D-Orbit and Astrocast sign new agreement for the launch of ten nanosats

Astrocast and D-Orbit have signed an agreement for the launch and deployment in LEO low inclination orbit of ten Astrocast nanosatellites through D-Orbit 's InOrbit NOW Launch Service. The agreement calls for the Astrocast nanosatellites to be launched onboard an Arianespace Vega or Vega C vehicle from Kourou, French Guyana, in the first quarter of 2022. This batch of nanosatellites will make up the Astrocast IoT Nanonsatellite Network's equatorial plane. The Astrocast constellation will consist of eight orbital planes, each consisting of eight operational and two spare satellites. The complete 80-unit Low Earth Orbit network will provide cost-effective two-way communications for the millions of IoT devices in remote areas of the world. Astrocast's constellation is expected to disrupt numerous enterprises, creating substantial efficiencies and cost advantages within key global sectors including maritime, oil and gas, mining, supply chain and logistics, automotive, utilities, and many others. Following an earlier InOrbit NOW mission planned in 2020 to deploy another batch of ten Astrocast satellites in sun-synchronous orbit, this mission will mark a total of twenty Astrocast satellites to be launched and deployed by D-Orbit. During the planned Astrocast mission, the ten nanosatellites will travel inside the DCube dispensers, designed by D-Orbit to reduce vibration and shock levels during launch.

"Reliable access to space is critical for Astrocast as we move quickly to deploy our constellation. We feel D-Orbit is a critical partner in our efforts and we are very excited to further our commitment to working together," said Kjell Karlsen, CFO, Astrocast.

"We are honored to contribute to the expansion of Astrocast's infrastructure in low inclination orbits" commented Renato Panesi, D-Orbit COO.

"This contract expands previous agreements with Astrocast and strengthens the cooperation between the two companies. We feel honored by Astrocast's renewed trust in our company and it's a privilege for D-Orbit to contribute to such an important mission".

CAPTION Ten Astrocast nanosatellites to be launched in low inclination orbit on Arianespace Vega or Vega C

Secrecy Tightens for X-37B

The recent landing of the latest X-37B robot spaceplane mission has been less visible to outsiders than any previous mission. The US Air Force has released photos of the spacecraft taken soon after its return. They show that the vehicle seems to be in fairly good condition after its longest flight ever, which extended for well over two years. The photos also show that the spacecraft has no visible features that would distinguish it from other spacecraft launched in this program, and in some ways make it hard to know exactly which one of the identical X-37B vehicles was used on this mission. We can probably judge that the mission was successful, but we are still not entirely sure of what the spacecraft was doing in orbit. Analysts have been speculating on the program for years, and have never been successful in penetrating the veil of secrecy surrounding the project. While the project itself is an amazing feat of technology, kudos must be extended to the team behind the scenes, who have managed to keep so much under wraps for so long. The existence of X-37B is no secret, and much has been officially released into the public domain. But there is an ongoing trend of tightening secrecy for the X-37B. In the past, we were given detailed images of the spacecraft being encapsulated in its payload fairing for launch, and then treated to nice video and images of its landing. That changed for recent missions, when pre-launch imagery of the spacecraft was not released. At the time, this analyst speculated that something had changed with the hardware, and this needed to be concealed.

The theory was that some form of instrument or sensor target had been added to the interface between the spacecraft and its launch vehicle, which would be used in some sort of interactions between the X-37B and the final launch stage shortly after launch.

The fact that the US Air Force had no problems with releasing full views of the spaceplane after landing suggested that any sensitive parts were on the rocket and not the X-37B itself.

This time, it's different. Admittedly, we still have photos of the spacecraft after landing, but they are far more restricted than ever before. The US Air Force Web site and an affiliated site contain just two images of the latest landing. No video of the landing has been released, either, which is also a departure from earlier trends.

Curiously, the images do not give any proper views of the rear of the spacecraft. By not showing certain things, the USAF is hinting that something unusual is there.

What could it be? This analyst suggests that some sort of calibration target is pasted to the rear of the X-37B. It was presumably photographed by sensors on the rocket soon after the spaceplane separated from it. This suggests that cameras or other sensors are being tested for close inspections of other satellites. T

hat being said, this analyst does not believe that any X-37B mission has ever made a close inspection of any foreign satellite, despite speculation elsewhere.

An alternative theory could be that there is a mounting bracket for a sub-satellite that was deployed from X-37B at some point in its mission. Such a satellite would be very small, and would presumably be in close proximity to the spaceplane. Thus, it could be hard to track or detect it.

What really lies at the rear of the spacecraft? We may never know until this program is declassified, and we could be waiting a long time for that.

NASA attaches first of 4 RS-25 engines to Artemis I rocket stage

Engineers and technicians at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans have structurally mated the first of four RS-25 engines to the core stage for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will help power the first Artemis mission to the Moon. Integration of the RS-25 engines to the recently completed core stage structure is a collaborative, multistep process for NASA and its partners Boeing, the core stage lead contractor, and Aerojet Rocketdyne, the RS-25 engines lead contractor. To complete the installation, the technicians will now integrate the propulsion and electrical systems. The installation process will be repeated for each of the four RS-25 engines. The four RS-25 engines used for Artemis I were delivered to Michoud from Aerojet Rocketdyne's facility at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, in June. The engines, located at the bottom of the core stage in a square pattern, are fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. During launch and flight, the four engines will fire nonstop for 8.5 minutes, emitting hot gases from each nozzle 13 times faster than the speed of sound. The completed core stage with all four engines attached will be the largest rocket stage NASA has built since the Saturn V stages for the Apollo Program.

NASA is working to land the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024. SLS is part of NASA's backbone for deep space exploration, along with Orion and the Gateway in orbit around the Moon. SLS is the only rocket that can send Orion, astronauts and supplies to the Moon on a single mission.

Breakthrough Listen to collaborate with scientists from NASA's TESS Team

Breakthrough Listen announced this week at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington, DC, a new collaboration with scientists working on NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. The new collaboration will be led by TESS Deputy Science Director, MIT Professor Sara Seager; S. Pete Worden, Executive Director of the Breakthrough Initiatives; Dr. Andrew Siemion, leader of the Breakthrough Listen science team at the University of California, Berkeley's SETI Research Center; and will engage Listen partners and collaborators worldwide. The TESS and Listen collaboration will expand Breakthrough Listen's target list (adding over 1,000 "objects of interest" identified by TESS); refine Listen's analysis strategy (for example, utilizing new knowledge about planetary alignments to predict when transmissions might be more likely to occur); and provide more meaningful statistics in the event of non-detections. Observations will take place using Listen's primary facilities (the Green Bank and Parkes Telescopes, MeerKAT, and the Automated Planet Finder), as well as partner facilities including VERITAS, NenuFAR, FAST, the Murchison Widefield Array, LOFAR stations in Ireland and Sweden, Jodrell Bank Observatory and e-MERLIN, Keck Observatory, and the Sardinia Radio Telescope, along with the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array. "It's exciting that the world's most powerful SETI search, with our partner facilities across the globe, will be collaborating with the TESS team and our most capable planet-hunting machine," remarked Dr. Worden. "We're looking forward to working together as we try to answer one of the most profound questions about our place in the universe: Are we alone?"

The TESS mission measures "light curves" (how the brightness of stars changes over time) to look for telltale dips caused by "transits" - where a planet passes in front of the star as viewed from Earth. The cutting-edge instruments on TESS are sensitive enough to detect small, rocky planets similar to Earth. Such planets are prime targets for follow-up by NASA programs, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, that seek to measure planetary atmospheres. Careful measurements of atmospheric composition could result in the detection of "biosignatures" - indicators that biological processes may be taking place on worlds other than Earth.

As well as looking for biosignatures, astrobiologists search for "technosignatures" - indicators of technology that may have been developed by advanced civilizations. Also known as SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), technosignature searches use powerful telescopes to look for signals coming from space that appear to have arisen from transmitters, propulsion devices, or other engineering.

No unambiguous technosignatures have been seen to date, but the chances of detection are higher than they have ever been, in large part due to Breakthrough Listen - the most sensitive, comprehensive, and intensive search for advanced life on other worlds ever performed. Listen is using facilities across the globe, including cutting-edge optical telescopes, to search for powerful lasers, and the world's most capable radio telescopes to search for signals over a wide range of the radio spectrum.

In the past three decades over 4,000 exoplanets have been discovered - many by TESS's predecessor, the Kepler spacecraft. According to recent estimates, the average number of planets per star is greater than one. As a result, technosignature searches operate in a "target-rich" environment, observing stars whether or not confirmed planets are known to exist around them. Nevertheless, as the haul of confirmed exoplanets continues to grow, the additional information about these systems is very useful for optimizing SETI strategies.

Launched in April 2018, TESS has four wide-field cameras, each monitoring a region of sky 24 degrees across (about the width of the span of your hand when held at arm's length). Light curves for 20,000 stars are measured every 2 minutes, and in addition, the brightness of every pixel in the cameras is recorded every 30 minutes.

TESS will observe over 85% of the sky - around 400 times more than Kepler - and is predicted to find as many as 10,000 new planets. Most of the TESS targets are considerably closer to Earth than those viewed by Kepler, enabling technosignature searches to probe for fainter transmitters.

And because TESS only sees planets that pass in front of their host star as viewed from Earth, all the planetary systems it detects will be edge-on. A large fraction (roughly 70%) of radio leakage from Earth-based transmitters is emitted in the plane of Earth's orbit; if the same is true for any transmitters developed by extraterrestrial intelligence, observing the systems edge-on will offer the best chance of detection.

In addition to targeting of TESS planets with Listen facilities, the TESS light curves themselves will be searched for anomalies. A planet transit produces a well-understood variation in detected light from the star, but large-scale engineering projects (for example, "megastructures" constructed in orbit) could block the stellar light in more complex ways. The TESS analysis pipeline is in essence a wide-field anomaly detector, and stars that behave strangely are interesting not just as technosignature candidates, but as potential laboratories for studying interesting astrophysics.

"The discovery by the Kepler spacecraft of Boyajian's star, an object with wild, and apparently random, variations in its light curve, sparked great excitement and a range of possible explanations, of which megastructures were just one," said Dr. Siemion. "Follow-up observations have suggested that dust particles in orbit around the star are responsible for the dimming, but studies of anomalies like this are expanding our knowledge of astrophysics, as well as casting a wider net in the search for technosignatures."

"We are very enthusiastic about joining the Breakthrough Listen SETI search," said Prof. Sara Seager. "Out of all the exoplanet endeavors only SETI holds the promise for identifying signs of intelligent life."

Breakthrough Listen is a scientific program in search for evidence of technological life in the universe. It aims to survey one million nearby stars, the entire galactic plane and 100 nearby galaxies at a wide range of radio and optical bands.

https://tess.mit.edu TESS

http://seti.berkeley.edu BSRC

NASA wants international partners to go to Moon too

As it looks to return to the Moon, NASA is open to the idea of international participation, which could mean a non-American setting foot on Earth's natural satellite for the first time in history, global space chiefs said Monday. "I think there's lots of room on the Moon, and we need all our international partners to go with us to the Moon," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters at the 70th International Astronautical Congress held in Washington. "If we can come to agreements on the contributions of all the nations and how they're going to be a part of the architecture, then certainly I would, I would see that there'd be no reason we can't have all of our international partners with us on the Moon," he added. The Americans are developing a spacecraft (Orion) and a mini space station (Gateway) that will remain in lunar orbit, which will in theory be used for a first crewed mission in 2024, Artemis 3. Only one element of the mission will be produced outside the US: the Orion service module that will supply it with electricity, propulsion, thermal control, air and water in space and is being delivered by the European Space Agency (ESA). Only once the Gateway is expanded will non-Americans be able to make the journey too. "We are in discussion also with NASA, so that we have European astronauts on the surface of the Moon -- this is of course the European intention," said Jan Worner, head of the ESA, at the same press conference. "2024 is for sure something which is purely American," he later told AFP. For Europeans, it could be "2027, 2028, something like that."

For its part, Japan also wants to take advantage of the new US program to write a new chapter in its own history.

"It's a very simple question to me because JAXA would like to send Japanese astronauts to the surface of the Moon," said Hiroshi Yamakawa, president of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

The building of the ISS in the late 1990s and 2000s appeared to usher in a new era of space cooperation between the US and Russia following the Cold War, but this time around, Washington is in no mood to work with geopolitical rivals.

Specifically, the US Congress has explicitly prohibited any cooperation with China, the world's biggest economy and an emerging space power.

During his speech inaugurating the weeklong conference, Vice President Mike Pence repeated seven times that the US wanted to work with "freedom-loving nations."

Solar Orbiter ready to depart Europe

ESA's Solar Orbiter mission has completed its test campaign in Europe and is now being packed ready for its journey to Cape Canaveral at the end of this month, ahead of launch in February 2020. The spacecraft was on display today for the final time in Europe, at the IABG test centre near Munich, Germany. It was built at Airbus Stevenage, UK, and has spent the last year at IABG undergoing essential testing such as checking deployment mechanisms, and that it can withstand the vibrations of launch, and the thermal extremes and vacuum of space. It has now been declared ready for shipment to the launch site and will travel an Antonov cargo plane on 31 October. Once launched it will follow an elliptical path around the Sun, at its closest bringing it within the orbit of Mercury, just 42 million kilometres from the Sun. As such, Sun-facing parts of the spacecraft have to withstand temperatures of more than 500 degrees C - due to solar radiation thirteen times more intense than for Earth-orbiting satellites - while other parts remain in shadow at -180 degrees C. The mission is essential to learn more about the Sun-Earth connection. We live inside a giant bubble of plasma generated by the Sun that surrounds the entire solar system, within which we are prey to space weather. Solar Orbiter will provide a deeper understanding as to how activity on the Sun is linked to these solar storms, which can disrupt electrical systems, satellite communications, GPS, and create higher doses of radiation for polar flights and astronauts.

"Solar Orbiter is set for answering some of the biggest scientific questions about our star, and its data will help us to better protect our planet from the global challenges of space weather," says Gunther Hasinger, ESA Director of Science.

"Thanks to the hard work of our teams building and testing this inspiring space mission, we've reached an important milestone today in Europe, and the spacecraft will now be readied for its final phase of pre-launch preparations at Cape Canaveral."

Solar Orbiter will launch on a NASA-provided Atlas V 411. The launch is currently scheduled in the early hours of 6 February (UTC). Once in space, and over the course of several years, it will use the gravity of Venus and Earth to raise its orbit above the poles of the Sun, providing new perspectives on our star, including the first images of the Sun's polar regions.

Its complementary suite of instruments means it will be able to study the plasma environment locally around the spacecraft, and collect data from the Sun from afar, connecting the dots between the Sun's activity, and the space environment in the inner solar system.

Solar Orbiter is an ESA mission with strong NASA participation. The prime contractor is Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage, UK. It follows in the legacy of missions such as Ulysses (1990-2009) and SOHO (1995-present) and will also provide complementary datasets to NASA's Parker Solar Probe that will allow more science to be distilled from the two missions than either could achieve on their own.

MRO HiRISE camera views InSight and Curiosity on Mars

The HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recently sent home eye-catching views of the agency's InSight lander and its Curiosity rover. HiRISE has been monitoring InSight's landing site in the Elysium Planitia region of the Red Planet for changes to the surface, such as dust-devil tracks. Taken on Sept. 23, 2019, at an altitude of 169 miles (272 kilometers) above the surface, the new image is NASA's best view yet of InSight from space. It clearly shows the two circular solar panels on either side of the lander body, spanning 20 feet (6 meters) from end to end. The bright spot on the lower side of the spacecraft is the dome-shaped protective cover over InSight's seismometer. The dark halo surrounding the spacecraft resulted from retrorocket thrusters scouring the surface during landing, while dust devils created the dark streaks that run diagonally across the surface. Several factors make this image crisper than a set of images released after InSight's November 2018 landing. For one thing, there's less dust in the air this time. Shadows are offset from the lander because this is an oblique view looking west. The lighting was also optimal for avoiding the bright reflections from the lander or its solar panels that have obscured surrounding pixels in other images. However, bright reflections are unavoidable with the seismometer cover just south of the lander because of its dome shape.

Driven by Curiosity

HiRISE has also been keeping tabs on NASA's Curiosity, which is roughly 373 miles (600 kilometers) from InSight, exploring a region called "the clay-bearing unit."

A GIF released this week shows Curiosity as a gray speck as it traveled 1,106 feet (337 meters) from a location within the clay-bearing unit called "Woodland Bay" (top center) to "Sandside Harbour" (bottom center, near the dark sand patch) between May 31 and July 20, 2019.

Look carefully and you can even see the rover's tracks arcing to the right side of the second image.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the InSight, MRO and Curiosity missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of Caltech. The University of Arizona in Tucson operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado. MRO was built by Lockheed Martin Space.

Soil on moon and Mars likely to support crops

Researchers at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands have produced crops in Mars and Moon soil simulant developed by NASA. The research supports the idea that it would not only be possible to grow food on Mars and the Moon to feed future settlers, but also to obtain viable seed from crops grown there. Wieger Wamelink and his colleagues at Wageningen University and Research, cultivated ten different crops: garden cress, rocket, tomato, radish, rye, quinoa, spinach, chives, peas and leek. The researchers simulated the properties of Lunar and Martian regolith and "normal" soil (potting soil from Earth) as a control. Nine of the ten crops sown grew well and edible parts were harvested from them. Spinach was the exception. Total biomass production per tray was the highest for the Earth control and Mars soil simulant that differed significantly from Moon soil simulant. The seeds produced by three species (radish, rye and garden cress) were tested successfully for germination. The article, "Crop growth and viability of seeds on Mars and Moon soil simulants", by Wieger Wamelink and colleagues has been published in De Gruyter's open access journal, Open Agriculture. "We were thrilled when we saw the first tomatoes ever grown on Mars soil simulant turning red. It meant that the next step towards a sustainable closed agricultural ecosystem had been taken," said Wieger Wamelink.

Aerojet Rocketdyne teams with NASA to develop novel rocket engine technology

Aerojet Rocketdyne has entered into a Space Act Agreement with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center to design and manufacture a lightweight rocket engine thrust chamber assembly using innovative additive manufacturing processes and materials. The goal of the project is to reduce manufacturing costs and make a thrust chamber that is easily scalable to support a variety of missions, including America's return to the Moon and subsequent missions to explore Mars. Aerojet Rocketdyne will use a unique combination of 3D printing technologies - including solid state deposition and laser deposition - to enable rapid fabrication of complex components. The vertical integration of these robotic additive manufacturing techniques is expected to yield a scalable design that could be applied to propulsion systems ranging from small systems that would support a lunar lander, all the way up to large boosters that enable launch vehicles to escape Earth's gravity. "As we look to the future of space exploration, efficiency and scalability will be key, which is why we are excited to work with NASA on this innovative thrust chamber for rocket engines," said Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and President Eileen Drake. "The technology we develop will leverage the most advanced additive manufacturing techniques and materials to help provide efficient and safe transportation to and through space."

The effort is being facilitated by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate through its Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity (ACO) initiative, which aims to reduce the development cost of technologies and accelerate the infusion of emerging commercial capabilities into space missions.

NASA and SpaceX hope for manned mission to ISS in early 2020

SpaceX could launch US astronauts to the International Space Station as early as next year if tests on the company's long-delayed Crew Dragon capsule prove conclusive, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Thursday. Bridenstine made the announcement as he toured the California headquarters of billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX, a major contractor for NASA. The visit came as Bridenstine and Musk have been engaged in a public spat over the much-delayed building of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. The capsule would provide the transportation for astronauts to the space station for the first time since America's space shuttle program ended in 2011. Musk, who appeared at a news conference alongside Bridenstine and the two astronauts who are set to fly on board the spacecraft, said he hoped to have the capsule delivered to NASA by the end of the year. He stressed, however, that safety was paramount and the launch would be delayed without hesitation if any problems arise. "If everything goes according to plan, it would be in the first quarter of next year," Bridenstine said of the launch. "But remember -- and this is the important thing that we have to get right on messaging -- there are still things that we can learn or could learn that could be challenging that we have to resolve. "I'm not saying that's going to happen, I don't know. That's why we test."

Some of the technical challenges SpaceX is working on include concerns about the parachutes and the propulsion system.

"It's a pretty arduous engineering job to get the parachutes right," Musk said.

"Parachutes, they look easy but they are definitely not easy," he added. "We want to get at least something on the order of 10 successful tests in a row before launching astronauts."

Since retiring its space shuttle program, NASA has had to rely on Russia to ferry astronauts to and from the space station at a cost of $85 million a seat. It is now counting on SpaceX and Boeing to carry out that task.

SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Musk to help reduce space transportation costs -- and with an ultimate goal of helping colonize Mars.

The first manned flight to the space station was due to take place last year but SpaceX suffered a major setback in April when its Crew Dragon spacecraft exploded during testing, prompting delays and renewed tests.

"You know, honestly, if there's a test program and nothing happens in that test program, I would say that test program is insufficiently rigorous," Musk said Thursday.

"Space is hard," he added.

Luca powers up for a spacewalk

European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Luca Parmitano is preparing to step out into space for his first spacewalk of the Beyond mission. Scheduled for 25 October, he will work with NASA astronaut Jessica Meir to replace nickel hydrogen batteries with newer lithium ion batteries and install battery adapter plates on the Space Station's Port-6 truss structure. This is a process fellow ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet knows well, having replaced batteries on another power channel during his Proxima mission. We asked him to tell us more about the task and how the crew will prepare. Known to the crew as an EVA (Extravehicular Activity), each spacewalk is planned up to a year in advance. On Station, preparation begins around two weeks ahead, with a set of procedures called the "Road to EVA". "Preparing for a spacewalk will make up 2-3 hours of your schedule every day during this time," Thomas explains. "The crew often carry out prep in their personal time as well."

The big day
Live coverage of Luca and Jessica's spacewalk starts on NASA TV at 10:30 GMT (12:30 CEST), but the crew will begin their preparation around 6:00. And there is to be no showering, shaving, or applying deodorant for at least a day in advance, as any remnants of these products could mix with the pure oxygen inside the suit and pose a fire risk

Astronauts wear a liquid cooling garment underneath their spacesuit. This is connected to the water system that keeps them cool, or warm, by circulating water around their body. They also don a medical monitor and put a dosimeter in their pocket to measure radiation before entering the hatch.

Thomas describes the process inside the airlock as "like scuba diving in reverse", as astronauts breathe in a controlled way to rid their blood of nitrogen and adjust to lower pressure.

A third crew member, known as the Intravehicular (IV) crew member, is also isolated in the airlock, before it goes to vacuum. This person helps the astronauts with their oxygen masks and into their spacesuits, while making sure everything is checked, tethered and ready for a safe and successful sortie.

It is a role Luca will play in the two spacewalks before his, on 15 and 21 October.

Out in space
Before exiting the airlock, Thomas says, extreme focus is the overriding feeling.

"Everybody's watching, so many people have been involved in the preparation, and the risks are so much higher when you're outside the Space Station," he explains. "The only thing you can't really prepare for are the day/night cycles.

"During the night, you only have your helmet light, so you can't really see anything except what you're working on. And because you're working in all body orientations, it's easy to get disoriented. But you know you can always follow your tether back towards the hatch."

After exiting the airlock, Thomas says one astronaut will prepare the worksite while the other breaks torque on the pre-positioned adapter plates. Each astronaut will then work to install the adapter plates, needed to replace two older batteries with one new one.

The spacewalk on 25 October is the one of five scheduled for October. Even more are expected in November as Luca ventures out again with the complex task of repairing and enhancing dark matter hunter AMS-02 - a structure never designed to be maintained in orbit.

Jet taking off from Florida will launch NASA weather satellite

After a two-year delay, NASA is ready to use a jet aircraft to launch a new space weather satellite from Florida on Thursday night, weather permitting. The Ionospheric Connection Explorer or ICON satellite will help NASA understand and predict how solar flares interact with the earth's atmosphere and magnetic field, including our planet's deadly Van Allen radiation belts. The data is expected to help satellites avoid radiation.The rocket will be carried high over the Atlantic from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a Northrop Grumman L-1011 Stargazer aircraft. When it's about 50 to 100 miles east of Daytona Beach, it will drop a 52,000-pound Pegasus XL rocket and payload. The rocket will ignite and carry the satellite into orbit. Previous launches in 2017 and 2018 were delayed due to faulty sensors and vibrations detected from the rocket as it was carried by the jet, Northrop Grumman officials said. Those issues were corrected after lengthy, difficult testing during which engineers had to mimic the conditions of the rocket's high-altitude journey. Despite the delays, the mission is coming in at its original budget of $252 million, NASA officials said. "This satellite will help us get exactly the right physics, and you will now have a much more accurate prediction about what that solar flare is going to do," said Nicola Fox, heliophysics division director for NASA. The flight is set to take off about 8:32 p.m. Thursday. The rocket should launch after about one hour, at roughly 40,000 feet. NASA will broadcast the event starting at 9:15 p.m. The rocket itself will only fly for about 10 minutes before releasing its payload.

Weather delayed the launch Wednesday night. There's a better chance for good launch conditions Thursday night - 70 percent, according to the U.S. Air Force.

The Pegasus has launched 90 satellites on 43 previous missions, according to Northrop.

Dropping the rocket is "the most exciting part of the flight," said Phil Joyce, vice president of space launch programs at the company. A copilot on board actually pushes a switch to drop the Pegasus, if weather and all other conditions are good.

"It's dropping 52,000 pounds, but the plane still has the same lift," he said. "So the plane climbs fairly rapidly about 1,200 to 1,500 feet as the rocket drops for about 5 seconds before firing. That also gives us safety margin of distance."

NASA believes the ionosphere, where the Sun ionizes the air to create charged particles, is significantly influenced by storms in Earth's lower atmosphere. ICON will also help NASA better understand how atmospheric winds control ionospheric variability.

Northrop Grumman began air-launching Pegasus rockets in 1990, when one launched from beneath a NASA B-52 aircraft.

Pegasus launches have been conducted from six separate sites in the United States, Europe and the Marshall Islands.

A crew of seven will be on the ICON mission plane when it takes off. In case of storms or other delays, there is a 90-minute launch window.

Pressure runs high at edge of solar system

Out at the boundary of our solar system, pressure runs high. This pressure, the force plasma, magnetic fields and particles like ions, cosmic rays and electrons exert on one another when they flow and collide, was recently measured by scientists in totality for the first time - and it was found to be greater than expected. Using observations of galactic cosmic rays - a type of highly energetic particle - from NASA's Voyager spacecraft scientists calculated the total pressure from particles in the outer region of the solar system, known as the heliosheath. At nearly 9 billion miles away, this region is hard to study. But the unique positioning of the Voyager spacecraft and the opportune timing of a solar event made measurements of the heliosheath possible. And the results are helping scientists understand how the Sun interacts with its surroundings. "In adding up the pieces known from previous studies, we found our new value is still larger than what's been measured so far," said Jamie Rankin, lead author on the new study and astronomer at Princeton University in New Jersey. "It says that there are some other parts to the pressure that aren't being considered right now that could contribute." On Earth we have air pressure, created by air molecules drawn down by gravity. In space there's also a pressure created by particles like ions and electrons. These particles, heated and accelerated by the Sun create a giant balloon known as the heliosphere extending millions of miles out past Pluto. The edge of this region, where the Sun's influence is overcome by the pressures of particles from other stars and interstellar space, is where the Sun's magnetic influence ends. (Its gravitational influence extends much farther, so the solar system itself extends farther, as well.)

In order to measure the pressure in the heliosheath, the scientists used the Voyager spacecraft, which have been travelling steadily out of the solar system since 1977. At the time of the observations, Voyager 1 was already outside of the heliosphere in interstellar space, while Voyager 2 still remained in the heliosheath.

"There was really unique timing for this event because we saw it right after Voyager 1 crossed into the local interstellar space," Rankin said. "And while this is the first event that Voyager saw, there are more in the data that we can continue to look at to see how things in the heliosheath and interstellar space are changing over time."

The scientists used an event known as a global merged interaction region, which is caused by activity on the Sun. The Sun periodically flares up and releases enormous bursts of particles, like in coronal mass ejections. As a series of these events travel out into space, they can merge into a giant front, creating a wave of plasma pushed by magnetic fields.

When one such wave reached the heliosheath in 2012, it was spotted by Voyager 2. The wave caused the number of galactic cosmic rays to temporarily decrease. Four months later, the scientists saw a similar decrease in observations from Voyager 1, just across the solar system's boundary in interstellar space.

Knowing the distance between the spacecraft allowed them to calculate the pressure in the heliosheath as well as the speed of sound. In the heliosheath sound travels at around 300 kilometers per second - a thousand times faster than it moves through air.

The scientists noted that the change in galactic cosmic rays wasn't exactly identical at both spacecraft. At Voyager 2 inside the heliosheath, the number of cosmic rays decreased in all directions around the spacecraft. But at Voyager 1, outside the solar system, only the galactic cosmic rays that were traveling perpendicular to the magnetic field in the region decreased. This asymmetry suggests that something happens as the wave transmits across the solar system's boundary.

"Trying to understand why the change in the cosmic rays is different inside and outside of the heliosheath remains an open question," Rankin said.

Studying the pressure and sound speeds in this region at the boundary of the solar system can help scientists understand how the Sun influences interstellar space. This not only informs us about our own solar system, but also about the dynamics around other stars and planetary systems.

NASA opens call for Artemis lunar landers

NASA is seeking proposals for human lunar landing systems designed and developed by American companies for the Artemis program, which includes sending the first woman and next man to the surface of the Moon by 2024. The final call to industry comes after NASA issued two drafts on July 19 and Aug. 30, encouraging companies to send comments to help shape a key component of the agency's human exploration Artemis partnerships. NASA is expected to make multiple awards to industry to develop and demonstrate a human landing system. The first company to complete its lander will carry astronauts to the surface in 2024, and the second company will land in 2025. Proposals to build a landing system are due Nov. 1-an ambitious timeline consistent with the sequence of events leading to this point-however, companies have been preparing for, reviewing, and commenting on several drafts of NASA's broad agency announcement since mid-July and should be ready for this tight timeline. "In order to best accelerate our return to the Moon and prepare for Mars, we collaborated with industry on ideas to streamline the procurement process," said Marshall Smith, director of the Human Lunar Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The private sector was eager to provide us feedback throughout this process, and we received more than 1,150 comments on the draft solicitations issued over the summer." Typical spaceflight hardware can take six to eight years to develop. With less than five years to land astronauts on the Moon, every word and requirement counts.

After reviewing the comments, NASA removed requirements that industry perceived as potential barriers to speed while preserving all the agency's human safety measures. For example, industry stated that delivery of a high number of formal technical reports would require a company to spend considerable resources and incur undue schedule risk.

Taking this into consideration, NASA has designed a less formal insight model that will be used for accessing critical contractor data while minimizing administrative overhead. As a result, NASA reduced the number of required contract deliverables from 116 to 37.

"Reports still are valuable and necessary, but to compromise and ease the bulk of the reporting burden on industry, we are asking for access to the companies' systems to monitor progress throughout development," said Nantel Suzuki, the Human Landing System program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

"To maximize our chances of successfully returning to the Moon by 2024, we also are making NASA's engineering workforce available to contractors and asking proposers to submit a collaboration plan."

When called to accelerate its return to the Moon, NASA said it would meet this ambitious goal by "any means necessary."

The agency's preferred approach to a lunar landing is for the crew in the Orion spacecraft and the uncrewed human landing system to launch separately and meet in lunar orbit at the Gateway, which is critical to long-term exploration of the Moon. NASA wants to explore all options to achieve the 2024 mission and remains open to alternative, innovative approaches.

Another shift centered around how to best achieve sustainability on the Moon by 2028. In addition to greater performance, such as global lunar surface access and higher payload mass capacity, NASA originally required the Human Landing System to be refuelable as a means to ensure a more sustainable exploration architecture.

Multiple companies had concerns about this requirement, and NASA agreed to remove it so that industry has greater flexibility to address the more fundamental attribute of sustainability, which is long-term affordability.

"They were absolutely right," said Lisa Watson-Morgan, the Human Landing System program manager at NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "We are operating on a timeline that requires us to be flexible to encourage innovation and alternate approaches. We still welcome the option to refuel the landing system, but we removed it as a requirement."

NASA's Artemis program includes sending a suite of new science instruments and technology demonstrations to study the Moon, landing the first woman and next man on the lunar surface by 2024, and establishing a sustained presence by 2028. The agency will leverage its Artemis experience and technologies to prepare for the next giant leap - sending astronauts to Mars.

SLS Rocket Pathfinders Prepare Teams for One-of-a-Kind Hardware Prior to Moon Mission

NASA's Pegasus barge arrived Sept. 27 at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida with the core stage pathfinder for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The pathfinder will be used for lift and transport practice techniques inside Kennedy's Vehicle Assembly Building to prepare for the first lunar mission of SLS and NASA's Orion spacecraft, Artemis I. The core stage pathfinder is one of three pathfinder structures used by NASA to train lift crews on best practices for moving and handling the SLS rocket flight hardware. In addition to the core stage pathfinder, there is an RS-25 engine pathfinder and a solid rocket booster pathfinder. Designed as full-scale mockups of the flight hardware, the three SLS pathfinders each reflect the shape and size of the individual components of the rocket. The number of pathfinders for the rocket allow multiple teams to use the pathfinders for different operations and procedures at several processing locations. After teams at Kennedy practice with the core stage pathfinder in the VAB, NASA's Exploration Ground Systems will begin stacking operations with the booster pathfinder structures to simulate an aft booster assembly and bottom center segment stacking operation. All this practice prepares teams for the same upcoming tasks with the actual flight hardware. Engineers previously used the core stage pathfinder in August at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, where crews practiced similar lift and handling procedures into the B-2 Test Stand ahead of the Green Run test series for the core stage.

"After the pathfinder lift operations were complete, the unit was installed into the B-2 Test Stand at Stennis," said Barry Robinson, B-2 Test Stand core stage test project manager at Stennis. "Among other things, the exercise helped us identify minor facility modifications early enough to provide the time needed to make the corrections prior to the arrival of the core stage flight hardware."

Equipped with the largest rocket stage NASA has ever produced and the largest twin boosters ever built for flight, the SLS rocket for the Artemis missions will be the most powerful rocket in the world, enabling astronauts in Orion to travel to the Moon's south pole. The two massive propellant tanks in the rocket's 212-foot-tall core stage power the four RS-25 engines at the bottom of the rocket. On either side of the core stage are two, five-segment solid rocket boosters. Together, the engines and the boosters will produce a combined thrust of 8.8 million pounds during launch and flight. The rocket for Artemis I will tower at 322 feet.

"Practicing operations with pathfinders offers teams hands-on experience for managing and handling the immense structures before this one-of-a-kind flight hardware arrives," Robinson said.

Because the pathfinders replicate the flight hardware, the various pathfinders validate ground support equipment, and flight hardware access techniques as well as train handlers to transport the equipment on a variety of terrains with different vehicles, like the Pegasus barge and Kennedy's mobile launcher, and demonstrate how the equipment can be integrated within facilities.

"Experience is the best teacher," said Jim Bolton, EGS core stage operations manager. "Pathfinders allow crews to practice lifting, accessing and transporting techniques that we prefer not to do for the first time with the flight hardware. Practicing with a pathfinder reduces risk and builds confidence."

As crews at Kennedy use the SLS booster and core stage pathfinders for the same processes the actual flight hardware will undergo when processed at Kennedy for Artemis I, completed flight hardware for SLS and Orion will also be delivered.

"NASA's first Artemis mission flight hardware has progressed into final assembly and integration, moving well beyond the early design and manufacturing stages of development," said Mark Prill, SLS core stage pathfinder lead. "Flight hardware for both the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft will continue to be delivered to Kennedy as NASA prepares for the launch of Artemis I."

NASA is working to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024. SLS, along with Orion and the Gateway in orbit around the Moon, are NASA's backbone for deep space exploration. SLS is the only rocket that can send Orion, astronauts and supplies to the Moon on a single mission.