December 31, 2022

SpaceX Kicking Off 2023 with Falcon 9 Transporter 6 Launch on Space Coast (Source: Click Orlando)
SpaceX is starting the new year off with a launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Monday. The space agency is planning to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral with a launch time of 9:56 a.m. Monday. The rocket will be carrying a number of small microsatellites and nanosatellites for government and commercial groups in what is called a sun-synchronous orbit. (12/30)

Wallops’ Rocket Lab Buildout: ‘Hundreds’ of Local Jobs (Source: Eastern Shore Post)
The number of jobs the newest private company at Wallops’ spaceport will create “is in the order of hundreds,” according to its founder. Spin-off business related to Rocket Lab and its launches will further increase its local economic impact. “It’s not just a launch site, it’s an entire manufacturing facility,” said founder and chief executive Peter Beck during a press conference earlier this month.

NASA Wallops Flight Facility Director David Pierce said “it has been nothing short of a Herculean effort” to reach the point of readiness for the inaugural Electron launch. Pierce said Rocket Lab’s activity at Wallops “is going to have a dramatic impact on the economy of the Eastern Shore of Virginia” as well as on surrounding areas. In addition to direct job creation, “with any one orbital launch at Wallops, you’ll see restaurants and all of the tangential businesses — hotels — really impacted in a positive way,” he said, noting the Wallops complex already has $1.4 billion per year in economic impact.

“We see nothing but that increasing,” he said. Ted Mercer, executive director of Virginia Space, said Rocket Lab launches “will boost economic development on the Eastern Shore through launch-viewing tourism, growing the high-skilled workforce in the area, as Rocket Lab expands its operations into the region.” Additionally, the company’s presence will draw to the region companies “that want to be involved in the supply chain for rocket launch and space lift.” (12/30)

How “Internet in Space” Will Transform the Satellite Imagery Industry (Source; Joe Morrison)
To understand why relay constellations are gonna be such a big deal for the satellite imagery industry, first you have to understand some basics about what makes satellite imagery companies tick. There are three key value propositions in the business of satellite imagery: resolution, coverage, and latency. Of those, internet connectivity in space most directly influences latency, which is just the time between when someone realizes they want a satellite image and when they actually get it.

Latency is tightly correlated with pricing power. There are people who will pay quite a lot of cheese for an image if you can deliver it in 30 minutes without any prior warning. Some of those same people have no use for an image if it’s delivered just a couple hours after it’s captured. There are no four words in the satellite imagery industry that command suitcases full of cash quite like “high resolution” and “low latency” when strung together in a sentence.  The intersection of these two value propositions enables a category of use cases I call “mobilization,” which I contend is the highest and best use for satellite imagery.

The brute-force way to reduce latency is to simply launch more satellites—more birds means more opportunities to collect. Waiting around for an “access opportunity” is typically the largest source of latency for customers today. But as you add satellites, there are diminishing returns to latency. Suddenly, a new bottleneck emerges—the time between collection and delivery. Historically, reducing latency at this step has entailed adding more ground station sites and processing data on board the satellite itself. Click here. (12/30)

How NASA Is Fixing Supersonic Flight’s Big Loud Problem (Source: Daily Beast)
If you know about Concorde, you already know that we figured out a faster way to get people to their destinations decades ago—but a string of complications led to the once hyped supersonic jet’s failure. People complained that Concorde flights overhead resulted in broken glass and freaked-out pets. As it turns out, breaking the sound barrier is a lot easier than dealing with the sonic repercussions of it.

The study of the perception of sound, known as psychoacoustics, is front and center with NASA’s X-59. The mission will tell us what the human threshold for sonic booms are, paving the way for the resurrection of commercial supersonic flight. But even before the plane is ready for test flights, NASA is already conducting psychoacoustics research in simulated environments. These tests, as well as ones in which an X-59 will be flown over several U.S. cities in 2024, will be used to develop a better scale for measuring the loudness and intensity of sonic booms and ultimately to set limits on these levels. Click here. (12/31)

South Korean Military Rocket Launch Causes UFO Scare (Source: Daily Beast)
The South Korean military launched a test flight for a rocket Friday evening, as part of ongoing efforts to put more spy satellites into orbit to bolster the country’s space-based surveillance. Due to national security considerations surrounding the mission, the military did not inform the public of the launch in advance. And as a result, many onlookers on the ground experienced a brief scare, mistaking the rocket for a UFO or a North Korean missile headed for its southern neighbors. (12/30)

Artemis I Orion Spacecraft Returns to Kennedy Space Center (Source: NASA)
After its 1.4-million-mile mission beyond the Moon and back, the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission arrived back at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Dec. 30. The capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 11 and was transported by truck across the country from Naval Base San Diego in California to Kennedy’s Multi Payload Processing Facility in Florida. (12/30)

Starlink Opens Offices in Azerbaijan (Source: Teslarati)
Starlink opened offices in Azerbaijan in November. Filings from the State Tax Service under the Ministry of Economy of Azerbaijan published earlier this week show that Starlink Azerbaijan, LLC, a subsidiary of Starlink, was registered in Baku City Khatai district, on November 8th with an authorized capital of $100. (12/30)

Israeli Pens Plan for Belt of Solar Panels on Moon to Power Oxygen Production (Source: Times of Israel)
NASA and the US Energy Department are working to advance space nuclear technologies. It notes that “fission systems are reliable and could enable continuous power regardless of location, available sunlight, and other natural environmental conditions. A demonstration of such systems on the moon would pave the way for long-duration missions on the Moon and Mars.”

As an alternative, a US-born Israeli academic has designed a conceptual plan to rig the moon with solar panels. Emeritus Professor Jeffrey Gordon of Ben-Gurion University’s Solar Energy and Environmental Physics Department has calculated that this would require six times less mass than the best nuclear option to provide the same amount of electricity. He claims that his proposal would provide uninterrupted electricity supply for oxygen-producing facilities 100% of the time, with a sufficient number of panels always exposed to the sun. (12/31)

Voyager Probes Keep On Truckin' (Source: Business Insider)
Some 14.8 billion miles from Earth, the Voyager 1 probe is cruising through the blackness of the interstellar medium — the unexplored space between stars. It's the furthest human-made object from our planet. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched in 1977 within 16 days of one another with a design lifetime of five years to study Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and their respective moons up close. Now 45 years into their mission, they've each made history by boldly venturing beyond the boundary of our sun's influence, known as the heliopause.

NASA said that about 300 years from now, Voyager 1 should enter the Oort Cloud, a hypothetical spherical band full of billions of frozen comets. It should take another 30,000 years to reach the end of it. It should take Voyager 1 40,000 years to reach another star, according to the space agency. (12/30)

Five Space Exploration Missions to Look Out For in 2023 (Source: The Hindu)
It’s been an eventful year for space exploration, with successes including the completion of NASA’s Artemis 1 mission (finally), the inauguration of the James Webb Space Telescope, and the completion of China’s Tiangong space station. 2023 is set to be another busy year. Here are five of the most exciting missions to watch out for. Click here. (12/29)