August 12, 2022

Papers Invited Through 30 November for Space History Prize (Source: Space 3.0)
Awarded since 2011, the Sacknoff Prize is designed to encourage original research by university students in the field of space history. Undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to submit their original manuscript for consideration! Submissions must be postmarked by 30 November 2022. Winners will be announced in December. Students must be enrolled at an educational institution (undergraduate or graduate) at the time of submittal and working toward a degree. Papers already published or scheduled for publication in another journal will not be accepted. Click here. (8/12)

Sidus Space Reports Quarterrly Earnings (Source: Sidus Space)
Revenue increased to $1.85 million for the three months ended June 30, 2022 from $232,000 in the comparable period of 2021. Gross Profit increased to $347,000 for the three months, from a loss of $56,000 in the comparable period of 2021. Operating Expenses increased to $2.7 million for the three months ended June 30, 2022 compared to $418,000 for the three months ended June 30, 2021, resulting from expansion of our staff and facilities, as well as increased insurance, investor relations, legal and accounting fees that are associated with being a publicly traded company. (8/12)

Army Explores Space Tech for Nontraditional Military Ops (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Army is looking into other ways to use space technologies for nontraditional military operations such as cyber and information warfare. Amy officials said at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium that wars in the future will be fought in the space and cyber domains and are thus seeking more synergy between those domains. One concept would be to use surveillance satellites and cyber tools to support U.S. special forces specializing in counterterrorism, information warfare and influence operations. The concept aligns with the Pentagon's national defense strategy that calls for the military to develop non-lethal capabilities, including those that can disable enemies' networks and satellites. (8/12)

Momentus Slows Spending, Focuses on Upcoming Space Tug Mission (Source: Space News)
Momentus will reduce spending to conserve cash as it focuses on its next space tug missions. The company said in an earnings call Thursday that its next tug mission, Vigoride-5, remains on track for launch in November. That mission will incorporate changes to fix problems with Vigoride-3 launched in May, such as a failure of a solar array deployment mechanism. The company, which reported a net loss of nearly $23 million in the second quarter, said it is cutting back on spending, including work on a future reusable version of Vigoride, to ensure it has enough cash to get through the end of 2023. (8/12)

Rocket Lab Reports Higher Revenues, Bigger Losses (Source: Rocket Lab)
Rocket Lab reported higher revenues but also greater losses in the second quarter. The company reported Thursday $55.5 million in revenue in the second quarter, compared to $11.3 million in the same quarter a year ago. The company's net loss grew from $16.7 million to $37.4 million. The company says its acquisitions of several companies in the last year significantly impacted revenue growth. The company is projecting revenues of $60-63 million for the third quarter. (8/12)

FCC In-Space Servicing Move Seeks to Ensure US Leadership (Source: Space News)
A move by the FCC last week seeks to position the U.S. as a leader in an emerging space economy. The FCC voted to explore the economic potential and policy questions relating to in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing capabilities (ISAM). The FCC said it is specifically seeking information on how the regulator might update, clarify or modify its rules and licensing processes to reduce barriers for ISAM missions and advance their progress. The move is welcomed by industry, which says the effort will help define what is needed to support emerging space applications. (8/12)

ESA Considers US, Indian, Japanese Launchers to Replace Russia's Soyuz (Source: Reuters)
ESA is considering SpaceX as well as Indian and Japanese rockets to launch missions once planned for Soyuz. In an interview, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said ESA was evaluating those options as temporary backups for missions grounded after Russia ended Soyuz launches from French Guiana earlier this year. Those discussions are in an "exploratory phase" and depend on the status of Ariane 6, whose first launch has slipped to 2023. (8/12)

Indian SSLV Launch Failure Blamed on Accelerometer (Source: The Hindu)
The head of the Indian space agency ISRO says an accelerometer failure caused the loss of the first Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) mission last weekend. S. Somanath said an accelerometer on the rocket failed around the time of second stage separation. That caused the vehicle's computers to incorrectly initiate a "salvaging operation" to separate the satellites immediately after the end of the third stage burn, before the vehicle's kick stage could circularize its orbit. He said engineers are looking into the accelerometer failure to see if it is a hardware or software problem. (8/12)

Astro Digital Pivoted From Constellation to Technology Services (Source: Space News)
Astro Digital says it's seeing strong interest in providing small satellite technology as a service. The company originally planned to develop a smallsat constellation for Earth imaging but pivoted several years ago to provide services for companies seeking space projects without the manufacturing, launch integration and other burdens that typically come with them. During that time, the company has seen the size of smallsats grow as well as interest in new markets like in-orbit infrastructure and transportation. (8/12)

NASA Hands Landsat 9 Over to USGS (Source: NASA)
NASA has handed over Landsat 9 to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). NASA announced Thursday it formally transferred ownership and operations of the Earth observation spacecraft, launched last September, to USGS. The transfer occurred after NASA and USGS completed on-orbit checkouts of the satellite and calibrated its instruments. (8/12)

Intelsat/OneWeb Collaboration Includes Airline Services (Source: Tech Crunch)
Intelsat and OneWeb announced Thursday they would collaborate on multi-orbit connectivity options for airlines. Under the agreement, Intelsat will distribute OneWeb services as part of its inflight connectivity services to airlines, including services from Intelsat's GEO satellites. The companies said the multi-orbit services will be available by 2024 after OneWeb completes its first-generation satellite constellation. (8/12)

Northrop Grumman Invests in New Solid Rocket Motor Manufacturing Facilities in Utah (Source: Space Daily)
Northrop Grumman is expanding its solid rocket motor manufacturing facilities with the groundbreaking of new state-of-the art facilities to support nearly every phase of solid rocket motor manufacturing, including case manufacturing, propellant mixing and casting, and final assembly. The infrastructure investment and expansion of solid rocket motor manufacturing will more than triple the company's capacity to deliver its 63-inch-diameter Graphite Epoxy Motor (GEM 63) solid rocket booster and the extended length variation (GEM 63XL), which will be critical to support the new contract award received from United Launch Alliance (ULA) in June. (8/11)

Antaris Close Seed Funding Round to Accelerate Development of Software Solutions for Space (Source: Space Daily)
Antaris, the software platform provider for space, announced the company has closed a $4.2 million seed round of funding led by Acequia Capital and Possible Ventures. The round also includes investment from leading space tech investors Lockheed Martin Ventures, HCVC, E2MC and Ananth Technologies. (8/11)

HKATG Tooling Up for Satellite Mass Production (Source: Space Daily)
Hong Kong Aerospace Technology Group, which is committed to promoting Hong Kong's industrialization and supporting Hong Kong's becoming an international innovation and technology hub announced on 2 August that HKSML, its indirect wholly-owned subsidiary entered into a fit-out contract regarding the 2/F and 8/F Advanced Manufacturing Center (AMC). The construction will be executed into three phases. It is estimated that the whole project will take about 150 days, and the contract involves approximately HKD$160 million. The Satellite Manufacturing Center, and the Satellite Operation Control and Application Center located at the 2/F and 8/F AMC Premises, respectively, cover an area of 180,000 square feet. (8/11)

Building on Mars or the Luna: You'll Need Extraterrestrial Cement (Source: Space Daily)
Sustained space exploration will require infrastructure that doesn't currently exist: buildings, housing, rocket landing pads. So, where do you turn for construction materials when they are too big to fit in your carry-on and there's no Home Depot in outer space? "If we're going to live and work on another planet like Mars or the moon, we need to make concrete. But we can't take bags of concrete with us - we need to use local resources," said Norman Wagner, Unidel Robert L. Pigford Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware.

Researchers are exploring ways to use clay-like topsoil materials from the moon or Mars as the basis for extraterrestrial cement. To succeed will require a binder to glue the extraterrestrial starting materials together through chemistry. One requirement for this out-of-this-world construction material is that it must be durable enough for the vertical launch pads needed to protect man-made rockets from swirling rocks, dust and other debris during liftoff or landing. Most conventional construction materials, such as ordinary cement, are not suitable under space conditions. (8/11)

Central Florida Model Rocketry Blasts Off Aalongside Space Coast Launches (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Young Nico Garces’ mother Jenny said he began going to rocketry club meetings in April after his father started researching model rockets online. “The first time I think they came out he just fell like perfectly still for four hours, which is kind of unusual for a 3-year-old,” she said. “If you find something like that you got to stick with it.” Hector Yepes, an assistant manager at HobbyTown in Sanford, has noticed a big pickup in business specifically from grandparents and parents hoping to share the hobby with their young ones.

Saturday’s turnout was about average, but of the 40 people in attendance, many if not most were new rocketeers or first-time arrivals at the club, said ROCK leader Roger Smith, whose been coordinating the club for 10 years. Steve Rausch, one of the owners of Orlando’s Colonial Photo and Hobby, said he’s seen rising interest in rockets and other hobbies. He said rocket enthusiasm grows every time “the news” covers a big launch. “If they keep shooting off rockets off the coast, people are gonna keep coming in here to buy them,” he said. (8/12)

Sierra Nevada Signs oOn to UK's Project Aether (Source: C4ISR.net)
Sierra Nevada has been awarded a $121 million contract by the UK Ministry of Defense as part of Project Aether, a program to establish "an uncrewed stratospheric communications and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability with a global reach in near-real time." Sierra Nevada will supply high-altitude uncrewed communication and surveillance balloons. (8/12)

DARPA Wants to Build an 'Internet' of Connected Satellites in Low Earth Orbit (Source: Gizmodo)
If you’ve taken a good look at the night sky in recent years you may have noticed a few more twinkling lights. That’s largely due to a surge in low Earth orbit satellites, an increasing number of which are being deployed to offer satellite internet service. SpaceX, OneWeb, and Amazon, the latter through its yet-to-launch Project Kuiper, together reportedly plan to launch over 46,000 more satellites into space in the coming years. There’s a problem though.

In their haste to get satellites up and running and beat out competitors, few of these satellite companies actually bothered to hammer out a set of standards that would let their satellites communicate with other firms’ satellites. Enter DARPA, the Pentagon’s gonzo research and development arm. As part of its Space-Based Adaptive Communications Node (Space-BACN) program DARPA is bringing together a team of experts to standardize communications between the ever-increasing hoard of satellites. The end goal, according to DARPA, is a type of “internet” of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites that lets civil, government, and military satellites easily communicate with each other. (8/11)

New Iran Satellite Presents Significant Challenge to Israel, US and Allies (Source: Times of Israel)
A new Iranian satellite has surveillance capabilities that present a serious problem for Israel due to its ability to monitor sensitive sites in the country, snapping high-resolution images of objects on the ground, experts have warned. The Khayyam satellite, built and launched by Russia on behalf of Iran, lofted into orbit on Tuesday from the Russia-controlled Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Hours later Iranian media reported that the first telemetry had been received from the spacecraft.

The Iranian Space Agency has said the satellite will be used for agriculture and water resources planning, and the Russian embassy in Tehran said the spacecraft was devised for non-military purposes, the New York Times reported Tuesday. But Western experts have no doubts that the satellite is intended for spying. “As far as Iran is concerned, this is a real breakthrough — for the first time an Iranian owns and operates a satellite with a high imaging resolution, much better than what they had until now,” said Tal Inbar, a senior research fellow at the non-partisan US-based Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. (8/10)

Elon Musk Is Convinced He's the Future. We Need to Look Beyond Him (Source: Time)
Elon Musk is a singular visionary driving humanity toward a better future—or at least that’s what he and his admirers want us to believe. For the past two decades, supporters and news outlets have praised him for the bold narratives he’s woven around Tesla and SpaceX, and by extension allowed him to evade scrutiny and become the world’s richest man. As his profile has been elevated by relentless media attention, Musk has become the figure everyone was looking for: a powerful man who sold the fantasy that faith in the combined power of technology and the market could change the world without needing a role for the government. (Just don’t talk about the billions in subsidies that kept his companies going over the years.)

But that collective admiration has only served to bolster an unaccountable and increasingly hostile billionaire. The holes in those future visions, and the dangers of applauding billionaire visionaries, have only become harder to ignore. Elon Musk has wielded a virtual monopoly on how we think about the future, but will his visions really deliver better lives for most people in our society? For all the tech industry’s talk of “disruption,” keeping us all trapped in cars for decades into the future by equipping them with batteries or upgraded computers doesn’t feel like much of a revolution.

As Musk sets our collective sights on Mars, a town in south Texas and nearby wildlife reserve are being sacrificed on the altar of his personal ambition. SpaceX recently fired employees who wrote an open letter asking it to distance itself from its increasingly controversial CEO, while astronomers and Indigenous groups have expressed concern about what Starlink is doing to the night sky. Meanwhile, scientists will tell you living on Mars won’t be an easy task. In service of his dreams, Musk is purposefully obscuring those challenges. (8/8)

FCC Cancels Starlink’s $886 Million Grant From Ajit Pai’s Mismanaged Auction (Source: Ars Technica)
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's FCC announced that it rejected the long-form applications from both Starlink and LTD Broadband for Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction grants. Rosenworcel made it clear over a year ago that she believes the auction was mismanaged, announcing in July 2021 that the agency must "clean up issues with the program's design originating from its adoption in 2020." The FCC cited "complaints that the program was poised to fund broadband to parking lots and well-served urban areas."

At the time, Rosenworcel's FCC asked Starlink to voluntarily give up funding in about 6 percent of the 113,900 census blocks where it tentatively won FCC grants. Now SpaceX isn't getting anything out of the auction. We contacted SpaceX and LTD Broadband today and will update this article if we get any response. The auction originally awarded $9.2 billion to 180 broadband providers. Rosenworcel has doled money out on a rolling basis as providers secure final approvals. (8/10)

Huntsville Company’s Solar Sail Propulsion Extending Deep Space Exploration (Source: Huntsville Business Journal)
A CubeSat developed by the Huntsville company NeXolve and NASA will soon take space exploration even further. Known as the Near Earth Asteroid Scout, the small craft was developed under NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems Program at Marshall Space Flight Center and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. CubeSats show immense promise for space-based science and exploration, engineering support and relay communications, and Earth observation. The approximately shoebox-sized spacecraft will be propelled by NeXolve’s 925 square foot solar sail. (8/10)

Yale Project Brings Creative Expression to Space Flight (Source: Yale News)
In the spring course “The Mechanical Artifact: Ultra Space,” Yale students from several disciplines were asked to design and build a flight suit that would help tomorrow’s astronauts express themselves creatively in zero gravity. What they’ve imagined would also provide travelers reminders of home and humanity as they hurtle into the unknown.

Constructed of a mix of found materials and ingeniously engineered components, the suit they created is inspired by their examination of questions connecting architecture, design, and artistry to humankind’s future in space. While not a traditional life-support system, the suit’s mechanisms would allow its wearer to bring lively, colorful performance to an orbiting space station or Martian settlement.

The course and the zero-g experience were part of a collaboration between the Yale School of Architecture; Yale’s Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM), an interdisciplinary arts  hub that activates creative research and practice across disciplines; and the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative, which supports research aimed at democratizing access to space and chartered the parabolic flight. (8/10)

Small Launch Vehicle Industry Growth Slows (Source: Space News)
The growth of the small launch vehicle industry is slowing, with fewer new vehicles entering the market and more vehicles going defunct, as demand for such vehicles lags expectations. Carlos Niederstrasser of Northrop Grumman discussed the latest version of an annual survey of the small launch vehicle industry, focused on vehicles capable of placing up to 1,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit and available commercially.

The survey now includes 166 launch vehicle projects, far higher than the 31 the same survey identified in 2015. However, growth in the number of those vehicles is now slowing. “There is no longer the crazy growth we were seeing back in ’16 or ’17,” he said. “We are definitely seeing significant attrition. That should surprise no one... We’re still far away from seeing the demand that will drive the once-a-week launches that many of these companies are hoping to see in the future.”

“That, of course, is the question for the smallsat community: are small launches really a viable way of having a steady access to space or will things like rideshare continue to dominate?” While those issues may have slowed growth of the industry, it has not stopped it. Niederstrasser said later in the conference session that he had just found out about another vehicle not previously included in the survey, bringing the total to 167. (8/11)

Kayhan Updates Pathfinder Spaceflight Safety Platform (Source: Space News)
Spaceflight safety startup Kayhan Space is broadening its product line to address collision threats for launch vehicles and satellites with or without propulsion. As traffic increases in popular orbits, Kayhan is updating its Pathfinder platform, which provides conjunction assessment and autonomous collision avoidance services. More than a dozen customers have signed up for the subscription-based Pathfinder platform including Capella Space, Lynk Global and Globalstar.

“The reception for Pathfinder has been strong and we are hoping to sign up a lot more operators given the new capabilities,” Araz Feyzi, Kayhan Space co-founder and chief technology officer, told SpaceNews. The latest version of Pathfinder is designed for satellites with various types of thrusters as well as for spacecraft without onboard propulsion. (8/11)

Scientists Detect Newborn Planet That Could be Forming Moons (Source: Space Daily)
For the first time, scientists have discovered what appears to be a brand new planet, 395 light-years from Earth, that could be forming moons. Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, recently detected gas in a circumplanetary disk, the third one ever discovered. Circumplanetary disks are comprised of gas, dust and debris around young planets that eventually form moons and other small, rocky objects. This, the researchers say, suggests the presence of a very young, Jupiter-sized exoplanet, according to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. (8/10)

Helga and Zohar are Ready for Their Flight Around the Moon (Source: Space Daily)
Three mannequins, a beagle and a sheep fly around the Moon in a giant rocket ... extraordinary, isn't it? This special crew is part of NASA's Artemis I mission, scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 29 August 2022. On board are three mannequins, Helga and Zohar, two identical model females from the German Aerospace Center, and NASA's Commander Moonikin Campos. They will test the spacecraft's systems and collect data for future crewed missions. The beagle is none other than Snoopy, who will serve as a microgravity indicator.

They will be accompanied by the 'woolly astronaut' Shaun the sheep. Helga and Zohar have now been successfully integrated into the Orion capsule and are awaiting their launch to the Moon. Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Experiment (MARE) is the largest radiation experiment to leave Earth orbit. It is designed to investigate exactly how radiation levels will affect female astronauts during a full lunar flight and determine what radiation protection measures might be helpful. The #LunaTwins will investigate radiation exposure for future long-term missions. (8/11)

Spaceflight’s Chemically Powered Space Tug Heads for Launch (Source: Space News)
Spaceflight shipped its Sherpa-LTC2 orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) Aug. 10 to the Cape Canaveral Spaceport, where it will make a second attempt to debut the chemically powered space tug on a SpaceX launch. The Seattle-based company’s first Sherpa-LTC, which has more powerful thrusters for dropping satellites off in specific orbits post-launch faster than the other tugs it has deployed, leaked propellant in December after integrating with SpaceX equipment at Cape Canaveral.

That led to SpaceX dropping the OTV from a Falcon 9 rideshare mission in January, forcing Spaceflight to find alternative launches for 10 cubesats set to hitch a ride on it. Benchmark Space Systems provided the non-toxic propulsion subsystems for both OTVs. The upcoming SpaceX launch will be the first time Benchmark’s Halcyon Avant bi-propellant thrusters have flown in space. (8/11)

Subsurface Water on Mars Defy Expectations (Source: Space Daily)
A new analysis of seismic data from NASA's Mars InSight mission has revealed a couple of surprises. The first surprise: the top 300 meters of the subsurface beneath the landing site near the Martian equator contains little or no ice. "We find that Mars' crust is weak and porous. The sediments are not well-cemented. And there's no ice or not much ice filling the pore spaces," said geophysicist Vashan Wright.

"These findings don't preclude that there could be grains of ice or small balls of ice that are not cementing other minerals together," said Wright. "The question is how likely is ice to be present in that form?" The second surprise contradicts a leading idea about what happened to the water on Mars. The red planet may have harbored oceans of water early in its history. Many experts suspected that much of the water became part of the minerals that make up underground cement. (8/11)

Astroport Space Technologies Awarded 2nd NASA for Lunar Construction (Source: Space Daily)
Astroport Space Technologies, Inc. has been awarded its second NASA Phase 1 Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contract for the construction of landing pads on the Moon. Astroport and its research partner, the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), will develop geotechnical engineering processes for "Lunar Surface Site Preparation for Landing/Launch Pad and Blast Shield Construction" with a focus on "regolith works" for bulk regolith excavation and movement. (9/11)

One More Clue to the Moon's Origin (Source: Space Daily)
Humankind has maintained an enduring fascination with the Moon. It was not until Galileo's time, however, that scientists really began study it. Over the course of nearly five centuries, researchers put forward numerous, much debated theories as to how the Moon was formed. Now, geochemists, cosmochemists, and petrologists at ETH Zurich shed new light on the Moon's origin story. The research team reports findings that show that the Moon inherited the indigenous noble gases of helium and neon from Earth's mantle. The discovery adds to the already strong constraints on the currently favored "Giant Impact" theory that hypothesizes the Moon was formed by a massive collision between Earth and another celestial body. (8/11)

SPACECOM Integrating Army, Navy Sensors to Improve Space Monitoring (Source: Breaking Defense)
Space Command is now integrating “non-traditional” sensors, originally built for tracking and targeting ballistic missiles, into its network for keeping tabs on satellites and spacecraft, Gen. Jim Dickinson, SPACECOM commander, said. Those sensors “now provide increased fidelity to the understanding of the space environment,” he said. The command is using “the Army-Navy Transportable Radar Surveillance-2, Sea-Based X-Band Radar, and Aegis radar platforms under our Global Sensor Management umbrella to provide improved domain awareness.” (8/9)

Arctic Warming Four Times Faster Than Rest of Earth (Source: AFP)
The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet over the last 40 years, according to research published Thursday that suggests climate models are underestimating the rate of polar heating. The UN's climate science panel said in 2019 that the Arctic was warming "by more than double the global average" due to a process known as Arctic amplification. A team of researchers based in Norway and Finland analyzed four sets of temperature data gathered by satellite studies since 1979 -- the year when satellite data became available -- over the entire Arctic circle. They found that on average the data showed the Arctic had warmed 0.75C per decade, nearly four times quicker than the rest of the planet. (8/11)

Swiss Mountain Pass set to Lose All Ice Within Weeks (Source: RFI)
The thick layer of ice that has covered a Swiss mountain pass for centuries will have melted away completely within a few weeks, a ski resort said Thursday. Following a dry winter, the summer heatwaves hitting Europe have been catastrophic for the Alpine glaciers, which have been melting at an accelerated rate. The pass between Scex Rouge and Tsanfleuron has been iced over since at least the Roman era. But as both glaciers have retreated, the bare rock of the ridge between the two is beginning to emerge -- and will be completely ice-free before the summer is out. (11/8)

Take a Look at the 'World's Only Carbon-Neutral Spaceship' (Source: CNN)
The space tourism race is now firing on all rockets, but one company is hoping to carve out a niche as "the only carbon-neutral, zero-emission way" to travel to the edge of space. Florida-based Space Perspective plans to take passengers up to 100,000 feet for suborbital adventures in a pressurized capsule suspended from an enormous high-tech version of a hot-air balloon. New images released July 27 show the latest patented capsule design for its Spaceship Neptune craft.

It's a roomier interior than in previous iterations, with a spherical capsule design affording travelers more head height, as well as adding the safety benefit of being optimal for pressure resistance. And we get a better look at the luxury Space Lounge, with its deep reclining seats, mood lighting and well-stocked bar. Reflective coated windows, similar to an astronaut's helmet, are in place to help keep temperatures comfortable, while a new thermal control system is patent-pending.

Space Perspective's co-founders Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum previously designed the air, food and water systems for the Biosphere 2 space base, in which they lived for two years. The company's zero-emissions claims rest on the fact that rather than using high-energy rockets to jet off to space, its craft defies gravity through buoyancy. As helium is in limited supply and needed for critical medical applications, Spaceship Neptune uses hydrogen. (7/27)