January 23, 2023

InSight's Importance: Seismic Measurements, New Terrain Highlight Ground-Breaking Mission (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
NASA’s InSight lander, formally known as the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport mission, wrapped a four-year scientific expedition on Mars in December 2022 after the lander succumbed to low power levels. Throughout its mission, InSight studied Mars extensively, collecting a plethora of ground-breaking science on the planet’s interior and exterior geologic processes.

Following the craft’s landing on Mars on Nov. 26, 2018, at Elysium Planitia, just four degrees above the equator, a main scientific aspect of the flight was to deploy a seismometer onto the Martian surface. Called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), the seismometer experiment was provided by France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and placed onto the surface of Mars by the lander’s Instrument Deployment Arm. (1/21)

Aerospace Startup Chooses Colorado Over Florida for Headquarters (Source: Denver Post)
ThinkOrbital is developing platforms that can be deployed in a single launch and assembled autonomously in orbit. The structures could be used for in-space manufacturing, to serve satellites, process and store space debris and for military missions. State officials said ThinkOrbital also considered Florida for its headquarters. The company, which has 11 employees, will initially focus on research and development and expects to create 60 new jobs at an average wage of $80,433.

"Colorado is the epicenter of the aerospace industry, and we are excited to welcome ThinkOrbital to Colorado, bringing 60 new good-paying jobs to Coloradans and joining our innovative and collaborative aerospace community,” Gov. Jared Polis said. Colorado’s aerospace industry is the second-largest in the country, behind California’s.

A report by the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation and the Colorado Space Coalition said there are 290 aerospace companies in the state and more than 500 companies that provide space-related products and services. The report said employment in the aerospace industry grew 11.2% from 2019 to 2020 in the nine-county Denver area and northern Colorado and grew 30.1% from 2015 to 2020. (1/23)

NASA, Boeing Teams Achieve Milestone Ahead of Crewed Starliner Flight (Source: Space Daily)
NASA and Boeing recently completed a full start to finish integrated mission dress rehearsal for the company's CST-100 Starliner flight with astronauts to the ISS, scheduled to launch in April 2023. The Crew Flight Test, or CFT, will launch NASA astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Suni Williams on Starliner -- atop a ULA Atlas V rocket -- from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Program.

During several days at Boeing's Avionics and Software Integration Lab (ASIL) in Houston, the ASIL Mission Rehearsal (AMR) combined tests of software and crew systems, along with operations teams. The completion of the end-to-end mission rehearsal clears a path for the next CFT milestones, including working with the crew and flight controllers on various integrated failure scenarios and a series of flight-day parameter updates that will become available as the team nears launch day. (1/23)

Chinese Astronauts Send Spring Festival Greetings From TSS Space Station (Source: Space Daily)
The Shenzhou-15 astronauts Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu sent their Spring Festival greetings from China's Tiangong space station in a video on New Year's Eve. The trio, dressed in blue jumpsuits with dark red patterns, each held a sticker showing their own calligraphy. Two of the stickers were written with the Chinese character "fu", meaning good luck, and the other sending good luck wishes from Tiangong. (1/23)

Canada's Launch Regs in Development (Source: Space News)
The Canadian government plans to set up a regulatory framework to enable commercial launches from the country. In a two-phase approach, Transport Canada will start considering requests to conduct commercial launches on a case-by-case basis within existing federal laws and regulations. Over the next three years, it will work with other government agencies to to develop a formal licensing framework for commercial launches that will include an interagency review. Government and industry officials said enabling commercial launches from Canada will create an "end-to-end" space industry in the country, rather than requiring companies to go elsewhere to launch satellites. Several Canadian companies are working on launch vehicles or spaceports, and the government said it has received inquiries from several other countries interested in launching from Canada. (1/23)

NASA Suspends Lucy Fix Attempts (Source: Space News)
NASA is suspending efforts, at least until late next year, to fully deploy a solar array on the Lucy spacecraft. Engineers had been working since shortly after the mission's launch in October 2021 to fully unfold one of two circular arrays on the spacecraft and latch it into place. NASA said late last week that the la(1/23)hat would likely further diminish as the spacecraft heads further from the sun. The array is about 98% deployed and appears to be stable, sufficient for the spacecraft to perform flybys of several Trojan asteroids. NASA may try again in late 2024 when the spacecraft makes another Earth flyby. (1/23)

ESA's JUICE Jupiter Probe Ready (Source: Space News)
An ESA mission to Jupiter is ready to ship to the launch site. Airbus Defence and Space, the manufacturer of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission, said it making final preprations to transport JUICE to French Guiana for launch on an Ariane 5 in mid-April. The spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter in 2031 and study the planet and three of its large, icy moons: Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. (1/23)

Lockheed Martin Sees Demand for Satellite-Assisted Logistics (Source: Space News)
Lockheed Martin sees demand for satellite-based augmentation systems to support transportation and other industries. Such systems, like WAAS in the U.S. and EGNOS ain Europe, provide greater accuracy needed for aviation. The company is marketing what it calls a second-generation system that uses an L1C signal on GPS 3 satellites that is interoperable with Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system. Lockheed Martin won a $1.18 billion, 19-year contract in September to develop and operate the Southern Positioning Augmentation Network (SouthPAN) for the governments of Australia and New Zealand. (1/23)

US and Israel Plan Cooperation on Astrophysics Mission (Source: Space News)
The U.S. and Israel are finalizing an agreement that would include cooperation on an astrophysics mission in development. The agreement, which could be signed as soon as this month, would make NASA a partner on the Ultrasat mission being developed by Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science. NASA would provide the launch of the spacecraft while also funding participating scientists and setting up a science archive. Ultrasat is an ultraviolet telescope that will operate in GEO, looking for ultraviolet signals from gravitational wave events like neutron star mergers as well as supernova explosions. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2026. (1/23)
 
ISS Spacewalk Focuses on Solar Array Upgrades (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
Two astronauts spent more than seven hours outside the International Space Station Friday to continue work upgrading the station's solar arrays. NASA's Nicole Mann and JAXA's Koichi Wakata completed the installation of a mounting bracket for one new solar array that started on a previous spacewalk, then started attaching another. They were not able to complete the installation of the second because of issues with one strut, deferring that work to a future spacewalk. The mounting brackets will host the final pair of iROSA roll-out solar arrays being installed on the station that will be delivered on a future cargo mission. (1/23)

Axiom ISS Mission Likely to Include Saudi Astronauts (Source: NASA)
ISS partners have approved, but not named, the crew for a second private astronaut mission to the station. NASA said Friday that the partners approved the four people who will fly on Axiom Space's Ax-2 mission later this year. They include commander Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut, and pilot John Shoffner, an Axiom customer. The company had previously disclosed both were planned to fly on Ax-2. NASA did not announce who the other two members of the crew were, but are widely believed to be Saudi astronauts based on announcements both Axiom and the Saudi government made last fall. (1/23)

Vulcan Rocket Arrives at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Florida Today)
The first Vulcan Centaur rocket has arrived in Florida. The rocket arrived at Cape Canaveral on a United Launch Alliance ship over the weekend. ULA is planning a series of tests of the vehicle ahead of a first launch scheduled for later this year, carrying the Peregrine lunar lander for Astrobotic. (1/23)

Shetland Spaceport Could Host October Launch (Source: The Scotsman)
A spaceport in the Shetland Islands could host its first orbital launch as soon as October. Officials with SaxaVord Spaceport said that Rocket Factory Augusburg (RFA) could be ready to perform the first launch of its RFA One rocket from the spaceport in October or November. RFA and SaxaVord announced an agreement earlier this month that gives the company exclusive access to one pad at the facility being developed on the island of Unst for its launches. (1/23)

Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Makes 40th Flight (Source: Space.com)
Ingenuity has hit the big 4-0. The Mars helicopter flew its 40th flight last week, traveling nearly 180 meters in a minute and a half. Ingenuity was originally designed to be a technology demonstration that would make no more than five flights in April 2021, but has continued to operate far beyond expectations. The design of Ingenuity is being adapted for two similar helicopters that will be used as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign to pick up samples cached by the Perseverance rover and return them to a lander that will launch them into orbit for transfer back to Earth. (1/23)

SpaceX to Ship Starship ‘Deluge’ Hardware From Florida to Starbase (Source: Teslarati)
SpaceX appears to be preparing to ship a huge collection of hardware – including parts of a possible launch deluge system – from Florida to Texas. Hardware began accumulating at KSC's Turning Basin on January 12. Within a few days, four midsize storage tanks, two or three large storage tanks, five high-pressure gas tanks, multiple sections of an apparent launch deluge system, and an unfinished Starship booster transport stand were all staged and ready for shipment.

Save for implicit statements from reliable sources, there wasn’t an obvious guarantee that the hardware was all SpaceX’s or headed to the company’s Starbase, Texas factory and launch site.

But combined with the sheer volume of hardware and its privileged presence on NASA KSC property, the last part to arrive – the base of an unmistakable Starship (booster) transport stand – all but confirmed that the destination is Starbase. SpaceX has already shipped hardware from Florida to Starbase multiple times, including a trio of tanks sent in October 2022, which further increases the odds that everything visible is destined for Starbase. (1/19)

Quantum Entanglement Just Got a Whole Lot Weirder (Source: Big Think)
One of the weirdest quantum properties of all is entanglement: where multiple quanta have inherent properties that are both indeterminate, but the properties of each one aren’t independent of the other. We’ve seen this demonstrated for photons, electrons, and all sorts of identical particles. But in a novel experiment, quantum entanglement has just been demonstrated between different particles for the first time, and already the technique has been used to see an atom’s nucleus like never before.

The Stern-Gerlach experiment arises from passing quantum particles that possess an inherent property called “spin,” which means intrinsic angular momentum, through a magnetic field. These particles will either deflect aligned with the field or anti-aligned with the field: up or down, with respect to the field’s direction. If you try to deflect a particle whose spin has already been determined by passing through such a magnetic field, it won’t change: the ones that went up will still go up; the ones that went down will still go down.

But if you pass it through a magnetic field with a different orientation — in one of the other two spatial dimensions — it splits again: left-right or forward-backward instead of up-and-down. What’s even weirder is now, once you’ve split it left-right or forward-backward, if you go and again pass it through an up-down magnetic field, it once against splits. It’s as though the last measurement you took erased any previous measurements, and with it, any definitive determination of the quantum state that existed in that dimension. (1/18)

Ripples in Fabric of Universe May Reveal Start of Time (Source: Phys.org)
Scientists have advanced in discovering how to use ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves to peer back to the beginning of everything we know. The researchers say they can better understand the state of the cosmos shortly after the Big Bang by learning how these ripples in the fabric of the universe flow through planets and the gas between the galaxies.

Researchers adapted this technique from their research into fusion energy, the process powering the sun and stars that scientists are developing to create electricity on Earth without emitting greenhouse gases or producing long-lived radioactive waste. Fusion scientists calculate how electromagnetic waves move through plasma, the soup of electrons and atomic nuclei that fuels fusion facilities known as tokamaks and stellarators. It turns out that this process resembles the movement of gravitational waves through matter. "We basically put plasma wave machinery to work on a gravitational wave problem," Garg said.

They created formulas that could theoretically lead gravitational waves to reveal hidden properties about celestial bodies, like stars that are many light years away. As the waves flow through matter, they create light whose characteristics depend on the matter's density. A physicist could analyze that light and discover properties about a star millions of light years away. This technique could also lead to discoveries about the smashing together of neutron stars and black holes, ultra-dense remnants of star deaths. They could even potentially reveal information about what was happening during the Big Bang and the early moments of our universe. (1/20)