June 4, 2023

Inside China's Reusable Rocket Program (Source: Dongfang Hour)
Let's look at the state of China's reusable rocket program as of mid-2023, discussing who the main players are, different technologies and strategies, and future perspectives. Click here. (6/3)

SpaceX Launches Starlink Satellites, Delays ISS Cargo Mission From Florida (Source: Florida Today)
SpaceX on Sunday launched a batch of Starlink Mini satellites from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport, recovering the first-stage booster on a droneship downrange. The company had planned to also launch an ISS cargo mission Sunday afternoon, but pushed that mission to Monday morning due to downrange weather concerns. (6/4)

Betelgeuse is Almost 50% Brighter Than Normal. What's Going On? (Source: Universe Today)
Whenever something happens with Betelgeuse, speculations about it exploding as a supernova proliferate. It would be cool if it did. We’re far enough away to suffer no consequences, so it’s fun to imagine the sky lighting up like that for months. Now the red supergiant star has brightened by almost 50%, and that has the speculation ramping up again. Betelgeuse will explode as a supernova. On that, there is universal agreement. But the question of when is less certain. The star’s behaviour is confounding. How can puny humans find out? (6/2)

A Culinary Lab Offers Astronauts a Taste of the Future (Source: CNN)
For astronauts who want to eat fresh, healthy food, the designers at Nonfiction in San Francisco may have a solution. The company developed the idea of a culinary lab as part of NASA and the Canadian Space Agency’s Deep Space Food Challenge. The culinary lab would function as a unit that could fit into a spacecraft of future long-term space missions. The multipurpose module would allow crew members to grow their own leafy greens, blend creamy coffee and even grill meat while in space. An algae-growing station would create an opportunity for an unlikely but nutrient-rich snack. Click here. (6/3)

Starlink, Amazon Red-Flag Satellite Spectrum Auction (Source: Economic Times)
Elon Musk’s Starlink and Jeff Bezos-led Amazon have, for the first time, directly entered the battle over satellite spectrum allotment in India, backing the administrative route, going up against telecom market leader Reliance Jio Infocomm and Vodafone Idea which want an auction. Starlink and Amazon, along with Bharti Group-backed OneWeb and Canada’s Telesat, have told the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) that auctioning satellite airwaves would make the business of satellite communications unviable. (6/3)

ESA Funds Zero-G Reactor That Runs on 'Powdered Rust' (Source: Extreme Tech)
Continuing an encouraging trend toward in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), officials from the European Space Agency (ESA) announced this week that the agency is backing an experimental steam reactor project designed to burn powdered rust, "un-rust" it, and burn it again. In a statement, the agency said, "Iron rust can even be processed to remove the oxygen and return it as iron using hydrogen. By using electricity from sustainable sources, iron as a fuel can become a circular, endlessly recyclable energy storage."

Given the right environment, anything can burn, but some materials burn much more readily than others. So, researchers studying a type of fire called discrete burning used the ESA's microgravity experiment facilities—parabolic flights and sounding rockets launched from an ESA facility in Sweden—to min-max combustion in space. (6/2)

US Military Has Been Observing ‘Metallic Orbs’ Making Extraordinary ‘Maneuvers’ (Source: The Hill)
At a historic NASA briefing on UAPs a key DoD official made a striking disclosure. Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, director of a new UAP analysis office, stated that U.S. military personnel are observing “metallic orbs” “all over the world.” An image, along with two brief videos of such objects are now publicly available. According to Kirkpatrick, spherical objects account for the largest proportion — nearly half — of all UAP reports received by his office. Critically, some of these objects are capable of “very interesting apparent maneuvers.”

To be sure, rigorous scientific analysis may ultimately identify a prosaic explanation for such observations. In the meantime, however, such “metallic orbs” are prima facie evidence of extraordinary technology. After all, how would spheres, lacking wings or apparent forms of propulsion, execute “maneuvers” of any kind? In his presentation, Kirkpatrick also described the UAP characteristics most frequently received by his office. This range of attributes, in short, amounts to a UAP profile that Kirkpatrick’s staff is “out hunting for.”

Intriguingly, this profile includes small (3 to 13 feet in diameter) “spherical” objects capable of flight at a range of velocities, from “stationary” to twice the speed of sound, despite a perplexing absence of “thermal exhaust” such as heat from an engine. Of particular note, as Kirkpatrick made clear, some of these highly anomalous characteristics are observed via multiple sensors. (6/2)

Chinese TSS Crew Returns to Earth (Source: China Daily)
The return capsule of the Shenzhou XV manned spaceship, carrying astronauts Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu, touched down at the Dongfeng landing site in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region safely on Sunday. The Shenzhou XV mission crew ended a six-month mission that witnessed the completion of the Tiangong space station. (6/4)

China Lunar Rocket Engine Sets Test Record (Source: Xinhua)
China has completed the 6th trial run for the main rocket engine of its future crewed lunar missions, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. The 130-tonne class liquid oxygen kerosene rocket engine brought its cumulative test run time to 3,300 seconds after this recent trial, setting a new record for the longest trial of a single 100-tonne class engine in China, said the corporation. (6/4)

UAE Outlines Plans for Asteroid Mission (Source: Space News)
The United Arab Emirates has released new details about its planned mission to the main asteroid belt. The Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt (EMA) is scheduled to launch in March 2028, flying by six asteroids in the main asteroid belt before arriving at a seventh asteroid in 2034. The EMA spacecraft, called MBR Explorer after Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai and prime minister of the UAE, will weigh nearly 2,300 kilograms at launch and carry four instruments from American and Italian partners.

The agency said that more than 50% of the “overall contracted mission” will be developed by UAE companies, but listed only satellite operator Yahsat in the announcement. The MBR Explorer spacecraft bears a resemblance to NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, launched in October 2021 on a mission to fly by two main belt asteroids and several Trojan asteroids that lead and follow Jupiter in its orbit around the sun. The Lucy mission has a total cost, including launch and operations, of nearly $1 billion. (6/3)

Tiny Probe the Size of Your Cell Phone Could Measure Asteroid Gravity (Source: Space.com)
The European Space Agency (ESA) wants to land a tiny mobile phone-sized satellite on an asteroid to measure its gravity. ESA has completed vacuum and vibration tests for its Gravimeter for Small Solar System Objects (GRASS) asteroid probe. GRASS is designed to measure surface gravity on the Dimorphos asteroid, which NASA's DART spacecraft collided with as a part of its mission last year. Dimorphos has a diameter of about 525 feet, which is roughly the size of NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).

GRASS will be hitching a ride to Dimorphos aboard a cubesat named Juventas, which is part of ESA's Hera mission for planetary defense. "Following the DART impact, Hera will gather close-up data on the Dimorphos asteroid to turn this kinetic impact experiment into a well-understood and in principle repeatable method of planetary defense. GRASS's surface gravity measurements will help researchers learn the precise mass of the asteroid, along with radio science experiments performed by the main Hera spacecraft," said Hera system engineer Hannah Goldberg. (6/2)

This is Not Your Apollo Moon Buggy. NASA Wants a New Moon Rover (Source: Washington Post)
NASA has opened competition to build a moon vehicle that would be a cross between the Apollo-era “moon buggy” and the remotely operated robotic rovers that have operated on Mars for years. Called the “Lunar Terrain Vehicle,” the rover would play a key role in NASA’s Artemis program. NASA said it wants vehicles that astronauts “will drive to explore and sample more of the lunar surface using the LTV than they could on foot.”

“As we found on Apollo, one to two kilometers is about as far as you want to walk in a suit on the lunar surface,” Steve Munday, NASA’s LTV program manager, said in an interview. “So you need something else. You need to extend that range, both for transportation and for science.” But since astronauts would be on the surface only for up to 30 days at a time, the vehicle would need to be useful without astronauts on board. Between crewed missions, the LTVs would be used to “transport cargo and scientific payloads between crewed landing sites, enabling additional science returns, resource prospecting and lunar exploration,” the agency said.

For various missions, NASA will pay to use the rover for its purposes. “But then, the other several months of the year, it’ll be up to the provider to commercialize it,” Munday said. “So we’re not only leveraging commercial innovation but helping to drive this nascent lunar economy.” Paying customers could include companies performing science experiments on the moon or prospecting for resources. (6/2)

Fixed-Price Satellite Contracts Earn High grades in Space Force Report Card (Source: Space News)
Military satellites acquired under fixed-price contracts get high praise in a report submitted to Congress by the Department of the Air Force. Two Space Force satellite programs — the Global Positioning System Follow-on (GPS 3F) and the Weather System Follow-on (WSF) — were identified in the report as “high performing,” in part because they were acquired under fixed-price contracts. Space Force procurement chief Frank Calvelli has advocated the use of fixed-price contracts for virtually all satellite procurements. He has been critical of traditional military “cost plus” acquisitions where the government reimburses all of the costs associated with a project, plus a negotiated profit fee. (6/2)

Colorado Springs to Host DEL 15, Two Additional Squadrons (Source: Space Daily)
The U.S. Space Force's Space Delta 15, activated in March 2023, is expected to be permanently based at Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado, along with the new 75th Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Squadron. Additionally, the service expects the 74th ISR Squadron, activated in November 2022, to be based at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado.

DEL 15, a command-and-control organization within Space Operations Command, provides mission-ready forces in support of the National Space Defense Center's protect and defend space mission. The unit currently operates at Schriever Space Force Base and is expected to remain there permanently. The two ISR squadrons will provide additional capabilities within Space Delta 7, which has embedded detachments in each of the command's other deltas to provide real-time ISR support to their respective missions. (6/1)