August 20, 2022

NASA Readies Europa Probe at JPL (Source: Time)
Weighing in at 6,000 kg and measuring 3 m tall and 1.5 m across, the Europa Clipper will be launched aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket on a six-year, 2.8 billion km looping trajectory to reach what might be the most promising place in our solar system for extraterrestrial life: Jupiter’s bright white moon Europa. Measuring 90% the diameter of our moon, Europa is covered by a shell of water ice 15 to 25 km thick, capping a warm, globe-girdling ocean up to 150 km deep. That single Europan ocean holds twice as much water as all of the Earth’s oceans combined—and Europa Clipper is built to learn more about it.

The spacecraft will not land on Europa, but is designed to make at least 50 close-up flybys of the moon, using a suite of instruments to take its chemical and geological measure. Among the on-board hardware are a plasma sensor to take magnetic soundings of the surface and subsurface; a wide-angle, high-resolution camera; a thermal emission system ; and an ultraviolet spectrograph. (8/19)

Is Aerospace Recovery at Risk From a Broken Supply Chain? (Source: Flight Global)
Over the summer, a succession of big aerospace firms have identified issues with supply as a serious risk. Aerospace producers are struggling to keep up. The major theme of July’s Farnborough air show was sustainability. How to cut aviation’s carbon output will top the agenda at aerospace companies for years to come. However, in the immediate term, another “s” word is obsessing those charged with managing what ought to be an impressive recovery from the pandemic: supply. The wider industry’s inability to cope with staff and raw material shortages and logistical snarl-ups is arguably its biggest challenge in 2022. (8/19)

SpaceX Launches Starlink; Maybe One More Before NASA's Artemis I (Source: Florida Today)
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket shot off its Florida pad with yet another batch of Starlink internet satellites Friday afternoon, setting the stage for what could be just one more launch before NASA's big show late this month. The 3:21 p.m. liftoff from Launch Complex 40 marked the 57th Starlink mission for the SpaceX constellation of internet satellites operating in low-Earth orbit. The company confirmed successful separation of the 53 spacecraft about 15 minutes after liftoff.

In between, the rocket's 162-foot first stage successfully landed on the "Shortfall of Gravitas" drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, completing its ninth flight so far. Overall, the Space Coast has hosted 36 launches in 2022; of those, exactly half have been dedicated Starlink missions. If everything goes according to plan, SpaceX could fly one more time before a massive NASA moon rocket named the Space Launch System blasts off from Kennedy Space Center toward the end of this month. As it stands, the company is eyeing the night of Saturday, Aug. 27, for another Starlink batch. (8/19)

Partnership Between Amazon, United Launch Alliance Brings Jobs to Decatur (Source: WAFF)
A new partnership between Amazon and United Launch Alliance that was announced in April will bring 250 jobs to Decatur. The partnership is for 38 launches of the Vulcan rocket as part of Project Kuiper. The goal of the project is to make high-speed, low-latency broadband more affordable and accessible around the world. (8/19)

Paso Library to Host Program for Future Spaceport Plan (Source: Paso Robles Press)
On Sep. 1, from 6 to 7 p.m. the Paso Robles City Library will host a joint presentation by Henry Danielson, CISSO Technology Advisor at Cal Poly’s Cybersecurity Institute (CCI), and Paul Sloan, Economic Development Manager for the City of Paso Robles, on CubeSats and the plan for a spaceport in Paso Robles. Danielson will focus on CubeSats and the role of the PolySat lab in their production and use. Sloan will focus on the city’s progress on applying to become a spaceport and what it means for the future of the airport and the City of Paso Robles. (8/19)

Dragon Departs Station to Return Scientific Cargo to Earth Off Florida Coast (Source: NASA)
At 11:00 a.m. EDT, flight controllers on the ground sent commands to release the uncrewed SpaceX Dragon spacecraft from the forward port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module. The Dragon spacecraft successfully departed the space station one month after arriving at the orbiting laboratory to deliver about 4,000 pounds of scientific investigations and supplies. Tomorrow, ground controllers at SpaceX will command a deorbit burn. After re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, the spacecraft will make a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of Florida. (8/19)

Aerospace Games Hosted Again on California Beach (Source: WIRED)
Watermelon eating, tug-of-war, human pyramid, and dodgeball. These are just a few competitions that are part of the annual Aerospace Games in Los Angeles, where employees and interns from SpaceX, Virgin Orbit, Blue Origin, Boeing, and NASA—among many others—compete for trophies and glory. Hundreds of aerospace and Department of Defense workers are bused in, donning colorful T-shirts with their respective employers' names plastered on the front.

Walking alongside the tents, Ernest Yeung, a 42-year-old flight software engineer at Terran Orbital and a balloon toss competitor, reminisces: “Look at all of these companies that I applied to that rejected me!” Obtaining his master's in theoretical physics in 2014, Yeung had pivoted his career from academia after being inspired by Richard Branson and Elon Musk. He taught himself programming while driving an Uber for a year, handing out résumés at the SpaceX campus. Two years of applications later, he received his first yes from Virgin Galactic. Pride still remains for his previous employer, though he’s switched jobs and no longer competes in the relay races. (8/20)

NASA Selects Potential Lunar Landing Sites for Artemis 3 (Source: Space News)
NASA has selected 13 regions around the south pole of the moon that it is considering for the first crewed landing of the Artemis program later this decade. The 13 locations include multiple sites that could host landings by SpaceX’s Starship vehicle serving as the lunar lander for the Artemis 3 mission that will carry the first NASA astronauts to the surface of the moon since Apollo 17 a half-century ago.

NASA and SpaceX officials working on Artemis “have worked very closely with our agency’s scientists and technologists to identify these 13 regions,” said Mark Kirasich, deputy associate administrator for the Artemis Campaign Development Division at NASA. All the regions are of interest to scientists, he said, “as well as meet the Artemis mission planning constraints, which can be challenging.” The 13 locations, each about 15 by 15 kilometers, are located within six degrees of latitude of the south pole. (8/19)

Intelsat Working to Regain Control of Galaxy 15 Satellite After Solar Storm (Source: Space News)
Intelsat said Aug. 19 it has lost control of its Galaxy 15 satellite after it was likely hit by a geomagnetic storm. High space weather activity likely knocked out onboard electronics needed to communicate with the satellite, Intelsat said, and keep it locked in its geostationary orbit slot at 133 degrees West. “The satellite is otherwise operating nominally, keeping earth pointing with all payload operations nominal,” Intelsat spokesperson Melissa Longo said. (8/19)

Big Plans for Mini-Launchers (Source: Space News)
Most of the enthusiasm about small launch vehicles has focused on the very smallest ones, those capable of placing a few hundred, and in some cases just a few dozen, kilograms into low Earth orbit. Some of them have been quite successful, like Rocket Lab’s Electron, which has launched five times in the first seven months of the year. Others, less so: Astra’s Rocket 3 has failed in five of its seven orbital launch attempts, including its most recent launch in June with two NASA Earth science cubesats on board.

In the next few months, though, the industry’s attention will shift to a larger class of rockets, sometimes called ”mini-launchers,” capable of placing about a metric ton into orbit. Firefly Aerospace is gearing up for its second Alpha launch a year after its inaugural flight failed, but with more changes at the company than on the rocket. Two other companies, ABL Space Systems and Relativity Space, are preparing for their first launches. Click here. (8/19)

China Launches Latest Group of Yaogan 35 Spy Satellites (Source: Space.com)
China launched three classified remote sensing satellites on Friday (Aug. 19), which are joining three earlier sets of Yaogan 35 series reconnaissance satellites in orbit. A Long March 2D rocket lifted off on Aug. 19 from Xichang Satellite Launch Center carrying the three satellites designated as the Yaogan 35 (04 group). The trio are likely to join the three sets of Yaogan 35 satellite triplets sent into orbit by three similar launches in November 2021 and June and July of this year. The first nine satellites are now orbiting at roughly 310 miles above Earth, with an inclination of 35 degrees in order to provide regular, repeated passes over areas of interest. (8/20)

NASA Has Artemis Defense Against Lightning, Tropical Threats (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
As NASA inches closer to a future return to the moon, its first leap toward its moonshot goal — Artemis I — is planned to launch during the peak of hurricane season and could face a gale of problems. NASA is targeting three potential launch days from Aug. 29-Sept 5. from Kennedy Space Center. Those dates also happen to be within the first half of what meteorologists refer to as the peak of hurricane season, which typically sees more Atlantic tropical storm production from mid-August to mid-October.

Statistically, the day with highest frequency of hurricane activity is Sep. 10 but the days leading up to it, from Aug. 15 onward, are when some of the most powerful hurricanes have been traditionally observed: hurricanes Andrew, Frances, Ivan and Katrina. That poses a potential problem for NASA’s launch pads and its 322-foot-tall Artemis I rocket stack. If a tropical storm or hurricane does emerge from the Florida’s Gulf or east coast, NASA will refer to a series of protocols, which are intentionally conservative to minimize risk due to weather.

Weather criteria preventing the launch can include a wide variety of potential dangers. One of the more obvious being lightning, which would delay a launch for 30 minutes if lightning is observed within 10 nautical miles of the flight path. A lightning threat even delayed the rollout this past week, but just for an hour. (8/20)