January 5, 2022

Redwire Wrapping Up Accounting Investigation (Source: Redwire)
Redwire is wrapping up an investigation that delayed the release of its earnings. The company said Thursday that an investigation started three months ago after discovering potential accounting issues at a business subunit found "no material misstatements" in previous financial filings. The company, which went public last year through a SPAC merger, says it expects to soon finalize its third-quarter financial results that had been delayed by the investigation. The company disclosed preliminary results for all of 2021, with total pro forma revenue of $146-151 million. (2/4)

India's Lunar Lander to Launch in August (Source: Space News)
An Indian official says the country's Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander mission will launch in August. In a statement this week, Jitendra Singh, India's science and technology minister, said much of the hardware and related tests for the lander had been completed. Launching on a GSLV Mark 3 rocket, the mission will be India's second attempt to land on the moon after the Chandrayaan-2 lander failed in 2019. Earlier reports suggested Chandrayaan-3's launch might be delayed to 2023. (2/4)

Boeing Developing Fully Composite Cryo Tank (Source: Boeing)
Boeing successfully tested a cryogenic fuel tank made entirely of composite materials. The tank was filled with a cryogenic liquid and pressurized to 3.75 times its rated design without failing. The work was funded by Boeing and DARPA for potential use on an "evolved" version of the SLS Exploration Upper Stage. The tank could also be used in aviation applications, such as aircraft that use hydrogen fuel. (2/4)

DoD's Newest WGS Satellite Passes Review (Source: Space News)
The newest satellite in the military's Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) system has passed a key review. The Space Force said this week that the WGS-11+ satellite passed a critical design review and is ready to move into production. The Boeing-built satellite will be completed in 2024 under a $605 million contract awarded in 2019. (2/4)

Sidus Space Partners with Red Canyon Software to Support the LizzieSat Constellation of 100 Satellites (Source: Sidus Space)
Sidus Space has entered a strategic partnership with Red Canyon Software to support LizzieSat constellation of 100 satellites. Through this partnership, Red Canyon will support the design, development, assembly, integration, deployment and sustainment of LizzieSat constellation, with its software solutions. LizzieSats are 3D manufactured microsatellites focused on rapid, cost-effective development and testing of upcoming innovative spacecraft technologies for multiple customers. (2/4)

L3Harris to Lead Integration of New Space Domain Awareness System (Source: C4ISRnet)
The U.S. Space Force is getting closer to replacing its aging space command-and-control system. The service has been working since 2018 to replace the Space Defense Operations Center (SPADOC) with a more modernized command-and-control capability, the Advanced Tracking and Launch Analysis System (ATLAS), developed by L3Harris. ATLAS is being designed to improve the Space Force’s ability to identify, characterize and understand increasing activity in space — from growing commercial constellations to adversary activity and space debris.

Last month, the service awarded L3Harris a two-year, $49.7 million task order to develop and integrate a suite of command-and-control tools, expanding the company’s role from prime contractor to lead integrator. (2/3)

Colorado-Based ULA Shows Off New Launch Abilities (Denver Business Journal)
Centennial-based United Launch Alliance notched its 148th consecutive successful space mission with its first launch of 2022, a delivery of two U.S. military surveillance satellites to orbit. The mission and the company’s last launch of 2021, also for the U.S. Space Force, illustrate ULA’s expertise in delivering satellites to far-away orbits and why it launches most U.S. military missions despite costing more than Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

A ULA Atlas V blasted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Jan. 21 to make deliver two satellites to geostationary orbit around 22,000 miles above the equator. The Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program satellites, made by Northrop Grumman, are the fifth and sixth military satellites fielded to watch other country’s satellites in orbit and be able to fly over to rendezvous with them, if needed. (2/3)

Iceye Raises $136 Million in Series D Round (Source: Space News)
Iceye raised $136 million in a Series D investment round led by Seraphim Space, a longstanding backer of the Finnish radar satellite operator. Iceye has now raised a total of $304 million for its global operations focused on providing government and commercial customers with imagery and data drawn from its constellation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites. (2/3)

Near Space Labs to Offer 10-Centimeter Resolution Imagery (Source: Space news)
Near Space Labs is upgrading instruments mounted on its Swifty high-altitude balloons to capture imagery of Arizona, California and Texas with a resolution of 10 centimeters per pixel. “We are ramping up a plan for expansion in 2022, which would allow us to cover 100 of the most populous cities in the country, including Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles andNew York,” said Rema Matevosyan, Near Space Labs CEO. In addition, the startup is “taking tasking requests to image custom areas of interest” throughout the continental United States, Matevosyan said. (2/3)

Why NASA Should Build an Even Bigger Telescope (Source: The Hill)
Our best chance for imaging city lights outside the solar system is around the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf located 4.25 light years away. This star is nearly 600 times fainter than the Sun, and so a planet needs to be 20 times closer to Proxima’s furnace than the Earth is from the Sun, in order for it to support life based on liquid water. In August 2016, astronomers  discovered  a planet weighing 1.3 Earth masses in this habitable zone. Because of its proximity to the star, this planet — Proxima b — is thought to be tidally locked, with a permanent dayside and a permanent nightside.

If the event Proxima b is already inhabited by a technological civilization, its dayside may be coated with photovoltaic cells to generate electricity that would illuminate and warm the nightside, which is otherwise be too cold and dark for comfortable life. My research team showed that NASA’s recently launched James Webb Space Telescope could potentially detect city lights on the permanent nightside of Proxima b. Even if the artificial illumination is as faint as our civilization currently utilizes on the nightside of Earth, Webb could detect it as long as it was limited to a frequency band that is a thousand times narrower than the starlight.

Future space telescopes, like NASA’s proposed Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared Surveyor, will be sensitive to even fainter levels of artificial illumination on the nightside of Proxima b. In another paper, we showed that a substantial coverage of Proxima b’s dayside with solar panels is detectable on its own, based on its characteristic spectral edge in reflecting starlight. (2/3)

Life-Enabling Moons Cn Probably Only Form Around Small Planets, Study Finds (Source: Space.com)
Earth's moon is large for the planet's size, and many astronomers have long believed that this fact has helped make Earth a habitable world. And a new study has now found that our planet was just the right size to form such a large, life-enabling moon. The study, by researchers from the University of Rochester in New York, found that rocky planets with a diameter more than 1.6 times that of Earth and icy planets with a diameter more than 1.3 times that of Earth likely can't create moons that would have those life-enabling effects on them. (2/3)

Mars May Have Been Habitable Millions of Years Later Than we Thought (Source: New Scientist)
Deformations in a small mineral grain from a Martian meteorite hint that habitable conditions on Mars could have arisen later than we thought. Billions of years ago, the inner solar system went through a phase of intense asteroid strikes known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. Previous analysis of meteorites suggests these impacts stopped on Mars 4.48 million years ago, allowing the planet to develop conditions that may have been advantageous for life by about 4.2 billion years ago. (2/32

Astronomers Set Up a New Center to Address Issues Raised by SpaceX and Amazon Satellite Networks (Source: GeekWire)
The International Astronomical Union is heading up the creation of a new center to deal with the complications created by broadband satellite constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper. The IAU Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky From Satellite Constellation Interference will be co-hosted at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab in Arizona and the SKA Observatory’s offices at Jodrell Bank in Britain.

The Institute for Data Intensive Research in Astrophysics and Cosmology, or DIRAC, is already getting a head start on one of the center’s missions — cataloging astronomical images with satellite streaks so that they can be made available for analysis. The rapid rise of satellite constellations will further complicate the issue. SpaceX has already launched more than 2,000 satellites for its Starlink network, and aims to have tens of thousands in orbit eventually. Another broadband venture, OneWeb, has launched almost 400 satellites and is gearing up for commercial service. Amazon, meanwhile, has won regulatory approval for a 3,236-satellite Project Kuiper constellation. (2/3)

SpaceX Sets New Fairing Reuse Record with Starlink Mission (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
SpaceX's Starlink launch featured both fairing halves reused from previous missions. One half flew on its sixth mission, setting a new record for SpaceX. (2/3)

A Satellite Finds Massive Methane Leaks From Gas Pipelines (Source: NPR)
There's new evidence, collected from orbiting satellites, that oil and gas companies are routinely venting huge amounts of methane into the air. Methane is the main ingredient in natural gas, the fuel. It's also a powerful greenhouse gas, second only to carbon dioxide in its warming impact. And Thomas Lauvaux, a researcher with the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences in France, says there's been a persistent discrepancy between official estimates of methane emissions and field observations. (2/3)

US Rejects Charge That Starlink Satellites Endangered China’s Space Station (Source: Breaking Defense)
The United States, in an official “note verbale” to the United Nations, has refuted China’s unusual diplomatic accusation that SpaceX’s Starlink satellites have endangered, and continue to endanger, its crewed space station. “If there had been a significant probability of collision involving the China Space Station, the United States would have provided a close approach notification directly to the designated Chinese point of contact,” asserts the Jan. 28 missive filed with the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs in Vienna. (2/3)

SpaceX Engineers in Fiji to Set Up  Temporary Satellite Comms Ground Station (Source: FBC News)
Engineers for SpaceX which, among other things makes space going rockets, are currently in Fiji. Minister for Communications, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum confirmed to FBC News that the team from SpaceX are here to work on an internet gateway for the Kingdom of Tonga. This is in response to the underwater volcanic eruption which has damaged the undersea fiber optic cable, leaving Tonga without reliable internet connectivity. Sayed-Khaiyum adds the engineers from SpaceX will establish and operate a temporary ground station in Fiji for six months. (2/3)

Needed: A European Space Strategy (Source: The Parliament)
Space policy may seem like science fiction for many people, but better regulation for global space activities is not a concern of the distant future. Our societies are already heavily dependent on orbital technologies. From mobile communication to global navigation, from intelligence data to climate change mitigation — satellite infrastructure is one of the most important of our century. It is, however, also one of the least protected. While technology is making rapid leaps, international regulation lags behind.

There is a great deal happening in space. We see new private-sector players becoming the driving forces behind a radical transformation of spaceflight and its economics. We see powerful states such as the US, China and Russia put a new race to the moon into motion as well as a further militarization of space. Almost daily, we see decisive developments.

The EU has to decide the role it wants to play in this increasingly contested terrain. It needs to tackle important questions like space traffic management, corporate liability and sustainability. We need to update international space law in order to ensure we preserve peace under new technological circumstances, and we need to invest in a European space economy and ensure that we do not fall behind our international competitors. (2/3)