June 25, 2024

Firefly Aerospace to Launch From Virginia Spaceport (Source: State of Virginia)
Governor Glenn Youngkin announced today that Firefly Aerospace has selected Virginia as the new launch site of its two-stage orbital Alpha rocket, attracted through a collaboration effort between the Virginia Spaceport Authority, the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation (VIPC) and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP). Firefly Aerospace plans to begin launching Alpha in 2025 from Virginia Spaceport Authority’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport located on Wallops Island in Accomack County. 

The new Alpha launch capability on Wallops Island will supplement Firefly’s existing launch complex at the Vandenberg Space Force Base and further enable Firefly’s rapid launch operations. With existing infrastructure already in place, Wallops Islands also offers a streamlined, accelerated approach to launching Firefly’s Alpha rocket and new Medium Launch Vehicle (MLV) from the same pad. 

Virginia Spaceport Authority's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport has three launch pads, with a fourth under construction, and a state-of-the art payload processing facility. MARS provides the full rocket launch value chain to its growing roster of customers. The Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport is located on NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility (WFF). Virginia Spaceport Authority leases from NASA the land upon which the launch pads and other facilities sit. WFF provides range support services to the spaceport. (6/24)

Firefly Says It Will "Maintain" Relationship with Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Space News)
Firefly had previously planned to conduct Alpha launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, signing an agreement to use Launch Complex 20 there in 2019. Those plans, at one point, called for Firefly to establish an Alpha manufacturing facility in the same industrial park just outside the gates of the Kennedy Space Center that hosts factories for Blue Origin and Airbus OneWeb Satellites.

“With Firefly conducting all its Alpha missions in a rapid cadence for its customers, it is prioritizing operations on Wallops Island while maintaining its relationship at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station,” the company said in a statement. “Wallops also answers the market demand for diverse launch locations and easing launch schedule constraints on the East Coast.” (6/25)

Report Highlights SpaceX Economic Impact in South Texas (Source: San Antonio Express-News)
A new report says that SpaceX has had a multibillion-dollar impact on the economy of South Texas. The report, released last week by the government of Cameron County, where SpaceX's Starbase site is located, concluded that SpaceX's work there has an annual "gross economic market value" of more than $6.5 billion. SpaceX has more than 3,400 employees and contractors at Starbase, and indirectly supports 21,000 jobs in the broader regional economy. (6/25)

Second Vulcan Rocket Arrives at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
The second Vulcan rocket has arrived at Cape Canaveral for a launch later this year. United Launch Alliance said that the ship carrying the Cert-2 rocket arrived at the Cape Sunday, with crews starting to transfer the rocket to facilities at the spaceport Monday. The Cert-2 mission is currently planned to launch Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spacecraft, with ULA seeking to perform the launch by October. (6/25)

Suborbital Spaceflight’s Crossroads (Source: Space Review)
Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the first commercial suborbital human spaceflight by SpaceShipOne, a milestone that at the time appeared to open a new era. Jeff Foust reports on how instead the field faces an uncertain future as spaceflight goes in other directions. Click here. (6/25)

The Little Rocket That Could: Thor in the Early Days at Vandenberg (Source: Space Review)
The Thor missile turned into a workhorse launch vehicle for the Air Force in the early years of the space program, evolving into the Delta. Dwayne Day describes those initial operations of Thor at Vandenberg Air Force Base thanks to new images of activities there. Click here. (6/25)

Space Command Excited About Potential for Rocket Cargo (Source: Space News)
Whiting also said Space Command is interested in a "rocket cargo" program by the Air Force Research Lab. That program is supporting efforts by SpaceX in particular to develop systems that could transport cargo across the planet in as little as an hour. Whiting said that Space Command is "excited" about the project but acknowledged that operational details remain undecided, such as who would be responsible for an operational rocket cargo program. For now, he said he wanted to see efforts to demonstrate rocket cargo capabilities continue. (6/25)

Musk Gives Tour of New Starfactory Production Facility in Texas (Source: Business Insider)
Elon Musk gave an early glimpse into SpaceX's new Starfactory production facility. Just a day before Starship's Flight 4 successfully landed in the ocean, Musk was at the SpaceX site giving science YouTuber Tim Dodd, known by his channel moniker "Everyday Astronaut," an exclusive tour of SpaceX's rocket factory, including the new facility. Click here for the video. (6/24)

Europe Aims to End Space Access Crisis with Ariane 6's Inaugural Launch (Source: Space News)
The maiden flight of the new Ariane 6 heavy-lift launcher is expected on July 9, four years behind the original schedule and finally ending the recurring development delays and industrial setbacks. Meanwhile, with no domestic launchers available, Europe has had to call on U.S. competitor SpaceX to launch its scientific and Galileo satellites. How will Arianespace ramp-up Ariane 6 operations?

"It’s a big challenge given that we’ve already signed 30 contracts, 18 of which are dedicated to Amazon’s Kuiper constellation. It’s pretty unique to have such an order book for a new rocket. We are already working on a quick ramp-up after the inaugural flight. After resolving the possible anomalies, the first commercial flight is scheduled by the end of the year. Then we’ll have six flights in 2025 and eight flights in 2026. In 2027, there will be 10 flights because we have numerous payloads waiting. Otherwise, we’re aiming for a steady state of nine flights per year in 2028 and 2029."

The ramp-up challenge is already happening in Kourou and throughout the full industrial chain in the 13 European countries building Ariane 6. The manufacturing of the first batch of 15 launchers is well underway. We are currently negotiating contracts for Ariane 6 flights 16 to 42. That’s the challenging production plan everybody is committed to. (6/24)

Dragon and Electron Featured at LA Museum (Source: CollectSpace)
A Dragon spacecraft and Electron rocket are sharing space in a Los Angeles museum. The California Science Center has put on display a cargo Dragon spacecraft that flew three missions to the ISS from 2015 to 2019, as well as an unflown Electron rocket from Rocket Lab. The exhibit is a temporary installation while the museum's star attraction, the shuttle orbiter Endeavour, is out of public view as the museum constructs a new facility to host the shuttle in its launch configuration. (6/25)

Space Suit Problem Scrubs Another ISS Spacewalk (Source: CBS)
A second consecutive spacewalk was scrubbed at the ISS Monday. Astronauts Tracy Dyson and Mike Barratt had suited up and were just opening the airlock door when Dyson reported a water leak when she disconnected an umbilical for her suit as planned. The water turned to ice and froze on her helmet. The leak stopped when she reconnected the umbilical, but station controllers called off the spacewalk to investigate the leak.

A June 13 spacewalk was called off when another astronaut reported discomfort issues with his suit. It's not clear what effect this will have on another spacewalk scheduled for July 2, or on other station activities like the departure of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, which had been delayed until after that July 2 spacewalk. (6/25)

China's Lunar Samples Land in Mongolia (Source: Space News)
A capsule containing samples collected on the far side of the moon by a Chinese spacecraft has returned to Earth. The return capsule from the Chang'e-6 mission landed in Siziwang Banner, Inner Mongolia at around 2:07 a.m. Eastern Tuesday. The event was the final act of a five-spacecraft, 53-day effort to collect the first samples ever collected from the lunar far side and delivered them to Earth. The capsule contains up to two kilograms of material that the Chang'e-6 lander collected after landing in Apollo Crater on the far side the moon early this month. (6/25)

France's Skynopy Raises $3.1 Million for Ground Station Services (Source: Space News)
French startup Skynopy has raised $3.1 million to enter the ground satellite services market. The company aims to simplify data transfer services between ground stations and satellites in LEO for operators seeking to outsource their teleport needs to save costs. Skynopy plans to provide those services by making use of excess capacity at existing ground stations for constellation operators. It will compete against several other companies already offering ground infrastructure as a service to help operators avoid terrestrial infrastructure costs. (6/25)
 
Airbus Takes Hefty Space Charge (Source: Space News)
Airbus announced Monday it will record a charge of nearly $1 billion because of problems on satellite programs. The company said it would take the 900-million-euro ($965 million) charge in the second quarter after completing an analysis that found cost and schedule problems with several telecommunications, navigation and Earth observation spacecraft programs. Executives did not identify specific programs but said one common theme was the company had not properly evaluated technology risks on programs, particularly those under contracts from 2018 to 2021. The company added it is examining "all strategic options" for its space unit, including restructuring as well as merger and acquisition options. (6/25)
 
The Mirage at the Core of Space Commerce, Space Stations, and Other Options (Source: Space Review)
There remains optimism for future commercial space markets, from commercial space stations to mining space resources. Roger Handberg argues those plans ignore the fact that the space industry has been built on providing data services to Earth. Click here. (6/25)

Space Command Prepares for Potential Russian Satellite Attacks (Source: Space News)
U.S. Space Command is preparing for the possibility of Russia attacking American satellites. Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of U.S. Space Command, said Monday that the command has been closely monitoring Russian spacecraft like Cosmos 2576, launched into an orbit aligned with that of a U.S. national security satellite. U.S. Space Command is taking these activities seriously and actively rehearsing a response to potential attacks on U.S. space assets, he said, and emphasized that Space Command is working closely with allies to develop strategies to mitigate the effects of any potential attack. (6/25)

Ukraine Targets Crimea-Based Russian Space Radio Complex (Source: Forbes)
With its high mountains, clear weather, minimal radio congestion and southern location, Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula was ideal for a Soviet space communication system. Which is why, in 1959, the Soviet space program began building. In Yevpatoria, 100 miles south of the current front line in southern Ukraine, they constructed a massive space radio installation: 10 giant, upward-pointing radio dishes plus their associated power and control facilities.

As part of the sprawling Soviet space communications network, the Yevpatoria site was known as NIP-16. It was designed to communicate with Moon and Mars probes in the 1960s and ’70s but, with many more recent additions to its original .92-gigahertz radio channels, it may also communicate with modern Lotos-S spy satellites and GLONASS navigation satellites. The latter are Russia’s answer to America’s GPS satellites. (6/24)

Mystery of the Moon's Far Side Explored by China's Chang'e-6 Lunar Probe (Source: SciTech Daily)
Based on the geological characteristics of the probe’s landing site, the researchers anticipate that the returned surface samples will consist of 2.5-million-year-old volcanic rock combined with small amounts of material generated by nearby meteorite strikes. There is also the possibility that evidence of distant impacts will be found in the samples. (6/24)

Sidus Space Plans Saudi Arabian Satellite Manufaturing (Source: Sidus Space)
Sidus Space has agreed with NamaSys, a multi discipline Technology & Electronic Security Consultancy, for the establishment of a joint venture with a mission to build, own and operate a satellite manufacturing, production, assembly and integration facility in the Middle East supporting government and private clients across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. (6/25)

Space Debris in Florida, North Carolina Draw Attention to Hazard (Source: Florida Today)
As we send more and more items into low Earth orbit (LEO), there are more chances for chunks to come back down to us. Space debris, also known as orbital debris or just space junk, is any human-made object in orbit around the Earth that has no use. Space debris is caused by malfunctioning satellites, meteorite impacts, even just tools dropped by astronauts on space walks.

"LEO is an orbital space junkyard," NASA said. "There are millions of pieces of space junk flying in LEO. Most orbital debris comprises human-generated objects, such as pieces of space craft, tiny flecks of paint from a spacecraft, parts of rockets, satellites that are no longer working, or explosions of objects in orbit flying around in space at high speeds." (6/24)

Will Boeing Starliner Issues Delay its 1st Long-Duration Astronaut Flight? (Source: Space.com)
As a test flight, the unexpected on CFT was in a sense, expected. But there's a key milestone coming up fast: Starliner was expected to start its first operational mission to the ISS in early 2025. Known as Starliner-1, it is manifested to carry at least three astronauts to the ISS for a normal six-month mission. NASA's Steve Stich said the certification timeline for Starliner-1 may shift to the right. Starliner-1 will carry NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Scott Tingle, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Josh Kutryk. The crew is far along in its training and is working closely with CFT. (6/24)

Could We Launch Resources From the Moon with Electromagnetic Railguns? (Source: Space.com)
Late last year, General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems filed a final report to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research's (AFOSR). That report was titled "Lunar Electromagnetic Launch for Resource Exploitation to Enhance National Security and Economic Growth." Underscored in the 30-page document is that the moon is rich in useful resources, including silicon, titanium, aluminum and iron. The prospect of tapping into lunar water also looms large.

"A not-too-distant future lunar economy will make use of these lunar resources to resupply, repair, and refuel spacecraft in lunar orbit at lower cost than delivering terrestrial resources from Earth's deep gravitational well," explains the report. A modern electromagnetic launcher is a superior choice for sending these resources to space, the report said, because it can use abundant solar energy as a prime energy source instead of importing chemical rocket fuel from Earth. (6/24)

Sierra Nevada's Owners Donate Big for University Aerospace/Defense Academy (Source: KRNV)
The owners of Sierra Nevada Corporation or SNC donated $1.13 million to the University of Nevada in Reno to help kickstart an Aerospace and Defense Academy. The academy will support the development of skilled workforce, and help small businesses grow in the aerospace and defense industry. It will also offer resources and business platforms to help small and woman-owned businesses who look to support the industry. (6/24)

James Webb Telescope Reveals 'New Understanding' of How Galaxies Formed at Cosmic Dawn (Source: LiveScience)
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered what could be the earliest star clusters in the universe. JWST spotted the five proto-globular clusters — swarms of millions of stars bound together by gravity — inside the Cosmic Gems arc, a galaxy that formed just 460 million years after the Big Bang. The galaxy is the most highly magnified region seen in the first 500 million years of our universe, giving astronomers an unprecedented window into how the stirrings of the first stars sculpted galaxies during cosmic dawn. (6/24)

Supermassive Black Hole Winds Blowing at 36 Million Miles Per Hour Can Sculpt Entire Galaxies (Source: Space.com)
A bright quasar, powered by a supermassive black hole, is blasting out radiation that pushes away clouds of gas in its surroundings to generate winds reaching speeds of around 36 million miles per hour (58 million kilometers per hour). Oh, and the quasar is also nearly as old as the universe itself. The discovery shows the role that feeding supermassive black holes at the hearts of so-called "active galactic nuclei," or "AGNs," can play in sculpting the wider galaxies around them. (6/24)

Is There a Second Arrow of Time? New Research Says Yes (Source: Big Think)
This idea suggests that while as the universe ages and expands, it is becoming more organized and functional, nearly opposite to theories surrounding increasing cosmological disorder. Hazen suggests that these two “arrows” – one of entropy and one of organized information – could very well run parallel to one another. If true, this theory could be groundbreaking in the way we perceive time, evolution, and the very fabric of reality. (6/24)

Mercury May Have a Layer of Diamond Beneath its Grey Surface (Source: New Scientist)
A thick layer of diamonds may be hidden hundreds of kilometres below the surface of Mercury, according to an experiment recreating early conditions on the solar system’s smallest planet. We already know that Mercury is rich in carbon, the element that makes up diamonds, thanks to observations by NASA’s Messenger orbiter, which revealed a surface covered in graphite.  This carbon is likely to be spread throughout the planet’s interior, where its exact form will depend on the temperature and pressure at each location. (6/24)

How Traveling Back in Time is Permitted by Einstein's Physics (Source: Big Think)
According to Einstein, space and time are not separate, absolute entities, but rather are woven together in an inseparable fabric: spacetime. There’s a quantity that’s known to be invariant — the spacetime interval (sometimes called the Einstein interval) — that represents your combined motion through space and time together. The faster you move through space, the slower you move through time, up to the absolute limit of how fast it’s possible to travel: the speed of light.

As you approach that ultimate limit, your motion through space gets faster and faster, while your motion through time gets slower and slower. If you could actually reach the speed of light, which is a physical impossibility unless you’re a massless entity, you’d find that time appeared to stop for you, and wouldn’t pass at all during your journey. In theory, if you could move faster than the speed of light, you’d become a tachyon, and would indeed experience time running backward.

However, going faster than the speed of light isn’t the only way to travel backward in time, according to Einstein. While the motion of any real entities through the fabric of spacetime is limited by the speed of light in a vacuum, spacetime itself is not required to be flat and unchanging: like a three-dimensional Cartesian grid. Instead, according to Einstein’s general relativity, it’s possible that space can evolve, and as part of that evolution, it can be curved, can expand or contract, or could even create and maintain a connection between two disparate points within it. (6/20)

Astronomers Find Three Potential Super-Earths Around Nearby Star (Source: Phys.org)
Astronomers have discovered three potential "super-Earth" exoplanets orbiting a relatively nearby orange dwarf star. This groundbreaking find was made by an international team of researchers led by Dr. Shweta Dalal from the University of Exeter. The exoplanets are orbiting Star HD 48498, located approximately 55 light-years from Earth. These planets revolve around their host star in 7, 38, and 151 Earth days, respectively. Notably, the outermost exoplanet candidate resides in the habitable zone of its host star. (6/24)