Author: Adam

The Pentagon’s renewed emphasis on space as well as the creation of the United States Space Force is driving up demand for commercially produced technology. AFWERX, an Air Force technology accelerator, is reacting by opening new doors for the space entrepreneurs. “We consider space as a quickly developing sector,” stated Jason Rathje, CEO of AFWERX’s AFVentures investment arm.

AFWERX will build a subsidiary named SpaceWERX in the following months. It expects to start a new platform called Space Prime to promote promising innovations’ commercial viability further. AFWERX has several projects aimed at attracting more space startups as well as commercial companies, including Space Prime. It’s focused on Agility Prime, which is a project AFWERX funded in 2020 to accelerate the demand for vertically taking off and landing electric-powered drones. AFWERX awarded about $40 million to six firms by Agility Prime to produce prototypes.

The government will have both financial and technological assistance for developments that are deemed strategically relevant through Space Prime. The aim is to locate inventions that are on the verge of being economically feasible that could benefit from any government assistance. For example, selected businesses may gain access to testing facilities and be mentored on regulatory and contracting procedures.

Officials said up to $100 million could be spent in Space Prime during the next year during a recent AFWERX webinar. “Smart spacecraft” is one of the groups being examined for Space Prime support. Autonomy, low-power data transmission onboard spacecraft, sophisticated propulsion, and trusted cybersecurity are all indicators of those capabilities.

AFWERX is in a role to help address chicken-and-egg issues with initiatives like Space Prime. According to Megan Crawford, investors would be reluctant to finance such developments before the government is interested, who works as the managing partner of venture capital company SpaceFund, who spoke at the AFWERX webinar. She listed the disposal of space debris as an example. That is an illustration of a skill that the private sector might fund if the government offered rewards.

General John Raymond, the director of the United States Space Command, has called for government-commercial alliances as a means to tap into private industry funding to get nascent technology related to national security to the market. Raymond shared his passion for commercial space developments by saying, “I’m pumped for it.” He said the space sector is investing in technology that it will use to its benefit.

According to a new survey by the investment capital firm Space Capital, institutional investors pumped $5.7 billion into 80 space firms in the fourth quarter of the year 2020, taking the overall amount invested in the year to $25.6 billion. According to Space Capital, since the year 2010, $177.7 billion has been invested in 1,348 space firms.

According to the announcement released by the White House, President Joe Biden’s nominee for the NASA administrator is Senator Bill Nelson, the former Florida senator. His career revolved around representing the space coast in the Federal Government. However, he also played space fame even before he was a senator. At one point, he ended up interrupting his career as an elected official to serve as a payload specialist on six days of the space shuttle Columbia, 1986.

According to what Joe Biden wrote in a statement, the Senate knew him as the Nation’s Space Program’s go-to person. Almost every piece of space and science has its imprint. The Democratic leaders in the US House of today’s inspiration focused on science were optimistic with this announcement, and they considered it good news. The committee’s chairperson said that he is pleased that president Joe Biden has chosen Senator Nelson to lead NASA. This agency is one of the Crown Jewels of the country’s science and technology and is also a source of inspiration worldwide and required someone with expertise and knowledge like him.

The Senate will consider Nelson’s nomination, and if they approve it, he will replace the acting administrator Steve Jurczyk. He only took NASA’s lead in January when Jim Bridenstine, the former administrator, had stepped down by the end of former President Donald Trump’s first term. In the confirmation of Jim Bridenstine in 2018, Nelson had concerns about his appointment. That’s because of his personal history as a politician. The NASA administrator is supposed to be a consummate professional, as said by Nelson. This senator words, someone who is a space professional and not just a politician to be NASA’s head.

According to a statement that he wrote, Jim Bridenstine has already endorsed Nelson and said that he is an excellent choice for the NASA administrator position, noting Nelson’s diplomatic skills and political clout. Bill Nelson will influence NASA’s substantial budgets and even enlist help from friends, if possible, President Joe Biden. The Senate should confirm him without delay. Even the acting administrator Jurczyk has welcomed this decision.

The men and women at NASA are very incredible national assets to the United States, and they will continue to take the most pressing issues facing the country. They will continue to accept and find solutions to problems that were once thought to be unsolvable; then, they will educate and inspire the Next Generation of American workers, scientists, and Engineers. It is important to note that Nelson lost his senatorial seat to Rick Scott, who was once a Florida governor in 2018. Ever since then, he has been working at the NASA Advisory Council.

Humans’ inquisitive behavior caused the need to learn more about their celestial friend; hence, hundreds of ventures on Mars started around 1960. The ventures aimed at obtaining information on space probes in short bursts as part of the competition. Many astronauts have been exploring the planet’s atmosphere for many years. Since the first successful flyby of Mars in 1965, four space organizations have joined the city: the ex-Soviet space program, NASA, the Indian Space Research Organization, and the European Space Agency.

The earliest attempts to reach Mars emerged at the dawn of space exploration. It is noteworthy that three years after the original satellite, Sputnik, was launched in 1957, the Soviet Union’s space agency sought to extend its activities to Mars. Throughout the 1960s, the Soviet Union, formally known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, made numerous attempts to explore Mars. NASA was followed in the coming years by the Mariner 3 spaceship.

Nevertheless, NASA has experienced diverse innovation, and the collapse of the Soviet Union necessitated NASA’s growth. Recently, NASA launched the Lucy mission as part of the organization’s desire for deeper space exploration. The Lucy project is a NASA rover that will deploy in October 2021 to uncover the Trojans, an asteroid group close to Jupiter. 

These ancient meteorites provide vital information about the formation of the solar system and, perhaps, the source of human existence. Together with the Psyche flight, Lucy was authorized in January 2017 as a component of NASA’s Exploration program, which funds centered and comparatively affordable planetary projects with construction costs estimated at $450 million.

The program was formally assigned a timeline and a series of eight asteroid objectives a year after it was approved. Lucy is given the name after a famous female Australopithecus afarensis fossil discovered in Ethiopia, who, as an ancestor of primates, helped shed light on the genus’ evolution. It is anticipated that the spaceship Lucy will shed light on the origins of the universe. The Trojan meteorites are the rover’s primary research targets.

Such artifacts are believed to be fragments of the primordial layer that created the sun and planetary systems, trapped by Jupiter’s gravity at a certain point towards creating the universe. Lucy will be the initial expedition to visit the Trojans named after prominent characters during Greek mythology’s Trojan Battle. By 2025, upon being deployed from Earth, the spaceship will make a quick rocket launch of the main belt comet. 52246 Donaldjohanson is the tiny celestial body’s title following the paleontologist who found the fossil, Lucy. The flyby, which will occur between Mars and Jupiter, will mainly act as a measure for the satellite’s equipment, as per the reports issued by the Southwest Research Institute.

SpaceX launched sixty more Starlink satellites aboard the Falcon 9 launch vehicle on March 11. The launch increased the company’s constellation to one thousand and two hundred satellites, meant to expand its internet coverage across the US, Canada, parts of the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.

The Falcon 9, the two-stage orbital launch vehicle developed by SpaceX in the United States, took off at around 3:13 EAT from the firm’s Space Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying the Starlink satellites. The upper stage launched the sixty satellites to orbit approximately sixty-five minutes after leaving the takeoff.

After deploying the satellites, the rocket’s reusable upper stage descended towards the earth’s surface, landing on the company’s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, about six hundred kilometers downrange. The landing happened eight and a half minutes after liftoff, making this Falcon 9’s sixth flight.

Falcon 9 has deployed payloads to space on several missions, including the Demo-2 commercial crew test flight in May 2020 and the Transporter-1 rideshare mission, launched at the beginning of 2021. In 2021, SpaceX has planned a series of Starlink launches, all of which will be carried by the Falcon 9.

The space company, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, has also launched two more missions besides the Starlink project this year. The Transporter 1 mission, which carries small satellites from different companies through the SmallSat Rideshare Program, was launched aboard Falcon 9.

Besides, the Falcon 9lalso lifted the Turksat 5A geostationary communications satellite to orbit. The communications mission operated by Turkish satellite company, Turksat, took off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on January 7, this year. The satellites will cover Turkey, Middle East, Europe, and Africa.

SpaceX is expanding Starlink’s coverage, and its beta test for broadband internet service provided by the satellites in progress. The beta test was initially restricted to the northern region of the United States. The company has since expanded the test to southern Canada and select areas in the United Kingdom.

The additional Starlink satellites will enable SpaceX to provide a satellite internet connection to the UK, including Scotland, Wales, and England. The western parts of Germany will also enjoy the services and the South Island area of New Zealand. SpaceX revealed that the services should be up in the next few weeks.

The beta tests have indicated that the internet speeds range between 50 and 150 megabits per second, sometimes going above 300 megabits per second. The only downside is the occasional downtime. SpaceX says despite the occasional outages, the service is ‘better than nothing.’

On Tuesday, the heads of China’s and Russia’s space agencies penned a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the creation of a joint international lunar research station. Via a conference call on March 9, Zhang Kejian, who serves as the head in charge of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), as well as Dmitry Rogozin, who is the General Director of Roscosmos, ratified the agreement.

The International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) is an interdisciplinary as well as multi-objective scientific exploratory base established on the lunar surface or even in the lunar orbit which can engage in activities such as discovery and exploration, lunar-centered observation, fundamental scientific experiment, and technological verification, as well as a long-term autonomous activity.

The project will be “available to all eligible countries and foreign partners,” according to CNSA and Roscosmos’ statements. Though not mentioned specifically, it is assumed that the ILRS will be built at lunar south pole. Both parties will use their combined expertise in space science, research as well as development, and the usage of the space equipment and technology to create a clear roadmap for the creation of the international lunar scientific research station, according to the press releases.

Following the robotic process of the mission, Roscosmos sees the possibility of human habitation on the moon. As SpaceNews announced in February, the signing of the agreement was scheduled. “This Memorandum of Understanding suits the broader pattern of Russia edging closer to China,” Bleddyn Bowen, an international affairs lecturer at the University of Leicester situated in the United Kingdom, informed SpaceNews in February.

Russia and China previously agreed to collaborate on the Chang’e-7 as well as Luna 27 missions, as well as establish a joint data facility for lunar as well as deep space investigation.  The European Space Agency is also active in negotiations, having recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the NASA agency on the Gateway.

“At ESA, we are closely watching the Chinese lunar exploration ambitions to see where our separate programmatic interests could intersect, mainly the CE-6, -7, as well as -8 missions, but also for the ILRS initiative,” Karl Bergquist, who is the ESA’s international relations administrator, informed SpaceNews last year.

Following the acceptance of the first series of missions in the 2000s, the ILRS idea evolved into an extended phase of Chinese lunar exploration. China has deployed two lunar orbiters, two landers as well as rover missions, and a Chang’e-5 lunar sample return flight in late 2020.