February 1, 2022

Tonga Volcano and Tsunami Destruction Shows Need to Secure Communications — in Space (Source: NBC News)
The world really is going from major disaster to major disaster. Forest fire season has become year-round, with Colorado recently joining California in seeing now-common annual occurrences. Last year had the third-highest number of Atlantic hurricanes on record. Then last month, a series of major tornadoes killed people and destroyed homes across six states, centering on Kentucky, before this weekend’s devastation in Tonga.

Fortunately for those who have connectivity, and with it organized emergency alert systems, tsunami warnings were sounded in the West Coast of the United States, Japan, New Zealand and select areas on the Pacific Rim. But not every country sent out an alert, and people located in remote areas in some of the more developed countries didn’t receive those that were sent because they had no coverage.

A global early warning system must remain functional before, during and after a disaster. Previous natural disasters have taken out cellphone towers and other modes of modern-day communication because they were based on land, and a quarter of the U.S. population uses cellphone towers threatened by wildfires. The only fool-proof way to avoid this is if the actual system is removed from Mother Nature’s grip here on the planet and run using satellites in orbit. (1/18)

SpaceX Launches COSMO-SkyMed, Lands Booster, on Florida Polar Mission (Source: Space News)
A Falcon 9 launched an Italian radar imaging satellite after days of delays. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 6:11 p.m. Eastern and deployed the Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation 2 satellite into orbit an hour later. The rocket's first stage, originally built as a Falcon Heavy side booster, landed eight minutes after liftoff back at Cape Canaveral's Landing Zone 1. The Italian satellite was originally to launch on a Vega, but delays in the development of the Vega C led the Italian space agency ASI to purchase a Falcon 9 launch. This was the fourth Falcon 9 launch of the year and the first of three scheduled for this week. (2/1)

Coast Guard Investigating Cruise Ship Launch Zone Incursion at Eastern Range (Source: Florida Today)
The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating a cruise ship that entered restricted waters and scrubbed an earlier Falcon 9 launch attempt. The Coast Guard confirmed that "Harmony of the Seas," a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, was in a restricted zone off the coast after departing Port Canaveral Sunday afternoon. The ship was unable to leave that restricted zone in time, causing SpaceX to scrub the launch. The Coast Guard said it is "actively investigating" the incursion, while Royal Caribbean did not comment on the incident. (2/1)

Jessica Watkins is Getting Ready to be the First Black Woman to Spend Months in Space (Source: NPR)
After an enrichment program at Sally Ride Elementary School, a young Jessica Watkins realized what she wanted to do when she grew up: study the geology of other planets. Today, at 33 years old, Watkins is training for a mission to do just that. This April, Watkins is set to become the first Black woman to live and work on the ISS for an extended mission. She will arrive there onboard a SpaceX capsule and then spend six months on the ISS. (1/31)

NASA Asteroid Tracking System Now Capable of Full Sky Search (Source: NASA)
The NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS)—a state-of-the-art asteroid detection system operated by the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) Institute for Astronomy (IfA) for the agency’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO)—has reached a new milestone by becoming the first survey capable of searching the entire dark sky every 24 hours for near-Earth objects (NEOs) that could pose a future impact hazard to Earth. Now comprised of four telescopes, ATLAS has expanded its reach to the southern hemisphere from the two existing northern-hemisphere telescopes on Haleakalā and Maunaloa in Hawai’i to include two additional observatories in South Africa and Chile.  (1/31)

Lawmakers Seek More Funds for DoD "Responsive Launch" Program (Source: Space News)
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is asking House appropriators to add funding for a Defense Department "responsive launch" program. A letter Monday by 12 members of Congress requested the $50 million in the final fiscal year 2022 appropriations bill for tactically responsive space launch, or the ability to launch satellites on short notice. The Pentagon did not request any funding in 2022 for tactically responsive launch, but the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act approved $50 million.

The Senate version of a defense spending bill does include the funding, while the House version does not. Companies like Virgin Orbit have actively lobbied for funding for this program, which is aimed at the small launch industry, particularly those providers that don't require conventional launch facilities and can get their vehicles ready to launch within days or hours. (2/1)

SpaceX and Relativity Not Selected for NASA Commercial Space Station Projects (Source: Space News)
SpaceX and Relativity Space were among the bidders for a NASA program to support development of commercial space stations. NASA released last week the source selection statement for its Commercial LEO Destinations program, which provided funded Space Act Agreements in December to Blue Origin, Nanoracks and Northrop Grumman. The statement revealed that Relativity and SpaceX were among the 11 bidders, with SpaceX proposing a station based on the lunar lander version of its Starship vehicle, while Relativity offered a station based on its Terran R reusable launch vehicle. Neither proposal was funded. (2/1)

Weather Sensor for Proposed Space Force Constellation Passes Design Review (Source: Space News)
An imaging sensor developed by EO Vista for U.S. Space Force weather satellites passed a key design review. The company is supplying sensors to General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems, one of three contractors competing in the Space Force's Electro-Optical Infrared Weather System (EWS) program. General Atomics is offering a constellation of 15 small satellites for the EWS program. The Space Force is expected to select one or more teams to launch a demonstration mission in 2023. (2/1)

JWST Instruments Switched On (Source: NASA)
NASA has turned on the James Webb Space Telescope's instruments. The agency said Monday it completed turning on the telescope's four main instruments in the last few days as part of the months-long commissioning process. Once one of the instruments, a camera called NIRCam, cools to a temperature of 120 kelvins, controllers will be ready to start using it to align the telescope's mirrors. (2/1)

New Mexico Legislators Reject Virgin GalacticTax (Source: Las Cruces Sun-News)
A proposal to add sales tax to the price of Virgin Galactic tickets has been rejected by New Mexico legislators. A bill introduced last month would have made those tickets eligible for the state's gross receipts tax, adding more than $30,000 to the current $450,000 list price for those seats. However, a New Mexico House of Representatives committee voted Monday to table the bill, effectively keeping the bill from being passed this year. Spaceport backers warned that adding a tax could make the state appear unfriendly to Virgin Galactic and other businesses. (2/1)

Prince Charles Visits UK's Astroscale (Source: Oxford Mail)
Prince Charles visited the offices of a company working to remove debris from space. Prince Charles was at the U.K. offices of Astroscale Monday to learn more about that company's plans to develop spacecraft to service satellites and remove debris. He also met with other government and space industry officials at the Harwell Campus. Astroscale has not provided an update since it said last week that it halted a test of its ELSA-d satellite after encountering an anomaly. (2/1)

NASA's TESS Detects 5,000 Potential Exoplanets (Source: Sky & Telescope)
A NASA spacecraft has now discovered 5,000 potential exoplanets. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) searches for exoplanets by detecting minute, periodic drops in brightnesses of stars as planets pass in front of, or transit, them. The spacecraft, launched in 2018, has now found its 5,000th exoplanet candidate, known as a "TESS object of interest." Changes in the analysis of TESS data have allowed astronomers to double the number of exoplanet candidates just in the last year. As of December, 175 of those objects have been confirmed to be exoplanets. (2/1)

China Marks New Year with Mars Video (Source: The Verge)
A Chinese spacecraft is marking the Lunar New Year with a new video. The China National Space Administration released a video taken by its Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter, showing part of the spacecraft with Mars in the background. The video was taken by a camera at the end of a boom that extended from the spacecraft bus. Click here. (2/1)

Former Florida Shuttle Simulator Used in Moonfall Movie (Source: collectSPACE)
There will be at least a little bit of realism in the upcoming movie "Moonfall." The movie, about NASA sending a shuttle mission to save the Earth from a collision with the moon, features scenes shot inside an actual NASA simulator. That cockpit simulator was given to a Florida museum after the shuttle program's end, but that museum later shut down. The filmmakers obtained the simulator and refurbished it for scenes in the movie, then handed it over to the Pima Air and Space Museum in Arizona, where it is on display today. (2/1)

NASA Provides Updated International Space Station Transition Plan (Source: Parabolic Arc)
The ISS is a unique laboratory that is returning enormous scientific, educational, and technological developments to benefit people on Earth and is enabling our ability to travel into deep space. The Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to extend space station operations until 2030 will enable the United States to continue to reap these benefits for the next decade while U.S. industry develops commercial destinations and markets for a thriving space economy. 

As NASA looks forward to a decade of results from research and technology development aboard the International Space Station, the agency is taking steps to ensure a successful transition of operations to commercial services. In response to Congressional direction, NASA has now provided an updated International Space Station Transition Report that details the goals for the next decade of station operations leading to a smooth transition to commercial services, the steps being taken to develop both the supply and demand side of the low-Earth orbit commercial economy, and the technical steps and budget required for transition. (2/1)

NASA Plans to Take International Space Station Out of Orbit in January 2031 by Crashing it Into 'Spacecraft Cemetery' (Source: Sky News)
NASA has published plans for the future of the International Space Station which could see the 444,615kg structure taken out of orbit in January 2031 and crashed into a "spacecraft cemetery." In the perfect scenario, the space station's orbiting altitude will be slowly lowered from its current altitude of 408km. As the altitude of the ISS drops it will encounter an ever-denser atmosphere, adding more drag and pulling it lower still. The space station will still be traveling so fast that it will begin to heat and cast off debris in a path behind it.

The plan to avoid this debris damaging people or property is to have the ISS crash into an uninhabited area of the south Pacific Ocean, near to Point Nemo. Point Nemo has been called a spacecraft cemetery because - as the point on the Earth most distant from any land - it is where decommissioned spacecraft are typically aimed when returning to the Earth. (1/2)