Need for (Launch) Speed
Launchers push for faster licensing, the Space Force sets themselves up for speedy satellite access, and what the quickest energy burst in the solar system can teach us about our universe.
Hello Celestial Citizens and Continuum readers,
Welcome to another Friday and another space news cycle. In the last two weeks, I’ve had the privilege of talking about space, listening to others talk about space, and meeting a ton of great people that are all focused on humanity’s celestial future. Shoutout to some of the thought-provoking events that I attended, which include the Tulsa Aerospace Summit, AIAA ASCEND, and the USC Space Diplomacy Conference. I’ll be spending this weekend (hopefully) catching up on sleep and reflecting on all the wonderful conversations that were had. Luckily for me, our out-of-this-world (sorry, had to) writer Tess Ryan kept tabs on all the space industry happenings while I was gone (thanks Tess!).
Another little announcement — you may have noticed our latest publication Ground Control hit your inbox yesterday. In this newsletter, we’ll be covering all the latest and greatest in space podcasting with the hope of helping you audiophiles out there find the right podcast and episodes for you. If you want access to our bi-weekly curated list of space podcasts, go ahead and hit that upgrade subscription button. And a big thank you to all of the brand-new paid subscribers that have already signed up! We appreciate your readership and support of our team.
And now, the space beat you came here for...
Top Headlines
The Only Way is Through – Like racehorses itching to break away from the starting gate, launch providers voiced their concerns with regulatory bottlenecks last week. At an October 18th Senate hearing, industry representatives pleaded with Congress to reform the Federal Aviation Administration’s launch licensing process, as the “pace of American regulation must match the pace of American innovation,” in the words of a SpaceX VP. And if FAA licensing lags – which SpaceX blames on agency staffing issues – are setting back cargo and test launches, we better believe they will hold up rockets carrying the most precious of payloads…people. Once again, we’re seeing the industry ask to extend the “learning period” for human spaceflight, allowing companies the room to build their foundation upon which safety protocols can eventually be established. And although these learning period extensions are beginning to feel like a never-ending game of kicking the can down the road, many providers are only just beginning their commercial service, well beyond the timeline anticipated back when the 2004 law was enacted. In any case, SpaceX has been smart in voicing their concerns about the FAA licensing bottleneck, citing not only the hindrance to the industry but to our country at large. After all, spacecraft like Starship could be a NASA astronaut’s ticket to the moon; else, “we will see China land on the moon before we do.” While we understand the call for an efficient system, we also hope that in all this haste, we do not lose the care required to keep our people and environment safe.
Mystery Signal — Speaking of speed, a fast radio burst (FRB) recently arrived at Australia’s Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope after a whopping eight billion years of traveling through the cosmos. Sounds counterintuitive, we know; how can a signal that took eight billion years to get here be fast? Well, this FRB released in a millisecond the same amount of energy that the sun produces in 30 years. Although astronomers believe this burst may have originated from a neutron star, the intensity of the FRB’s light exceeds current models of neutron star shifts or collisions. And this isn’t the only mysterious quality of this light burst. There are also questions around its dispersion measure, or the way its different wavelengths travel through the hidden matter of the universe. With these new questions, researchers must reevaluate old theories, and with that new discoveries are sure to follow.
Space Force Locks It Down – With so many companies trying their hands in the satellite game, the cosmos are full of floating robots these days. From Earth and astronomical observation to communication and navigation, each satellite has its own objective. While this diversity is great for business and scientific progress, the Space Force wants monopolizing power – in special cases, that is. Essentially, the Space Force plans to form agreements with commercial satellite providers to equip the government with fast access to satellite imagery and communication in case of a national security emergency. The arrangement will be called the “commercial space reserve,” and while there is not yet a specific use (conflict or natural disaster) in mind, the Force’s leading man Gen. Chance Saltzman says the program is about “doing the planning and the expectation management before you actually need the capability.” With greater government demand, we can expect to see a rise in satellite manufacturing, and this includes subsystems that support satellite flight, such as batteries, propulsion and computing systems. Investors seem to be reading between the lines here and pointing their focus to these necessary “behind-the-scenes” commodities lately.
Mars Sample Return – Meeting last week in response to recent budget and schedule criticism on the Mars Sample Return mission, NASA announced the formation of a response team to address the established issues. The MSR is certainly not a mission the space agency (or anyone, really) is keen to drop, but this committee signals that NASA is willing to make some serious changes. The team will produce alternative mission architectures by March of 2024, which may or may not incorporate some of the September report’s ideas, such as launching the Mars lander and orbiter on separate dates or perhaps even handing off one of those launches completely to the European Space Agency. We’ll be standing by for the new (appropriately scaled) fate of the MSR!
Great Tests of Fire! – While the MSR remains in a holding pattern, NASA successfully completed a full duration hot fire test of its RS-25 engine, destined for the SLS rocket and its lunar-bound, human-hauling mission, Artemis V. The over nine-minute long test on October 17th kicked off a 12-test series, which is “the final round of certification testing ahead of production,” according to the space agency. Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3Harris Technologies Company is the key contractor for the liquid-propellant engine.
Berkeley Space Center – If the key to progress is the mingling of government, industry and academic perspectives, then NASA and the University of California are about to burst through the door with a $2 billion dollar build they’re calling the Berkeley Space Center. Further developing Moffett Fields, an old Naval station in Mountain View, California that NASA co-opted in the ‘90s, UC Berkeley and NASA Ames Research Center have designed a space center with collaboration in mind. The research campus – which could break ground as early as three years from now – will feature 18 acres of outdoor space and 130,000-square-meters (approximately 1,400,000-square-feet) of offices and facilities. Around 10% of these facilities will go to the university for academic efforts, while the rest of the space will be leased to private industry. Berkeley Space Center leaders hope the Silicon Valley campus will one day be buzzing with diverse endeavors, from space robotics to climate change, offering a way forward not only for students but for seasoned professionals looking to freshen up their skills. Something the pandemic amplified is that “collaboration results from people bumping into one another,” in the words of UC Berkeley chancellor Carol Christ; we certainly believe this melting pot of space devotees will bump its way to real celestial progress.
The JWST Download
By combining JWST and Hubble imagery, astronomers have discovered a Jovian storm giving the Great Red Spot a run for its money, raging at a speed five times that of a category 5 hurricane.
Crystal fiends, listen up: an exoplanet orbiting a star 1,300 light years from Earth is home to a quartz hailstorm, according to recent JWST findings. Will it still clear our chakras at a thousand miles per hour? JWST, please get back to us.
Just like humans, some stars appear to be mature beyond their years. New research based on JWST imagery has introduced the concept of “bursty star formation” to explain the disparity.
A Global Space
China - After transferring the Shenzhou-17 crew spacecraft and a Long March-2F rocket to the launchpad at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center last week, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) swiftly launched a crew of three taikonauts towards the nation’s Tiangong space station yesterday, October 26th. This marks the sixth manned mission for China since 2021. Upon their arrival, the Shenzhou-17 crew – 33-year-old Tang Shengjie, 35-year-old Jiang Xinlin and 48-year-old Tang Hongbo – will relieve three Shenzhou-16 taikonauts, onboard since May and surely looking forward to returning to Earth to reunite with their families. China’s fast progress is celebrated in the nation, although it unnerves the U.S. Department of Defense, with the Space Force citing a lack of military-to-military communication in their annual report to Congress. While these two powerful nations continue to go head to head, Pakistan and Belarus are sidling up to China, signing on to the nation’s International Lunar Research Station program last week.
ESA – In a not-so-great couple weeks for Arianespace, a recent Vega launch resulted in the loss of two cubesats, one from the Estonian Student Satellite Foundation and one from Spanish National Institute of Aerospace Technology. These payloads were designed to investigate safe satellite disposal methods and monitor local water quality, respectively. In addition to these recent losses, a continued problem with the thrust hydraulics in the rocket’s core stage meant another delay for the Ariane 6 last week, pushing its long-duration static-fire test to November. Fortunately, the team did pull together a rehearsal this week, which lasted 30 hours and tested launch safety protocols. Less fortunately, that’s the last bit of good news for the European launch industry, as ESA now turns from Arianespace to SpaceX to launch up to four flagship navigation satellites. Assuming the European Commission officially signs off before the end of this year, SpaceX will launch two pairs of Galileo satellites on Falcon 9 rockets in 2024. These classified payloads are not only a win for SpaceX, but a big vote of confidence from ESA, as the Galileo constellation is intended for encrypted communications within European militaries.
Canada – Last week, the Space Agency of Canada (CSA) kicked off the 2023 Spacebound conference in Ottawa with the exciting announcement that they’d be putting $1 billion towards a new Earth observation constellation, RADARSAT+. This national satellite constellation will replace an existing trio of satellites known simply as the RADARSAT Constellation. Of course, the crowd of Canadian space industry members celebrated the considerable funding, but François-Philippe Champagne – the nation’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry – redirected the applause to the audience themselves, “because this is Canadian funds that we’re putting in the industry.” What a nice reminder of that thing we all love to hate – taxes. In all seriousness, the initiative should be a great source of national pride in Canada, and serve the nation with profitable imagery for years to come.
India – The heat is on for India, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi committing the nation to “new and ambitious goals,” including a 2035 launch of their very own space station. The Bharatiya Antariksha Station, a.k.a. the Indian Space Station, a.k.a. the ISS (another one) will theoretically be the precursor to landing an Indian astronaut on the Moon in 2040. And if all this sounds – in the words of the Prime Minister himself – “ambitious,” the nation’s recent successes surely make these ambitions all the more plausible. Beyond the historic Chandrayaan-3 lunar landing and solar probe Aditya-1, India also just launched a successful test flight of their Gaganyaan spacecraft last week, designed to carry crew into space as early as December 2025.
Japan – Japan is still aiming for the moon with their Tokyo-based company, iSpace. While iSpace’s mission to the lunar south pole is a private endeavor, the nation is invested in its success – literally. Through a national Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, the Japanese government just granted $80 million (12 million yen) to the company in support of their Series 3 lunar lander, set to launch in 2027. Preceding Series 3 will be Series 2, recently rebranded to APEX 1.0 and led by iSpace U.S., the company’s Denver-based outpost. In any case, we sincerely hope the assumed success of these missions will help heal the loss of beloved HAKUTO-R back in April; we know we’re still sad about it.
Space Reads!
Read why microgravity is great for building new kinds of electronic materials – according to Aeronautics expert Debbie Senesky – but not for drinking coffee (she writes as she sips french press with grounds pleasantly settled at the bottom of the mug thanks to Earth’s gravitational pull).
In anticipation of Psyche’s rendezvous with its namesake asteroid, economists are buzzing with the potential of an emerging space mining industry, while other studies warn of the likely challenges. We all know the saying, with great power comes great responsibility!
If you’re here for the alien content, we won’t leave you hanging any longer: SETI recently got some great news about signal frequencies, which will allow them to detect and analyze signals much faster.
Have you heard the latest on Martian mud? And no, we’re not talking about a Matt Damon x Matthew McConaughey collab (although we’re not against it, either), we’re talking about an equatorial mud lake on the Red Planet that may contain traces of life.
And that’s a wrap on this week in space news! Keep an eye out this coming Monday for MOONSHOT, our paid subscriber newsletter covering the commercial space sector. A big thank you to Tess Ryan for writing this edition with me and for keeping up with the cosmos! We hope you enjoyed reading Continuum this week and will share it with your friends. And if you really, really like us, then consider becoming a paid subscriber or gifting a subscription so we can keep putting out more space content.
Keep it celestial people,
Britt
CEO of Celestial Citizen & Creator of Continuum
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