led by Lockheed Martin, one of America’s biggest aerospace companies, announced plans to build a permanently crewed commercial space station called Starlab, and launch it into orbit around Earth by 2027. Not to be outdone, on the 25th, Blue Origin unveiled plans for a yet more ambitious effort. Orbital Reef is a joint venture with (among others) Lockheed’s competitor Boeing. It will host up to ten people and will serve, as Blue Origin put it, as a “mixed-use business park.” The hope is that this orbiting industrial estate will open by the end of the decade.

Private-enterprise missions to orbit are not new. Mr Bezos’s rival Elon Musk, for example, has been offering them, via his rocketry firm SpaceX, for several years. But these two projects, if they succeed, will be on a far grander scale. Eye-catching though they are, however, they are not alone. Several other firms, egged on in some cases by NASA, that country’s space agency, have similar ideas. The firms’ owners hope to make money. Acting together with NASA, these motives seem likely, some time this decade, to result in the first real settlement of outer space by private enterprise. (10/27)

Industry Group Working to Accelerate Partnerships for Space Innovation (Source: PRWeb)
NewSpace New Mexico (NewSpace), a 501(c)(3) non-profit that is uniting and igniting the business-focused commercial space ecosystem, is creating a data-driven platform intended to facilitate partnerships and accelerate innovation. The platform, developed in partnership with data science and analytics firm RS21, will improve virtual collaboration, learning environments and co-innovation for its more than one hundred members in government, industry and academia.

The platform will support a public-facing website, a real-time stakeholder engagement dashboard and a membership management application that centralizes NewSpace membership sign-up, access and security features. As it develops, the platform will also incorporate open source and procured data of interest to the NewSpace community to enhance knowledge management and connect members to national and international opportunities. (10/27)

What Computing Tech Will Drive Future Space Exploration? (Source: IEEE Spectrum)
At the heart of every successful space mission is a sophisticated and capable computer system. But which kind of computing system will best serve humankind's future, more ambitious space explorations? Even for earthly applications, it can be challenging to develop computers that are the right size, weight, power, and cost. Often one of these desirable features are achieved at the expense of another. For example, more powerful computing systems tend be less energy efficient.

"In space processing applications, these tradeoffs are even more critical, where large volumes of data need to be processed within strict execution time and power consumption constraints," explains Michael Cannizzaro at the NSF Center for Space, High-Performance, and Resilient Computing. Cannizzaro has been studying and comparing different computing architectures for space applications, and has narrowed in on a choice. As part of his Masters thesis completed this past summer, he is recommending that RISC-V—which has been gaining much traction recently—could be an attractive option for future space missions. (10/27)

UAE Considers India's Rockets to Launch Small Satellites From New Spaceport (Source: India Today)
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) could use low-cost launch vehicles developed by the Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO) for lifting off its small satellites. Sarah Al Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Technology and Chairperson of UAE Space Agency, said that the two nations are looking at a wide variety of scientific cooperation in the space sector.

"We spoke during the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) with ISRO, looking at different aspects that are important to both countries. ISRO provides a low-cost launch capacity that we would like to explore for smaller satellites launching out of UAE," the UAE Space Agency chief said. India has been known worldwide for its cost-effective missions to Moon and Mars and its success ratio in launching satellites with its indigenous launch vehicles. (10/28)

Blue Origin's New Glenn: Building the Road to Space at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Blue Origin)
Down in Florida we’re hard at work building our orbital rocket, New Glenn. This is the rocket that will help build the road to space. Here's a video featuring rocket production and launch pad activities at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. Click here. (10/15)

Space Startups Selected for Air Force Accelerator Program in New Mexico (Source: Space News)
A new accelerator program funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the U.S. Space Force announced Oct. 27 it has selected six U.S. and international startups for its first cohort. The program called “Soft Landing” was created to attract space industry startups to New Mexico, where AFRL is based. The lab has been actively supporting the space industry, sponsoring the Hyperspace and Catalyst Campus accelerator programs.

Gabe Mounce, deputy director of SpaceWERX, said these accelerators help businesses figure out how they might work with the federal government. “And we are making it easier for the Space Force and other government partners to learn about emerging technologies,” he said. Click here to see the list. (10/27)

AAC Clyde Space Teams with Orbcomm and Saab on Maritime Satcom Demos (Source: AAC Clyde Space)
AAC Clyde Space AB signed a memorandum of understanding with Orbcomm and Saab to develop maritime communication services based on a VHF Data Exchange System. The firms plan to conduct space-based and terrestrial demonstrations as part of their campaign to establish a global maritime communication network for ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communications. (10/27)

Spain's Sener Aerospacial Plans Demo on Rocket Factory Augsburg Launch (Source: Rocket Factory Augsburg)
Sener Aeroespacial of Spain signed a contract to launch its E.T.Pack technology demonstrator on the RFA One rocket from Germany's Rocket Factory Augsburg AG. E.T.Pack is a deorbit device for satellites and rocket stages that includes an electrodynamic tether. (10/27)

Italy's D-Orbit Explores Oman-Based Satellite Manufacture (Source: Times of Oman)
D-Orbit of Italy is discussing a potential partnership with International Emerging Technology Company of Oman to establish a satellite manufacturing and space logistics facility in Oman. The companies signed a memorandum of understanding at the International Astronautical Congress. (10/27)

Swarms of Robots Could Explore Lunar Hills (Source: Charles River Analytics)
Charles River Analytics is working with Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Novel Engineering for Swarm Technologies Lab to develop swarms of robots to explore lunar hills, craters and lava tubes without human intervention. If it works, teams of four to ten robots will be smart enough to divvy up tasks by recognizing the jobs each one is best suited to perform. The robots also will need to recognize their own wear and tear. (10/27)

Innovative Single-Person Spacecraft Design Passes Leak Test (Source: Space.com)
A spacecraft designed to eventually replace many spacewalking astronaut activities passed two key pressure tests in September, representatives from the company building the spacecraft said. The spacecraft concept from Maryland-based Genesis Engineering Solutions is just big enough for one person; an astronaut would float inside the spacecraft for several hours and use robotic arms to manipulate equipment. Propulsive thrusters would allow the spacecraft to nestle close to a target, similar to NASA's Manned Maneuvering Unit jetpack that was briefly tested on astronaut spacesuits in the 1980s. (10/5)

Satellogic Signs Agreement to Provide Dedicated Satellite Constellation to the Republic of Paraguay (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Satellogic, a leader in sub-meter resolution satellite imagery collection, announced today that it has signed a letter of intent (the “LOI”) with Agencia Espacial del Paraguay (“AEP”) to develop a Space-as-a-Service program for the country. As a result of this LOI, Satellogic and AEP will undertake various technological and scientific projects in accordance with AEP’s Institutional Strategic Plan and the Space Policy of Paraguay.

The LOI provides a framework for the start-up and development of a dedicated satellite constellation network. Satellogic’s Dedicated Satellite Constellation Program enables municipal, state, and national governments to manage a fleet of satellites over a specific area of interest and develop a geospatial imaging program at unmatched frequency, resolution, and cost. (10/26)

Announcement of Opportunity to Fly Payloads on ESA’s Space Rider (Source: ESA)
ESA is offering the opportunity for payloads to ride on board the first return flight, and future flights, to low orbit of its reusable Space Rider. Applications should reach ESA by 30 November. Space Rider’s planned debut is in 2023. Launched on a Vega-C rocket, it will provide a laboratory in space for an array of applications, orbit altitudes and inclinations. ESA has released a dedicated Announcement of Opportunity with no restriction on nationality for commercial or institutional customers.

Scientific experimentation in microgravity for pharmaceutics and biology are key examples of a Space Rider service. Other examples include in-orbit demonstration and validation of technologies for applications such as robotics for exploration, instrumentation for Earth observation, surveillance for Earth disaster monitoring, and satellites inspection. (10/26)