May 5, 2022

Accelerating Change at Space Force Delta 45 (Source: Air Force Magazine)
To pick up the pace, SLD 45 leaders say they must offer a faster turnaround than was ever demanded in the past. New weather tracking programs and more sophisticated risk assessment technology make this possible. The 2-year-old Space Force is inculcating a culture of innovation and responsible risk-taking, an approach Chief of Space Operations Gen. John “Jay” Raymond likens to the Silicon Valley mindset, where even the lowest-ranking individuals can speak truth to power and offer ideas for better ways to accomplish the mission.

Raymond is responding to pressure. China’s heavy investment in space capabilities—and Russia’s demonstration of counter-space weapons—raise the stakes for future operations dependent on space. Increasing the launch pace is about lowering launch costs and realizing national security imperatives, while at the same time enabling a growing and vibrant commercial space business that will help enable the Space Force to achieve its mission objectives, including establishing a more resilient space architecture.

SLD 45 is at the forefront of the policy adjustments, digital transformation, and innovative new ways of thinking that will help realize Raymond’s vision of a space—“Range of the Future”—an urgent national security challenge. Click here. (4/29)

NASA is Bringing Rocks Back From Mars, But What if Those Samples Contain Alien Life? (Source: NPR)
This week, the agency is holding public meetings and looking for feedback on its plan to land a spacecraft carrying Martian specimens at a U.S. Air Force testing range in Utah in the early 2030s. "Maybe this is the most important environmental assessment that humans have ever done," says Peter Doran, a geologist at Louisiana State University who studies life in extreme environments.

"I think that it's a very low probability that there's anything living at the surface of Mars," says Doran, who also serves on an international committee devoted to planetary protection. "But there is a possibility." Having a rock sample from Mars here on Earth would let scientists run exhaustive lab tests to look for evidence of whether this cold, harsh, rocky world was once habitable and maybe even inhabited. (5/4)

'Space Force' Is Now Official to the VA, but Not Everyone Is on the Same Page (Source: Military.com)
The Department of Veterans Affairs has officially recognized the Space Force as a branch of the military, nearly 2½ years after the service was established. The Space Force was created on Dec. 20, 2019, when then-President Donald Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act. While the Space Force was created in fiscal year 2020, Congress didn’t expand the definition of “veteran” or make other changes to the law requiring VA to furnish benefits and services to Space Force veterans until 2021.

Now halfway through 2022, the VA is announcing in a May 3, 2022, Federal Register posting, they have updated their regulations to include the Space Force as a military branch. Specifically, the existing legal language defining the Armed Forces as “the United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard, including their Reserve components” was updated by adding “Space Force” to the list. (5/3)

SpaceX to Pull All-Nighter with Planned Crew Dragon Splashdown, Falcon 9 Launch Within 5 Hours (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
SpaceX has plans to knock out two major operations overnight. By Friday morning the company looks to have welcomed home another four astronauts from the ISS splashing down in their Crew Dragon off the coast of Florida, and less than five hours later will attempt to launch a Falcon 9 rocket on a Starlink mission from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. (5/5)

DARPA DRACO Project Moves Forward (Source: Space News)
DARPA announced Wednesday it is moving into the next phase of a project to test space nuclear propulsion. DARPA issued a solicitation for the next phase of the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO), where it will seek proposals for the design, development, fabrication and assembly of a nuclear thermal rocket engine. DARPA last year selected a preliminary design for a rocket engine reactor developed by General Atomics, and chose two conceptual spacecraft designs by Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin, but said this phase of the project will be open to all companies. The goal is to launch a flight demonstration of nuclear thermal propulsion in fiscal year 2026. (5/5)

Senate Rejects Attempt to Cancel Second NASA Lunar Lander (Source: Space News)
The Senate overwhelmingly rejected a motion Wednesday to strip a lunar lander provision from a NASA authorization bill. The motion, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), would have directed Senate conferees working with the House on the final version of the United States Innovation and Competition Act to remove language authorizing $10 billion over five years for the Human Landing System program and directing NASA to support at least two companies.

Sanders argued that the provision would be a $10 billion handout to Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos. However, the authorized funding would be for the overall HLS program that includes the existing contract with SpaceX and a second company yet to be selected. Other senators said the provision is critical to ensuring competition and redundancy in the program. Only 17 senators, including Sanders, voted for the motion, while 78 voted against it. (5/5)

AFRL Invites Industry Input on Responsive Space Capabilities (Source: Space News)
The Air Force Research Laboratory's rocket propulsion arm is asking space companies to help identify responsive launch technologies and capabilities. In a request for information last month, AFRL said it wants to better understand what technologies and capabilities are available and which ones need to be developed to help shorten the time it takes to plan and launch space missions. That includes asking companies how they would launch a small spacecraft to a specific targeted high energy orbit, beyond the reach of current small launch vehicles, with only days or weeks' notice. (5/5)

Astroscale Spacecraft Makes Close Approach to Client Satellite (Source: Space News)
Astroscale said a satellite servicing tech demo spacecraft was able to make a close approach to another spacecraft despite thruster problems. Astroscale's ELSA-d servicer spacecraft, a 175-kilogram satellite designed to demonstrate orbital debris removal technologies, lost the use of four of its eight one-newton thrusters in January. However, it was still able to close within about 159 meters of its much smaller client satellite on April 7 from a starting distance of 1,700 kilometers. The company said engineers still need to assess the servicer's capabilities to decide the timing and nature of the mission's next steps. (5/5)

China Launches Eight Imaging Satellites on Long March 2D (Source: Xinhua)
China launched eight imaging satellites Wednesday night. A Long March 2D rocket lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 10:38 p.m. Eastern and placed eight satellites into orbit. The rocket's payload included seven Jilin-1 Gaofen 03D imaging satellites along with Jilin-1 Kuanfu 01C, which can produce images with a resolution as sharp as 0.5 meters with a swath width of 150 kilometers. (5/5)

Stratolaunch Makes Fifth Flight, with New Pylon for Hypersonic Payloads (Source: GeekWire)
Stratolaunch flew its giant aircraft for a fifth time Wednesday, this time with a pylon for attaching hypersonic payloads. The plane spent nearly five hours in the air on the flight that took off and landed from Mojave Air and Space Port. The primary objective of the flight was to test the handling characteristics of a new pylon on the central section of the wing for mounting the hypersonic test vehicles the company is developing. Stratolaunch originally developed the plane to serve as an air-launch platform. (5/5)

MDA Selling Canadarm Tech for Axiom Space Station (Source: SpaceQ)
Canada's MDA announced it sold technology it is developing for the Canadarm3 robotic arm to Axiom Space. Under the contract, MDA will provide 32 external robotic interfaces to be attached to modules of Axiom's future commercial space station. The interfaces would allow robotic arms to be attached to the modules. MDA says the interfaces are based on technologies it is developing for Canadarm3, the robotic arm system it is building as Canada's contribution to the lunar Gateway. (5/5)

Postal Service Features JWST on New Stamp (Source: CollectSpace)
The U.S. Postal Service will honor the James Webb Space Telescope with a new stamp. The stamp features the fully deployed JWST with stars reflected in its primary mirror and galaxies as a backdrop. The Postal Service has not announced when the stamp will be released other than later this year. (5/5)

World View Reaches 1000 Reservations for Flights to Edge of Space (Source: World View)
World View, the leading stratospheric ballooning and space tourism company, has accomplished a new milestone: reaching one thousand reservations for its space tourism program taking participants to the edge of space in a zero-pressure stratospheric balloon and pressurized space capsule. As seasoned leaders in stratospheric exploration and space tourism, the company has now sold the greatest number of seats in the space tourism category.

World View’s reservations for Spaceport Grand Canyon have also been sold out for the first year, with commercial flights slated to begin in 2024. World View’s reservations come from 32 countries with the United States, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom leading the list. A growing list of Explorers have reserved at multiple spaceports while others purchased additional tickets for friends and family, including 43 reservations for a full-capsule.

World View voyages will originate out of the Seven Wonders of the World, Stratospheric Edition™ including Spaceports Grand Canyon, Great Barrier Reef, Serengeti, Aurora Borealis, Amazonia, Pyramids of Giza and Great Wall of China, providing participants the opportunity to experience these wonders from the ground and then view the same location from the edge of space. (5/4)

Momentus Completes All Regulatory Milestones for Inaugural Mission (Source: Momentus)
Momentus announced that it has received a favorable determination from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of its application for payload review in support of the Company’s inaugural flight of the Vigoride orbital transfer vehicle on the upcoming SpaceX Transporter-5 mission targeted for launch this month. (5/5)

Tuberville Says He ‘Still Feels Good’ About Space Command in Huntsville (Source: AL.com)
U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville “still feels good” about the headquarters for U.S. Space Command and its approximately 1,400 troops locating at Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal despite a forthcoming federal report that is expected to chastise the Trump Administration for its decision to locate it to Alabama instead of Colorado. Tuberville’s comments come after a Colorado-based news story, citing unnamed sources, suggested that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) will soon release a report that identifies “significant shortfalls” in the “transparency and credibility” in the Space Command basing decision in early 2021. (5/4)

A Plan to Keep the Space Force’s Future AI Safe (Source: Air Force Magazine)
The Space Force’s chief technology and innovation officer has an idea for how not to let the military’s artificial intelligence get out of hand. Lisa Costa’s office focuses on “asymmetric, disruptive technology,” she told members of the press at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo., in April. “We’re really looking at leap-ahead capability as opposed to just keeping up.”

The office’s role isn’t to sustain anything, Costa said, but instead to “come up with some of the innovative ideas, get them started.” Costa predicted that artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) will become “critically important,” though conceded that so far, “a lot of people talk about it—but have not necessarily implemented it—for space.” (5/4)

Spaceport America Confirms New Tenant, Probably a British Company (Source: Las Cruces Sun-News)
Spaceport America has confirmed a lease with a new tenant, but is providing no details yet about the company, its operations or lease terms; nor would it confirm a report last week that British aerospace company Prismatic may be establishing operations there. "We work in a very secretive industry," spaceport spokesperson Alice Carruth wrote in an email, "not just because of the proprietary nature of the customers we serve, but because all space vehicles fall under ITAR regulations."

The British company specializes in UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly referred to as drones), including the Persistent High Altitude Solar Aircraft (PHASA-35) it developed in collaboration with UK defense corporation BAE Systems. BAE Systems, which also operates in the U.S., acquired Prismatic in 2019. Building permits are in process for a new hangar at Spaceport America for the tenant. (5/4)

Canadian Company Says it Wants to Launch Rockets from Nova Scotia Spaceport (Source: Toronto Star)
Canada could be the next country to reach for a piece of the “trillion-dollar space economy” pie, if new plans to launch rockets from Nova Scotia take off. The Quebec company will announce its intentions to conduct launches from a future spaceport outside the town of Canso, N.S., more than 200 kilometers northeast of Halifax. It means that Reaction Dynamics’ rockets — a new type of hybrid rocket that uses recycled plastic and a liquid oxidizer as fuel — could, theoretically, be taking off and carrying an orbital payload from Spaceport Nova Scotia, the country’s first commercial spaceport, as early as 2024. (5/4)

NASA is Bringing Rocks Back From Mars, But What if Those Samples Contain Alien Life? (Source: NPR)
This week, the agency is holding public meetings and looking for feedback on its plan to land a spacecraft carrying Martian specimens at a U.S. Air Force testing range in Utah in the early 2030s. "Maybe this is the most important environmental assessment that humans have ever done," says Peter Doran, a geologist at Louisiana State University who studies life in extreme environments.

"I think that it's a very low probability that there's anything living at the surface of Mars," says Doran, who also serves on an international committee devoted to planetary protection. "But there is a possibility." Having a rock sample from Mars here on Earth would let scientists run exhaustive lab tests to look for evidence of whether this cold, harsh, rocky world was once habitable and maybe even inhabited.

NASA officials are hashing out a plan to safely collect the samples: A spacecraft would land on Mars and launch a container full of the previously collected rock samples into orbit around the planet. Once in orbit, this container could be engulfed by another container — like a big fish eating a little fish — to keep anything that had touched Mars inside. It would then be sealed, and the seal would be heat-sterilized, says Brian Clement, a planetary protection expert with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is working on the mission. (5/4)