November 7, 2024

SpaceX Plans November Starship Test Flight (Source: Space News)
SpaceX plans to perform the next Starship test flight as soon as mid-November. The company announced Wednesday that the sixth integrated test flight of Starship/Super Heavy is scheduled for the afternoon of Nov. 18 from the Starbase launch site at Boca Chica, Texas. The upcoming flight will feature incremental changes from the previous flight in October, including doing an in-flight relight of a Raptor engine on Starship and testing changes to the vehicle's thermal protection system. The afternoon launch, rather than a morning liftoff of previous flights, will enable a splashdown in the Indian Ocean during daylight hours. SpaceX also plans to catch the Super Heavy booster back at the launch tower on this flight. (11/7)

Space Command Adds Five to Intelligence Sharing Effort (Source: Space News)
U.S. Space Command has added five companies to its commercial intelligence-sharing initiative. The Commercial Integration Cell (CIC), established in 2015, will now include Earth observation company BlackSky, space intelligence contractor Kratos, space tracking firm LeoLabs, radar satellite operator Iceye and satellite communications provider Telesat, Space Command announced Wednesday. Radio-frequency satellite data provider HawkEye 360 and space tracking specialist ExoAnalytic Solutions are also expected to join in the coming weeks. The CIC helps coordinate responses to space threats and satellite anomalies, ensuring that military and private sector partners are aware of threats as they unfold. (11/7)

Lynk Global Hires Potarazu (Source: Space News)
Lynk Global, the company developing a satellite constellation for direct-to-device services, has hired a former Intelsat executive as its new CEO. Lynk announced Thursday that Ramu Potarazu had joined the company as CEO, succeeding Dan Dooley, who will return to his earlier post as chief commercial officer. Potarazu held various positions at Intelsat between 1991 and 2006, including president and chief operating officer, and was most recently CEO of media management software company EditShare. Lynk also hired Steven Fay as chief financial officer as the company prepares to go public through a SPAC merger with Slam Corp. Lynk said the appointments coincide with new capital investments from shareholders but declined to disclose details. (11/7)

Virgin Galactic Plans to Raise $300 Million for Fleet Expansion (Source: Space News)
Virgin Galactic is proposing to raise $300 million to accelerate the expansion of its suborbital spaceplane fleet. The company, which says it has enough cash on hand to complete development of its Delta-class vehicles and produce the first two, said in an earnings call Wednesday that the $300 million would allow it to more quickly build a second pair of spaceplanes as well as a second mothership aircraft that takes the spaceplanes aloft. Virgin says raising the growth capital would allow those additional vehicles to enter service in 2028, at least two years earlier than if the company relied on cash from operations of the first two vehicles to finance the new ones. The company said it still expects to begin commercial service with the first Delta-class spaceplane, using the existing VMS Eve aircraft, in 2026. (11/7)

NASA MSR Recommendations by Year's End (Source: Space News)
NASA says it still expects to get a recommendation on a new plan for its Mars Sample Return (MSR) program by the end of the year despite a change in the committee reviewing various concepts. NASA established the MSR Strategy Review Team in mid-October, led by former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, to review a dozen industry and NASA studies on alternatives and recommend a "go-forward" architecture. At a meeting of a Mars exploration committee Wednesday, though, NASA said that Bridenstine was no longer on the committee, which is now chaired by planetary scientist Maria Zuber. NASA said that Bridenstine had informed the agency that he was unable to devote the time needed to serve on the committee. NASA still expects that review team to make a recommendation in December to NASA leadership on a new MSR architecture. (11/7)

Geopolitical: SpaceX Removes Starlink Work From Taiwan (Source: Reuters)
SpaceX has asked suppliers who manufacture components in Taiwan to move that work off the island. Companies that provide components, principally for Starlink terminals and related products, said SpaceX had asked them to move that production outside of Taiwan, with one company relocating the work to Vietnam. One company said it was told to move manufacturing "mostly due to geopolitical considerations," but did not elaborate, and SpaceX also declined to comment. (11/7)

Cartwright Loses House Seat (Source: Allentown Morning Call)
The top Democrat on the House appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA has lost his bid for another term. Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Penn.) formally conceded Wednesday after losing a close race to political newcomer Rob Bresnahan Jr. to represent a district in northeastern Pennsylvania. Cartwright had been the ranking member of the commerce, justice and science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, which funds NASA, NOAA and NSF, among other agencies. (11/7)

ISS National Lab-Sponsored Research to Test Cold Welding for Spacecraft Repairs (Source: CASIS)
Imagine a spacecraft hurtling through deep space when suddenly, it's struck by a rogue piece of space debris. In the harsh vacuum of space, traditional repair methods falter. Enter ASTROBEAT, an innovative experiment sponsored by the ISS National Laboratory, poised to advance spacecraft repairs using cold welding—a technique akin to patching a tire while soaring through space. This experiment, which arrived at the space station via SpaceX’s 31st Commercial Resupply Services mission for NASA, is spearheaded by Leonardo Barilaro, a senior lecturer in aerospace engineering at the Malta College of Arts, Sciences, and Technology (MCAST). (11/7)

Trump Likely to Reverse Several Pentagon Policies (Source: Politico)
President-elect Donald Trump is expected to reverse several Pentagon policies enacted during President Joe Biden's administration, including those related to transgender service members and abortion access for troops. Trump might also revisit the location of the US Space Command headquarters and the color scheme of Air Force One. Concerns have been raised about Trump's potential use of the military for political purposes, particularly domestically. (11/6)

Space Forge and Voyager Space Unite to Revolutionize Commercial In-Space Manufacturing (Source: Space Forge)
Space Forge, the leader of the first clean-industry revolution through the in-space research, development, and manufacturing of hyper-efficient space materials, is pleased to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Voyager Space, a global leader in space exploration, to explore new possibilities in space-based research and manufacturing. The collaboration will explore integrating ForgeStar’s flexible returnable spacecraft with Voyager’s orbital capabilities to create next-level solutions for industries that rely on high-performance materials, from biomedical sectors to cloud computing. (10/29)

Boeing's Military Space Plane Just Slammed on the Brakes in Orbit (Source: Futurism)
The US military's top secret X-37B space plane, which has been orbiting the Earth since December 2023 on its current mission, has slammed on the brakes. The plane has started "performing advanced aerobraking maneuvers," which are designed to lower its currently "highly elliptical orbit." The goal is to "safely dispose of the service module components in accordance with recognized standards for space debris mitigation" — without having to burn copious amounts of fuel to change orbit. (11/6)

MAVEN Advances Science on Mars Magnetic Field (Source: Ecoticias)
Earth’s core is made up of molten iron which generates a magnetic field that surrounds the whole planet. Such a process is not present in the case of Mars. It is the solar wind particles that induce electric currents in the Martian atmosphere which creates a magnetic field surrounding the planet. These currents aren’t only hypothetical; they have been found in the measurements obtained by the sensitive magnetometer of the MAVEN spacecraft, enabling scientists to build a three-dimensional magnetic field map of Mars and track the pathways of these currents.

As noted by Robin Ramstad, a researcher at the University of Colorado, these currents are like the electric circuit found in the atmosphere of Mars, where intense currents sit about 75 to 125 miles from the surface of the planet. This understanding of the induced magnetosphere plays an important role in understanding how atmospheric particles are accelerated and eventually escape to space, causing change on Mars.

The results obtained from MAVEN’s investigations show that Mars’ atmospheric and magnetic fields are significantly influenced by various solar forces. By tracing the electric currents responsible for atmospheric escape, scientists elucidate how Mars has evolved from a warmer and more hydrated world. This research contributes not only to the knowledge of Mars, but also to the planning of other missions and studies of planetary atmospheres within and outside the solar system. (11/5)

NRO Chief: “You Can’t Hide” From Our New Swarm of SpaceX-Built Spy Satellites (Source: Ars Technica)
The director of the National Reconnaissance Office has a message for US adversaries around the world. "You can’t hide, because we’re constantly looking," said Chris Scolese, a longtime NASA engineer who took the helm of the US government's spy satellite agency in 2019.

The NRO is taking advantage of SpaceX's Starlink satellite assembly line to build a network of at least 100 satellites, and perhaps many more, to monitor adversaries around the world. So far, more than 80 of these SpaceX-made spacecraft, each a little less than a ton in mass, have launched on four Falcon 9 rockets. There are more to come. (11/5)

Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck Talks Scaling the Space Industry (Source: Yahoo! Finance)
At TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, Rocket Lab's founder and CEO Peter Beck sat down with senior editor Devin Coldewey to discuss the space industry. Together the two delve into Rocket Lab's strategic mission of scaling the space industry and its approach to spacecraft manufacturing and supply chain management. Beck also shared updates on the company's current space missions and future initiatives. Click here. (11/3) https://finance.yahoo.com/video/rocket-lab-ceo-peter-beck-140017847.html

Astronomers Find Signs Of Distant Objects At The Edge Of Our Solar System (Source: Twisted Sifter)
When you get out past the planets of our solar system and keep going, you will eventually enter the Kuiper belt, which has long been seen as the outer edge of the solar system. After observing this area with the Subaru Telescope, located in Hawaii, for over a decade, however, scientists believe that there may be additional objects out there orbiting our sun.

“If this is confirmed, it would be a major discovery. The primordial solar nebula was much larger than previously thought, and this may have implications for studying the planet formation process in our Solar System.” This new area of space is approximately 70 to 90 astronomical units away from the sun (an astronomical unit being the distance between the sun and the Earth). The researchers found 11 objects in this area of space. They are traveling in a heliocentric orbit, indicating that they are indeed part of our solar system and not just objects that are passing by and happened to be seen by the scientists. (11/5)

Ghana Launches Space Policy (Source: Modern Ghana)
Ghana's government has launched a space policy to harness the power of space science and technology to enhance the country's socio-economic transformation. The policy will guide the use and development of space science and technology to achieve sustainable development through research and commerce. (11/5)

Korea Launches Project to Develop Rover for Space Exploration (Source: Korea Times)
Korea's industry ministry said Wednesday it has launched a project to develop homegrown space rovers amid the growing global competition for lunar exploration. The government has reached an agreement with 13 institutions and companies, including Hyundai Motor, to develop around 10 key rover components with a combined budget of 23 billion won ($16.54 million), according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

Through the project, Korea aims to develop motors, robotic arms and other essential rover parts capable of operating under extreme conditions, such as low temperatures and high radiation. (11/5)

Japan Space Agency Hacking Reveals Cyber Espionage Risk (Source: Nikkei)
A cyberattack against Japan's space agency is an example of the growing threat of cyber espionage targeting executives with access to critical data, a tactic that analysts say is commonly used by Chinese hacker groups. JAXA has been hit by multiple cyberattacks, in which staff accounts were hacked through the Microsoft 365 cloud service. (11/6)

Engineers Ignored Warning Signs in Arecibo Telescope Collapse (Source: Space Policy Online)
A new report from the National Academies concludes that the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico collapsed in 2020 due to failures of cable sockets that supported the platform above the dish because of accelerated zinc creep. Structural engineers who inspected the cables and sockets missed warning signs, especially after winds from Hurricane Maria placed extra stress on the cables. The authors also speculate that the electromagnetic environment may have been a contributing factor.

The report from the Academies’ Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment cited a number of technical and managerial factors that led to the collapse of Arecibo’s 913-ton instrument platform on December 1, 2020, but fundamentally it was the failure of engineers to recognize the warning signs. Arecibo was owned by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and managed by the University of Central Florida. No one was injured. (11/5)

Iran's Private Sector Joins Space Race (Source: Tehran Times)
In a landmark achievement for Iran's space industry on Tuesday, the country successfully launched its first privately-developed satellites, Kowsar and Hodhod, into orbit aboard a Russian Soyuz launcher. This marked the inaugural foray of the private sector into Iran's space exploration endeavors. The CEO of the knowledge-based company behind the design and development of the satellites says it took his team 15 years of dedicated work to finally witness Hodhod and Kowsar successfully launched into orbit. “This is only the beginning for us, we are only going forward from here,” Faghih Imani said after personally assessing the launch of the two satellites in Russia. (11/5)