June 7, 2023

Analysts See Space Investment Rebound, After Shakeout (Source: Space News)
Investors and analysts see signs of a rebound in space investment, but one that is more selective than the previous boom. Investment in space companies has dropped from a peak in 2021, caused by a rise in interest rates as well as poor performance of some space companies. At a conference this week, officials said they were seeing signs of recovery in the field, but noted that investors are being more cautious about the companies they support and the amount of funding they provide. However, a shakeout in the industry could carry on for some time as companies that went public through SPAC deals continue to struggle. (6/7)

ULA Vulcan Testing Resumes on Cape Canaveral Launch Pad (Source: ULA)
United Launch Alliance rolled its Vulcan Centaur rocket back to the pad for a static-fire test. The company said Tuesday the rocket is back on the pad for testing ahead of what it calls the Flight Readiness Firing of its BE-4 engines. That firing was postponed last month because of a problem with the booster ignition system. ULA has not set a new date for the firing, one of the last tests before the vehicle is ready for its first launch. (6/7)

Law Gives DeSantis More Power Over Space Florida as CEO Retires (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
The retiring head of Space Florida says his departure is not linked to a new law changing state oversight of the agency. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law Monday that reshapes the Space Florida board of directors, reducing it from 13 to 8 members, 5 of which will be chosen by the governor. The law also increases oversight of Space Florida, devoted to space economic development in the state. Retiring CEO Frank DiBello said he had been in discussions with the board for more than a year about his retirement plans, which were not changed by the legislation. He said the new oversight of Space Florida also won't change its activities. (6/6)

Astronomers Propose Arecibo Replacement in Puerto Rico (Source: Physics World)
Astronomers have proposed a smaller replacement for the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. After the giant 305-meter dish collapsed in 2020, astronomers proposed replacing it with an array of more than 1,100 dishes, each nine meters in diameter, providing the same collecting area as the original monolithic dish. That proposal has failed to win support, so astronomers have come up with a scaled-back replacement, one featuring 102 dishes each 13 meters in diameter, with a collecting area equal to a single 130-meter dish.  Astronomers do not have a revised cost estimate for the smaller array, but it expect it to be less than the $454 million of the earlier proposal. (6/7)

Bombshell UFO Whistleblower Testimony Suggests Virgin Galactic Could Be Wildly Undervalued (Source: Benzinga)
Shares of Virgin Galactic are moving aggressively higher in early trade on Tuesday as the world may be about to change in a fundamentally paradigm-shifting way. At last check, the stock was trading up almost 6% to above $4.00 in the wake of bombshell whistleblower testimony that the US and other near-peer countries are in possession of exotic materials of a non-human, off-planet origin.

The most obvious stock to benefit from this news is Virgin Galatic. The company’s equity is currently trading at just over $1 billion but could be worth at least 50x that just on speculation of what the future of space travel for humanity holds. The possibilities implied by the latest news regarding the reverse-engineering of non-human exotic-propulsion vehicles are endless in terms of humanity’s future in space. Virgin Galactic and the privately-held SpaceX will be among the biggest beneficiaries of technological breakthroughs that are inevitably on the way.

The other company set to benefit is Lockheed Martin, home of the infamous experimental aerospace arm known as Skunkworks. Rumors have been swirling for a couple of years that Lockheed has actually been in possession of exotic materials and that reverse engineering has been taking place at Skunkworks. Even more fascinating, Steve Justice, who currently serves as a Senior Vice President for Programs and Engineering at Virgin Galactic, is a former Skunkworks program director. (6/6)

Space Force COSMIC Office Opens in Virginia (Source: Space News)
The Space Force opened a new office Tuesday as part of its efforts to work more closely with the commercial space industry. Space Systems Command held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday for COSMIC, or Commercial Space Marketplace for Innovation and Collaboration, in Chantilly, Virginia. The office and conference center will serve as the headquarters for the command’s new Commercial Space Office. The office is an umbrella organization for several units that already existed, including a new Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve program that will look at ways to partner with commercial space companies so their services can be accessed during national security emergencies. (6/7)

OneWeb Steps Up Maritime Service (Source: Space News)
OneWeb is making inroads into the maritime market as it expands its satellite coverage. OneWeb announced Tuesday it is offering a free trial for maritime customers for up to 45 days, with speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. The company says its service is now available in the northern hemisphere down to a latitude of 35 degrees, offering coverage for most of Europe and much of the United States. It has previously only offered service north of 50 degrees. OneWeb expects to finalize the ground stations needed for worldwide coverage by the end of this year. (6/7)

Italy's Apogeo to Launch Nine Satellites (Source: Space News)
Italian remote monitoring satellite startup Apogeo Space has signed a deal to launch nine satellites with Momentus. The nine satellites, each one-third the size of a single-unit cubesat, will launch on a Vigoride tug that will be on the SpaceX Transporter-10 mission in February 2024. They will follow nine satellites on the Vigoride-7 mission launching in October. Apogeo Space plans to ultimately deploy 96 satellites to provide connectivity for remote devices at VHF frequencies. (6/7)

Rivada Seeks Ex-Im Bank Financing for Constellation (Source: Space News)
Rivada Satellite Networks is looking to the Ex-Im Bank to help finance its satellite constellation. At a conference this week, Rivada CEO Declan Ganley said the company was in discussions with Ex-Im about debt financing for its 300-satellite constellation. Rivada, through a German subsidiary, signed contracts earlier this year with Terran Orbital for the satellites and SpaceX for 12 Falcon 9 launches. The company has not disclosed how much the constellation will cost beyond the $2.4 billion contract with Terran Orbital. Rivada is also awaiting a decision from the ITU by early July on a waiver of a spectrum filing milestone that currently requires the company to launch 10% of its constellation by September. (6/7)

York Space Systems acquires Emergent Space Technologies (Source: Space News)
Satellite manufacturer York Space Systems announced June 7 it has acquired Emergent Space Technologies, a small business that develops flight software and engineering tools for space missions. York, based in Denver, did not disclose the value of the acquisition. Emergent, founded in 2001, is based in Laurel, Maryland; and Austin, Texas. The transaction has cleared regulatory reviews and the merger is now complete, said York’s CEO Dirk Wallinger. (6/7)

Congress Supports Biden's $886B Defense Budget (Source: Jane's)
Congress has endorsed a 3.3% increase in the defense budget for fiscal year 2024, allocating $886 billion, which aligns with President Joe Biden's request. This increase, part of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, also includes a rise in the US government's debt ceiling to prevent a potential default. (6/6)

Design Proposal Could Double Space Solar Cell Efficiency (Source: Space Daily)
When it comes to supplying energy for space exploration and settlements, commonly available solar cells made of silicon or gallium arsenide are still too heavy to be feasibly transported by rocket. To address this challenge, a wide variety of lightweight alternatives are being explored, including solar cells made of a thin layer of molybdenum selenide, which fall into the broader category of 2D transition metal dichalcogenide (2D TMDC) solar cells. Researchers propose a device design that can take the efficiencies of 2D TMDC devices from 5%, as has already been demonstrated, to 12%. (6/7)

Xona Space Systems Certifies Spirent's LEO SatNav Constellation Simulator (Source: Space Daily)
Spirent, the leading global provider of test and assurance solutions, is pleased to announce SimXona, an industry-first Xona satellite constellation simulator, has been fully certified by Xona Space Systems. Xona is developing PULSAR, a commercial positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) service built on a backbone of low Earth orbit (LEO) small satellites. Xona's patented high-powered smallsat signals will improve PNT resilience and accuracy by augmenting global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), such as GPS, while operating with an independent navigation and timing system architecture. (5/31)

ESA Launches Major Recruitment Drive for 2023 (Source: Space Daily)
In an unprecedented move, the European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that it will be hiring over 200 new colleagues to join its teams in 2023. This large-scale recruitment drive aims to support ESA's ongoing mission of promoting the peaceful exploration and use of space for the benefit of everyone. ESA recently published over 30 job vacancies and hinted at more to come. This opens a multitude of career opportunities for professionals ready to take the next step in their space career. (6/2)

NASA Inspector General Blames Rocket Engine Contract Mismanagement for Artemis Moon Program’s Problems (Source: SpaceRef)
NASA’s Artemis Moon program is six years behind schedule and at least $6 billion over budget due to the space agency’s mismanagement of rocket engine contracts. That’s according to the findings of a new NASA IG report released May 25. The OIG audited NASA’s contracts procuring powerful RS-25 rocket engines and boosters for the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which finally flew its first test flight in November after four years of delays.

The Artemis program comes with a steep cost. So far, the program has cost an estimated $93 billion in total from its origins in 2012 through fiscal year 2025, 26 percent ($23.8 billion) of which is due to the SLS rocket. And the whole project could have been further along by now if not for mismanagement, per the OIG report — Congress originally instructed NASA to launch the first SLS flight by 2016.

So far, Aerojet Rocketdyne has only completed five of the 16 RS-25 engine adaptations contracted by NASA, and the unexpected technical difficulties also increased the costs of the booster rocket development, per the OIG’s Artemis audit. Engine and booster adaptations and production were supposed to cost NASA about $7 billion over 14 years, according to the report, but will now cost $13.1, at a minimum, over 25 years. (6/5)

Game On—the Most Metal of Asteroid Missions is Back on the Menu (Source: Ars Technica)
One year after NASA announced an indefinite delay of a much-anticipated mission to visit a metal-rich asteroid, the agency said Monday that the Psyche spacecraft is back on track. The Psyche mission is now scheduled to launch in four months on a Falcon Heavy rocket, and everyone involved in the project feels good about that date. "We believe Psyche is on a positive course for an October 2023 launch," said Thomas Young, who chaired an independent review board that NASA convened last summer after the mission was delayed.

If the mission does launch this fall, the spacecraft will reach asteroid Psyche in August 2029. There, it will go into orbit for 26 months to gain insights into planetary formation, understand the interior of terrestrial planets like Earth, and examine a world that is made largely of metal. The mission is also of interest to the nascent asteroid mining community, which seeks to learn about the potential value harbored by these relatively rare, metallic asteroids. (6/5)

Hughes Partners with OneWeb to Distribute Global In-Flight Connectivity Services (Source: The Gazette)
Hughes Network Systems has entered into a strategic partnership agreement with LEO satellite constellation operator OneWeb to serve as a OneWeb connectivity services distributor to the global airline market. Hughes will package the OneWeb services in a new hybrid LEO in-flight connectivity solutions package anchored by Hughes’ electronically steered antenna. (6/5)

How Activity in Outer Space Will Affect Regional Inequalities in the Future (Source: The Conversation)
Science fiction has always been a tool for processing life on Earth. Norwegian sci-fi expert Karl Kristian Swane Bambini has said that the space-bound genre is well placed to “interrogate and reimagine real-world economic disparities”. He gives the examples of, among other things, the 2013 blockbuster Elysium, wherein healthcare is only accessible off-world, to people with spaceships, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s 1990s Mars trilogy of novels, which opposes the egalitarianism of a Martian society to Earth’s capitalist dystopia.

Regional development is about tackling spatial injustice – that is, regional inequalities. Doing so, though, isn’t just about measuring the difference between today’s haves and have-nots to determine whether that gap might narrow or widen. Our idea of what is fair changes over time. Circumstances change, too. New inequalities emerge. Click here. (6/5)

Neumann Space Signs with Space Inventor (Source: Space & Defense)
Neumann Space has announced it has signed a contract with Space Inventor in a bid to gain greater access to space as part of its program of in-orbit demonstration (IOD). Space Inventor says as part of its contract it will provide Neumann Space with the opportunity to integrate its next generation Neumann Drive as an IOD payload on board a 6U EDISON Satellite scheduled for launch in the second half of 2024. (6/6)

NASA Finds Organic Molecules in 12 Billion-Year-Old Galaxy, and a Mystery (Source: Vice)
Astronomers have spotted complex organic molecules in an ancient galaxy that existed only 1.5 billion years after the birth of our universe, setting a new record for the most distant detection of these key cosmic compounds, reports a new study. The discovery revealed that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a class of molecules found in smoke and soot, are distributed across this faraway galaxy in an unexplained pattern that raises new questions about the early evolution of stars and galaxies. (6/5)

Astroscale Contracts with Share My Space for Risk Identification (Source: Share My Space)
Share My Space, the French space surveillance and operations safety startup has signed a new contract with Japanese headquartered in-orbit servicing company Astroscale. This first contract will optimally enable Astroscale to assess space objects’ attitude in LEO, a mandatory requirement for any on-orbit rendezvous. (6/6)