March 15, 2022

DoD's MDA Decommissions Two Old Missile Tracking Satellites (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announced Monday it decommissioned two missile-tracking satellites that have operated in low Earth orbit for more than 12 years. The two Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) satellites, built by Northrop Grumman and launched in 2009, stopped collecting data last September and were removed from service March 8. In its 2022 budget request, MDA sought $15.2 million to retire the STSS satellites and close out the program. The satellites were intended to be pathfinders for a larger constellation called SBIRS Low that the Defense Department later canceled. (3/15)

India Tests Solid Rocket Stage for New Smallsat Launcher (Source: Indian Express)
The Indian space agency ISRO completed a test of a solid-fuel stage for a new smallsat launch vehicle. ISRO said Monday that the ground test of the first stage of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) was a success after previously completing testing of two upper stages. ISRO has scheduled the inaugural launch of the SSLV for May. (3/15)

NASA Astronauts Install Equipment During ISS Spacewalk (Source: NASA)
Two NASA astronauts have started a spacewalk outside the International Space Station this morning. Kayla Barron and Raja Chari started the spacewalk, scheduled to last six and a half hours, at 8:12 a.m. Eastern. The two will install adapters on the station's truss for new solar arrays to be delivered later this year. A second spacewalk is scheduled for March 23 to perform other maintenance on the station. (3/15)

Moon Battle: New Space Force Plans Raise Fears Over Militarizing the Lunar Surface (Source: Politico)
The battle is on for the moon. The U.S. military is investing in new technologies to build large structures on the lunar surface. It’s designing a spy satellite to orbit the moon. And it just announced plans for a surveillance network — what it calls a “highway patrol” — for the vast domain between Earth’s orbit and the moon, known as cislunar space. Top military strategists and documents, meanwhile, now consistently refer to this region as a new realm of operations.

The funding is also starting to flow. The government spending bill passed by Congress this week added $61 million for the military to pursue projects in cislunar space. “That’s basically the first significant chunk of money that we’re putting towards this,” said Space Force Col. Eric Felt, commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Vehicles Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. He likened it to “putting the toe into the water, but we think this is an important potential future tech area.”

“From the Space Force’s perspective,” he added, “they don’t know how big of a deal this is going to be in the future, but it could be a big deal.” But space policy and security experts also fear that the armed forces could outstrip NASA in space exploration and thrust what has largely been a peaceful competition into a military contest. (3/12)

France Puts Space at Top of National — and European — Security Priorities (Source: Defense News)
France is several years into a multibillion-euro investment in military space capabilities, and the country is using its temporary role leading the European Council presidency to emphasize the operational domain’s importance across the continent. Mirroring its American partners, officials in Paris have in recent years upped the rhetoric and investment around military efforts in space. “If space was the ‘new frontier’ of the 1960s, there is no doubt that today it is a ‘new front’ on the battlefield,” French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly said.

Paris has reworked the way it organizes and funds its space capabilities, and it developed a new space-dedicated exercise. In 2019, France released a national space defense strategy and launched its own Space Command, locally known as Commandement de l’espace, or CDE. In 2020, the French Air Force was renamed the French Air and Space Force to recognize the importance of space as its own warfighting domain. (3/14)

Satellite Images Spot Russian Artillery Firing on Kyiv (Source: Space.com)
New satellite views from space show the Russian military moving towards Kyiv, Ukraine on Friday (March 11), including images of a battalion firing upon the besieged capital. Muzzle flashes and smoke are visible in some of the satellite images obtained by Maxar's WorldView-2 satellite, which has been watching the invasion of Ukraine by Russia since Feb. 24 and producing high-above views of the conflict. Russia has faced international condemnation and sanctions for its actions, especially in the space sector, where many partnerships have dissolved or frayed. (3/12)

Time for NASA to Go All In on Commercial Space (Source: The Hill)
Recent developments suggest that the business-as-usual approach to civil space policy has become increasingly untenable. At the same time, commercial partnerships continue to pay dividends, saving NASA money and expanding its reach and capabilities. NASA needs to go all-in on the one area of human spaceflight that has been a complete success: commercial space.

It has becoming increasingly clear that the question is not if the Russians will leave the International Space Station but when. Even if the Ukraine invasion is stopped and Russian President Vladimir Putin deposed soon, Russia’s economy may be so damaged by the war and sanctions that it will be incapable of maintaining an independent space program for some time to come. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson could reestablish the Regulatory and Policy Committee to deal with commercial space issues.

He has become a born-again supporter of commercial space, something he was skeptical of when he was a United States senator. The reestablishment of a this committee devoted to commercial space would signal that the change in attitude is real. The growing importance of private space’s capacity to provide a measure of stability and vigor in NASA programs such as the ISS and Artemis through public/private partnerships, and to create an independent space economy demands nothing less. (3/13)

Italy's Avio Has Enough Ukrainian Rocket Engines, For Now (Source: Twitter)
European rocket builder Avio says they have all the Ukrainian Yuzhmash engines they need, for now, from the company's eastern Ukrainian factory. No comment otherwise. Vega C inaugural slips to June; all-EU-components Vega E LOX/methane rocket wont be ready til 2026. (3/14)

Ukraine Outage for Viasat's KA-SAT Satellite (Source: Space News)
Work to restore a partial outage for Viasat’s KA-SAT satellite in Ukraine and other European countries continues more than two weeks after what the U.S. company called an “external cyber event” knocked out modems as Russia started its Feb. 24 invasion. Hackers were able to remotely access modems amid a misconfiguration in the “management section” of the satellite network, Reuters reported March 11.

Viasat declined to comment on specifics as it works with governments and law enforcement to investigate the incident, but said the network has since been stabilized. “There is no evidence to date of any impairment to the KA-SAT satellite, core network infrastructure or gateways due to this incident,” Viasat said in a March 11 statement. (3/14)

How Elon Musk’s Satellite Internet is Coming to Ukraine’s Defense (Source: Mercury News)
In a move as rogue-ishly provocative as his moonshot, Elon Musk is inserting himself into the drama of international conflict by bolstering Ukraine’s internet connection to the outside world. On Wednesday, his trucks delivered a second shipment of satellite-based Starlink internet terminals to a battered Ukraine, responding to a plea from the nation’s vice prime minister. His initial shipment arrived on Feb. 28, only four days after Russian forces launched an assault on the nation.

His system beams data from space – and so, unlike land-based networks, it is less vulnerable to attack or authoritarian control. Those aspects seem to be angering Russian officials. “This is the West that we should never trust,” responded Dmitry Rogozin, director-general of Russia’s space agency, on a state television channel translated by Katya Pavlushchenko on Twitter. “When Russia implements its highest national interests on the territory of Ukraine, Elon Musk appears with his Starlink which was previously declared as purely civilian.”

There are other complications too. Using Starlink is potentially dangerous because the Russian military could detect and identify citizens by their satellite communications, warned John Scott-Railton. “Users’ uplink transmissions become beacons for airstrikes,” he tweeted. Musk himself took to Twitter to offer Ukrainian tweeters strategic advice, instructing users to “place light camouflage over antenna to avoid visual detection” and “turn on Starlink only when needed and place antenna away (sic) as far away from people as possible.” (3/13)

China's BeiDou Enters New Phase of Stable Services, Rapid Development (Source: Space Daily)
China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) has entered a new phase of sustained stable services and rapid development, according to the China Satellite Navigation Office on Friday. Measured by the global continuous monitoring and evaluation system, the BDS-3 system shows an advanced performance index in providing global positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services, with more outstanding performance in the Asia-Pacific region, said the office. (3/13)

Command Control and Technologies Corporation Celebrates 25 Years, Innovators in Mission Critical Automation (Source: Space Coast Daily, CCT)
For a quarter of a century, Command Control Technologies Corporation has assured the success of mission-critical process control systems in projects ranging from space launch operations to border patrol and security. “As a small business with a powerful product suite, we can be responsive to our client’s unique mission objectives at lower cost with less risk,” said Peter Simons, president and CEO.

With a well-earned reputation for designing, developing, and operating mission-critical control systems on time and within budget, CCT is a multi‐disciplinary engineering firm specializing in automated, mission-critical command, control, and monitoring systems and products for the space, defense, and intelligence communities. Offering complete automation solutions, Command Control Technologies Corporation delivers products, engineering expertise, support, and training for the entire systems lifecycle.

CCT has provided control systems for hypersonic test facilities, spaceports in Alaska and Virginia, the Antares launch control system, and for maritime surveillance systems. CCTK 4.0 is now shipping. Our latest major upgrade adds Red Hat 8.0 and 64 bit support for increased performance and reliability, new and enhanced industrial control protocols and upgraded user interface tools. (3/14)

Arecibo Observatory Reopens Visitor Center After Telescope Collapse (Source: Space Daily)
The famous Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, once home to the world's most powerful radio telescope, has reopened to visitors more than a year after the giant facility collapsed. The visitor center and observation deck are now open to visitors who make reservations in advance. From the outdoor deck, visitors can see the valley and remaining reflective dish -- 1,000 feet in diameter. Visitors began signing up for tours as soon as Arecibo announced it would reopen Wednesday, said Ricardo Correa, director of communications. (3/11)

Texas Leaders Pressuring FAA to Approve SpaceX’s Boca Chica Site for Super Heavy/Starship Launches (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Elon Musk’s recent update on the progress of SpaceX’s Super Heavy/Starship launch system didn’t provide much in the way of technical news. However, the billionaire’s presentation did seem to have had its intended political effect. Musk was clear that if the Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t come through with an approval to conduct launches from its Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX will move operations to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Sergio Tito Lopez, chairman of the Brownsville Navigation District (BND) that runs the city’s port, told the Rio Grande Guardian last week that he had been in communications with the region’s two Congressmen, Reps. Filemon Vela and Vicente Gonzalez, about how to pressure the FAA to grant environmental approval for the Boca Chica site so SpaceX doesn’t up and leave.

Critics have questioned the FAA’s decision to conduct an environmental assessment of the site for Super Heavy/Starship launches. They say the agency should have conducted a full EIS instead. The FAA did an EIS prior to approving the Boca Chica site in 2014. However, that statement was based on SpaceX’s plan to launch up to 12 smaller Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy launches annually. SpaceX subsequently abandoned its plans to launch Falcon rockets from Boca Chica. (3/14)

Astronaut Mark Vande Hei Breaks Record for Longest US Spaceflight (Source: CollectSpace)
When NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei launched into space 11 months ago, he did not know how long he would be off the planet, let alone that he would be up there long enough to set any records. But when the clock struck 12:24 p.m. EDT on March 15, Vande Hei claimed the title of the U.S. astronaut with the single longest spaceflight in history. At a mission elapsed time of 340 days, 8 hours and 42 minutes, Vande Hei will surpass the duration logged by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly on March 2, 2013.

From Tuesday afternoon forward, until his scheduled ride home on March 30, Vande Hei's record will continue to grow. His stay aboard the International Space Station is expected to wrap just short of a full year at 355 days. (3/15)

Water on the Moon? A New Mission Will Send Two Satellites to Look for Water on the Lunar Surface (Source: WMFE)
A new mission called Lunar Trailblazer is set to launch two satellites by 2025 with the goal of mapping the lunar surface and understanding the form and distribution of water on the moon. “ It’s cold enough at the South Pole, and at the North Pole, to house ice and water,” says UCF  planetary geologist Professor Kerri Donaldson Hanna. “But we’ve never actually made real detections of it. This will give us our first opportunities to do that.”

Donaldson Hanna is the co-investigator of NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer mission which consists of two science instruments about the size of a desk.They’ll launch to the moon together and orbit the moon and collect data from above the lunar surface.

The first satellite is a lunar thermal mapper which will map the temperatures of the surface of the moon in regions that get very little sunlight. This will tell scientists where the surface of the moon is cold enough to hold water in the form of ice. The second satellite will be studying the reflected light that is coming off the lunar surface that can look for signatures of water ice and other types of water and what makes them different. (3/14)

Meet the 2022 Startup Space Pitch Contest Competitors (Source: Via Satellite)
At the SATELLITE 2022 conference, nine startup entrepreneurs, hailing from all over the world, will take the stage in a battle of lightning-fast business pitches to some of the most powerful investors in the space sector. They will fight for a grand prize that includes a 30-minute conference call with even more investors to guarantee the funding they need to build prototypes, launch services, and take their businesses to the next level. Click here. (3/11) https://www.satellitetoday.com/satellite/2022/03/11/meet-the-2022-startup-space-pitch-contest-competitors/

Space Force Won’t Say Why it Delayed ULA's Launch of  Wide-Field-of-View Testbed Satellite (Source: C4ISRnet)
The U.S. Space Force is offering few details on its decision to delay the launch of its Wide-Field-of-View Testbed, which was set to lift off this spring. “National security space launches are incredibly complex and can be delayed for any number of reasons,” spokesman Jim Spellman said. “All issues, concerns and questions must be satisfactorily resolved prior to moving forward.”

The WFOV testbed, a pathfinder mission meant to inform the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared program, is part of the USSF-12 mission, which also includes an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Secondary Payload Adaptor with added propulsion, power and avionics. ULA announced last week it had been delayed “due to a customer request.” Spellman said the service does not have a new projected launch timeline and declined to confirm whether the delay was related to the satellite or the launch vehicle. (3/14)

NanoRacks Announces Leadership Plan for "Science Park" in Space (Source: NanoRacks)
The Universities Space Research Association, ZIN Technologies, The Ohio State University, and the International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation have been selected as the founding leadership team of the George Washington Carver (GWC) Science Park on the Starlab commercial space station. The GWC Science Park, established by Nanoracks, is the world’s first-ever science park in space, operating today on the International Space Station (ISS), and soon on future commercial platforms.

Nanoracks is looking for a highly experienced Director to lead the GWC Science Park team members in the definition, development, and design of the park. They will be an obsessively organized individual, capable of meeting both programmatic and organizational demands, and coordinate a constant flow of communication between science park members and Starlab technical staff at both Nanoracks and its integration subcontractor. (3/13)

Agile Supplies Thrusters for Astrobotic, ispace and Masten Lunar Landers (Source: Space News)
Colorado-based Agile Space Industries is additively manufacturing thrusters for robotic lunar landers being built by Astrobotic Technology, ispace and Masten Space Systems. Specifically, Agile is manufacturing attitude control thrusters for Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander. For Masten’s Xelene and Tokyo-based ispace’s Series 2 lunar landers, Agile is supplying thrusters for both attitude and axial control. (3/14)

New Mexico Spaceport Authority Names New Board Member, Announces Departure of Another (Source: New Mexico Inno)
The New Mexico Spaceport Authority board recently added a high-ranking official from an aerospace firm. Stephanie Luongo, chief of mission operations for aerospace company Sceye, was appointed to the board Feb. 23. Luongo began her career at Sierra Nevada Corp. as a systems engineerand was a part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program at Sierra Nevada. Furthermore, Luongo was also a "launch operations engineer for Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy lift rocket," according to her statements. (3/14)

Central Florida Power Couple Ditches Virgin Galactic to Fly with Blue Origin to Space (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Blue Origin announced the next set of civilians to take a flight on its New Shepard rocket, and while Saturday Night Live comedian Pete Davidson may be the headliner, Winter Park couple Marc and Sharon Hagle will be taking the ride, too. Their trip will fulfill a journey that has been in the works for more than a decade. Marc Hagle is president and CEO of Maitland-based commercial property company Tricor International Corp., and Sharon Hagle is founder of local nonprofit SpaceKids Global as well as a board member of the onePULSE Foundation.

The duo, who would become the first married couple to fly on a commercial spacecraft, had previously been among the first to sign up to fly on Blue Origin competitor Virgin Galactic’s space tourism flights back in 2010, but when that company will start launching customers is unclear. Now 12 years later, they look to finally make it to space with the Jeff Bezos venture, targeting liftoff at 9:30 a.m. EDT on March 23 from the company’s Launch Site One in West Texas. (3/14)

Will the Billionaire Space Race Lead to Technologies That Help Humanity, or Be Its Detriment? (Source: CEO Magazine)
With all this in mind, how should we feel about the so-called ‘billionaire space race’? Is it really all bad? Or is it possible that some great good may yet emerge out of it – not only for SpaceX or Blue Origin shareholders, of course, or the burgeoning space tourism industry and its cottage industry of new supporting startups, but humanity at large? Or even the Earth itself? In thinking about it, it’s easy to feel conflicted – do we look up in hope and awe, or do we give in to despair? Either position seems understandable.

An optimist cannot help but marvel at the array of technological wizardry being brought to bear right now – from SpaceX’s game-changing re-usable Falcon rocket systems; to NASA’s exploration of Mars via the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity drone; to newly emerging players such as STOKE Space Technologies and Varda Space Industries, and their growing talent pool of astrophysicists; to the inflatable space stations of Bigelow Aerospace; to the spectacular engineering feat of the new James Webb Space Telescope.

Certainly, the latter will tell us more about our place in the universe than any amount of astronomy has ever done before and could answer questions that humanity has pondered ever since we first huddled around camp fires 300,000 years ago and gazed up at the constellations. Surely, despite everything that is wrong with the world, how can we not be spellbound by these shining examples of human ingenuity? (3/14)

Why Starship is the Holy Grail for SpaceX (Source: CNBC)
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said that the “holy grail” to making human life multiplanetary lies in our ability to make a completely reusable rocket system that can carry a massive amount of equipment, supplies — and people — deep into space. That’s why SpaceX created Starship. The project could be alluring to investors too.

According to McKinsey & Co., private funding in space-related companies topped $10 billion in 2021 — a tenfold increase over the past decade. Traditionally, most of that funding has concentrated on activities closer to Earth, such as building out satellite communications, but there’s some evidence that may be changing. “Recently, there’s been increased focus on lunar,” McKinsey's Brooke Stokes said. “So the moon and beyond. Think moon, Mars [and] deeper planetary exploration. Lunar and beyond investment was about $1 billion from private investors in 2021, the highest sum we’d seen to date.”

Some experts have estimated that if SpaceX succeeds with Starship alongside its global satellite internet venture Starlink, the company’s valuation could skyrocket into the trillions of dollars. (3/13)

Camden County Officials Aim to Refuel Sputtering Georgia Spaceport Plans (Source: Georgia Recorder)
The long journey to launch rockets off the Georgia coast is running low on fuel as Spaceport Camden opponents brace for a final push from county officials to salvage their plans. Camden County’s spaceport project suffered a new setback Thursday as the Georgia Supreme Court refused to block the certification of Tuesday’s special election in which Camden residents overwhelmingly made it clear they don’t want the spaceport to be built.

However, the court order leaves open the door for Supreme Court justices to determine whether the constitutional law intended to protect against runaway governments should have applied to the spaceport petition that argued it’s a dangerous and unsustainable project. Spaceport opponents say they’re concerned that the county commission will take another route, such as having a spaceport authority or an investor to complete a deal with Union Carbide Corp. for the former industrial site.

County Administrator Steve Howard said on Friday that the private sector is showing interest in building a spaceport that will comply with federal licensing requirements. “They have indicated their renewed interest in having their own spaceport,” Howard said in an email. “Camden’s future remains bright!” Camden officials hail the project as a regional economic driver that will create well-paying jobs in the aerospace industry. (3/14)

Russia takes Putin’s War Into Space (Source: New York Post)
Vladimir Putin’s war is spreading to space: Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, is threatening to strand NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei aboard the International Space Station. The threat to maroon the American — scheduled to touch down in Kazakhstan next month with two Russian cosmonauts aboard a Russian spacecraft — came after President Biden imposed sanctions over Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Rogozin, a close Putin ally, has also refused to launch a UK satellite company’s payloads, stopped supplying Russian-built rocket engines to US customers and even threatened to cut ties to NASA and disconnect the Russian section from the ISS. Even in the Cold War, peaceful international cooperation was the sacred rule for civilian space programs. Count this as at least one way Putin is worse than than the USSR. (3/13)

Could Mars Ever Have Supported Life? This NASA Challenge Wants Your Help to Find Out (Source: Space.com)
NASA and crowdsourcing platform HeroX have launched a $30,000 challenge to find better ways to analyze data relating to Mars' potential to host life. The deadline to make your submission is April 18, and you can review the full competition eligibility requirements, along with the HeroX challenge page, to get more information.

The goal is to create a tool to autonomously analyze data flowing from spectrometers on Mars rovers like Perseverance and Curiosity. Their spectrometers are used to analyze the composition of rocks and to seek out components like organic molecules, which can be the building blocks of life in some circumstances. (3/12)

Astra and Spaceflight Inc. Announce Multi-Launch Contract (Source: Astra)
Astra Space and Spaceflight Inc. announced a multi-launch contract. The first launch under this contract is currently planned for March 15, 2022 in Alaska. This agreement provides Spaceflight with launch opportunities using Astra’s launch services through 2025. Through this commitment, Spaceflight expands its launch vehicle partner portfolio, offering its customers additional launch opportunities through Astra missions. Astra gains a knowledgeable and reliable partner that offers a consistent stream of satellite customers seeking launches. (3/14)

Missions to Mercury: From Mariner to MESSENGER (Source: Space Review)
ESA’s BepiColombo mission is on its way to orbit Mercury, the latest in a handful of missions to explore the innermost planet. Dwayne Day examines the challenges such missions faced and efforts to develop lower-cost spacecraft to make those missions technically and fiscally feasible. Click here. (3/14)
 
Regulatory Issues for a Growing Launch Industry (Source: Space Review)
The commercial launch industry has become far more dynamic in recent years in the US, with more companies performing more launches. Jeff Foust reports on some of the regulatory issues they face, from revised licensing regulations to a turf battle among federal agencies. Click here. (3/14)
 
Red Heaven: China Sets its Sights on the Stars (Source: Space Review)
China’s plans for sending humans to the Moon once looked like a version of NASA’s approach. Jason Szeftel, in the first of a three-part article, discusses how those plans have changed as China watched SpaceX reshape the launch market. Click here. (3/14)

FSGC Offers Florida Space Research Grants, Fellowship Opportunities (Source: FSGC)
The 2022-23 NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium Fellowship and Research Programs are now accepting proposals. The grant program’s focus is on space exploration and the technology required to carry out the exploration of Space that are aligned with the priorities of NASA’s 4 Mission Directorates (Science Mission Directorate, Human Exploration and Operations, Space Technology, and Aeronautics). Maximum funding per award is $25000. Click here. (3/14)