The Spanish Air Force is Now a Space
Force Too (Source: Aviacionline)
Spain moves beyond: President Sanchez’s office decided to rename its
Air Force as the Air and Space Force, to adapt the institution to the
new challenges. Following in the wake of other armed forces that
formally assumed the extension of their area of responsibility towards
the space field, either by creating new dedicated branches of the
military (as in the US or UK) or, as in the French case, by expanding
the field of action of its Air Force, the Spanish Air Force also
spreads its wings to soar beyond the atmosphere. (6/27)
Boeing-Backed Rocket Maker Partners
with Blue Origin to Battle SpaceX (Source: Seattle Times)
By 2014, United Launch Alliance wasn’t the rocket industry stalwart it
had been since its founding almost a decade earlier when it had a
monopoly on lucrative Pentagon contracts to lift national security
satellites into orbit. Instead, the company was under intense pressure
— Elon Musk and SpaceX were on the prowl, disrupting the industry and
threatening to take a large chunk of ULA’s government business.
Congress was moving to ban the Russian-made engine the company used in
its workhorse rocket. ULA’s parent companies, Lockheed Martin and
Boeing, were growing desperate, and there were fears that they might
want to cut their losses and move on.
So when Tory Bruno accepted the offer to lead the faltering company,
which had recently ousted its CEO, he knew what he was getting into.
“It was clear they were in serious trouble,” Bruno said. “This is a
company that wasn’t supposed to survive.” Eight years later, after
enduring what Bruno called a quest “to completely transform the
company” — laying off hundreds of workers, including 40% of executives,
streamlining processes, shedding surplus real estate — the company,
once in a downward spiral, is experiencing a transformation.
Although SpaceX took a large chunk of its business, Denver-based ULA
maintained enough to keep going, winning another round of launch
contracts to hoist satellites for the Pentagon and intelligence
agencies. It persuaded Congress to allow it to import enough of the
Russian-made engines to keep launching. After years of delays, it says
it’s close to flying a next-generation rocket with a new, American-made
engine built by Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin. (6/26)
Shuttered Space Station Mockup Finds
New Use with Axiom Space (Source: CollectSpace)
A Houston company building a commercial orbital outpost has found the
perfect place to move: a sprawling facility that comes pre-equipped
with a full-scale mockup of the International Space Station (ISS).
Axiom Space, which has a contract with NASA to test components of its
planned Axiom Station at the ISS, has leased the former location of
Fry's Electronics in Webster, Texas to house its engineering
operations. The former big-box retail store, which closed when the
national chain went out of business in 2021, is unique for its
football-field-long representation of the ISS.
The space station installation also has a replica of the Canadarm2
robotic arm, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, two models of NASA's
never-realized X-38 emergency crew return vehicle and astronauts
(mannequins) in replica spacesuits. Additional oversized modules
previously served as product demonstration rooms and an in-store cafe,
while most of the station sat among and above aisles of computers and
other devices.
The buildout was and still continues to be one-of-a-kind on Earth.
Neither NASA nor any of international partners have a complete ISS.
(Nearby Johnson Space Center has training versions of each of the
modules, but omits the truss and solar array wings.) Construction is
now underway to convert the 146,000-square-foot (13,600-square-meter)
building to meet Axiom's needs, including adding a collaboration
workspace, offices and lab space. The building's high ceilings will
support Axiom's plans for full-scale mockups and engineering units of
its own space station. (6/28)
NASA X-57 First Flight on Track for
September (Source: Flying)
The development team working on NASA’s X-57 Maxwell are closing in on
the all-electric experimental airplane’s first flight test, which the
agency said could take place as soon as September 20, if all goes as
planned. This initial flight will make the aircraft—named for the 19th
century Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell—NASA’s first piloted
X-plane in two decades.
The X-57 is basically a Tecnam P2006T twin with four seats, which has
been modified to accommodate an integrated electric propulsion system
powered by lithium-ion batteries. The first iteration of the airplane
will be outfitted with two electric motors and propellers aimed at
testing the X-57’s electric cruise propulsion system. This will be the
version that is set to fly this fall. (6/27)
Starlink Ops Delayed in Phlippines
(Source: Business World)
The start of Starlink operations in the Philippines is being delayed.
The Philippine government originally expected that SpaceX would start
offering Starlink service in the country before the end of President
Rodrigo Duterte's term at the end of June. Government officials,
though, said the start of Starlink service will be delayed as SpaceX
has yet to set up gateways in the country required for the service. The
government did not provide a new estimate for when Starlink services
will begin. (6/28)
Analog Astronauts Emerge From 8-Month
Mission (Source: The National)
A team of analog astronauts is about to emerge from an eight-month
"mission" into a changed world. Six people from Russia, the United
States and the United Arab Emirates started an analog Mars mission last
November, confining themselves to a simulated spacecraft in Moscow.
During the mission, scheduled to end Sunday, the six people have had no
internet access and only limited contract with family and friends. "If
we want to know something, the only way is to ask the people in the
mission control center," said Saleh Al Ameri, one of the six people on
the Sirius 20/21 mission. "To overcome these things, we try to keep
ourselves busy." (6/28)
Chancery Nixes Aerojet CEO's Bid For
Neutral Counsel (Source: Law360)
Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc.'s board chairman will preside over an
upcoming meeting where shareholders will vote for directors, the
Delaware Chancery Court ruled Monday, rejecting a bid from the chair's
rival, the company's CEO, for neutral counsel to conduct the meeting.
(6/28)
It’s Time for NASA to Cancel the Lunar
Gateway (Source: The Hill)
A recently leaked NASA document shows there is bad news and some good
news for the Artemis return to the moon program, according to a recent
article in Ars Technica. The bad news is, largely because of costs
associated with building the Lunar Gateway, the pace of Artemis
missions to the moon slows to an unsustainable crawl, with years
between flights and the establishment of a lunar base pushed off to the
2030s. The good news is that many of these problems might be solved by
canceling the Lunar Gateway.
The Lunar Gateway, once known as the Deep Space Gateway when it was
first envisioned in the Obama administration and then the Lunar Orbital
Platform-Gateway, is planned for an elliptical lunar orbit and would,
as the name implies, serve as a gateway to the lunar surface.
Astronauts on board the Orion would dock at the Lunar Gateway and
transfer to a Human Landing System (HLS) to travel the rest of the way
to the lunar surface.
Some at NASA argue that the Lunar Gateway, which would serve as a
human-tended space station in orbit around the moon, is needed to test
technologies that would sustain astronauts on the long voyage to Mars.
Considering that the International Space Station exists, and several
commercial space stations are being planned, this argument seems
dubious at best. If a space station in lunar orbit is required to go to
Mars, then it would make sense to step back and rethink it while taking
it out of the critical path to return to the moon. A SpaceX Starship
could be outfitted as a Lunar Gateway, for example. (6/26)
Rocket Lab Launches CAPSTONE to the
Moon (Source: Space News)
A Rocket Lab Electron launched a NASA lunar cubesat mission this
morning. The Electron lifted off from the company's New Zealand launch
site at 5:55 a.m. Eastern and placed into orbit the CAPSTONE cubesat
and its Photon kick stage. The Photon will fire its HyperCurie engine
several times over the next six days to place CAPSTONE on a trajectory
to the moon. CAPSTONE, short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System
Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, will enter the
near-rectilinear halo orbit NASA plans to use for Artemis missions in
November, testing its stability and as well as autonomous positioning
technologies. (6/28)
ESA Picks Airbus to Build FORUM Earth
Science Satellite (Source: ESA)
ESA awarded a contract to Airbus to build an Earth science satellite.
Airbus will build in the U.K. the Far-infrared Outgoing Radiation
Understanding and Monitoring (FORUM) satellite under a contract awarded
Tuesday valued at $169 million. Forum will study the Earth's emissions
of far-infrared radiation to support climate change studies. FORUM is
slated for launch in 2027. (6/28)
Cygnus Cargo Craft Departs ISS
(Source: Space News)
A Cygnus cargo spacecraft departed the International Space Station this
morning after a test to reboost the station's orbit. The NG-17 Cygnus
spacecraft was unberthed by the station's robotic arm and released at
7:07 a.m. Eastern. The spacecraft will reenter after a deorbit burn on
Wednesday. On Saturday, the spacecraft fired its main thruster for five
minutes, raising the station's orbit slightly. Previously, only
Progress spacecraft and thrusters in the Russian segment of the station
adjusted the station's orbit. (6/28)
China Launches Imaging Satellite
(Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
China launched a radar imaging satellite Monday. A Long March 4C rocket
lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 11:46 a.m.
Eastern and placed the Gaogen-12 03 spacecraft into a sun-synchronous
orbit. The spacecraft is the third in a series of radar imaging
satellites. (6/28)
Spotting Objects From Space Is Easy.
This Challenge Is Harder (Source: WIRED)
A battle royale called the SMART program has charged teams with a
daunting first task: Identify construction sites on Earth using only
data from orbiters. It’s the work an intelligence community R&D
agency called the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity
(IARPA). SMART stands for Space-based Machine Automated Recognition
Technique, and its goal is to “harmonize” data from many kinds of
Earth-watching satellites and then task software with searching through
it for signs of change, natural or human-made.
Everyone—from spy agencies to climate scientists to insurance companies
to wildland firefighters—wants to use those visuals to understand
what’s happening on Earth. But there’s more satellite data than human
analysts can keep track of. Automating at least part of the analysis
takes advantage of the terabytes (and terabytes) out there and
eliminates the tedium so people can focus on interpretation. The
program’s initial focus is on identifying and monitoring heavy
construction because rather than simply identifying single objects from
above, spotting a construction site requires identifying many objects
and terrain changes over time and deducing a pattern from them. (6/28)
The C-Band Replacements are Coming
(Source: Space News)
SpaceX is slated to launch the first satellite in SES’s C-band clearing
plan this week, which will help the operator reap billions of dollars
from vacating frequencies for U.S. 5G networks. A SpaceX Falcon 9
rocket is being prepared to launch the SES-22 television broadcast
satellite on Wednesday at 5:04 p.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral,
Florida.
SES-22 will be the first to launch of six geostationary satellites that
SES ordered — including a ground spare — to migrate broadcast customers
into a narrower swath of C-band. United Launch Alliance is slated to
launch two SES C-band replacement satellites in the third quarter of
2022, and SpaceX is due to deploy another two later in the year.
SES said Friday it is on track to receive billions of dollars in total
spectrum-clearing proceeds by meeting the Federal Communication
Commission’s December 2023 deadline. SES and Intelsat, which hold the
largest share of C-band in the United States, successfully unlocked
more than $2 billion in combined proceeds from meeting an initial FCC
milestone last year. However, SES and Intelsat remain locked in a
long-running legal dispute over their share of the proceeds. (6/27)
SpaceX's Lack of Transparency As a
Tool for Recolonization (Source: Trucha)
Last month, in the middle of a bid to take over Twitter, Elon Musk
tweeted to the masses that nothing will deter him “from fighting for a
good future and your right to free speech.” That Musk views himself as
a crusader for First Amendment rights is difficult to understand given
the ways his companies have used provisions in the Texas Public
Information Act to block the release of public records in South Texas.
That Musk views himself as a crusader for First Amendment rights is
difficult to understand given the ways his companies have used
provisions in the Texas Public Information Act to block the release of
public records in South Texas. I wanted to know what discussions public
servants enchanted by SpaceX have facilitated with Musk and his
companies behind closed doors. But the more records I requested, the
clearer it became that both governments and Musk’s businesses were
willing to stall the release of information that should be available to
the public for reasons of ethics and transparency
Does an entire community benefit when a local government uses taxpayer
dollars to fund a space port for a private company, then refuses to let
the public in on the entire story? Open records requests show that
public entities have not only withheld important public information,
but that they’ve also continued to do so with knowledge that Musk’s
companies haven’t necessarily followed the rules. Click here. (6/24)
https://truchargv.com/the-fine-print-part-two/
House Appropriators Partially Restore
Funding for Planetary Defense Mission (Source: Space News)
House appropriators partially restored funding for a planetary defense
mission as part of a spending bill while also raising concerns about
NASA’s closure of an airborne observatory and plans to return samples
from Mars. The House Appropriations Committee released June 27 the
report accompanying its commerce, justice and science (CJS) spending
bill for fiscal year 2023, due to be marked up by the full committee
June 28. The CJS appropriations subcommittee approved the bill without
debate June 22.
The report spells out in greater detail how appropriators seek to
allocate the $25.446 billion they provide to NASA, $1.4 billion more
than what the agency received in 2022 but $527 million less than what
NASA requested for fiscal year 2023 in March. Appropriators partially
rejected a proposal by NASA to cut funding for the Near Earth Object
(NEO) Surveyor mission, a space telescope to search for potentially
hazardous asteroids. NASA requested only $40 million for NEO Surveyor,
pushing its 2026 launch back by at least two years. The project
previously expected needing $170 million in 2023. (6/27)
NASA Rents the Runway for its New
Spacesuits (Source: Space Review)
NASA needs new spacesuits for both the space station and Artemis lunar
missions, but has struggled to develop new suits on its own. Jeff Foust
reports on how NASA is taking a services approach instead, working with
two companies to lease new suits from them. Click here.
(6/27)
Escaping Gravity and the Struggle to
Reshape NASA (Source: Space Review)
Former NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver has written a book about
her time at the agency. Rand Simberg reviews the book with a focus on
Garver’s efforts to put NASA on a new course that leveraged commercial
capabilities. Click here.
(6/27)
Why the Space Industry Needs a Space
College (Source: Space Review)
The growth of the space industry is creating new demands on the
education system to train workers. Dylan Taylor and Keith Cowing
discuss a concept for a “space college” that is both physical and
virtual to more effectively train the next generation of the space
workforce. Click here.
(6/27)
Every Single Contribution Counts
(Source: Space Review)
Improving diversity, equality, and inclusion is becoming a growing
priority for the aerospace industry. Timo Pesonen describes one
initiative the European Commission is taking to address this issue.
Click here.
(6/27)
Cyber Threats Beyond Earth: Securing
In-Space Manufacturing (Source: Forbes)
Our global society is heavily dependent on space-based technologies.
Most of us are aware that space positioning, weather and communications
systems are critical to our transportation activities. Many people
would be surprised to learn that modern factories also depend on
satellites.
In the aerospace domain many of the products being produced are
classified or fall into the broader category of Controlled Unclassified
Information (CUI) and are actively sought by foreign adversaries.
Securing industrial robots, waterjet cutters and 3D printers from
state-sponsored cyber-intruders is a challenging task for factory IT
departments. Securing the programming and parts files for these systems
during their transmission is an equally important task that often gets
overlooked.
NASA recognizes space manufacturing as an important technology that can
benefit the agency’s own missions. It is also a critical business
sector, along with space tourism, in the near-term development of a
space economy. I recently lead the review of business models for the
Johnson Space Center’s In-space Production Applications (InSPA)
program. Under InSPA, NASA awarded eight manufacturing teams the
opportunity to fly their manufacturing project to space. NASA and the
ISS National Laboratory will provide these manufacturing startups with
the rack space and astronaut time required for their test runs. (6/27)
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