August 7, 2022

Musk Says Joe Rogan Weed Puff Meant Random Drug Tests for Him, SpaceX Employees: 'A Lot of Backlash' (Source: FOX)
Elon Musk revealed in an interview released Thursday that his marijuana use on the "The Joe Rogan Experience" created a nightmare for his company. Musk smoked marijuana on an episode of Rogan's show in 2018, saying he was not a regular user himself and asked if it was legal. After taking one puff from a joint, the tech mogul passed it back.

In California, where the podcast was recorded, recreational marijuana use is legal, but SpaceX maintains federal contracts, and the use of marijuana is against federal law. Musk told the "Full Send" podcast this week that the federal government began giving him and other SpaceX employees random drug tests "to prove I'm not a drug addict."... "Because SpaceX has a federal government contract — and it's still illegal federally. So the SpaceX competitors were like 'Hey, why don't you do anything? Look at him brazenly smoking weed on Joe Rogan's podcast.'" (8/6)

ISRO Declares SSLV Maiden Mission as Failure, Satellites in Wrong Orbit (Source: India Today)
While the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) lifted off smoothly from the first launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, the mission did not reach its intended destination on Sunday and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said that the satellites are no longer usable. The Velocity Trimming Module (VTM), which inserts the satellite into their desired orbits, is being cited as the cause of failure as it did not fire in the terminal stage. The VTM was to fire up for 30 seconds but it was barely ignited for one.

The Indian space agency, while declaring that all stages performed well, had initially hinted at data loss and did not straight away declare the mission a success. An unstable orbit means that the satellite’s performance will be affected and there are chances that it could collide with others or in the worst-case scenario, crash back on the planet. This marks the loss of two big satellites, the Earth Observation Satellite (EOS-02) and the AzadiSAT, a CubeSat developed by 750 girl students to mark the 75th year of India's Independence. (8/7)

Launchapalooza: 26 New Boosters Debuting Worldwide (Source: Parabolic Arc)
During the first seven months of the year, five new satellite launch vehicles from Europe, China, Russia and South Korea flew successfully for the first time. As impressive as that is, it was a mere opening act to a busy period that could see at least 20 additional launchers debut around the world. The new launch vehicles range from massive beasts (Starship/Super Heavy, Space Launch System) designed to send astronauts to the moon and Mars to small satellite launchers capable of orbiting payloads weighing 100 kg (220 lb) or less.

Rockets designed to replace boosters that have been the mainstays of the launch industries in the Europe, Japan and the United States will see their maiden flights over the next year. Most of the new launch vehicles are designed to serve the booming small satellite market. Development has been pursued by both private companies, government space agencies and private-public partnerships. Whether there are enough payloads to support all these new boosters remains an open question.

New launchers are being developed in Australia, China, Europe, Japan, Russia, Taiwan and the United States. Launches will be conducted from at least 17 locations around the world. Seven spaceports in Australia, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States will host their first orbital launch attempts. Click here. (8/7)

The Dark Matter Hypothesis Isn't Perfect, But the Alternatives are Worse (Source: Space.com)
You may not be a fan of dark matter, the hypothetical particle that makes up the bulk of the mass in the universe. And it's true that the dark matter hypothesis has its shortcomings — and, of course, we haven't found any dark matter particles yet. But the truth is that the alternatives are much worse. The original idea is called MOND, for "modified Newtonian dynamics," but the name also applies to the general family of theories descended from that original concept.

Under MOND, there's no need for an additional particle to explain the observations — just a slight tweaking of the gravitational force. And because the tweaking of gravity under MOND is explicitly designed to explain the motions of stars within galaxies, it naturally does that very well. The theory also doesn't suffer from the overproduction of satellites and the extremely high galactic cores of dark matter. There is no MOND-like theory that can account for every single observation when it comes to dark matter; all of them fail at least one test. While MOND may still be accurate when it comes to galaxy rotation curves, there are enough observations to tell us that we would still need dark matter to exist in the universe. (8/6)

Entire NASA Astronaut Corps Eligible for Artemis Missions (Source: Space News)
As NASA prepares to select the crew of the second Artemis mission, the agency’s chief astronaut says the entire astronaut corps, and not a previously announced subset, is eligible for that flight and future missions to the moon. At an Aug. 5 briefing at the Johnson Space Center about the upcoming uncrewed Artemis 1 mission, Reid Weisman, the chief of the astronaut office, said he expected the four-person crew who will fly on Artemis 2 to be selected soon.

“The question everyone will ask is when are we assigning a crew to Artemis 2? We hope that will be later this year,” he said. That mission is expected to launch no earlier than 2024. “The way I look at it, any one of our 42 active astronauts is eligible for an Artemis mission,” he said. NASA has not stated if any other international partners, such as Europe or Japan, will fly astronauts on Artemis 2. (8/6)

Canada's Military Seeks Commercial Solutions for Space Situational Awareness (Source: SpaceQ)
Canada's Department of National Defence (DND), through Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), is soliciting opinions on commercial Space Situational Awareness observations. An ever-increasing and constantly-changing orbital environment requires serious investments in tracking satellites and other space objects. A new RFI was released on this issue on July 29 by PSPC, on behalf of the Department of National Defence. (8/5)