April 24, 2024

Creature Comforts in Space: Designing Enjoyment and Sustainability for Off-World Living (Source: Retro-Futurist)
After 50 years of space exploration, off-world living is still like going on an extreme camping trip. Living out there is uncomfortable at best. This book tackles the challenge of Creature Comforts: those hard-to-describe things that make life more enjoyable, have mental health benefits, and are fun! Using the analogy of building a homestead on the high frontier, early space settlers need to develop long term sustainability techniques with limited resources. This book isn't just about making life better beyond our planet; it's a blueprint for enhancing life on Earth through thoughtful, space-inspired design. Click here. (4/24)

Streaming and Texting on the Moon: Nokia and NASA are Taking 4G Into Space (Source: CNN)
Texting on the Moon? Streaming on Mars? It may not be as far away as you think. That’s the shared vision of NASA and Nokia, who have partnered to set up a cellular network on the Moon to help lay the building blocks for long-term human presence on other planets. A SpaceX rocket is due to launch this year — the exact date has yet to be confirmed — carrying a simple 4G network to the Moon. The lander will install the system at the Moon’s south pole and then it will be remotely controlled from Earth.

“The first challenge to getting a network up and running is having a space-qualified cellular equipment that meets the appropriate size, weight, and power requirements, as well as being deployed without a technician,” Walt Engelund, deputy associate administrator for programs at NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, told CNN. No less of a challenge, it will need to operate in the harsh lunar environment of extreme temperatures and radiation.

The 4G network unit is being built by Nokia’s Bell Labs using a range of off-the-shelf commercial components. It will be loaded onto a lander made by US company Intuitive Machines, and once deployed it will connect the lander via radio equipment to two roaming vehicles with their own special mission: to search for ice. (4/24)

Congress Pushes DoD to Deliver (Source: Space News)
In the $825 billion defense spending bill Congress passed March 21, one of the under-the-radar winners was the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, which saw its 2024 budget skyrocket to $945 million, up from the $107 million enacted for 2023. The eye-popping increase sends the Pentagon a loud and clear message: It’s time to get serious about transitioning cutting-edge technologies into real military capabilities. It also reflects Capitol Hill’s growing impatience with DoD’s sluggish adoption of emerging private sector technologies in artificial intelligence, space, and autonomous systems. (4/19)

Cosmic Rays Streamed Through Earth's Atmosphere 41,000 Years Ago (Source: Phys.org)
Earth's magnetic field protects us from the dangerous radiation of space, but it is not as permanent as we might believe. Scientists at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly present new information about an 'excursion' 41,000 years ago where our planet's magnetic field waned, and harmful space rays bombarded the planet.

Magnetic field excursions are brief periods in which the intensity of the magnetic field wanes and the dipole (or two magnetic poles) that we're familiar with can disappear, replaced with multiple magnetic poles. The Laschamps excursion that occurred around 41,000 years ago is among the best studied. It features a low magnetic field intensity that implies less protection for Earth's surface from harmful space rays. Periods of low magnetic field intensity could correlate to major upheavals in the biosphere. (4/19)

Ambitious Houston Spaceport Takes Off with 2nd Phase of Development (Source: Houston CultureMap)
Since the Houston Spaceport secured the 10th FAA-Licensed commercial spaceport designation in 2015, the development's tenants have gone on to gain billions in NASA contracts. Now, the Houston Spaceport is on to its next phase of growth.

“Reflecting on its meteoric rise, the Spaceport has seen remarkable growth in a short span of time. From concepts on paper to the opening of Axiom Space, Collins Aerospace, and Intuitive Machines, the journey has been nothing short of extraordinary,” says Arturo Machuca, director of Ellington Airport and the Houston Spaceport, in a news release. “These anchor tenants, collectively holding about $5 billion in contracts with NASA and other notable aerospace companies, are not just shaping the future of space exploration but injecting vitality into Houston’s economy.”

The next phase of development, according to Houston Airports, will include: construction of a taxiway to connect Ellington Airport and the Spaceport; construction of a roadway linking Phase 1 infrastructure to Highway 3; and expansion of the EDGE Center, in partnership with San Jacinto College. (4/23)

Satellites Watch as 4th Global Coral Bleaching Event Unfolds (Source: Space.com)
Multiple major coral reefs around the world are getting paler due to warming sea temperatures in the fourth-ever global bleaching event, and satellites are keeping tabs on the carnage. The grim event, the second in a decade, is affecting over half the world's coral area across the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans. The toll includes what could be the worst bleaching ever experienced by Australia's famous Great Barrier Reef, according to NOAA and the International Coral Reef Initiative, which confirmed the bleaching event on Monday. (4/22)

ESA Debris Removal Mission Changes Targets (Source: Space News)
ESA has revised the ClearSpace-1 debris removal mission. The agency announced Wednesday that the spacecraft, originally designed to capture and deorbit a Vega payload adapter called Vespa left in low Earth orbit, will instead seek to deorbit the defunct Proba-A satellite. The change came after Vespa apparently suffered a collision last year that generated debris in its vicinity. The mission, which had been under development by Swiss startup ClearSpace, will now be led by German company OHB, with ClearSpace handling proximity operations and capture. (4/24)

China Military Reorganization to Affect Space Operations (Source: Space News)
A reorganization of China's military is likely to affect the country's space operations. Xi Jinping, China's president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, established last week the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) Information Support Force (ISF), which effectively replaces the Strategic Support Force (SSF) that commanded the PLA's space forces. The move appears to represent a strategic shift toward prioritizing information warfare, which includes cyber operations, electronic warfare, and potentially space aspects such as satellite communication and reconnaissance. The move is the biggest PLA reorganization since 2015, when the SSF was created. (4/24)

Space Fore's Commercial Strategy to Identify Useful Capabilities (Source: Space News)
A Space Force official says the service's new commercial space strategy will start an effort to see what private sector capabilities will be of real utility to the military. Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton, deputy chief of space operations for strategy, plans, programs and requirements, said at an Atlantic Council event this week that potential commercial capabilities, like in-space refueling, are currently immature, and the Space Force is still trying to understand what is possible and useful. Many questions have yet to be answered about how to employ new commercial space services, he said. The Space Force's watchword is "understanding the art of the possible." (4/24)

Companies Pitch Concepts for Asteroid Visit (Source: Space News)
Companies are pitching concepts for missions to visit an asteroid that will make a close approach to Earth in five years. The asteroid Apophis will pass closer to the Earth than the GEO satellite belt in April 2029, but with no risk of impact, and scientists are eager to send spacecraft to study Apophis both before and after the flyby. At a workshop this week, Blue Origin said it is offering its Blue Ring spacecraft for an Apophis mission, with room for up to 13 instruments or deployable spacecraft. JPL is working with startup ExLabs on another Apophis mission concept that could be privately funded. Short timelines for the missions and constrained government budgets, though, may make it difficult for many of the proposed missions to launch. (4/24)

China Names Crew for Next TSS Mission (Source: Xinhua)
China has named the crew for its next space station mission. The crew of Shenzhou-18, named Wednesday, includes commander Ye Guangfu along with Li Cong and Li Guangsu. The flight is the second for Ye, who was on the Shenzhou-13 mission in 2021-2022, and the first for the other two. Launch of Shenzhou-18 is scheduled for Thursday. (4/24)

Rocket Lab Launches Solar Sail Mission From New Zealand (Source: Space News)
Rocket Lab launched a South Korean imaging satellite and a NASA solar sail experiment Tuesday. An Electron rocket lifted off at 6:32 p.m. Eastern from the company's New Zealand launch site. It first deployed into a 520-kilometer orbit NEONSAT-1, the first spacecraft in an 11-satellite constellation by South Korea to provide imagery for civil and national security applications. It then placed into a 1,000-kilometer orbit ACS3, a NASA cubesat that will test a solar sail deployment system. The launch was the fifth this year for Rocket Lab. (4/24)

SpaceX Launches Starlink Mission From Florida, Achieves 300th Booster Landing (Source: Space.com)
SpaceX achieved its 300th booster landing on a launch Tuesday evening. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 6:17 p.m. Eastern and placed 23 Starlink satellites into orbit. The booster landed on a droneship in the Atlantic, the ninth flight for that particular booster and the 300th time that SpaceX has landed a booster. (4/24)

L3Harris Specifies Layofff Plans with 2,500 to Lose Jobs (Source: Reuters)
L3Harris plans to lay off 2,500 employees this year to reduce costs. An email to company employees Tuesday announced that the company will reduce its 50,000-person workforce by 5% this year as part of efforts to find $1 billion in savings in the next three years. The layoffs will target redundant functions at the companies, with a source stating it is not specifically targeted at Aerojet Rocketdyne, the propulsion company acquired by L3Harris last year. (4/24)

Japan's Lunar Lander Wakes Again After Lunar Night (Source: AP)
Japan's SLIM lunar lander has once again awakened after an extended lunar night. The Japanese space agency JAXA said that the lander resumed communications with Earth on Tuesday after its third lunar night. SLIM, or Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, landed in January and was not designed to survive the two-week lunar night. However, the spacecraft awakened in February and March before this latest revival. JAXA plans to continue monitoring the spacecraft to see how the wide temperature swings between lunar day and night degrade its systems. (4/24)

NASA Ends CloudSat Mission (Source: NASA)
An Earth observation mission launched by NASA almost 18 years ago has formally ended. NASA announced Tuesday that it has decommissioned the CloudSat spacecraft, launched in April 2006 to study the vertical structure and water content of clouds using a W-band radar. The spacecraft, originally designed for a two-year prime mission, operated the radar until last December. Controllers then lowered the spacecraft's orbit to ensure it will deorbit with 25 years. (4/24)

Geoengineering Could Save the Ice Sheets – But Only If We Start Soon (Source: New Scientist)
Shading Earth’s surface from sunlight could postpone or even avoid the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet – but only if we start soon and only in conjunction with substantial emissions cuts, according to two computer modeling studies by independent teams. “There’s a time window that we can do this, and if we dither, there’s just no point in doing it,” says John Moore at the University of Lapland in Finland. (4/22)

China and Russia's 'Unfriendly' Space Behavior 'Concerning' (Source: Business Insider)
Russia and China appear to be actively looking into ways to watch and potentially incapacitate US satellites in space, and defense analysts are concerned. "China and Russia are both operating satellites that attempt to better understand high-value U.S. government satellites" and engaging in other alarming activities, analysts at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said. "These developments are concerning and will likely continue in the coming years."

"Both Russia and China routinely maneuver their satellites near Western government and commercial satellites, sometimes remaining close by for months at a time," the report's six expert authors said. (4/22)

Former NASA Engineer Says He's Invented a Thruster That Doesn't Require Propellant (Source: Futurism)
Space startup Exodus Propulsion Technologies claims to have achieved a breakthrough, stumbling upon an entirely new force of nature that could power thrusters that don't need propellant to work. As The Debrief reports, co-founder Charles Buhler — a former NASA engineer who's worked on a number of major programs including the ISS, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Space Shuttle — said the discovery could be a major turning point in humanity's quest to explore space. Buhler makes some wildly ambitious claims that will likely face plenty of scrutiny from the scientific community — and it's unclear if his startup's claims will survive. (4/22)

How Could Life Survive on Tidally Locked Planets? (Source: Space.com)
The famed science fiction author Isaac Asimov called them "ribbon worlds" — planets forced to always show one face to their parent star. The star side is locked in perpetual day, its sun never dipping below the horizon; indeed, its sun never even moving at all, fixed in place as if time itself stood still. The far side is trapped in perpetual night, a sky blazing with the light of thousands of stars, never knowing the warmth of its parent star.

And in between those two extremes, there's a special place: a terminator line, the boundary between night and day, a region of infinite twilight. Caught between the two extremes, this ribbon that stretches like a girdle around a planet might — might — just be a home for life, neither too hot in the never-ceasing glare of the star nor too cold in the infinite night. (4/22)

E-Space to Build Manufacturing Plant in Texas; More Than 3,000 Jobs Forecast (Source: Fort Worth Report)
Satellite communications startup E-Space is moving ahead with its North American expansion, a project that could bring a minimum of 400 high-tech jobs with an average annual salary of $95,000 within its first five years of operation in Arlington. At full capacity, the project will create 3,355 jobs and provide over $8 billion in salaries and wages over the 30-year term lease, according to the city’s staff report.

The Arlington City Council will vote on a resolution to authorize the Arlington Economic Develop Corp., to enter a public-private partnership with E-Space and the city of Arlington. That partnership will allow the company to build a headquarters and manufacturing plant at the Arlington Municipal Airport. After construction is completed, the economic development corporation will lease the project back to the company for a term of 30 years with two renewal options with a base rent of $2 million per year of occupancy and a 3% increase every five years thereafter.

The economic development corporation will contribute up to $50 million from cash and/or proceeds from sales tax revenue bonds toward the project’s development and construction. E-Space will have to meet some requirements before the economic development corporation moves forward with construction of the facility, according to Wieder. (4/22)

50 Years Later, This Apollo-Era Antenna Still Talks to Voyager 2 (Source: IEEE Spectrum)
For more than 50 years, Deep Space Station 43 has been an invaluable tool for space probes as they explore our solar system and push into the beyond. The DSS-43 radio antenna, located at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, near Canberra, Australia, keeps open the line of communication between humans and probes during NASA missions. Today more than 40 percent of all data retrieved by celestial explorers, including Voyagers, New Horizons, and the Mars Curiosity rover, comes through DSS-43. (4/18)

If Photons Have Mass, Could They Explain Dark Matter? (Source: Big Think)
We know that the stars and galaxies in the Universe have grown up and evolved as the Universe has aged. We know that gravitation has formed the large-scale structure in the Universe, and that structure has grown more complex over time. And we also know how much normal matter, altogether, is present in the Universe, and that it isn’t sufficient to explain the full suite of the gravitational effects that we see on its own.

So if the normal matter can’t be all that there is, what else can there be? The leading idea is dark matter, but we don’t know precisely what it is. What if it’s just light? Is that possible?

Is deep space entirely dark? You might think it ought to be, but that’s not what the New Horizons team found. There was excess light from expected sources: camera noise, scattered sunlight, excess off-axis starlight, crystals from the spacecraft thrust, and other instrumental effects all create an excess of light. But those effects can all be modeled, and when they are, their magnitudes and contributions can be quantified. Still, when they were subtracted out, an incontrovertible excess remained. Click here. (4/22)

This Crater Could Be Where Earth's 'Second Moon' Broke Off The First One (Source: Science Alert)
The provenance of asteroid Kamo'oalewa, discovered in 2016, is something of a mystery, but astronomers believe it may be a chunk of the Moon. A new analysis has even identified the crater from which it may have been gouged. Using numerical simulations, a team led by astronomer Yifei Jiao of Tsinghua University in China has determined the properties of the crater most likely have to produced the asteroid, and found a real one that matches those properties: the Giordano Bruno crater on the far side of the Moon. (4/22)

Tsinghua University Advances China's Lunar Habitat Construction Techniques (Source: Space Daily)
Tsinghua University's latest research emphasizes the critical importance of in situ lunar construction as we shift from exploration to the establishment of Moon habitats. Focusing on regolith solidification and formation, the study, led by Professor Feng, evaluates nearly 20 techniques for creating building materials directly from lunar soil, aiming to maximize efficiency and reduce dependency on Earth-based resources.

The research classifies regolith solidification methods into four primary categories: reaction solidification (RS), sintering/melting (SM), bonding solidification (BS), and confinement formation (CF), each suited to specific aspects of lunar construction. These categories further divide into specialized techniques that consider the lunar environment's unique challenges, such as extreme temperatures and resource scarcity. (4/22)

Exploring Venus Could Redefine Search for Life in Universe (Source: Space Daily)
Though Venus is a harsh environment with extreme temperatures and toxic clouds, it provides crucial data on the conditions that might limit life on other planets, according to a recent study. "Earth is often seen as a model for habitability; however, without comparing it to other planets, we remain unaware of the potential boundaries," stated Stephen Kane. The research uses Venus as a comparative basis to enhance our understanding of planetary environments that may inhibit life.

The study underscores the importance of further exploration missions to Venus, such as NASA's upcoming DAVINCI and VERITAS missions. These missions aim to provide deeper insights into Venus's atmosphere and surface conditions, which could refine our understanding of climate models applicable to Earth and other planets. (4/23)