May 22, 2024

Space Force to Restructure All Missions into ‘Integrated’ Units to Boost Readiness (Source: Breaking Defense)
After seeing good results for force readiness from about nine months of experimenting with the Integrated Mission Delta (IMD) concept, the Space Force next intends to create two more units mixing acquisition and operational personnel — with the intent to eventually convert entirely to the new organizational structure, according to a senior service official. The Space Force stood up two prototype IMDs, one for electronic warfare and one for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) last September. (5/21)

Ocala FL Team Makes Rocketry Challenge Finals for 3rd Straight Year (Source: WCJB)
Ocala Florida's Cornerstone School qualified for the American Rocketry Challenge for the third consecutive year. This year, more than 900 teams entered the competition, with the top 100 advancing to the national finals held in The Plains, Va. (5/21)

Thales Expands Satcom Offering with Get SAT Buy (Source: Breaking Defense)
Thales has acquired the Israeli company Get SAT to enhance its satellite communications capabilities in response to the increasing influence of SpaceX's Starlink. The acquisition will allow Thales to offer advanced satellite communication solutions, particularly with Get SAT's Ka-band Milli Sling Blade antenna, which uses electronically steered phased array technology.  (5/21)

NASA and Boeing Delay Starliner Launch Again (Source: Space News)
NASA and Boeing have once again delayed the launch of the company's CST-100 Starliner commercial crew spacecraft, this time without setting a new launch date. NASA said late Tuesday that Saturday's launch of the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, which had been already delayed several times since early this month, will be postponed again with no new date immediately announced.

Boeing has been working to resolve a helium leak in one spacecraft thruster, but neither NASA nor Boeing provided specifics on the issues that were holding up the launch beyond what NASA said was work "assessing flight rationale, system performance, and redundancy." CFT will be the first crewed flight of Starliner, sending two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on a mission lasting a little more than a week. (5/22)

SpaceX Launches NRO Satellite From California (Source: Space News)
SpaceX launched the first in a new line of NRO reconnaissance satellites this morning. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 4 a.m. Eastern on the NROL-146 mission. The rocket carried an undisclosed number of small reconnaissance satellites developed by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman for the NRO, part of a new constellation. NRO officials previously said six launches are planned in 2024 for its proliferated architecture of small satellites but has not stated how large the constellation will be. (5/22)

DoD Working to Block Illicit Starlink Use by Russian Forces (Source: Space News)
Pentagon officials say they are working with SpaceX to block illicit use of Starlink by Russian forces. At a Senate hearing Tuesday, officials said SpaceX has been "more than cooperative" and "forward leaning" in its efforts turn off terminals that are in Russian hands. Some members of Congress has questioned what the Defense Department and SpaceX were doing to block Russian use of Starlink after reports that Russian troops were accessing the service through terminals acquired on the black market. The officials added, though, that efforts to block Russian use of Starlink is a constant struggle as Russia acquires additional terminals. (5/22)

SpaceX Prepping for Next Starship Test Flight (Source: Space News)
SpaceX is nearing its fourth Starship integrated test flight as the company continues to scale up the facility where the vehicle is built and launched. SpaceX conducted a wet dress rehearsal of the vehicle Monday, fueling it and going through a practice countdown. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the launch should take place in about two weeks, pending receipt of an updated launch license from the FAA. The company is working to expand the Starbase facility in Texas where Starship is built and currently launched, with a new factory set to be completed by the end of the year along with work on a second launch pad. (5/22)

Florida Company Studying Spaceport Proposed in Dominican Republic (Source: Space News)
The Dominican Republic is working with an American company to study the feasibility of developing a spaceport. The study, announced Wednesday between the country's National Intelligence Directorate and Florida-based Launch On Demand, will examine technical and other factors for a spaceport in the south of the country. The country is interested in a spaceport to support launches of satellites for national security needs, while Launch On Demand sees interest from companies looking for alternatives to congested spaceports like Cape Canaveral. A spaceport in the Dominican Republic, though, could pose export control and missile technology proliferation challenges. (5/22)

Boston Team Wins Smallsat Student Competition (Source: Space News)
A team from Boston University has won a student competition run by a smallsat industry group. The team took home top honors in the SmallSat Alliance Collegiate Space Competition by proposing a cubesat-based system to move defunct satellites out of geostationary orbit and into higher graveyard orbits. The SmallSat Alliance established the annual competition last year to highlight space sector job opportunities and to attract talent. (5/22)

NASA's JEDI to Fly on ESA Spacecraft (Source: NASA)
A NASA instrument will be hitching a ride on a European space science mission. NASA announced Tuesday it selected for development the Joint EUV coronal Diagnostic Investigation, or JEDI, instrument for monitoring the sun at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. The $45 million JEDI will be incorporated on ESA's Vigil spacecraft slated to launch in 2031 to monitor the sun from the L-5 Lagrange point. (5/22)

Caltech's Kulkarni Wins Shaw Prize (Source: Physics World)
An astronomer has won a million-dollar prize for his studies of supernovas and other transient objects. Shrinivas Kulkarni of Caltech will receive the $1.2 million Shaw Prize in Astronomy this year for work studying "variable or transient astronomical objects" that include supernova explosions as well as millisecond pulsars and gamma-ray bursts. His research has involved the first measurements of the distance of a gamma-ray burst as well as development of new instruments to study variable astronomical objects. (5/22)

Jeff Bingham Passes Away at 77 (Source: Space Policy Online)
Jeff Bingham, who worked on space policy at NASA and in the Senate, has died. Bingham, 77, passed away last week from cancer. He worked on space policy issues for Sens. Jake Garn and, later, Kay Bailey Hutchison, securing funding and support for programs like the International Space Station and the Space Launch System. He later chaired the board of directors of the Virginia Spaceport Authority, which operates the commercial Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island. (5/22)

Astrophysicists May Have Cracked Mystery of Vanishing Stars (Source: Newsweek)
Rather than dying dramatically in a massive supernova explosion, some large stars may die quietly and without fanfare. This may explain the mysterious and sudden disappearance of certain stars from the night sky spotted by astronomers over the years, according to a new paper in the journal Physical Review Letters. These massive stars may completely collapse in on themselves and become black holes without a supernova, which has been long thought to be a necessary part of the death of a large star. (5/22)

\ Chinese Astronauts Strike A Match Aboard Their Station (Source: The Signal)
In a fascinating experiment, Chinese astronauts from the Shenzhou 16 mission recently struck a match aboard the Tiangong space station. This type of experiment would be nearly impossible on the International Space Station (ISS) due to strict regulations regarding flammable materials and open flames. When you light a candle on Earth, the heat from the flame warms the surrounding air, causing it to become less dense. This creates an upward current of hot air (convection current).

In the microgravity environment of low Earth orbit, the combustion convection current is weak. This means that flames spread in all directions rather than primarily upwards, resulting in nearly spherical fireballs. (5/20)

Blue Origin's BE-4 Vs. SpaceX's Raptor Engine: What's The Difference Between Them? (Source: SlashGear)
There are many reasons behind the affordability, from advanced manufacturing techniques to reusable technology. But arguably, the true game-changers are in the engines that power these spacecraft — the Blue Engine-4 (BE-4) and Raptor. Compared to more "conventional" rocket engines, BE-4 and Raptor are cheaper, more efficient, environmentally friendly, reusable... basically better in every single way than the engines we've relied on to go to space in the past. Click here. (5/19)

‘Doomsday Glacier’ That Could Cause Catastrophic Sea-Level Rise is More Vulnerable Than Scientists Thought (Source: New York Post)
Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier is much more exposed to warm ocean water than scientists previously believed, according to a new study. Dubbed the “Doomsday Glacier” by scientists because its collapse could lead to a catastrophic rise in sea levels, the Thwaites could raise global sea levels by up to two feet if it melts. A new study, published Monday, conducted by scientists shows new evidence of “vigorous melting” of the glacier due to warm seawater flowing underneath it. (5/21)

Swarming Proxima Centauri: Coherent Picospacecraft Swarms Over Interstellar Distances (Source: Astrobiology)
Tiny gram-scale interstellar probes pushed by laser light are likely to be the only technology capable of reaching another star this century. We presuppose availability by mid-century of a laser beamer powerful enough (~100-GW) to boost a few grams to relativistic speed, lasersails robust enough to survive launch, and terrestrial light buckets (~1-sq.km) big enough to catch our optical signals. Then our proposed representative mission, around the third quarter of this century, is to fly by our nearest neighbor, the potentially habitable world Proxima b, with a large autonomous swarm of 1000s of tiny probes. Click here. (5/18)

Scientists Are Very Worried About NASA’s Mars Plan (Source: The Atlantic)
Perseverance will stay on Mars forever, but the majority of its carefully packaged samples are meant to return to Earth. The Mars Sample Return mission, known as MSR for short, is one of the boldest undertakings in NASA history, as consequential as it is complicated. The endeavor, which involves sending an extra spacecraft to the red planet to retrieve the samples, serves as a precursor to getting future astronauts home from Mars. It’s a test of whether the United States can keep up with China’s space program, which is scheduled to return its own Mars samples in the 2030s.

NASA officials say that they remain committed to the return effort, but researchers—including the agency’s collaborators who work on the project—are concerned. “The path forward is not clear,” Aileen Yingst, a geologist at the Planetary Science Institute who works on the Perseverance mission, told me. Scientists who study Mars are worried that the mission will be downsized. Scientists who don’t study Mars—and a few who do—are frustrated, because MSR consumes so much of NASA’s budget. Scientists can’t imagine NASA giving up on the mission entirely, but the debacle has even prompted some whispered jokes about China coming along and claiming the tubes on the surface before NASA can fly them home. Click here. (5/21)

Astrobotic to Conduct NASA JPL Studies for Mars Missions (Source: Space Daily)
Astrobotic has been selected by NASA's Mars Exploration Program for two studies of commercial services aimed at supporting cost-effective, frequent missions to Mars. The studies will explore commercial payload delivery and surface imaging services to enable future scientific missions to the Red Planet. The two studies will focus on large payload delivery and hosting services, and Mars surface-imaging services. These studies will analyze how Astrobotic can adapt its current spacecraft systems for frequent, cost-effective missions to Mars over the next 20 years.

Astrobotic is partnering with Arizona State University for the large payload delivery and hosting services study, which will adapt the company's Griffin-class lunar lander to deliver payloads to Mars from orbit. The Mars surface-imaging services study, a collaboration between Astrobotic, Arizona State University, and Malin Space Science Systems, will focus on electro-optical imaging instruments for mapping the Martian surface. (5/21)

NASA Announces $6BN in Contracts for Spacecraft Acquisition Services (Source: Space Daily)
NASA has awarded contracts to four companies to provide spacecraft and related services, including the acquisition of spacecraft components and equipment, for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The contracts are indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity base contracts with a firm-fixed-price structure, totaling $6 billion.

These contracts may support other NASA centers and federal agencies. The performance period extends through August 31, 2025, with a possible extension to August 31, 2030. The spacecraft designs and related services will be customized to meet the specific needs of each mission. The companies awarded the Rapid Spacecraft Acquisition IV (Rapid IV) On-Ramp III contract are: ARGOTEC Inc.; Blue Canyon Technologies LLC; General Atomics; and Kongsberg NanoAvionics US LLC. (5/21)

Aerojet Rocketdyne Steps Up SRM Production (Source: Army Technology)
Aerojet Rocketdyne will use $215.6 million from a 2023 Department of Defense agreement to boost its production of solid rocket motors at its Camden, Ark., facility. These SRMs, essential for powering missiles and rocket artillery across various domains, are crucial components in key defense systems like the THAAD, Patriot, Standard Missile, Stinger, and Javelin, supporting over 100,000 units produced annually by a workforce of 1,100 employees. (5/20)

Thailand's National Telecom Risks Losing OneWeb Partnership Deal (Source: Bangkok Post)
State telecom enterprise National Telecom (NT) is facing a possible risk of losing a partnership deal with low earth orbit (LEO) satellite operator OneWeb to provide gateway station facilities to OneWeb's satellites as it is still uncertain when the telecom regulator will approve the related licenses for NT. There are concerns that OneWeb may move its gateway facilities from Thailand to other countries. (5/21)

Liquid and Eutelsat Announce African LEO Deal (Source: Developing Telecoms)
Pan-African technology group Liquid Intelligent Technologies has announced a distribution partner agreement (DPA) with Eutelsat Group, described as the world's first satellite operator with an integrated GEO-LEO infrastructure, that will see enterprise-grade low earth orbit (LEO) satellite services being made available in Africa.

The strategic integration of the OneWeb LEO satellite network allows scalable connectivity platform Liquid Dataport to deliver not only low-latency satellite services but also introduces a network interconnect that enables services integration across the LEO satellite access and Liquid Dataport core network infrastructure. (5/21)

Colorado Officials Fight Military’s Attempt to Move Air National Guard Members to U.S. Space Force (Source: Denver Post)
The U.S. military’s proposal to unilaterally move potentially hundreds of Colorado Air National Guard members involved in space operations to the Space Force is facing pushback from Gov. Jared Polis and most of the state’s congressional delegation. The proposal, which would affect guard units in several states, is aimed at bolstering the newest military branch. In Colorado, that would mean moving members of the guard who fall under Polis’ authority into the federal military service. (5/20)

Vandenberg Space Force Base Preparing for Busy Year, State Budget Challenges (Source: Santa Maria Times)
A busy Vandenberg Space Force Base is working with the state Space Industry Task Force to address the challenges posed by a floundering California state budget and drive the local space industry forward, according to U.S. Space Force Col. Mark Shoemaker, commander, Space Launch Delta 30 and Western Launch and Test Range.

“The defense industry is ... I believe, the No. 1 economic driver in the state of California ahead of agriculture and the entertainment industry. So what we're hearing from the state is they're committed to continue to do that. What we're also hearing from the state is in a budget challenge, it's hard to bring money to some of those (projects).” The base expects between 40 and 50 launches in 2024, up from 37 last year. (5/20)

Blue Origin Sends Oldest Person into Space (Source: Voice of America)
Blue Origin announced that it sent 90-year-old Ed Dwight into space, making him the oldest space traveler. The company said Dwight was the first Black astronaut candidate and was picked personally by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. But it said Dwight was not chosen to be among the next group of astronauts. (5/20)