The Space Review

[Orionid]

Steady growth beyond the skies: five trends in outer space from 2021
by Harini Madhusudan Monday, January 10, 2022


SpaceX launched 31 Falcon 9 rockets in 2021, part of a worldwide surge in orbital launch activity last year. (credit: SpaceX)

Outer space was one of the most successful domains in 2021 amidst fluctuations in politics and industry worldwide. The world observed dynamic growth in space, specifically in the participation of non-state players, while among the government players there was significant institutionalization. There were an estimated 141 orbital launches in the year with 132 successes and up to ten missions that were related to various planetary achievements. The 2020s have seen a significant increase in investment in space, and many of the missions undertaken in the past decade have come to fruition in the past two years. These achievements individually have added a lot of value and have set the ball rolling for a Space Race 2.0. This time, it includes many more contenders than the US or the former USSR, and have expanded to include major corporations competing at an unprecedented scale. What are the highlights of space activities in 2021?
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4310/1

[Orionid]

New year, new (and overdue) rockets
by Jeff Foust Monday, January 10, 2022


The first SLS in the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center, awaiting a first launch some time in 2022. (credit: NASA/Frank Michaux)

In a race to see which will launch first, neither the Space Launch System nor Starship appears to be winning.

Both giant launch vehicles are set to make their first launches early this year. In the case of SLS, that launch comes after years of delays that have had ripple effects on the overall Artemis program. SpaceX’s Starship had also fallen behind the aspirational schedules of its founder, Elon Musk, who in September 2019 predicted that the company would “try to reach orbit in less than six months” (see “Starships are meant to fly”, The Space Review, September 30, 2019).
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4311/1

[Orionid]

Blacker than a very black thing: the HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite signals intelligence payloads
by Dwayne Day Monday, January 10, 2022


HEXAGON satellites had a large forward section that could carry deployable satellites as well as attached "pallets" used for collecting signals intelligence.

On April 18, 1986, a giant Titan 34D rocket roared off its launch pad at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base and promptly blew itself to smithereens.

The rocket exploded only a few hundred feet above the ground, relatively close to the ocean, and rained pieces of rocket, propellant, and a top secret spy satellite all over the surrounding area. The satellite was a HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite, the last of its type, and its loss was a major blow to the American intelligence community, happening less than a year after another Titan launching from Vandenberg destroyed another reconnaissance satellite called CRYSTAL (originally KENNEN), leaving the United States with very limited reconnaissance capability.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4312/1

[Orionid]

Review: Not Yet Imagined
by Jeff Foust Monday, January 17, 2022



Not Yet Imagined: A Study of Hubble Space Telescope Operations
by Christopher Gainor
NASA, 2021
ebook, 452 pp., illus.
free

The James Webb Space Telescope is, in many respects, unlike any other astrophysics mission launched to date: a massive telescope that required an intricate series of deployments after launch last month to take its final shape, with months of commissioning of its mirrors and instruments still ahead, all to peer deeper into the universe than any previous observatory. Yet, it’s based on the legacy and the institutions of its predecessors, notably the Hubble Space Telescope.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4313/1

[Orionid]

Liability and insurance framework for manufacturers of space objects in India
by Biswanath Gupta, Lavanya Pathak, and Kunwar Surya Pratap Monday, January 17, 2022


India is working to commercialize its launch and satellite manufacturing sectors, but those efforts require reforms in areas like liability and insurance. (credit: ISRO)

On June 24, 2020, India approved the participation of Non-Government-Private-Entities (“NGPEs”),[1] in end-to-end space activities. This shift from exclusive reliance on a state-owned agency, Indian Space Research Organization (“ISRO”), is likely to boost the economy and allow ISRO to focus on capacity building. Thus, ISRO and New Space India Limited (“NSIL”), a public undertaking, will now outsource work to NGPEs on a demand basis and an autonomous nodal agency will regulate private endeavors.[2]
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4314/1

[Orionid]

When SPACs are attacked
by Jeff Foust Monday, January 17, 2022


Virgin Orbit’s stock got a boost when it put a replica of LauncherOne on display in Times Square earlier this month. But when an actual LauncherOne boosted seven cubesats into orbit less than a week later, the company’s stock fell. (credit: Virgin Orbit)

For publicly traded space companies, it may be better to look good than to feel good.

Take Virgin Orbit, the air-launch company that became the latest in a wave of space companies to go public in the last year when it completed its merger with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in late December. On January 7, the company took part in a ceremony at Nasdaq’s headquarters in New York, ringing the opening bell. A full-sized mockup of its LauncherOne rocket went on display in Times Square as company executives talked up the company’s prospects for the coming year. It looked good, and the market responded accordingly: the company’s stock closed up nearly 25% after dropping nearly every day since its public debut.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4315/1

[Orionid]

Stealing secrets from the ether: missile and satellite telemetry interception during the Cold War
by Dwayne Day Monday, January 17, 2022


The dishes of the STONEHOUSE site in Ethiopia. STONEHOUSE was used to intercept Soviet deep space signals, such as those emitted by lunar and planetary spacecraft. A site in Turkey was used to intercept the signals that were sent up to the spacecraft. STONEHOUSE was closed in the mid-1970s after civil unrest in Ethiopia made the location unsafe. (credit: NSA)

Atop a mountain in northeast Iran there sit several buildings and some satellite dishes. What they are doing is not clear, but the Iranians have improved the site and added equipment over the past 15 years, indicating that it is active and probably serves as a post for Iran to intercept signals from American and other satellites. That site is notable for another reason: it used to be a CIA facility known as TACKSMAN. TACKSMAN was established in the late 1950s by the CIA to monitor Soviet missile launches from their Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan, the same location where Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin launched into space. It was an important Cold War missile telemetry interception cite. CIA officials sometimes had a knack for applying winking codenames to their projects, and this facility was a classic case, because “tacksman” is a Scottish term for somebody who paid rent to his landlord, usually a clan chief. The United States certainly paid the Shah of Iran for the use of land at his hunting palace, in return for the opportunity to hunt Soviet missiles and rockets.[1]
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4316/1

[Orionid]

Review: Becoming Off-Worldly
by Jeff Foust Monday, January 24, 2022


Becoming Off-Worldly: Learning from Astronauts to Prepare for Your Spaceflight Journey

by Laura Forczyk
Astralytical, 2022
paperback, 255 pp.
ISBN 978-1-7344622-2-7
US$19.99
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1734462221/spaceviews

Last year finally opened the doors of the space tourism market, after years, if not decades, of anticipation. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic flew people suborbitally, while SpaceX performed its first commercial Crew Dragon flight to orbit. Even the Russians got back into the space tourism business, flying commercial customers to the International Space Station on Soyuz spacecraft for the first time in more than a decade. More private astronauts are set to fly this year, with Blue Origin expected to conduct several crewed New Shepard flights and Axiom Space sending its first customers to the ISS on a Crew Dragon launching at the end of March.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4317/1

[Orionid]

Cold War Pony Express in the western Pacific
by Mike Beuster Monday, January 24, 2022


USNS General H.H. Arnold off Adak Island, Alaska. (courtesy of the author)

Recently, The Space Review ran an article about Cold War collection of telemetry from Soviet missiles and satellites. This was done at ground stations in remote places like an Alaskan island, as well as at sea, on both big and small ships equipped with multiple antennas (see “Stealing secrets from the ether: missile and satellite telemetry interception during the Cold War,” The Space Review, January 17, 2022.) During the Cold War, I was one of the relatively few members of the United States Air Force who spent a significant amount of time at sea performing this mission. As a USAF Security Service Electronic Intelligence Operations Operator/Analyst, I earned my sea legs on the USNS General H.H. Arnold during the final months of my Air Force enlistment. The Arnold was a modified World War II-era troop transport, originally named the General R.E. Callan, that in the early 1960s had been equipped to track American ballistic missiles during tests and renamed for the founding general of the Air Force. But the ship was soon pressed into additional duties.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4318/1

[Orionid]

A phoenix dying in Samos ashes: The SPARTAN reconnaissance satellite program
by Dwayne Day Monday, January 24, 2022


The Thrust Augmented Thor Agena became the workhorse for the American reconnaissance satellite program in the early 1960s. In 1963, the National Reconnaissance Office began work on the SPARTAN project to adapt a Samos E-6 camera to use the TAT Agena and a proven CORONA reentry vehicle. (credit: Peter Hunter Collection)

One of the first American efforts to develop a reconnaissance satellite was known as Samos. Several of the Samos projects involved taking photographs using film and returning it to Earth in a reentry vehicle. One of these projects, designated E-6, was a search satellite equipped with two Eastman-Kodak cameras designed to photograph large amounts of territory at medium resolution. The satellite held promise but failed because of reentry vehicle problems. In 1963 the E-6 project was briefly revived as part of a program designated SPARTAN, the proverbial effort to make a silk’s purse out of a sow’s ear.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4319/1

[Orionid]

Space policy, geopolitics, and the ISS
by Jeff Foust Monday, January 24, 2022


The International Space Station as seen bya departing Crew Dragon spacecraft in November. The international partnership that made the station possible is facing its strongest geopolitical challenge to date as Russia threatens to invade Ukraine. (credit: NASA)

On the International Space Station, it is business as usual these days for the seven-person multinational crew. A Dragon cargo spacecraft undocked from the station Sunday, returning experiments and other equipment to Earth after a month-long stay. Last week, the station’s two Russian cosmonauts, Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, spend seven hours outside the station on a spacewalk working on the Prichal module, added to the Russian segment of the station in November. That spacewalk was covered live on NASA TV, much like those involving NASA and other western astronauts.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4320/1

[Orionid]

Review: Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars
by Jeff Foust Monday, January 31, 2022



Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars: The Story of the First American Woman to Command a Space Mission
by Eileen M. Collins with Jonathan H. Ward
Arcade, 2021
hardcover, 368 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-1-950994-05-2
US$27.99
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1950994058/spaceviews

Astronauts write memoirs for many reasons, including to stop people from bugging them about writing a memoir. “I wrote this book to stop that pesky question I’ve heard so many times since 1995: ‘Where is your book?’” Eileen Collins writes near the end of her book, Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars. Even after retiring from NASA 15 years ago, she said, she was too busy raising her children and doing other work to consider writing a book. Only a couple years ago, after being contacted by writer Jonathan Ward, did she believe it was time to tell her life story.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4321/1

[Orionid]

Reconsidering the efficacy of an “Incidents in [Outer] Space Agreement” for outer space security
by Michael J. Listner Monday, January 31, 2022


A simulation of the intercept of the Cosmos 1408 satellite by a Russian ASAT missile in November 15. (credit: COMSPOC)

This author posited in an essay here 13 years ago (see “A bilateral approach from maritime law to prevent incidents in space,” The Space Review, February 16, 2009) that five events in the years preceding 2009 brought the issue of “space weapons” and outer space security to the forefront, including the collision of the Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251.[1] The author suggested at that time a solution to the burgeoning challenges to outer space security might be had in a bilateral agreement analogous to the Incidents on the High Seas Agreement entered into by the United States and the Soviet Union on May 5, 1972, in the form of an “Incidents in Space Agreement.”
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4322/1

[Orionid]

Building a commercial space sustainability ecosystem
by Jeff Foust Monday, January 31, 2022


Astroscale launched its ELSA-d mission last year to demonstrate technologies to capture and deorbit defunct satellites and other debris. (credit: Astroscale)

Few would disagree that there’s a growing problem with space debris, particularly in low Earth orbit. The sharply increasing population of active satellites, thanks to megaconstellations like SpaceX’s Starlink, along with defunct spacecraft and other objects result in far more close approaches and risks of collisions.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4323/1

[Orionid]

The NRO and the Space Shuttle
by Dwayne Day Monday, January 31, 2022


The NRO was going to be a major user of the Space Shuttle, including launches of reconnaissance satellites from Vandenberg Air Force Base. (credit: USAF)

One of the few remaining gaps in the history of the space shuttle program is how it was affected and used by the secretive National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The NRO was involved with the shuttle in several key ways: it influenced the initial design of the shuttle in the early 1970s, it negotiated with NASA over the use of the shuttle during the 1970s and planned for the transition of its own spacecraft to the shuttle when it became operational, and then it used the shuttle during approximately a half dozen missions between 1985 and 1992.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4324/1