November 6, 2021

Maritime Launch Services to Go Gublic with SPAC (Source: SpaceQ)
Maritime Launch Services (MLS), the company proposing to build a spaceport in Nova Scotia, will go public in Canada through a proposed reverse takeover of Jaguar Financial Corp. Jaguar was previously a Canadian merchant bank generally investing in companies Jaguar determines to be undervalued, overlooked and underappreciated. (11/5)

Girl Scouts, Aerojet Rocketdyne, and AIA Unite to Engage More Girls in Model and Competitive Rocketry (Source: ARC)
Girl Scouts of the USA and the Aerojet Rocketdyne Foundation are partnering to support and encourage Girl Scout councils and troops with amateur rocket activities and the opportunity to compete in the American Rocketry Challenge. With additional support from the National Association of Rocketry and Aerospace Industries Association middle and high school Girl Scouts will have access to meaningful skill-building experiences and gain insight into potential career paths.

Through this partnership, Girl Scouts will strengthen important STEM skills and techniques needed to build rockets, work on teams, and problem solve—critical, foundational learning for the next generation of female leaders in the aerospace industry and broader STEM workforce. (10/27)

Sian Proctor, First African American Woman to Pilot a Spacecraft (Source: Washington Post)
I was born in Guam, because my dad was working at the NASA tracking station. And I was born 8 1/2 months after Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon, so I consider myself to be a moon celebration baby, and space has always been in me, to some extent. As a kid I just wanted to fly. I made lots of model airplanes — World War II airplanes and military jet fighters. I always saw that as the path to space: You became a fighter pilot, and then went on and became the shuttle commander. Click here. (11/2)

Florida's Cecil Spaceport to Benefit From $6 Million Infrastructure Grant (Source: Click Orlando)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a grant of $6 million for the Jacksonville Aviation Authority to support the construction of nearly two miles of roadway at the Cecil airport and spaceport. This grant comes on top of $4 million from the Department of Transportation and $3 million from Space Florida. The governor said the expansion should add 3,780 new jobs to the area. (11/5)

We’re Gonna Need Another Space Telescope (Source: The Atlantic)
Scientists have looked for distant life in many ways over the decades, drafting telescopes to listen for mysterious radio transmissions and sending rovers to dig through the soil on Mars. But exoplanets are a fairly recent prospect. At the time of the last decadal report, astronomers had discovered a few hundred—an exciting start, certainly, but not enough to seriously propose a major observatory dedicated to their study.

That search will require powerful technology. Rocky planets as small as Earth are the most difficult exoplanets to detect because they become obscured in the glare of their suns. So the decadal survey recommends an observatory bigger than Hubble, which the astronomy community made a top priority in the 1970s. This new instrument, astronomers imagine, would suppress the bright light of a star and look right at the planets hidden in the glow. It would be capable of observing worlds that are 10 billion times fainter than their sun. (11/4)