April 22, 2022

Orlando Pride's New Space-Themed Jerseys Celebrate the First Woman, Pson of Color Heading to the Moon (Source: Insider)
The Orlando Pride are launching into a new frontier. Following the success of last season's Ad Astra kits, the National Women's Soccer League club has unveiled new jerseys for the upcoming season that peek into the future of space travel and build on the franchise's NASA theme. The Pride's 2022-23 Luna kit celebrates NASA's Artemis Lunar Exploration program — which launched in 2020 and will bring the first woman and person of color to the moon — while continuing to celebrate Central Florida's proud ties to American space exploration. (4/21)

Planet Gives Details on Pelican Constellation (Source: Space News)
Planet provided new details Thursday about its proposed Pelican constellation of high-resolution imaging satellites. The system, scheduled to begin launching in early 2023 pending FCC license approval, will offer at least 10 daily views of Earth's landmass and as many as 30 views of mid-latitude locations with a resolution of 30 centimeters per pixel. To speed up data delivery, Planet is equipping Pelicans with Ka-band inter-satellite data links. The satellites will also use electric propulsion rather than the green-propellant thrusters flown on its existing SkySat satellites. (4/22)

Iridium Considers Rideshare Options for Launching Spare Satellites (Source: Space News)
Iridium is considering rideshare options for launching some of its spare satellites. The company is in talks for a $35 million contract to launch up to five of its six spare satellites this year. Iridium says there's no urgent need to launch the spares, but placing them in orbit would relieve the company of the costs of maintaining them on the ground. Iridium reported $168.2 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2022, a 15% increase over a year ago. Sales were driven by connectivity markets recovering from the pandemic and "tremendous demand" in Ukraine following Russia's invasion. (4/22)

Viasat Blames Supply Chain for Link 16 Satellite Delay (Source: Space News)
Viasat is rushing to complete the integration of a small communications satellite for the U.S. military that is years behind schedule due to supply chain delays. The Link 16 satellite is designed to serve as a data relay in space for the network of Link 16 tactical radios used by the U.S. military and allies. The satellite was scheduled for launch in 2020, but Viasat only recently received the satellite bus from Blue Canyon Technologies. The Air Force Research Laboratory, which is managing the satellite project, expects the satellite will now be ready for launch by the end of this year. (4/22)

China's Deep Blue Raises Funds for Reusable Rocket (Source: Space News)
Chinese launch firm Deep Blue Aerospace announced a Series A+ funding round this week. The undisclosed funds, in a round led by CMBC International Holdings, will go towards the development of the reusable Nebula-1 kerosene-liquid oxygen rocket, the "Thunder" engine series and additive manufacturing processes. The company now says its first orbital launch and recovery is expected in 2024, whereas earlier statements targeted a first launch in 2023. Chinese space companies raised nearly $1 billion last year, and one report projects that funding to double this year. (4/22)

Rocket Lab Reschedules Launch to Ease Booster Recovery (Source: Rocket Lab)
Rocket Lab is postponing an Electron launch because of weather in the booster recovery zone. The company said late Thursday that the Electron launch scheduled for Friday evening had been delayed to no earlier than Wednesday. This launch, a dedicated smallsat rideshare mission, will be the first where Rocket Lab attempts to catch the descending booster with a helicopter, part of its efforts to reuse the booster. (4/22)

ULA Begins Stacking Atlas 5 Rocket for Boeing’s Starliner Test Flight (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
Final assembly of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket began Wednesday with the hoisting of a first stage booster onto a mobile launch platform at Cape Canaveral, kicking off a campaign to prepare for liftoff May 19 on a delayed unpiloted test flight of Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule. ULA’s ground team raised the Atlas first stage off its trailer transporter, and a crane lifted the rocket into the Vertical Integration Facility Wednesday morning. The 107-foot-tall (33-meter) rocket stage was then lowered onto the Atlas 5’s mobile launch platform inside the integration building just south of ULA’s launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41.

The milestone event Wednesday, known as Launch Vehicle On Stand, will be followed in the coming days by the addition of two strap-on AJ-60A solid rocket boosters made by Aerojet Rocketdyne. Then a dual-engine Centaur upper stage will be raised on top of the Atlas first stage to complete the initial build-up of the launcher. In early May, Boeing and ULA will move the Starliner spacecraft from its hangar at the Kennedy Space Center to the VIF for stacking atop the Atlas 5. (4/21)

Musk Forms ‘X Holdings’ After Hints at a Parent Company for Tesla, SpaceX (Source: Bloomberg)
Elon Musk formed a trio of holding companies as part of his bid to acquire Twitter Inc., potentially giving the billionaire a path to bring all of his business ventures under a single parent. The new companies -- each with a variation of the name “X Holdings” -- were formed this week in Delaware, according to records filed with the state. Musk and his investing partners plan to put money into one of the entities to fund the purchase of Twitter shares in a tender offer, while a subsidiary would merge with the social-media firm, according to filings with the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission. (4/21)

Blue Origin Reconsidering Use of Ship Now Being Converted in Pensacola for New Glenn Landings (Source: Pensacola News Journal)
Blue Origin is reportedly reconsidering using a large ship for recovering the first stage of its New Glenn rockets. The company has been working since 2018 to covert a cargo ship named Jacklyn, after founder Jeff Bezos' mother, into a landing platform for the New Glenn first stage. Amid rumors that the retrofitting project ongoing at the port in Pensacola, Florida, might be canceled, a Blue Origin spokesperson said the company is considering "different options" for recovery vessels but has yet to make a decision. (4/22)

Another Airline Plans Use of Starlink for In-Flight Broadband (Source: CNBC)
A small charter airline says it will be the first to offer Starlink in-flight broadband. JSX, which currently operates 77 30-seat Embraer planes, said it struck a deal with SpaceX to offer Starlink services free of charge to passengers. JSX expects to start providing the service by the fourth quarter, pending regulatory approvals. (4/22)

House Chairman Endeavors to Pass NASA Bil On Time (Source: Space News)
The chair of the House appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA says his committee will develop spending bills "on time" this year. Speaking at the unveiling of Astrobotic's lunar lander this week, Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA) said the commerce, justice and science appropriations subcommittee would develop bills on schedule but offered few hints about funding for NASA. The agency is seeking nearly $26 billion in its fiscal year 2023 budget proposal released last month, an increase of 8% over 2022. Cartwright, who took over as chairman of that subcommittee last year, expressed his support for NASA, saying he is "proud to be a buff of the space program." (4/22)

Spacesuits Are Showing Their Age (Source: The Economist)
Fixing panels on the ISS is a bit like doing car repairs while wearing stiff oven gloves and standing on a skateboard. That, at least, is the way Kate Rubins, an astronaut at NASA describes it. And she has spent 300 days orbiting Earth on board the station, so she should know. Today’s bulky spacesuits weigh (or, for pedants, have a mass that is) nearly a third more than those sported by the Apollo astronauts who walked on the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s. Click here. (4/23)

NASA Preparing for Next Attempt to Deploy Lucy Solar Panel (Source: NASA)
NASA will make a new attempt next month to fully deploy a solar panel on the Lucy spacecraft. One of two circular solar arrays on that asteroid mission did not fully extend and lock into place after launch in October. After engineering reviews, mission managers approved a plan that calls for first turning on a motor to tension a lanyard used for the solar array deployment the week of May 9. That will be used to fine-tune a second step, about a month later, to pull in the lanyard enough to latch the array into place. (4/22)

Scientists Say There’s an ‘Anti-Universe’ Running Backward in Time (Source: Popular Mechanics)
Scientists believe there could be an “anti-universe” somewhere out there that looks like the mirror image of our own universe, reciprocating almost everything we do. If this theory holds true, it could explain the presence of dark matter. Researchers suggest that the Big Bang might have been smaller and more symmetrical than we think. “Among other things, we shall describe in detail a remarkable consequence of this hypothesis, namely a highly economical new explanation for the cosmological dark matter,” the researchers write.

One cool thing about this model of the Big Bang is that it removes the need for what scientists call “inflation,” a period of time in which the universe massively expanded in order to account for its size soon after birth. Instead, the matter could have naturally expanded over time in a less forceful way, which could simplify our explanation for what happened. And in order for these two before-and-after universes to be truly symmetrical, we would need to add a particle to our existing understanding of the universe around us.

If our universe is mirrored by a similar universe running backward in time from the Big Bang, then what we call dark matter could actually be a version of a neutrino that is “right-handed,” a term that refers to the direction of motion in the neutrino. It would be the natural opposite of the left-handed neutrinos in the other universe. (4/21)

Airman on the Moon (Source: Air Force Magazine)
Newly remastered images of NASA’s Apollo 16 Moon mission recall USAF’s historic contributions. How strange to think now, 50 years later, that despite massive technological change and breakthroughs in the ensuing years, that mystical concept of walking on the lunar surface is now, at once, something for the history books and in another sense still a dream for many to return there once again. Click here. (4/20)

Space Force Jobs are Eligible for Re-Enlistment Bonuses (Source: Stars and Stripes)
The number of Air Force and Space Force career specialties eligible for re-enlistment bonuses has increased by more than half since last fiscal year, even as retention levels for each service branch remain high. The Air Force on Thursday announced 63 specialties are eligible for bonuses for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, up from the 40 qualifying positions in the previous year. The service offered bonuses in 72 specialties for fiscal year 2020 and 115 specialties for fiscal year 2019. (4/22)

Space Force Space Defense Squadron Tasked to Focus on Deep Space (Source: C4ISRnet)
The U.S. Space Force stood up the 19th Space Defense Squadron this month in Dahlgren, Virginia, to focus on cislunar space domain awareness, Lt. Col. Matthew Lintker, the force’s Space Delta 2, said. NASA, Space Systems Command and Space Force already have a close relationship when it comes to working on human spaceflight support including collision avoidance for the International Space Station and exploration of the cislunar domain, Lintker said.

The Defense Department has made a notable shift in its posture toward cislunar space in the last few years – from viewing potential deep-space threats as part of a far-off future to recognizing that those threats may present much sooner. And the increased activity isn’t just adversarial, but also commercial. The Air Force Research Laboratory recently said it planned to award a contract as soon as this summer for a new experiment on cislunar domain awareness to help the U.S. military observe and track objects that reside in that space between geostationary orbit and the moon. AFRL is soliciting bids to build a Cislunar Highway Patrol System, or CHPS, with an eye on a 2025 launch date. (4/20)

NASA is Supporting Some Seriously Risky Missions to the Moon—It’s About Time (Source: Ars Technica)
For more than three years, NASA has been intensely focused on the Artemis Moon program. This high-profile international effort, spearheaded by the US space agency at a cost of nearly $7.5 billion per year, seeks to return humans to the lunar surface in the mid-2020s and establish a sustainable presence in deep space.

But in recent years, NASA has been funding a second, much smaller-scale Moon program, at just 3 percent of the cost of Artemis. This is the "Commercial Lunar Payload Services" program, which seeks to use private companies to send small- and medium-size landers to the Moon's surface for primarily science-based missions. Its budget is about $250 million per year.

This program, known as CLPS, is showing some promising signs and will beat the Artemis program to the Moon by at least a couple of years. Moreover, it represents a bold new effort by NASA's Science division, which is seeking to leverage the emerging commercial space sector to radically increase scientific and exploration capabilities. If successful, the CLPS model of exploration could be extended to Mars and beyond. Click here. (4/21)

Astronomers Discover Micronovae, a New Kind of Stellar Explosion (Source: Phys.org)
A team of astronomers, with the help of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), have observed a new type of stellar explosion—a micronova. These outbursts happen on the surface of certain stars, and can each burn through around 3.5 billion Great Pyramids of Giza of stellar material in only a few hours.

"We have discovered and identified for the first time what we are calling a micronova," explains Simone Scaringi, an astronomer at Durham University in the U.K. who led the study on these explosions. "The phenomenon challenges our understanding of how thermonuclear explosions in stars occur. We thought we knew this, but this discovery proposes a totally new way to achieve them," he adds. (4/20)

Planet Partners with SynMax to Provide Energy Intelligence and Monitor Dark Vessels (Source: Space Daily)
Planet Labs has partnered with SynMax, a Houston-based satellite analytics and intelligence company, to provide data-informed insights on the energy industry within the United States and monitor the movements of dark vessels around the globe. With Planet's daily PlanetScope imagery, SynMax monitors the location of hundreds of well pads for hydraulic fracturing and the ongoing activity at the sites by frac crews that maintain the operations and safety of the wells.

These frac crews are responsible for the final steps in the development of oil and gas wells, and with Planet's data, the status of the sites can be monitored in near real-time. By gaining intelligence on these operations, SynMax is able to inform energy-focused hedge funds, looking to accurately forecast the near-term supply of oil and gas. (4/21)

BlackSky Upgrades Customers’ Site Monitoring Experience with Enhanced Analytics and Imaging Capabilities (Source: SpaceRef)
BlackSky upgraded its site monitoring capabilities with new analytics and imaging features to meet customers’ varied needs for information gathering and intelligence across geographically diverse environments. “BlackSky released new imaging and analysis upgrades that, when combined with our high-revisit satellite imaging capabilities, will make monitoring the world’s most critical locations, events and economic assets more impactful for customers,” said Amy Minnick, chief commercial officer at BlackSky. (4/21)

Space Security Challenge 2022: Hack-A-Sat 3 Registration Opens (Source: Space Daily)
The U.S. Air and Space Force, in collaboration with the security research community, opened registration April 8 for the qualification round of the third annual Space Security Challenge: Hack-A-Sat satellite hacking competition. Hack-A-Sat enables and encourages security researchers of all levels to focus their skills, creativity and innovative thinking on solving cybersecurity challenges of space systems. (4/21)

Chinese Satellite Obtains Global Gravity Field Data (Source: Space Daily)
China's Tianqin-1 satellite has acquired the global gravity field data during its in-orbit operation, according to Sun Yat-sen University in south China's Guangdong Province. The satellite was launched in December 2019 to test the technologies of the space-based gravitational wave detection program "Tianqin." The program Tianqin, meaning "harp in the sky," was initiated by the university in 2015.

The gravity field data is of great significance to the national economy and people's livelihood as the relevant data can aid geodesic survey, geophysics, oil and gas exploration, and disaster prevention and mitigation. (4/21)

SpaceX Launches Another 53 Starlink Satellites From Florida, Recovers Booster (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
SpaceX launched a a Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport on Thursday, carrying another 53 Starlink internet satellites into orbit. The first stage booster, flying for the 12th time, landed on an offshore drone ship. (4/21)