With a deadline for an agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union on British involvement in, and funding for, Copernicus come and gone, the European Space Agency is pressing ahead on several missions in the hopes a deal can eventually be reached. British and European negotiators had been working toward a Nov. 30 deadline regarding British participation in the E.U. aspects of Copernicus post-Brexit, including a British contribution of 750 million euros ($850 million) to the program. That deadline passed, though, without a deal. Without an agreement, the Copernicus program faces a funding shortfall that could jeopardize work on six new Earth science missions approved at ESA’s 2019 ministerial meeting, contracts for which ESA awarded in July 2020. The issue came up at the latest meeting of the ESA Council that concluded Dec. 15. Josef Aschbacher, director general of ESA, mentioned the 750 million euro funding shortfall during a media briefing after the meeting. Several options were under consideration, he said, including simply delaying the deadline on an agreement for as long as possible. “One [option] that is most likely to be brought forward is to keep the door open and postpone the decision point into the future,” he said, specifically until the critical design review (CDR) for the missions. “We can, with some arrangements and negotiations with industry, we could push this date into 2024, which would give us three more years to negotiate and, basically, find the 750 million. The participation of the U.K. is still a priority and our preferred option.”
The Copernicus Carbon Dioxide Monitoring, or CO2M, mission is one of six Copernicus missions whose development is jeopardized by a 750 million euro funding shortfall caused by a lack of an agreement on U.K. participation in E.U. elements of the program. Credit: OHB
That would mean that the CDR, where final approval is given to move into full-scale assembly of the spacecraft, would become what he called the “break point or go/no-go decision” on proceeding based on available funding.
That plan poses complications for the companies working on those missions. “What we expect from our institutions is to come up with an agreement in between the PDR and the CDR,” said Philippe Pham, senior vice president for Earth observation, navigation and science at Airbus Defence and Space, during a panel at World Satellite Business Week Dec. 16. The preliminary design review, or PDR, of those Copernicus missions is scheduled for 2022, with CDRs between late 2023 and 2024.
“It gives us some room for maneuver for final agreement to preserve the six missions,” he said. “What we expect is that the E.U. will come up with a solution for the missing Brexit budget and keeping the schedule of the six missions.”
“It’s so important that we protect all the six missions,” said Massimo Comparini, deputy chief executive of Thales Alenia Space, on the same panel. He said that while the missions have a high level of technical maturity, there shouldn’t be any attempt to compress development schedules between reviews, or from CDR to launch.
“We’re talking about such important missions that we cannot have any kind of shortcut,” he said.
The Federal Aviation Administration awarded a license Dec. 20 to a proposed commercial launch site in Georgia, but that facility still faces legal and business challenges. The FAA issued a launch site operators license, also known as a spaceport license, to Camden County, Georgia, for the proposed Spaceport Camden. The license came after years of environmental reviews of the site that slowed the licensing process, as well as the county’s decision two years ago to focus on small launch vehicles rather than larger ones originally envisioned for the site. The license came after a formal “record of decision” by the FAA regarding those environmental reviews. The document outlined the assessed environmental impacts of the proposed site, supporting a dozen launches a year of small launch vehicles, and the measures required to mitigate those effects, concluding that “all practicable means to avoid or minimize environmental harm from the Selected Alternative have been adopted.” County officials, who have invested an estimated $10 million into spaceport plans, hailed the decision as a boost to the area’s economy. “This once in a generation opportunity will provide a new frontier of economic prosperity for Camden, the region and the state of Georgia,” said Steve Howard, county administrator and project leader for the spaceport, in a statement. The license is a necessary but not sufficient step toward enabling launches from the site. Any company that seeks to launch from Spaceport Camden would have to get an FAA launch license, a process that includes environmental reviews. The terms of the license also prohibit the county from entering into an agreement with a launch provider until the county has a purchase or lease agreement for the property where the launch facility would be built.
An earlier concept for Spaceport Camden in Georgia. While the FAA issued a license for the spaceport, the site still faces legal and business obstacles. Credit: Spaceport Camden
The county has an agreement with Union Carbide, the company owns the property, to purchase it. However, a petition signed by several thousand county residents seeks a referendum on whether to allow the county to spend any money acquiring the property. A state court is reviewing the petition to see if the referendum should go forward in early 2022 and also whether to block the county from acquiring the land in the meantime. Should the referendum pass, it would effectively kill the project.
Another challenge for the county is identifying potential users of the spaceport. While there are dozens of small launch vehicles under development, none has formally committed to launching from Spaceport Camden.
The county statement about the FAA license included a quote from James Cantrell, chief executive of Phantom Space, which is working on a small launcher. “Phantom Space is thrilled to see Spaceport Camden open for business,” he said. “The additional launch capacity aligns well to our efforts to make access to space commonplace with reliable and responsive space transportation systems.”
Cantrell was previously chief executive of Vector, which conducted a low-altitude test flight of a vehicle prototype from the Spaceport Camden site in 2017. He departed Vector in 2019 when the company lost financing, leading eventually to Vector’s bankruptcy and liquidation. Earlier this month, the liquidating trustee for Vector filed suit in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware against Cantrell for breach of fiduciary duty during Cantrell’s time as chief executive, alleging “disloyal and systematic looting of Vector for his own personal financial gain in order to fund Cantrell’s personal racing hobby and other business ventures unrelated to Vector.”
Spaceport Camden backers have argued that demand for small launches can’t be met by other spaceports, notably Cape Canaveral. However, small launch vehicle company Astra Space announced Dec. 6 it would perform its next launch from Space Launch Complex 46 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in January. That facility was previously used for Athena launches but had been idle in recent years other than an Orion launch abort test in 2019.
A Long March 4B launched the Shijian-06 (05) group of satellites Dec. 9, marking the 400th launch of China’s Long March family of launch vehicles. The Long March 4B lifted off from Site 9401 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 7:11 p.m. Eastern, rising into a dark blue pre-dawn desert sky. The Shijian-6 (05) satellites, which could be a pair of satellites to join four earlier pairs satellites in the series, with the previous launch occurring in 2010, were developed by the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) and Aerospace Dongfanghong Satellite Co., Ltd. The satellites will be used for space environment exploration and technology verification tests, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., (CASC). No images of the satellites have been published.Western analysis of the series and their roughly 585-kilometer Sun-synchronous orbits suggests Shijian-6 satellites are designed for signals intelligence or electronic intelligence purposes. The Long March 4B was provided by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST) which like CAST is a major CASC subsidiary. The launcher uses hypergolic propellant and is capable of carrying 2,800 kilograms of payload into Sun-synchronous orbit. The mission was China’s 49th orbital launch of 2021, extending a new national record for calendar year activity. The vast majority of launches have been Long March rockets, with additional launches from commercial firms Expace, iSpace and Galactic Energy.
Thursday’s launch was also the 400th Long March rocket launch. The official space industry newspaper China Space News marked the Long March achievement with the term “YYDS,” a Chinese equivalent of the abbreviation of GOAT, or “the greatest of all time.”
The relative speed at which the new milestone was reached illustrates the rapid acceleration of China’s launch rate in recent years.
The first Long March launch took place April 24, 1970. It took until June 2007—or 37 years—to launch the first 100 Long March rockets, when a Long March 3A launched Xinnuo-3. The 200th launch followed seven and a half years later, in December 2014.
The 300th launch was conducted three and a half years later, in March 2019, meaning the latest 100 launches were carried out inside a period of two years and nine months.
The Long March rocket family has been responsible for 92.1 percent of China’s orbital launches in the 51 years since the country’s first launch, sending more than 700 spacecraft into space, with a launch success rate of 96.25 percent, according to CASC.
In comparison, SpaceX, a U.S. private company, has conducted more than 130 launches of its Falcon 9 family of rockets since the first in 2010, suffering one failure and one partial failure, while also developing and establishing first stage reusability.
CASC’s first generation of Long March rockets are hypergolic, with the new Long March 5, 6, 7 and 8 rockets using cryogenic or kerosene fuel. With the demonstration of reusability by SpaceX, CASC is also working on a reusable variant of the Long March 8 and has reusable concepts for its future super heavy-lift launcher.
One major driver of Chinese launches in recent years has been the construction of Beidou, the country’s own Global Navigation Satellite System. China is also building remote sensing and communications space infrastructure which other leading space powers already have on orbit.
In 2014 China also opened a new, coastal launch site at Wenchang to facilitate launches of new large, cryogenic and kerolox rockets for space station and deep space missions.
Chinese space-related activities are also increasing with the emergence and fostering of a commercial space sector since 2014. New spaceports are being constructed to allow for expanded launch activity and remove bottlenecks, including new facilities for sea launches.
NASA issued awards Dec. 2 valued at more than $400 million to three groups of companies to advance development of commercial space stations, keeping those efforts on track to succeed the International Space Station by the end of the decade despite skepticism from the agency’s inspector general. NASA announced three funded Space Act Agreements as part of its Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations, or CLD, program, an initiative to support work on commercial stations that the agency hopes to have in place by late this decade, allowing it to transition from the ISS. The awards will allow the winning companies to mature the designs of their proposed stations through 2025. The largest award, at $160 million, went to a team led by Nanoracks and includes Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin. Those companies announced a space station concept called Starlab Oct. 21 that could be ready as soon as 2027. A second award, valued at $130 million, went to a team led by Blue Origin for the Orbital Reef space station announced Oct. 25. That project includes Boeing, Redwire and Sierra Space, among others, with a goal of entering initial operations in the latter half of the 2020s. The third award, worth $125.6 million, went to a previously undisclosed concept from Northrop Grumman. That proposed station would leverage the company’s work on the Cygnus cargo spacecraft, Mission Extension Vehicle satellite servicing program and the Habitation and Logistics Outpost module it is building for NASA’s lunar Gateway.
Northrop Grumman, one of three companies winning commercial space station development awards from NASA Dec. 2, proposes building a station leveraging work on its Cygnus cargo spacecraft and HALO module, among other projects. Credit: Northrop Grumman
Rick Mastracchio, director of business development for human exploration at Northrop Grumman, said in a call with reporters that a single launch could place in orbit a facility able to support four people, with the ability to expand. “This allows for low risk and rapid deployment,” he said. The station, which he said doesn’t yet have a name, is being developed with Dynetics, with others to be announced in the near future.
NASA selected the three concepts from 11 proposals the agency received in August. “Almost all of the proposals represented viable concepts for commercial LEO destinations,” said Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight at NASA Headquarters, in the call.
All the bidders and others will be eligible to compete for the second phase of the program in the middle of the decade, where NASA will issue contracts to certify commercial space stations for use by NASA astronauts and purchase initial services from those stations.
The program is part of NASA’s overall strategy to retire the ISS while maintaining a presence in LEO for scientific research and preparation for missions beyond Earth. That strategy includes an award made to Axiom Space in early 2020, giving that company access to a port on the ISS to which the company plans to attach a series of commercial modules starting as soon as 2024. Those modules will eventually be detached from the ISS to form a commercial station.
Axiom said in a statement that it did not submit a CLD proposal. “With active hardware development on pace to meet a late 2024 delivery to orbit of the first Axiom Station module and strong support from the market already in hand, Axiom declined to bid on CLD,” the company said.
The announcement came two days after a report by NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) that warned of a gap between the end of the ISS and commercial stations. The report said that while NASA’s initial efforts to support commercial stations “show promise,” it raised concerns about several aspects of that work, including cost and schedule.
“In our judgment, even if early design maturation is achieved in 2025 — a challenging prospect in itself — a commercial platform is not likely to be ready until well after 2030,” the report stated. “We found that commercial partners agree that NASA’s current timeframe to design and build a human-rated destination platform is unrealistic.”
McAlister said he agreed with many of the conclusions of the OIG report. “What they said primarily is that a gap in U.S. human presence in LEO would be disastrous for the LEO economy,” he said. “A gap would be bad, and that is exactly why we’re making these awards today, to help ensure that there is no gap.”
The winning companies reiterated their confidence that their stations would be ready before the end of the decade. “The technologies, the equipment, the habitats that we are using for Starlab are under development today,” said Kirk Shireman, a former NASA ISS program manager now at Lockheed Martin. “I believe it’s certainly feasible to meet the schedule we’ve laid out with NASA.”
“There are two pieces to an end-to-end service: there’s transportation and destination,” said Brent Sherwood, senior vice president of advanced development programs at Blue Origin. The transportation systems that Orbital Reef will rely on, including Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser, will be in service in the next few years. “And with respect to the destination systems, we’re building already.”
He added the importance of addressing another issue raised in the OIG report: uncertain NASA funding for the CLD program. “It’s very important that we all work on sustaining and growing stakeholder for what NASA is trying to do,” he said. “It is critically important that the West not lose its foothold in LEO and have a gap.”
NASA requested $101.1 million for commercial LEO development in its fiscal year 2022 budget proposal. A House bill provides about half that amount while a Senate bill would fully fund the program. Congress has yet to finalize spending bills for the fiscal year, which started Oct. 1.
McAlister said the CLD awards assume that NASA receives full funding for commercial LEO development in 2022 and later years. That budget proposal projected spending $186.1 million on commercial LEO development per year in fiscal years 2023 through 2026. If there is a funding shortfall, “we could rephase some of the milestones to accommodate reduced levels of funding.”
He added that, in the near term, a continuing resolution (CR) passed by Congress Dec. 2 funding the government through Feb. 18 at 2021 levels should not affect the CLD awards, although the agency may have to revisit those plans if Congress later extended the CR through the rest of the fiscal year. “If we got a full-year CR,” he said, “we would obviously have to do some replanning.”
OneWeb is considering options to remove one of its broadband satellites from low Earth orbit after it failed following a software issue last year. “We are looking at all potential suppliers to address de-orbit as and when the tech is safe,” said Chris Mclaughlin, OneWeb’s chief of government, regulation and engagement. The failure was disclosed in a OneWeb financial report filed Nov. 17. That report noted OneWeb has deployed 358 satellites at 1,200 kilometers through 11 launches, “with loss of only one satellite to date.” Mclaughlin said the failure of OneWeb’s SL41 satellite resulted from “a software issue right at the end of the Orbit raise.” That software issue has since been fixed from the ground for the other satellites in the operator’s growing network, a OneWeb official added. The failed satellite, according to an industry source, was one of 34 launched Feb. 6, 2020, from Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. OneWeb’s satellites are being built in Florida by OneWeb Satellites, a joint venture with Airbus Defence and Space. OneWeb has a partnership formed earlier this year with debris-removal startup Astroscale under ESA’s Sunrise program, which awarded OneWeb and Astroscale funding in May for a satellite to demonstrate technologies including space junk removal. The OneWeb official added: “We are working with ESA Sunrise and, by extension, Astroscale and others to determine how best to remove a failed satellite when technology permits. It’s very early days.”
The loss of a single satellite is not critical in a megaconstellation like OneWeb’s with built-in redundancy. OneWeb plans to deploy nearly 650 satellites by the time it rolls out global broadband services next year.
“OneWeb’s network is designed for global coverage with redundancy planned for and built into the network,” the OneWeb official said via email.
“OneWeb can offer global coverage with 588 satellites however plans for redundancy with 50+ spares.”
The U.K.-headquartered startup has an insurance policy worth more than $1 billion that covers its satellite launches, which typically deploy 36 satellites at a time. However, the policy only spans the launch phase of the constellation’s deployment, and does not cover in-orbit failures.
SpaceX, which has claimed to have an in-orbit failure rate of less than 1% (although competitor Viasat disputes that), has also decided it has enough redundancy in its Starlink broadband megaconstellation that it does not need to insure in-orbit operations against satellite failures.
Potential mission
In October, the UK Space Agency awarded Astroscale and Swiss startup ClearSpace contracts totaling $1 million to study a mission to remove two spacecraft from LEO by 2025.
Astroscale and ClearSpace are allowed to pick which two spacecraft to remove, as long as they were sent to orbit under a U.K. license.
It is too early to say whether the failed OneWeb satellite will be a part of a mission that could follow these study contracts, an Astroscale official said.
Following the Phase 0 and A study phases there will most likely be two further phases to refine the mission design with parallel phase B contracts with a detailed concept of operations, costings, manufacturing proposals, and timelines, according to John Auburn, managing director of Astroscale’s U.K. subsidiary.
A final selection will identify the lead industry prime and partners that will develop the mission planned for a 2025 launch.
“We very much hope the UK government will be able to provide a substantial proportion of the mission funds, secured during the ongoing government comprehensive spending review (CSR),” Auburn said in an email.
“This mission is a fantastic opportunity for the UK government to demonstrate leadership in space sustainability and provide vital funding and licencing support for this innovative debris removal mission.”
A week after a filing an application with the Federal Communications Commission for a constellation of more than 13,000 satellites, Astra Space executives said that their near-term focus remains on developing their launch capabilities. Astra released its third quarter financial results Nov. 11, showing an adjusted net loss of $34.5 million for the quarter and $72.4 million for the year to date. In the earnings call about the results, though, much of the attention was on the filing the company made with the FCC Nov. 4 to develop a constellation of 13,620 satellites operating in V-band. Chris Kemp, chief executive of Astra, said the filing was driven by the near-term opportunity offered by the FCC to request V-band spectrum, with a Nov. 4 deadline for filing applications. Astra was one of several companies submitting applications for tens of thousands of potential satellites, although its application has the largest single number of satellites. “Spectrum is incredibly hard to get. It’s incredibly valuable,” he said. “In the not-too-distant future, the demand for spectrum access will significantly outstrip supply. This view of spectrum is what motivated us to file the V-band spectrum application to prepare Astra for its next stage of growth.” Kemp also emphasized the three-phase approach to the proposal, which would start with a single equatorial plane of 40 satellites. “That provides a service that we believe has real value to customers in phase one,” he said. “We can deploy a basic service that allows us to learn and iterate.”
A second phase would place 2,296 satellites into orbit to provide global service, with a third phase involving an additional 11,284 satellites for additional capacity. Those future phases, he said, would depend on customer demand. “We can deploy that constellation, frankly, as we start to see traction with those space services,” he said. “There’s no requirement that we deploy we deploy those 13,000 satellites, but in the license we have to contemplate the full deployment of the entire constellation.”
Kemp didn’t give a schedule for developing the constellation. It may take several years for the FCC to review and approve this latest series of V-band applications. The FCC approved a Boeing proposal for a 147-satellite V-band constellation Nov. 3 nearly five years after the company filed its proposal. One approved, the company would have six years to deploy half the constellation and nine years for the entire fleet.
He insisted the company’s near-term focus is on its small launch vehicles. The latest Rocket 3.3 vehicle, with the serial number LV0007, is currently on Kodiak Island, Alaska, for an upcoming launch for the U.S. Space Force. That launch was expected for earlier this month, but Kemp said he expected it to occur “in the next week or so.” The Federal Aviation Administration has airspace restrictions in place for the launch Nov. 14 and 15 as well as Nov. 19 and 20.
“Our focus right now is on delivering a satellite to orbit so that we can begin to deliver for our customers on the launch services contracts that we have, and be recognizing revenue in our launch services business,” he said. The FCC filing is among what he called the “long-lead items” for developing satellites that can launch on its rockets to provide services.
Astra has yet to place a payload into orbit, having failed on three orbital launch attempts dating back to September 2020. The most recent launch attempt on Aug. 28 failed because of a problem with quick-disconnect system for fuel lines leading into the rocket that caused one of the first stage’s five engines to shut down less than a second after liftoff.
Kemp praised his employees and Astra’s partnership with the FAA to quickly investigate the issue and prepare for this launch. “Developing an orbital launch system is incredibly difficult,” he said. “While we can’t guarantee that the current test flight will be successful, we strongly believe that launching again with the changes that we just made is the fastest and most capital-efficient path to success.”
If the LV0007 launch is successful, Kemp said the company could perform its next launch before the end of the year. That vehicle, LV0008, is nearing completion, while work is underway on the next two vehicles, LV0009 and LV0010.
The next astronauts to return to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon won't be able use a crucial system on their trip home next month: the space potty. SpaceX's toilet on its Crew Dragon Endeavour will be off limits for the four Crew-2 mission astronauts once they leave the International Space Station in early November, NASA officials said late Friday (Oct. 29). That's because of a possible urine leak in the toilet like one seen on SpaceX's all-civilian Inspiration4 flight in September. SpaceX has since redesigned its toilet to avoid leaks on future flights. "Our intent is to not use the system at all for the return leg home because of what we've seen with the fluids we are talking about," Steve Stitch, NASA's Commercial Crew program manager, told reporters Friday in a prelaunch briefing for SpaceX's Crew-3 astronaut launch, now set for next week. "We have other means to allow the crew to perform the functions they need." Those other means? An "undergarment" for waste management that astronauts have long used to relieve themselves when clad in spacesuits for launches, landings or spacewalks. "Anytime the crew is suited they use an undergarment in that suit, and it's a short mission coming home," Steve Stitch said. "So, it's pretty typical to have an undergarment on and they can use that on the way home." It's been a backup for any spaceflight, he added.
SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endeavour (bottom center) and a visiting uncrewed Cargo Dragon supply ship (foreground), are seen docked at the International Space Station's Harmony module in September 2021.(Image credit: NASA)
The astronauts returning to Earth on the Crew-2 mission are NASA's Shane Kimbrough and Meghan McArthur, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency. They launched to the station in April were expected to return home on Nov. 4 with a splashdown off the Florida coast, NASA officials said late Friday.
European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet shared this image of Crew Dragon's toilet on Twitter while flying to the International Space Station on the Endeavour Dragon in April 2021. (Image credit: Thomas Pesquet)
That landing date may now change after SpaceX and NASA delayed the launch of the Crew-2's relief mission, Crew-3, until Nov. 2 due to bad weather. The Crew-2 astronauts will return after a handover with their incoming crewmates.
Stitch said SpaceX and NASA have worked to shorten the length of time it takes a Dragon crew to return to Earth after leaving the space station.
In August 2020, when SpaceX's first crewed flight Demo-2 returned to Earth, it took just over 19 hours for its two-person crew to splashdown after undocking from the station. SpaceX's recovery team reached them shortly after they landed. SpaceX's Crew-1 splashdown on May 2 of this year cut that time down to just under 6.5 hours. SpaceX recovery teams aim to unload a crew from their capsule within an hour of splashdown.
"We are working to try to always minimize that time from undocking to landing, so that's what we'll do with this flight," Stitch said.
In the meantime, SpaceX and NASA are focused on the imminent launch of the next astronaut flight to the space station: the Crew-3 mission. That flight, originally scheduled to launch on Oct. 31, is now scheduled to lift off Nov. 3 from Pad 39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff is at 1:10 a.m. EDT (0510 GMT).
That mission will launch NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, Kayla Barron and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer on their own six-month trip to the space station. They will launch on the Crew Dragon Endurance, a new Dragon capsule. The Crew-2's Endeavour capsule is older and is flying its second crewed mission.
You'll be able to watch the Crew-3 launch live on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV and SpaceX, starting on Tuesday, Nov. 2, at 8:45 p.m. EDT (0045 GMT).
Rocket launches can inject huge amounts of soot into higher layers of Earth's atmosphere, depending on their fuel, possibly contributing to climate change. A pair of British rocket startups now claim their rocket technology can reduce spaceflight's environmental footprint by switching to renewable fuel. Both of these startups plan to launch their rockets from different spaceports located in Scottish wilderness, and being green has been part of their pitch from the start. While Edinburgh-based Skyrora plans to fly their rockets using rocket fuel made from non-recyclable plastics. Their counterpart, the Inverness-based Orbex, is betting on biopropane, a natural gas made as a byproduct during biodiesel production. Last week, Orbex released a study by experts from the University of Exeter in the U.K., which claims that the company's bio-propane-powered rocket Prime, a micro-launcher, will produce 86% less emissions than a similar-sized fossil fuel launcher. The comparison was made with launchers that burn RP-1, or Rocket Propellant 1, a refined form of aviation fuel kerosene. RP-1 is widely used by rocket builders all over the world. SpaceX's Falcon 9 uses this fuel in both of its stages. The fossil fuel also powers Russia's workhorse Soyuz rockets and the first stages of America's Atlas V.
The U.K. rocket startup Skyrora tested its Skylark Micro suborbital rocket last year. In the future, the company's rockets will be powered by a renewable fuel made from non-recyclable plastics.(Image credit: Skyrora)
Most of the carbon dioxide emissions reductions achieved by Orbex come from the negative carbon footprint of the biofuel production rather than by the launcher emitting considerably less, according to the report's executive summary. The company that supplies the biopropane, U.K.-based Calor, makes the fuel from a mixture of waste residues and "sustainably sourced materials", according to Calor's website.
However, most experts are not that concerned with the carbon dioxide emissions of spaceflight, simply because there are currently not that many rocket launches. In an earlier interview this year, Martin Ross, of the U.S. Aerospace Corporation, a leading expert on atmospheric effects of rocket launches, told Space.com that the space industry burns only about 1% of the fossil fuel consumed by aviation.
There is another component of rocket exhaust that climate experts are concerned about: soot. Rockets inject huge amounts of it into the otherwise pristine upper layers of Earth's atmosphere, where it could trigger possibly far-reaching changes.
And here, technology such as Orbex's biopropane-fueled Prime rocket could make a difference. The University of Exeter study says that the Prime vehicle, which is 62 feet (19 meters) long and designed to carry small payloads of up to 330 lbs. (150 kilograms) to low Earth orbit, will emit much less soot than a similar micro-launcher using RP-1. The company added in a statement that Prime "almost entirely eliminates" soot emissions.
Soot in the atmosphere can absorb heat and affect the temperature of the higher layers of the atmosphere — the mesosphere and the stratosphere. Orbex said in its statement that 120 rocket launches emit as much soot as the entire global aviation industry emits in a year.
Overall, a single Orbex rocket launch will generate a total of 15 tons (13.8 tonnes) of greenhouse gas emissions, which is equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of an average U.K. citizen, Orbex said in the statement.
The Prime micro-launcher of U.K. company Orbex uses sustainably sourced biopropane that emits much less soot compared to rocket fossil fuel RP-1. (Image credit: Orbex)
Orbex expects to fly its reusable 3D-printed Prime rocket for the first time next year from the Space Hub Sutherland on the northern coast of Scotland. The spaceport recently received planning permission after winning a court case against a billionaire landowner who questioned its environmental impact.
Orbex's counterpart Skyrora hasn't launched its three-stage Skyrora XL orbital rocket yet either but has performed several successful test flights of their sub-orbital missile Skylark Micro, which reached the altitude of up to 17 miles (27 kilometers). In 2020, the company tested a small prototype of its engine, which runs on fuel made from non-recyclable plastics. According to the company's website, the new fuel, called Ecosene, showed a 1- 3% better energy profile compared to RP-1.
Derek Harris, CEO of Skyrora's Ecosene division, told Space.com that Ecosene comes much cheaper than RP-1, at about $2 per gallon.
"The plastics that we are using actually come from waste disposal," Harris said. "We even get paid to take it, so feedstock is a negative value."
Harris said the company's experiments show the Ecosine-fuelled rocket engine, which uses hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizer to burn with the fuel, produces about 40% less emissions overall, including carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, soot and sulfur.
Harris said the company hopes to fly its rocket prototype in late 2022 from a spaceport on the Shetland Islands north off the coast of Scotland.
Orbex and Skyrora are not the only ones pursuing biofuel. In February this year, American start-up bluShift Aerospace flew its first stage rocket prototype Stardust 1.0, which uses proprietary solid biofuel made from agricultural waste. The test rocket reached less than one mile in altitude.
Terran Orbital, the parent company of Tyvak and PredaSAR, has leased a new four-story facility in Irvine, California, to house satellite design, engineering and development. Terran Orbital will continue to manufacture satellites at a separate Irvine facility, which the company is expanding to support its “robust pipeline,” according to a Sept. 22 news release. Terran Orbital is growing rapidly, both in terms of its workforce and facilities, due to strong demand from government and commercial customers, Marc Bell, Terran Orbital co-founder and CEO, told SpaceNews. Terran Orbital’s new Irvine facility covers nearly 8,262 square meters. “The new space will significantly increase our operational efficiency and permit us to continue to expand our workforce at a rapidly accelerating pace, while also allowing us to expand our manufacturing capacity at our current location,” Bell said in a statement. One of Tyvak’s recent orders was from Lockheed Martin, a Terran Orbital investor. Lockheed is buying a pair of 12-unit cubesats for LINUSS, short for Lockheed Martin In-space Upgrade Satellite System, to demonstrate satellite servicing in geosynchronous orbit. Tyvak also developed and built the spacecraft bus for the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE), a satellite destined for the same orbit as the lunar Gateway. CAPSTONE is scheduled to launch later this year on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from New Zealand.
CAPSTONE, a lunar cubesat developed by Advanced Space for NASA, will launch in the fourth quarter on an Electron rocket from New Zealand, not Virginia as originally planned. Credit: Advanced Space/Tyvak, a Terran Orbital Company
What do you see when you look at the Moon? Beauty? Craters? Some people see dollar signs. You’ll occasionally see our only natural satellite billed as ‘Earth’s eighth continent’ because it’s full of resources that are hard to ignore. A rare form of helium, helium-3, could be used in fusion power stations here on Earth. Rare elements, such as neodymium, could be extracted and returned home for use in smartphones and other electronics. But how do we get them here without blowing all the profits on rockets? According to a study published in 2019, a lunar elevator could be the answer. A cable anchored to the lunar surface would stretch most of the 400,000km (250,000 miles) home. It couldn’t be directly attached to the Earth, due to the relative motions of the two objects, but it could terminate high in Earth orbit. That would have the added benefit of placing it above the bulk of our space junk, a growing problem as we launch ever more satellites. Solar-powered robotic shuttles could move up and down the cable, acting as a conveyor belt to ferry precious resources our way. It may sound like an outlandish prospect, but Zephyr Penoyre and Emily Sandford – the two University of Columbia astronomy PhD candidates behind the study – believe we could pull it off for a few billion US dollars. To put that into context, Jeff Bezos liquidates $1bn (over £700m) of his Amazon stock every year to fund his Blue Origin space tourism company. NASA’s Artemis programme, which is sending the first female astronaut and first astronaut of colour to the Moon later this decade, is costing $86bn (£60bn). Such is the value of the Moon’s resources, a separate study estimated that a lunar elevator would pay for itself within just 53 trips.
The cable, which would be no thicker than a pencil, would weigh 40 tonnes – well within the remit of modern rockets, such as SpaceX’s Starship. Unlike a space elevator that would travel from Earth’s surface into space, a lunar elevator stopping slightly shy of our planet wouldn’t have to contend with huge gravitational forces.
The Moon has no atmosphere either, which simplifies matters. That means the cable could be made from existing materials, such as Kevlar, instead of the yet-to-be-invented super-strong materials needed for an Earth-to-space elevator.
We could also combine the two. In April 2021, Chinese state-run media presented the country’s idea for a ‘Sky Ladder’. This would see a spacecraft winched up an elevator from Earth’s surface to a waiting space station, before being flung towards the Moon where it would meet another elevator that would lower it down to the lunar surface.
The idea of space elevators has been around for over a century without much progress. But if enough people – or, more likely, corporations – become enamoured with the chance of making big bucks, we could see the lunar equivalent of a gold rush in the decades ahead. Elevators could well turn out to be a way to keep costs down and profits literally sky-high.
China's Mars rover Zhurong has produced a remarkable new panorama of its surroundings in Utopia Planitia to mark 100 days of activity on the Red Planet as preparations continue for the rover to spend more than a month in safe mode this autumn. The six-wheeled, solar-powered rover has covered 3,491 feet (1,064 meters) since rolling onto the Martian surface on May 22. But from mid-September to late October, the rover and its orbiting companion, Tianwen-1, will be in safe mode as the sun's charged particles interfere with their communication with Earth. In preparation for the break, Zhurong paused to take a good look around with its panoramic camera. The returned image shows the rover and its solar arrays and antenna close to a dune, a feature type that mission scientists are keen for Zhurong to analyze. A number of distant features can be seen on the horizon of the panorama including, above Zhurong's antenna, the backshell from the rover's landing in May. Zhurong visited the discarded gear up close in July. Since landing on May 14 and deploying onto the surface a week later, Zhurong has been moving south from its landing platform, analyzing different rocks, dunes and other features as it goes. The Tianwen-1 orbiter with which Zhurong hitched a ride to Mars has been orbiting so that it passes over Zhurong once a day to relay data to mission control in China. The National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) also released an image from Tianwen-1's high resolution camera which shows Zhurong's journey from the lander, including tracks the rover left in the Martian surface.
A panorama of Utopia Planitia returned by the Zhurong rover in late August 2021. (Image credit: CNSA/PEC)
Meanwhile, a new paper on the geological characteristics of Zhurong's landing area identifies a number of features and landforms that scientists working on the mission hope to study as the rover continues south.
A high-resolution image from the Tianwen-1 orbiter showing Zhurong's roving progress through late August 2021. (Image credit: NAOC)
According to the paper, the rover will investigate transverse aeolian ridges, or dunes, as well as troughs, caused by erosion, and particularly mysterious pitted cones. One of the scientists' key objectives is to use Zhurong's ground penetrating radar to determine the thickness and distribution of Martian soil near some landforms hypothesized to have been created by the presence of subsurface water or ice.
The presence of water would have profound implications for understanding of the climate history of Mars, potential resources for future crewed missions and even as a habitat for simple subsurface life.
The paper also notes that a number of pitted cones are present a number of kilometers to the south of the rover's position. A close-up look at these with Zhurong's terrain camera, multispectral camera, and Mars Surface Composition Detector could help provide fresh insights into how these features were formed, since current hypotheses range from volcanism, mud- or hydrovolcanism, or even underground water flows.
Despite their industry, both Zhurong and Tianwen-1 will soon go into safe mode because of a solar conjunction preventing communications between Earth and Mars. Both spacecraft will pause activities from mid-September through late October, as the sun and the charged particles it releases will obscure our view of Mars from Earth and interfere with radio communications between the two planets.
A route map showing Zhurong's travels south from its landing platform. (Image credit: BACC)
Both spacecraft will autonomously carry out health assessments, self-monitoring and trouble-shooting until communications can be restored.
The China National Space Administration and the People's Bank of China also jointly released silver and gold commemorative coins featuring the rover to celebrate Zhurong's 100 days on Mars.
The Mercury-bound BepiColombo spacecraft listened to the sound of the solar wind at Venus as it flew just 340 miles (550 kilometers) above the planet's surface during a maneuver designed to adjust its path. BepiColombo, a joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), recorded the audio with its magnetometer instrument, providing a rare glimpse into the interaction between the stream of charged particles flowing from the sun, known as solar wind, and the thick carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere of Earth's closest planetary neighbor. The audio is not the actual sound that could be heard in space but a so-called sonification, a translation of data into sounds, ESA said in a statement. BepiColombo passed by Venus on Aug. 10, just one day after another inner-solar-system explorer, Solar Orbiter, made its own close approach. This coincidence enabled scientists for the first time to make measurements of the environment around Venus from multiple points. Solar Orbiter, a joint mission by ESA and NASA, has a similar magnetometer in its instrument suite as BepiColombo. It has made its own measurements of the interactions between the solar wind and the planet as it zipped by at a distance of nearly 5,000 miles (8,000 km) on Aug. 9. Flybys are a common maneuver used by spacecraft operators to adjust the trajectory of a spacecraft. By flying close to a planet or another celestial body with a strong gravitational pull, the spacecraft loses or gains energy, which helps "slingshot" it toward its destination in the most fuel-efficient way.
The European/Japanese spacecraft BepiColombo has taken a selfie with Venus during its close flyby at the planet in August 2021. (Image credit: ESA)
Researchers are still analysing the data gathered by both spacecraft and hope that the Japanese mission Akatsuki, the only orbiter currently studying Venus, could contribute as well.
"This was the first time we could obtain such multi-dimensional measurements of the environment around Venus," Johannes Benkhoff, ESA BepiColombo project scientist, told Space.com. "That could enable us to see, for example, how the solar wind interacts with the planet and its atmosphere and how fast the processes are."
Mercury-bound BepiColombo has performed two flybys at Venus during its seven-year cruise to Mercury. (Image credit: ESA)
A detailed look at the composition of the atmosphere
BepiColombo could provide especially valuable data as the spacecraft swung closer to the surface of Venus during this flyby than Akatsuki gets at the closest point in its orbit around Venus.
According to Benkhoff, BepiColombo's Mercury Radiometer and Thermal infrared Imaging Spectrometer (MERTIS) instrument could therefore make unprecedented measurements of the middle layers of Venus's thick and cloudy atmosphere, known for its out-of-control greenhouse effect.
"We can look for carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and other aerosols, which has not been done with this type of instrument before," Benkhoff said. "There hasn't been a European mission to Venus since Venus Express [which lost contact with Earth in 2014]. We hope to make some measurements with BepiColombo that could be compared to the Venus Express measurements to see how things have changed."
For example, Benkhoff added, changes in concentrations of sulfur dioxide could indicate changes in the volcanic activity on the planet's surface.
ESA said in the statement that the MERTIS instrument captured high-resolution spectra of the atmosphere of Venus that are similar to those obtained by the early 1980s Soviet Venera 15 mission. No other spacecraft has made such detailed measurements since, ESA said.
An artist impression of BepiColombo flying by Venus on Aug. 10, 2021. (Image credit: ESA/ATG medialab)
Finding life on Venus?
There has been a revival in the interest in Venus following last year's surprising indications that the boiling planet might harbor life.
In September 2020 a team of scientists from the U.K. announced that they had detected phosphines, organic compounds that are usually produced by bacteria, in the planet's sulfur-rich clouds. The conclusions were based on measurements obtained by Earth-based telescopes. This year, however, a study co-authored by astrobiologist Chris McKay, of the NASA Ames Research Center in California, concluded that the amount of water in the atmosphere of Venus is so low that it is impossible for any life to exist there.
Benkhoff said that BepiColombo is unlikely to solve the ongoing dispute, even though it will look for phosphines in the atmosphere.
"Our MERTIS instrument is in principle able to detect phosphines," Benkhoff said. "But we don't think that it is sensitive enough to detect the low amounts that are expected at Venus."
Getting ready for Mercury
The Aug. 9 flyby was the third of the overall nine required for BepiColombo to approach Mercury in the right way so that it can insert its two orbiters, the European Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Japanese Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, into their correct orbits.
The innermost planet of the solar system is notoriously difficult to reach as the spacecraft has to continuously brake against the gravitational pull of the sun. For BepiColombo, this braking is achieved with the help of the gravity-assist flybys.
BepiColombo performed its first flyby at Earth in April 2020. Six months later, it made its first visit to Venus, passing at a much greater distance of 6,650 miles (10,700 km). On Oct. 1, the spacecraft will take its first look at Mercury from a distance of merely 125 miles (200 km). There will be five additional Mercury flybys to prepare BepiColombo for entering the planet's orbit in 2025.
The close Venus flyby, Benkhoff said, provided the first opportunity to test the spacecraft's instruments at a distance at which they will operate at Mercury.
"Our instruments were designed for orbiting Mercury at 400 to 1,500 kilometers," or 250 to 930 miles, Benkhoff said. "This Venus flyby provided us with the perfect opportunity to prepare not only for the mission but also for the upcoming first Mercury flyby."
BepiColombo has captured a sequence of photographs during the Venus flyby, which were released by ESA as a short video. The images were obtained by three low resolution 'selfie cameras' mounted on BepiColombo's propulsion module. The high albedo, or reflectiveness. of Venus, however, made it impossible for the cameras to capture any details of the planet's clouds.
The much darker Mercury, which lacks an atmosphere, will present a better photo opportunity, Benkhoff suggested.
"Venus was unfortunately quite overexposed in the images," Benkhoff said. "But we hope that at Mercury, even the selfie cameras might be able to identify some structures on the surface of the planet."
BepiColombo is fitted with a high-resolution stereoscopic camera, but that cannot be used during the cruise phase because of the spacecraft’s configuration in transit. The two orbiters and the propulsion module are stacked on top of each other, which blocks some of the instruments.
The October Mercury flyby will mark the first occasion any spacecraft will have visited the smallest and innermost planet of the solar system since the demise of the NASA mission Messenger in 2015.
Shareholders of a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) approved a merger with in-space transportation company Momentus Aug. 11, the first of several such deals expected to close in the next month. Shareholders of Stable Road Acquisition Corp. voted to approve a merger with Momentus at a special meeting, with 97% of votes in favor of the deal. However, shareholders representing only about 55% of outstanding shares cast votes at the meeting. With that vote, the merger of Momentus and Stable Road is scheduled to close Aug. 12. The merged company will begin trading under the Momentus name on Nasdaq Aug. 13 with the ticker symbol MNTS. Shareholders representing 20% of Stable Road’s shares elected to redeem their shares rather than participate in the merger, a relatively high fraction. That reduced the amount of cash Momentus will get from the SPAC from $173 million to $137 million. An additional $110 million will come from a private investment in public equity funding round concurrent with the SPAC deal. The vote wraps up a long and often fraught merger that was announced 10 months ago. A variety of legal and regulatory issues, many linked to the company’s Russian co-founders Mikhail Kokorich and Lev Khassis, delayed the launch of the company’s first Vigoride tugs and prompted government reviews of the company. Those co-founders later divested their shares and Momentus reached a national security agreement with the federal government.
Momentus will begin trading on Nasdaq Aug. 13 after shareholders in a SPAC, Stable road Acquisition Corp., approved a merger. Credit: Momentus
Stable Road revised its deal with Momentus, slashing the valuation of the company in half to $567 million. Both companies settled charges with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in July over false claims the companies made about the maturity of the company’s technology and national security concerns involving Kokorich.
More SPACs, more skepticism
The Momentus SPAC deal is the first of several scheduled to close in the next month. Shareholders of NavSight Holdings will vote Aug. 13 on a merger with smallsat constellation company Spire, while shareholders of Vector Acquisition Corp. will meet Aug. 20 to vote on its merger with Rocket Lab.
Genesis Park Acquisition Corp. announced Aug. 11 that it will hold a special meeting of its shareholders Sept. 1 to vote on its merger with Redwire, a space components and manufacturing company. Osprey Technology Acquisition Corp. also announced Aug. 11 that its shareholders will vote Sept. 8 on a merger with Earth observation company BlackSky.
Even as this wave of SPAC deals close, some investors and entrepreneurs remain wary about them. SPACs offer a faster means for companies to go public but face the perception that they are less rigorous than a traditional initial public offering (IPO) of stock.
“I have mixed emotions about the SPAC craze,” said Eric Stallmer, executive vice president of government affairs and public policy at Voyager Space Holdings, during a panel discussion Aug. 4 at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference.
SPACs can give companies a “burst of capital” in a streamlined way, he said, “but I also seem some really silly valuations that I just cannot understand.” He said such deals may drive up the costs of acquisitions of space companies and reduce the returns investors can see. “It could push investors into other areas.”
“I worry a little bit about the across-the-board quality of them,” said Tom Gillespie, managing partner and investment lead at In-Q-Tel. “There are some great companies getting exits at this point, but you have to be sure they’re the right ones telling the right story.”
Sunil Nagaraj, founder and managing partner of Ubiquity Ventures, said it will be critical to see how the companies that go public via SPACs perform on the market. “There are a lot of people waiting to say, ‘I told you so,’” he said. “The jury’s still out.”
“There’s nothing inherently evil about SPACs. They’re just another way for companies to go public, but particularly at an earlier stage in their development,” said Tess Hatch, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. She argued that the ability of SPACs to provide long-term projections not allowed in a traditional IPO makes them particularly well-suited to space companies.
“They unlock public pools of capital that historically weren’t available” for space companies, she said, predicting that SPACs will allow as many as a dozen companies in the industry to go public by the end of the year. “I really look forward to the next generation and a big uptick in the industry due to this path that Rocket Lab and Spire and a dozen other space SPACs are paving.”
The infrared imaging payload — called PIRPL (short for prototype infrared payload) — is a 110-pound multispectral camera that will collect data on the low Earth orbit environment. A Northrop Grumman spacecraft scheduled to launch Aug. 10 on a resupply mission to the International Space Station will deliver 8,200 pounds of crew supplies, hardware and science experiments. Among the science payloads on board Cygnus NG-16 is an infrared imaging sensor that will collect data on the low Earth orbit environment. The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency will use the data to develop thermal sensors that can detect hypersonic missiles and other advanced weapons while in flight. Cygnus NG-16 will fly on a Northrop Grumman Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. It is scheduled to rendezvous with the ISS on Aug. 12. The infrared imaging payload — called PIRPL (short for prototype infrared payload) — is a 110-pound multispectral camera also made by Northrop Grumman under a $13.8 million contract from the Space Development Agency (SDA) and the Missile Defense Agency. This is SDA’s first experiment in support of its Tracking Layer, a planned constellation of small sensor satellites in low Earth orbit. “Upon arrival at the Space Station, PIRPL will begin collecting infrared data and expanding detection capabilities that will aid in the development of algorithms for the next generation of tracking satellites,” Northrop Grumman said Aug. 9 in a news release.
For the NG-16 mission, the Cygnus spacecraft will launch aboard the Northrop Grumman Antares rocket, carrying approximately 8,200 pounds of supplies, equipment and experiments for the International Space Station. Credit: Northrop Grumman
PIRPL will gather imagery through the entire NG-16 mission expected to last about three months. After Cygnus leaves the space station, PIRPL will be released from the spacecraft and briefly operate in free flying mode so it can collect more data from different angles before it burns up in the atmosphere, an SDA official said during a call with reporters.
The imagery “will help us understand what Earth infrared backgrounds look like from this type of orbit,” the SDA official said.
Current U.S. military missile-warning satellites have powerful infrared sensors that can detect ballistic missile launches from geosynchronous orbits 22,000 miles above Earth. SDA’s Tracking Layer satellites will be in lower orbits at about 600 miles so the agency needs sample data to develop algorithms that can identify targets amid the clutter.
“One of the objectives is to look at what we can do from LEO orbits which are fairly new for these types of missions,” the official said. “We need to understand what the atmosphere, clouds, earth surface, land and ocean all look like at various times of day and night.”
SDA and the Missile Defense Agency want to “show that we can do those missions at a lower Earth orbit, that we are able to get much closer to the threats,” the agency official said. Another reason for the PIRPL experiment is to test how sensors perform when they’re moving at very fast speeds in low orbits, compared to current staring sensors on geostationary satellites.
“We call that a complex background,” the SDA official said of low Earth orbit. “We need to check whether LEO data can be processed successfully to do the same missions that we do well in high orbit.”
A chunk of stellar shrapnel is careering toward the edge of our Milky Way galaxy at almost 2 million mph (3.2 million kph), a new study reports. "The star is moving so fast that it's almost certainly leaving the galaxy," study co-lead author J.J. Hermes, an associate professor of astronomy at Boston University, said in a statement. The star, known as LP 40-365, currently lies about 2,000 light-years from Earth. And calling it a star may be a bit generous, actually; Hermes and his colleagues think it's a hunk of a superdense stellar corpse called a white dwarf that was blown apart in a violent supernova explosion after gobbling up too much mass from a companion. "To have gone through partial detonation and still survive is very cool and unique, and it's only in the last few years that we've started to think this kind of star could exist," study co-author Odelia Putterman, a former Boston University student who has worked in Hermes' lab, said in the same statement. The speedy star was spotted during an analysis of survey data gathered by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The researchers noticed that LP 40-365 is not only racing along but is also rotating once every nine hours as it goes.The rotation in itself is nothing unusual, for all stars rotate; our own sun spins on its axis every 27 Earth days. However, according to researchers, a nine-hour rotational period is considered to be relatively slow for an object that went through something as catastrophic as a supernova.
It's this sluggish rotation that implies LP 40-365 was once part of a two-star system with an unhealthy feeding habit.
According to the researchers, stars commonly orbit each other in close pairs, including highly dense white dwarfs. In such binary systems, if one white dwarf transfers too much mass to the other, the result can be a supernova — the largest explosion that takes place in space, according to NASA.
It's usually hard to determine which star was the "donor" and which was the "eater." But because LP 40-365's rotation is relatively slow, the research team feels confident that the object is cosmic shrapnel from the exploded star. As the two stars orbited each other at high speeds and in close proximity, the resulting supernova likely catapulted both stars out at breakneck speed, but we've only been able to spot LP 40-365, according to the statement.
"This [paper] adds one more layer of knowledge into what role these stars played when the supernova occurred," and what can happen after the explosion, Putterman said. "By understanding what's happening with this particular star, we can start to understand what's happening with many other similar stars that came from a similar situation."
These supernova survivors are even more intriguing as they are metal-rich, unlike our sun, which is primarily composed of hydrogen and helium. (Astronomers consider any element heavier than hydrogen and helium a metal.)
"These are very weird stars," Hermes said. "What we're seeing are the byproducts of violent nuclear reactions that happen when a star blows itself up." Strange stars like LP 40-365 are therefore fascinating targets to study, the researchers said.
The research is described in a study published June 10 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Commercial space services company Nanoracks has hired a former NASA official most recently involved with planning for the Artemis program to lead its efforts to develop commercial space stations. Nanoracks announced Aug. 2 it hired Marshall Smith to be its senior vice president of commercial space stations. Smith retired from NASA at the end of July after more than 35 years at the agency, most recently as deputy associate administrator for systems engineering and integration in the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. In his new role, Smith will oversee the company’s Outpost program, which seeks to convert upper stages of launch vehicles into modules that can be used for in-space manufacturing or habitats, as well as plans to develop free-flyer commercial space stations. Smith will run the company’s new office in Huntsville, Alabama. “I’ve gotten to know Marshall very well over the last several years and have come to appreciate his understanding of how to evolve the NASA legacy into the commercial sector,” Jeffrey Manber, chief executive of Nanoracks, said in a statement. “Put simply, Marshall gets it. He understands that the innovation and cost efficiencies of the private sector are key to furthering American leadership in space.”
As the new its senior vice president of commercial space stations, Marshall Smith will lead work by Nanoracks to develop commercial modules converted from the upper stages of rockets. Credit: Nanoracks“I was impressed to learn how much Nanoracks has quietly accomplished in advancing the use of in-space platforms and look forward to moving both Nanoracks and the new Huntsville office forward to ensure a vibrant future for commercial space stations and platforms,” Smith said in the statement.
Nanoracks is one of the pioneers in commercial use of the International Space Station, working with NASA to fly payloads to the station and use it as a platform for cubesat launches. Nanoracks developed a commercial airlock, called Bishop, that was installed on the station in December 2020. The company is one of several that has expressed interest in developing commercial space stations as successors to the ISS.
In his last role at NASA, Smith was the senior engineer for the directorate responsible for human spaceflight, converting high-level goals into program objectives and requirements. Before that, he was director for lunar exploration programs, ovseeing development of the lunar Gateway, Human Landing System and other lunar exploration efforts.
Voyage Space Holdings acquired a majority stake in Nanoracks in a deal that closed in May, adding Nanoracks to its portfolio of space companies. Smith said that he will be working closely with Voyager to make the most use of those firms. “There is a need for a vertically integrated NewSpace company with entrepreneurial spirit that will drive the future of our space programs by scaling up successful smaller space companies,” he said in the statement.
Arecibo Observatory's massive radio dish was many things to many people: pulsar finder, broadcaster to aliens, asteroid mapper, Bond villain's hidden satellite dish, Puerto Rican icon, birthplace of future scientists. Until seven months ago, that is, when gravity got the best of an engineering marvel that had endured everything thrown its way for decades and the entire platform crashed down. Since that fateful day, plenty of eyes have turned to analyzing what went wrong, while many hands have gotten to work sorting through and cleaning up the wreckage. And the brains have been doing what brains do best: dreaming of what science might come next for the site. For one group of scientists with deep ties to Arecibo, that meant dreaming up an entirely new type of telescope: one that would fill the gap left by the iconic instrument, then go much further. "I personally think that this was the first cut; this was done in the wake of the collapse just to show that there are viable options of continuing the legacy of fantastic science at the telescope," Tracy Becker, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and co-author on a white paper describing the design, told Space dot com. "I don't think that this version has to necessarily be what a new, built version will look like," she added. "It could end up looking more like the original telescope, or it could look completely different from anything that we've imagined so far. The primary goal was to show that we could use that space and continue that legacy of really powerful science."
The design, dubbed the Next Generation Arecibo Telescope, is perhaps better approached as a statement than a blueprint. Right now, scientists aren't even sure this particular design can be built. But the project was meant to paint a picture of what the next 60 years of science at Arecibo could perhaps look like — if institutions are willing to show up for the facility, and to do so with ambition.
"We had to think bold and we had to think big, because you don't inspire the next generations and you don't serve the next generations if you just want to do what you were doing," Noemí Pinilla-Alonso, deputy principal scientist at Arecibo Observatory, told Space.com. "That was a result of someone thinking bold and big 60 years ago." Pinilla-Alonso, who is also a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida, which manages the observatory, is one of dozens of co-authors on the design concept.
The design came together within just two months of the collapse. In part, that's because the process was a salve for scientists with close ties to and strong feelings for the observatory. "It was not so long that it took me to pass from the feeling of sadness, of frustration, to the feeling of, 'We're doing something good. We're working, we're making progress,'" Pinilla-Alonso said.
Now, the scientists behind the new concept are trying to keep the momentum going in order to try to accelerate the rebuilding process, Arecibo Observatory Director Francisco Cordova, another white paper co-author, told Space.com.
"Arecibo left a really big hole," he said. "We have hundreds of scientists right now that are scrambling to find another telescope that will be able to give them the data they need to continue their projects."
A close up of the damage from the Arecibo Observatory telescope collapse on Dec. 1, 2020. (Image credit: UCF)
Institutional options
But there's only so much more that scientists can do on their own, before any institutions step up to fund work on the project.
Meanwhile, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), which owns the site, held a virtual workshop throughout June to explore options for Arecibo Observatory writ large. Officials have emphasized that Arecibo will continue to exist, but the agency has not committed to rebuilding the telescope as it stood, or to supporting a new project at similar scale. The workshop didn't allocate any funding and wasn't meant to result in selected projects.
"There is no current plan to build a new radio telescope, although this is certainly an idea worthy of discussion," workshop leaders wrote in a document describing the process. "For this workshop, however, our main goal is to explore a broad range of options, for the short-, medium- and long-term, which should engage all segments of the community and may be complementary."
(Right now, the NSF has plenty on its hands just to ensure safety at the site and clean up the debris, a process the agency in March estimated would require about $50 million.)
During the workshop, then, the agency focused on broader consideration of the site's future. "NSF is committed to participating in this future development but is not restricting the ideas to the construction of a new telescope," the document noted. "That is certainly one long-term possibility, there are many others, and also near-term projects that could bridge the gap while a potential large project is being designed."
The grand design isn't the only option the NSF will contemplate when it decides what to do with the telescope's legacy.
The observatory overall can resume some science activities fairly quickly. There's a host of other equipment at the site that is still working, unaffected by the collapse, and observatory leadership wants to repair at least some of the antennas of one experiment that sat at the center of the dish to use elsewhere.
Although the crash destroyed all the equipment on the science platform, which had been suspended above the vast 1,000-foot (305 meters) dish on a web of 39 cables from a trio of towers, parts of the radio telescope may have more life in them. NSF officials have said that at least half of the dish survived the collapse, and the panels aren't particularly difficult or expensive to replace. And the bottom portion of all three towers that held the suspended cables remain sturdy, the NSF has said.
That combination could be the basis for rebuilding the lost telescope essentially as it was, but using newer technology and more advanced materials.
"There are many directions to go in," Joanna Rankin, a radio astronomer at the University of Vermont who is not a co-author on the white paper but did formally endorse it, told Space.com. "Of course it's exciting to choose the most ambitious and technologically exciting one, but it's not the only choice."
A new telescope at Arecibo
The daring Next Generation Arecibo Telescope design traces its roots to Zoom meetings that Rankin, who first arrived at the facility five decades ago and has used it ever since, organized in November, when the old telescope's precarity became clear. Quickly dubbed "vigils," the gatherings started with a dozen attendees but ballooned to encompass a couple hundred scientists. Then, on Dec. 1, the telescope fell. "After the collapse, there was a meeting or two that was kind of a ghoulish, 'Oh my goodness, what happened?'" Rankin said, dissecting how the telescope collapsed and the resulting damage. Advertisement
But that mood quickly dissipated, she said, as scientists turned their focus to the future. "Immediately, the thing which came to our mind is we should have a plan to rebuild it," Anish Roshi, a radio astronomer at Arecibo Observatory and the lead author of the white paper, told Space.com. "That's when all the discussions and meetings with the community — everything became very active, discussing what to replace this telescope with and how to rebuild this telescope."
The result of that work is a 70-page paper outlining the case for an innovative new Arecibo Telescope to build on the scientific legacy of the fallen instrument.
Unusually for a major facility, bringing together the community who used Arecibo meant reaching across three very different fields of science.
Although ionospheric researchers originally lobbied for the massive radio telescope to conduct atmospheric experiments, scientists specializing in radio astronomy and planetary radar research soon realized that the massive telescope and its powerful radar system could also offer them valuable information.
"Those three scientific specialties evolved a kind of symbiosis at Arecibo, which was completely unique to Arecibo," Rankin said.
Scientists calling for rebuilding say that union of three separate fields ought to be honored into the facility's future. "We wanted to keep being a multidisciplinary facility," Pinilla-Alonso said. "We didn't want to prioritize one against the other, so we had to think of something that could serve the three communities."
In addition to keeping the union of disparate disciplines, the process was based on the premise that a replacement facility should retain the lost telescope's site, tucked away in Puerto Rico's verdant interior. Originally, the site was dictated by the military looking to put the instrument somewhere on U.S. territory near the equator, which remains a relevant criterion.
Astronomers also cited the value of retaining a host of infrastructure that remains despite the collapse, like the sinkhole the telescope nestled inside and the staff and community that support the observatory. "No instrument is really entirely the hardware. The hardware is only the beginning of the story," Rankin said. "Without that skilled staff, it's pretty useless." Advertisement
Plus, there's a precious resource for which radio astronomers will trek deep into deserts — shelter from the constant chatter of technology operating in the same radio wavelengths that scientists want to observe, and astronomers can't simply pack up that quiet and carry it with them. Regulations around Arecibo protect the facility from radio interference. "To waste that would be, as my old mother used to say, a crying shame," Rankin said. "It would be incredibly horrid not to use the site in some creative manner, given that we have it."
An image showing damage to Arecibo Telescope's massive dish after a cable slipped out of its socket in August 2020. (Image credit: University of Central Florida)
Science dreams
The first step in designing a new telescope was identifying what a next-generation facility in each field would be able to do. "We didn't start it like, 'Let's design something different,'" Pinilla-Alonso said. "We started discussing the science and what was the role which Arecibo wanted to have for the future."
That's not how scientists are used to coming up with observing programs, Pinilla-Alonso said. "The first challenge is the mindset, because you are used to making the best of one thing that is already there," she said. "You keep asking to do different things, but from the engineering point of view, they tell you, 'No, you cannot do that with this.'"
But not so for pulling together the heart of the Next Generation Arecibo Telescope white paper: new science goals for the site, which form a wishlist of sorts for what experts in each field want next. Advertisement
Some of the scientific priorities the team identified overlap across the three communities. For example, everyone wants to see more of the sky and in more detail. "More sky to explore, more discoveries to come," Abel Mendez, a Puerto Rican planetary astrobiologist who regularly used Arecibo to observe and who was involved in the science conversations about a new telescope, told Space.com.
Both atmospheric experimentalists and planetary radar experts prioritize a more powerful radar system, although what counts as more powerful from them isn't quite the same. In addition, the planetary radar community doesn't necessarily want to increase power if it means sacrificing range, since one of Arecibo's strengths was that it could spot even asteroids that scientists hadn't quite pinned down yet.
"Arecibo was sort of the big, blunt instrument, and so if things weren't perfect it still worked," Mike Nolan, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, told Space.com. "As you get fancier and fancier, that's less true." But the white paper scientists say the design they sketched out would be able to observe six times as many asteroids.
Meanwhile, for radio astronomers, a clear priority was to be able to point the instrument to the center of our galaxy, which requires the flexibility to point a full 48 degrees away from the sky's zenith. (Your clenched fist held at arm's length covers about 10 degrees of sky.)
Overall, the specifications that the team worked toward meant that a few new types of science may be possible at the sort of facility they outline, in addition to the work that the facility has done for decades.
One of those additional fields is understanding space weather, a host of assorted influences the sun has on the solar system that can endanger astronauts and disrupt satellites in orbit and power systems on the ground. And it turns out that the proposed capabilities of the new design would allow scientists to better monitor space weather, including studying the solar wind and coronal mass ejections, two particularly relevant phenomena. Advertisement
In addition, the design concept's radar system would be so much more powerful than the lost system that it could observe defunct satellites and other space debris in addition to its work on space rocks. For space junk in geosynchronous orbit, the new design could see pieces about 3 feet (1 meter) across; the radar would also be able to monitor large debris out as far as the moon.
Arecibo Observatory's radio telescope's science platform illuminated at night. (Image credit: Courtesy of the NAIC - Arecibo Observatory, a facility of the NSF)
"A dish of dishes"
From the list of desired capabilities, scientists set about designing one possible telescope to fulfill the Arecibo community's goals. The result is nothing like the lost instrument.
Instead of one big dish, the new design would fill the old telescope's massive bowl-shaped sinkhole with a closely packed hive of smaller dishes perched on perhaps seven massive tilting plates, a "dish of dishes," as Pinilla-Alonso described it. The precise statistics of those dishes is a matter of tradeoffs: more smaller dishes or fewer larger dishes.
"I remember when I got the first draft of the paper with all the engineering ideas all formalized, and I was just surprised," Mendez said. "Wow, that's a big change." But it's a big change that would address many longstanding issues with the previous telescope, scientists noted, including the heavy platform that was ultimately the telescope's downfall.
The scientists behind the new design concept considered both a massive dish in a fixed position, like the lost telescope, and a scattering of many individual dishes across a landscape, like the Very Large Array in New Mexico, a two hour drive southwest of Albuquerque. But in the end, they determined that what matched the science needs best was a sort of blend of those two models: many small dishes crammed together and able to move in tandem.
There's just one little problem: The scientists aren't sure yet whether such a structure can actually be built.
But the outlined idea gives engineers something to work with, a place to start digging into the tradeoffs involved in building an ambitious new telescope. The scientists behind the concept hope that process can begin later this year. "It's a conceptual design," Rankin emphasized. "No one has passed it by all the droves of engineers that need to check it and think about it to decide whether it can actually be built or would work if it was built."
Politics at play
Engineering questions aren't the only hurdles to tackle to make a new Arecibo a reality. The trickiest piece, of course, is finding the money to build anything at the scale of the original telescope. The authors of the white paper suggest that a budget on the scale of $454 million could cover construction.
But even before the collapse, Arecibo's budget has been a sore subject, as the NSF has decreased its funding for the observatory over the past two decades to address larger agency budget crunches, Rankin said.
"Things started to go sour when, in the first years of the 2000s, the NSF budget was supposed to double and didn't," Rankin said. "There'd been no Nobel Prize, no immediate huge splash from the second upgrading, and so Arecibo became kind of an easy target."
It's not like other big budget increases have come through since then. And although Arecibo's situation echoes the abrupt collapse in 1988 of the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia that was rebuilt by 2000, Rankin doesn't expect Arecibo to be as lucky. Strong advocacy in Congress from West Virginia's two senators was crucial in getting that telescope rebuilt, but Arecibo has no such support: As a territory, Puerto Rico doesn't have any representation in Congress.
"Arecibo was always a cheap target because Puerto Rico has no senators," Rankin said. "If that had happened to any of the other NSF facilities, the senators would have been there with boots on, but there was none of that kind of protection for Puerto Rico."
Instead, at the federal level, Puerto Rico has no senators and only a resident commissioner, a member of the House of Representatives who can't join full floor votes.
"The collapse was met with great sadness to say the least," Jenniffer González-Colón, the current resident commissioner, told Space.com in a statement. "Since then, I have been in contact with the different stakeholders to discuss possible ways to move forward, including potential reconstruction of the telescope, so that we can once more fully partake of all of the great features hosted by AO [Arecibo Observatory] and their team of experts, and maintain Puerto Rico’s legacy and contributions to STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] fields.”
Although the telescope was the scientific pride of the island, the territory's government surely can't fund a replacement. Nevertheless, local leaders do support a new telescope, said Mendez, who has been involved in discussions with the government. "They're eager to provide funding for designing, so that would be something new," he said, since the original telescope was built exclusively with money from the mainland. "They're eager to be involved more now."
Serendipitous timing issues could also shape Arecibo's fate. The telescope collapsed midway between President Donald Trump losing his re-election bid and President Joe Biden taking office. The latter is surely more open to both science and Puerto Rico than his predecessor, Rankin noted. "If this had happened two years ago, I wouldn't have given it a chance, just because of the national political situation."
Meanwhile, scientists have their own politics and schedules. Both NASA and the NSF rely on massive documents dubbed decadal surveys to guide their funding decisions. In these roadmaps, large teams of scientists under the auspices of the prestigious National Academies of Sciences prioritize space-science projects on a 10-year time frame.
But the decadal survey that would best match a large, ground-based radio facility is the astrophysics version, which is currently undergoing peer review before publication. Scientists doubt that document can support a rebuilding effort at Arecibo because the telescope collapsed after the committee's deadline for community input.
"Nobody expected that big money might be needed for a rebuilding," Rankin said. "So Arecibo isn't in line to ask for big money for rebuilding." If the observatory cuts the line, so to speak, it risks upsetting other scientists contending for the same money.
A separate decadal survey for planetary science is earlier in the process and still receiving public comments, and the planetary radar swath of Arecibo's work would be relevant to it, although that document traditionally focuses on NASA facilities in space, rather than NSF facilities on the ground.
Cordova said he's confident that funding for design work and a new instrument will come through eventually, although it may not be as soon as scientists would like. "I'm optimistic — I think when you have the right capabilities in an instrument and the right science and operational mission objectives, it's a lot easier to find funding for something," he said.
"We have a concept that is amazing, but that will evolve through the design process, through the feasibility studies process, the engineering studies; all of this will evolve," he said, just as the original telescope did. "It's gonna take some time."
But he has plenty of company in hoping that one day, Arecibo will rise again with a steady eye on our atmosphere, solar system, and beyond. Advertisement
"It's a situation that's pregnant with possibility, and humanity doesn't take advantage of all wonderful situations," Rankin said. "Anything can happen. There are no guarantees."
