November 25, 2021

Astra Holds New Record for Startup-to-Orbit (Source: Space News)
Astra Space holds the record for the fastest company to reach orbit with a privately developed liquid-fueled rocket. Astra's Rocket 3.3 reached orbit five years and one month after the startup was founded. By comparison, the SpaceXFalcon 1 reached orbit after six years and four months. Firefly, Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit needed seven years or more. (11/23)

EU Regulators Probe Defense Industry Cartel Activity (Source: Reuters)
European Union antitrust regulators on Tuesday raided a defence company on concerns that it may have breached the bloc’s rules against cartels and restrictive business practices. The European Commission did not name the company, which can face fines up to 10% of its global turnover if found guilty of violating the rules. (11/23)

10 Power Players in Private Space You Don't know But Should (Source: Business Insider)
Mercedes LeGrand and Patrick Gray are managing directors at Raines International, a firm that recruits talent for the private space industry. They compiled a list of the top 10 people in space exploration that people should know about. The list includes business executives and entrepreneurs who have played key roles in their companies. Click here. (11/24) https://www.businessinsider.com/space-exploration-companies-people-you-should-know

Embry-Riddle Research Park Innovation Facility Provides Powerful Student Opportunities (Source: Aviation Pros)
When Nolan Coulter was getting his master’s degree at Embry-Riddle, he worked in the Advanced Dynamics and Control Laboratory in the university’s John Mica Engineering and Aerospace Innovation Complex (MicaPlex). A company named Modularity Space was right upstairs, so one day he decided to stop by with a resume. After meeting Modularity Space CEO Scott Weintraub and talking to him about the company’s commitment to minimizing space debris, Coulter said he “fell in love with the company’s values.”

Luckily, Weintraub was equally impressed with Coulter, and hired him — as lead engineer — just before the Aerospace Engineering graduate student completed his master’s. Eight months later, Coulter was named the company’s chief technical officer (CTO).

Coulter’s story is just one example of the many mutually beneficial collaborations that involve Embry-Riddle students and the companies at the university’s research park. As companies headquartered there have access to such university resources as high-tech equipment and technical expertise, students gain opportunities for real-life exploration in their fields of study, resume-building to further graduate studies or employment opportunities, chances to work on cutting-edge technologies, participation on patents for new inventions and full-time jobs. (11/22)

OneWeb Mulls Debris-Removal Service for Failed Satellite (Source: Space News)
OneWeb is considering options to remove one of its broadband satellites from low Earth orbit after it failed following a software issue last year. “We are looking at all potential suppliers to address de-orbit as and when the tech is safe,” said Chris Mclaughlin,. The failure was disclosed in a OneWeb financial report filed Nov. 17. That report noted OneWeb has deployed 358 satellites at 1,200 kilometers through 11 launches, “with loss of only one satellite to date.” He said the failure of OneWeb’s SL41 satellite resulted from “a software issue right at the end of the Orbit raise.” (11/24)

Why We Need Space Ethicists (Source: Noem)
If recreational or commercial ventures arrive on Mars before scientific ones, the bodies they bring will be rife with Earthly microbes, contaminating the Martian environment and preventing us from determining whether any microbial life we later find on Mars was there before us. Dwellings on or under the surface of Mars would drastically disrupt billions of years of largely undisrupted systemic processes, thereby fatally contaminating scientific observations and callously destroying that which is not ours to destroy. 

The point here is not to impugn non-Earth habitation on the whole. Surely we would learn a lot in the process of establishing settlements on Mars, and  aspects of human expansion could meaningfully inform our ethical deliberations about our extraterrestrial future. But — as philosophers often do — we may acknowledge and maintain assumptions about one debate in order to better focus on another, and the question at the moment is primarily one of timing. In the case that Martian settlements and scientific exploration of Mars are both morally appropriate, we can gain the value of both unique Martian data and new Martian societies — but this valuable outcome is only possible when science is allowed to go first.

We need space ethicists to help us weigh important and often competing concerns so that we may proceed into space in a morally justifiable manner. Moral deliberation about practical matters is often highly complex. Philosophers are experts at creating, testing and adjudicating between candidate principles and competing interests in order to arrive at the most ethically defensible position. They can help us to reason as carefully as possible as we construct new and important regulations, to balance what is valuable with weighty considerations like justice and harm prevention, and to clue us in to relevant moral considerations that may not arise in popular discourse. (11/23)

Michael Strahan to Join Next Blue Origin Space Flight (Source: New York Times)
The “Good Morning America” co-host Michael Strahan signed up to follow the billionaire Jeff Bezos and the actor William Shatner to the edge of space on the next Blue Origin spaceflight, the private company said on Tuesday.

Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Mr. Bezos, said on Tuesday that its third flight with a human crew would launch in early December. This spaceflight will have six passengers, two more than were on the company’s two previous crewed flights, and follows several other private launches this year, as billionaire-backed companies compete to send wealthy tourists on space jaunts. (11/23)

Hack-Proof Communication Network, Self-Eating-Rockets, Vanishing-Satellites: ISRO Working on Disruptive Future Tech (Source: India Today)
The Indian Space Research Organization is working on several key technologies as the space race intensifies. The Indian space agency is exploring new tools from quantum communications to self-vanishing satellites to humanoid robots to sharpen its edges as it competes with global giants like Nasa and Roscosmos.

ISRO chairman K Sivan mentioned a plethora of futuristic technologies on which ISRO has initiated research and development, including satellite-based quantum communication, quantum radar, self-eating-rocket, self-vanishing-satellite, self-healing materials, humanoid robotics, space-based-solar-power, intelligent satellites and space-vehicles, make-in-space concept, artificial-intelligence-based space applications among others.

New technologies like self-eating rockets will revolutionize the space sector, which is marred by growing concerns about space debris. ISRO is working on finding a solution to space debris. Meanwhile, its research on quantum communication will make the relay faster and much more secure in the coming era of quantum computers. (11/24)

China’s Mysterious Hypersonic Test May Take a Page from DARPA’s Past (Source: Breaking Defense)
The ongoing drips and drabs of unclear information leaking from the Pentagon about this summer’s Chinese hypersonic test are raising red flags for physicists and experts, who are questioning whether claims about the results of the test stand up to scrutiny. The new detail regards a possible launch or simple release of either a missile or some kind of countermeasure over the South China Sea. This most recent claim, if accurate, would represent a leap in capability — and one that firmly remains in the future concepts basket at the Pentagon.

The basic question at hand with regard to the new report is: could China have successfully launched a submunition from a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) while it was screaming through the atmosphere at Mach 5-plus? And the answer is, perhaps. There is a historical analog, of sorts. Two decades ago DARPA worked on a project [PDF]  known as the Common Aero Vehicle (CAV), which included a suborbital, hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) that could deliver conventional weapons anywhere in the world within two hours. (11/24)

Gaia Reveals That Most Milky Way Companion Galaxies are Newcomers to Our Corner of Space (Source: ESA)
Data from ESA’s Gaia mission is re-writing the history of our galaxy, the Milky Way. What had traditionally been thought of as satellite galaxies to the Milky Way are now revealed to be mostly newcomers to our galactic environment. A dwarf galaxy is a collection of between thousand and several billion stars.

For decades it has been widely believed that the dwarf galaxies that surround the Milky Way are satellites, meaning that they are caught in orbit around our galaxy, and have been our constant companions for many billions of years. Now the motions of these dwarf galaxies have been computed with unprecedented precision thanks to data from Gaia’s early third data release and the results are surprising.

They found that these galaxies are moving much faster than the giant stars and star clusters that are known to be orbiting the Milky Way. So fast, that they couldn’t be in orbit yet around the Milky Way, where interactions with our galaxy and its contents would have sapped their orbital energy and angular momentum. (11/24)

House Science Committee Chair Leaves Bipartisan Legacy as She Bids Farewell (Source: Science)
The science committee in the U.S. House of Representatives is the rare example of a congressional panel still capable of crafting bipartisan legislation. That ability is in part a tribute to its chair, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D–TX), a champion of increased federal support for research and expanding opportunities in science for women and people of color. But on Saturday, the 85-year-old legislator announced she would not seek a 16th 2-year term next fall, making her the 16th House Democrat to announce their departure in this election cycle.

Johnson is the first Black woman to chair the committee. Over the past 3 years she has teamed with the panel’s top Republican, Representative Frank Lucas (OK), to stake out a centrist position on a host of challenges facing the U.S. scientific community, from China’s growing scientific prowess to research misconduct. In doing so, she kept a promise made when the Democrats regained control of the House in November 2018 to “restore the credibility” of a panel that had spent a contentious 6 years under her predecessor, retired Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX). (11/22)