January 26, 2023

Commerce Department Plans More Expansive SSA Service (Source: Breaking Defense)
The Commerce Department is planning to expand the space situational awareness services currently provided by the Defense Department. A draft proposal by the department, which is preparing to take over civil space traffic management services from the Pentagon, foresees offering free "basic" services that include capabilities not provided by the DoD today, such as more advanced calculations of potential collisions. The department recently met with representatives of several space situational awareness companies about its plans and how it will avoid competing with more advanced services those companies offer. (1/26)

We Need to Define Timekeeping on the Moon (Source: Nature)
Does anybody really know what time it is on the moon? Some people care. NASA and other agencies planning lunar missions are looking into how to define lunar time, taking into account small differences from terrestrial time, linked to relativity, caused by the moon's weaker gravity. Even small differences could create issues for various missions, particularly as some agencies work on satellite networks to provide communications and navigation services. (1/26)

Bezos' Significant Other to Fly on Blue Origin Suborbital Mission (Source: Wall Street Journal)
Lauren Sánchez confirmed she plans to go on a suborbital spaceflight by Blue Origin. Sánchez, currently in a relationship with Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, she she will go on the New Shepard flight with five other women by early 2024. She said she is "super excited" about the flight but did not disclose other details about it, including who will accompany her. Blue Origin has not flown New Shepard since suffering an anomaly during an uncrewed flight last September, and has not released updates about the investigation or plans to return to flight. (1/26)

NEO Surveyor Launch Moves to 2028, Despite Funding Increase (Source: Space News)
Additional funding by Congress for the NEO Surveyor mission will not move up its launch. NASA sought only $40 million for the mission, designed to search for near Earth asteroids, in its fiscal year 2023 budget proposal, delaying its 2026 launch to 2028. While Congress provided $90 million, NASA officials said at a meeting this week that the additional funding won't move up the launch from 2028 but will help keep the mission moving ahead. Officials also defended a cost increase in NEO Surveyor to $1.2 billion, saying it was a result of those delays that save the agency money in the short term but increase the mission's overall cost in the long term. (1/26)

ESA Rules Out Astronaut Visits to China's TSS (Source: Space News)
The European Space Agency is not planning to send astronauts to China's space station for political and budgetary reasons. At a briefing this week, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said the agency is focused on its commitments to the International Space Station, ruling out any plans to send European astronauts to the Tiangong space station. ESA and China had earlier been working towards a potential visit of European astronauts to Tiangong, with European astronauts training in China and a Chinese astronaut participating in an ESA training course. Officials with China's human spaceflight agency have said they have received interest in flying international astronauts to Tiangong. (1/26)

Spaceflight Books Launch on Isar's Spectrum Rocket From Norway, and Maybe Kourou (Source: Space News)
Launch services provider Spaceflight has booked a launch on Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket. The companies announced Wednesday the contract for the dedicated launch, scheduled for 2026, from Isar's launch site in Andøya, Norway. The agreement includes an option for a second launch in 2025 and the ability to launch from French Guiana. Spaceflight, Isar's first U.S.-based customer, brokers ride-sharing opportunities for small satellites. The first Spectrum launch is scheduled for the second half of 2023, carrying European payloads that were selected as part of a competition run by German space agency DLR. (1/26)

SpaceX Launches Starlink Satellites From Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
SpaceX launched another set of Starlink satellites early this morning. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 4:32 a.m. Eastern, deploying 56 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. The rocket's first stage, making its ninth flight, landed on a droneship in the Atlantic. This was the second launch of Starlink satellites to orbits authorized by the FCC for the "Gen2" second-generation Starlink system, although the satellites appear similar to those in the first-generation constellation. SpaceX said the combined mass of the satellites, more than 17.4 metric tons, made it the heaviest payload launched by the Falcon 9. (1/26)

Japan Launches H2A with Military Satellite (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
Japan launched a military reconnaissance satellite Thursday night. The H-2A rocket lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center at 8:49 p.m. Eastern carrying the IGS Radar 7 satellite. The spacecraft is the latest in a series of radar mapping satellites used by Japan's military to monitor North Korea as well as for civilian disaster response. With this launch, only four more H-2A launches are planned before the vehicle is retired. It will be replaced by the H3 rocket, slated to perform its first launch next month. (1/26)

Colorado Rep. Lamborn to Chair House Subcommittee Overseeing Space Force (Source: Space News)
Colorado Congressman Doug Lamborn will be the new chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the Space Force. The House Armed Services Committee announced Wednesday that Lamborn would chair the strategic forces subcommittee. Lamborn, a Republican whose district includes Colorado Springs, said his priorities will include progress on hypersonic missiles and defenses against Russian and Chinese hypersonic missiles, streamlining acquisition of new technologies, and procurement of national security launch services, including responsive launch. (1/26)

Stratolaunch Creates Advanced Program Office at Purdue for Hypersonics (Source: Space Daily)
Stratolaunch LLC and Purdue University are pleased to announce they have established a partnership dedicated to accelerating the time required to design, build, test and fly hypersonic vehicles. Stratolaunch will establish the Stratolaunch Advanced Programs Office at the Convergence Center in Purdue's Discovery Park District in West Lafayette, Indiana, to ensure the goals of their collaboration will be rapidly achieved. The office will be led by an experienced advanced design director with support staff that will offer opportunities for student internships. (1/26)

OneWeb and Marsh's Mission-Critical Collaboration Continues (Source: Space Daily)
OneWeb, the low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications company, and Marsh, the world's leading insurance broker and risk advisor, have announced that their relationship will continue through in 2023, covering launches from the US and India. OneWeb signed an agreement for an aggregate insured value of more than $1 billion through Marsh in September 2021 and now that relationship will cover the remaining satellite launches for OneWeb to complete its Gen1 constellation. The insurance programme has continued to underpin the development of OneWeb's communications capabilities in established and new markets. (1/26)

SwRI-Led Lucy Team Announces New Asteroid Target (Source: Space Daily)
NASA's Lucy spacecraft will add another asteroid encounter to its 4-billion-mile journey. On Nov. 1, 2023, the Southwest Research Institute-led Lucy mission will get a close-up view of a small main belt asteroid to conduct an engineering test of the spacecraft's innovative asteroid-tracking navigation system.

The Lucy mission was already on course to break records by its planned visit of nine asteroids during its 12-year mission to tour the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, which orbit the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter. Originally, Lucy was not expected to get a close-up view of any asteroids until 2025, when it will fly by the main belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson. However, the SwRI-led Lucy team identified a small, as-yet unnamed asteroid in the inner main belt as a potential new and useful target for the Lucy spacecraft. (1/26)

NASA Validates Revolutionary Propulsion Design for Deep Space Missions (Source: Space Daily)
As NASA takes its first steps toward establishing a long-term presence on the Moon's surface, a team of propulsion development engineers at NASA have developed and tested NASA's first full-scale rotating detonation rocket engine, or RDRE, an advanced rocket engine design that could significantly change how future propulsion systems are built. The RDRE differs from a traditional rocket engine by generating thrust using a supersonic combustion phenomenon known as a detonation.

This design produces more power while using less fuel than today's propulsion systems and has the potential to power both human landers and interplanetary vehicles to deep space destinations, such as the Moon and Mars. Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and primary collaborator IN Space LLC, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, are confirming data from RDRE hot fire tests conducted in 2022 at Marshall's East Test Area. The engine was fired over a dozen times, totaling nearly 10 minutes in duration. (1/26)

Rocket Maker Reaction Dynamics ‘Absolutely Ecstatic’ About Commercial Launch in Canada (Source: SpaceQ)
The momentous announcement on Friday (Jan. 20) about Canada’s willingness to go into the commercial launch market is still garnering industry praise. After hearing from Maritime Launch Services (MLS), which told SpaceQ it is thrilled by the announcement, one of the spaceport’s partners is also giving high praise for the opportunities the government support will bring. “We are absolutely ecstatic,” Reaction Dynamics’ founder and CEO Bachar Elzein said. (1/24)

First Crewed Flight for Boeing's Starliner Set for April (Source: WESH)
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is now scheduled for an April launch for its first test mission with astronauts onboard. Just a few days ago at a Boeing facility on the Kennedy Space Center, the capsule was attached to the service module. “A lot of delays and a lot of money has been invested. The idea was to have independent pathways for getting U.S. astronauts into low earth orbit,” said UCF professor Josh Colwell. But Starliner’s delays gave the other pathway, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, a two-year head start. (1/24)

European Launch Chief Insists There Be No Competition with Ariane Rockets (Source: Ars Technica)
The development of a commercial launch industry in Europe lags behind the United States by about 10 or 15 years, but there are now about a dozen startups in Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, and France building small rockets sometimes referred to as "microlaunchers." Arianespace markets and operates a small launcher in the form of the Vega C rocket and heavy-lift rockets in the form of the soon-to-be retired Ariane 5 and forthcoming Ariane 6 rocket.

These rockets are considered essential to Europe's strategic interests because they provide European nations with independent access to space. In recent years, with the rise of private launch companies in Europe backed primarily by investors, some space officials have called for ESA to support these commercial space entities as NASA and the US government have done over the last 15 years. However, Arianespace chief executive Stéphane Israël took issue with this notion.

"It is not possible to copy-paste the US model," he said. "The level of space spending in the United States is five times higher than in Europe, and the private capital is not the same. So if the answer is to say let's do what the US has done, I think we will not manage to do it." Moreover, Israël said the European Space Agency must resist supporting microlaunchers to the point where these companies might compete with the existing capabilities. "A huge mistake would be that this focus on microlaunchers destabilizes Ariane 6 and Vega C—it would be a historic mistake." (1/24)

Lots of Tatooine-Like Planets Around Binary Stars May Be Habitable (Source: Science News)
Tatooine-like planets in orbit around pairs of stars might be our best bet in the search for habitable planets beyond our solar system. Many stars in the universe come in pairs. And lots of those should have planets orbiting them. That means there could be many more planets orbiting around binaries than around solitary stars like ours. But until now, no one had a clear idea about whether those planets’ environments could be conducive to life. New computer simulations suggest that, in many cases, life could imitate art.

A planet orbiting binary stars can get kicked out of the star system due to complicated interactions between the planet and stars. In the new study, the researchers found that, for planets with large orbits around star pairs, only about 1 out of 8 were kicked out of the system. The rest were stable enough to continue to orbit for the full billion years. About 1 in 10 settled in their habitable zones and stayed there. (1/24)

Giant Meteorite Found in Antarctic Ice (Source: Cosmos)
Antarctica’s inhospitable, wind-swept ice desert has produced five new meteorite finds – including a mammoth weighing in at 7.6 kilograms. In science, size isn’t all that matters. But we still love a thing that’s bigger than other things of the same type. Finding a space rock of this size is a very rare find, but not unheard-of. While undoubtedly large, it is a minnow compared to other finds.

The largest meteorite ever found in Australia is the Mundrabilla meteorite discovered in 1966 on the Nullarbor. The 12-tonne rock is now at the Western Australian Museum. But the largest in the world is the Hoba meteorite discovered in Namibia, weighing around 54 tonnes. Discovered in 1920, the meteorite is so big, it has never been moved. (1/25)

Vection Technologies to Develop Space Travel Metaverse Platform (Source: Australian Business)
Vection Technologies is on its way to providing the first virtual reality metaverse platform to promote space travel. The virtual reality player has executed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to develop the platform ahead of the Artemis Program – NASA’s bid to re-establish a human presence on the Moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Under the terms of the MOU, executed with Thales Alenia Space, Next One Film Group and ALTEC, Vection has been appointed as exclusive provider of VR and metaverse technologies. The plan is to capture video imaging data from cameras and sensors on-board space modules and spacecrafts, and transfer the captured video imaging data to ground, for immersive virtual reality visualisation by users through a dedicated metaverse platform called Lunar City. (1/25)

A Rocket Launcher You Can Recycle — ISRO Chief Says RLV Landing Demo This Week (Source: The Print)
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is all set to carry out the first landing demonstration of its Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) Saturday, its chairperson S. Somanath has said. Somanath said the demonstration will continue as planned provided climate and weather conditions are suitable. An RLV is a launch vehicle that is designed to return to the Earth substantially intact and could, therefore, be reused.

ISRO’s Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstration (RLV-TD) Programme is a series of technology demonstration missions, seen as the first step towards realising a two-stage-to-orbit (TSTO) fully reusable vehicle. A TSTO, or a two-stage rocket, is a spacecraft in which two distinct stages provide propulsion consecutively in order to achieve orbital velocity. (1/25)