January 22, 2022

Brevard County High School JROTC Program Converts From Air Force to Space Force (Source: WFTV)
On Friday, the Space Coast Junior/Senior High School in Cocoa is converting its JROTC program from the Air Force to Space Force. Officials say the school is one of 10 nationally in JROTC to agree to make the change. The formal changeover is scheduled for Friday afternoon. Retired Lt. Col. Joseph Stevens and retired Senior Master Sgt. John Werner lead Space Coast’s JROTC program. Stevens said coming under the Space Force, which was created in December 2019, has been a smooth transition for the program’s 123 students. (1/21)

Denied Georgia Spaceport Injunction Heads to Court of Appeals (Source: The Current)
Anti-spaceport petitioners filed an appeal late Friday in an attempt to keep alive an effort to block the purchase of land from Union Carbide for the county-led commercial spaceport project. The plaintiffs’ move will send the case to the Georgia Court of Appeals. Superior Court Judge Stephen Scarlett on Thursday denied the injunction, which was needed to prevent the purchase of the property until the citizens could vote on the measure. Scarlett wrote that the plaintiffs should have brought their case sooner.

Camden residents James Goodman and Paul Harris are appealing the denial on behalf of themselves and about 3,850 other Camden residents who signed a petition to force a referendum on the land purchase. Without the land, the spaceport project cannot advance. The petition, filed in Camden County Probate Court, is under review to determine if the required 10% of registered voters signed it. The Georgia Constitution gives the court 60 days from the petition’s Dec. 14 filing to vet signatures and another 30 days to hold a referendum if the signatures reach the 10% threshold. (1/21)

Bouncing Boulders Point to Quakes on Mars (Source: New York Times)
If a rock falls on Mars, and no one is there to see it, does it leave a trace? Yes, and it’s a beautiful herringbone-like pattern, new research reveals. Scientists have now spotted thousands of tracks on the red planet created by tumbling boulders. Delicate chevron-shaped piles of Martian dust and sand frame the tracks, the team showed, and most fade over the course of a few years.

Rockfalls have been spotted elsewhere in the solar system, including on the moon and even a comet. But a big open question is the timing of these processes on other worlds — are they ongoing or did they predominantly occur in the past? A study of these ephemeral features on Mars, published last month in Geophysical Research Letters, says that such boulder tracks can be used to pinpoint recent seismic activity on the red planet. (1/22)

Machine to Melt Moon Rocks and Derive Metals May Launch in 2024 (Source: Ars Technica)
In recent years, much has been said about mining water ice in shadowed craters at the Moon's South Pole for use as rocket propellant. Enthusiasm for this idea has led NASA to begin planning the first human missions of its Artemis Program to land near the South Pole instead of the mid-latitudes. However, a Houston-based company says there is value in the gray, dusty regolith spread across the entire lunar surface. The firm, Lunar Resources, is developing technology to extract iron, aluminum, magnesium, and silicon from the Moon's regolith.

These materials, in turn, would be used to manufacture goods on the Moon. "There are all of these valuable metals on the Moon, just there for the taking," said Elliot Carol, chief executive officer of Lunar Resources. In addition to the private capital raised to date, the National Science Foundation and NASA have provided the company with about $3 million in funding to develop a prototype reactor that could be sent to the Moon for a demonstration test. Carol said this demonstration reactor will be ready to fly "before" 2024.

The technology to extract metals has its roots at NASA. It is called Molten Regolith Electrolysis, by which lunar regolith is heated to a temperature of 1,600 degrees Centigrade, melted, and then electrolyzed to produce oxygen and metals, such as iron and silicon. Although the composition varies by location, lunar soil is composed of about 40 to 45 percent oxygen, 20 percent silicon, and 10 percent aluminum, with smaller amounts of iron and titanium. (1/21)

NASA Needs a Lead Program Office for Artemis (Source: Space News)
he U.S. once again has the opportunity to lead the world back to the surface of the moon to establish the first permanent human presence.  The piece-parts of a program seem to be falling into place, but what is lacking is a Lead Program Office with the responsibilities and commensurate authorities to make and shoulder the risk of the architectural and technical decisions, control requirements, integrate schedules across multiple teams, and foster the necessary urgency and attention to detail needed to control cost which is primarily done by meeting promised schedules.

Just getting humans to the surface of the moon and returning them safely to Earth is a tremendous challenge. Across the country and spread amongst myriad contractors, the Saturn 5, Apollo capsule, Command Service Module and Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) all had to be designed and built, and — just as importantly — had to work together with a new Vehicle Assembly Building, crawler and launchpad. That the U.S. accomplished this in less than a decade still amazes.

It’s time to take the best lessons from our past and meld them with the promises of today’s technologies and innovative industrial base. It’s time to stand up an Artemis Program Office, modeled after the Apollo Program Office, with the long-term strategic vision for human exploration of Mars as its guiding star, but with a near-term laser focus on getting us back to the moon to stay — safely, on schedule, and within budget. If successful America will once again reap the benefits of our Human Exploration Program. (1/20)

Archaeologists Launch First-Ever 'Dig' Into Life on the International Space Station (Source: NPR)
A group of researchers has launched the first-ever archaeological study of humans in space, observing the lives of the crew living on the International Space Station. The experiment, which will analyze and document the unique "microsociety in a miniworld," began this week with associate professors Alice Gorman from Flinders University in Australia and Justin Walsh of Chapman University in California leading the effort.

"We're the first to try to understand how humans relate to the items they live with in space," Walsh said in a statement. He added: "By bringing archaeological perspectives to an active space domain, we're the first to show how people adapt their behavior to a completely new environment." Over the course of the project, the team will investigate how a space culture has emerged and evolved since the opening of the ISS in November 2000 and the effects on the development of long-term missions on those who are aboard to solve technical, engineering or medical issues. (1/20)

SpaceX: Boca Chica Beach Closure Set for Jan. 26 Flight Test (Source: ValleyCentral.com)
State Highway 4 will be closed from FM 1419, Oklahoma Avenue, up to the entrance of Boca Chica Beach. The closures are in place due to planned “space flight activity”, by SpaceX. The closures are set for Jan. 26 from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. However, if SpaceX doesn’t complete its testing in that time frame, closures on Jan. 27 from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. or Jan. 28 from 6:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. can be arranged to accommodate SpaceX, Trevino said. (1/21)

As Earth Orbit Becomes More Congested and Contested, Critical Satellites are at Risk (Source: Washington Examiner)
Last November, Russia launched a PL19 Nudol interceptor missile targeting a long out-of-service Soviet-era Cosmos 1408 satellite orbiting 300 miles above the Earth and blew it to smithereens. The resulting 1,500 pieces of trackable space junk threatened the seven-member crew of the International Space Station, including two Russian cosmonauts, who had to shelter in their transport spacecraft as the station passed perilously close to the debris field.

“This is our wake-up call because that test was not illegal. It was not against any law. We can argue all day long that it did not show ‘due regard’ for the activities of others in space, but we don't know what ‘due regard’ means,” said Michelle Hanlon, an instructor of space law at the University of Mississippi, in a recent BBC interview. “This is the wake-up call for the international community to really start getting those rules together.”

Of the 4,550 satellites circling the Earth, almost 400 are U.S. government or military satellites that provide everything from the GPS signals for civilian navigation to early warnings of a nuclear attack. By comparison, China has 431 and Russia has 167 satellites in orbit. The Defense Intelligence Agency has estimated that China will likely field a ground-based laser weapon that could destroy low Earth orbit space sensors by the end of this decade. (1/21)

Any Single Galaxy Reveals the Composition of an Entire Universe (Source: Quanta)
Agroup of scientists may have stumbled upon a radical new way to do cosmology. Cosmologists usually determine the composition of the universe by observing as much of it as possible. But these researchers have found that a machine learning algorithm can scrutinize a single simulated galaxy and predict the overall makeup of the digital universe in which it exists — a feat analogous to analyzing a random grain of sand under a microscope and working out the mass of Eurasia.

The machines appear to have found a pattern that might someday allow astronomers to draw sweeping conclusions about the real cosmos merely by studying its elemental building blocks. “Instead of measuring these millions of galaxies, you can just take one. It’s really amazing that this works.” The improbable find grew out of an exercise Villaescusa-Navarro gave to Jupiter Ding, a Princeton University undergraduate: Build a neural network that, knowing a galaxy’s properties, can estimate a couple of cosmological attributes.

The assignment was meant merely to familiarize Ding with machine learning. Then they noticed that the computer was nailing the overall density of matter. When tested on thousands of fresh galaxies from dozens of universes it hadn’t previously examined, the neural network was able to predict the cosmic density of matter to within 10%. “It doesn’t matter which galaxy you are considering,” Villaescusa-Navarro said. “No one imagined this would be possible.” (1/21)

Stennis Expects Active 2022 (Source: NASA)
As the new year begins, seven of the nine test stands at Stennis Space Center (SSC) are being used for testing. Four stands are being operated by NASA directly, one is under a Reimbursable Space Act Agreement with Aerojet Rocketdyne, and two have been turned over to Relativity Space Inc. for operation under a Commercial Space Launch Act. The outlook for 2022 activity is a carry-over from 2021, when rocket engine testing featured 11 test campaigns, including seven NASA-led projects, on eight test stands.

The year’s activity totaled 434 tests and 7,341 seconds of cumulative firing time. On the commercial front, SSC partnered with seven companies on rocket engine and component testing projects during the recent year – Aerojet Rocketdyne, Relativity Space, Virgin Orbit, Blue Origin, Ursa Major, Launcher, and Firehawk.

Aerojet Rocketdyne conducted the final scheduled RS-68 hot fire acceptance test on the B-1 Test Stand in April. However, several of the other companies are continuing testing projects into 2022. There also is the possibility of participating in partnerships with additional companies in the new year. (1/18)

NASA Conducts Another RS-25 Engine Test for Artemis SLS Rocket (Source: NASA)
NASA conducted its first RS-25 engine hot fire test of the new year Jan. 19 on the Fred Haise Test Stand at Stennis Space Center. The test was the second hot fire in the latest series that began in mid-December. Each test in the series is providing data to NASA's lead contractor, Aerojet Rocketdyne, on a variety of new engine components manufactured with state-of-the-art fabrication techniques as the company begins production of new RS-25 engines.

These engines will help power the agency's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on future deep-space missions. During launch, four RS-25 engines will power the SLS, generating a combined 2 million pounds of thrust during ascent. The RS-25 engines for the first four SLS flights are upgraded space shuttle main engines and have completed certification testing. NASA will use the data from this test to enhance production of new RS-25 engines and components for use on subsequent SLS missions.

The testing is part of NASA's and Aerojet Rocketdyne's effort to use advanced manufacturing methods to reduce the cost and time needed to build new engines. (1/19)

Chinese Scientists Build 'Artificial Moon' to Conduct Experiments in Low Gravity (Source: Space Daily)
According to the South China Morning Post, the facility located in Jiangsu Province, will play an important part in the exploration of the Moon as China plans to land its astronauts on Earth's satellite by 2030 and set up a base there. Chinese scientists have built an artificial moon that will make it possible to conduct experiments in low gravity. According to the researchers, their creation is the first of its kind in the world and is designed so that it can make gravity "disappear".

The researchers say they were inspired by an experiment conducted by the Russian-Dutch-British physicist Andre Geim, who used magnets to levitate a frog. The device consists of a 2-foot room placed inside a vacuum chamber, which, in turn, has two powerful magnets. The magnets generate a strong magnetic field, making the room levitate. Chinese researchers simulated the lunar landscape in the room, putting rocks and dust in there. (1/18)

NASA Gives a Boost to 57 High-Flying Student Experiments (Source: GeekWire)
NASA has chosen 57 winning teams to receive funding to build and fly experiments focusing on subjects ranging from lunar dust mitigation to inkjet printing in zero gravity. The prizes were awarded through NASA’s first-ever TechRise Student Challenge, which aims to give students in grades 6 through 12 an opportunity for real-world experience in designing and executing autonomously operated experiments. The program, administered by Future Engineers, attracted entries from nearly 600 teams representing 5,000 students nationwide. (1/21)

Space Race Comes to Hollywood: Second Film Studio to Be Built in Space (Source: Variety)
Hollywood has officially entered the space race, as plans for a second film and TV studio in outer space have been unveiled. Space 11 Corp, which was set up by “Survivor” producer Andrea Iervolino and is run by MMA fighter turned producer John Lewis, is exploring a deal with Voyager Space company Nanoracks to build a free-flying space station that will function as a soundstage in zero gravity.

Named S11S, the module can also be used as a live venue and will contain accommodation and sleeping quarters. Nanoracks, the largest commercial user of the International Space Station, expects the studio to be operational by 2027. Space 11 Corp launched in April with the primary intention of making screen projects in zero gravity. Its subsidiaries include film and television studio Space 11 Studio, which focuses on high-concept zero-gravity productions, and Space 11 City, a film production facility. The company is also behind the forthcoming reality TV series “Galactic Combat,” a zero-gravity fight competition series. (1/21)

Russia to Launch at Least Two Light Angara Rockets in 2022 (Source: TASS)
Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos expects to launch at least two light Angara carrier rockets this year, Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin said on Friday. "As you know, the test launches of Angara rockets are in full swing. A new launch was carried out in December. This year, we will launch at least two light Angara rockets," the Roscosmos chief said during his visit to the construction site of the National Space Center in Moscow. (1/21)

US Refuses Visa for Russian Cosmonaut (Source: RIA Novosti)
The American authorities denied Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Chub a visa without explanation, an informed source told RIA Novosti. "Cosmonaut Nikolai Chub , whose flight to the International Space Station is planned in the spring of 2023, was denied an entry visa to the United States without explanation," the agency's source said. He explained that traditionally all Russian members of the expedition are trained at the Johnson Space Center before flying to the ISS. They are studying, among other things, the structure of the American segment of the station in the same way as astronauts from the US are preparing in Russia . (1/22)

National Ukrainian Spaceport to be Built in Odesa Region (Source: Kyiv Post)
Territory has been found on the administrative border of Odesa and Mykolayiv regions for the creation of a new Ukrainian spaceport. The news was announced at a Jan. 20 press conference organised by the Association of Innovation and Space Clusters of Ukraine; Head of the Odessa Regional State Administration, Serhiy Hrynevetsky; and Head of the National Center for Space Management and Testing, Volodymyr Prysyazhny.

However, construction of a strategic facility on the Black Sea Coast needs approval from neighboring Turkey because of the risk of second stage launch vehicles falling back to its territory. Head of the Dnipropetrovsk Space Cluster, Yevhen Rokytskyi, clarified that there are already technologies that allow launch vehicles to take off and make a controlled return without the need for an exclusion zone. (1/21)

On Scotland’s Haunting Coast, a Village Dreams of Space (Source: Wall Street Journal)
Dorothy Pritchard and her neighbors hadn’t always planned to host a spaceport. The retired schoolteacher lives along the coast of A’ Mhoine peninsula, an area of wind-scoured peat lands known as the Flow Country, at the tip of Scotland’s mainland. For generations, aristocratic landlords far away in England rented parcels of land here to small groups of crofters to farm as best they could. Oil and gas from the North Sea helped provide jobs some 180 miles away in Aberdeen, allowing some people to stay reasonably nearby and return home at weekends. (1/22)

Space Norway Restores Redundancy for Svalbard Ground Stations (Source: Space News)
Space Norway has restored communications on an undersea fiber-optic cable it operates between its Svalbard satellite station and mainland Norway, which had left the Arctic region without a backup connection after failing Jan. 7. A shunt failure caused a loss of power to signal repeaters on one of two cables that connect the Arctic region, state-run Space Norway said Jan. 19.

“Through a work around applying alternate power supply to the damaged cable, the redundancy was restored during the evening of January 18th, 2022,” state-run Space Norway’s head of infrastructure Dag Stølan said. “This minimizes the operating risk until final cable repair can be performed probably in the February 2022 timeframe, depending on the availability of cable vessel and the necessary weather conditions.” (1/21)

Former NASA Administrator Bridenstine Endorses Candidate in Virginia Congressional Race (Source: Space News)
Former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine is wading into one of Virginia’s congressional races, backing a Republican candidate with a background in national security space. Bridenstine told SpaceNews he decided to endorse John Henley, a former U.S. Air Force legislative liaison who worked on the standup of the U.S. Space Force, because of his space and national security expertise. Henley announced Jan. 20 he will be running for the House seat in Virginia’s 10th district currently occupied by two-term incumbent Jennifer Wexton (D). (1/21)

Mars Signs of Past Life (Source: TIME)
Mars may be a wasteland today, but for the first billion or so years of its 4.5 billion year life span, it was awash in oceans and seas and protected by a thick blanket of air. Eventually its magnetic field shut down, allowing the solar wind to claw away the atmosphere and the water to vanish into space. But that first billion years offered Mars plenty of time to cook up at least microbial life. Now, a study published Jan. 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests researchers may have found lingering surface markers of such ancient biology.

The new research was based on work conducted by NASA's Curiosity rover, which has spent nearly a decade in Mars's Gale Crater, which NASA believes was once a lake. In the first part of House's study, the rover collected rock and soil samples at 24 different sites around Gale Crater. The samples were then transferred to a laboratory oven within the body of the rover and heated to about 1,500º F. A laser spectrometer then analyzed the chemistry of the samples. It was looking especially closely for carbon, the elemental backbone of all life as we know it. It found plenty, which was pretty much as expected. The surprise was just which type.

Carbon comes in two principal isotopes: carbon-13, with six protons and seven neutrons; and carbon-12, with six protons and six neutrons. Carbon-13 doesn't play well with biology; its heavier structure makes for tougher molecular bonds that don't allow for the nimble recombining that makes biological processes possible, and that carbon-12 performs so easily. The more carbon-12 you find in a Martian sample, the greater the possibility that you're looking at an artifact of early life. And Curiosity found plenty of it: Nearly half of the samples it collected had significantly higher levels of carbon-12 than scientists typically detect in Martian meteorites. (1/21)

Lift of SpaceX Super Heavy Booster 4 Animation (Source: RyanHansen Space)
The first use of the SpaceX Starbase Starship Super Heavy launch tower's multipurpose "Mechazilla" arms is right around the corner with Super Heavy Booster 4 slated to be the first full-size vehicle prototype to be lifted by the tower systems to the orbital launch mount. This animation depicts what that operation may look like including all steps to lift, translate, and rotate the booster into position. The tower motions depicted in this animation are dramatized and I do not expect the real operation to be performed this quickly. Click here. (1/20)

Space Force’s Data Transport Layer is Linchpin of JADC2 (Source: Breaking Defense)
Military commanders across the board need two key capabilities to fulfill their missions — awareness of their respective domains, and the ability to command and control their forces — both of which rely heavily on space systems, Space Force chief Gen Jay Raymond said. “If you look at JADC2, Joint All Domain Command and Control, space is one of the domains that puts the ‘all domain’ into that definition,” Raymond said. “I’ve been saying, kind of tongue in cheek, we’ve been JADC2 before it was cool.”

Raymond explained that Space Force has been “working really hard” on developing these two baseline JADC2 capabilities over the past two years of its existence. “We made some really good progress in some capabilities that we’ve built on the space side of the house that better integrate with with other domains, specifically the air domain,” he said. (1/21)

NASA Offers $1 Million for Innovative Systems to Feed Tomorrow's Astronauts (Source: Space Daily)
As NASA prepares to send astronauts further into the cosmos than ever before, the agency aims to upgrade production of a critical fuel source: food. Giving future explorers the technology to produce nutritious, tasty, and satisfying meals on long-duration space missions will give them the energy required to uncover the great unknown.

In coordination with the Canadian Space Agency, NASA is calling on the public to help develop innovative and sustainable food production technologies or systems that require minimal resources and produce minimal waste. Dubbed the Deep Space Food Challenge, the competition calls on teams to design, build, and demonstrate prototypes of food production technologies that provide tangible nutritional products - or food. (1/21)

Wanted: Recycling Methods to Keep Astronauts Alive (Source: Space Daily)
It took a crop of potatoes to keep Matt Damon alive on the red planet in The Martian. And in future, real life astronauts on the Moon and Mars will have to be gardeners, farmers and expert recyclers as well as explorers. Do you have promising ideas that might help them to get by in space on next to no resources?

The fundamentals of living in space are already clear. To make such plans sustainable over the long term, settlers will have to recycle their air, water and nutrients as much as possible, to minimize their reliance on long, costly supply lines back to their distant home planet. So ESA and the European Innovation Council - the new body guiding the commercialization of high-risk, high-impact technologies in Europe - are teaming up to crowd source ideas for implementing 'circular economy' technologies and sustainable processes in space.

The aim is to seek out concepts targeting the reuse and recycling of water, food, oxygen, nitrogen and other scarce resources from apparent waste material. And further to their use in space, these solutions should also have wider uses on Earth, creating synergies with terrestrial moves towards a circular economy. The underlying idea is not new. The ISS already recycles all the water it can, including crew urine, sweat, moisture from wet towels, even the humidity from astronauts' breathing. (1/20)

Blue Origin Announces Personnel Assignments (Source: Blue Origin)
The Blue Origin team is delighted to welcome Tommy Sanford as our new Payload Sales Director. Tommy comes to us from an impactful run as the Executive Director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, where he was a vocal advocate for the suborbital research community. Tommy takes the reins from Erika Wagner, who is moving over within Blue to help lead Orbital Reef, our new commercial space station. (1/21)

NASA Solar Sail Mission to Chase Tiny Asteroid After Artemis I Launch (Source: Space Daily)
NEA Scout will visit an asteroid estimated to be smaller than a school bus - the smallest asteroid ever to be studied by a spacecraft. Launching with the Artemis I uncrewed test flight, NASA's shoebox-size Near-Earth Asteroid Scout will chase down what will become the smallest asteroid ever to be visited by a spacecraft. It will get there by unfurling a solar sail to harness solar radiation for propulsion, making this the agency's first deep space mission of its kind.

The target is 2020 GE, a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) that is less than 60 feet in size. Asteroids smaller than 330 feet across have never been explored up close before. The spacecraft will use its science camera to get a closer look, measuring the object's size, shape, rotation, and surface properties while looking for any dust and debris that might surround 2020 GE. (1/21)

Russia's Only Female Cosmonaut to Travel to Space in September (Source: Space Daily)
Russia's sole active female cosmonaut, Anna Kikina, is due to travel to the International Space Station in September on a Soyuz rocket, the national space agency said Thursday. Kikina, a 37-year-old engineer, will be only the fifth professional woman cosmonaut from Russia or the Soviet Union to fly to space. (1/20)

Atlas Lofts Two Military Satellites to Orbit From Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
The first United Launch Alliance mission of the year sent an Atlas V rocket with a payload for the U.S. Space Force into orbit today. The launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 41 hit its target of 2 p.m. liftoff, marking the 75th flight of an Atlas V from the Space Coast.

The USSF-8 mission aims to put two space surveillance satellites directly into geosynchronous orbit, the fifth and sixth satellites of the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program for more accurate tracking and identification of man-made orbiting objects. (1/21)