October 20, 2022

Space Force May Seek Commercial Fleet to Augment Wartime Needs (Source: C4ISRnet)
The U.S. Space Force may seek to deepen partnerships with private companies by establishing a fleet of commercial spacecraft that could be on standby for military use, much like the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. Through the CRAF, the Department of Defense contracts with commercial airlines to provide additional airlift capacity in emergencies. The reserve fleet has been activated just three times in its 70 year history, most recently in the summer of 2021 to aid in the U.S. military’s evacuation mission in Afghanistan.

The Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve could function in a similar manner, Col. Joseph Roth, director of Space Systems Command’s Innovation and Prototyping Directorate, said Oct. 19. The service plans to meet with companies and congressional stakeholders in Washington in January to gather feedback, he said. (10/19)

Sidus Space Executes Launch Agreement with Vaya Space (Source: Sidus Space)
Sidus Space announced that it has signed a launch agreement with Vaya Space for four launches over multiple years. Vaya Space is an emerging leader in sustainable space access and this agreement expands Sidus Space’s ability to deliver satellite services. Sidus Space recently announced a launch agreement with SpaceX for a total of 5 expected launches in the next 13-15 months. In addition, as an ISS implementation partner, Sidus also has the ability to launch from the ISS which creates multiple paths to orbit for LizzieSat with the signing of this launch agreement with Vaya Space. (10/20)

Space Safety: Rescue Rangers (Source: Quartz)
This week, the Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded think tank, released its 2022 Space Safety Compendium. Its primary point is one we can all agree on: Space activity has changed dramatically in recent years and so should our approach to keeping it safe. And when it comes to human spaceflight, there’s something of a deadline: The Congressional moratorium preventing regulators from imposing safety rules is set to expire in October 2023.

That would leave the FAA in charge of regulating human spaceflight, but the report concludes that “the agency would not be fully prepared to assume this regulatory responsibility today.” One reason is simply resources. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby complained yesterday that a lack of air traffic controllers will limit extra airline routes in the US, blaming the FAA’s wide responsibilities, from drones to space launch.

An agreement between the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board gives the NTSB responsibility for investigating any human space mishap that leads to a death or property damage outside the launch site. The researchers at Aerospace Corporation say more work like this is needed to clarify each agency’s role in setting the rules for carrying passengers in space, and enforcing them transparently. Those rules, in their view, shouldn’t be overly prescriptive but rather should follow a “safety case” approach that allows companies to develop their own plans that are then assessed by the FAA. (10/20)

ARCA Space Launches the AMiE Crypto Coin (Source: Space Daily)
ARCA Space started the first sale for the AMi Exploration (AMiE) utility token, issued in the Avalanche blockchain. For this first sale ARCA Space made available 675,676 tokens from the total of 1 billion issued. The regular price of one token is $0,1, and for this first sale the price is $0,075. The AMiE Token could be purchased with the USDt native token in the Avalanche blockchain. The Asteroid Mining Program (AMi) is a ten-year program that aims to unlock one of the largest sources of wealth in history, through profitable asteroid mining. In order to accomplish this task, ARCA develops the EcoRocket Heavy launcher and the AMi Cargo spaceship to allow this endeavour. (10/20)

Utah-Made Rocket Boosters Arrive in Florida (Source: UPR)
Northrop Grumman has delivered two solid rocket boosters to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. At 72 feet long and over 117,000 pounds, the boosters are the longest single-cast rocket motors ever produced. Manufactured in Utah, the boosters will be used on the inaugural flight of United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket planned for the first months of 2023. ULA’s Vulcan rockets will use up to six of these boosters, providing over 460,000 pounds of thrust at launch. (10/19)

Kayhan Space is Making Orbit Safer with Timely, Automatic Collision Warnings for Satellites (Source: Tech Crunch)
The orbital economy is heating up, but the infrastructure that supports it is starting to creak. Kayhan Space is a startup that makes sure your satellite doesn’t crash into another — or a launch or piece of space trash, for that matter — using modern data crunching techniques and a web-accessible platform.

Kayhan presented today at Disrupt SF as part of the Battlefield, and the business is considerably further along than when we first covered them; at the time, they were raising a pre-seed round, but now they’ve got their feet under them and are raising again. Founded by old friends Araz Feyzi and Siamak Hesar, who came together to the U.S. from Iran for school years ago, the company is taking on the natural result of the last decades order-of-magnitude increase in satellite launches: traffic. (10/19)

ESA Delays First Ariane 6 Launch to Late 2023 (Source: Space News)
ESA announced Wednesday that the first launch of the Ariane 6 has slipped again, this time to late 2023. Officials with ESA, prime contractor ArianeGroup and launch services company Arianespace did not give a specific reason for the delay, the latest in a series for a vehicle once set to debut in 2020. They said static-fire testing of the rocket's upper stage is in progress, as well as tests of launch site infrastructure using a vehicle prototype. Those tests will continue to the first quarter of 2023 as ArianeGroup completes assembly of the first flight model of the Ariane 6. Development of Ariane 6 has cost Europe nearly 4 billion euros ($3.9 billion), and ESA plans to seek additional funding at next month's ministerial meeting both for upgrades to the rocket and to increase production. (10/20)

ESA to Launch Euclid and Hera on Falcon 9 (Source: Space News)
Ariane 6 delays, and loss of access to Soyuz rockets, will move two ESA missions to Falcon 9. ESA announced Thursday that it will launch the Euclid astrophysics mission and the Hera astrophysics missions on Falcon 9 launches in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Euclid was to launch on a Soyuz, which is no longer available. ESA shifted Hera from an Ariane 6 because of delays in ramping up that launch vehicle. At next month's ministerial meeting, ESA will also decide on the future of ExoMars, which was to launch on a Proton. The preferred option is to launch it in 2028 on a European rocket after replacing the mission's Russian descent module. (10/20)

Space Force Briefs Bezos on China and Russia Space Developments (Source: Space News)
The Space Force gave a personal briefing to Jeff Bezos about military competition with China in space. Executives from the space company Blue Origin, founded by Bezos, heard the briefing in September at a Space Systems Command industry meeting in Los Angeles and asked the service to give the briefing to Bezos. The unclassified briefing, based on open sources, concluded China and Russia have significant counterspace capabilities today, from lasers that can blind imaging satellites to a Chinese satellite that moved another satellite out of GEO in a demonstration earlier this year. China is also advancing technologies for space-to-ground weapons, the Space Force concluded. (10/20)

OSHA Fines SpaceX for Safety Violations That Injured Technician (Source: Semafor)
OSHA fined SpaceX for safety violations after an accident that left a technician seriously injured. The incident in January, during testing of a Raptor engine, fractured the skull of the technician, leaving him in a coma for months. OSHA fined SpaceX $18,475 for two safety violations, one rated as "serious." A report found that at least 24 space industry workers have died in accidents since 1980, although it's not clear how that compares with other industries. (10/20)

JWST Images Pillars of Creation (Source: NASA)
The James Webb Space Telescope has revisited one of the most iconic images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA released Wednesday a JWST image of the "Pillars of Creation", columns of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula where new stars are formed. The near-infrared JWST image reveals newly formed stars, including those still ejecting material as they interact with clouds of material in the pillars. Hubble first observed the Pillars of Creation in 1995, creating images that remain among the most famous in that telescope's history. (10/20)

Virgin Orbit May Aid NATO in Europe with 'Responsive Launch Infrastructure' (Source: Space.com)
Virgin Orbit could end up becoming an important part of European defense plans and infrastructure. The company announced today (Oct. 18) that it has signed a letter of intent with Luxembourg's Minister of Defence to study ways that Virgin Orbit could boost the resilience of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and allied states.

Virgin Orbit delivers satellites to orbit using a 70-foot-tall (21 meters) rocket called LauncherOne, which is dropped at altitude from a carrier plane. This air-launch system is flexible and responsive, allowing customers to get their payloads up on short notice from a variety of sites around the world, company representatives say. (10/19)

China's FAST Telescope Spots Huge Atomic Gas Structure (Source: Xinhua)
The "China Sky Eye," also known as the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), has spotted a huge atomic gas structure in the vicinity of a galaxy group. The find came as the world's most sensitive radio telescope "cast its glance" at Stephan's Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies of which four form a compact galaxy group. The linear scale of the atomic hydrogen structure reaches some two million light-years or 0.6 megaparsecs, the largest one of its kind ever discovered in the universe, according to the study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. (10/20)

Iranian Astronomers Seek Collaborations for Their New, World-Class Telescope (Source: Science)
In a major milestone for Iran’s scientific community, astronomers announced today in Tehran that the Iranian National Observatory (INO) has seen “first light”: The world-class, 3.4-meter optical telescope, whose future appeared cloudy just last year, is operational and has acquired its debut images. “We’ve been waiting for this moment for so long,” says INO Project Director Habib Khosroshahi, an astronomer at the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM) in Tehran.

First light for the $25 million observatory “comes at a turbulent time,” Khosroshahi acknowledges. Iran has been roiled by protests since last month’s death in police custody of a young woman who’d been arrested for not wearing her hijab properly. “We’re anxious about how our announcement will be interpreted,” Khosroshahi says. “But we want to emphasize that INO is for all the people of Iran. We couldn’t keep this news to ourselves anymore.”  (10/19)

Space Business Or Solve Problems On Earth? Jeff Bezos Finally Responds To Criticism (Source: Mashable)
"We go to space not to abandon our home but to protect it.” Bezos stated how the limitless solar energy can be tapped into, along with other resources in space, without bothering the Earth. He reminisced about his childhood, when he used to watch Star Trek and make models. He had turned his cozy li’l garage into a lab for contraptions of all kinds. In 2000, the maverick founded Blue Origin, an aerospace company. The motto of the company is “For the Benefit of the Earth”.

Bezos had earlier stated how Blue Origin seeks to make space travel inexpensive. more frequent and more accessible. In 2018, Bezos remarked that Blue Origin is the most important work he’s been preoccupied with. In the acceptance speech at the Vatican, he reiterated the vision of the company. He said that the company’s long-term goal is to get the Earth rid of polluting industries by moving them off the planet. Bezos acknowledged that it is the poor and the vulnerable that are facing the brunt of climate change and ensuing natural disasters. He established the Bezos Earth Fund in 2020 to fight climate change and preserve nature. Bezos has committed $10 billion through the foundation. (10/19)

Failure of Japan’s Epsilon Rocket Blamed on Attitude Control System (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
Engineers investigating the Oct. 12 launch failure of a Japanese Epsilon rocket have traced the problem to the attitude control system on the second stage, Japan’s space agency said Tuesday. The solid-fueled launcher took off from Japan’s Uchinoura Space Center on Oct. 12 to boost payloads into orbit for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the Japanese commercial remote sensing company iQPS, and Japanese universities. The Epsilon rocket aimed to place its eight satellite passengers into a polar orbit about 350 miles (560 kilometers) above Earth, using three solid-fueled stages and a liquid-fueled “post boost stage” to reach the missions target orbit. (10/18)

Space Company Investments Decline (Sources: Space Capital, Space News)
Space Capital noted a dip in space company investment, with $3.4 billion tallied in the third quarter of 2022 compared with $3.9 billion for the same period in 2021. "With $151 billion closed through September and nearly $300 billion of dry powder on the sidelines, we are still waiting for the floodgates to open," said Space Capital's Q3 2022 Space Investment Quarterly. Space Capital expects "the economic environment" to disproportionately hurt companies with high upfront capital costs and long lead times before generating revenue. Better positioned are firms that supply data, insight and services to enterprises and government agencies, according to the report. (10/19)

Starlink Aviation Division Created to Support Aircraft Connectivity (Source: Space News)
SpaceX announced plans for Starlink Aviation, a service to begin offering airborne connectivity in mid-2023. Customers will pay $150,000 for airplane antennas and associated hardware, plus service fees of $12,500 to $25,000 per month. "Internet in airplanes will feel same as if you were accessing Internet at home!" Musk tweeted Oct. 18. (10/19)

Climate Change to Increase Lifetime of Space Pollution (Source: Space Daily)
Increasing levels of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere will result in a long-term decline in air density at high altitudes, according to new research from British Antarctic Survey. Such decreased density will reduce drag on objects orbiting in the upper atmosphere, between 90 and 500 km altitude, extending the lifetime of space debris and elevating the risk of collisions between debris and satellites. As society becomes ever more dependent on satellites for navigation systems, mobile communications and monitoring Earth, collisions could cause major problems if satellites, that cost billions of dollars, are damaged. (10/19)

Beyond Gravity to Supply Power Electronics for Loft Orbital's Satellites (Source: Space Daily)
Beyond Gravity, a leading space systems company, has been selected to supply equipment for Loft Orbital's Longbow spacecraft based on Airbus Arrow platform. The physical equipment is referred to as the Power Control and Distribution Unit (PCDU). The PCDU provides mission critical power supply capabilities and in-orbit configurability for "The Hub" that carries all payloads of a Loft Orbital's satellite and provides an independent electrical, computing and communication environment. Beyond Gravity will deliver PCDU flight units for over 15 Loft Orbital satellites. (10/19)

2023 Suborbital Researchers Conference to Spotlight Burgeoning Rocket, Balloon Opportunities (Source: Space Daily)
As the pace of commercial and civil suborbital space missions on rockets and balloons continues to climb, so does the number and diversity of research and educational payloads and payload specialists flying on these missions. The 2023 Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC-2023) will convene February 27 to March 1 in Broomfield, Colorado, bringing together hundreds of suborbital researchers, educators, flight providers, spaceport operators and government officials. In suborbital flight, spacecraft reach the edge of space for short durations.

NSRC is the premier conference for the suborbital space research and education community. NSRC-2023 will provide an in-depth forum for attendees to discuss funding, new research and education missions aboard the many suborbital flight vehicles in operation and under development, as well as new results from recent suborbital missions. Representatives from NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, numerous spaceports, suborbital vehicle operators, as well as researchers and educators and aerospace news media, will attend. (10/13)

Treemetrics Signs 1.2M Euro Contract with ESA (Source: Space Daily)
Treemetrics, a global leader in forestry management software, has signed a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) valued at euro 1.2 million. Under the two-year contract, Treemetrics will be utilising satellite imaging, data analytics and its advanced forest measurement technology to provide more accurate forest carbon credit estimates.

The global demand for forest carbon credits is growing larger every year, having nearly quadrupled in 2021, driven by an increasing desire from companies and individuals to reduce their carbon footprint. Many organisations across the globe are voluntarily committing to this and investors are demanding the utilisation of high-quality carbon projects. The planting of trees and the restoration of forests is an important part of the global fight against climate change and accurate forest measurement is imperative to this. (10/17)