March 17, 2022

Order and Progress – Brazil’s Second Act in Space (Source: Space News)
For decades, journalists and analysts have characterized Brazil as a “sleeping giant” perpetually on the verge of “waking up” to its enormous economic and geopolitical potential. In 1971, the New York Times proclaimed, “The giant of the continent, dismissed as a sleeping giant until recently, has begun to stir, and interest in Brazil’s intentions has grown among her neighbors.” Today, as the pieces of Brazil’s modern space ecosystem slide into place, the country isn’t just now waking up to the value and potential in the space ecosystem. It is entering its “second act.”

“Brazil is back,” said retired Maj. Gen. Jose Vagner Vital, former Brazilian Air Force Space Commission Executive Vice President. He credits this rebound to two key achievements that have unlocked the potential and momentum in the next phase of Brazilian space activity: government investment in the development of the domestic VLM rocket and the approval of the Technology Safeguards Agreement (TSA), which opened the Alcântara Space Center for global business.

Work on the three-stage, solid-fuel VLM began in 2008, but the momentum of its development has picked up in recent years, aided in part by collaboration with the German Space Agency. When ready, it will give Brazil indigenous launch capabilities, and that means stepped-up government demand for everything from producing the components of the vehicle to analyzing data returned from space. Meanwhile, in 2019, Brazil and the United States signed the TSA, which allows U.S. space technologies to be imported to Brazil for launch. (3/17)

China Launches Reconnaissance Satellites (Source: Space News)
China launched the second in a series of reconnaissance satellites Thursday. A Long March 4C rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 3:09 a.m. Eastern carrying the second Yaogan-34 satellite. Chinese state media reported that the new satellite will provide civilian services like urban planning and crop yield estimation, but Western analysts believe the Yaogan series is military in nature, providing a range of reconnaissance capabilities. The first Yaogan-34 satellite launched last April and operates in a 63-degree orbit at an altitude of more than 1,000 kilometers. (3/17)

NASA Aligns JWST Mirrors (Source: Space News)
NASA announced Wednesday that alignment of the primary mirror segments of the James Webb Space Telescope confirmed its optics would work as expected, if not better. NASA said the JWST team completed the alignment of the 18 primary mirror segments so that the images from each were matched to within a wavelength of infrared light. One project official called the performance of the mirrors "as good, if not better, than our most optimistic predictions." That alignment work involved one instrument, the Near-Infrared Camera, and the next step is to tweak the alignment to optimize it for three other instruments on JWST. NASA still expects to complete the commissioning of the telescope and begin science observations in June or July. (3/17)

Boeing Completes CDR for Space Force Satellite Payload (Source: Space News)
Boeing has completed a critical design review of a U.S. Space Force satellite communications payload. The company said Wednesday it completed the review of the payload it is building for the Protected Tactical Satcom (PTS) program, a planned network of jam-resistant geostationary satellites for military classified and unclassified communications. Boeing won a $191 million contract for the PTS payload in 2020 and expects to launch the prototype payload in 2024. Northrop Grumman is developing a PTS payload under a separate contract. The Space Force says the specifics of the deployment and procurement timeline for the overall PTS system have not yet been finalized. (3/17)

Tomorrow.io Completes CDR for Satellites (Source: Space News)
Weather satellite company Tomorrow.io has completed its own critical design review for its first two spacecraft. The successful review clears the way for satellite production and keeps the operational constellation on track to start launching in 2023. Two demonstration satellites, using Astro Digital's Corvus-XL platform, are scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter this year, with the first of 30 satellites in the operational system expected to launch in late 2023. Tomorrow.io is moving ahead with its system even after dropping plans to go public via a SPAC merger. The company says it is well funded and canceled the SPAC deal earlier this month because of changing market conditions. (3/17)

KSAT Plans Lunar Communications Network (Source: Space News)
KSAT announced Wednesday plans to establish a dedicated antenna network for lunar communications. Increasing cislunar activity, including commercial lander missions through NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, is prompting KSAT to invest in a lunar communications network. KSAT is currently identifying three sites for 20-meter antennas to provide continuous coverage for spacecraft operating near the moon and for lunar data relay constellations. Other aspects of the system will be similar to those for communicating with satellites in Earth orbit. (3/17)

Colorado Companies Lobby to Keep Space Command HQ There (Source: KOAA)
Colorado companies are lobbying Congress to keep U.S. Space Command headquartered in the state. Thirteen companies signed a letter sent this week to Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper endorsing efforts by those senators to overturn the Defense Department's decision in January 2021 to place U.S. Space Command headquarters in Alabama. The companies argue that Colorado is the natural home for the command given the state's aerospace industry that serves as "the force multiplier in our ability to deliver innovation to our national defense and space missions." The companies signing the letter include Agile Space Industries, Maxar and Voyager Space. (3/17)

Eugene Parker Dies (Source: University of Chicaco)
Eugene Parker, the solar physicist who was the namesake for NASA's Parker Solar Probe mission, has died at the age of 94. Parker first proposed the concept of solar wind in the 1950s, a hypothesis widely ridiculed by other scientists. Several years later, though, NASA spacecraft detected solar wind particles, validating Parker. He did other research in solar physics and astrophysics, and in honor of his work, NASA named its Solar Probe Plus mission the Parker Solar Probe ahead of its 2018 launch. (3/17)

SPAC Check (Source: Quartz)
A key thing to know about SPACs is they typically start off with a benchmark price of $10. When the merger goes through, investors in the acquisition company can trade their shares for $10 each, in lieu of owning the new company. As of now, none of the main players have traded above $10 in months. It’s not exactly their fault: The broader market has suffered a correction, with the S&P 500 index falling 3.5% in the last six months, but every company above has offered worse performance.

It seems the pandemic-era excitement over flashy meme stocks with exciting stories has passed or at least subsided. Now, the companies will have to stand out on their own performance. Some, like Satellogic, with the highest stock price, have a built-in runway: It is building a satellite constellation expected to be finished by 2025. Some are running out of runway: Virgin Galactic, the oldest, has missed forecasts steadily for the last two years as it tries to get its space tourism operation running regularly. (3/17)

Nield: Space Tourism Industry is ‘Really in a Major Transformation’ (Source: Yahoo)
George Nield, Commercial Space Technologies, LLC President, sits down with Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the outlook on commercial space travel, the upcoming Blue Origin space flight, and the benefits of private companies investing in the sciences behind space flight. Click here. (3/16)

Third Party May Finance Spaceport Camden (Source: First Coast News)
Voters may have rejected Spaceport Camden in a referendum vote last week, but that doesn't mean the project is dead. According to a spokesperson for Spaceport Camden, a third party is interested in setting up a fund to finance the project at no cost to taxpayers. It comes after taxpayers voted against letting county leaders purchase the site for the project just last week. The spokesperson for the project said they plan to make a full announcement next week regarding this latest chapter for the project. (3/16)

Student Team Designs Mmicrogravity Simulation Device for Florida Space Institute (Source: Florida Polytechnic University)
A team of Florida Polytechnic University capstone students is designing a device that will help engineers at Florida Space Institute and the Hawking Center for Microgravity Research effectively perform microgravity simulations.

“The goal is to create a device with a chamber in it that is able to drop from a given altitude – 900 feet for us – and from its descent be able to simulate up to four seconds of zero Gs so microgravity simulations can be done on the device,” said Andre Archer, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering with an aerospace concentration.

The interdisciplinary team of Capstone Senior Design students is building a rocket that will carry a box of pebbles and a GoPro video camera to the desired altitude. The camera will provide evidence that the rocks floated in simulated zero gravity as intended. Among the tests it one day will be able to facilitate is simulating how craters form on the moon. (3/7)

SpaceX Schedules Spy Satellite, NASA Astronaut Launches on the Same Day (Source: Teslarati)
The US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has confirmed that its next spy satellite is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the same day the company is planning to launch four NASA and ESA astronauts. Following SpaceX’s flawless NROL-87 spy satellite launch last month, the NRO has announced that the company is on track to launch NROL-85 – another one or several unknown but potentially related spy satellites – as early as April 15th. Less than two hours prior, NASA simultaneously confirmed that SpaceX is on track to launch Crew-4 – the agency’s fourth operational astronaut transport mission – on April 15th. (3/16)

Netflix Plans "Return to Space" Documentary on SpaceX's Development of a New US Human Spaceflight Capability (Source: Netflix)
Offering rare inside access to NASA and SpaceX, this is the thrilling story of the nearly 20 year journey to send American astronauts back to space aboard U.S. rockets, from Oscar-winning filmmakers Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin. Click here. (3/17)

An Antimatter Experiment Shows Surprises Near Absolute Zero (Source: Quanta)
For decades, researchers have toyed with antimatter while searching for new laws of physics. These laws would come in the form of forces or other phenomena that would strongly favor matter over antimatter, or vice versa. Yet physicists have found nothing amiss, no conclusive sign that antimatter particles — which are just the oppositely charged twins of familiar particles — obey different rules.

That hasn’t changed. But while pursuing precision antimatter experiments, one team stumbled upon a puzzling finding. When bathed in liquid helium, hybrid atoms made from both matter and antimatter misbehave. Whereas buffeting from the stew would throw the properties of most atoms into disarray, hybrid helium atoms maintain an unlikely uniformity. The discovery was so unexpected that the research team spent years checking their work, redoing the experiment, and arguing about what might be going on.

“It’s very exciting,” said Mikhail Lemeshko, an atomic physicist at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria who was not involved with the research. He anticipates that the result will lead to a new way to capture and scrutinize elusive forms of matter. “Their community will find more exciting possibilities to trap exotic things.” (3/16)

NASA’s Webb Reaches Alignment Milestone, Optics Working Successfully (Source: NASA)
Following the completion of critical mirror alignment steps, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope team expects that Webb’s optical performance will be able to meet or exceed the science goals the observatory was built to achieve. On March 11, the Webb team completed the stage of alignment known as “fine phasing.” At this key stage in the commissioning of Webb’s Optical Telescope Element, every optical parameter that has been checked and tested is performing at, or above, expectations.

The team also found no critical issues and no measurable contamination or blockages to Webb’s optical path. The observatory is able to successfully gather light from distant objects and deliver it to its instruments without issue. Although there are months to go before Webb ultimately delivers its new view of the cosmos, achieving this milestone means the team is confident that Webb’s first-of-its-kind optical system is working as well as possible. (3/16)