August 23, 2024

New Shepard’s Crewed NS-26 Mission Targets Liftoff on August 29 (Source: Blue Origin)
Blue Origin announced that its eighth human flight, NS-26, will lift off from Launch Site One in West Texas on Thursday, August 29. (8/23)

The Playbook Behind Lockheed’s Acquisition of Terran Orbital (Source: Payload)
Terran has become a de facto extension of Lockheed over the past few years. And now, for pennies on the dollar ($0.25 per share to be exact, down 98% from its peak), the $450M deal which includes retiring existing debt, will officially consolidate the relationship. Lockheed—an experienced aerospace prime with roots going back nearly 100 years and dozens of cycles under its belt—played a shrewd, successful, and unforgiving long game with its Terran relationship.

For Lockheed, the company gets to tuck in Terran’s $300M+ backlog (91% of which are its own contracts [!]) and a new manufacturing facility build-out well equipped to continue servicing its booming SDA business. For Terran, the company was saved at the very last moment from an impending cash crunch. But it was at the expense of shareholders who lost nearly all of their value paying for the expensive production ramp to serve its dominant customer, Lockheed. (8/21)

How SpaceX Modified a Dragon Crew Capsule for Polaris Dawn's Historic Private Spacewalk (Source: Space.com)
Polaris Dawn's spacecraft will be like no Dragon ever flown before. The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule for the Polaris Dawn mission sports modifications for the first-ever private spacewalk, which will take place after the scheduled launch on Aug. 27. Polaris Dawn's Dragon will also soar higher than any crewed spacecraft since the Apollo missions, flying above Earth at an altitude of about 435 miles.

Polaris Dawn's spacewalk will involve opening the Dragon's hatch, which has a new motor for the job — but the capsule won't feature an airlock. This is different than spacewalking procedures on the International Space Station and NASA's retired space shuttle, where the airlock has allowed the rest of the spacecraft to be isolated from the vacuum of space.

Dragon's lack of an airlock means all four Polaris Dawn astronauts will don their spacesuits during the spacewalk. The spaceflyers also cannot purge nitrogen from their systems and avoid decompression sickness by using pre-breathing procedures as seen on the ISS. Instead, the spacecraft will gradually lower its overall internal pressure while the partial pressure of oxygen rises, which will remove the nitrogen. Then all four astronauts will use pure oxygen in their suits while the spacewalk is happening. (8/22)

Space Development Agency’s Global Mesh Network in Space is Moving Forward, With Speed (Source: Breaking Defense)
Production for the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) constellation is in full swing, and Northrop Grumman is one of the primary contractors producing satellites for what will soon be a global constellation of missile defense and data transport satellites. SDA’s concept relies on mature technology available on the open market to field satellites two to three times faster than traditional military space programs. (8/20)

Virgin Galactic vs Blue Origin – A Detailed Comparison in 2024 (Source: Space Impulse)
Virgin Galactic: Virgin’s top innovation is its carrier plane/spaceplane duo, VMS Eve and VSS Unity. Unity’s wings feature a unique system known as feathering that allows the vehicle to switch between plane and capsule mode during flight. As explained by the company, both planes and capsules feature some benefits; spaceplanes offer a smooth ride and can land on a runway, while capsules are much less finicky when it comes to reentering the atmosphere.

Since Virgin flies suborbital and doesn’t encounter the intense speeds and heat of orbital reentry, a spaceplane does the job – but it can flip its wings backwards during descent to help with heat distribution. When the atmosphere becomes thick enough, the wings come back out and allow the plane to land. Blue’s tourism service is different. Instead of a spaceplane, it flies tourists on its 18-meter tall New Shepard rocket, which consists of a booster and capsule. The rocket blasts off to an altitude of about 75 kilometers, where the two components separate.

The capsule keeps ascending until it reaches a peak altitude of over 100 kilometers, which is above the internationally recognized boundary of space (as Blue pointed out in a shady infographic leading up to its race with Virgin). Meanwhile, the booster descends and lands itself. Aboard the capsule, passengers experience three to four minutes of weightlessness before they too descend and land via parachute. The whole thing lasts around ten minutes, with a ticket costing at least $1 million (though exact prices vary according to the passenger and are often kept mum). (7/15)

NASA Escorted Rocket Lab CEO Off Its Premises In 2006 Before He Built His Multi-Billion Dollar Business (Source: Benzinga)
In 2006, a rocket enthusiast from New Zealand traveled to the United States, aiming to impress NASA with his experiments and secure an internship. Instead, he was escorted off the premises. It might have been for the best, as few companies were building what he envisioned: a lightweight rocket capable of launching satellites. Beck founded Rocket Lab in 2006, and three years later, it became the first private company in the Southern Hemisphere to reach space, but the journey wasn’t easy.

Shortly after starting the company, Beck attempted to raise $5 million from Silicon Valley investors, which he described as one of his biggest challenges. Rocket Lab reached 50 launches of its Electron rocket this year. The company hit that milestone faster than any commercially developed rocket in history. Rocket Lab generated more than $244 million in revenue last year and reported revenue growth of 71% last quarter. Editor's Note: I believe it was that 2006 trip when Mr. Beck visited me at the Spaceport Florida Authority to discuss how our agency might support his plans. (8/22)

Hermeus Marks Progress With Quarterhorse Taxi Testing (Source: Aviation Week)
Hermeus, the Atlanta-based hypersonic aircraft developer, has completed low-speed taxi tests of its Quarterhorse Mk. 1 vehicle as part of the buildup to flight tests, which are planned to start later this year. (8/23)

An 8,000-Ton Problem: How to Combat Space Debris (Source: Space.com)
The skies may look clear from our perspective, but just out of view, there's a junkyard in our low Earth orbit (LEO), a region of space relatively close to our planet's surface. There are approximately 60,363 tracked objects in orbit, the vast majority of which is space debris. That number doesn't even include the over one hundred million bits and bobs too small to be tracked. Some speculate that there are over 8,000 metric tons of debris floating around, including non-functional satellites, discarded rocket parts, and broken pieces of spacecraft.

The working satellites in our LEO are vital to our global infrastructure, and with debris moving through space at almost seven times the speed of a bullet, even the smallest impact can create a huge problem. This is an issue we all have a stake in—here's how the U.S. Space Force is working to tackle it. Click here. (8/22)

Black Hole in Orbit Around a Planet Could Be a Sign of an Advanced Civilization (Source: Phys.org)
Harvard Professor Avi Loeb proposed in a recent paper how advanced civilizations could rely on a "Black Hole Moon" to provide their home planet with power indefinitely. The way this black hole would illuminate the planet it orbits, he argues, would constitute a potential technosignature for future SETI surveys. Loeb suggests an advanced civilization could engineer a black hole that would orbit its home planet. This black hole would be very small, weighing just one hundred thousand tons (1011 g). (8/23)

‘Very Pleased:’ Florida Leaders React to Port Canaveral Abandoning New Cruise Terminal Plan (Source: WKMG)
On Thursday, FDOT secretary Jared Perdue and Gov. Ron DeSantis addressed resolving the Port Canaveral conflict when they appeared in Titusville.” We’re very pleased that Port Canaveral has been responsive to our letter,” Perdue said. “We just wanna see that berth continue to be used for what the investment was intended for.”

DeSantis called Brevard County the best place to launch in the country, adding that he wants to keep it that way before he addressed the port’s change of plans. ”We’ve had some of the major companies say that this is important for them to keep, so I think we can do that,” he said of the cargo berth. “And then we can, I think, still have pathways to be able to help the cruise industry, as well.” (8/22)

Gravitational Waves Hint at a 'Supercool' Secret About the Big Bang (Source: Space.com)
In 2023, physicists were awed to find nearly imperceptible ripples in the fabric of space and time — united as an entity known as spacetime. They were ripples discovered in association with collections of rapidly spinning neutron stars called "pulsar timing arrays." This low-frequency background hum of gravitational waves in our universe was originally attributed to a change, or a "phase transition," that occurred shortly after the Big Bang. New research, however, casts doubt on that assumption.

The phase transition perhaps most familiar to us is the transition of water into ice as temperatures fall below freezing. There are also what are known as "supercool" transitions. With water, a supercool transition occurs when the substance gets "stuck" in its liquid phase, slowing its transformation into ice. Many scientists believe a "first-order phase transition" occurred at the very beginning of time, triggering the launch of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. Those waves, experts think, could therefore be used to determine conditions present during the first epoch of rapid inflation in our universe, or maybe even the conditions present before the Big Bang. (8/22)

Gateway: Energizing Exploration (Source: NASA)
Technicians work diligently to assemble a key power element of Gateway, the lunar space station that will become the most powerful solar electric spacecraft ever flown. Gateway’s Power and Propulsion Element will use the largest roll-out solar arrays ever built – together about the size of an American football field endzone – to harness the Sun’s energy for deep space exploration. The module is built by Maxar Space Systems in Palo Alto, California, and managed at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

That includes energizing xenon gas to produce the thrust needed to send Gateway from Earth to lunar orbit and keep it there for the Artemis IV, V, and VI missions. On those missions and beyond, international teams of astronauts will expand Gateway with additional living and working space, and will journey to the lunar South Pole region from Gateway. The Power and Propulsion Element will power Gateway’s subsystems and enable telecommunications between the lunar surface, the space station, Earth, and back again. (8/22)

Musk Said He's 'Definitely Going to be Dead' Before Humans Go to Mars (Source: Live Science)
"If we don't improve our pace of progress, I'm definitely going to be dead before we go to Mars," said Elon Musk. "If it's taken us 18 years just to get ready to do the first people in orbit, we've got to improve our rate of innovation or, based on past trends, I am definitely going to be dead before Mars." (8/22)

Where We Would Send The Ark: The Best Exoplanets Within 25 Light-Years (Source: SyFy)
If humanity ever does make the leap to another star system, we’re going to want to consider the length of the journey, but also the type of world we’ll find when we get where we’re going. With all of that in mind, these are a few of the confirmed exoplanets we recommend sending humanity’s future Arks to. Click here. (8/22)

Kamala Commits to Space at Nominating Convention (Source: Space Policy Online)
Space made a cameo appearance in Vice President Kamala Harris's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention Thursday. In her speech formally accepting the party's presidential nomination, Harris said that she would ensure "we lead the world into the future on space and artificial intelligence" and that "America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century." Harris, who has chaired the National Space Council as vice president, hasn't elaborated on any differences in space policy her administration would make if elected. The Democratic party platform, formally adopted at the convention, includes one paragraph on space that expressed support for the ISS, human exploration of the moon and Mars and increased Earth science observations to support climate change research. (8/23)

Mynaric Production Challenges Could Delay DoD Satellites (Source: Space News)
Problems with a key supplier could delay deployment of Space Development Agency (SDA) satellites. Mynaric is facing significant challenges producing optical communications terminals for intersatellite links that several satellite manufacturers plan to use on satellites they are building for SDA. Mynaric this week dramatically reduced its 2024 revenue forecast to 16-24 million euros from the previous 50-70 million euros, citing slower production ramp-up and higher production costs. The company said it is increasing production of those terminals for SDA satellites but did not provide details. Mynaric's problems have reportedly frustrated SDA, which has been trying to deal with broader supply chain issues. (8/23)

Amazon to Expand Payload Processing Facility at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Space News)
Amazon will expand a facility in Florida it is developing for Project Kuiper satellite integration. Amazon said Thursday it will spend an additional $19.5 million on a satellite processing building at the Kennedy Space Center, adding a secondary support facility. The company is now spending nearly $140 million on the overall facility that will be used to prepare Kuiper satellites for launch. The additional building will allow Amazon to accelerate deployment of the constellation, with the company facing a July 2026 deadline to get at least half of the 3,200-satellite system in orbit. (8/23)

NASA Adds Rideshare and Transfer Contractors to VADR (Source: Space News)
NASA has added three companies to a contract for launches of small satellites. NASA said Thursday it has added Arrow Space and Technology, Impulse Space and Momentus Space to its Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) contract, allowing them to compete for task orders for specific missions. The three companies provide rideshare or orbital transfer vehicle services for satellites. Momentus has struggled financially recently, delaying launches and laying off staff, and the publicly traded company has yet to file quarterly reports with the SEC for the last two quarters. (8/23)

Norway's Andøya Spaceport Gets License (Source: Space News)
A spaceport in Norway has secured a key license from the government. Norway's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries awarded a site operator license Thursday to Andøya Spaceport, allowing the site north of the Arctic Circle to support up to 30 orbital launches a year. Isar Aerospace plans to launch its Spectrum rocket from the spaceport. Isar said it is preparing to go into final stage testing of the rocket but has not set a launch date for the vehicle's inaugural flight. The company will also need a separate launch license from the Norwegian government. (8/23)

China Launches Commsat (Source: Space News)
China launched a geostationary orbit communications satellite Thursday. A Long March 7A lifted off from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center at 8:25 a.m. Eastern and deployed the ChinaSat 4A spacecraft within 45 minutes. The payload, not announced until after the launch, is intended to provide voice, data and television services, although Chinese media provided few specifics. That lack of detail suggests the satellite may also have military applications. (8/23)

China Plans Exoplanet Hunter Launch in 2028 (Source: Space News)
China is planning to launch a spacecraft in 2028 that will search for Earth-like exoplanets. The Earth 2.0 or ET mission proposed by the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory under the Chinese Academy of Sciences intends to use six wide-field optical telescopes 28 centimeters in aperture to observe about two million stars in the same field observed by NASA's Kepler mission. The spacecraft's telescopes will offer high photometric precision that will allow for the detection of small, rocky planets that Kepler or other missions could not detect. (8/23)

Boeing Reclaims Top Spot In Top 100 Aerospace Companies By Revenue (Source: Simple Flying)
According to a list published by FlightGlobal, Boeing has emerged as the number one aerospace company in terms of sales revenue in 2023. The US plane maker has had some challenges in recent years, but it manages to outshine its rivals in overall sales. The US plane maker made $77.8 billion in 2023, compared to $76.6 billion in 2019. European aircraft manufacturer Airbus made $70.8 billion last year as opposed to $78.9 billion in 2019 and sits behind Boeing on the list at number 2. (8/23)

Airbus-Made Artemis Module on Way to NASA (Source: Aerospace Manufacturing)
Orion's third European Service Module, built by Airbus, is being sent to NASA's Kennedy Space Center for integration with the Crew Module, as part of the Artemis III mission. Built by Airbus for the European Space Agency, ESM-3 will support a crew of four astronauts during the three-week mission. (8/22)

Scout Space, Dawn Aerospace Partner for Spaceplane Surveillance Demonstration (Source: Space News)
Scout Space, a Virginia-based startup specializing in space domain awareness, has signed an agreement with Dawn Aerospace to demonstrate the ability to observe objects in very low Earth orbit (VLEO) from an aircraft operating in suborbital space. Under the deal announced Aug. 22, Scout will install its space domain awareness sensors aboard Dawn Aerospace’s Mk-II Aurora uncrewed suborbital spaceplane for a test flight targeted for November at the Tāwhaki National Aerospace Center near Christchurch, New Zealand. (8/22)

What If We Never Find Dark Matter? (Source: Scientific American)
Increasingly, physicists ac­­knowl­edge that we may have to search for a wider range of possible explanations. The scope of the problem is both intimidating and exhilarating. At the same time, we are starting to grapple with the sobering idea that we may never nail down the nature of dark matter at all. In the early days of dark matter hunting, this notion seemed absurd. We had lots of good theories and plenty of experimental options for testing them. But the easy roads have mostly been traveled, and dark matter has proved more mysterious than we ever imagined.

It’s entirely possible that dark matter behaves in a way that current experiments aren’t well-suited to detect—or even that it ignores regular matter completely. If it doesn’t interact with standard atoms through any mechanism be­­sides gravity, it will be almost impossible to detect it in a laboratory. In that case, we can still hope to learn about dark matter by mapping its presence throughout the universe. But there is a chance that dark matter will prove so elusive we may never understand its true nature. (8/20)

UAE's First SAR Satellite Launched by Bayanat and Yahsat (Source: Space Daily)
Bayanat AI PLC and Al Yah Satellite Communications Co. have successfully launched the nation's first Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite. The launch took place on August 16, 2024, in collaboration with ICEYE, a frontrunner in SAR satellite technology for earth observation, continuous monitoring, and natural disaster management. The Bayanat-owned SAR satellite, developed in partnership with Yahsat, was launched aboard SpaceX's Transporter 11 rideshare mission. (8/22)

UK to Build Military Test Site to Combat GPS Jamming (Source: Space Daily)
The UK is to build a new facility to help protect military equipment against foreign GPS jamming, the defence ministry announced on Wednesday amid a rise in hostile threats. The so-called silent hangar site will aim to protect equipment from "attempts to jam GPS devices" and develop kit that can "perform in the harshest electromagnetic environment on operations", the MoD said. The facility, which is due to open in 2026 and will be one of the largest in Europe, will be used to test military equipment. (8/20)

Grant Announced for Access to Space Industrial Park Near Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Florida Today)
The Titusville-Cocoa Airport Authority has received a $5.8 million state grant to pay the lion's share of a new road leading to a future 1.4-million-square-foot industrial park, which will be built for high-tech space and aerospace companies. And state officials estimate the future Space Coast Innovation Park will create more than 900 jobs. Total roadway infrastructure project costs — which include a 3,200-foot, two-lane road expandable to four lanes in the future, stormwater drainage and utility upgrades — should reach $7 million to $8 million.

The Space Coast Innovation Park is a future three-phase, multi-building industrial spaceport complex along the west side of the Titusville airport. Thursday's announcement represents a public-private partnership to make the large-scale park a reality. Private firms Hines and Titusville-based Key Group are teaming up to develop Space Coast Innovation Park, which will be built on leased land within the airport's federally licensed Exploration Spaceport. The $5.8 million infrastructure outlay announced Thursday comes from the Florida Job Growth Grant Fund. Space Florida and the airport authority will also help cover costs. (8/22)

The Evolution of the Trappist-1 Planetary System (Source: Phys.org)
Planets are bodies that orbit a star and have sufficient gravitational mass that they form themselves into roughly spherical shapes that, in turn, exert gravitational force on smaller objects around them, such as asteroids and moons. With the help of the Spitzer Space Telescope, which made its own first exoplanet detection in 2005; the Kepler/KW Space Telescope, specifically designed to search for exoplanets; and the James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, the transit method and other techniques have confirmed the existence of more than 5,000 exoplanets inhabiting thousands of star systems.

Exoplanets are, of course, much more difficult to directly observe than stars and galaxies. Almost all exoplanet discoveries, particularly starting around 2010, have been based on photometric measurements (the amount of light received) of the exoplanets' host stars, rather than of the planets themselves. This is called the transit method. "By looking at Trappist-1, we have been able to test exciting new hypotheses for the evolution of planetary systems," Pichierri says. "Trappist-1 is very interesting because it is so intricate; it's a long planetary chain. And it's a great exemplar for testing alternative theories about planetary system formation." (8/20)

China Space Engineers Kick ‘Doomed’ Satellite Pair Into Life in Lunar Orbit (Source: South China Morning Post)
China has “kicked” two of its experimental satellites into their designated lunar orbit, five months after they were left in limbo when the launch rocket’s upper stage did not fire properly. The satellites, developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, were shown operating in their planned distant retrograde orbit (DRO) in a PowerPoint slide attributed to CAS that started circulating on social media platform Weibo from Tuesday.

A researcher who works for CAS in Beijing and is familiar with the project confirmed that the satellites DRO-A and B had been recovered. The recovery was achieved by getting the spacecraft to fire their engines in a series of “perigee kicks” aimed at the closest point to the Earth, increasing velocity and extending their reach, the researcher said, on condition of anonymity.

The satellites left the Xichang launch center on March 13 on top of a Long March 2C rocket but did not reach their destination, tens of thousands of kilometres above the moon’s surface. The rocket’s first and second stages worked normally, but the Yuanzheng-1S upper stage did not, state news agency Xinhua reported the next day. “The satellites have not been inserted into their designated orbit, and work is under way to address this problem,” it said. (8/22)

Concerns Grow Over Chinese Space Maneuvering Capability (Source: Aviation Week)
Newly released details of recent Chinese spacecraft maneuvers tracked by U.S.-based observers show increasing capability in key areas of control for counter inspection, co-orbital anti-satellite weapons and other potential threats. The observations, disclosed by space domain awareness specialists ExoAnalytic Solutions, come as U.S. space defense leaders continue to warn of the rapid growth of China’s military assets in geostationary Earth orbit (GEO).

“They’re getting better. They’re getting more comfortable,” said Rhett Butler, vice president of ExoAnalytic’s National Security Space Sector. Describing China as “the most active adversary we have today,” he added that “they are actively practicing counterspace techniques and showing that technology.”

Speaking at the National Defense Industrial Association Space Warfighting Forum in Colorado Springs on Aug. 15, Butler said the rise of China’s military space capability has accelerated dramatically over the past decade. “We know that the adversary is busy,” he said. “We were busy fighting the war on terrorism. We battled COVID, and while all those things were going on, the adversary decided to step on the gas.” (8/21)

SSLV: A Boon for India’s Nascent Space Industry (Source: New Indian Express)
Indian space scientists are warming up to the huge potential in significantly increasing commercial launches for domestic and foreign customers. On August 16, the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) completed its program development phase successfully when the SSLV-D3 launcher placed in the intended orbits ISRO’s Earth Observation Satellite-08 and the SR-O Demosat developed by aerospace start-up Space Kidz.

This has opened the doors for ISRO’s commercial arm, the New Space India Limited (NSIL), to transfer the SSLV technology to private players. It will see these launchers being produced on a mass scale for commercial missions. (8/21)