January 25, 2022

China's New Generation Long March-8 Ready for Launch (Source: Space Daily)
China plans to launch its new generation carrier rocket Long March-8 Y2 between late February and early March from the southern island of Hainan, sources with the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, the country's leading rocket maker, said on Friday. The rocket arrived at the Wenchang Space Launch Center Friday after a week of ocean transport. It will undergo final assembly and testing at the launch site. The scheduled Long March-8 mission will be China's first rocket launch this year.

A two-stage medium-lift carrier rocket, the Long March-8 is 50.3 meters long, with a takeoff weight of 356 tonnes. It uses liquid propellants with a 5-tonne capacity for sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 km. Designed for both land and sea launches, the rocket made its maiden flight on Dec. 22, 2020, at the Wenchang coastal launch site. (1/22)

Roskosmos is Looking for a Foreign Partner to Operate Sea Launch (Source: RIA Novosti)
Roskosmos plans to find a foreign partner to resume operation of Sea Launch and update its control system for launching Soyuz-5 rockets, Dmitry Rogozin, head of the state corporation, said. “In any case, it is necessary to preserve Sea Launch, modernize its control system for Soyuz-5 launches. To share the risks and financial burden at the first stage, as well as to jointly operate the complex in the future, it makes sense to find a foreign partner who, by virtue of his geographic location cannot have a cosmodrome on its territory and would be interested in a partnership on a floating cosmodrome," he said. (1/23)

European Launch Startup Isar Aerospace Wins European Commission’s EIC Horizon Prize and Receives 10 Million Euros (Source: Isar Aerospace)
Isar Aerospace, the leading European launch service provider focusing on small and medium satellite deployment, announced today that it has won the European Commission’s EIC Horizon Prize “Low-Cost Space Launch”, receiving 10 million euros in prize money. The European Commission’s award was given to Isar Aerospace for its launch service solution using ‘Spectrum’, a two-stage launch vehicle that offers flexible and cost-efficient access to space for small and medium-sized satellites and constellations and drives the quest for European sovereignty in space.

Since its founding in 2018, Isar Aerospace has raised private funding of more than 150 million euros and attracted both commercial and institutional customers. The production of Spectrum is on track: the company has completed the build-up of its in-house, vertically integrated manufacturing facility and it is now working on achieving testing milestones leading towards the first test flight, which is planned for the end of 2022. (1/25)

UAE's Moon Mission on Track for October Launch (Source: The National)
The UAE will attempt to land a rover on the Moon in October, the chief of the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre said. The Arab world's first Moon mission was announced in 2020, with a launch date set for 2024. However, the Emirates was able to secure an earlier flight when it partnered with Japan's ispace to use its Hakuto-R lander to deliver the rover to the lunar surface this year. Salem Al Marri, the director general of the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center confirmed the rover would launch in October. “We plan to launch our first rover, which will be the first object from the Arab world to land on another celestial body,” he said. “We will be landing on the Moon in October of this year.” (1/25)

Future Trillion Dollar 'Space Economy' Treatened by Debris (Source: Space Daily)
The space economy is on track to be valued at a trillion dollars by the end of 2030, according to Piyush Mehta, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at West Virginia University. Yet space assets-equipment that is placed in space such as navigation, weather and communication satellites that serve our society daily-are threatened by space debris.

According to NASA, it is estimated that millions of pieces of space debris orbit around Earth. A major portion of these debris objects as well as active satellites reside in the low Earth orbit region, at altitudes between 200 and 1000 km. "In low Earth orbit, our ability to safeguard these space assets depends on modeling of the aerodynamic forces acting on the satellites, specifically satellite drag. The drag force acting on a satellite is affected by various physical parameters, however, the most crucial and uncertain are the drag coefficient and mass density," Mehta said. (1/22)

PredaSAR Selected for NRO Geospatial Intelligence Contract (Source: Parabolic Arc)
PredaSAR, a Terran Orbital subsidiary, has been selected for a contract by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) Directorate for commercial Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems available in the satellite imaging industry. The PredaSAR constellation will offer robust capabilities to commercial and national security customers, including a flexible and responsive remote sensing platform, low latency, frequent revisit times, and the ability to host secondary payloads. (1/24)

Falcon 9 Rocket Stage is on Course to Hit the Moon (Source: Ars Technica)
SpaceX launched its first interplanetary mission nearly seven years ago. After the Falcon 9 rocket's second stage completed a long burn to reach a transfer orbit, NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory began its journey to a Sun-Earth LaGrange point more than 1 million km from the Earth. By that point, the Falcon 9 rocket's second stage was high enough that it did not have enough fuel to return to Earth's atmosphere. It also lacked the energy to escape the gravity of the Earth-Moon system, so it has been following a somewhat chaotic orbit since February 2015.

Now, according to sky observers, the spent second stage's orbit is on course to intersect with the Moon. According to Bill Gray, who writes the widely used Project Pluto software to track near-Earth objects, asteroids, minor planets, and comets, such an impact could come in March. Earlier this month, Gray put out a call for amateur and professional astronomers to make additional observations of the stage, which appears to be tumbling through space. With this new data, Gray now believes that the Falcon 9's upper stage will very likely impact the far side of the Moon, near the equator, on March 4. (1/24)

Avio Announces New Launch Service Contracts for Vega C (Source: Space Daily)
At the end of an intense 2021 with 3 successful Ariane and 3 successful Vega missions in about 6 months, Avio announces the signature by Arianespace of several new launch service contracts for Vega C. In particular, a contract was signed with the Italian Space Agency for the launch of Platino 1 and Platino 2 satellites between 2022 and 2024. Platino is a lightweight advanced satellite platform entirely developed and manufactured in Italy.

In addition, the Microcarb and NESS launch service contracts were signed with CNES, the French Space Agency, and ESA. Microcarb is a micro-satellite for measurement of CO2 absorption and release into the atmosphere. NESS is a Nanosat demonstrator mission to perform surveillance of the civilian radiofrequency spectrum against jamming. Finally, the launch service contracts for the Flex and Altius satellites were signed with the European Space Agency for a launch by 2025. Flex will monitor carbon cycles and agriculture for food security, while Altius will monitor the status of the atmosphere ozone layer. (1/22)

Worldwide Coordinated Search for Dark Matter (Source: Space Daily)
An international team of researchers with key participation from the PRISMA+ Cluster of Excellence at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM) has published for the first time comprehensive data on the search for dark matter using a worldwide network of optical magnetometers. According to the scientists, dark matter fields should produce a characteristic signal pattern that can be detected by correlated measurements at multiple stations of the GNOME network.

Analysis of data from a one-month continuous GNOME operation has not yet yielded a corresponding indication. However, the measurement allows to formulate constraints on the characteristics of dark matter, as the researchers report in the prestigious journal Nature Physics. GNOME stands for Global Network of Optical Magnetometers for Exotic Physics Searches. Behind it are magnetometers distributed around the world in Germany, Serbia, Poland, Israel, South Korea, China, Australia, and the United States. (1/21)

There are 40 Billion Billions of Black Holes in the Universe (Source: Space Daily)
With a new computational approach, SISSA researchers have been able to make the fascinating calculation. Moreover, according to their work, around 1% of the overall ordinary (baryonic) matter is locked up in stellar mass black holes. Their results have just been published in the prestigious 'The Astrophysical Journal'.

How many black holes are out there in the Universe? This is one of the most relevant and pressing questions in modern astrophysics and cosmology. The intriguing issue has recently been addressed by the SISSA Ph.D. student Alex Sicilia, supervised by Prof. Andrea Lapi and Dr. Lumen Boco, together with other collaborators from SISSA and from other national and international institutions. In a first paper of a series just published in The Astrophysical Journal, the authors have investigated the demographics of stellar mass black holes, which are black holes with masses between a few to some hundred solar masses, that originated at the end of the life of massive stars.

According to the new research, a remarkable amount around 1% of the overall ordinary (baryonic) matter of the Universe is locked up in stellar mass black holes. Astonishingly, the researchers have found that the number of black holes within the observable Universe (a sphere of diameter around 90 billions light years) at present time is about 40 trillions, 40 billion billions (i.e., about 40 x 1018, i.e. 4 followed by 19 zeros!). (1/19)

Aerojet Rocketdyne Expects FTC to Try to Block Lockheed Martin Acquisition (Sources: Aerojet Rocketdyne, CNBC)
Aerojet Rocketdyne said this morning it expects the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to sue to block its sale to Lockheed Martin. The company said it has been advised by the FTC that a proposed consent order governing the acquisition will not address the agency's concerns and that it is "highly likely" it will file suit to block the deal as soon as this week. Aerojet said if the FTC does file suit, Lockheed could elect to either defend the suit or cancel the deal. Aerojet Rocketdyne stock fell on the news. Lockheed in December 2020 announced its intention to buy Aerojet at a $4.6 billion equity valuation. (1/25)

JWST Arrives at L2 (Source: Space News)
The James Webb Space Telescope arrived at its destination Monday, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. The spacecraft fired its thrusters for five minutes Monday afternoon, placing it into its final halo orbit around the Earth-sun L-2 point. The accuracy of the launch, mission managers said after the maneuver, means the spacecraft should have on the order of 20 years of fuel to maintain that orbit, double its original lifetime. Engineers will still need another five months to align the telescope's mirrors and check out its instruments. (1/25)

Japan's LE-9 Engine Problems to Delay H3 Launch Debut (Source: Space News)
The Japanese space agency JAXA says that engine problems will delay the first launch of its H3 rocket. That launch, which had been scheduled for this quarter, will be postponed to study continued problems with the new LE-9 main engine for the rocket, including both the engine's combustion chamber and its turbopumps. No new date has been set for H3's first flight, but JAXA officials said it would not occur sooner than April and hopefully no later than March 2023. (1/25)

NOAA Looks to Future Space Weather Instruments (Source: Space News)
NOAA is looking ahead to a future generation of space weather instruments. A NOAA official said Monday that the agency is thinking about the continuity of key observations after the Space Weather Follow-On (SWFO) L1 mission launches in 2025, with a five-year lifetime. An analysis of alternatives for the mission after SWFO L1 will consider various orbital slots along the sun-Earth line. NOAA is also planning how best to maintain its ability to gather space weather data in geostationary orbit after the last of the GOES-R series of satellites launches in 2024. (1/25)

Dragon Splashes Down in Gulf Off Florida Coast (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
A cargo Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico Monday. The Dragon spacecraft splashed down shortly after 4 p.m. Eastern off the coast from Panama City, Florida. The Dragon spacecraft's return wrapped up the CRS-24 mission, returning more than two tons of experiments and cargo from the station. Among the hardware returned to Earth on the Dragon was a microscope that had been on the station since 2009. (1/25)

Phase Four and Orbit Fab Evaluate Refueling Exotic Propellants (Source: Space News)
Propulsion startup Phase Four will cooperate with satellite refueling startup Orbit Fab. Under the agreement announced Monday, the companies will work together to evaluate the refueling potential of traditional electric propulsion propellants like xenon for Phase Four Maxwell engines, as well as ASCENT, a non-toxic chemical propellant. Orbit Fab has developed an interface for spacecraft refueling called Rapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface or RAFTI and sent its first fuel depot, Tanker-001 Tenzing, into low Earth orbit last year. (1/25)

Powerful In-Space Computing Drives New Orbital Capabilities (Source: Space News)
RUAG Space is teaming up with a software provider to run artificial intelligence solutions on an onboard satellite computer. Sweden-based Stream Analyze will provide its sa.engine analytics platform under the partnership for Lynx, an onboard computer RUAG Space expects to qualify through ground-based tests this year. Lynx, RUAG Space claims, is 350 times more powerful than other onboard computing systems, enabling it to run AI systems. While RUAG expects sa.engine will gain flight heritage on a Lynx computer, the companies said their partnership is not exclusive.

Satellites are making greater use of more powerful computers in general. Spacecraft, particularly commercial ones in Earth orbit, are adopting state-of-the-art onboard processors, as upcoming missions require even greater computing capability. Advanced onboard computing can enable the processing of data such as Earth imagery, reducing the amount of data to be returned to the ground. Other advanced computers will help spacecraft choreograph complex operations.

One such advanced computer is in high demand on the space station. Since arriving at the station nearly two years ago, Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Spaceborne Computer-2 has completed 20 experiments focused on health care, communications, Earth observation, and life sciences. The company expects increasingly capable computers to be installed on satellites and housed in orbiting data centers in the coming years, including support for the lunar Gateway and missions to the moon's surface. (1/25)

'With Tax, that Will Be $481,000.' State Lawmakers Propose Taxing Virgin Galactic Tickets (Source: Las Cruces Sun-News)
New Mexico legislators want to add sales tax to the price of Virgin Galactic tickets. A bill introduced in the state legislature would remove an exception for such tickets from the state's gross receipts tax. The bill's sponsors, both Democrats and Republicans, said they see no reason why such tickets should be exempt from taxes, providing additional revenue for the state as well as the county where Spaceport America is based. A tax would add more than $31,000 to a SpaceShipTwo ticket's current $450,000 price. (1/25)

Hopes Dry for Mars Subsurface Lake (Source: New Scientist)
Hopes for a subsurface lake on Mars may have dried up. Radar observations of the planet's south polar ice cap in 2018 turned up what scientists believed at the time to be evidence of a lake of liquid water below the ice cap up to 20 kilometers across. A new study stimulated what the Mars surface would look like to the radar instrument on Mars Express if the entire surface was covered under a similar ice cap. That study found other signatures similar to what was seen at the south pole in regions of the planet with no evidence of water. Scientists think what may be under the ice cap is volcanic rock, not liquid water. (1/25)

Sidus Space Announces the Composition of the Board of Directors (Source: Sidus Space)
Sidus Space’s five-member Board includes three independent directors and is composed of the following: Dana Kilborne. Ms. Kilborne is the President and CEO of Cypress Bank & Trust and CEO of Cypress Capital Group. She brings to the Board a broad background in finance, accounting, entrepreneurship and governance. Cole Oliver. Mr. Oliver is an equity partner in the law firm of Rossway, Swan, Tierney, Barry & Oliver. He has extensive legal experience and a wide breath of knowledge and understanding of the impact of the space industry on local, federal and global economies.

Miguel Valero. Mr. Valero is a managing partner with Détente LLC, a strategy and financial advisory firm that focuses on technology associated with telecommunications, satellites, and space. He has extensive experience in the space industry and has developed solid relationships with key players in commercial space. Jamie Adams. Mr. Adams is Chief Technology Officer at Sidus Space. His selection to the board of directors was due to his legacy experience in the space industry along with his position as CTO. Carol Craig. Ms. Craig is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sidus Space. (1/25)

Proposed NTSB Commercial Space Regulation Criticized by Industry and FAA (Source: Space News)
A proposal by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that would give the agency a greater role in investigating failures of commercial launches is facing strong opposition from both the industry and the FAA. The NTSB issued a notice of proposed rulemaking, or NPRM, in November regarding commercial space investigations. The proposed regulation is intended to codify the role that the board plays in investigating accidents involving commercial launches and reentries, much as it does in various modes of transportation.

The regulations would require companies conducting a launch or reentry under an FAA license or experimental permit to immediately notify the NTSB in the event of a mishap. The NTSB would conduct an investigation to determine the probable cause and provide recommendations to avoid similar events in the future. NTSB has helped investigate space-related incidents in the past, including the October 2014 accident involving Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo that killed its co-pilot and seriously injured the pilot. A 2004 memorandum of understanding that includes NTSB, the FAA and the U.S. Air Force, as well as an older agreement between NTSB and FAA, currently governs that partnership.

The NTSB argues that the existing agreements are out of date and that it must now explicitly state its authority to do so under a section of law called Subpart F in the document. “Notably, at the time both documents were signed, commercial human space launches were not viable,” the NTSB stated. “With commercial human space flight now a reality, however, the NTSB believes codifying its authority to investigate commercial space safety accidents and incidents in Subpart F is necessary.” The NTSB adds that it believes that, under federal law, it has “statutory priority over any investigation by a U.S. department or agency.” (1/24)

Boeing Expanding Footprint in Florida's Okaloosa County (Source: WKRG)
Aircraft manufacturer Boeing said they are expanding a current Fort Walton Beach facility. The project will cost an estimated $2,550,000 and will take around 12 months to complete. Boeing said the new building will be a 20,000 square foot expansion at the current location. The company will hire 12 new positions for the facility with an average salary of $70,000 each year. The facility currently modifies, tests, repairs and services aircraft for military operations and civilian U.S. air travel.

Boeing is one of Okaloosa County’s largest private-sector employers. The project was filed under a tax exemption, Economic Development Ad Valorem Tax Exemptions (EDATE), in both Fort Walton Beach and Okaloosa County. One Okaloosa, a non profit organization, said the total ten-year value of the exemptions is estimated to be $108,197 (Fort Walton Beach) and $77,709 (Okaloosa County). (1/24)

Space Policy, Geopolitics, and the ISS (Source: Space Review)
The International Space Station has survived several decades of ups and downs in relations between Russia and the West. Jeff Foust reports that partnership could face its toughest challenge yet amid fears Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine. Click here. (1/24)
 
A Phoenix Dying in Samos Ashes: The SPARTAN Reconnaissance Satellite Program (Source: Space Review)
In the 1960s there was a short-lived effort to resurrect a cancelled reconnaissance satellite program under the codename SPARTAN. Dwayne Day examines the technical and other challenges that effort faced. Click here. (1/24)
 
Cold War Pony Express in the Western Pacific (Source: Space Review)
A recent essay described how the US Air Force used ships, among other means, to track Soviet launches and missile tests. Mike Beuster recalls his experience serving on one of those ships in the 1970s. Click here. (1/24)