Snakes on a (Space) Plane
The latest NASA budget cuts, robot snakes, China's spaceplane returns, plus McLovin is going to Mars.
Hello Celestial Citizens and Continuum readers,
Hope everyone had a great week and is ready to roll into the weekend with the same energy as this unprecedented cosmic explosion!
Our team has been busy hanging out at all sorts of space conferences this month - most recently the Analog Astronaut Conference, where we got to talk about simulated space experiences and analog habitat planning. And perhaps not surprisingly, it seems even Hollywood wants in on the analog mission game.
Fox just announced a new reality show, ‘Stars on Mars,’ where celebronauts will compete for the title of “brightest star in the galaxy.” Celebrities include Lance Armstrong, McLovin, Adam Rippon (figure skater extraordinaire and inspired podcast host), Tom Schwartz (of Vanderpump Rules fame), and several others. What kind of wild Martian hijinks will this crew get into? I’ll certainly be tuning in this summer to find out.
Can’t wait for analog content until June? Then, I strongly recommend that you check out Tony DiBernardo’s (Continuum co-host and space communicator) just released documentary that follows crew ARG-1M at the Mars Desert Research Station as they simulate a 2-week mission to Mars. Get the popcorn ready!
And now, onto the space beat you came here for…
Top Headlines
TROPICS Thunder – This past week, Rocket Lab successfully launched and deployed a pair of weather-watching cubesats for a NASA mission we know lovingly as TROPICS. This comes nearly a year after the agency’s first attempt to deliver the cubesats via an Astra rocket and almost six months after transferring the mission to Rocket Lab, ensuring a timely construction of the constellation for the 2023 hurricane season. The team will launch two additional cubesats in the coming weeks to complete its four-satellite constellation, which will provide hourly updates based on “microwave observations,” allowing us to better monitor the formation of hurricanes. While these cubesats use microwave technology, don’t get it twisted – they’re each only the size of a toaster.
Robbing Peter To Pay MSR – It turns out the VERITAS suspension was only the beginning of NASA’s 2023 budget gymnastics, as just last week the agency made a significant and ripple-causing funding cut to the New Horizons project. After spending nearly a billion dollars and 15 years to travel a spacecraft out to the Kuiper belt – a distant ring of icy bodies between Neptune and Pluto’s orbit – NASA has decided to pull the vehicle back towards the Sun post-2024. Though agency directors believe similar deep-space observations can be made from Earth, planet scientists are concerned that without the New Horizons spacecraft, discoveries in the far reaches of the solar system will be limited for many years to come – especially considering how long it takes to get something out there. As more and more long-term and on-track planetary projects get sacrificed for bigger flagship projects like the Mars Sample Return, unrest brews at the agency. Alan Stern, planetary scientist and former NASA associate administrator calls for more transparency from NASA directors, pointing out that “there’s a point at which [a program] becomes overly ambitious to the extent that it’s brittle.”
Lunar Flashlights, Lasers, Eels, Oh My! – While New Horizons feels the weight of budget cuts, other agency missions move full steam ahead. The team behind NASA’s Lunar Flashlight – designed to shine light (literally and figuratively) on the moon’s shadowed craters – experienced some success last week with one of the satellite’s thrusters in an attempt to course-correct its orbit. In an interview from this week, Daniel Cavendar, who oversaw the propulsion system, identifies debris as the likely cause for the spacecraft veering off course back in December. In other news, the agency has also announced its inclusion of laser communications on Artemis 2. An Optical Communications System (O2O) will essentially allow the Artemis astronauts to send imagery and video at a much faster speed than what’s been previously available, building a much more “real time” connection with Earth. Last but not least, news of a “creepy robot snake” constructed to navigate the narrow vents of Saturn’s moons came out of California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory this week. We’ll be anxious to ssssss-ee what the robot discovers. Oh shoot, was I speaking in parseltongue again?
Old Dog, New Tricks – Sometimes, looking back at the past with a new lens can yield new findings. We saw this a couple months ago when images of Venus from the 1990s – looked at through the meticulous lens of a scientist with pandemic-bred cabin fever – presented conclusive evidence of Venus’ volcanism. This month, it’s a new look at NASA’s Voyager 2 footage of Uranus from the 1980s that’s offered new insight into the makeup of the planet’s moons. The recent study of the Voyager’s imagery – combined with intel from more recent projects like, you guessed it, New Horizons – shows that four of Uranus’s five largest moons likely hold oceans “dozens of miles deep.”
Space Force Invests In…Themselves – The commercial space industry may have been hyped about the U.S. Department of Defense’s hefty space budget proposal for 2024, but companies shouldn’t put the cart before the horse. According to a recent budget analysis, the DoD will be devoting most of that cash to in-house initiatives as opposed to investing heavily in commercial services, perhaps in an effort to maintain ultimate control and confidentiality. In any case, analyst Mike Tierney believes “there will continue to be that friction between what the industry wants and what the government is willing to let go.” That being said, there are still contracts to be won, particularly for satellite manufacturers such as with the Space Test Program.
Flying Private – We’re looking at a new launch date for the world’s second private spaceflight to the International Space Station. Next weekend, SpaceX and Axiom Space will launch the Ax-2 mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, via a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule named “Freedom.” The ISS is prepared for the arrival, with crewmembers having just relocated another Dragon spacecraft to make room for the Ax-2 astronauts, marking the 27th relocation in the station’s history. The mission will hopefully break even more exciting records, such as growing the first stem cells in space. One of the four crewmembers, Rayyanah Barnawi will also be the first Saudi woman to go to space.
Play It Again, SAM – We’ve talked about CHAPEA, a year-long experiment beginning this June testing the mental effects of contained life on Mars, but did you know about SAM (The Space Analog for the Moon and Mars)? Lasting for six days in late April, the Arizona-based simulation was the first of hopefully many tests of moon and Mars living systems. In this first test, known as Inclusion I, four crew members lived in a 1,100-square foot space, communicating solely through a single email address and relying on a finite water system and space-equivalent interior pressure. Aerospace systems engineer and mission engineer for Inclusion I (not to mention legendary Celestial Citizen podcast and YouTube channel guest) Bailey Burns has a lot of optimism coming out of the test — "The life support systems. It all worked, the water systems, there are things that we can improve upon but overall, we can do this.” Analog experiments like SAM present cost-saving opportunities to agencies like NASA, where environmental systems for future off-Earth settlements can be tried and tested before shipping out to the final frontier. Fun fact: Celestial Citizen just spoke about this very topic at the Analog Astronaut Conference this past week!
The Sound of Silence – Similar to how JWST changed the game by capturing (and translating) the infrared spectrum, solar powered balloons have been recording “infrasound.” Researchers study the audio – which often contains seashell-like ocean sounds in addition to mysterious static – picked up by balloons over Earth in hopes of eventually using the balloons over other planets, like Venus for example.
The JWST Download
Like Julia Fox in a foil gown, a mysterious planet in a distant galaxy reflects the light from the star it orbits.
Pisces season may be over but Fomalhaut – the hot young star that can be seen in the Piscis Austrinu constellation – is still burning, showing off an asteroid belt that may even contain a “planet or two.”
While JWST relishes being the belle of the ball, guess who’s back (back again)? The Hubble telescope might have another chance at glory thanks to new thrust technology.
A Global Space
Czech Republic – Jan Lipavský, the Czech Republic’s Foreign Minister signed the Artemis Accords in Washington D.C. last Wednesday, making the nation the 24th to enter into the international agreement. This unsurprising but exciting development comes after decades of Czech collaboration with NASA and ESA, with previous contributions to the Lunar Gateway and the European Large Logistics Lander. The nation has also recently received funding from ESA to build a deep-space-bound nuclear rocket.
China – In a solid couple weeks for the country, China celebrates both a successful departure and return. First, the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center welcomed home a spacecraft this past Monday after it spent 276 days in orbit, marking a significant milestone in Chinese reusable spacecraft technology. The “spaceplane” sparked intrigue last year after ejecting what might have been a small satellite, though it remains – in typical fashion for the nation – unconfirmed. Soon after this touchdown, China’s Tianzhou-6 spacecraft arrived at Tiangong space station, carrying science experiments, crew supplies, and propellant to keep the station safely in orbit. After a six-month stint at the station, the current four-person crew will be replaced by the Shenzhou-16 team in the next few weeks.
ESA – In addition to their aforementioned plans of nuclear, deep-space rockets, the European Space Agency has shared other exciting discoveries and ambitions as of late. For one, ESA published a study concluding that female astronauts are more efficient than male astronauts – both in terms of required food weight and O2 requirements – paving a clear path for all-female crews in future space travel. Of course, we’ve known this, but appreciate the scientific validation. On top of that (as if anything could top that), the agency plans to test an assisted reentry technique with a retired wind mission called Aeolus in a few months time, hoping to set a new industry standard for safe spacecraft reentry worldwide.
Scotland – The Highlands welcome a new launch site, breaking ground last week on the Sutherland Spaceport. Previously schemed as a shared facility for UK-based Orbex and Lockheed Martin’s UK arm, the location now belongs solely to launch vehicle developer Orbex after years of regulatory hoop-jumping. Though we don’t yet have a completion date or total project cost, we know the first launch is roughly a few years and 20 million pounds away.
Australia – Despite some celebration of industry momentum, the first day of this year’s Australian Space Forum was also met with a harsh funding cut from the Australian government. Over $30 million designated for spaceports and launch sites were cut from the federal budget, which certainly “undermines our competitiveness internationally,” says Dr. Malcolm Davis, senior space analyst. Here’s hoping the remainder of the forum – attended by both ASA and JAXA leaders – isn’t colored by this discouraging development.
Kenya – Having recently deployed its first Earth-observing satellite, Taifa-1 – meaning “one nation” in Swahili – the Kenya Space Agency takes a huge step into the global space economy. The nation hopes the satellite will “provide the critical multi-spectral imagery of Kenya needed for applications in agriculture, security, land use/land cover, forestry resources and disaster management,” according to the agency, helping them combat the challenging conditions of East Africa like droughts and wildfires.
Space Reads!
Can’t get enough stellar content? Here are some pieces of space-adjacent news we’ve been reading:
Knowing about space isn’t just for space nerds – which we say in the most loving sense of the word – anymore. Read about how “solargraphy” could be the new school textbook on the block.
In honor of the current writers’ strike in Hollywood, astrophysicist and author Erika Nesvold discusses potential future conflicts regarding labor rights in space civilization.
Oh, humans. Our flawed little brains will never be able to compete with our own creation – artificial intelligence – but maybe that’s okay. Learn more about how AI is helping us sort through enormous amounts of data from telescopes like JWST and those of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence).
For as much as the millennials love to hate capitalism, it likely had something (read: everything) to do with the modern space race. Ashlee Vance’s new book examines how Elon Musk and Silicon Valley pulled//grasped space access from NASA’s clutches.
Well Celestial Citizens, that’s a wrap on this week! 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 keeping up with all the latest space news! 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 to someone who is the Ashley Wagner to your Adam Rippon (IYKYK).
Until next time…
Keep it celestial people,
Britt
CEO of Celestial Citizen & Creator of Continuum
This edition of the newsletter was brought to you by:
Multiverse Media (Gold Sponsor)
Colorado School of Mines Space Resources Program (Silver Sponsor)
Explore Mars (Silver Sponsor)
First time reading the newsletter--had a blast! Loved the Harry Potter reference about the snake! This photo of said snake caught my eye since I just wrote about a fictional smaller version in my short story chapter I dropped this week! Cool confluence of events ;)