August 26, 2023

SpaceX Launches ISS Crew on Dragon Capsule, Recovers Booster (Source: Click Orlando)
SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket early Saturday morning from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport as part of its Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station. The rocket took off at 3:27 a.m. The launch was originally scheduled for 3:50 a.m. on Friday morning, but NASA announced that they would scrub the launch. Mission managers rescheduled the liftoff for early Saturday morning, giving them an extra 24 hours to close out lingering issues, officials said. (8/26)

DIU Teaming with Space Force on Victus Haze Project (Source: Defense Scoop)
The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit issued a solicitation for “tactically responsive” space system prototypes from the commercial sector amid growing concerns about threats to U.S. satellites. DIU is partnering with the Space Force’s Space Safari acquisition program office on the initiative, which will culminate in a multi-phase technology demonstration it’s calling Victus Haze. (8/25)

NSSL Space Force Proposal is Government Contracting Gone Bad (Source: Daily Torch)
Government contracting decisions can often unintentionally create unnecessary additional costs to taxpayers. Such is the case with the Request for Proposal (RFP) from the U.S. Space Force that will award launch providers billions of dollars in taxpayer money over the course of four years. Space Force routinely awards these contracts as part of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Program, the main vehicle for procuring launches so the U.S. government can reach space.

The Space Force should be working to make launch more competitive and drive down costs, not incentivizing the opposite as providers bid high to account for the maximum number of launches possible to avoid coming up short. The second draft RFP for NSSL Phase 3 is the latest example of government contracting gone bad. It’s clear that there was little consideration for the final cost or how it could impact taxpayers. (8/25)

SpaceX Blast Left Officials in Disbelief Over Texas Environmental Damage (Source: Bloomberg)
In April, US wildlife officials visited the site of a SpaceX rocket that exploded shortly after takeoff and took in the damage: Concrete chunks had left craters a foot deep and were strewn across tidal flats, almost four acres of state park were burned, and seven bobwhite quail eggs and a collection of blue land crabs had been incinerated.

The officials, biologists working with the Fish and Wildlife Service, privately expressed disbelief at the extent of the scene, records obtained by Bloomberg News show. “The explosion was so extensive it sent concrete chunks flying into the surf,” said one email from Chris Perez of the FWS to colleagues. The environmental damage was due to the tremendous amount of force required to get the world's largest rocket off the ground. (8/25)

Spaceport America Releases Economic Impact Report (Source: KVIA)
A new report finds that in 2022, Spaceport America supported 548 direct jobs, 811 total New Mexico jobs, and contributed an estimated $138 million to the economy. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA), NMSU's Arrowhead and Border Economic Development (BED) centers conducted the report. New Mexico taxpayers, especially those who live in Sierra and Dona Ana counties, are paying for the spaceport. As of 2021, Dona Ana County was shouldering 95% of the debt incurred by the building of Spaceport America.

PM Modi Announces August 23 as ‘National Space Day’ in India (Source: Hindustan Times)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday announced August 23 as the ‘National Space Day’. Chandrayaan-3 made a successful soft landing on the south pole of the Moon on August 23. (8/26)

Rideshare Industry Adapting to a Changing Smallsat Market (Source: Space News)
Satellites have launched as secondary payloads for decades. For much of that time, however, those payloads were arranged on a one-off basis, hitching rides ad hoc on rockets with room to spare. Growing interest over the last 15 years in cubesats, often developed by universities or startups, led to the emergence of rideshare aggregators, companies that would serve as an intermediary between satellite developers looking for rides and launch service providers with excess capacity for sale.

But as the demand for rideshare launches grows, the customers for those launches are changing. Renato Panesi, chief commercial officer of Italian rideshare operator D-Orbit, says his customers fall into two broad categories. The biggest customers for his company are smallsat constellation developers looking to build out their systems. The other major group are startups, universities and governments looking to launch their first satellites.

Those two customer sets are moving in different directions. The constellation market is not growing as fast as projected a few years ago, which D-Orbit suspects is due to a combination of supply chain issues affecting the satellite industry and challenges raising capital. In the other category, Panesi said the company has seen an increase in demand from regions like Latin America and the Middle East that are just starting to get involved in space operations. (8/25)

Mysterious Dark Spot on Neptune Detected From Earth for the First Time (Source: SciTech Daily)
Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have identified a significant dark spot in Neptune’s atmosphere, with an adjacent smaller bright spot. This marks the first such observation made with a terrestrial telescope.

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have observed a large dark spot in Neptune’s atmosphere, with an unexpected smaller bright spot adjacent to it. This is the first time a dark spot on the planet has ever been observed with a telescope on Earth. These occasional features in the blue background of Neptune’s atmosphere are a mystery to astronomers, and the new results provide further clues as to their nature and origin. (8/25)

Big Constellations No Longer Necessarily Mean Small Satellites (Source: Space News)
The world’s largest constellation operators are plotting considerably bigger second-generation satellites, joining a trend toward more sizable spacecraft in low Earth orbit (LEO). SpaceX operates by far the largest constellation by satellite count and mass after launching more than 4,000 Starlinks in four years. Most of the Starlinks deployed to date weighed between 200 and 300 kilograms ready for launch — already close to the 500-kilogram cut-off point for being considered a small satellite under some definitions (others set the upper limit at 1,200 kilograms).

OneWeb has 634 broadband satellites in LEO and has said its second generation will be bulkier than the 150-kilogram spacecraft currently in its fleet, which recently became the world’s second-biggest by number, at around 500 kilograms each. Constellation operators will always prefer larger satellites for their second generation, according to Euroconsult principal adviser Maxime Puteaux, versus going smaller with the miniaturization of technology. Even if they have higher upfront costs, larger satellites promise better performance in payload size and design life, which should make it easier to cover this expense over the network’s lifespan. (8/25)

Japan's 'Moon Sniper' Mission Looks to Match Indian Success (Source: Space Daily)
Hot on the heels of India's historic lunar landing, Japan's space program is hoping to rebound from a string of setbacks next week with the launch of its own mission: "Moon Sniper". The rocket will carry a lander expected to reach the Moon's surface in four to six months as well as an x-ray imaging satellite designed to investigate the evolution of the universe. The launch is scheduled to take place Monday after bad weather pushed it back.

Japan's space program is one of the world's largest, but its first attempt to put a lander on the Moon failed in November 2022, and a new type of rocket exploded during a test last month. JAXA's hopes are now centered on the "Smart Lander for Investigating Moon". As its acronym suggests, SLIM is small and light, standing 2.4 meters high, 2.7 meters wide and 1.7 meters long, and weighing around 700 kilograms. Dubbed the "Moon Sniper" for its precision, JAXA is aiming to land it within 100 meters of a specific target on the Moon, far less than the usual range of several kilometers. (8/25)

Tomorrow.io Announces First Weather Report From Space-Based Radar (Source: Space Daily)
Joining the likes of NASA, weather intelligence company Tomorrow.io said Thursday its radar satellites have the unique ability to monitor precipitation intensity from space. Tomorrow.io said its satellites are able to close the gap in terms of availability and affordability for real-time, radar-based weather forecasting for every point on Earth. The company estimates that billions of people are currently outside of radar coverage. (8/24)

Solar Orbiter Spacecraft May Have Discovered What Powers Solar Winds (Source: Engadget)
The images captured last year by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument aboard ESA's and NASA's Solar Orbiter, may have finally given us the knowledge needed to explain what powers solar winds. Researchers described observing large numbers of jets coming out of a dark region of the sun called a "coronal hole" in the images taken by the spacecraft. The team called them "picoflare jets," because they contain around one-trillionth the energy of what the largest solar flares can generate.

These picoflare jets measure a few hundred kilometers in length, reach speeds of around 100 kilometers per second and only last between 20 and 100 seconds. Still, the researchers believe they have the power to emit enough high-temperature plasma to be considered a substantial source of our system's solar winds. While Coronal holes have long been known as source regions for the phenomenon, scientists are still trying to figure out the mechanism of how plasma streams emerge from them exactly. This discovery could finally be the answer they'd been seeking for years. (8/25)