October 10, 2022

Launch on Demand: If Satellites are Shot Down, Will Space Force Be Ready to Restock? (Source: Space News)
A small satellite mission the U.S. Space Force plans to launch in 2023 will test the ability of the commercial space industry to deploy a payload on an extraordinarily compressed timeline. A contract for the mission, code-named Victus Nox, was awarded Sept. 30 to launch services provider Firefly Aerospace and satellite manufacturer Millennium Space. Once the Space Force decides when the mission must launch, it will give Millennium a few months to produce the spacecraft and Firefly will only get 24 hours’ notice to get ready for liftoff.

The idea of responsive space launch has been talked about for years but is now gaining attention due to congressional and industry advocacy, as well as world events that have shown the strategic value of satellites, making them more attractive targets. Congress has criticized the Pentagon for not moving more quickly in this area and, over the past two years, inserted $65 million into the defense budget for tactically responsive spaceflight demonstrations. For 2023, the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee are proposing $100 million, although the final amount has yet to be negotiated.

Small-satellite launch companies like Virgin Orbit and Rocket Lab have lobbied for this funding, arguing that the Defense Department should create a program of record with long-term budgets for tactically responsive launch. The letter to appropriators said, “robust investment in tactically responsive small launch in 2022 will help accelerate this emerging industry’s efforts to lower launch costs.” (10/10)

Venture Catalyst Space Set to Target Next Cohort of Australian Startups (Source: Space Daily)
Learn, build, reiterate. That was the mantra Raj Gautam, founder and chief executive of start-up company QL Space, learned when he took part in the Venture Catalyst Space program. Gautam launched his start-up less than a year ago and is developing a multi-sensor remote sensing satellite for the space industry and mining sectors. Once developed, QL Space's high-tech tool will be used by mining companies as a faster and safer alternative for finding mineral deposits.

With the aid of South Australia's burgeoning space industry ecosystem, the program - funded by the South Australian Government - aims to help international businesses prove the viability of their concepts. Now in its fifth year, the initiative is based out of the University of South Australia's Innovation and Collaboration Centre (ICC) in Adelaide, South Australia. The latest round opened today and startups have until 16 November to apply for $10,000 of equity-free support to get them established. (10/6)

Australia Seeks to Grow Plants on Moon by 2025 (Source: Space Daily)
Australian scientists are trying to grow plants on the Moon by 2025 in a new mission unveiled Friday that they said could help pave the way for a future colony. Plant biologist Brett Williams, from the Queensland University of Technology, said seeds would be carried by the Beresheet 2 spacecraft -- a private Israeli Moon mission. They would be watered inside the sealed chamber after landing and monitored for signs of germination and growth.

Plants will be chosen based on how well they cope in extreme conditions, and how quickly they germinate, he said. One likely choice is an Australian "resurrection grass" that can survive without water in a dormant state. (10/6)

JPL Developing More Tools to Help Search for Life in Deep Space (Source: Space Daily)
A JPL team has invented new technologies that could be used by future missions to analyze liquid samples from watery worlds and look for signs of alien life. The science equipment used must be exquisitely complex yet capable of withstanding intense radiation and cryogenic temperatures. What's more, the instruments must be able to take diverse, independent, complementary measurements that together could produce scientifically defensible proof of life.

To address some of the difficulties that future life-detection missions might encounter, a team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has developed OWLS, a powerful suite of science instruments unlike any other. Short for Oceans Worlds Life Surveyor, OWLS is designed to ingest and analyze liquid samples. It features eight instruments - all automated - that, in a lab on Earth, would require the work of several dozen people.

One vision for OWLS is to use it to analyze frozen water from a vapor plume erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus. "How do you take a sprinkling of ice a billion miles from Earth and determine - in the one chance you've got, while everyone on Earth is waiting with bated breath - whether there's evidence of life?" said Peter Willis, the project's co-principal investigator and science lead. "We wanted to create the most powerful instrument system you could design for that situation to look for both chemical and biological signs of life." (10/7)

United Launch Alliance's Debut Vulcan Mission Slips to 2023 (Source: Reuters)
United Launch Alliance has pushed the debut launch of its new Vulcan rocket to early 2023 at the request of one of its customers, the company's chief executive said, further delaying a benchmark mission crucial to the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture's launch business. Vulcan, a roughly 200 foot-tall rocket in the final stages of development, will be the centerpiece to ULA's launch business. It also will be a workhorse for U.S. Pentagon missions to space starting late next year as the rocket's predecessor nears retirement over its use of Russian-made engines. (10/10)

Former SES CEO Joins Megaconstellation Startup E-Space (Source: Space News)
Former SES CEO Karim Michel Sabbagh has returned to the space industry to oversee strategy in Europe and the Middle East for E-Space, the connectivity startup plotting a network of hundreds of thousands of satellites. Sabbagh left SES in April 2018 after four years with the Luxembourg-based satellite operator to head Abu Dhabi-based cybersecurity company DarkMatter. He more recently served as a senior advisor on policy matters and investment strategies in the Middle East, E-Space said, and was also engaged in a think tank and academic activities before joining the startup. (10/10)

Tailless Comets Could Threaten Earth (Source: The Economist)
Asteroids have predictable orbits, so cataloguing them is feasible, and is currently being done. This does not generally apply to comets. Though some (like Halley’s) have known orbits, most sweep in from the farthest reaches of the solar system, with little notice of their arrival. And that lack of notice applies, a fortiori, to a newly discovered class of them that do not flag up their appearance in the conventional way, by developing a tail.

The first Manx comet, so called after the tailless cats of the Isle of Man, was spotted in 2014 by a telescope in Hawaii. Since then, several dozen more have been detected. And, as a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in London, Ontario, heard on October 5th, they are objects of great interest. The chance—albeit remote—that such a comet might hit Earth is one reason. Another is that they are a surprising source of evidence for what happened in the solar system’s earliest days.

Having fallen so far through the Sun’s gravitational field to get there, Oort-cloud objects are, by the time they reach the inner solar system, travelling fast. If one hit Earth it would have an impact velocity of 50-70km per second, about three times that of a nearby asteroid. One such was observed by a program called the Meteorite Observation and Recovery Project. The object weighed about 2kg—too small to reach Earth’s surface. Instead, it burned up in the atmosphere as a fireball. But its velocity meant it came closer to the ground than most fireballs of that size, ending its run at a height of just over 46km, whereas 70-80km is normal. (10/10)

NASA Finds Earth's Moon Didn't Need Hundreds of Years to Form. Try Hours. (Source: Mashable)
When the universe has seemed a vast, lonely place, people have taken comfort in Earth's steadfast companion — the moon — ever-marching through space with this planet on an odyssey around the sun. But at one time, some 4.5 billion years ago, the moon wasn't around. And despite its being Earth's cosmic bestie and closest neighbor, scientists still aren't sure how it got there.

Since the 1980s, the leading theory has been that a massive planet, perhaps the size of Mars, crashed into Earth billions of years ago, spattering a world's worth of gas, magma, and metals that forged the moon over tens to hundreds of years. A study published Tuesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters suggests a bold new idea: The moon could have formed in one swift exchange, with a large chunk of baby Earth and its impactor's material blown into a wide orbit — in a matter of hours. (10/8)

Finding Aliens Could Trigger Global Conflict With Dire Consequences (Source: Newsweek)
The discovery of alien civilizations might have disastrous effects on Earth, but as a result of geopolitical conflict rather than an interstellar war. There has been much discussion between scientists about the dangers of sending out signals into space and listening for replies, with concerns that any contact with aliens would be inevitably bad news for humankind, and could result in humans fighting among ourselves. However, according to a paper published in the journal Space Policy, which is a critique of a previous study discussing the geopolitical dangers of detecting extra-terrestrial life, these fears are unfounded.

We need to make sure policymakers and government officials are aware of what SETI is, and understand the nature of any signal that gets detected early. There are some protocols in place that SETI practitioners know and generally try to follow, and these include widely sharing the details of any detected signal to make sure there are no misunderstandings." (10/9)

Rocket Lab Launches GAzelle Satellite for Wildlife Tracking (Source: Space News)
Rocket Lab launched a satellite Friday that will collect wildlife tracking and other sensor data. An Electron rocket lifted off the company's New Zealand launch site at 1:09 p.m. Eastern and placed the GAzelle satellite into orbit nearly an hour later. GAzelle, built by General Atomics, carries the Argos-4 instrument that is part of the Argos program led by the U.S. and France. Argos payloads collect and relay data from wildlife trackers and other sensors. The launch was the eighth Electron mission this year, and Rocket Lab said it would continue a monthly cadence of launches through the end of the year. That includes the first Electron launch from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia in December. (10/10)

Russia Launches Navigation Satellite (Source: TASS)
Russia launched a Glonass navigation satellite Sunday night. A Soyuz-2.1b rocket launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome at 10:52 p.m. Eastern, carrying a Glonass-K satellite. Russian officials said the satellite was delivered to its planned orbit. (10/10)

China Launches Advanced Space-Borne Solar Observatory (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
China launched the Advanced Space-borne Solar Observatory (ASO-S) on Chang Zheng 2D. The launch took place on Oct. 8 and was confirmed a success. It will operate in a 720 km Sun-synchronous orbit and will observe the Sun 24 hours a day. ASO-S is equipped with three instruments. The first is a Full-Disc Vector Magnetograph (FMG) which will be used to monitor the magnetic field of the entire Sun. It can operate with a sensibility of 0.5 mT and will mainly be used to observe the photosphere of the Sun, which is the star’s outer shell. (10/9)

Firefly: Launch Was Successful Despite Early Payload Reentry (Source: Space News)
Firefly Aerospace says its Alpha launch earlier this month was a success even though its payloads reentered within days. The Oct. 1 launch carried three satellite payloads, with five objects, including the upper stage, tracked by the U.S. Space Force. Those payloads, though, were placed in an elliptical orbit lower than the 300-kilometer orbit advertised by Firefly before the launch, and the satellites reentered within days. While some observers have classified the launch as a failure, Firefly says the vehicle performed within its requirements. NASA, whose TechEdSat-15 cubesat was among the payloads, said it was able to achieve the mission's planned objectives before reentering. (10/10)

Eutelsat: Iran is Jamming Our Satellites (Source: Space News)
Eutelsat says Iran is jamming signals from two of its geostationary satellites. The company said the Hot Bird 13C and Eutelsat 7B are being affected by jamming coming from Iran since those satellites broadcast Farsi channels that are based abroad and not under the control of the Iranian government. The jamming comes amid weeks of protests in Iran following the death of a woman while in police custody. ITU regulations prohibit such jamming. (10/10)

DoD's Arctic Strategy Could Rely on New Space Assets (Source: Space News)
A new Arctic strategy released by the Defense Department will likely require new investments in space-based systems. The strategy predicts greater competition in that part of the world, fueled by climate change and growing military activities, and recommends investments in infrastructure to monitor the region and improve connectivity. The strategy suggests infrastructure improvements will require investments in space-based communications and Earth monitoring. (10/10)

Dust Storm Threatens InSight Lander on Mars (Source: NASA)
A dust storm could hasten the demise of NASA's InSight Mars lander. JPL, which operates the mission, said the solar-powered lander had suffered a drop in power caused by a dust storm reducing the amount of sunlight reaching it. Controllers turned off the lander's main instrument, a seismometer, to conserve power for the next two weeks. The lander's power levels had already dropped because of dust accumulating on its solar panels. Before the storm, project leaders estimated the lander would cease operations between October and January. (10/10)

Black Holes May Hide a Mind-Bending Secret About Our Universe (Source: New York Times)
A blizzard of research in the last decade on the inner lives of black holes has revealed unexpected connections between general relativity and quantum mechanics. The implications are mind-bending, including the possibility that our three-dimensional universe — and we ourselves — may be holograms, like the ghostly anti-counterfeiting images that appear on some credit cards and drivers licenses. In this version of the cosmos, there is no difference between here and there, cause and effect, inside and outside or perhaps even then and now; household cats can be conjured in empty space. We can all be Dr. Strange. Click here. (10/10)