September 2, 2022

Talking Lasers at Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command in Alabama (Source: FNN)
The challenge is, how can we generate enough energy and a tight beam to affect the target. It’s not just the part of the system that’s generating the laser, it’s also the beam control and the beam director to get you on the target. Those are the three things that we’re trying to get after. And trying to get those in a form factor, with size, weight and power that's practical for the soldier to use. Platforms can be smaller, power requirements are smaller. And that way, you’ve more options to employ these weapons, either airborne seaborne or underground [and in space when used for communications or data transmission]. (9/1)

NASA Awards Contract to Demonstrate Trash Compacting System for ISS (Source: Space Daily)
NASA has awarded a contract to Sierra Nevada Corporation of Madison, Wisconsin, to develop and demonstrate a microgravity-compactible Trash Compaction and Processing System (TCPS) Phase B, for the ISS. This contract provides firm-fixed-price core requirements and indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity, firm-fixed-price task orders, along with additional option periods. If all options are exercised, the total potential contract value is $13,775,324. The period of performance is from Sep. 1, 2022, through Aug. 31, 2027, and it includes four option periods. (8/28)

Biden Formalizes Pay Raise for NASA, FAA, Other Civilian Federal Workers (Source: Government Executive)
President Biden on Wednesday formalized his plan to provide civilian federal workers with an average 4.6% 2023 pay increase in a letter to congressional leaders. In March, Biden first announced his pay raise plan as part of his fiscal 2023 budget proposal, recommending the largest pay increase for civilian federal employees in two decades and nearly double the 2.7% average pay increase employees saw in 2022. Wednesday’s announcement confirms that, if implemented, federal employees would see an across-the-board boost in basic pay of 4.1%, and an average 0.5% increase in locality pay. (8/31)

Air Force and Space Force Have New Diversity Targets for Their Officer Corps (Source: Yahoo!)
The Department of the Air Force has set new demographic goals in hopes of getting more diverse applicants for its officer corps, which has historically leaned towards white males. It marks the first time in nearly a decade that the Department of the Air Force has updated its demographic targets for officer applicants. An Aug. 9 memo outlining the goals, released publicly on Tuesday, said it was "imperative that the composition of our military services better reflect our nation's highly talented, diverse, and eligible population."

In the memo, the new demographic targets aim to have officer applicants through the Air Force Academy, ROTC, Officer Training School and the Space Force's direct commissioning program be 67.5% white, 13% Black, 10% Asian, 7% multi-racial, 1.5% American Indian and 1% Native Hawaiin and Pacific Islander. The services are also aiming to have 15% of all applicants be hispanic – many demographic surveys separate hispanic origin because respondents can be different races or from different countries but still identify as being of hispanic origin – as well as 36% of all applicants be female. (8/31)

FCC Has Approved $6 Billion in Broadband Grants Despite Rejecting Starlink (Source: Ars Technica)
Several US government agencies are having a busy week distributing broadband deployment funding to ISPs and state governments. Today, the FCC announced $791.6 million for six broadband providers, covering network expansions to over 350,000 homes and businesses in 19 states. The ISPs will receive the money over 10 years. "This round of funding supports projects using a range of network technologies, including gigabit service hybrid fiber/fixed wireless deployments that will provide end-user locations with either fiber or fixed wireless network service using licensed spectrum," the FCC said. (8/31)

Chinese Astronauts Perform Space Station Spacewalk (Source: Xinhua)
Two Chinese astronauts performed a spacewalk outside China's space station Thursday. Chen Dong and Liu Yang spent about six hours outside the station, working on the exterior of the new Wentian lab module and testing a robotic arm. The spacewalk was the first to use the airlock in Wentian, which was added to the station in July. (9/2)

UK Military Space Strategy Released (Source: Space News)
The United Kingdom released a comprehensive military space strategy Thursday. The 91-page "UK Space Power" document lays out the role of the U.K. military in protecting space from foreign threats and provides "a basis for understanding the utility of the space domain in the military context," the paper says. Space power, it concluded, "can contribute to deterrence but must form part of a wider, whole-of-government strategy." The document also emphasized the importance of the U.K.'s close relationship with the United States in space. (9/2)

Space Force Developing Satcom Gateway in Alaska (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Space Force has started building a gateway site in Alaska to support polar communications satellite payloads. The Clear Space Force Station site will serve the Enhanced Polar Systems-Recapitalization (EPS-R) payloads on Space Norway's Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission, a pair of satellites launching next year. The EPS-R payloads will provide secure communications services for U.S. forces operating in the north polar region. (9/2)

Luxembourg's OQ Raises $13 Million for IoT (Source: Space News)
Luxembourg startup OQ Technology has raised about $13 million to continue work on an internet-of-things constellation. The company said Thursday the Series A round was co-led by Saudi oil and gas company Aramco's venture capital arm and a fund managed by Greek early-stage investor 5G Ventures. The proceeds would fund future satellites and help the company expand internationally, particularly across Luxembourg, Saudi Arabia and Greece. OQ Technology has two prototype satellites in orbit and plans to launch its first operational satellite late this year. (9/2)

Scout Space and Privateer Partner on SSA (Source: Space News)
Space-tracking startups Scout Space and Privateer announced Thursday they will partner on space situational awareness services. Details of the partnership are still being refined by the two companies but will involve combining data from Scout Space with Privateer's data analysis and visualization tools. Scout Space is planning its own series of satellites for collecting SSA data, with the first launching in late 2023. (9/2)

Spire Picks ThrustMe for Lemur Propulsion (Sources: Space News, Spire)
Spire Global is working with French company ThrustMe to provide propulsion for its Lemur cubesats. ThrustMe is producing seven I2T5 iodine cold gas propulsion systems for Spire 3U cubesats scheduled to launch later this year on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission. Spire says it's taking advantage of advances in cubesat propulsion technologies to incorporate such thrusters in its satellites to improve performance and space safety. ThrustMe has delivered more than 20 thruster systems to customers and is building a new factory to increase production. Spire separately announced Thursday it hired Boyd Johnson, an expert in corporate compliance, as its new chief legal officer. (9/2)

Blue Origin Texas Suborbital Research Launch On Hold for Weather (Source: Blue Origin)
A Blue Origin New Shepard launch remains on hold because of the weather. The company scrubbed a launch attempt Thursday for the second straight day because of weather. The company announced Thursday night it would not attempt a launch Friday, again because of weather. The company has not set a new launch date for the NS-23 suborbital mission, which is carrying dozens of payloads but no people. (9/2)

Bridenstine Joins Phase Four Board (Source: CNBC)
Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is joining the board of space propulsion company Phase Four. Bridenstine said he believes the company's electric thruster technology will be "an absolute game changer" for smallsat constellations. Beau Jarvis, CEO of Phase Four, said his relationship with Bridenstine goes back to when Jarvis was at Planet and Bridenstine was a congressman trying to help startups work with government agencies. Bridenstine, a senior adviser to private equity group Acorn Growth, is also on the boards of The Aerospace Corporation and Viasat. (9/2)

Japan Aims for March Debut of H3 Rocket (Source: NHK)
The Japanese space agency JAXA expects the first H3 launch to take place by the end of March. JAXA officials said at a briefing Thursday that they believe they have resolved a problem with vibrations in the turbopumps of the first-stage engine of the new vehicle, and will confirm that with tests scheduled to begin later this month. The agency says that if all goes well, the first H3 could lift off before the end of the current Japanese fiscal year March 31. (9/2)

JWST Observes Exoplanet (Source: Nature)
The James Webb Space Telescope has taken its first picture of an exoplanet. Astronomers used the infrared space telescope to directly observe HIP 65426 b, an exoplanet about the size of Jupiter 350 light-years away. Observing in the infrared makes it easier to see exoplanets that would otherwise be lost in the glare from the stars they orbit, and this observation, astronomers said, confirms the potential of JWST to study exoplanets. (9/2)

To Save the Deep Ocean, We Should Mine the Moon (Source: Nautilus)
The greatest source of rare-earth metals are to be found at the bottom of the sea—and so are Earth’s most fragile ecosystems, an undisturbed and largely unexplored world of marvels. The metals are required for the batteries that could power the clean energy revolution so desperately needed to avert the worst consequences of fossil fuel pollution-induced climate change, not to mention meet consumer demand for electronics. Yet mining them will have devastating consequences.

In an ideal world, mining would proceed slowly, with great caution, attentive to the creatures sacrificed for our appetites and to as-yet-unstudied consequences for Earth’s biogeochemical cycles. But the world is not ideal, and plans for deep-sea mining have proceeded at breakneck pace, with nearly 600,000 square miles of exploration permits granted by the International Seabed Authority and commercial mining expected to begin within the next several years.

We have a responsibility to life on the planet and to the diversity of the planet. Humanity’s demand for metals—and the profits that will accrue from mining them—is on a collision course with deep-sea life. It appears that devastation is imminent—unless, argues Lewis Pinault, we mine the moon instead. “We have this gift of our geological twin, the moon, to provide us with mineral and energy wealth,” says Pinault. The trick is figuring out how. (8/31)

Space Industry Hiring Dip? (Source: Space News)
Space Talent, a Space Capital affiliate with free job listings, is tracking fewer jobs at the intersection of space and technology. (Jobs listings include Garmin, for example, the GPS technology specialist.) After tracking roughly 45,000 jobs at the beginning of the year, Space Talent's job board was down to 25,000 in mid-July. Space Talent founder Justus Kilian attributes the reduction to companies trimming growth in response to a slowdown in investment. For space companies still hiring, the tech sector layoffs present opportunities. (9/2)

Atlas Space Ops Raises $26 Million (Source: Space News)
Atlas Space Operations raised $26 million in Series B funding. Mitsui & Co. Ltd. led the round. The investment will accelerate Atlas' plan for international expansion of its business of providing what the company calls Ground Software as a Service. Mitsui & Co. is expanding its space portfolio. The Japanese trading company acquired Spaceflight Inc. in 2020 and a minority stake in BlackSky in 2018. (9/2)

Failure to Launch: How a Georgia County Spent Seven Years and Millions of Dollars to Join the Space Race (Source: NBC)
In 2015, officials in Camden County pitched a bold idea to their 54,000 residents: a commercial spaceport to be built along one of the most pristine stretches of the Georgia coast. It was to be the kind of project that would catapult the area’s quiet and unassuming towns into a projected trillion-dollar industry and a chance for this southeastern corner of the state to join a new kind of space race.

Seven years later, with nearly $12 million of taxpayer money swallowed up by the initiative — a gargantuan sum for a county that last year operated on a roughly $57 million annual budget — Camden County finally has a license from the Federal Aviation Administration, but not a single part of the spaceport has been built. Many residents have since soured on the idea of southeastern Georgia as the country’s next big space hub, and today, the project remains mired in more controversies than there are bends in the St. Marys River. Click here. (9/2)

NASA's Moment of Truth (Source: Quartz)
The extremely difficult choice faced by NASA right now is in part the consequence of how the space agency manages its development programs. This test flight has to succeed because NASA just doesn’t have extra SLS rockets or spacecraft kicking around, and because this rocket can only be loaded and fueled so many times; NASA planned to reserve 13 for this launch.

That’s one reason why the space agency chose to head for the launch pad instead of completing a full dress rehearsal. But as former NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver pointed out, “the consequence of two years before another test flight and four years before astronauts could launch, all while other systems progress, make this more than a ‘test flight’ in the usual sense.” (8/31)

SPACECOM Deputy Says ‘Maneuver and Logistics’ Key to Future Operations (Source: Breaking Defense)
The capability to rapidly maneuver satellites — and the space-based infrastructure, such as orbiting re-fueling stations, necessary to support that capability — is among Space Command’s top priorities for technological innovation, according to Lt. Gen. John Shaw, deputy commander. “We see it as a holistic endeavor, and we’re calling it ‘space maneuver and logistics,'” he told the DARPA Forward forum. (8/31)

Space Force Partners with Norway to Launch Arctic Comms Satellites (Source: National Defense)
To extend the service life of the U.S. military’s current Arctic communications system, the Space Force will deploy a pair of communications payloads on Norwegian satellites in early 2023. The Arctic region is notoriously difficult for communications systems. “Communications satellites operating in geostationary Earth orbit do not cover the area of the Arctic,” according to the European Space Agency. “Even when a link can be made, it can be prone to interruption from icing on antennas, or from disruption caused by heavy seas.” (8/31)

United Launch Alliance Set to Build 38 Rockets for Amazon (Source: Rocket City Now)
United Launch Alliance out of Decatur, Alabama and household name and E-commerce giant, Amazon have partnered up. Amazon has selected ULA's next-generation Vulcan rocket for 38 launches supporting deployment for its ambitious Project Kuiper, Amazon’s initiative to increase global broadband access through a constellation of 3,236 advanced satellites in low Earth orbit.

"You know, we benefit from Huntsville and Marshall Space Flight Center and everything that's space-related in Huntsville... but we also have a piece of it here in Decatur, as well," said President and CEO of Morgan County Economic Development Association, Jeremy Nails. (8/31)

Chinese Scientist Advocates Cooperation in Space Science (Source: Xinhua)
A thousand people may have a thousand answers as to why we explore space. For 64-year-old Chinese scientist Wu Ji, exploring space has a more self-reflective meaning. "When one enters space, one will realize that human beings are an indivisible whole. Regardless of skin color, they have far more in common than they have differences," said Wu, chairman of the Chinese Society of Space Research.

It is under this belief that for more than two decades, Wu has been persisting in one thing -- promoting international cooperation in the field of space science. (9/1)

Faulty Sensor May Have Scrubbed the First SLS Launch Attempt (Source: Ars Technica)
NASA flight controllers halted the first launch attempt after they were unable to verify that one of the SLS rocket's four main engines—engine no. 3—had been properly cooled to a temperature of -420° Fahrenheit prior to ignition. The engines must be chilled to very cold temperatures to handle the injection of very cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen propellants.

During a news conference on Tuesday evening, NASA's program manager for the SLS rocket, John Honeycutt, said his engineering team believed the engine had actually cooled down from ambient temperature to near the required level but that it was not properly measured by a faulty temperature sensor. (9/1)

Astronomer Thinks Alien Tech Could Be on the Ocean Floor (Source: NPR)
Eight years ago, a meteor believed to have been 2 feet long entered Earth's atmosphere at more than 100,000 miles an hour before exploding into tiny, hot fragments and falling into the South Pacific Ocean. Some scientists believe it came from another star system, which would make it the first known interstellar object of its size to impact Earth.

Now, professor Avi Loeb, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is planning an expedition to retrieve fragments of the meteor from the ocean floor. By analyzing the debris, he is hoping to determine the object's origins — even going so far as to make the extraordinary suggestion that it could be a technological object created by aliens. (8/31)

Years of Tensions at Mauna Kea May End with Peaceful Negotiations (Source: Sky & Telescope)
The University of Hawaii has overseen the construction of 13 telescopes on the peak of Mauna Kea over the past 50 years — each one larger and more groundbreaking than the last. But with the passage of a law inspired by Native Hawaiian protests, the volcanic summit will soon transition to new management: an 11-member board that includes a broad spectrum of voices. With the observatories’ leases up for renewal in 2033 and the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope still in limbo, the re-organization could change the face of astronomy at the summit. 

Since the 1960s, Mauna Kea has come to symbolize a touchpoint between groundbreaking science and cultural traditions. The university built its first, 2.2-meter telescope on the summit in the 1960s, and in 1968 the Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources gave the University of Hawaii a 65-year lease for land within a 4 km radius around it. The generous lease amounts to almost all of the summit above 11,500 ft. (8/31)

Collins Aerospace Opens a New 120,000-Square-Foot Facility at Houston Spaceport (Source: Click 2 Houston)
A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Wednesday afternoon for the new Collins Aerospace building at the Houston Spaceport. During the grand opening, the next generation xEVAS spacesuit was also unveiled. Sen. Ted Cruz along with Mayor Turner joined other community and state leaders at the ribbon-cutting and gave remarks about the role of Texas in advancing America’s continued exploration of the final frontier.

“End-to-end systems for the next generation of space flight will be done right here in this building,” Phil Jasper, President of Mission Systems for Collins Aerospace said. It’s a $30 million investment into the future of space technology. “It’s hundreds of new high-paying jobs in Houston, but it also paves the way for thousands of new jobs. Every bit is important,” Senator Ted Cruz said. (8/31)

First Canadian Student Spaceflight Experiment to Fly with Blue Origin (Source: The Record)
As the seconds count down to launch, Olivia Ye will be holding her breath. Watching from Launch Site One in West Texas, the University of Waterloo mechatronics student will make history when her project becomes the first Canadian student space flight experiment with Blue Origin. Ye’s experiment — created with a group of 10 students from across Canada as part of Shad Canada’s 2020 Summer STEAM Program — will test the effects of microgravity on polyurethane foam. (8/30)

Outpost Raises $7M Seed Round to Develop Reusable Satellites for Earth Return Service (Source: Space Daily)
Outpost Technologies announced the closing of a $7.1M Series Seed round. During a bearish fundraising environment, this round was oversubscribed, demonstrating Outpost's visionary approach to disrupting the satellite market. The company has developed, and flight tested a novel re-entry method that enables satellites to safely return to Earth with precision landing. This technology not only makes single-use satellites obsolete, but also enables the broader aerospace market to attain dedicated payload return to Earth. (9/1)

Accenture Invests in Hyperspectral Satellite Company Pixxel to Monitor Earth's Health (Source: Space Daily)
Accenture has made a strategic investment, through Accenture Ventures, in Pixxel, a leader in cutting-edge earth imaging technology. Based in Bangalore with a presence in Los Angeles, Pixxel is building the world's highest resolution hyperspectral imaging satellite constellation in order to offer industry AI-powered insights that discover, solve, and predict climate issues at a fraction of the cost of traditional satellites.

Pixxel's satellites can capture images at hundreds of wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum and reveal key data about the health of our planet that is invisible to other satellites. The company's planned constellation of hyperspectral satellites will reshape how businesses across agriculture, defense, mining, environmental, and other critical industries make decisions on a global level to reduce their environmental impact. The data from Pixxel's satellites provides 8x more information and 50x better resolution than existing in-market options. (9/1)

Plant Growth in China's Space Lab in Good Condition (Source: Space Daily)
The seeds of two plants in China's Wentian lab module have germinated and are now in good condition, according to a briefing on the progress of plant culture experiments in the country's space station on Monday. Seed samples of the two plants, Arabidopsis and rice, were installed in the life ecology experiment cabinet of the lab module, which went into space in July. The space growth experiments were launched on July 29 with ground instructions.

The Arabidopsis seedlings have grown several leaves, and rice seedlings have grown to a height of about 30 centimeters. Later, their life cycle experiments will be conducted to obtain space seeds, said the briefing. The country has successfully obtained space seeds of Arabidopsis through its previous life cycle experiment in space, said Zheng Huiqiong. Zheng added that the experiment on rice's life cycle in the Wentian lab module would hopefully be successful and provide theoretical guidance for space grain production. (8/31)

NASA to Fly Six Scientific Balloons From New Mexico (Source: Space Daily)
NASA's Scientific Balloon Program is moving full-steam ahead into the fall 2022 campaign with six scientific, engineering, and student balloon flights supporting 17 missions. The flights are scheduled to launch from Fort Sumner, New Mexico, from mid-August through mid-October. With one balloon already off the ground, a test flight carrying several different technology payloads and other piggyback missions, the team hopes to launch the five remaining balloons by the end of the launch window in support of multiple science and technology initiatives. (8/30)