September 17, 2022

SpaceX Scrubs Starlink Mission Four Nights in a Row Due to Bad Weather (Source: Florida Today)
The fourth try to launch a SpaceX Starlink mission this week was called off on account of poor weather again on Friday. The company announced its next attempt would be Saturday, September 17, at 8:43 p.m. EDT. Forecasters with the U.S. Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 gave Friday’s opportunity only a 40% chance of acceptable liftoff weather conditions. A frontal boundary that has stalled out across the state is the culprit for the rainy weather that has plagued central Florida all week. (9/16)

Firefly Launch From Vandenberg Space Force Base Delayed for Fourth Time (Source: KEYT)
A Firefly Aerospace launch planned to take off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Monday, Sep. 19 or Tuesday, Sep. 20 has been delayed for a fourth time, Firefly Aerospace announced on Friday. The rocket was supposed to take its inaugural launch from the base on Sep. 2, 2021, but dramatically exploded mid-air and lost the vehicle. Firefly officials said at the time that the rocket experienced an anomaly.

The aerospace company attempted its second rocket launch on Sunday, Sep. 11, 2021, but was scrubbed after multiple delays. It was then rescheduled for Monday, Sep. 12, but was also scrubbed. It was rescheduled to take off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on either Monday, Sep. 19 or Tuesday, Sept. 20, but Firefly officials announced on Friday that the new launch window will be "no earlier than Sep. 29. (9/16)

NASA Pursues Astronaut Lunar Landers for Future Artemis Moon Missions (Source: NASA)
NASA is seeking proposals for sustainable lunar lander development and demonstration as the agency works toward a regular cadence of Moon landings. Through Artemis missions, NASA is preparing to return humans to the Moon, including the first woman and first person of color, for long-term scientific discovery and exploration.

Under the solicitation, Human Landing System Sustaining Lunar Development, NASA has provided requirements for companies interested in developing and demonstrating astronaut Moon landers. These efforts will pave the way for multiple companies to provide recurring Moon landing services beyond the Artemis III mission, which is planned for no earlier than 2025. Companies selected under this contract will be required to perform one uncrewed and one crewed lunar landing demonstration. NASA will certify any lander system to meet its requirements prior to the crewed demonstration mission(s). (9/16)

Mars Rover Offers New Clues About Chance for Ancient Life (Source: TIME)
The Perseverance rover first landed on Mars in February 2021. And this week, as NASA reports, the rover collected new evidence that that bet may have paid off on Mars too. In late July, Perseverance abraded some samples from a formation in Mars’ Jezero crater that astronomers have dubbed Wildcat Ridge—a sedimentary rock about 3 ft. wide that formed more than three billion years ago as the saltwater lake that once filled the crater began to evaporate and fine sand and mud began to settle out.

Studying the samples with an onboard instrument dubbed SHERLOC—​​Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals—Perseverance has now found organic chemistry in the ancient mud, including the presence of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen; further analysis may also turn up nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. All of these ingredients are present in biologically rich environments on Earth.

“In the distant past, the sand, mud, and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., in a statement. “The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock—known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth—is important.” (9/16)

Lynk May Beat Starlink and Apple to the Punch as FCC Approves its Space-Based Texting (Source: Tech Crunch)
SpaceX and T-Mobile may have hogged the headlines with their flashy pre-announcement about Starlink connectivity last month, and Apple last week, but Lynk has been putting in the work and may very well steal their lunch with a satellite-to-phone connection that already works — with any device out there. In fact, they just got FCC approval for it, meaning it’s just a matter of selecting a mobile network partner to bring it to market here in the States.

Lynk demonstrated a direct satellite-to-phone (and back) emergency connectivity service late last year with its test orbital cell tower. Far from an orbital broadband connection or a legacy satellite band that has you pointing your phone at an invisible dot in the sky, Lynk would provide intermittent (think every half hour or so) two-way SMS service via ordinary cellular bands that just happen to reach orbit. It’s intended for emergencies, check-ins from the back country and spreading information in places where networks are down, such as disaster zones. (9/16)

Bezos's Rocket Engine Nears Debut, Ending US Reliance on Russia (Source: Bloomberg)
An engine made by Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin LLC appears on track to show it can power heavy payloads to space for the Pentagon after several years of delay, bringing the US closer to ending its politically fraught dependence on a Russian-made model. Blue Origin predicted in 2014 that its BE-4 engine would be ready by 2017 to launch the new Vulcan rocket built by ULA, a joint venture of top Pentagon contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

But the Government Accountability Office as recently as June cited “continued technical challenges in developing a US-produced rocket engine.” Now, the US Space Force is expressing optimism, saying in a statement that “Vulcan launch system development activities continue to make progress” toward a first test launch by December because “ULA and Blue Origin have completed originally planned BE-4 development testing, and have successfully demonstrated full engine performance.”

ULA used the dependable Russian-made RD-180 engine to launch its Atlas V heavy rocket on about 80 successful civil, commercial and national security launches since 2000, according to the Congressional Research Service. But Congress demanded a replacement for the Russian engines after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. For Bezos, the Space Force’s positive view on his company’s progress provides some good news after closely held Blue Origin was forced to abort a launch Sept. 12 of its suborbital New Shepard rocket. (9/16)

Meet the Mystery Diamond From Outer Space (Source: CNN)
Scientists have debated its existence. Tiny traces provided clues. Now, researchers have confirmed the existence of a celestial diamond after finding it on Earth’s surface. The stone, called lonsdaleite, has a hardness and strength that exceeds that of a regular diamond. The rare mineral arrived here by way of a meteorite, new research has suggested. What’s more, the natural chemical process through which scientists believe lonsdaleite formed could inspire a way to manufacture super-durable industrial components.

The revelation started to unfold when geologist Andy Tomkins, a professor at Monash University in Australia, was out in the field categorizing meteorites. He came across a strange “bended” kind of diamond in a space rock in Northwest Africa, said study coauthor Alan Salek, a doctoral student and researcher at RMIT University in Australia. Tomkins theorized the meteorite that held the lonsdaleite came from the mantle of a dwarf planet that existed about 4.5 billion years, Salek said. “The dwarf planet was then catastrophically struck by an asteroid, releasing pressure and leading to the formation of these really strange diamonds,” he added. (9/16)

China's Lunar Probe Discovers High Water Content in Moon Materials (Source: Xinhua)
The analysis of moon samples brought back to Earth by China's Chang'e-5 probe suggests that minerals on the lunar surface have a high content of solar-wind-derived water. Researchers from the Institute of Geochemistry under the Chinese Academy of Sciences found a large amount of water in the returned lunar soil samples, with an estimated content of at least 170 parts per million, equivalent to 170 grams of water per tonne of lunar soil. (9/16)

China’s Suborbital Space Plane Project Gets Major Funding Boost (Source: South China Morning Post)
China’s biggest funder of scientific research said it would support the development of civilian hypersonic flight technology that can carry passengers anywhere on Earth – or to near space – within an hour. The National Natural Science Foundation of China approved on Sep. 7 an unspecified amount of funding for a suborbital transport project to develop the hypersonic transport system. The system will feature winged aircraft that take off and land on a runway just like an ordinary plane, but with the ability to cruise faster than five times the speed of sound at high altitude, according to the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), one of the project’s lead contractors. (9/16)

Polaris Dawn Crews Train in Bozeman MT (Source: NBC)
Over the course of the upcoming weekend there's a good chance you’ll hear fighter jets taking off in Bozeman. The Polaris Dawn crews are using the Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport to train until Sep. 18. The goal is to prepare for their mission that will take them to space for five days, later in 2022. They’re bringing in around 14 fighter jets to the airport and the crew is made up of four people. Their mission later in the year, will help push space exploration ahead. (9/16)

Is Intuitive Machines the Last Space SPAC? (Source: Quartz)
If US plans for renewed exploration on the Moon have you excited, you’ll soon be able to make a financial bet on the endeavor: Intuitive Machines, which NASA hired to bring cargo to the lunar surface, is going public and expects to trade as LUNR on the NASDAQ stock market. Intuitive is merging with a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, called Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. The deal is valued at $1 billion, and should leave the company with $350 million of cash on its balance sheet.

Intuitive was founded in 2013 by longtime NASA contractor Kam Ghaffarian and former NASA executives Steve Altemus and Tim Crain to provide components and services for spacecraft development. When the US space agency decided to hire businesses to do robotic reconnaissance missions on the Moon ahead of the next generation of arriving astronauts, Intuitive Machines won contracts to deliver science payloads and develop a “hopper-lander” that could bring them into deep craters. (9/16)

Russia Says Private Satellites Could Become 'Legitimate Target' During Wartime (Source: Space.com)
Russia continues its trend of making provocative statements about the international order in space. As the United States continues to leverage more commercial satellites for intelligence and communications work, Russia has issued a warning that these may become a "legitimate target" for wartime operations.

The remarks were made by Konstantin Vorontsov, a member of the Russian Foreign Ministry and head of Russia's delegation to the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs. In a statement(opens in new tab) delivered Monday (Sep. 12), Vorontsov stated that the Russian delegation "would like to underline an extremely dangerous trend that goes beyond the harmless use of outer space technologies and has become apparent during the events in Ukraine."

Vorontsov said that the uses of commercial and civilian satellite assets by the United States and its allies throughout the ongoing invasion of Ukraine "constitute indirect involvement in military conflicts" whether they realize it or not and that so-called "quasi-civilian infrastructure may become a legitimate target for retaliation." (9/16)

New Tri-Agency Office to Coordinate U.S. Missile-Defense Space Programs (Source: Space News)
The Space Systems Command, the Space Development Agency and the Missile Defense Agency have formed a new program office to coordinate disparate procurements of satellites to detect ballistic and hypersonic missiles. The Space Systems Command (SSC), the procurement arm of the U.S. Space Force, announced the realignment Sep. 15. The combined program office “establishes a formal partnership among missile warning, missile tracking and and missile defense  acquisition organizations for greater delivery of integrated and resilient sensor-to-shooter capabilities,” said Col. Brian Denaro. (9/16)

Mars Rover Offers New Clues About Chance for Ancient Life (Source: TIME)
The Perseverance rover first landed on Mars in February 2021. And this week, as NASA reports, the rover collected new evidence that that bet may have paid off on Mars too. In late July, Perseverance abraded some samples from a formation in Mars’ Jezero crater that astronomers have dubbed Wildcat Ridge—a sedimentary rock about 3 ft. wide that formed more than three billion years ago as the saltwater lake that once filled the crater began to evaporate and fine sand and mud began to settle out.

Studying the samples with an onboard instrument dubbed SHERLOC—​​Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals—Perseverance has now found organic chemistry in the ancient mud, including the presence of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen; further analysis may also turn up nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. All of these ingredients are present in biologically rich environments on Earth.

“In the distant past, the sand, mud, and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., in a statement. “The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock—known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth—is important.” (9/16)

Museum Premiers Documentary Film About MLP-2 (Source: ASM)
The American Space Museum and a well-known documentary team will have the “world premier” of the incredible story about NASA’s Mobile Launch Platform 2, “The Base to Space,” on Sunday, Sep. 25, from 2-4 pm at Hyatt Place Hotel in Titusville. The “launch” of the film that chronicles the historic missions behind MLP-2 will be attended by astronaut Bruce Melnick, who blasted off from the base to space on two Space Shuttle missions. 
 
“The Base to Space” is the 5th documentary from the film making team of producer Mike Cotton and director Dave Barnes, surpassing 100 film projects by them during the past 15 years. Tony Pasko provides original music for this historical look at an important piece of NASA’s hardware to launch humans to space. Click here. (9/16)

National Space Club "Destination Space" Program to Bring Students to Space Center in November and December (Source: NSCFL)
Destination Space in 2021 was huge success with more than 5,500 Brevard Public Schools sixth graders and their science teachers participating in the program. The National Space Club Florida Committee (NSCFL) initiated this program and coordinated contributions of over $440,000 toward the program’s overall cost since its inception.

Destination Space 2022 will return to in-person trips to Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Students will participate in a two-week curriculum, with 7 days of lessons prior to the KSC trip, and 2 days after the trip. The students learn about living and working in space with a focus on going to Mars. The program will be conducted throughout November and December. (9/16)

Communications Restored with CAPSTONE in Latest Update (Source: Space Daily)
The CAPSTONE team has received some relatively good news on the recovery progress for the spacecraft. The communications situation has dramatically improved, the power state of the spacecraft appears to be sufficient for continuous (duty cycled) heating of the propulsion system which dropped below its operational temperature.

Over the past few days, CAPSTONE's power - though limited by the orientation of the spacecraft in its spin relative to the Sun - appears to be sufficient for heating of the propulsion system. When the spacecraft propulsion system temps are at +5C for 12+ hours the system will be further evaluated for use in the recovery operation.

Information on the cause of the anomaly has been obtained and is being evaluated, and recovery plans that mitigate risk of further anomalous behavior are being developed. We do not have a timeline for a recovery attempt, but the team is working hard to make progress guided by what we are learning from the data with an explicit goal to minimize further risk to the mission. (9/16)

Space Seeds Thrive at the United Nations Campus (Source: Space Daily)
What is biodiversity? How do flowers affect us and the environment? And how are they related to spaceflight? For primary school children to be able to investigate these exciting questions, the German Space Agency at DLR sent two kilograms of wildflower seeds to the International Space Station ISS aboard a Falcon 9 rocket (SpaceX CRS-23) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 29 August 2021.

These 'space seeds' were on the International Space Station (ISS) together with German European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer during his Cosmic Kiss mission. They landed safely back on Earth on 24 January 2022. On 7 September 2022, the astronaut and a primary school class planted a small portion of these seeds on the UN Campus in Bonn in cooperation with UN-SPIDER. (9/16)

The Potential of Biomaterials for Human Space Exploration (Source: Newsweek)
Long-term space travel is becoming increasingly likely as global organizations plan missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Yet it's no secret that venturing beyond Earth's atmosphere wreaks havoc on the human body. To achieve these ambitious goals and take us one step closer to establishing a revolutionary spacefaring economy, our latest crop of explorers will need all the help they can get. The key to their survival may lie in cutting-edge biomaterials.

What are biomaterials? Biomaterials are objects, substances or surfaces interacting with a biological system. This term has many applications in medicine, where biomaterials are used to enhance, replace and repair limbs and bodily functions. These materials can be either natural or synthetic in origin. Many prosthetic legs, for instance, are composed primarily of aluminum or titanium.

Today, the average person interacts with biomaterials so often—through such ubiquitous devices as contact lenses, dental implants and hip replacements—that they can seem unremarkable. But biomaterial advancements for space exploration inspire a renewed fascination with the field. Challenges presented by other obstacles such as kidney stones, cosmic radiation poisoning and weight loss further complicate plans to establish an outpost on the Moon or Mars. Experts anticipate biomaterials alleviating some of these effects on travelers and streamlining surgeries that currently require highly-skilled medical professionals. (9/16)