December 17, 2022

Florida's 56th Launch of 2022 Lofts Starlink Satellites to Orbit, 57th Possible Before 2023 (Source: Florida Today)
On Saturday SpaceX conducted 56th mission to launch from Florida's Space Coast this year, shattering recent yearly launch records. The Falcon 9 rocket launched another batch of the company's internet-beaming satellites to join the more than 3,000 already in orbit. The first-stage booster was successfully recovered aboard a drone ship downrange after its 15th flight (another record).

Through the Christmas holiday, launch providers and the Eastern Range will collaborate with the Federal Aviation Administration to open air space along the East Coast to minimize delays for commercial air travel. But don't count on SpaceX to slow down for long. It's possible that one more Falcon 9 mission could squeak in between Christmas and New Year's Day. Expected to be a Transporter mission, it will be another internal one for SpaceX. Transporter missions are designed to take dozens of payloads to orbit for a variety of customers, helping bring down per-payload costs. When it's slated to take off though, has not yet been confirmed. (12/17)

On 55th 2022 Florida Launch, SpaceX Sends Two SES Satellites to Orbit (Source: Florida Today)
SpaceX closed out another week with a Falcon 9 launch on Friday, Dec. 16. The rocket lofted two communications spacecraft to orbit for Luxembourg satellite operator SES. Shortly after liftoff, the Falcon 9 first-stage booster somersaulted to land aboard a drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. It marked the completion of the booster's eighth trip to space and back. Friday's Florida launch followed another SpaceX mission which took off about 11 hours prior from the company's California launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Friday's Cape Canaveral Space Spaceport launch marked the 55th from Florida's Space Coast this year. (12/16)

The Last Vital Ingredient for Life Has Been Discovered on Enceladus (Source: Science News)
The last key ingredient for life has been discovered on Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. Phosphorus is a vital building block of life, used to construct DNA and RNA. Now, an analysis of data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft reveals that Enceladus’ underground ocean contains the crucial nutrient. Not only that, its concentrations there may be thousands of times greater than in Earth’s ocean, planetary scientist Yasuhito Sekine reported December 14 at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting. (12/16)

Hubble Researchers Find Twin Super-Earth Planets With 1,000-Mile-Deep Oceans (Source: Viral Tab)
The planets, called Kepler-138c and Kepler-138d, were first discovered by the now-retired Kepler telescope before being revisited recently using Hubble. “Slightly larger than Earth, they don’t have the density of rock. And yet, they are denser than the gas-giant outer planets orbiting our Sun. So, what are they made of? The best answer is that these exoplanets have global oceans at least 500 times deeper than the average depth of Earth’s oceans, which simply are a wet veneer on a rocky ball." (12/16)

Pentagon’s UFO Investigation Finds No Evidence of Alien Activity (Source: Al Jazeera)
The Pentagon’s new push to investigate reports of UFOs has so far not yielded any evidence to suggest that aliens have visited Earth or crash-landed here, senior military leaders said. However, the Pentagon’s effort to investigate anomalous, unidentified objects – whether they are in space, the skies, or underwater – has led to hundreds of new reports that are now being investigated, US defence officials said on Friday.

So far, “we have not seen anything, and we’re still very early on, that would lead us to believe that any of the objects that we have seen are of alien origin”, Ronald Moultrie, undersecretary of defence for intelligence and security, told reporters. Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Pentagon’s newly formed All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) – which is investigating the sightings – did not rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial life and said he was taking a scientific approach to the research. (12/17)

How Commercial Aviation Could Benefit From Airbus' Space Program (Source: Simple Flying)
One of the perceived keys to shifting away from a carbon-intensive economy and aviation industry is hydrogen. NASA has relied on hydrogen to send astronauts and supplies into space for decades and used liquid hydrogen to power fuel cell systems for both the electricity and water supplies for Apollo 11. Speaking specifically on how Airbus space programs can assist with transitioning to a hydrogen-powered propulsion system on commercial aircraft, Laura Todd, Airbus' VP for Space Exploration and Future Programs, said...

"This is something that we look at, and it's also changing our mindset about how we approach things - it's not about an individual product, but the technology itself and how that can be applied across different markets - because we are a business after all, and we want to have investment - but also making use of these technologies in different areas. And it's certainly one of the things we are looking at with these different technologies - how we can apply anything that's generated in space onto commercial aircraft - including fuel sources." (12/15)

Planet Labs Reports Higher Third Quarter Revenue, But Profitability Remains a Challenge (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Planet Labs reported third quarter earnings of $9.7 million that were up 57% over the same period last year, and forecast revenues for the year would be up 45 percent to $188-$192 million. Planet ended the quarter with $425 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments.

Profitability, however, remains a challenge for the Earth observation company. Planet reported a net quarterly loss of $40.2 million, down slightly from $41.5 million in the third quarter of 2021. Net loss for the first nine months of 2022 was $124.1 million, compared with $91.2 million for the same period last year. (12/16)

Planet Makes its Geospatial Data Available Through Amazon SageMaker (Source: Space Daily)
Planet Labs announced it is making geospatial data available through Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed machine learning (ML) service from Amazon Web Services (AWS). Now, Planet data can be directly embedded into Amazon SageMaker, allowing data scientists and ML engineers to acquire and analyze global, daily satellite data. With this data, customers can train, test, and deploy ML models all within Amazon SageMaker. (12/15)

Scottish Startups Get Share of UK Space Agency Funding (Source: Digit)
The UK Space Agency has announced £2.7 million for 13 early-stage technology projects across the UK to support the growing satellite launch sector. Britain is home to a thriving satellite manufacturing industry and is on track to become the first country in Europe to offer commercial launch services to small satellite manufacturers, from a range of spaceports offering both horizontal and vertical rocket launch capabilities.

Funding from the agency’s new Launch UK Technology Investment Programme will support teams from industry and universities to develop technology, products and services that will enhance the UK spaceflight supply chain, strengthen international competitiveness, and catalyse further investment. (12/15)

Space Force Official Kept Job After IG Investigated Sex Toys at Work (Source: Air Force Times)
It began with a pair of sparkly pants. Around the time he became director of the Pentagon’s Space Security and Defense Program in 2013, Andrew Cox received a framed pair of tight, silver pants as a gag gift. He hung the glittery jeans behind his office door with a note: “Break here in the event of an emergency.”

He occasionally joked that the pants could seduce Washington officials into giving SSDP more funding. At a workplace holiday party a few years later, Cox received a silver case filled with sex toys and other paraphernalia. And in 2018, the high-ranking civilian donned a “mankini” — over his clothes — that he was given at the office’s “Bad Santa” party, in front of several dozen SSDP employees and their families.

The mankini made at least one other appearance at the office. The incidents fueled an Air Force inspector general investigation into Cox’s workplace antics in late 2020. Though the six-month inquiry substantiated multiple claims of unprofessional behavior and misconduct, Cox remained a senior civilian employee in the Space Force, with an annual six-figure salary. He also started overseeing a new unit focused on space combat planning. (12/16)

‘Huge, Huge Problem’: DoD Space Policy Chief Says Over-Classification Harming Allied Advantage (Source: Breaking Defense)
John Plumb, the Defense Department’s head of space policy, said he has set three priorities for his staff, one of which it to untangle the knot of security classification that makes it hard for the US to share important operational information with even its closest allies. Indeed, he said Wednesday in a fireside chat at Center for Strategic and International Studies that cracking the conundrum of over-classification is directly related to another of his priorities: improving space cooperation with allies and partner nations. (12/15)

Perseverance Rover is About to Build a First-of-its-Kind Depot on Mars (Source: CNN)
The Perseverance rover is about to build the first depot of rock and soil samples on another planet. Establishing a cache site is a milestone in the complex preparation to return the first rocks and dirt from Mars to Earth by 2033. Within days, the rover will start dropping some of its sample tubes, containing chalk-size cores of rock and sediment collected from the Martian surface, into the depot in an area nicknamed Three Forks in Jezero Crater. (12/16)