December 28, 2021

SpaceX’s Proposed Florida Starship Launch/Landing Complex Draws Environmental, Beach Access Concerns (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
SpaceX proposes to build a launch and landing site for its Starship rockets at the north end of Kennedy Space Center in an area wedged between the historic pads built for moon rockets and Canaveral National Seashore. During the era of space shuttles, which flew from the pair of former moon-rocket pads, the road providing access to the seashore’s southern end at Playalinda Beach was routinely closed for launches.

The potential for regular or prolonged closures of the beach-access road and the destruction of coastal wetlands resulting from SpaceX’s launch and landing site has drawn Audubon Florida’s concern. The natural environment adjoining the proposed launch site, including habitat of Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, is “one of the most important birding sites in Eastern North America,” said Audubon Florida’s director of advocacy, Charles Lee.

Lee would not comment further, pending Audubon’s review of SpaceX plans. A formal and detailed study overseen by NASA of potential environmental impacts from the rocket pad is poised to start in early 2022. If developed, the 175-acre rocket site would be Launch Complex 49, or LC-49, spreading across 175 acres about 1.5 miles north of the LC-39B, the nearest of the two launch sites used by Apollo moon rockets and space shuttles. (12/27)

MIT Engineers Test an Idea for a New Hovering Lunar Rover (Source: Space Daily)
Aerospace engineers at MIT are testing a new concept for a hovering rover that levitates by harnessing the moon's natural charge. Because they lack an atmosphere, the moon and other airless bodies such as asteroids can build up an electric field through direct exposure to the sun and surrounding plasma. On the moon, this surface charge is strong enough to levitate dust more than 1 meter above the ground, much the way static electricity can cause a person's hair to stand on end. (12/27)

NASA, Private Space Industry May Reach New Heights in 2022 (Source: Space Daily)
Space exploration may shatter records in 2022 with the launch of the most powerful rocket ever in a flight beyond the moon, a space telescope that will peer into the dawn of the universe and groundbreaking science on Mars. The New Year also may see SpaceX's deep space Starship rocket fly above the atmosphere, expansion of space tourism and new rocket launches from companies such as United Launch Alliance and Firefly Aerospace.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to dominate the global launch industry again with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy after launching a record 31 orbital missions in 2021. Most of those launches will carry the company's own Starlink broadband Internet communications satellites. Click here. (12/27)

Scientists at PPPL and Princeton University Demonstrate a Novel Rocket for Deep-Space Exploration (Source: Space Daily)
The growing interest in deep-space exploration has sparked the need for powerful long-lived rocket systems to drive spacecraft through the cosmos. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have now developed a tiny modified version of a plasma-based propulsion system called a Hall thruster that both increases the lifetime of the rocket and produces high power.

The miniaturized system powered by plasma - the state of matter composed of free-floating electrons and atomic nuclei, or ions - measures little more than an inch in diameter and eliminates the walls around the plasma propellent to create innovative thruster configurations. Among these innovations are the cylindrical Hall thruster, first proposed and studied at PPPL, and a fully wall-less Hall thruster. Both configurations reduce channel erosion caused by plasma-wall interactions that limit the thruster lifetime - a key problem for conventional annular, or ring-shaped, Hall thrusters and especially for miniaturized low-power thrusters for applications on small satellites. (12/27)

Russia Launches OneWeb Satellites Atop Soyuz Rocket (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
A Soyuz rocket carrying a set of OneWeb satellites launched Monday morning. The Soyuz-2.1b rocket took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 8:10 a.m. Eastern with a payload of 36 satellites. The Fregat upper stage will complete deployment of the satellites nearly four hours after liftoff. (12/27)

Chinese Astronauts Conduct Six-Hour Spacewalk (Source: Space News)
Two Shenzhou-13 astronauts conducted a six-hour spacewalk Sunday to install equipment outside China's Tianhe space station module. Ye Guangfu started the spacewalk at 5:44 a.m. Eastern, followed nearly an hour later by mission commander Zhai Zhigang. The spacewalkers installed a third panoramic camera outside Tianhe, performed further tests of equipment and made preparations for future missions. The EVA is the fourth conducted since the launch of the Tianhe core module in April this year. (12/27)

Canada's NorthStar Plans New HQ in Luxembourg (Source: Space News)
Canadian space situational awareness startup NorthStar Earth & Space plans to set up European headquarters in Luxembourg after raising a round of funding there. Luxembourg Future Fund (LFF) said this month it is joining a $45 million investment round for Montreal-based NorthStar, which is developing a constellation of commercial imaging satellites to monitor what's happening in orbit and on Earth. NorthStar said it will create a Luxembourg-based "center of excellence" for space situational awareness and related activities. (12/27)

China Launches Earth Observation Satellite (Source: Xinhua)
China launched an Earth observation satellite Saturday night. A Long March 4C rocket lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 10:11 p.m. Eastern and placed the Ziyuan-1 02E spacecraft into a sun-synchronous orbit. The spacecraft is the latest in a series of spacecraft used for civil Earth resources applications. The rocket also carried a cubesat built by middle school students in Beijing. (12/27)

ESA Proceeds with Copernicus Despite UK's Unresolved Status (Source: Space News)
The European Space Agency is continuing to press ahead on a series of Copernicus Earth science missions despite the lack of an agreement between Britain and the European Union on U.K. participation and funding. A Nov. 30 deadline for an agreement came and went without a deal, leaving a shortfall of 750 million euros ($850 million) for those programs. ESA has decided for now to continue work on six previously approved Copernicus missions, at least through their critical design reviews in 2024, in the hopes that the U.K. and E.U. will eventually reach an agreement that will fill the funding gap. (12/27)

Kepler to Test Network Terminal with Spire Satellite (Source: Space News)
Kepler Communications plans to use a Spire Global nanosatellite launching late next year to test a terminal it hopes to someday deploy by the thousands. The terminal is part of Kepler's Aether network, intended to provide real-time connectivity for spacecraft that can currently only relay information when passing over approved ground stations. The test on the Spire satellite will be limited to verifying hardware performance and data rates, but would enable Spire to evaluate how Aether could support Spire's LEO constellation of more than 110 Lemur smallsats. Kepler recently filed for permission to place Aether terminals on nearly 115,000 satellites. (12/27)

Angara Upper Stage Malfunctions in Test Launch (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
The upper stage of an Angara rocket launched Monday reportedly malfunctioned, stranding it in a low transfer orbit. The Angara-A5 rocket lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome at 2 p.m. Eastern. The launch was a test flight, with the rocket's Persei upper stage performing a series of burns to place an inert payload into geostationary orbit. However, Russian sources said the second burn of the upper stage did not take place, keeping it in a transfer orbit likely to decay within days. Russian officials have not formally confirmed the problem, stating only that the initial phases of the launch were successful. (12/28)

China Space Station Maneuvers to Avoid Starlink Satellites (Source: Space News)
The Chinese government says its space station had to maneuver twice to avoid close approaches by SpaceX Starlink satellites. In a statement filed with the U.N. earlier this month, China said close approaches by two Starlink satellites in July and October prompted the maneuvers. The statement did not indicate how close the Starlink satellites came to the station, but outside analysis indicates the satellites came within five kilometers or less. SpaceX has not responded to questions about the incidents. (12/28)

Roscosmos Chief Criticizes ASAT Test (Source: New York Times)
The head of Roscosmos criticized the Russian ASAT test last month that generated debris in orbits that intersect the International Space Station. "No, I don't like it," Dmitry Rogozin said of the test in a recent interview, noting that "there is a lot of debris scattered across the orbit." The test has aggravated tensions between Russia and the United States that risk damaging the ISS partnership. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Rogozin is "between a rock and a hard place" because it's difficult for him to criticize his own government. "He's had to be quite demure, which I understand completely," Nelson said. (12/28)

JWST Performs Second Maneuver En Route to L-2 (Source: NASA)
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has performed a second course correction maneuver. NASA announced Monday that the the maneuver took place 60 hours after launch, as planned, tweaking the spacecraft's trajectory towards the L-2 Lagrange point. The next major step for JWST is to begin deployment of its sunshield, a process expected to begin today and take several days to complete. (12/28)

Biden Signs Defense Authorization Bill (Source: Space Policy Online)
President Biden signed a defense authorization bill into law Monday. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2022 authorizes spending for the Defense Department and includes a number of space-related policy provisions. However, Congress has yet to pass a full-year spending bill for the Pentagon or other federal agencies, which continue to operate under a continuing resolution that runs until February. (12/28)

India Slips Satellite Launches to 2022 (Source: Indian Express)
The launch of three Indian Earth observation satellites has slipped to 2022. The three missions, which were scheduled for launch in the second half of 2021, are now scheduled for the first quarter of 2022, according to a monthly report from the Indian government. Those missions include the first launch of India's Small Satellite Launch Vehicle, a dedicated smallsat launcher. (12/28)