January 28, 2022

Tensions with Russia Worry Former US Astronauts About the Partnership in Space (Source: CNN)
Russian politicians have threatened to use the station as a bargaining chip during previous geopolitical crises. When the United States imposed sanctions on Russia after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, it was entirely reliant on Russian Soyuz rockets to launch NASA astronauts to the space station and return them safely home. A potential lunar base agreement between Russia and China, combined with the crisis in Ukraine and Russia's recent test of an anti-satellite missile, could be the beginning of the end of the US-Russian alliance in civilian spaceflight, which has continued uninterrupted since 1975.

"Unfortunately, I do think it's destined to end," Reisman said. But the NASA administrator is more optimistic, describing the partnership as "one of the truly remarkable stories of our time." "Isn't it something that when our politics on terra firma are causing us to be at odds with each other, us earthlings can overcome that around a common civilian space program and cooperate so beautifully," Nelson said. (1/28)

Roscosmos and NTI Held Conference on Development of Private Cosmonautics in Russia (Source: Parabolic Arc)
On January 27 Roscosmos and the Platform of the National Technology Initiative (NTI) held an online conference dedicated to the development of private cosmonautics and the implementation of the accompanying regulatory framework in Russia. The event was attended by Sergey Prokhorov, director of the department for advanced programs and the Sphere project of the Roscosmos State Corporation, Vladislav Ivanenko, general director of the private space company Sputniks, Roman Zhits, head of the NTI Aeronet direction for private astronautics, as well as representatives of the Russian media. (1/28)

Satellite Vu to Publicly Share Carbon Emissions Data in Major Climate Change Commitment (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Satellite Vu, an Earth observation company that offers the highest-resolution thermal imagery and insights, are set to make their carbon emissions data available to the public to raise awareness and promote accountability towards business sustainability.

The COP26 summit at the end of 2021 reaffirmed the call for governments and businesses to take action against climate change. The global aim, initially crafted by an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, is to reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2030, and 90% by 2050, and Satellite Vu will become one of the first major space companies to share their carbon emissions data publicly in a drive towards these goals. (1/28)

Aerospace Engineering Job Outlook in the US And Abroad (Source: UCF)
There are a wealth of job opportunities within the evolving field of aerospace engineering, which has plenty of momentum behind it thanks to a booming commercial air transport industry, the popularity of technologies that rely on satellite technology, and the consistent needs of the U.S. defense and travel industries.

With a continued demand across the production supply chain for aircraft manufacturing, as well as increased military spending with an emphasis on cybersecurity within aerospace technologies, there are abundant career opportunities in the field. As technologies advance and the world becomes more globalized, the aerospace engineering job outlook in the U.S. — and even internationally — will remain promising. (1/28)

Launch Countdown Clocks Placed in Florida Capitol Building (Source: SPACErePORT)
Space Florida unveiled two video launch countdown monitors in the state capitol building in Tallahassee during Space Day 2022 on 27 January. The monitors are placed in high-traffic areas to keep state legislators, staff, and visitors updated on the status of launch operations at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. (1/27)

China Demonstrates Satellite Servicing with Tow (Source: Space News)
A Chinese satellite recently towed a defunct navigation satellite out of geostationary orbit. Data from space tracking firms show that the Shijian-21 satellite docked with the defunct Beidou-2 G2 navigation satellite and performed a large burn Jan. 22., moving the spacecraft out of the GEO belt. Shijian-21 undocked from Beidou-2 G2 on Jan. 26, leaving that spacecraft in a disposal orbit well above GEO, and has since returned to GEO. Beidou-2 G2 failed in orbit following its 2009 launch, has been drifting since 2010 and may have partially fragmented at some point. China describes Shijian-21, launched last October, as a space debris mitigation satellite but has not released details about the satellite or its planned objectives. (1/28)

DoD Space Tracking System Shut Down (Source: Space News)
A Defense Department space tracking software system beset by problems has been shut down. The Space Force has closed down the last remaining piece of the Joint Mission System (JMS), a troubled software platform conceived more than a decade ago to help track satellites and orbital debris. The Air Force decided in 2018 to terminate JMS following years of cost overruns and criticism for the system’s poor performance. In place of JMS, the Space Force started an agile development software program called Space C2 that relies on a commercial data analytics platform named Warp Core, provided by Palantir. (1/28)

DoD to Test GPS Cybersecurity (Source: Space News)
The Defense Department will test the performance and cybersecurity of the overall GPS "enterprise" this year and next. In an annual report released Thursday, the Pentagon's office of operational testing and evaluation said it plans to begin a cyber assessment of the GPS ground control system known as OCX in late 2022, followed by the initial operational testing of the GPS enterprise in 2023. The office said that growing threats to U.S. space systems warranted the evaluation. (1/28)

India's Skyroot Launcher Startup Raises $4.5 Million (Source: Hindu Business Line)
An Indian launch startup has secured a new round of funding. Skyroot Aerospace said it raised $4.5 million as a bridge to a future Series B round. The company, which has raised $17 million to date, is developing the Vikram line of small launch vehicles and hopes to conduct a first launch by the end of the year. (1/28)

NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel Keeping Close Eye on Human Spaceflight Reorganization (Source: Space News)
NASA’s safety advisers say they’re closely watching an ongoing reorganization of NASA’s human spaceflight efforts. NASA announced in September it would split its Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate into two directorates, one devoted to exploration systems development and the other to operations. At Thursday’s NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel meeting, members said that reorganization “will have implications for safety and risk,” citing lessons learned from the Columbia accident investigation on organizational changes. That reorganization is still ongoing, agency officials said at a committee meeting last week, as it awaits approvals from the White House and Congress. (1/28)

Leshin to Lead JPL (Source: Space News)
A planetary scientist and university president will be the first woman to lead NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Caltech, which operates JPL for NASA, announced Thursday it selected Laurie Leshin as the next director of JPL, effective in May. Leshin is currently president of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and previously held positions at NASA Headquarters and the Goddard Space Flight Center. She also is on the science team for the Curiosity Mars rover. She will become the first woman to lead JPL, established by Caltech in 1936 and operated by the university for NASA since 1958. (1/28)

Water on Mars May Have Flowed for a Billion Years Longer Than Thought (Source: Space.com)
Mars may have had liquid water on its surface for a billion years longer than previously thought. Scientists used observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to measure the age of salt deposits on the surface by counting the number of craters present. Those deposits, believed to be left behind by liquid water, were formed as recently as two billion years ago, a billion years younger than previous estimates. (1/28)

Spaceport Closer to Launching in Georgia, as Cataula Man Helps Lead Mission (Source: WTVM)
The state of Georgia hopped another hurdle to be able to launch rockets at a new facility, and we learned more it from a space leader near Columbus. Last month, the FAA approved the Launch Site Operator License for Peach State to operate a commercial spaceport, only the 13th in the nation. On Friday, a judge denied requests from opponents to stop Camden County to finally buy land for it. This is on the coast, 11 miles north of the border with Florida.

News Leader 9 sat down with the Georgia Space Committee Chairman, who lives in Harris County. “I think it’s a really big deal. I think, over time, it could be one of the biggest economic development projects in the history of Georgia, not on day one, but over time,” Chuck Hunsaker said. This would only be the 3rd vertical lift spaceport in the U-S., if it’s built in Georgia as planned, with impacts also in the Chattahoochee Valley. Hunsaker says we could see the first rocket launch next year. And he tells us, this is about more than rockets, also attracting and impacting satellites, Direct TV, satellite radio, and parts of the “space economy.” (1/24)

Space For Humanity Announces $1.25 million Matching Campaign to Send More People to Space (Source: Space For Humanity)
Today, Space For Humanity (S4H), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, announced the launch of a new matching campaign to support the organization's mission to expand access to space for all humanity. A generous donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, has pledged $1.25 million to support our "To Space" matching grant campaign.

The funds from this campaign will further support the organization's Humanity Missions, which will sponsor citizen astronauts to visit space and experience the Overview Effect: the cognitive shift in awareness that occurs when looking back at the Earth from space. Space For Humanity has received more than 4,000 applications since the organization's founding (2017) from leaders from every walk of life including over 100 different countries and nations around the world. (1/26)

How Does Time Pass When You Live in Space? (Source: WESH)
For those of us on Earth, adjusting to a new normal, like extended periods of working from home and disruptions to well-established routines, has created a sensation that time has no meaning. Astronauts experience a different kind of time warp when they travel to space and spend six months or longer living on the International Space Station. From the perspective of their low-Earth orbit, the crew witnesses 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets per day.

The astronauts' 12-hour workdays are scheduled down to five-minute increments as they work on experiments, maintain the space station, and conduct routine maintenance and cleaning. Breaking the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, NASA astronaut Christina Koch spent 328 days in space between March 2019 and February 2020.

"We have a saying in long duration spaceflight that 'it's a marathon, not a sprint,'" Koch told CNN. "In my mind, I just change it to, 'it's an ultra-marathon, not a marathon.' And I made sure to let the people around me know that I would probably need help at some point, and I would probably rely on them for different things and that it might not be easy every single day." While preparing for her record-breaking mission, Koch spoke with fellow NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who still holds the all-time record with 340 days in space. Kelly reminded Koch that it was crucial to pace herself and be vocal about what she needed in order to recharge. (1/27)

SpaceX Plans for Record Year of Launches at Rate of One Per Week (Source: CNBC)
SpaceX broke its own annual orbital launch record last year, and it’s looking to pick up the blistering pace further in 2022 to an average rate of one per week. The private company is targeting to launch 52 missions this year, according to a key NASA agency oversight committee. “That’s an incredible pace,” said Sandra Magnus of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel during a meeting on Thursday.

SpaceX successfully completed 31 launches in 2021, which beat its previous record of 26 launches in 2020. For context, SpaceX represented about a fifth of the world’s successful orbital rocket launches last year – with the company roughly keeping pace with China. The company is already on a weekly average pace to begin the year. (1/27)

A Private Mission to Scan the Cloud Tops of Venus for Evidence of Life (Source: Universe Today)
The search for life on Venus has a fascinating history. Carl Sagan famously and sarcastically said there were obviously dinosaurs there since a thick haze we couldn’t see through covered the surface. More recently, evidence has pointed to a more nuanced idea of how life might exist on our sister planet. A recent announcement of phosphine in the Venusian atmosphere caused quite a stir in the research community and numerous denials from other research groups.

But science moves on, and now some of the researchers involved in the phosphine finding have come up with a series of small missions that will help settle the question more thoroughly – by directly sampling Venus’ atmosphere for the first time in almost 40 years. Several interesting findings, and important questions, have cropped up in the absence of any current data. Venus is commonly depicted as a hellscape of sulfuric acid where any living thing would be instantly melted, either by the acid itself or by the extremely high temperatures and pressures present on the planet’s surface. But parts of its atmosphere have temperatures and pressures similar to Earth. 

The Venus Life Finder (VLF) mission is not sponsored by any state-funded space agency but by the Breakthrough Initiatives program, a non-profit research organization founded by billionaire Yuri Milner. The first of these missions would launch a 50 lb probe with a laser 38 million miles to ride through Venus’ atmosphere for three minutes. During those three minutes, it will use an instrument called an autofluorescing nephelometer to detect whether any molecules light up when hit with a laser beam. (1/25)

NASA Aims to Reduce Sonic Boom of X-59 SuperSonic Airplane with Softer Sonic ‘Thump’ (Source: Space Coast Daily)
NASA hopes the ban on commercial supersonic flight over land can be lifted by replacing the loud sonic boom with a softer sonic “thump.” A sonic boom happens when the shock waves from an object traveling through the air faster than the speed of sound merge together before they reach the ground. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, about 110 decibels, like the sound of an explosion or a thunderclap. Through the unique design of the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) airplane, NASA aims to reduce the sonic boom to make it much quieter. (1/26)

NASA Marks Anniversary of Apollo and Space Shuttle Tragedies (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
Each year around the last week of January, NASA pays tribute to those who gave their lives in the quest to explore space, in particular, those from Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia. This year, NASA’s Day of Remembrance was Jan. 27, 2022, which marks 55 years after the Apollo 1 fire that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee during a fire in the capsule during a pre-launch test. (1/27)

ABL Space Systems Test Accident to Delay First Launch by Three Months (Source: Space News)
ABL Space Systems says a test incident that destroyed the upper stage of its RS1 rocket last week will delay that vehicle’s first flight by three months as it identifies and corrects the failure’s root cause. ABL was in the middle of a test campaign for the RS1 upper stage built for its first launch when an anomaly destroyed the stage during a Jan. 19 static firing at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The accident created a dramatic plume of black smoke and prompted a response from local firefighters, but there were no injuries reported and no damage outside of the location where the stage was being tested.

After the incident, he said the company expects a three-month delay in that first launch. The upper stage being built for the second RS1 launch will now be used for the first launch. The lower stage is complete and currently in storage in Kodiak, while the interstage between the first and second stages is being shipped to Kodiak. The payload fairing has completed acceptance testing and will soon be shipped to the launch site. (1/27)