May 13, 2022

NASA Seeks Feedback on Commercial Destination Certification (Source: NASA)
NASA is currently developing requirements for commercially owned and operated destinations that would support NASA, international, and private astronauts safely in low-Earth orbit. The agency is requesting feedback from industry to evaluate the technical and financial feasibility of the requirements.

NASA’s Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Development Program has released the first of several Request for Information (RFI) documents that contain draft crew certification requirements, and a white paper documenting the agency’s current assumptions and expectations on commercial destinations. This RFI is intended to gather industry comments on the feasibility of the requirements and assumptions to aid NASA in the development of safe, reliable and cost-effective space destination capabilities.

As part of the process, NASA will hold an informational briefing on May 25 to provide industry with a top-level summary of the agency’s documents and expectations from its review. RSVPs to participate in the briefing are due by 5 p.m. EDT May 24. (5/11)

China's iSpacce Suffers Third Launch Failure (Source: Space News)
Chinese launch startup iSpace suffered its third consecutive launch failure Friday. The company's Hyperbola-1, a four-stage solid rocket, lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 3:09 a.m. Eastern. However, the company provided few details after liftoff and state media confirmed the failure four hours later. The company successfully launched Hyperbola-1 in July 2019 but suffered failures in February and August of 2021. The company is also developing the much more complex Hyperbola-2, a larger, methane-liquid oxygen launcher with a reusable first stage. (5/13)

India Tests Human-Rated Solid Rocket Booster (Source: IANS)
India successfully tested a human-rated version of a solid-rocket booster. The Indian space agency ISRO said Friday that it fired the HS200 booster in a static test for 135 seconds, declaring the test a success. The HS200 is a version of the S200 booster used on the GSLV Mark 3 rocket that will launched crewed flights for the Gaganyaan program. (5/13)

Chinese Military Deeply Alarmed Over Starlink's Dual-Use Capabilities (Source: Sputnik)
Beijing's concerns echo criticisms of the South African-born billionaire's satellite internet system by Russia. On Sunday, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin warned that Elon Musk would be held accountable for supplying Starlink internet terminals to neo-Nazi militants fighting in Ukraine.

SpaceX's plans to increase the constellation of Starlink internet satellites from 12,000 to 42,000 "should put the international community on high alert," China Military Online, a news site affiliated with the Central Military Commission, the PRC's top national defence organ, has warned. (5/12)

Starlink Now Available to Ship Immediately in 32 Countries (Source: The Verge)
SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink is now available in 32 countries around the world, the company has announced. Impressively, Elon Musk’s space company says it’ll ship “immediately,” contrary to earlier issues that caused customers to wait months to receive their dishes. The service as “available” across most of Europe and North America, as well as parts of South America, Australia, and New Zealand. (5/13)

Space Force to Select Small Responsive Launcher in August (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Space Force plans to select a small satellite launcher to fly a payload to low Earth orbit on short notice. The Space Force's Space Systems Command announced Thursday it plans to award a contract in August for its Tactically Responsive Space 3 (TacRS-3) mission. Vendors pre-selected for the Orbital Services Program OSP-4 will compete for the task order. The selected launcher will deploy a space domain awareness payload called Victus Nox. Congress included $50 million in the 2022 defense budget for responsive space activities. (5/13)

Astra Gives Details on Larger Rocket Plan (Source: Space News)
Astra announced its Rocket 4.0 vehicle, capable of placing up to 300 kilograms into orbit at a base price of $3.95 million a launch. The company is projecting a test flight of the vehicle as soon as the fourth quarter of this year. The vehicle will use new, larger engines in its first stage that the company has tested, but did not disclose if the engines were developed internally or came from another company. The overall Launch System 2.0 that includes Rocket 4.0 will be designed for a weekly launch cadence, including the ability to perform launches on consecutive days. (5/13)

Russian Sanctions Creating Administrative Difficulties for ISS Collaboration (Source: Space News)
Sanctions on Russia are starting to affect ISS operations, NASA's safety advisers said Thursday. Members of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said that while day-to-day operations of the ISS are continuing without "serious interruptions" since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, sanctions imposed on Russia are creating "administrative difficulties" for NASA personnel in the country, including limited flight options and inability to use credit cards.

In addition, sanctions are affecting Russia, such as Microsoft's suspension for support of its products there. The panel, though, reiterated its support for a seat barter agreement to allow cosmonauts to fly on commercial crew vehicles and NASA astronauts to fly on Soyuz. (5/13)

SES Considers 5G Satellite-to-Phone Service (Source: Space News)
SES is considering plans to provide 5G services directly to handheld devices after rescuing spectrum rights for a constellation. Luxembourg's government filed an application in 2015 to international regulators at the ITU for the constellation, dubbed Cleosat, but faced losing it until SES used at least one of its satellites to secure the frequencies May 10, two days before the deadline.

SES said its interest in the constellation is because of the "potential of direct-to-handheld 5G satellite connectivity in the years to come," but has not disclosed additional details or a schedule for the system. The proposed Cleosat constellation uses multiple frequency bands from around 1.5 to 29 gigahertz, covering 62 satellites across eight planes in non-geostationary orbits between 519 and 8,062 kilometers. (5/13)

Satellite Operators Eye Arctic Services (Source: Space News)
Satellite operators are venturing into the Arctic to improve connectivity as the changing atmospheric and geopolitical climate drives demand for more bandwidth there. The Arctic cannot be served well by traditional GEO communications satellites, leading companies to turn to LEO constellations or spacecraft in highly elliptical orbits to serve the region. Satellite companies are increasingly investing in the area as a number of factors drive demand for more capacity, from demand for in-flight connectivity on routes over the poles to defense. (5/13)

Housing Costs Skyrocket as SpaceX Expands in Texas City (Source: NPR)
The city of Brownsville's motto used to be, "On the Border, By the Sea" to indicate its geography at the Southern tip of Texas. In 2019, it changed to "On the Border, By the Sea, and Beyond" — an ode to SpaceX, which has a facility about 23 miles east of the city. In downtown Brownsville, there are space-themed murals. One of them is of an astronaut, on the side of a hot dog stand called Space Dog Station.

"Elon Musk is bringing a lot of changes here into the city," Rodriguez says. "I think a lot of people, just the same way they don't like it, a lot of people do go for it as well." Some of that change includes rising housing costs. Texas A&M University data show median housing prices have increased in the Brownsville-Harlingen metro by 26% since 2020, from $184,900 to $233,000. The median yearly family income for Brownsville residents is just over $40,000, a third less than the country as a whole, according to Census data. (5/13)

Three New Facilities are Coming to the Houston Spaceport (Source: Houston Chronicle)
Three new facilities are under construction at the Houston Spaceport, a promising step toward the city’s 2015 commitment to transform Ellington Airport into a hub for space activity. Axiom Space, the local company that recently sent private astronauts to the International Space Station, held a ground-breaking ceremony Wednesday for Phase I of its 22-acre campus. This campus will be used to train future astronauts and develop a commercial space station.

In January, Houston-based Intuitive Machines broke ground on its 12.5-acre, 110,000-square-foot location. This is where it will build lunar landers, operate its mission control and make other space products, such as guidance, navigation and control technology. And in June of 2021, Charlotte, N.C.-based Collins Aerospace broke ground on an 8-acre, 120,000-square-foot campus to develop and produce systems for NASA’s human spaceflight programs. (5/13)

Too Poor for Space? Ballooning to the Stratosphere is the Next Best Thing (Source: Fast Company)
For civilians, it’s reserved for a rarified few who can shell out $450,000 to $55 million for several weightless minutes at the edge of space to several days in orbit aboard the International Space Station. But in 2024, two companies—Space Perspective, a startup on Florida’s Space Coast, and World View, an established high-altitude balloon firm in Arizona—hope to spread that transcendence to more people through comparable views at much lower prices via high-tech ballooning to the stratosphere, a section of the atmosphere still well below space but beyond commercial flights.

For $50,000 to $125,000, tourists aloft both companies’ balloons will be able to slowly drift to a minimum of 19 miles (or 100,000 feet) for vistas that still encompass the curvature of the Earth, blackness of space, and stars that twinkle ever more sharply through the thinner atmosphere. Though participants won’t earn astronaut wings or experience weightlessness—flying well below the internationally recognized Kármán line space boundary at 62 miles (or even NASA’s designation of 50 miles)—the companies hope the experience, coupled with curated companion itineraries, will spark greater environmental and humanitarian concern. (5/13)

Space Force Lays Out ‘Range of the Future’ Priorities as Launches Surge (Source: C4ISRnet)
A decade ago, the major launch pads in Florida were flying just three or four missions annually. Now, after a record 31 launches in 2021, they are expecting to host 67 this year, or almost one every five days. Not only has the number of launches ballooned, but so have the providers. By Brig. Gen. Stephen Purdy's estimates, if all those providers hit their targets, the Eastern Range could be supporting an annual launch rate of around 300 missions within several years.

The Space Force’s West Coast launch hub at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California is seeing more modest growth, with Purdy projecting its manifest to increase from about five or six launches annually to as many as 50 in the coming years. This explosion of range activity is requiring Purdy and his team to rethink the way they manage the launch enterprise, adopting automated safety systems, implementing new processes for scheduling launches and considering legislative proposals that could allow the Space Force to operate its launch ranges like airports.

Purdy said the service has made progress over the last year in designing a roadmap for those changes, using a 2019 initiative called “Range of the Future” as its foundation. The effort was designed to implement strategic changes at the Space Force’s ranges in four primary areas: architecture, infrastructure, policy, operations. The service recently added a fifth focus on transforming its business model. Click here. (5/13)

Pentagon May Rethink How it Determines Which Space Programs are Classified (Source: C4ISRnet)
The U.S. Department of Defense may rewrite its guide for classifying space programs, a policy official told lawmakers this week. Congress last year directed the Pentagon to review its classified space portfolio to determine whether programs are appropriately classified. The fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act required the department to complete that effort by the end of April, submit a report to Congress in June and change the classification status of its programs, as necessary, by late July.

John Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy, said during a May 11 Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee hearing that DoD has conducted the review and determined that all of its space programs are “probably appropriately classified.” Still, the department may reconsider how it classifies some of its space programs going forward, he said. (5/13)

Astronomers Captured the First Image of the Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy (Source: NSF)
This is the first image of Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. It's the first direct visual evidence of the presence of this black hole. It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an array which links together eight existing radio observatories across the planet to form a single Earth-sized virtual telescope. The telescope is named after the "event horizon", the boundary of the black hole beyond which no light can escape.

Although we cannot see the event horizon itself, because it cannot emit light, glowing gas orbiting around the black hole reveals a telltale signature: a dark central region, called a "shadow," surrounded by a bright ring-like structure. The new view captures light bent by the powerful gravity of the black hole, which is 4 million times more massive than our sun. The image of the Sgr A* black hole is an average of the different images that the EHT Collaboration has extracted from its 2017 observations. (5/12)

UF Scientists Grow Plants in Lunar Soil (Source: NASA)
In the early days of the space age, the Apollo astronauts took part in a visionary plan: Bring samples of the lunar surface material, known as regolith, back to Earth where they could be studied with state-of-the-art equipment and saved for future research not yet imagined. Fifty years later, three of those samples have been used to successfully grow plants. For the first time ever, researchers have grown the hardy and well-studied Arabidopsis thaliana in the nutrient-poor lunar regolith.

“This research is critical to NASA’s long-term human exploration goals as we’ll need to use resources found on the Moon and Mars to develop food sources for future astronauts living and operating in deep space,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “This fundamental plant growth research is also a key example of how NASA is working to unlock agricultural innovations that could help us understand how plants might overcome stressful conditions in food-scarce areas here on Earth.”

Scientists at the University of Florida have made a breakthrough discovery — decades in the making — that could both enable space exploration and benefit humanity. “Here we are, 50 years later, completing experiments that were started back in the Apollo labs,” said Robert Ferl, a professor in the Horticultural Sciences department at the University of Florida. (5/12)

Boeing, NASA Teams Gve Starliner Final Go for OFT-2 Mission (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
NASA, Boeing, and ULA teams, along with international partners, have finished the agency Flight Readiness Review (FRR) ahead of the Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2) for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. They are now targeting May 19 at 6:54 PM EDT for the launch from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport.

Despite being uncrewed, OFT-2 is an end-to-end simulation of a crewed launch–including arming the abort system. Lifting off from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Starliner will be placed into a 72 km x 181 km sub-orbital trajectory by United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. Starliner will then undergo several phasing burns to raise its orbit to that of the International Space Station.

Starliner will then dock to the ISS’ Harmony forward port, where it’ll remain docked for approximately five days for a total mission length of five-to-eight days. This will mark the first time that NASA’s docking system will be used, as Dragon’s docking system was designed in-house. Starliner will then undock, perform several phasing burns, and reenter the Earth’s atmosphere for a landing in White Sands Missile Range on May 25, 2022. (5/12)

Boeing Clashes with Key Supplier Ahead of Starliner Spacecraft Launch (Source: Reuters)
Boeing s feuding with Aerojet Rocketdyne, a key supplier for its Starliner spacecraft, as the U.S. aerospace giant races to test launch the uncrewed astronaut capsule and mend its reputation in the space sector, people familiar with the matter said. They are at odds over the cause of a problem involving fuel valves in the Starliner propulsion system that forced a postponement of a test flight last July, with the two companies faulting one another, the sources said. (5/12)

GIF Demonstrates Just How Much Sharper JWST is Compared to its Predecessor (Source:  IFL Science)
Now that all of JWST's science instruments have been aligned with the telescope's optics and are all operating at their (very cold) operating temperatures, we have seen some of the test images it has sent back. These images are very impressive but they become even more so when directly compared with our previous infrared observatory in space. Now, NASA has released two images of the same part of the sky taken by Spitzer and JWST to demonstrate just that.

JWST, now the largest and more powerful telescope ever sent to space, is the successor of Hubble (which still works very hard, thank you very much) and the Spitzer Space Telescope, which was retired a few years ago. Spitzer brought incredible new insights to our understanding of the universe by giving us an infrared eye into the cosmos and providing us with the first high-resolution images of the universe in near- and mid-infrared. Click here. (5/12)

Colorado Startup Plans Space Training Center (Source: Denver Business Journal)
A startup launching a commercial spaceflight training center plans to develop a 53-acre Denver metro-area campus where people can learn to be astronauts and companies develop new space technologies. The company, Star Harbor Academy, plans development of an astronaut school with dorms and future phases of development planned to create a hotel and commercial spaces for companies and space workforce training.

Maraia Tanner, Star Harbor’s founder and CEO, calls it the first private training center for people flying on the growing number of commercial spacecraft and space stations being developed. “There’s really no resources available for spaceflight training now if NASA is not involved,” she said. "We would be the first center for this available to the commercial space industry." (5/11)

Axiom Space Breaks Ground on New Houston Spaceport HQ (Source: Houston Business Journal)
Just weeks after completing the first all-private mission to the International Space Station, Houston-based Axiom Space is breaking ground on its new headquarters at the Houston Spaceport. Axiom scheduled a May 11 groundbreaking ceremony to celebrate major construction getting underway. The company expects to move its headquarters to the new spaceport campus in 2023.

The Houston Airport System announced in February that Houston City Council and Axiom had finalized the ground lease and user agreement for the previously announced facility. The 22-acre Space Flight and Assembly Headquarters will be used to train private astronauts and for the production of the Axiom Station, which has been billed as the world’s first free-flying, internationally available, private space station. The space station will be used for research manufacturing and commerce in low-earth orbit. (5/11)

Two Federal Reports Muddy Water Around Decision to Relocate Space Command Away From Colorado (Source: CPR)
One of two long-awaited government reports on the decision to move Space Command from Colorado to Alabama seems to support the claim that the selection was legal and reasonable based on the criteria the military looked at. But Colorado lawmakers say another report due out soon may still turn up flaws in the process.

DoD’s Office of Inspector General has found that former President Donald Trump’s decision to move the Space Command Headquarters from Colorado to Alabama was “reasonable.” It could be a damaging, but not fatal, blow for Colorado lawmakers seeking to have President Joe Biden revisit the decision.

In the meantime, Colorado's political leaders, who are fighting to keep the Command in the state, argue that the DoD report doesn't capture the full picture of the process and that a more detailed look at the decision — the one coming from the Government Accountability Office — may still vindicate their efforts. (5/11)

Leaked Report Should Doom the Space Command Move (Source: The Gazette)
Finally, it is official. A leaked report says Colorado Springs was and remains the best location for the permanent headquarters of Space Command. President Joe Biden should quickly reverse then-President Donald Trump’s vengeful decision to move it from Peterson Space Force Base as retribution for Colorado supporting Biden and ousting Colorado Republican Sen. Cory Gardner.

Trump’s political indulgence was predictable, and we predicted it. Trump staged a 2020 rally in Colorado Springs and said he would make a Space Command decision after the election. In other words, read between the lines and don’t be stupid. If you want Space Command, vote for Trump.

That did not happen, so Trump rejected the advice of his top military officials. After ordering the relocation of the command, Trump bragged on the radio about single-handedly giving Space Command to Alabama — a state that supported him by 62%. After Trump’s Space Command stunt, Alabama’s congressional delegation fought harder than any other to overturn the 2020 election. (5/12)