April 12, 2024

Fleet's Centauri-6 Satellite Enhances Global Mineral Surveys (Source: Space Daily)
Fleet Space Technologies has successfully launched the Centauri-6 satellite. The satellite joins Fleet Space's constellation, enhancing its ExoSphere mineral exploration solution and expanding its advanced SATCOM capabilities utilizing microsatellite technology. Centauri-6 represents another stride in Fleet Space's portfolio. Notably, Fleet Space launched Centauri-4 with Push-To-Talk capabilities for the Australian Defence Force. Additionally, Fleet plans to deploy its SPIDER seismic technology to the Moon under NASA's CLPS initiative with Firefly Aerospace. (4/8)

Iridium Secures Contract to Enhance FAA Network Resilience with L3Harris (Source: Space Daily)
Iridium has entered into a five-year commercial agreement with L3Harris Technologies to provide the Iridium Satellite Time and Location (STL) service. This service will be deployed across over thirty L3Harris-operated network backbone nodes and numerous FAA facilities nationwide. L3Harris manages a proprietary nationwide network for the FAA, facilitating voice, data, and video communications critical to National Airspace System operations. The network's need for precise timing synchronization, vital for supporting various critical infrastructure applications, is served by the Iridium STL service. This service significantly reduces reliance on GPS for primary network timing. (4/10)

NASA Expands Collaboration with Commercial Partners on Space Station Medical Protocols (Source: Space Daily)
As the aerospace community expands beyond governmental boundaries, NASA is leveraging its comprehensive human spaceflight experience to guide the development of new commercial space stations. By working with private partners, NASA aims to make space more accessible, ensuring that the cumulative know-how of over a quarter-century at the International Space Station translates into safer future missions for a wider range of participants.

Dr. Rahul Suresh, a medical officer at NASA's Johnson Space Center, highlighted the lack of established industry standards and government regulations for managing the health and safety of non-professional astronauts in orbit. To address this, NASA is imparting its medical best practices to budding commercial spaceflight entities. This initiative aims to lay a solid foundation for hosting future NASA missions on these new platforms. (4/10)

SpaceX Launches Military Weather Satellite From California Spaceport (Source: Space Daily)
SpaceX launched its second national security mission of 2024 on Thursday with a Falcon 9 rocket lifting the U.S. Space Force mission USSF-62 into orbit. The mission took off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base. The mission sends a Weather System Follow-on Microwave satellite, or WSF-M, to low Earth orbit. (4/11)

Space Investors Question the Merits of Vertical Integration (Source: Space News)
Space investors are questioning the benefits of vertical integration. Companies like SpaceX have benefited from having more control over their supply chains, reducing costs and creating greater capabilities. However, during a panel at Space Symposium this week, executives noted that vertical integration is more difficult to carry out now given reduced access to capital. They said there may instead be greater opportunities for investors to fund companies that fill gaps in the supply chain. (4/12)

Banding Together for Direct-to-Smartphone Satellite Services (Source: Space News)
Satellite operators are considering banding together to serve the emerging direct-to-smartphone market. Viasat CEO Mark Dankberg said his company is considering investing in mobile satellite services spacecraft with other companies, an approach he said could enable seamless roaming from one operator to another. He compared that approach to terrestrial cell towers that host payloads from multiple carriers. Dankberg is chair of the Mobile Satellite Services Association, an industry group founded in February intended to foster cooperation among mobile satellite services companies. (4/12)

China Completes Lunar Comms Satellite Testing (Source: Space News)
A Chinese lunar communications satellite has completed tests that will allow China to proceed with a sample return mission. Queqiao-2 completed on-orbit communication testing in recent days, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced Friday, including communications with the Chang'e-4 lander on the far side of the moon. The completion of the tests is the final step before the launch of Chang'e-6, which will land on the far side of the moon and return samples to Earth. Chang'e-6 now appears set to launch May 3, based on airspace closure notices. (4/12)

Amazon CEO Has High Hopes for Kuiper (Source: GeekWire)
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the Project Kuiper broadband constellation is a "very large revenue opportunity" for the company. In an annual letter to shareholders published Thursday, Jassy emphasized the potential of the $10 billion system but did not estimate how much revenue the company expects Kuiper to generate and over what period. Amazon plans to launch its first operational Kuiper satellites this year after two prototypes launched last October. The company must launch half of the planned 3,232 satellites by mid-2026. (4/12)

LeoLabs Using AI to Identify Anomalous Satellite Operations (Source: Space News)
Space tracking company LeoLabs is using AI to help identify anomalous satellite operations. A LeoLabs visualization tool shown at Space Symposium this week tracks maneuvers performed by satellites that change their orbits frequently and highlights maneuvers conducted by satellites that did not typically perform them. An example is a series of sudden maneuvers of three Chinese satellites that raised their orbits together after remaining in the same orbit for months after launch last year. The company has also improved its ability to detect maneuvers in as little as a single orbit. (4/12)

‘Innovation Theater’ Fills Gap Between Words and Action (Source: Space News)
While government agencies talk about embracing commercial innovation in space programs, many see a gap between words and action. National security space agencies are spending only between 2% and 5% of their budgets on commercial capabilities even as they tout phrases like "buy what we can, build what we must." Former government officials call that mismatch "innovation theater" or "buy what we're forced to and build anything we can get away with," and say factors such as unclear procurement regulations and reticence to change are to blame. (4/12)

TESS Enters Safe Mode with Technical Issue (Source: NASA)
A NASA astronomy spacecraft has gone into safe mode. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, went into safe mode on Monday because of an unspecified technical issue. NASA says the safe mode was triggered during "scheduled engineering activities" and that the spacecraft overall is in good health. The spacecraft, launched six years ago to search for exoplanets, should return to science operations in the near future. (4/12)

Illinois Airport Exploring Options for Commercial Spaceport (Source: WBBM
The Quad Cities International Airport is exploring a new frontier. With space tourism expected to grow in the coming years, the board of commissioners at The Quad Cities International Airport in Moline want to know if the airport could support a commercial spaceport. A state grant is paying for 90% of a study to look into the potential and evaluate if the airport has the necessary infrastructure. (11/9/23)

Midland TX Spaceport Leaders Reflect on Progress, Seek Community Interest (Source: KOSA)
The culmination of a decade of work, growing funding opportunities and an eye on community outreach has marked the first year of the Midland Spaceport Development Corporation’s return. In April 2023, City of Midland and Midland County leaders revived the board, which dissolved in 2020 after the Midland International Air and Space Port was first licensed as a spaceport in 2014.

In anticipation of state funding opportunities through House Bill 3447, the corporation was reestablished in 2023 for the spaceport to qualify. That bill established the Texas Space Commission, which was launched on March 26. The spaceport corporation is part of the work completed by Midland Development Corporation (MDC). The latter recruits, contracts and negotiates with new companies. However, both corporations have similar goals. (4/10)

Muon Space Unveils Satellite Platform Muon Halo (Source: Space Impulse)
Muon Space has launched its innovative satellite platform, Muon Halo. The platform’s integrated hardware and software stack seeks to revolutionize how LEO satellite constellations are designed, built, and operated. (4/5)

NATO Member Turkey Seeks to Join China-Russia Moon Project Instead of US-Led Artemis Program (Source: South China Morning Post)
Turkey could play an influential role in the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) as it seeks to join the project led by China and Russia, bringing with it high space ambitions and a shifting political agenda, according to a space analyst. The Middle Eastern nation had applied to be a member of the ILRS, an initiative to build a base at the moon’s south pole by 2035, Turkish and Russian media outlets reported on Monday. It is the first NATO member to apply. (4/11)

NASA Next-Generation Solar Sail Boom Technology Ready for Launch (Source: NASA)
The Advanced Composite Solar Sail System demonstration uses a twelve-unit (12U) CubeSat built by NanoAvionics to test a new composite boom made from flexible polymer and carbon fiber materials that are stiffer and lighter than previous boom designs. The mission’s primary objective is to successfully demonstrate new boom deployment, but once deployed, the team also hopes to prove the sail’s performance. (4/10)

Uranus and Neptune Aren't Made of What We Thought, New Study Hints (Source: Live Science)
Much about Uranus and Neptune remains unknown. These ice giant worlds have had just a single spacecraft visitor, Voyager 2, which flew past them in the 1980s. As a result, scientists have only a hazy idea of the ice giants' compositions — for example, that they contain significant amounts of oxygen, carbon and hydrogen. Astronomers have devised models that match the physical properties that Voyager 2 and Earth-based telescopes have measured.

Many models assume the planets have a thin hydrogen and helium envelope; an underlying layer of compressed, superionic water and ammonia; and a central rocky core. (The water is what gives them their "ice giant" tag.) Some estimates suggest Uranus and Neptune may each have 50,000 times the quantity of water in Earth's oceans. But a new study says these models ignore the way the ice giants formed. As Uranus and Neptune coalesced from the dust cloud surrounding the young sun, they gobbled up objects called planetesimals. The team says these planetesimals resemble present-day comets.

Unlike the supposedly water-rich ice giants, though, a large fraction of these planetesimal-like objects are rich in carbon. So "how is it possible to form an icy giant from ice-poor building blocks?" The astronomers found that those models with methane — either in solid chunks or, given the pressure, in a mushy state — form a thick layer between the hydrogen-helium envelope and the water layer. In some models, methane accounted for 10% of the planet's mass. (4/11)

Space Weather Can Make it Hard to Predict VLEO Satellite Trajectories (Source: Space.com)
Satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) can venture hundreds of miles off their expected trajectories when bad space weather hits. The problem affects the International Space Station, China's Tiangong space station and many Earth-observing satellites that need a close view of our planet. Experts say this positioning uncertainty increases the risk of dangerous orbital collisions, which threaten to worsen the space debris problem and make the space around Earth unsafe.

"At altitudes of 500 kilometers [310 miles], we can determine the position of our satellites with the accuracy of 2 centimeters [0.8 inches]," Alex Saltman, CEO of California-based satellite company GeoOptics, which makes meteorological measurements of Earth's upper atmosphere, told Space.com. "But at lower altitudes, it becomes a big problem." The lower the orbit, the bigger the inaccuracy. That's because space weather affects the density of Earth's upper atmosphere. (4/11)

Rocket Lab, True Anomaly Selected for Space Force ‘Tactically Responsive’ Mission (Source: Space News)
The space services company Rocket Lab and startup True Anomaly have secured contracts to launch a “tactically responsive space” mission for the U.S. Space Force. Rocket Lab was awarded a $32 million contract and True Anomaly got a $30 million contract for Victus Haze, a demonstration mission intended to test and refine the military’s capabilities for rapidly deploying satellites in response to threats in space. For Victus Haze, an imaging satellite will be launched to inspect a suspicious object in orbit. (4/11)

U.S. Invites France, Germany, New Zealand To Join Space Alliance (Source: Aviation Week)
U.S. Space Command has extended invitations to France, Germany and New Zealand to join a high-level collaborative group on military space operations. If accepted, the three nations would join Australia, Canada and the UK in the U.S.-led Operation Olympic Defender. The operation, first formed in 2020, focuses on sharing intelligence, planning of military operations and other efforts focused on safe operations in space.

Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command, said the three new nations are already working closely together. This includes in the Space Operations Center at Vandenberg SFB, California, and operations centers in France and Germany. France and Germany in particular have “a lot of their own space capability for national defense purposes, and we have very positive relationships with them," Whiting says. "We’ve done some exercises together—we’ve done wargames.” Also on April 9, Whiting announced Spacecom has signed a new space situational awareness agreement with Uruguay. (4/11)