June 25, 2022

Space Force Needs ‘Bodies’ at Pacific Commands to Meet Rising Threats (Source: Air Force Magazine)
In past Pacific exercises, space capabilities came into the picture after the fact—supposition over what Air Force Space Command might have done had it been involved. Since the creation of the Space Force, however, small teams of Guardians assigned to Pacific Air Forces and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command have been tasked with assuring that space effects are incorporated into all exercises, but some work is falling through the cracks.

Current Space Force leaders at PACAF say the small number of Guardians planning exercises and advising both INDOPACOM commander Adm. John C. Aquilino and PACAF commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach are not enough. What’s more, as allies and partners stand up their own space components, Space Force Guardians are needed to coordinate the joint force, allies, and partners to unite efforts against rising threats posed by China, Russia, and North Korea. (6/22)

What You Pay For Blue Origin’s Spaceflight Depends On Who You Are (Source: Observer)
Blue Origin appears to be leading the space tourism race. While it’s still all talk and no action at rival Virgin Galactic, which has yet to launch paying passengers into space, Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket is five missions into commercial launch and has sent 25 civilians to the lower edge of space (100 kilometers in the sky). But what these passengers paid for their tickets on New Shepard is a mystery.

Blue Origin doesn’t advertise price information on its flight reservation page. Passengers say they have paid from zero to nearly $30 million. Industry insiders say Blue Origin’s ticket price is tailored to individual passengers based on a variety of factors. “It’s not about money; it’s about who you are, your social capital, whether you align with their launch purposes. It’s kind of a package deal,” said Roman Chiporukha, cofounder of SpaceVIP, a platform that helps the wealthy book space trips, including Blue Origin’s. Blue Origin declined to discuss its pricing strategy.

Virgin Galactic sells a 90-minute ride to suborbital space for $450,000 per seat. Space Perspective charges $125,000 per person on a six-hour journey to the stratosphere in a balloon-borne capsule. Even the most out-of-reach space experience has a price tag: Axiom Space is marketing a 10-day trip to the ISS for $55 million. Blue Origin ticket ranges from zero to $28 million. Blue Origin auctioned off a seat on its maiden flight for $28 million After the winner said he couldn’t make the trip due to a schedule conflict, the seat was sold to the second highest bidder, who reportedly paid nearly as much. But a passenger who is scheduled to fly this December paid only $1 million for his seat. (6/23)

Meet the ‘Dream Chaser,’ the Supersonic Space Craft Taking on Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic (Source: Robb Report)
Will the supersonic Dream Chaser soon be competing with Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin in the space-tourism race? That’s the plan—eventually. Sierra Space is developing the Dream Chaser as the world’s “first and only winged commercial spaceplane.” The company has been focused on a cargo version, which is scheduled to fly seven missions to deliver 12,000 pounds of supplies to the ISS beginning in 2023. But Sierra said it has always planned a “multi-mission” version that will carry three to seven astronauts. The crewed version would be ready by 2025, according to the company.

The announcement about the partnership with Spaceport America is part of Sierra’s plans to build a global network that would allow “high-value payloads” to be delivered. Sierra Space also announced plans to open the first commercial human spaceflight center and astronaut training academy. Dr. Janet Kavindi, a veteran NASA astronaut, will lead the new facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Kavindi foresees different astronauts being trained at the facility, including career astronauts who will spend months in space and “experiential” astronauts, or private citizens, who want to visit Orbital Reef, which is being designed as the world’s first private space station. (6/23)

Pittsburgh is Bringing U.S. Back to the Moon (Source: TIME)
Pittsburgh is a once-gritty steel city that has reinvented itself as a hub for technology, light manufacturing, healthcare, and education; and the moon is, well, the moon. But the two will join hands soon—as early as the fourth quarter of this year—when local company Astrobotic launches its golf-cart-sized Peregrine lander to the moon’s Lake of Death (or Lacus Mortis, as it is known to astronomers), becoming the first American spacecraft to touch down on the lunar surface since the landing of Apollo 17 in December 1972.

Peregrine is a nimble little ship that will be stuffed with no fewer than 24 payloads—11 from NASA and 13 from the private sector—all as a part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. NASA’s Artemis program aims to have astronauts back on the moon by the middle of this decade, but unlike the Apollo crews and their brief flags-and-footprints visits, the Artemis crews will ultimately be establishing a long-term presence at fixed lunar bases.

Enter CLPS, under which the space agency will outsource the delivery of cargo and rovers to the lunar surface to the private sector—much the way NASA’s commercial crew program outsourced the delivery of astronauts to the ISS. There are 14 CLPS companies overall, contracted to build spacecraft that can do jobs as diverse as scouting for water ice deposits on the moon that can be used for drinking, breathable air, and rocket fuel; studying the radiation of the lunar environment to determine the hazard levels for long-duration crews; and ferrying up power-generating solar panels as well as construction material for lunar greenhouses and even habitats. (6/24)

Controversy Grows Over whether Mars Samples Endanger Earth (Source: Scientific American)
Less than a decade from now, a spacecraft from Mars may swing by Earth to drop off precious cargo: samples of the Red Planet’s rocks, soil and even air to be scoured for signs of alien life by a small army of researchers right here on our terra firma. Orchestrated by NASA and the European Space Agency, this fast-paced, multibillion-dollar enterprise, formally known as the Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign, is the closest thing to a holy grail that planetary scientists have ever pursued.

In many respects, MSR is already well underway: NASA’s Perseverance rover is wheeling around an ancient river delta in Mars’s Jezero Crater, gathering choice specimens of potential astrobiological interest for future pick-up by a “fetch rover.” Then there’s the design and testing of the Mars Ascent Vehicle for lifting those retrieved samples into orbit for subsequent ferrying to Earth that is proceeding apace. But one crucial aspect of the project remains troublingly unresolved: How exactly should the returned samples be handled and at what cost, given the potential risk of somehow contaminating Earth’s biosphere with imported Martian bugs? (6/23)

Deterring Aggression in Space (Source: Space News)
To keep peace on Earth, we must keep peace in space. We must deter aggression through a system of capabilities and norms that inspire restraint in our adversaries. There is no simple, single, and quick solution to this problem. It must be viewed within the classical context of nation-state deterrence in a peer environment. This means understanding the motivation for aggression, choosing a deterrent strategy, and fielding credible, obvious capabilities, with a dash of hesitancy inducing uncertainty.

Fundamentally, a nation attacks to achieve a beneficial change in the status quo. Our mission, as a peacekeeper, is to discourage hostile and destructive action. To do this there are two approaches. One, a nation can allow the adversary the ability to attack, do harm, and achieve the benefit sought. However, to deter this action, we would need to make it clear that we would respond with an overwhelmingly destructive retaliatory cost that far outweighs any potential perceived benefit.

This approach is known as the artificial imposition of a reciprocal cost, nuclear deterrence being the classic example. Alternatively, a nation can seek to render any practical attack ineffective. In an environment where aggression will stimulate severe consequences, an adversary is discouraged from acting when no conceivable attack can succeed. This is clearly the correct approach for deterring aggression in space for several reasons. (6/22)

World View and Rainforest Partnership Team Up to Protect One of the World's Greatest Wonders (Source: Business Wire)
In support of World Rainforest Day, June 22, World View, the industry leading stratospheric ballooning and space tourism company, announces a new alliance with Rainforest Partnership, an impact-driven international nonprofit that uses the power of community-centered collaboration to protect rainforests—crucial components in the global climate crisis—in some of the most critical places on Earth for biodiversity and climate.

World View’s space tourism flight from Spaceport Amazonia, one of its Seven Wonders of the World Stratospheric Edition TM, will provide explorers with a deeper appreciation for tropical rainforests and distinctive learning opportunities about the integral role they play in regulating Earth’s climate. Through this partnership, World View will donate five percent of all sales from World View’s forthcoming Amazonia merchandise line to Rainforest Partnership in support of indigenous and local-led forest conservation projects in Peru and Ecuador. (6/22)

UK Wants to Send a Spacecraft to Grab Two Dead Satellites From Space (Source: New Scientist)
The UK is committing £5 million to fund a mission to remove space junk. The project will aim to bring two defunct satellites back through Earth’s atmosphere later this decade – a first-of-its-kind feat. The UK’s science minister George Freeman outlined the country’s commitment to keeping Earth’s orbit clean and tidy as part of the UK’s Plan for Space Sustainability. This includes drawing up regulatory norms for the safe operation of satellites and lowering insurance costs for sustainable missions.

The UK’s Active Debris Removal mission, first announced last year, will see a spacecraft launched into orbit in 2026. Once there, it will journey to two dead UK satellites orbiting our planet and pull them back into the atmosphere so they burn up, proving that a single spacecraft can remove more than one piece of debris. (6/23)

BlackSky Awarded Five-Year Joint Artificial Intelligence Center Contract for AI Data Readiness (Source: Space Daily)
BlackSky Technologies was awarded a basic order agreement from the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) to create and optimize data sets for use in DoD AI models and applications. The JAIC agreement has a ceiling value of $241 million over five years.

"With demonstrated AI expertise in space-based dynamic monitoring, this agreement will open even more doors for BlackSky to contribute its unique value to the diverse national security challenges faced by the wider DoD community," said Patrick O'Neil, BlackSky chief innovation officer. (6/22)

NASA Loans Moon Rock to Tucson (Source: Tucson Local Media)
During NASA’s Apollo 15 mission in 1971, astronauts David Scott and James Irwin brought back 170 pounds of moon rocks for research on Earth. Everyone in Tucson can see a piece of this history at the University of Arizona Alfie Norville Gem & Mineral Museum. Weighing 4 ounces and measuring 3 inches in length, the space rock is on loan from NASA.

It is the biggest chunk of moon rocks that NASA loans to museums. The rock is on display in the museum’s Mineral Evolution Gallery. “It’s a privilege to have this rock here,” said Elizabeth Gass, exhibit specialist at the Museum in a press release. “Not every museum qualifies to have one because of the strict security protocols needed to keep the rock safe.” (6/19)

AWS Sent a Snowcone to Space (Source: Tech Crunch)
At its re:Mars conference, Amazon today announced that it quietly sent one of its AWS Snowcone edge computing and storage devices into space on the Axiom mission to the International Space Station. For the most part, this was an off-the-shelf Snowcone, which AWS already built to be rugged enough to be shipped by UPS, though the company had to do months of testing to get it certified for this flight. (6/23)

Canadian Space Agency and Luxembourg Space Agency Sign MOU (Source: SpaceQ)
The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with another space agency, this time with the Luxembourg Space Agency. In the last year the CSA has signed MOU’s with the UK Space Agency, the Italian Space Agency, renewed an agreement with the French space agency CNES and signed a joint statement with the State Space Agency of Ukraine. (6/23)