The Space Review

[Orionid]

1/I 2003 [1-5]

1) Review: Dear Neil Armstrong
by Jeff Foust Monday, January 6, 2020



Dear Neil Armstrong: Letters to the First Man from All Mankind
by James R. Hansen
Purdue Univ. Press, 2019
hardcover, 400 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-1-55753-874-1
US$34.99
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1557538743/spaceviews

Neil Armstrong gained a reputation in his post-Apollo career of being a recluse. This was not accurate—he was quite active from the end of his time at NASA until his death in 2012—but he was a private person, carefully choosing what he did. Of course, that didn’t stop Armstrong from being flooded with letters over the years, from wellwishers seeking nothing more than an autograph to those offering business and political opportunities.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3857/1

2) Chicken or the egg: space launch and state spaceports
by Roger Handberg Monday, January 6, 2020


Spaceport America is just one of many spaceport projects, of varying stages of development, seeking to get into the launch market in the United States. (credit: J. Foust)

A recent article in The Space Review presents a nice summary of where US state spaceports stand at this point in history (see “How many spaceports are too many?”, The Space Review, December 9, 2019). The concern is that there are too many, meaning that many proposed and actual state spaceports may fail, remaining as white elephants symbolizing the cyclical nature of the space marketplace. The Space Foundation also reported that “around the world, there are 40 active spaceports, 10 in development and at least 13 proposed. The U.S. has five times as many spaceports active, in development, or proposed compared to its nearest competitor, Russia, which currently has five active spaceports and no new known ones in development. China is third with four active spaceports.”
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3858/1

3) It’s all a matter of timing
by Wayne Eleazer Monday, January 6, 2020


The Boeing CST-100 Starliner after landing in New Mexico, its test flight cut short by a timer problem. (credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

The timing problem that caused the partial failure of the Boeing Starliner’s first mission represents yet another space launch when bad timing—or at least bad synchronization of timing—occurred.

On the first SM-75 Thor IRBM to be launched operationally at Vandenberg Air Force Base, someone forgot to cut the wire that secured the 35mm tape that served to provide electromechanical timing for the flight. As far as the booster was concerned, the plus count never got past T-0. The booster never entered its pitch and roll programs and climbed straight up until the Range Safety Officer at Vandenberg decided he’d better send the destruct signal.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3859/1

4) Strange bedfellows
by Dwayne A. Day Monday, January 6, 2020


The Mapping and Survey System being attached to an Apollo Applications Program “wet workshop” in Earth orbit. This NASA artist illustration from early 1967 demonstrates that MSS was depicted in NASA artwork at the time. Yet reporters never asked many questions about what MSS really was or where it came from. (credit: courtesy David Portree)

In the 1960s, NASA was a big, well-funded government agency with a high profile. In contrast, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) was significantly smaller and it did not officially exist. It was a covert agency, hiding in the shadows, not publicly acknowledged until 1992. Despite this, the two organizations cooperated on several projects throughout the decade. The most important was undoubtedly the UPWARD program.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3860/1

5) The challenges facing Artemis in 2020
by Jeff Foust Monday, January 6, 2020


One near-term challenge for NASA is how to handle development of human-rated lunar landers given the shortfall in funding for the program in 2020. (credit: NASA)

When 2019 started, NASA was going back to the Moon, gradually. The agency had set an internal goal of getting astronauts back onto the surface of the Moon by 2028, after developing the lunar Gateway in orbit around the Moon that would serve as a base camp for such missions, and for other purposes. That all changed in March, though, when Vice President Mike Pence directed NASA to get back to the Moon in the next five years, a timeline later interpreted to be the end of 2024 (see “Lunar whiplash”, The Space Review, April 1, 2019).
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3861/1

[Orionid]

2/I 2003 [6-9]

6) Why improved registration is essential for public and private activities on the Moon
by Dennis O’Brien Monday, January 13, 2020


As both public and private lunar ambitions increase, there’s a growing need to update agreements about the registration of such missions. (credit: Anna Nesterova/Alliance for Space Development)

At its recent workshop and symposium in Japan, the Moon Village Association (MVA) presented a white paper that asserted that the current Convention On Registration Of Objects Launched Into Outer Space (aka the Registration Convention) is inadequate to support a sustainable human presence on the Moon. After analyzing relevant space treaties and proposed norms, the paper concluded that the Registration Convention should be expanded to include additional topics that have become important since its adoption, but that other institutions or processes might also be needed in order to share information about topics that would not easily fit into the Registration Treaty’s scope or processes.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3862/1

7) China’s space dream on track
by Namrata Goswami Monday, January 13, 2020


The Long March 5 lifts off December 27 on its return-to-flight mission. The vehicle is a key element of much of China’s space plans, including missions to the Moon. (credit: Xinhua)

Last January 3, China dazzled the world with the landing of the Chang’e-4 spacecraft on the far side of the Moon, accomplishing a first for humanity. On December 14, its Yutu-2 rover set the record for longest active rover on the Moon, breaking the record of the erstwhile Soviet Union’s Lunokhod-1 that was active for ten and a half months (November 15, 1970 to October 4, 1971). Yutu-2 has travelled about 345 meters on the lunar surface and is entering its 13th lunar day.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3863/1

8 ) You can’t take the sky from me
by Arwen Rimmer Monday, January 13, 2020


A stream of Starlink satellites passes overhead during an exposure at the Cerro Tololo International Observatory in Chile in November, shortly after the launch of a second set of 60 satellites. (credit: Clarae Martínez-Vázquez )

Despite the very earnest, practical, and well-informed advice of international space governance experts, outer space is becoming the new Wild West. Astronomers will merely be the first to pay the price, as profit-seeking entities thoughtlessly overpopulate the heavens, countries jockey for position in an orbital arms race, and the Kessler Syndrome becomes a mathematical inevitability. Without strict, universally adhered-to standards for orbital activities, humanity will soon find itself locked in a hothouse with no windows.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3864/1

9) Balancing astronomical visions with budgetary realities
by Jeff Foust Monday, January 13, 2020


The James Webb Space Telescope with its sunshield deployed during a test last fall at a Northrop Grumman facility in California. (credit: NASA/Chris Gunn)

In an alternate timeline, last week’s meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) would have been filled with presentations involving data from the James Webb Space Telescope. In that timeline, JWST would have launched in October 2018 and completed its six-month commissioning phase in the spring of 2019—time for astronomers to start using the telescope and presenting the results, from observations of the solar system to distant galaxies, at one of the biggest astronomy conferences of the year.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3865/1

[Orionid]

3/I 2003 [10-13]

10) Review: Final Frontier: India and Space Security
by Jeff Foust Monday, January 20, 2020



Final Frontier: India and Space Security
by Bharath Gopalaswamy
Westland, 2019
paperback, 274 pp.
ISBN 978-93-89152-24-1
US$12.95
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9389152240/spaceviews

On New Year’s Day, K. Sivan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), held a press conference to talk about his agency’s achievements from the past year and plans for the future. That included, of course, discussion about the Chandrayaan-2 mission and its failed lunar lander, and plans to fly a Chandrayaan-3 mission, likely in early 2021, to make a second lunar landing attempt. He also mentioned the selection of the country’s first astronauts, who will soon begin training for a flight in late 2021.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3866/1

11) All these moments will be lost…
by Dwayne A. Day Monday, January 20, 2020


For some people, STS-107 is just history, but for others, that history is deeply personal. (credit: NASA)

On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia came apart in the skies over Texas, killing all seven crewmembers aboard. Several months later I found myself sitting against the wall of a conference room in Houston, awaiting a briefing about what could have been done to save them. As a civilian investigator for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), I had much greater access to many of the board activities and deliberations than most of the other investigators, many of whom were military officers who had been assigned to the investigation when their leaders—some of them generals and admirals—had become board members. Generally, they didn’t attend many meetings unless told to, whereas I went where I needed to go to gather information necessary for my work supporting board member John Logsdon, or writing the sections of the report I was assigned.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3867/1

12) A national treasure turns 90
by Eric R. Hedman Monday, January 20, 2020


Buzz Aldrin speaks at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington in October 2019. (credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)

Today, January 20, 2020, is Buzz Aldrin’s 90th birthday. It is a milestone birthday for someone who accomplished one of the biggest milestones in human history when he and Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon. I won’t recap his many accomplishments because so many others have done it better, and in more detail, than I could do. What I want to do is say thank you to Buzz Aldrin for what an inspiration he was for me as a little kid growing up fascinated by spaceflight.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3868/1

13) Panchromatic astronomy on a budget
by Jeff Foust Monday, January 20, 2020


NASA will decommission the Spitzer Space Telescope, launched in 2003 as the last of the original four Great Observatories, on January 30. (credit: NASA)

The annual January conference of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), held this year in Honolulu, included many presentations about exoplanets, including new discoveries. One of those discoveries, the subject of a press briefing, was about an Earth-sized exoplanet in a star’s habitable zone discovered by scientists using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), launched nearly two years ago. The planet, TOI 700 d, is one of three found to orbit an M dwarf star about 100 light-years from Earth.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3869/1

[Orionid]

4/I 2003 [14-17]

14) Review: Leadership from the Mission Control Room to the Boardroom
by Jeff Foust Monday, January 27, 2020



Leadership from the Mission Control Room to the Boardroom: A Guide to Unleashing Team Performance
By Paul Sean Hill
Atlast Press, 2017
paperback, 360 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-0-9986343-1-9
US$16.99
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/099863431X/spaceviews

Few groups appear as competent as those who work in Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The controllers there are responsible for operating the International Space Station and other spacecraft in its vicinity, ensuring the safety of those on board and the success of their activities. They’ve demonstrated their technical expertise and leadership over the decades, built on Gene Kranz’s admonition to controllers to be “tough and competent” in the aftermath of the Apollo 1 accident 53 years ago.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3870/1

15) Forty years of revolution, ten years of spaceflight
by Henk H.F. Smid Monday, January 27, 2020


Simorgh, an Iranian space launch vehicle with roots in ballistic missile programs. (credit: MelliunIran)

Last year, the Islamic Republic of Iran commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Iranian revolution that transformed the state into a theocracy, admittedly with a parliament, but where the clergy are ultimately in charge. The country also celebrated last year the 10th anniversary of the launch, with its own resources, of an indigenous, working satellite. Yet, there is currently little to celebrate. Due to economic sanctions, which have resulted in devastating inflation, Iran is on the verge of an economic abyss. The sanctions are the result of the reactions of the United Nations and the United States to Iran’s nuclear and armament policy. This article describes how Iranian spaceflight effort is entangled with this policy.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3871/1

16) Assessing China’s commercial space industry
by Jeff Foust Monday, January 27, 2020


LandSpace is among the more than 20 Chinese commercial space companies pursuing launch vehicles, primarily small launchers. (credit: LandSpace)

One of the more remarkable developments in the space industry in the last decade—arguably just in the last several years—has been the rise of a vibrant, well-funded startup economy. A report issued earlier this month by Space Angels estimated that space companies received $5.8 billion in 2019 in 198 separate rounds. While that dollar figure is dominated by a few large companies, like Blue Origin, OneWeb, and SpaceX, the report concludes $686 million went towards early-stage companies, accounting for about three-fourths of the total investment rounds. Since 2009, Space Angels estimates $25.7 billion has been invested in 535 space companies.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3872/1

17) Target Moscow: Soviet suspicions about the military uses of the American Space Shuttle (part 1)
by Bart Hendrickx and Dwayne A. Day Monday, January 27, 2020


The Soviets took seriously the prospect of a shuttle, launched from Vandenberg, maneuvering to drop a nuclear weapon on Moscow. (credit: USAF/Walt Weible)

The Cold War was often a shadow war, with events and decisions taking place in secret and based upon inaccurate or ambiguous information. The end of that struggle several decades ago has resulted in many fascinating revelations about what actually occurred, sometimes dramatically changing our perception of events, like the revelation about the presence of deployed nuclear weapons in Cuba during the Missile Crisis. Space history has benefitted from the end of the Cold War: thirty years ago, we knew almost nothing about the Soviet program to land cosmonauts on the Moon, but today we know vastly more.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3873/1

[Orionid]

5/II 2003 [18-21]

18) Review: The Contact Paradox
by Jeff Foust Monday, February 3, 2020



The Contact Paradox: Challenging our Assumptions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
by Keith Cooper
Bloomsbury Sigma, 2020
hardcover, 336 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-1-4729-6042-9
US$28.00
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1472960424/spaceviews

While most of the discussion about the House’s new NASA authorization bill revolved around its language regarding the agency’s human spaceflight plans (see “New challenges for NASA’s Moon 2024 goal”, The Space Review, this issue), there was another interesting provision included in the bill. Section 323, titled “Research on Technosignatures,” notes that “research related to the search for life has encompassed nongovernment funded research on and searches for intelligent life.” It therefore allows NASA to, “support, as appropriate, peer-reviewed, competitively-selected research on technosignatures,” defined as evidence of advanced technologies of extraterrestrial origin.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3874/1

19) Suborbital refueling: a path not taken
by Francis Castanos Monday, February 3, 2020


The US Navy has used buddy-buddy refueling for at least 60 years, all the way from Skyhawks to Super Hornets. Suborbital refueling would be very similar, at least in some scenarios involving vehicles and their propellants.

The following paper considers a groundbreaking launch system involving the use of in-flight oxidizer transfer during suborbital flight. It stems from the discovery many years ago of a terra incognita in the land of RLVs, a small breach in the tyranny of the rocket equation that grew larger and larger.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3875/1

20) Target Moscow (part 2): The American Space Shuttle and the decision to build the Soviet Buran
by Bart Hendrickx and Dwayne A. Day Monday, February 3, 2020


How did a report claiming to show that the American shuttle could be used as a bomber influence the development of its Soviet counterpart, Buran?

The old axiom that when all you have is a hammer, every job looks like a nail, also applies to interpreting the actions of adversaries. The authors of an infamous 1976 assessment of the American Space Shuttle program, Dmitry Okhotsimsky and Yuri Sikharulidze, were mathematicians, not intelligence analysts. (See: “Target Moscow: Soviet suspicions about the military uses of the American Space Shuttle (part 1),” The Space Review, January 27, 2020). They began with an assumption that the United States was hostile toward the Soviet Union and this clouded their assessment of the American shuttle program. What may have started them on their quest was a bizarre mystery: the Americans had justified their shuttle by claiming that it could save money for launching satellites into space, but Soviet researchers believed that was impossible and the shuttle would be more expensive. The cost justification, they determined, had to be a lie. What they did not realize was that the lie was not intended for the Soviet Union. Instead, the Americans were lying to themselves.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3876/1

21) New challenges for NASA’s Moon 2024 goal
by Jeff Foust Monday, February 3, 2020


A House bill would push back the “deadline” for returning humans to the Moon to 2028, although the bill’s backers say it does not prevent NASA from getting there as soon as the current plan of 2024. (credit: NASA)

A week from today, the White House will release its fiscal year 2021 budget proposal. For NASA, that will include not just what the agency is seeking in 2021 to carry out its various programs, but also projections for future years—“outyears” in budget jargon—from 2022 to 2025. That will, for the first time, offer an estimate of how much NASA thinks it will cost to carry out the Artemis program through its return of humans to the lunar surface in 2024, a figure long sought by Congress and others in the space field. That estimate could provide new realism for Artemis, or make it the subject of renewed criticism, depending on the cost and how the administration seeks to pay for it.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3877/1

[Orionid]

6/II 2003 [22-25]

22) Review: Rise of the Space Age Millennials
by Jeff Foust Monday, February 10, 2020



Rise of the Space Age Millennials: The Space Aspirations of a Rising Generation
by Laura Forczyk
Astralytical, 2020
paperback, 234 pp.
ISBN 978-1-7344622-0-3
US$17.99
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1734462205/spaceviews

There does, at times, seem to be something of a generational war going on between Millennials and Baby Boomers. Millennials are often stereotyped by that older generation as being self-centered and spendthrift, “killing” all sorts of industries, products, and services along the way. Boomers, in turn, are seen as out of touch with the changing ways of the world and lecturing their younger cohorts, prompting a millennial rejoinder of “OK, boomer” heard around the world, including in the chamber of New Zealand’s parliament late last year.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3878/1

23) The US Space Force and international law considerations
by Bharatt Goel Monday, February 10, 2020


President Trump signed into law the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act in December, which formally established the US Space Force. (credit: US Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Spencer Slocum)

President Trump’s signing of the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act has put into action the United States’ ambitions of an independent Space Force, ushering its military ascendancy in the outer space and attaching a new facet to its hard power. The US Space Force will formally be the sixth military service branch, absorbing its predecessor, the Air Force Space Command.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3879/1

24) Alternative financing for lunar mining exploration
by Blake Ahadi Monday, February 10, 2020


The costs and risks associated with lunar mining may require the use of alternative funding mechanisms. (credit: Anna Nesterova/Alliance for Space Development)

The space industry is in the midst of a widespread transformation, as the last decade has seen several young, private companies seek to profit in areas historically dominated by governmental interests. Among these areas is lunar mining, which represents a crucial step for the development of the space economy by enabling the utilization of lunar resources. Though significant opportunities exist for wealth creation and societal benefits, it will require sustained multibillion-dollar investment to develop a vibrant lunar mining industry.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3880/1

25) Starliner software setback
by Jeff Foust Monday, February 10, 2020


Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner after landing on its uncrewed Orbital Flight Test in December. Boeing engineers scrambled during the mission to correct a software problem that a safety panel warned could have led to a “catastrophic spacecraft failure” as it prepared to return to Earth. (credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

The quarterly teleconferences of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, or ASAP, are enlightening, but rarely exciting. ASAP is an independent committee charged with examining the safety of NASA programs and facilities with a broad mandate, from the International Space Station and crewed spacecraft to the long-term health risks of human spaceflight to terrestrial facilities. The public meetings offer insights into safety issues they see in NASA programs and how the agency is addressing them, but with few surprises.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3881/1

[Orionid]

7/II 2003 [26-29]

26) Review: Fighting for Space
by Jeff Foust Monday, February 17, 2020



Fighting for Space: Two Pilots and Their Historic Battle for Female Spaceflight
by Amy Shira Teitel
Grand Central Publishing, 2020
hardcover, 448 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-1-5387-1604-5
US$30.00
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1538716046/spaceviews

By now, most people interested in space have heard of what’s most commonly called the “Mercury 13”: the group of women pilots who underwent medical assessments that demonstrated that they were just as physically capable of spaceflight as the men NASA selected as its first astronauts. None, though, would get to fly in space as NASA argued that it needed the extensive military test pilot experience that those men, and only those men, provided in its race to the Moon.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3882/1

27) Democratizing space exploration with new technologies
by Dylan Taylor Monday, February 17, 2020


Cubesats are one example of technologies that are democratizing space, expanding access to it to more than just governments and large companies. (credit: NASA)

Emergent technologies have made our world more efficient, engaging, and accessible. We’ve witnessed how innovations like artificial intelligence (AI) have transformed from largely an insider trend of the leading edge of the tech industry into more commercially viable devices, such as Amazon Echo, Siri, and on-demand machine learning from AWS. There tools have democratized the way we interact with the world.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3883/1

28) Why the International Lunar Decade still makes sense
by Vidvuds Beldavs, Bernard Foing, Jim Crisafulli, and Henk Rogers Monday, February 17, 2020


As companies like Blue Origin make plans for a return to the Moon, it opens up new opportunities for public-private partnerships that could be harnessed through an international framework. (credit: Blue Origin)

In his recent commentary “For the United States, a second race to the moon is a second-rate goal,” Louis Friedman strongly rejects US leadership in human lunar missions that depend on commercial involvement. He states:

…the House Science Committee is pushing a policy more directed to Mars and away from commercial participation. That is sensible if you believe that the purpose of human spaceflight is exploration and that its rationale is geopolitical. That has been true for all of the Space Age, and I believe it will remain so.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3884/1

29) Will we hit the snooze button on an orbital debris wakeup call?
by Jeff Foust Monday, February 17, 2020


The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (above) passed within meters of another defunct satellite January 29, offering another example of the potential hazards of orbital debris. (credit: NASA)

On the evening of January 29, about 900 kilometers above Pittsburgh, two satellites approached each other at a relative velocity of nearly 15 kilometers per second. And there was nothing anyone could do about it but watch.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3885/1

[Orionid]

8/II 2003 [30-33]

30) Review: Handprints on Hubble
by Jeff Foust Monday, February 24, 2020



Handprints on Hubble: An Astronaut’s Story of Invention
by Kathryn D. Sullivan
MIT Press, 2019
hardcover, 304 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-0-262-04318-2
US$26.95
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262043181/spaceviews

Two months from today—April 24—will be the 30th anniversary of the launch of shuttle mission STS-31, which deployed the Hubble Space Telescope. The upcoming celebrations of the telescope’s 30 years in space will focus on its scientific legacy, from the discovery of dark energy that won astronomers a Nobel Prize to studies of exoplanets and objects in our own solar system. They will also reflect on the changed public perception of Hubble, from an object of ridicule when its optical flaw was revealed shortly after launch to one of the most famous, and most loved, missions today.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3886/1

31) Passive space debris removal using drag sail deorbiting technology
by Rebecca Hill Monday, February 24, 2020


An engineering unit of the Spinnaker 1 drag sail, which uses a transparent material called CP-1 for the sails. (credit: David Spencer)

There are currently about 22,000 tracked objects in LEO, some of which are smaller than one centimeter. The focus of many current plans has been on the active removal of current debris.

But with a projected 57,000 new satellites expected to launch by 2029, the question becomes: how to prevent new debris? Currently, at Purdue University’s School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, David Spencer and his team are working on a passive debris removal system using drag sail deorbiting technology where these passive deorbiting systems are embedded within a spacecraft for deorbiting at the end of the spacecraft’s lifetime.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3887/1

32) Making the funding case for commercial space stations
by Jeff Foust Monday, February 24, 2020


Axiom Space envisions installing several commercial modules on the International Space Station, which will form the core of a future commercial free-flying space station. (credit: Axiom Space)

When NASA released its fiscal year 2021 budget proposal two weeks ago, most of the attention devoted to it—from politicians, the press, and the public—was on the parts related to the Artemis program for returning humans to the Moon by 2024. That includes more than $3 billion to work on human lunar landers, and the first estimate of the cost of achieving that goal: $35 billion through 2024.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3888/1

33) The United States is losing its leadership role in the fight against orbital debris
by Brian Weeden Monday, February 24, 2020


While the US government makes superficial changes to orbital debris mitigation guidelines, ESA is funding a mission to demonstrate the ability to deorbit debris. (credit: ESA)

After more than a year of effort, the Trump Administration released an update to the US Government Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices in December 2019. The Standard Practices define the standards for minimizing the creation of orbital debris and generally apply to all US government space missions and establish the foundation for rulemaking that applies to commercial space activities licensed by the US government. The updated Standard Practices are a key part of demonstrating how the United States fulfills its national space policy goal of strengthening the safety and sustainability of space activities and establishing a benchmark for other countries to follow.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3889/1

[Orionid]

9/III 2003 [34-37]

34) Review: What Stars Are Made Of
by Jeff Foust Monday, March 2, 2020



What Stars Are Made Of: The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
by Donovan Moore
Harvard Univ. Press, 2020
hardcover, 320 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-0-674-23737-7
US$29.95
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674237374/spaceviews

The early 20th century was a dynamic time in astronomy and physics, with breakthroughs that reshaped our understanding of the universe and how it works. Many of the scientists who made those discoveries became famous: think of Albert Einstein and relativity, Edwin Hubble and the expansion of the universe, and Erwin SchrĂśdinger’s advances in quantum mechanics, to name just a few.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3890/1

35) EnVision and the Cosmic Vision decision
by Arwen Rimmer Monday, March 2, 2020


An illustration of the proposed EnVision spacecraft orbiting Venus. (credit: VR2Planets - François Civet)

In 2016, the European Space Agency announced a call for medium-size missions within their Cosmic Vision Program. In layman’s terms, “medium-size” means moderate-cost (less than 550 million euros, or $610 million) and low-risk, and this is achieved by keeping payloads small and by using proven, heritage technology for both spacecraft and payload. Alongside these common-sense conditions is a third and less tangible quality, that the project be scientifically robust. But when comparing excellent cases from vastly different fields, the merits of one scientific mission over another can seem subjective. It’s not enough to lament the dearth of data in said field, or to establish how a project will discover this or that, or even to show exactly how said “groundbreaking technology” will work. ESA wants a mission that will stir up an unprecedented level of excitement, support, and interest within the scientific community. Here is how they attempt to measure a project’s relevance.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3891/1

36) Handicapping the megaconstellations
by Jeff Foust Monday, March 2, 2020


OneWeb launched its first large set of satellites February 6 on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome. (credit: OneWeb)

This year is shaping up to be a critical one for broadband satellite megaconstellations. SpaceX, which launched its first set of Starlink satellites last May, followed by a second set in November, is picking up the pace of deployment of its constellation. Three Falcon 9 launches in January and February placed 180 satellites into orbit, with the next launch scheduled for March 11. Company officials previously talked about performing as many as 24 Starlink launches this year to get the initial phase of its constellation in orbit.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3892/1

37) Racing to where/what/when/why?
by Dwayne A. Day Monday, March 2, 2020


The concept of a “space race” has been around for decades, but has lost its meaning today. (credit: Time)

During the Cold War, Albert Wohlstetter, one of the most well-known American strategic thinkers, earned a reputation for upsetting the status quo when it came to discussing nuclear weapons. Starting in the late 1960s and into the next decade, Wohlstetter, occasionally co-writing with his wife Roberta, began challenging the popular concept of the arms race, and particularly the idea of “arms race spirals,” the theory that the two superpowers would keep building more and more weapons in an action-reaction relationship. As Wohlstetter noted, many Soviet strategic weapons were not deployed in response to any particular American action, and it was difficult to find examples of action-reaction in many of the weapons developments made by both superpowers. What, for instance, was one to conclude when large numbers of weapons such as medium-range bombers were actually eliminated from the American arsenal?
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3893/1

[Orionid]

10/III 2003 [38-41]

38) Review: The Vinyl Frontier
by Jeff Foust Monday, March 9, 2020



The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of the Voyager Golden Record
by Jonathan Scott
Bloomsbury Sigma, 2019
hardcover, 288 pp.
ISBN 978-1-4729-5613-2
US$28.00
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1472956133/spaceviews

Starting today, Earth won’t be able to talk to the Voyager 2 spacecraft in the hinterlands of the solar system. The only antenna both powerful enough to transmit to the spacecraft and able to see it in the sky, a 70-meter dish at a Deep Space Network site in Australia, is being taken offline for the next 11 months for upgrades to prepare it for the armada of Mars missions arriving at the Red Planet in early 2021. That won’t stop the spacecraft from continuing to transmit spacecraft telemetry and space science data during the interim, but will keep controllers from being able to respond if something goes wrong.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3894/1

39) Wasn’t the future wonderful?
by Dwayne A. Day Monday, March 9, 2020

For All Mankind and the space program we didn’t get


Joel Kinnaman as astronaut Edward Baldwin, who commands America's first moonbase at the lunar South Pole, and discovers that he has company. (credit: Apple TV+)

If you were a kid during the 1960s and watched American astronauts float outside their Gemini capsules, and then stayed up late to watch Neil Armstrong step onto the surface of the Moon, there’s a good chance that you were incredibly excited by these events only to be disappointed, even angered, when they came to an end only a few years later. Space enthusiasts have even applied labels to themselves because of this: “children of Apollo” or even “the orphans of Apollo.” What persists in some of them even today is a sense that America—and they in particular—were robbed of more of it, more missions, more exploration, more inspiration and awe. It was going to happen, they believe; it should have happened, they argue; but somebody took their dream away. Much of the anger you can find directed at NASA on the Internet stems from this sense of betrayal, that we were promised a great big shiny future of space exploration… and then somebody took it away.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3895/1

40) Space reconnaissance and Anglo-American relations during the Cold War
by Aaron Bateman Monday, March 9, 2020


Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had a close working relationship during the 1980s, one that Thatcher sought to preserve in part by not lobbying the US against pursuing the Strategic Defense Initiative. (credit: Reagan Library)

In March 1983, President Ronald Reagan announced his intention to pursue a capability that would render nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. This concept became the basis of his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) that was derisively referred to as “Star Wars.” SDI represented a fundamental shift in American military strategy away from nuclear deterrence, but none of the NATO allies were consulted. When Reagan attempted to garner British support for the program, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was especially annoyed by the fact that London had agreed to upgrade its nuclear deterrent using the American-made Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) system. British support for SDI would have seemed to contradict the need for Trident, which represented the United Kingdom’s long-term commitment to nuclear deterrence. When it became clear that SDI would involve the placement of kinetic-kill weapons in space, many European allies, in addition to the Soviet Union, began to publicly express concerns that the US was weaponizing outer space. Yet ultimately, Thatcher supported both SDI and the American Miniature Homing Vehicle (MHV) anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons program.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3896/1

41) Responsive launch is still not quite ready for prime time
by Jeff Foust Monday, March 9, 2020


Astra’s “Rocket 3.0” on the pad prior to its scrubbed launch attempt from Alaska March 2. (credit: DARPA)

They are the three words—or, more accurately, one word uttered three times—that anyone listening to a launch countdown dreads. On March 2, a small rocket stood on a pad at Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska on Kodiak Island, in the final phases of a countdown for its first attempted orbital flight. Weather, which had been poor the previous several days, had improved, and the rocket finally appeared ready to fly.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3897/1

[Orionid]

11/III 2003 [42-45]

42) Private options, private risks: the future of US spaceflight
by Roger Handberg Monday, March 16, 2020


Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner after landing on its uncrewed Orbital Flight Test in December, a mission cut short by technical problems. (credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

The United States is moving closer to commercial human spaceflight for its International Space Station (ISS) crews. This new flight option has drawn much enthusiasm especially when compared to the multiple failures of NASA to develop a replacement for the now departed space shuttle. Here, a brief discussion of the problem and the hazards of the new approach will be presented.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3898/1

43) Space security: the need for a monitoring mechanism
by Ajey Lele Monday, March 16, 2020


India’s test of an anti-satellite weapon last year. Efforts to stem the development of ASATs through treaties or international agreements have failed so far. (credit: DRDO)

This essay examines one idea for addressing space security. The intention is to learn something from the evolution of an existing structure from the domain of arms control and disarmament. Could a similar structure be developed for the space domain?

Outer space is fast gaining recognition as the possible fourth domain of warfare. Recently, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has identified outer space as an “operational (warfighting) domain.” At the same time, almost everybody is of the opinion that the weaponization of outer space is not in the interest of humanity. However, no rule or treaty mechanism has won widespread acceptance to stop the possible weaponization of space.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3899/1

44) Mars in limbo
by Jeff Foust Monday, March 16, 2020


The launch of the ExoMars mission, featuring a rover named Rosalind Franklin, has been postponed from 2020 to 2022. (credit: ESA)

This year was supposed to be one of the biggest ever for the exploration of Mars. Four missions by four different space agencies were scheduled for launch this summer, arriving at Mars in early 2021. The missions ranged from an orbiter by an up-and-coming space power to a rover that is the beginning of a decade-long effort to collect samples of the Red Planet and return them to Earth.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3900/1

45) When Senator Walter Mondale went to the Moon: the Apollo 1 fire and the myths we create
by Dwayne A. Day Monday, March 16, 2020


NASA leadership, including administration James Webb (second from left) testifying at a Senate hearing about the Apollo 1 accident in 1967. (credit: NASA)

In 1999, in honor of the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, radio station WAMU in Washington, DC, aired a fascinating program about the role of Washington politics in the lunar landing. “Washington Goes to the Moon” was written and produced by Richard Paul and featured interviews with a number of key figures in the story, including CBS anchor Walter Cronkite and former NASA Deputy Administrator Robert Seamans. The program remains an excellent introduction to the subject of politics and Apollo and is worth listening to even 20 years later.
Source: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3901/1

[Orionid]

12/III 2003 [46-50]

46) Another look at The Vinyl Frontier
by Glen E. Swanson Monday, March 23, 2020


Voyager mission project manager John Casani with the Voyager record, its cover, and a small American flag to be carried by the spacecraft. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Recently TSR ran a brief review on Jonathan Scott’s book (see “Review: The Vinyl Frontier”, The Space Review, March 9, 2020). Glen E. Swanson wrote the following review which originally appeared in the Vol. 26, No. 4 2019 issue of Quest.

1977 was the year Star Wars premiered. Late that summer, as kids waited to watch Luke Skywalker take down the Death Star for the nth time before summer vacation came to a close, a twin set of robotic probes launched into space.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3902/1

47) Magnificent isolation: what we can learn from astronauts about social distancing and sheltering in space
by Deana L. Weibel Monday, March 23, 2020


Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden, who passed away last week, experienced a unique kind of isolation as he circled the Moon alone. (credit: NASA)

The emergence of the novel coronavirus and its associated disease, COVID-19, has led to a global pandemic and a call for individuals, in the name of overall public health and an attempt to prevent national medical systems from being overwhelmed with too many patients at once, to self-isolate, self-quarantine, and practice social distancing. Many of us are confronted, for perhaps the only time in our lives, with an uncertain span of time in solitude.

Although this is the first time we’ve seen this particular phenomenon, social distancing isn’t a new invention. Humans have always had good reasons to withdraw from society, often for the greater good. Among the champions of isolation and social distancing are astronauts and cosmonauts—including the late Al Worden—whose time in space has often been spent in extended periods of cramped loneliness, away from family and friends. They can serve as inspiration in these difficult times.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3903/1

48) Capsule on fire: An interview with Robert Seamans about the Apollo 1 accident
by Dwayne A. Day Monday, March 23, 2020


The Apollo 1 crew enters their spacecraft in a test in an altitude chamber at the Kennedy Space Center. (credit: NASA)

In January 1967, three astronauts died on the ground in what should have been a routine test. Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White were slated to launch into space in a few months aboard what was then known as Apollo 204 and would soon become known as Apollo 1. Following the fire, NASA conducted an internal investigation. The US Senate also held hearings and called senior NASA leaders to testify. One of the people at the hearings was NASA Deputy Administrator Robert Seamans, who appeared alongside NASA Administrator James Webb and head of the manned space flight office, George Mueller. They soon found themselves in the sights of a junior senator, Walter Mondale, who knew that there had been a string of problems involving Apollo main contractor North American Aviation. (See: “When Senator Walter Mondale went to the Moon: the Apollo 1 fire and the myths we create,” The Space Review, March 16, 2020.)
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3904/1

49) Capabilities on the cusp: the impact of a responsive, flexible launch challenge with no winner
by Todd Master Monday, March 23, 2020


Astra prepares its Rocket 3.0 on a bare concrete pad in Kodiak, Alaska, prior to a launch attempt during the DARPA Launch Challenge. (credit: John Kraus/Astra)

Creating a flexible (“launch from anywhere”) and responsive (“launch any time”) space launch capability is a critical need for the Defense Department, with increasing importance as our views on national security space architectures evolve. Space resiliency is critical to our warfighting capability, and space access is its linchpin, as the means for deployment of our satellite systems. Resiliency for space access is directly created by untethering ourselves from one-of-a-kind fixed launch sites, which are subject to range congestion, weather, natural disasters, human-made disasters (like rockets blowing up on pads), and adversary attack. This resiliency is further bolstered by the ability to place in orbit new spacecraft at will, surging new on-orbit capability to provide tactical support to operations from space or rapidly replacing end-of-life, malfunctioning, or damaged spacecraft. Developing launch systems that deliver these capabilities is directly aligned with DARPA’s mission of preventing strategic surprise, and led us to DARPA Launch Challenge.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3905/1

50) Space in uncertain times
by Jeff Foust Monday, March 23, 2020


A SpaceX Falcon 9 after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center March 18, a launch that went ahead despite the coronavirus pandemic. (credit: SpaceX)

Last month, even as the coronavirus epidemic was ravaging China and making inroads in other nations, the space industry’s concerns were elsewhere. There were debates about a NASA authorization bill in the House that would reshape NASA’s Artemis program even as the agency sought more money for it, the ongoing review into the flawed test flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle, renewed concerns about orbital debris after a close call between two defunct satellites, and discussions about the viability and sustainability of satellite constellations like OneWeb and SpaceX’s Starlink as both moved into full-scale deployment.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3906/1

[Orionid]

13/III 2003 [51-55]

51) Review: For All Humankind
by Jeff Foust Monday, March 30, 2020



For All Humankind: The Untold Stories of How the Moon Landing Inspired the World
by Tanya Harrison and Danny Bednar
Mango Publishing, 2020
hardcover, 200 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-1-64250-096-7
US$19.95
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1642500968/spaceviews

Most books written about the Apollo program, and the Apollo 11 landing specifically, have an American-centric focus, and for good reason. This was, after all, a program featuring American astronauts flying on American rockets, advocated by American politicians as part of a geopolitical competition the United States was waging against the Soviet Union. The contributions of other countries, like Canadian engineers or Australian ground stations, tended only to play cameos in that story (although the role of German-born engineers, some with Nazi ties, has gotten more scrutiny in recent decades.)
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3907/1

52) Why a business case for Mars settlement is not required
by John Strickland Monday, March 30, 2020


One concept for a Mars settlement supported by Starship vehicles. (credit: SpaceX)

Some people have claimed that a “business case” for profitable interplanetary trade with a Mars settlement, or at least the identification a saleable product for trade, is required before such a settlement can be established or supported by business or government. But there is no reasonable prospect for trade in any significant mass of physical material from a Mars settlement back to Earth in the near future due to the high transport costs. In his recent article in the National Review, “Elon Musk’s Plan to Settle Mars,” Robert Zubrin makes exactly the same point: a business case based on physical trade is not necessary and makes little sense. Later trade and commerce via non-physical goods such as software is probable once a settlement is fully operational. More significant and interesting economic situations will occur on Mars.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3908/1

53) The decade of Venus: an interview with David Grinspoon
by Arwen Rimmer Monday, March 30, 2020


Venus as seen by Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft, one of the few missions to the planet in the last two decades. (credit: JAXA)

David Grinspoon is an American astrobiologist, science communicator, and senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. His research focuses on comparative planetology, with a focus on climate evolution on Earth-like planets and implications for habitability. He is considered one of the top worldwide experts on the planet Venus. He serves as an advisor to NASA on space exploration strategy, and is currently on the DAVINCI+ proposal, one of NASA’s four Discovery-class missions up for selection next year. He was an interdisciplinary scientist on the ESA’s Venus Express mission, and is contributing scientist on Akatsuki with JAXA. Two technical papers he helped author, “Was Venus the first habitable world of our Solar System” and “Venus as a laboratory for exoplanetary science,” have been making waves in the community. Recently, he’s been doing the conference circuit, talking about “The Evolution of Climate and a Possible Biosphere on Venus,” which makes a synoptic plea for more missions. Grinspoon recently attended the Rocky Worlds Conference in Cambridge, where the author was able to arrange this interview.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3909/1

54) And that’s the way it was on the way to the Moon: an interview with Walter Cronkite
by Dwayne A. Day Monday, March 30, 2020


Walter Cronkite during CBS News coverage of the Apollo 11 landing. (credit: CBS)

Walter Cronkite was once known as one of the most trusted men in America, a newscaster with a reputation for telling it like it was. Cronkite, who died in 2009 at the age of 92, reported on many subjects during his decades in the news business, including the Apollo program, about which he could not hide his enthusiasm. He was a space buff, clearly relishing the drama and inspiration of the effort to send Americans to the Moon, and getting teary-eyed when Apollo 11 successfully landed on the Sea of Tranquility.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3910/1

55) Stars and Starlink
by Jeff Foust Monday, March 30, 2020


SpaceX says that efforts to darken one Starlink satellite resulted in a “notable reduction” in its brightness, but that may not sufficiently mitigate its effect on astronomy. (credit: SpaceX)

Astronomers may have one less (satellite) constellation to worry about.

Late Friday, OneWeb announced it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a New York court. In a statement, the company said it had been in “advanced negotiations” since the beginning of the year to raise a new round of funding needed to complete its broadband satellite constellation. The company said it was close to completing that deal, but “the financial impact and market turbulence related to the spread of COVID-19” kept it from closing the deal.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3911/1

[Orionid]

Review: Extraterrestrials
by Jeff Foust Monday, April 6, 2020



Extraterrestrials
by Wade Roush
MIT Press, 2020
paperback, 240 pp.
ISBN 978-0-262-53843-5
US$15.95
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262538431/spaceviews

One of the longest-running projects in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) came to an end, at least temporarily, last week. The SETI@home project started in 1999 as a distributed computing effort, allowing participants to use spare time on their home computers to process batches of data collected by radio telescopes. It immediately became popular by people who enjoyed the opportunity to take part in SETI with little more than an Internet-connected computer running a colorful screensaver. But the project announced in early March it was placing SETI@home into “hibernation,” with no new data being distributed after the end of March. “Scientifically, we’re at the point of diminishing returns; basically, we’ve analyzed all the data we need for now,” the project said.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3912/1



Rashomon’s fire: another perspective on Apollo 1 from NASA official Paul Dembling
by Dwayne A. Day Monday, April 6, 2020


Part of the Apollo 1 capsule seen during the accident investigation. (credit: NASA)

Reality doesn’t happen like the movies. Except sometimes it does.

In January 1967, three astronauts died in a fire on a launch pad in Florida before they ever got the opportunity to reach space. Their spacecraft killed them. Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White were slated to launch into space in a few months aboard what was then known as Apollo 204 and would soon be commonly known as Apollo 1. Immediately following the fire, NASA conducted an internal investigation that identified numerous problems with the spacecraft. Within a month, the US House of Representatives held hearings on the accident, followed by the US Senate. NASA leaders were called to testify. One of the people who headed up to the Senate—but who was not supposed to testify himself—was Paul Dembling.(...)
Source: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3916/1

[Orionid]

Review: Spacefarers
by Jeff Foust Monday, April 13, 2020


Spacefarers: How Humans Will Settle the Moon, Mars, and Beyond
by Christopher Wanjek
Harvard Univ. Press, 2020
hardcover, 400 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-0-674-98448-6
US$29.95
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067498448X/spaceviews

Space enthusiasts have, for decades, struggled to develop compelling rationales for human spaceflight. The Cold War-fueled Space Race with the Soviet Union sustained early efforts through the Apollo landings, but was too costly to maintain over the long term. Since then, advocates have sought to develop other explanations, from national prestige to science to commerce. Their failure is evident by the lack of progress we have seen in human spaceflight in recent decades.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3917/1