March 22, 2022

The Universe’s Background Starlight is Twice as Bright as Expected (Source: Science News)
Even when you remove the bright stars, the glowing dust and other nearby points of light from the inky, dark sky, a background glow remains. That glow comes from the cosmic sea of distant galaxies, the first stars that burned, faraway coalescing gas — and, it seems, something else in the mix that’s evading researchers. Astronomers estimated the amount of visible light pervading the cosmos by training the New Horizons spacecraft on a spot on the sky mostly devoid of nearby stars and galaxies.

That estimate should match measurements of the total amount of light coming from galaxies across the history of the universe. But it doesn’t, researchers report. “It turns out that the galaxies that we know about can account for about half of the level we see,” says Tod Lauer. Lauer and colleagues pointed the spacecraft’s LORRI camera toward a patch of sky and took a bunch of pictures. They digitally removed all known sources of light — individual stars, nearby galaxies, even heat from the spacecraft’s nuclear power source — and measured what was left to estimate the COB.

Then they used large archives of galaxy observations, like those from the Hubble Space Telescope, to calculate the light emitted by all the galaxies in the universe. The measured COB is roughly twice as bright as that calculation. This new measurement reveals a wider difference, and with smaller uncertainty. “There’s clearly an anomaly. Now we need to try to understand it and explain it,” says coauthor Marc Postman. (3/22)

SLS Crawls Toward its First Launch (Source: Space Review)
NASA’s Space Launch System rolled out to the launch pad for the first time last week for a countdown test ahead of a launch later this summer. Jeff Foust reports on that milestone in the vehicle’s long-delayed development amid broader concerns about the state of the Artemis program. Click here. (3/22)
 
Red Heaven: China Sets its Sights on the Stars (Source: Space Review)
In the second installment of a three-part article, Jason Szeftel examines the changes in China’s space industry in response to the United States and whether those changes can make it competitive with the likes of SpaceX. Click here. (3/22)
 
Financing Space-Derived Data as Commodities (Source: Space Review)
When the major assets of space companies are spacecraft that cannot easily be repossessed in the event of default, it can be difficult to secure some kinds of financing. Lucien and Paul Rapp propose one solution that treats the data those spacecraft generate as commodities. Click here. (3/22)

AFRL Seeks Ideas for Cislunar Monitoring (Source: Space News)
AFRL is asking companies to submit proposals on how they would design and develop a spacecraft to monitor cislunar space. The lab is asking members of the Space Force's Space Enterprise Consortium to offer their concepts for the Cislunar Highway Patrol System (CHPS) project, which would send a spacecraft into cislunar space to collect space situational awareness data. CHPS will search for objects like debris, rocket bodies and other previously untracked cislunar objects, as well as provide position updates on spacecraft currently operating near the moon or other cislunar regions that are challenging to observe from Earth. (3/22)

DoD’s Internet-in-Space a Win for Commercial Space (Source: Space News)
The Pentagon’s space agency is buying 126 small satellites for $1.8 billion to build a communications network in low Earth orbit known as the Transport Layer. The Space Development Agency is overseeing the Defense Department’s first major procurement of small satellites in low Earth orbit, a trend that has accelerated in the commercial industry as companies plan ever-larger megaconstellations. Also notable is that one of the prime contractors selected by SDA to build the Transport Layer is a commercial satellite manufacturer that has never won a large defense contract.

“It’s a major shift in DoD space procurement,” said Derek Tournear, the director of SDA. People talk about the “disruption” that SDA is bringing to the DoD space business, he said. The proliferation of small satellites in LEO is certainly one type of disruption; another is the selection of purely commercial companies for big-ticket awards. (3/22)

Talent Attraction/Retention Remains Key for Space Industry Expansion (Source: Space News)
Attracting and retaining talent is becoming a bigger concern for the space industry than securing investment. One investment firm estimates about 200,000 job openings in the aerospace sector, and finding people to fill those positions is more challenging than raising funding or policy issues. Space companies are being forced to search non-traditional sources for talent, including companies with early retirement programs. (3/22)

Australia Establishes Space Command (Source: Australian Broadcasting Corp.)
The Australian military has established a space command as it considers its own space force. Defence Minister Peter Dutton announced Tuesday that the Space Command had started operations, a year after the Royal Australian Air Force announced plans to create the command. Space Command includes personnel from Australia's three military branches as well as contractors, and will coordinate with the Australian Space Agency. Dutton said the command may be a precursor for a Space Force as a separate military branch in the future. (3/22)

Blue Origin's New Shepard Designer to Fly (Source: GeekWire)
The chief architect for Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital vehicle will get to fly to space on it next week. The company announced Monday that Gary Lai would take the seat on the upcoming NS-20 mission that originally had gone to Pete Davidson. Lai joined Blue Origin in 2004 and is currently senior director and chief architect for the New Shepard vehicle. The company said last week that Davidson, the comedian who is on the cast of "Saturday Night Live," would not go on the flight but did not disclose why. (3/22)

Exoplanet Count Rises to 5,000 (Source: NASA)
NASA says astronomers have now discovered 5,000 exoplanets. The agency said Monday it crossed that threshold with the addition of 65 planets around other stars detected by various techniques. Astronomers discovered the first exoplanets 30 years ago. Still, the rate of discoveries has increased in recent years thanks to spacecraft missions like Kepler and TESS and improved ground-based instrumentation. The exoplanets found to date are split nearly evenly among gas giants, Neptune-like exoplanets and "super Earths," with a handful of Earth-sized worlds. (3/22)

SpaceX Severs Ties with Longtime Partner Spaceflight Inc. (Source: Space News)
SpaceX is severing ties with Spaceflight Inc. after years of working closely together, a move that surprised Spaceflight executives. In an email sent to companies that send satellites to orbit on its popular small satellite rideshare missions, the “SpaceX Rideshare Team” said SpaceX “will no longer be flying or working with Spaceflight Industries after the currently manifested missions. We look forward to reliably launching all customers currently on our manifest and growing our relationships with new operators as well.”

Spaceflight was notified of SpaceX’s decision by text minutes before the email was sent to rideshare customers. “We were surprised to learn of it on Friday, and were not given any insight into the reasoning behind the decision,” Jodi Sorensen, Spaceflight marketing vice president, said by email. “We continue to reach out to SpaceX in an attempt to discuss their position but haven’t heard back yet.”

Firms that opt to book rideshare flights directly with SpaceX pay more than $1 million per payload, making it more expensive than relying on a rideshare provider. Spaceflight is a dominant player in the launch integration business. In 2021, Spaceflight supported the launch of 81 spacecraft from nine countries on 11 launches. In addition to integrating satellites for SpaceX, Spaceflight works with launch providers Rocket Lab and Astra Space. (3/21)

Large Solar Storm Could Knock Out the Power Grid and the Internet (Source: Space Daily)
The Carrington Event of 1859 is the largest recorded account of a geomagnetic storm, but it is not an isolated event. Scientific data from Antarctic ice core samples has shown evidence of an even more massive geomagnetic storm that occurred around A.D. 774, now known as the Miyake Event. That solar flare produced the largest and fastest rise in carbon-14 ever recorded. Geomagnetic storms trigger high amounts of cosmic rays in Earth's upper atmosphere, which in turn produce carbon-14, a radioactive isotope of carbon.

A geomagnetic storm 60% smaller than the Miyake Event occurred around A.D. 993. Ice core samples have shown evidence that large-scale geomagnetic storms with similar intensities as the Miyake and Carrington events occur at an average rate of once every 500 years. Nowadays the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses the Geomagnetic Storms scale to measure the strength of these solar eruptions. The "G scale" has a rating from 1 to 5 with G1 being minor and G5 being extreme. The Carrington Event would have been rated G5.

Today, a geomagnetic storm of the same intensity as the Carrington Event would affect far more than telegraph wires and could be catastrophic. With the ever-growing dependency on electricity and emerging technology, any disruption could lead to trillions of dollars of monetary loss and risk to life dependent on the systems. The storm would affect a majority of the electrical systems that people use every day. A geomagnetic storm three times smaller than the Carrington Event occurred in Quebec, Canada, in March 1989. The storm caused the Hydro-Quebec electrical grid to collapse. (3/19)

SES to Buy Leonardo DRS Satcom Business (Source: Space News)
Leonardo DRS is selling its satcom business to commercial satellite operator SES in a $450 million deal announced Tuesday. Leonardo DRS Global Enterprise Solutions is one of a handful of network integrators that provide managed satcom services to the Defense Department and other government agencies. SES plans to organize the former Leonardo business unit under its SES Government Solutions subsidiary. The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of Leonardo DRS and SES. The deal is expected to be completed by the second half of 2022, subject to regulatory approvals. (3/22)

Starlink Grows to 250,000 Subscribers (Source: Space News)
SpaceX's Starlink system now has 250,000 subscribers as the company seeks to move into the aviation market. A SpaceX executive said Monday that the subscriber total includes consumer broadband customers and enterprise and other business users of the satellite broadband system. The company is testing antennas to be certified for use on aircraft, saying that aviation connectivity is "ripe for an overhaul." (3/22)

E-Space to Launch First Satellites with Rocket Lab (Source: Space News)
E-Space, the satellite megaconstellation company founded by Greg Wyler, will launch its first satellites with Rocket Lab. Three E-Space demo satellites will launch in the second quarter of this year on an Electron rocket. The spacecraft aim to validate systems and technology for a broadband network that could number more than 100,000 satellites. E-Space announced it raised $50 million to start work on the constellation earlier this year. (3/22)

Satellite Supply Chains Coming Under Increasing Scrutiny (Source: Space News)
Changes in the geopolitical landscape following Russia’s war in Ukraine are pushing space companies to tighten international supply chains amid a renewed focus on security. “We’re having to scrutinize our supply chain even more,” said Tina Ghataore. “We already have restrictions on where the components and parts can come from, specifically electronics,” she said, but “that has just expanded, and that list is just going to grow.” (3/22)

U.S. Government Urged to Address Supply Risks in the Space Sector (Source: Space News)
The U.S. military traditionally relies on a core group of defense contractors to ensure it has access to critical supplies and equipment at all times. But as space becomes increasingly important to military operations, DoD should address supply risks in the space sector given the volatility of the market, experts said. In aerospace and defense, the government takes a long view on what capabilities it needs and where they will come from, said J. Armand Musey, president and founder of Summit Ridge Group, an investment banker and advisory firm. (3/22)

Lockheed Martin Designs New Satellite Bus (Source: Space News)
Lockheed Martin plans to launch a new satellite bus designed for commercial and government markets later this year. The first launch of the LM400 will be a demonstration mission, a company executive said Monday. Lockheed Martin is developing payloads that will launch on LM400 for the demonstrations. The company says the LM400, with a mass of about 1,700 kilograms including payload, has already attracted potential commercial and government customers. (3/22)

Spaceflight Inc. and Astrocast Extend Launch Contract (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Spaceflight Inc., the leading global launch services provider, today announced an extended multi-launch agreement (MLA) with long-time customer, Internet of Things (IoT) constellation developer, Astrocast. This agreement will add two missions to accommodate Astrocast’s fast-growing IoT constellation which helps track assets in some of the world’s most remote regions. In February of 2020, Astrocast and Spaceflight signed an MLA for the launch of 10 additional IoT nanosatellites, representing the sixth launch booked with Spaceflight. (3/22)

Viasat, Inmarsat Reach Agreement with UK Govt on Plan to Increase Jobs and R&D Investment in the UK Space Sector (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Viasat and Inmarsat, the US and UK satellite communications groups, have agreed on a package of legally-binding economic undertakings with the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) as part of the proposed combination of the two companies. BEIS welcomed the constructive discussions that have taken place with both companies on their future plans. The transaction remains subject to the regulatory processes of the UK. (3/21)

Eutelsat and OneWeb Sign Global Distribution Partnership (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Eutelsat Communications (Euronext Paris: ETL) and OneWeb, the low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications company, today announced a global, multi-year Distribution Partnership Agreement (DPA) for OneWeb capacity. The agreement paves the way for Eutelsat to commercialise OneWeb services across key verticals including Maritime, Aviation, Enterprise, Telcos and Government.

The partnership reflects the deepening cooperation between the two companies after Eutelsat became OneWeb’s second-largest shareholder last December, and it showcases the synergies between them, delivering Eutelsat’s extensive commercial reach to OneWeb while complementing Eutelsat’s fleet of geostationary satellites with low Earth orbit assets. It paves the way for the companies to work together on developing combined GEO/LEO connectivity solutions. (3/22)

AE Industrial Partners Leads $75 Million Investment in Firefly Aerospace (Source: Parabolic Arc)
AE Industrial Partners, a U.S-based private equity firm specializing in aerospace, defense and government services, space, power and utility services, and specialty industrial markets, led a $75 million financing round in Firefly Aerospace. The investment will support Firefly’s next stage of growth by providing capital for future Alpha flights, the Blue Ghost Lunar Lander Program, and the development of additional launch and in-space solutions. Concurrently, AEI completed its previously reported acquisition of Noosphere Venture Partners LP’s (“Noosphere Ventures”) stake in the Company. The transaction values Firefly above its May 2021 valuation of more than $1 billion. (3/22)

Motiv Space Systems Wins NASA Contract to Support Future Missions to the Moon and Mars (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Motiv Space Systems is proud to announce a key contract with NASA that will continue to power the future of space exploration and innovation, with eyes set on NASA’s Artemis program. Motiv was recently awarded a $5 million contract to begin development of the Distributed Extreme Environments Drive System (DEEDS) under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Sequential Phase II Program. This revolutionary technology has applications across a broad spectrum of missions, including in-situ resource utilization systems, robotics, payload offloading systems and mobility systems on the Lunar and Martian surfaces. (3/22)

GEO Operators Say They Can Compete Against LEO Systems on Cost (Source: Space News)
Despite all the investment in low Earth orbit broadband megaconstellations, operators of geostationary satellites argue they can offer more cost-effective services. During a Satellite 2022 panel March 21, executives pointed to innovations such as very small GEO satellites and software-defined payloads that allow new GEO satellites to provide broadband services at lower costs than LEO systems, albeit with higher latency.

One reason for that is the ability to focus coverage over densely populated areas that LEO systems lack. “You have this illusion that you can launch a lot of LEO satellites and have this big amount of capacity, but 75% of those bits are wasted,” he said, because the satellites are passing over unpopulated areas. “If you really want a lot of capacity, it’s going to be very expensive.” ... “There’s no better way of covering high-density regions than with a GEO satellite,” said Adrian Morris, executive vice president of Hughes. “The large GEOs are very efficient. They create the lowest cost per bit.” (3/22)

Swarm Launched Satellites on Astra Mission (Source: Space News)
Swarm Technologies was the unidentified customer of an Astra Space launch this month that placed 16 of its tiny satellites into orbit.
The March 15 launch of Astra’s Rocket 3.3 from Kodiak Island, Alaska, carried the OreSat0 cubesat from the Portland State Aerospace Society as well as a payload by NearSpace Launch that remained attached to the rocket’s upper stage as planned. The launch also included payloads from a third, unnamed customer. Neither Astra nor Spaceflight, which arranged for the launch, disclosed the identity of that customer or how many payloads it had on board. (3/22)

Telstra to Build Teleports for OneWeb Constellation (Source: Space News)
Australian communications company Telstra announced plans March 22 to build and maintain three dedicated teleports to provide satellite gateway services in the Southern Hemisphere for OneWeb’s broadband constellation. The teleports, spread across Australia, are being built as part of a 10-year agreement between Telstra and OneWeb. Satellite constellation operators continue to forge ties with telecommunications companies that own and operate terrestrial and subsea assets, including fiber networks, IP backbones and data centers. (3/22)

Record-Breaking NASA Astronaut Mark Vande Hei's Contributions to Human Research Studies (Source: NASA)
While clocking the single longest spaceflight by a NASA astronaut, Vande Hei contributed to dozens of studies from the hundreds executed during his mission, including six science investigations supported by NASA’s Human Research Program, or HRP. For one investigation, Vande Hei helped grow and evaluate vegetables harvested with the space station’s Vegetable Production System, or Veggie. The investigation seeks to develop a food production system that can help astronauts meet their dietary needs with fresh vegetables cultivated in space.

Vande Hei also provided biological samples for an investigation that collects a core set of measurements, called Spaceflight Standard Measures. The investigation seeks to characterize “normal” changes in the human body during spaceflight. For instance,  wrist-worn sensors that measure activity levels and light exposure can help researchers better understand the sleep-wake cycle of astronauts. Blood and saliva samples collected by crew members throughout their mission can also help scientists assess changes in various hormones, proteins, and cells that reveal how the immune system changes in space.

In addition, he contributed to a separate investigation collecting biological samples from the crew aboard the space station and placing them in a storage bank. Researchers can draw upon the samples to study spaceflight-induced changes in human physiology. Vande Hei also participated in the first formal investigation into how eating repetitive meals in spaceflight changes the appeal of certain foods over time. In space, menu fatigue can have serious consequences, including lost appetites, nutritional deficiencies, and loss of body mass. Results will help researchers improve the design of current and future space food systems. Click here. (3/15)