SPACE
‘From Marswalks to cultivating vegetables’: NASA crew emerge from 378-day long Mars simulation mission
07 Jul 2024,
07 Jul 2024,
AFP
Four scientists emerge from a 378-day simulated Mars mission in Houston, Texas, facing challenges like communication delays and isolation.
Four scientists emerge from a 378-day simulated Mars mission in Houston, Texas, facing challenges like communication delays and isolation.
In this still image taken from a July 6, 2024, NASA TV broadcast, NASA astronaut and deputy director, Flight Operations Kjell Lindgren (C) speaks as volunteer crew members (L-R) Kelly Haston, Ross Brockwell, Nathan Jones and Anca Selariu, exit the first simulated yearlong Mars habitat mission at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Four scientists, who spent over a year i.e. 378 days in a simulating mission to Mars without any other human contact, emerge were welcomed back with cheers and applause. Before heading out, a NASA astronaut knocked loudly three times on a what appears to be a nondescript door, and calls cheerfully: "You ready to come out?"
Who are the four scientists?
Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell, Nathan Jones, and team leader Kelly Haston dedicated the last 378 days inside the "Martian" habitat in Houston, Texas, as part of NASA's research into the requirements for future human missions to Mars.
During their isolation, they cultivated vegetables, conducted simulated "Marswalks," and faced various challenges termed by NASA as "additional stressors." These included communication delays with Earth, limited contact with their families, and the psychological strains of isolation and confinement.
"Hello. It's actually so wonderful just to be able to say hello to you," Haston, a biologist, said with a laugh.
"I really hope I don't cry standing up here in front of all of you," Jones, an emergency room doctor, said as he took to the microphone -- and nearly doing just that several moments later as he spotted his wife in the crowd.
The habitat, dubbed Mars Dune Alpha, is a 3D printed 1,700 square-foot (160 square-meter) facility, complete with bedrooms, a gym, common areas, and a vertical farm to grow food.
An outdoor area, separated by an airlock, is filled with red sand and is where the team donned suits to conduct their "Marswalks", though it is still covered rather than being open air.
"They have spent more than a year in this habitat conducting crucial science, most of it nutrition-based and how that impacts their performace ... as we prepare to send people on to the Red Planet," Steve Koerner, deputy director at NASA's Johnson Space Center, told the crowd.
"I'm very appreciative."
This mission is the first of a series of three planned by NASA, grouped under the title CHAPEA -- Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog.
A year-long mission simulating life on Mars took place in 2015-2016 in a habitat in Hawaii, and although NASA participated in it, it was not at the helm.
Under its Artemis program, America plans to send humans back to the Moon in order to learn how to live there long-term to help prepare a trip to Mars, sometime towards the end of the 2030s.
Four scientists, who spent over a year i.e. 378 days in a simulating mission to Mars without any other human contact, emerge were welcomed back with cheers and applause. Before heading out, a NASA astronaut knocked loudly three times on a what appears to be a nondescript door, and calls cheerfully: "You ready to come out?"
Who are the four scientists?
Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell, Nathan Jones, and team leader Kelly Haston dedicated the last 378 days inside the "Martian" habitat in Houston, Texas, as part of NASA's research into the requirements for future human missions to Mars.
During their isolation, they cultivated vegetables, conducted simulated "Marswalks," and faced various challenges termed by NASA as "additional stressors." These included communication delays with Earth, limited contact with their families, and the psychological strains of isolation and confinement.
"Hello. It's actually so wonderful just to be able to say hello to you," Haston, a biologist, said with a laugh.
"I really hope I don't cry standing up here in front of all of you," Jones, an emergency room doctor, said as he took to the microphone -- and nearly doing just that several moments later as he spotted his wife in the crowd.
The habitat, dubbed Mars Dune Alpha, is a 3D printed 1,700 square-foot (160 square-meter) facility, complete with bedrooms, a gym, common areas, and a vertical farm to grow food.
An outdoor area, separated by an airlock, is filled with red sand and is where the team donned suits to conduct their "Marswalks", though it is still covered rather than being open air.
"They have spent more than a year in this habitat conducting crucial science, most of it nutrition-based and how that impacts their performace ... as we prepare to send people on to the Red Planet," Steve Koerner, deputy director at NASA's Johnson Space Center, told the crowd.
"I'm very appreciative."
This mission is the first of a series of three planned by NASA, grouped under the title CHAPEA -- Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog.
A year-long mission simulating life on Mars took place in 2015-2016 in a habitat in Hawaii, and although NASA participated in it, it was not at the helm.
Under its Artemis program, America plans to send humans back to the Moon in order to learn how to live there long-term to help prepare a trip to Mars, sometime towards the end of the 2030s.
Published Jul 05, 2024
By Joe Edwards
Live News Reporter
Russia has finally admitted that American astronauts did, in fact, land on the moon.
Head of Russian Space Corporation Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, accepted the truth of the U.S. putting a man on the moon in an address to the State Duma, Intellinews has reported.
"As for whether the Americans were on the Moon or not, I have one fact to share," he was reported to have said.
"I was personally interested in this matter. At one time, they provided us with a portion of the lunar soil that the astronauts brought back during their expedition."
Previous polling revealed that just under half of Russians believe America's 1969 moon landing was a government hoax.
However, Borisov said that tests performed on the samples by the Russian Academy of Scientists confirmed their authenticity.
Neil Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon's surface in July 1969, famously declaring, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."
By Joe Edwards
Live News Reporter
Russia has finally admitted that American astronauts did, in fact, land on the moon.
Head of Russian Space Corporation Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, accepted the truth of the U.S. putting a man on the moon in an address to the State Duma, Intellinews has reported.
"As for whether the Americans were on the Moon or not, I have one fact to share," he was reported to have said.
"I was personally interested in this matter. At one time, they provided us with a portion of the lunar soil that the astronauts brought back during their expedition."
Previous polling revealed that just under half of Russians believe America's 1969 moon landing was a government hoax.
However, Borisov said that tests performed on the samples by the Russian Academy of Scientists confirmed their authenticity.
Neil Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon's surface in July 1969, famously declaring, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle during the Apollo 11 mission. Mission commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface...
HERITAGE IMAGES VIA GETTY
Joined by Buzz Aldrin, the two astronauts spent approximately two hours exploring the lunar landscape at Tranquility Base, collecting 47.5 pounds of lunar material to bring back to Earth while Michael Collins orbited the Moon in the Command Module Columbia.
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin may have been the first human being to be sent into space, but many Russians remain skeptical on whether the U.S. successfully landed men on the moon in 1969.
A receet survey of 1,600 Russian adults found that just 31 percent accepted that U.S. astronauts landed on the moon in the last century.
The conspiracy that the moon landing was faked in also prevalent in the United States, though to a lesser degree.
A 2019 Statista study found that 11 percent of Americans believed the landing was a hoax.
Five percent "strongly believed" the conspiracy, with a further six percent who "somewhat believed" it.
Another 11 percent answered that they "neither believed nor disbelieved" in the theory, but 61 percent said they "strongly disbelieved" the conspiracy.
A separate poll conducted by Gallup 30 years after the 1969 moon landing also found that six percent of Americans believed the event was either staged or fake, but the vast majority (89 percent) were confident the landing did, in fact, take place.
In related news, China's mission to the far side of the moon successfully returned last month after spending two months in space.
The Chang'e-6 lunar module arrived back on earth with the first-ever samples from the "dark side" of the moon.
Joined by Buzz Aldrin, the two astronauts spent approximately two hours exploring the lunar landscape at Tranquility Base, collecting 47.5 pounds of lunar material to bring back to Earth while Michael Collins orbited the Moon in the Command Module Columbia.
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin may have been the first human being to be sent into space, but many Russians remain skeptical on whether the U.S. successfully landed men on the moon in 1969.
A receet survey of 1,600 Russian adults found that just 31 percent accepted that U.S. astronauts landed on the moon in the last century.
The conspiracy that the moon landing was faked in also prevalent in the United States, though to a lesser degree.
A 2019 Statista study found that 11 percent of Americans believed the landing was a hoax.
Five percent "strongly believed" the conspiracy, with a further six percent who "somewhat believed" it.
Another 11 percent answered that they "neither believed nor disbelieved" in the theory, but 61 percent said they "strongly disbelieved" the conspiracy.
A separate poll conducted by Gallup 30 years after the 1969 moon landing also found that six percent of Americans believed the event was either staged or fake, but the vast majority (89 percent) were confident the landing did, in fact, take place.
In related news, China's mission to the far side of the moon successfully returned last month after spending two months in space.
The Chang'e-6 lunar module arrived back on earth with the first-ever samples from the "dark side" of the moon.
Low-intensity explosion caused Russian satellite to spew debris
Jeff Foust
Jeff Foust
July 6, 2024
A model of the Resurs-P spacecraft like the one that suffered a breakup event in low Earth orbit June 26. Credit: Vitaly V. Kuzmin CC BY-SA 4.0
TOKYO — A Russian satellite likely suffered a “low-intensity explosion” that created hundreds of pieces of debris in low Earth orbit, according to one company’s analysis.
Both U.S. Space Command and private space situational awareness providers reported that Resurs P1, a defunct Russian remote sensing satellite, suffered a breakup event on June 26. That event created more than 100 pieces of debris that could be tracked by ground-based sensors.
The cause of the breakup remains unclear, but LeoLabs, which was the first to publicly report the event, believes that a “low-intensity explosion” either from a collision or within the spacecraft itself created the debris. That explosion has created at least 250 debris fragments at altitudes extending as high as 500 kilometers.
That conclusion came from the company’s analysis of that debris cloud, using its own tools to look at the number of distribution of debris objects to better understand what created it.
“While much of the debris cloud has yet to be analyzed fully, our preliminary assessment concludes that the most likely cause of the event is a low intensity explosion,” LeoLabs concluded in a July 3 statement posted on LinkedIn. “This explosion could’ve been triggered by external stimuli such as an impact by a small fragment (not currently cataloged) or an internal structural failure leading to a propulsion system failure.”
That analysis rules out speculation that the satellite might have been used as a target for an anti-satellite weapons test, much like Cosmos 1408 in November 2021. There had been no other indications, such as statements from the Russian or American militaries or airspace restrictions, to suggest such a test was planned or carried out.
The explosion does not appear to have caused the satellite itself to completely break apart. Optical observations of Resurs P by Sybilla Technologies, a Polish space situational awareness company, report that the main satellite is still there, rotating with a period of two to three seconds.
Images taken before the breakup by HEO, an Australian company that uses commercial satellites to image other space objects, show that the solar panels on Resurs P1 and two follow-on spacecraft, P2 and P3, failed to fully deploy. It’s not clear if this deployment malfunction is linked in any way to the breakup.
While the fragmentation event does not appear to be a worst-case scenario, it still creates a hazard for other satellites in low Earth orbit. The altitude of some of the debris, LeoLabs noted, takes it through the orbits used by many other operational satellites as well as the International Space Station and China’s Tiangong space station. Those objects will likely remain in orbit for “weeks to months” before atmospheric drag causes them to decay.
“This event demonstrates the ongoing risk of defunct spacecraft in orbit,” the company concluded. Resurs P1 was decommissioned in 2021 and will reenter later this year as its orbit, currently about 355 kilometers, decays.
It is not alone, LeoLabs added. “There are over 2,500 long-lived intact derelict hardware (i.e., abandoned rocket bodies and non-operational payloads) that may suffer a similar fate to Resurs P1 over time.”
TOKYO — A Russian satellite likely suffered a “low-intensity explosion” that created hundreds of pieces of debris in low Earth orbit, according to one company’s analysis.
Both U.S. Space Command and private space situational awareness providers reported that Resurs P1, a defunct Russian remote sensing satellite, suffered a breakup event on June 26. That event created more than 100 pieces of debris that could be tracked by ground-based sensors.
The cause of the breakup remains unclear, but LeoLabs, which was the first to publicly report the event, believes that a “low-intensity explosion” either from a collision or within the spacecraft itself created the debris. That explosion has created at least 250 debris fragments at altitudes extending as high as 500 kilometers.
That conclusion came from the company’s analysis of that debris cloud, using its own tools to look at the number of distribution of debris objects to better understand what created it.
“While much of the debris cloud has yet to be analyzed fully, our preliminary assessment concludes that the most likely cause of the event is a low intensity explosion,” LeoLabs concluded in a July 3 statement posted on LinkedIn. “This explosion could’ve been triggered by external stimuli such as an impact by a small fragment (not currently cataloged) or an internal structural failure leading to a propulsion system failure.”
That analysis rules out speculation that the satellite might have been used as a target for an anti-satellite weapons test, much like Cosmos 1408 in November 2021. There had been no other indications, such as statements from the Russian or American militaries or airspace restrictions, to suggest such a test was planned or carried out.
The explosion does not appear to have caused the satellite itself to completely break apart. Optical observations of Resurs P by Sybilla Technologies, a Polish space situational awareness company, report that the main satellite is still there, rotating with a period of two to three seconds.
Images taken before the breakup by HEO, an Australian company that uses commercial satellites to image other space objects, show that the solar panels on Resurs P1 and two follow-on spacecraft, P2 and P3, failed to fully deploy. It’s not clear if this deployment malfunction is linked in any way to the breakup.
While the fragmentation event does not appear to be a worst-case scenario, it still creates a hazard for other satellites in low Earth orbit. The altitude of some of the debris, LeoLabs noted, takes it through the orbits used by many other operational satellites as well as the International Space Station and China’s Tiangong space station. Those objects will likely remain in orbit for “weeks to months” before atmospheric drag causes them to decay.
“This event demonstrates the ongoing risk of defunct spacecraft in orbit,” the company concluded. Resurs P1 was decommissioned in 2021 and will reenter later this year as its orbit, currently about 355 kilometers, decays.
It is not alone, LeoLabs added. “There are over 2,500 long-lived intact derelict hardware (i.e., abandoned rocket bodies and non-operational payloads) that may suffer a similar fate to Resurs P1 over time.”
India preps for space milestone: ISRO shortlists two astronauts for Gaganyaan Mission
The chosen astronauts will head to the United States for specialized training focused on the ISS modules and protocols, complementing their extensive training on the Gaganyaan modules in India.
Written by FE Online
July 7, 2024
ISRO Chief S Somnath breaks silence over delayed return of astronauts Sunita Williams, Barry Wilmore
ISRO’s Aditya-L1 mission achieves milestone, completes first Halo Orbit around Sun-Earth L1 point
While India’s own human spaceflight under the Gaganyaan mission is projected for 2025, contingent on the success of two prior unmanned flights, this joint venture with NASA represents a significant leap forward, symbolizing India’s growing role in global space exploration.
MORE STORIES ON
The chosen astronauts will head to the United States for specialized training focused on the ISS modules and protocols, complementing their extensive training on the Gaganyaan modules in India.
Written by FE Online
July 7, 2024
The mission, part of the Axiom-4 project, is NASA’s fourth private astronaut mission in partnership with Axiom Space. (Image: Reuters)
In an exciting development for India’s space program, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has finalised two astronauts for its groundbreaking Gaganyaan Mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in collaboration with NASA. This mission, which is set to launch no earlier than October 2024, will see these astronauts embark on an incredible journey to the ISS, marking a significant milestone in India’s space exploration efforts.
The chosen astronauts will head to the United States for specialized training focused on the ISS modules and protocols, complementing their extensive training on the Gaganyaan modules in India. The mission, part of the Axiom-4 project, is NASA’s fourth private astronaut mission in partnership with Axiom Space. It will involve a fourteen-day docking with the ISS, with SpaceX providing transportation and familiarization with the Dragon spacecraft systems, procedures, and emergency protocols.
SKY’S THE LIMIT! PM MODI COULD JOIN GAGANYAAN MISSION, SAYS ISRO CHIEF
This collaboration has been long in the making. During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US last year, a joint statement announced NASA’s commitment to providing advanced training to Indian astronauts. NASA administrator Bill Nelson reiterated this commitment during his visit to Delhi, confirming plans to train an Indian astronaut for the ISS mission by the end of 2024.
In an exciting development for India’s space program, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has finalised two astronauts for its groundbreaking Gaganyaan Mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in collaboration with NASA. This mission, which is set to launch no earlier than October 2024, will see these astronauts embark on an incredible journey to the ISS, marking a significant milestone in India’s space exploration efforts.
The chosen astronauts will head to the United States for specialized training focused on the ISS modules and protocols, complementing their extensive training on the Gaganyaan modules in India. The mission, part of the Axiom-4 project, is NASA’s fourth private astronaut mission in partnership with Axiom Space. It will involve a fourteen-day docking with the ISS, with SpaceX providing transportation and familiarization with the Dragon spacecraft systems, procedures, and emergency protocols.
SKY’S THE LIMIT! PM MODI COULD JOIN GAGANYAAN MISSION, SAYS ISRO CHIEF
This collaboration has been long in the making. During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US last year, a joint statement announced NASA’s commitment to providing advanced training to Indian astronauts. NASA administrator Bill Nelson reiterated this commitment during his visit to Delhi, confirming plans to train an Indian astronaut for the ISS mission by the end of 2024.
ISRO Chief S Somnath breaks silence over delayed return of astronauts Sunita Williams, Barry Wilmore
ISRO’s Aditya-L1 mission achieves milestone, completes first Halo Orbit around Sun-Earth L1 point
While India’s own human spaceflight under the Gaganyaan mission is projected for 2025, contingent on the success of two prior unmanned flights, this joint venture with NASA represents a significant leap forward, symbolizing India’s growing role in global space exploration.
MORE STORIES ON
Kazakhstan joins China’s ILRS moon base program
Andrew Jones
Andrew Jones
July 5, 2024
SPACE NEWS
China’s ILRS plans
The China-led ILRS envisions constructing a permanent lunar base in the 2030s. This will be constructed using a super heavy-lift launcher. The ambitious project seeks to advance lunar exploration and the utilization of lunar resources. China also aims to send astronauts to the moon before 2030.
The plan is a parallel yet separate program to NASA’s Artemis Program, for which the U.S. is building partnerships. Both the U.S. and China are engaged in diplomatic efforts to attract countries, with the former attracting 42 other countries to sign the Artemis Accords, which set out principles to guide the exploration and use of outer space. The most recent was Armenia in June.
China has also stated it will establish the International Lunar Research Station Cooperation Organization (ILRSCO). The organization will coordinate and manage the construction of the ILRS moon base.
In late May, China signed an agreement with Bahrain covering lunar and deep space exploration. The ILRS was not explicitly mentioned. It will however collaborate with Egypt to jointly develop a hyperspectral imager for lunar surface material identification payload for Chang’e-7, a Chinese ILRS precursor mission. Notably, Bahrain signed up to the Artemis Accords in 2022.
Peru, another Artemis Accords signatory, is involved in the ILRS via its participation in the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization (APSCO). The inter-governmental organization is headquartered in Beijing and has signed an MoU regarding ILRS.
A Russian space official stated in April that Turkey had applied to join ILRS. China, which leads the moon project’s diplomatic efforts, has yet to comment officially on this.
Local reports from June state that China’s Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL) under CNSA signed an ILRS agreement with Supreme Deep Space (Pvt) Ltd. of Sri Lanka.
Kazakhstan becomes the 12th country to join the ILRS, following Serbia in May, and Nicaragua and Thailand in April. This list does not include Turkey.
China and Russia formally announced the joint ILRS project in St. Petersburg, Russia, in June 2021. Venezuela, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, South Africa and Egypt signed up during 2023.China will launch precursor ILRS missions in the 2020s.
These include Chang’e-7 around 2026 and the later Chang’e-8 in-situ resource utilization technology test mission. Both multi-spacecraft missions will target the lunar south pole.
Illustration displaying the China-led ILRS concept. Credit: DSEL
HELSINKI — Kazakhstan has signed a memorandum on cooperation on the China-led ILRS and will also explore commercial use of each other’s spaceports.
The agreement was signed during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Kazakhstan July 3, which saw the signing of 30 documents between the two sides. The development further bolsters China’s lunar exploration plans.
A joint statement issued by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the “two sides support exchanges and cooperation between the two countries’ aerospace agencies and enterprises in the peaceful use of outer space, promote mutually beneficial cooperation in the moon and deep space, and reception and exchange of remote sensing data.”
A memorandum on cooperation as part of the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) was one of the 30 signed documents, according to the Interfax news agency.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has not issued its own statement on the development. It did not issue a statement following a similar development when Serbia signed up to the ILRS.
Notably, China’s MFA also stated that China and Kazakhstan would, “explore the possibility of commercial use of the two sides’ space launch sites.”
China is currently working to boost pad access for emerging commercial launch service providers. The Baikonur cosmodrome was set up by the Soviet Union in Kazakhstan. It is leased to Russia until 2050. The country also hosts the Sary Shagan Test Site. Kazakhstan shares a border with Xinjiang, in China’s west.
“Kazakhstan will need to diversify away from Russia if it wants to have a big future in space,” Bleddyn Bowen, an associate professor specializing in space policy and military uses of outer space at the University of Leicester, told SpaceNews.
Xi also gave a speech to a Shanghai Cooperation Organization+ Summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, July 4. “China welcomes all parties to use the Beidou satellite navigation system and participate in the construction of the International Lunar Research Station,” Xi said.
HELSINKI — Kazakhstan has signed a memorandum on cooperation on the China-led ILRS and will also explore commercial use of each other’s spaceports.
The agreement was signed during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Kazakhstan July 3, which saw the signing of 30 documents between the two sides. The development further bolsters China’s lunar exploration plans.
A joint statement issued by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the “two sides support exchanges and cooperation between the two countries’ aerospace agencies and enterprises in the peaceful use of outer space, promote mutually beneficial cooperation in the moon and deep space, and reception and exchange of remote sensing data.”
A memorandum on cooperation as part of the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) was one of the 30 signed documents, according to the Interfax news agency.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has not issued its own statement on the development. It did not issue a statement following a similar development when Serbia signed up to the ILRS.
Notably, China’s MFA also stated that China and Kazakhstan would, “explore the possibility of commercial use of the two sides’ space launch sites.”
China is currently working to boost pad access for emerging commercial launch service providers. The Baikonur cosmodrome was set up by the Soviet Union in Kazakhstan. It is leased to Russia until 2050. The country also hosts the Sary Shagan Test Site. Kazakhstan shares a border with Xinjiang, in China’s west.
“Kazakhstan will need to diversify away from Russia if it wants to have a big future in space,” Bleddyn Bowen, an associate professor specializing in space policy and military uses of outer space at the University of Leicester, told SpaceNews.
Xi also gave a speech to a Shanghai Cooperation Organization+ Summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, July 4. “China welcomes all parties to use the Beidou satellite navigation system and participate in the construction of the International Lunar Research Station,” Xi said.
China’s ILRS plans
The China-led ILRS envisions constructing a permanent lunar base in the 2030s. This will be constructed using a super heavy-lift launcher. The ambitious project seeks to advance lunar exploration and the utilization of lunar resources. China also aims to send astronauts to the moon before 2030.
The plan is a parallel yet separate program to NASA’s Artemis Program, for which the U.S. is building partnerships. Both the U.S. and China are engaged in diplomatic efforts to attract countries, with the former attracting 42 other countries to sign the Artemis Accords, which set out principles to guide the exploration and use of outer space. The most recent was Armenia in June.
China has also stated it will establish the International Lunar Research Station Cooperation Organization (ILRSCO). The organization will coordinate and manage the construction of the ILRS moon base.
In late May, China signed an agreement with Bahrain covering lunar and deep space exploration. The ILRS was not explicitly mentioned. It will however collaborate with Egypt to jointly develop a hyperspectral imager for lunar surface material identification payload for Chang’e-7, a Chinese ILRS precursor mission. Notably, Bahrain signed up to the Artemis Accords in 2022.
Peru, another Artemis Accords signatory, is involved in the ILRS via its participation in the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization (APSCO). The inter-governmental organization is headquartered in Beijing and has signed an MoU regarding ILRS.
A Russian space official stated in April that Turkey had applied to join ILRS. China, which leads the moon project’s diplomatic efforts, has yet to comment officially on this.
Local reports from June state that China’s Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL) under CNSA signed an ILRS agreement with Supreme Deep Space (Pvt) Ltd. of Sri Lanka.
Kazakhstan becomes the 12th country to join the ILRS, following Serbia in May, and Nicaragua and Thailand in April. This list does not include Turkey.
China and Russia formally announced the joint ILRS project in St. Petersburg, Russia, in June 2021. Venezuela, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, South Africa and Egypt signed up during 2023.China will launch precursor ILRS missions in the 2020s.
These include Chang’e-7 around 2026 and the later Chang’e-8 in-situ resource utilization technology test mission. Both multi-spacecraft missions will target the lunar south pole.
COLD WAR 2.0 IN SPACE
China’s ‘worst-case thinking’ could spark space crisis, study finds
A new RAND report highlights China’s inflated perceptions of U.S. threats and a policy approach that resists cooperation with the U.S. to prevent crisis escalation
Sandra Erwin
While a “space hotline” was established in 2015, there are no indications that China would be inclined to use it during a crisis.
The report recommends the U.S. should avoid investing heavily in establishing crisis communications mechanisms with the PLA, as these efforts are unlikely to be reciprocated in good faith. Instead, the PLA might use these mechanisms to draw the United States into prolonged and unproductive negotiations.
RAND’s analysis highlights a pattern of “worst-case thinking” in PLA scholarship, which often exaggerates the threat posed by U.S. space capabilities, increasing the risk of further escalation and instability.
The findings come at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing, with space emerging as a critical arena for strategic competition between the world’s two largest economies and military powers.
As space becomes a contested domain, RAND’s analysis underscores possible challenges facing U.S. policymakers in managing potential crises and preventing unintended escalation with a rival that views competition, rather than cooperation, as the primary mode of interaction in space.
Sandra Erwin writes about military space programs, policy, technology and the industry that supports this sector. She has covered the military, the Pentagon, Congress and the defense industry for nearly two decades as editor of NDIA’s National Defense.
China’s ‘worst-case thinking’ could spark space crisis, study finds
A new RAND report highlights China’s inflated perceptions of U.S. threats and a policy approach that resists cooperation with the U.S. to prevent crisis escalation
Sandra Erwin
June 26, 2024
SPACENEWS
SPACENEWS
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) officials attend an Oct. 24 meeting on implementing the spirit of the Communist Party’s 20th National Congress. Credit: CASC
WASHINGTON — A new report from the RAND Corporation suggests that China’s approach to space competition with the United States could increase the risk of unintended military escalation.
Drawing on authoritative materials including leader speeches, defense white papers, and military education documents, RAND’s report paints a concerning picture of Chinese military thinking on space security. The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) growing assertiveness, coupled with its historical reluctance to engage in crisis communication with the United States, is creating a volatile environment, says the study.
The report, titled “China’s Growing Risk Tolerance in Space,” was written by RAND Project Air Force, a division of the company that serves as the Department of the Air Force’s federally funded research and development center for studies and analyses.
According to the study, Chinese leaders see themselves in direct competition with the United States to build military power in space. And the PLA’s thinking on escalation in space has become significantly more risk-tolerant over the past decade. RAND says this shift aligns with Xi Jinping’s guidance to be more proactive in shaping the international environment, even if it involves higher levels of risk.
Other takeaways from the report:Chinese leaders harbor deep suspicions of the United States, viewing it as a dominant but declining power likely to lash out against rising powers like China. This has led to inflated perceptions of U.S. threats and a policy approach that resists cooperation with the United States to prevent unintended crisis escalation.
The PLA views crisis communications mechanisms as tools for leverage rather than genuine efforts to prevent conflict. Chinese leaders tend to interpret U.S.-led efforts to establish such mechanisms as attempts to control China’s behavior, making them reluctant to engage in these efforts.
WASHINGTON — A new report from the RAND Corporation suggests that China’s approach to space competition with the United States could increase the risk of unintended military escalation.
Drawing on authoritative materials including leader speeches, defense white papers, and military education documents, RAND’s report paints a concerning picture of Chinese military thinking on space security. The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) growing assertiveness, coupled with its historical reluctance to engage in crisis communication with the United States, is creating a volatile environment, says the study.
The report, titled “China’s Growing Risk Tolerance in Space,” was written by RAND Project Air Force, a division of the company that serves as the Department of the Air Force’s federally funded research and development center for studies and analyses.
According to the study, Chinese leaders see themselves in direct competition with the United States to build military power in space. And the PLA’s thinking on escalation in space has become significantly more risk-tolerant over the past decade. RAND says this shift aligns with Xi Jinping’s guidance to be more proactive in shaping the international environment, even if it involves higher levels of risk.
Other takeaways from the report:Chinese leaders harbor deep suspicions of the United States, viewing it as a dominant but declining power likely to lash out against rising powers like China. This has led to inflated perceptions of U.S. threats and a policy approach that resists cooperation with the United States to prevent unintended crisis escalation.
The PLA views crisis communications mechanisms as tools for leverage rather than genuine efforts to prevent conflict. Chinese leaders tend to interpret U.S.-led efforts to establish such mechanisms as attempts to control China’s behavior, making them reluctant to engage in these efforts.
While a “space hotline” was established in 2015, there are no indications that China would be inclined to use it during a crisis.
The report recommends the U.S. should avoid investing heavily in establishing crisis communications mechanisms with the PLA, as these efforts are unlikely to be reciprocated in good faith. Instead, the PLA might use these mechanisms to draw the United States into prolonged and unproductive negotiations.
RAND’s analysis highlights a pattern of “worst-case thinking” in PLA scholarship, which often exaggerates the threat posed by U.S. space capabilities, increasing the risk of further escalation and instability.
The findings come at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing, with space emerging as a critical arena for strategic competition between the world’s two largest economies and military powers.
As space becomes a contested domain, RAND’s analysis underscores possible challenges facing U.S. policymakers in managing potential crises and preventing unintended escalation with a rival that views competition, rather than cooperation, as the primary mode of interaction in space.
Sandra Erwin writes about military space programs, policy, technology and the industry that supports this sector. She has covered the military, the Pentagon, Congress and the defense industry for nearly two decades as editor of NDIA’s National Defense.
JUST SAY NO!
Seeding the future of space warfare
Sandra Erwin
Small business funding
Projects run by SpaceWERX leverage SBIR/STTR funds — short for Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer. These are U.S. government programs set aside for domestic small businesses engaged in research and development with commercialization potential.
Before joining SpaceWERX, Grijalva worked on multibillion-dollar military space programs under the Space Systems Command.
“In my experience working with the big primes, they’re really integral to U.S. efforts. But if we can tap into the innovation that’s coming out of small businesses, there’s just so much ingenuity there that you could get a lot more bang for your buck,” he says. “So you might be able to get 80% of your requirements for 20% of the cost. So that’s what I’m trying to bring in.”
SpaceWERX, with a staff of about 50 people, operates under the Space Systems Command’s Commercial Space Office but its corporate parent is AFWERX, the Department of the Air Force’s tech investment arm that doles out about $1.4 billion a year in SBIR/STTR contracts.
With China making strides in space technology, the U.S. military is under pressure to accelerate its innovation cycle. The Space Force is targeting key “mission areas” that it wants to modernize such as in-orbit surveillance, in-space data communications, on-orbit logistics and advanced satellite maneuvering.
SpaceWERX is trying to tackle these priorities “by taking bite-sized chunks out of each mission area, and teaming with government entities to see how we can transition technologies out of R&D,” Grijalva says.
Strategic funding available
SBIR/STTR agreements act as a springboard, offering seed funding that starts at $250,000, but can lead to much larger endeavors, the largest of which are STRATFI (Strategic Financing Initiative) deals, which bring as much as $30 million in additional government funding.
Only a handful of companies get STRATFI deals, which are made possible by program offices interested in accelerating particular technologies. Typically they include $15 million from AFWERX and $15 million from a program office, and these funds are then matched by private investors.
Otherwise, “it’s really hard to get past the valley of death,” says Grijalva. “Even if you get a STRATFI, it only maybe gets you up to a tech demo in space, but there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done to operationalize those tech demos to get into a program.”
SpaceWERX so far in 2024 has announced five STRATFI agreements:Satellite-servicing startup Starfish Space will perform a mission in geostationary orbit by 2026, docking and attaching to a military client satellite to provide maneuver capabilities.
Lunar Outpost will develop software that enables advanced robotic systems and spacecraft to act as autonomous swarms.
Defense Unicorns will develop software and cybersecurity solutions for U.S. launch systems that support the Eastern and Western launch ranges.
Skyloom will develop optical communications infrastructure in support of a mesh network in space to connect U.S. military and allies.
Satellite communications specialist Astranis will develop a software-defined radio capable of performing signal processing tasks and change its configuration so operators can reroute a signal around adversarial interference.
SpaceWERX is also supporting space projects in partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit, a Pentagon organization that identifies promising technologies with potential military applications and fast-tracks prototypes in a streamlined acquisition process.
For example, both organizations collaborated on a “tactically responsive space” demonstration awarded earlier this year to Rocket Lab and True Anomaly.
DIU helped fund a $32 million contract for Rocket Lab to design, build, launch and operate a rendezvous and proximity operation-capable spacecraft in late 2025. The startup True Anomaly got a $30 million contract to build a second rendezvous and proximity operation-capable spacecraft for the demonstration. The company was selected from a pool of SpaceWERX-funded businesses that participated in a tactically responsive space challenge competition.
In the tactically responsive space challenge, SpaceWERX received 302 submissions and ended up awarding $34 million to 17 companies.
Aligned with operators’ needs
Grijalva notes that SpaceWERX is being strategic in how it selects projects based on actual operators’ needs. “We work with the program offices, we ask them what they need help with,” he says. Combatant command organizations, particularly U.S. Space Command and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, are increasingly informing SpaceWERX priorities.
Soon after taking over SpaceWERX, Grijalva says he heard from senior leadership in the Space Force that they had concerns that SBIR/STTR efforts were not aligned with service needs. “Even though we were making lots of investments throughout the ecosystem, we weren’t putting enough focus on the top priorities for the Space Force,” and that needed to change, he adds.
Whereas traditional military programs work on 10 to 20 year timelines, Grijalva says, SpaceWERX is focused on “now to five years out, on capabilities that we can deliver to the warfighter.”
Lessons from Orbital Prime
One of SpaceWERX’s early projects is Orbital Prime, launched in 2021 with a focus on in-space mobility and servicing technologies.
Grijalva says the program has provided useful lessons on the Space Force’s capabilities and limitations in trying to “birth a commercial market by making strategic investments into an area that we care about,” Grijalva says.
He cites Starfish Space as a notable success story from Orbital Prime, as the company is now working under a STRATFI agreement on a servicing vehicle for an on-orbit demonstration.
More than three dozen startups are still working on projects under Orbital Prime SBIR/STTR contracts.
SpaceWERX hired Ellen Chang, head of ventures at the consulting firm BMNT, to advise a cohort of Orbital Prime startups and help them network with government buyers and private investors. BMNT also provides SpaceWERX with a portfolio view of how the cohort companies are performing, assessing risks related to fundraising, product development and commercialization opportunities.
Chang says SpaceWERX’s leadership has shown a “willingness to try things” rather than adhering to business as usual. “They don’t think about just commercialization, they’re thinking about market creation,” she tells SpaceNews.
However, Chang cautions that despite some success stories, the broader impact of Orbital Prime in creating and “priming” a market remains to be seen. “I think we’re halfway. We still don’t have a vibrant commercial model funding all these companies yet. It’s going to take a while.”
The Orbital Prime initiative has sparked important discussions about SpaceWERX’s potential role in shaping market sectors, with emphasis on understanding the private investment climate, Chang says, warning that premature venture capital investment “before there is a market could be a disaster.”
Challenges in transitioning
The most frequent question Grijalva gets from startups and venture investors is about the transition process: What does it take for a small business that has scored SBIR/STTR wins to reach commercial viability and military programs of record?
He acknowledges that there are no easy answers. “A lot of these investments take time to mature and for us to actually pull those in.” Grijalva says he consistently emphasizes the importance of commercial viability.
“What I tell them is that while we appreciate what they do to help the Space Force, it’s crucial not to rely solely on government contracts,” he says, noting that SpaceWERX also wants to know if a company has a viable commercial strategy.
This thinking aligns with senior Space Force leadership’s vision of partnering with dual-use companies rather than expanding the traditional defense contractor base. Grijalva adds. “This is where we can provide the greatest value. Beyond providing contracts and resources, we facilitate connections to private capital and diverse customers, helping companies develop and showcase their innovations.”
As military spending tightens, the Space Force is counting on SpaceWERX to develop useful tools and technologies, he says. In that vein, the Space Force intends to leverage investments made by SpaceWERX, DIU and the Commercial Space Office “to pull commercial technologies into the missions.”
SpaceWERX meanwhile is trying to improve how it communicates “demand signals” to industry so private investors can better support companies that are seeking government contracts.
“Quantifying demand signals and converting future needs projections into tangible data is complex,” says Grijalva. “We’re implementing initiatives to track how expenditures translate into venture capital investment.”
Despite the challenges, Grijalva remains upbeat about SpaceWERX’s future. “These investments will pay off and make a tangible impact,” he predicts. “Our goal is to harness American innovation and channel it into Space Force programs. The opportunities ahead are significant.”
Sandra Erwin
July 5, 2024
SPACENEWS
Arthur Grijalva, SpaceWERX director, addresses tech startups at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, March 9, 2024.
Credit: U.S. Air Force photo by Matthew Clouse
As the United States and China compete for space dominance, the Pentagon is tapping the private sector to maintain its edge. Enter SpaceWERX, a relatively unknown entity within the U.S. Space Force that is serving as the military’s bridge to cutting-edge commercial space technology.
Based in Los Angeles, SpaceWERX is making bets on startups and small businesses to the tune of about $460 million a year in research and development contracts.
“We are not just building widgets or just doing studies. We’re actually trying to build end-to-end capabilities,” says Arthur Grijalva, director of SpaceWERX.
Grijalva joined the organization last fall. Since then, “my focus has been on how we can bring more commercial capabilities into the programs of record,” he tells SpaceNews.
SpaceWERX has set a goal to help guide promising space technologies through the “valley of death,” he adds, referring to the gap between early-stage funding and the point where a technology becomes commercially viable or ready for large-scale government adoption.
As the United States and China compete for space dominance, the Pentagon is tapping the private sector to maintain its edge. Enter SpaceWERX, a relatively unknown entity within the U.S. Space Force that is serving as the military’s bridge to cutting-edge commercial space technology.
Based in Los Angeles, SpaceWERX is making bets on startups and small businesses to the tune of about $460 million a year in research and development contracts.
“We are not just building widgets or just doing studies. We’re actually trying to build end-to-end capabilities,” says Arthur Grijalva, director of SpaceWERX.
Grijalva joined the organization last fall. Since then, “my focus has been on how we can bring more commercial capabilities into the programs of record,” he tells SpaceNews.
SpaceWERX has set a goal to help guide promising space technologies through the “valley of death,” he adds, referring to the gap between early-stage funding and the point where a technology becomes commercially viable or ready for large-scale government adoption.
Small business funding
Projects run by SpaceWERX leverage SBIR/STTR funds — short for Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer. These are U.S. government programs set aside for domestic small businesses engaged in research and development with commercialization potential.
Before joining SpaceWERX, Grijalva worked on multibillion-dollar military space programs under the Space Systems Command.
“In my experience working with the big primes, they’re really integral to U.S. efforts. But if we can tap into the innovation that’s coming out of small businesses, there’s just so much ingenuity there that you could get a lot more bang for your buck,” he says. “So you might be able to get 80% of your requirements for 20% of the cost. So that’s what I’m trying to bring in.”
SpaceWERX, with a staff of about 50 people, operates under the Space Systems Command’s Commercial Space Office but its corporate parent is AFWERX, the Department of the Air Force’s tech investment arm that doles out about $1.4 billion a year in SBIR/STTR contracts.
With China making strides in space technology, the U.S. military is under pressure to accelerate its innovation cycle. The Space Force is targeting key “mission areas” that it wants to modernize such as in-orbit surveillance, in-space data communications, on-orbit logistics and advanced satellite maneuvering.
SpaceWERX is trying to tackle these priorities “by taking bite-sized chunks out of each mission area, and teaming with government entities to see how we can transition technologies out of R&D,” Grijalva says.
Strategic funding available
SBIR/STTR agreements act as a springboard, offering seed funding that starts at $250,000, but can lead to much larger endeavors, the largest of which are STRATFI (Strategic Financing Initiative) deals, which bring as much as $30 million in additional government funding.
Only a handful of companies get STRATFI deals, which are made possible by program offices interested in accelerating particular technologies. Typically they include $15 million from AFWERX and $15 million from a program office, and these funds are then matched by private investors.
Otherwise, “it’s really hard to get past the valley of death,” says Grijalva. “Even if you get a STRATFI, it only maybe gets you up to a tech demo in space, but there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done to operationalize those tech demos to get into a program.”
SpaceWERX so far in 2024 has announced five STRATFI agreements:Satellite-servicing startup Starfish Space will perform a mission in geostationary orbit by 2026, docking and attaching to a military client satellite to provide maneuver capabilities.
Lunar Outpost will develop software that enables advanced robotic systems and spacecraft to act as autonomous swarms.
Defense Unicorns will develop software and cybersecurity solutions for U.S. launch systems that support the Eastern and Western launch ranges.
Skyloom will develop optical communications infrastructure in support of a mesh network in space to connect U.S. military and allies.
Satellite communications specialist Astranis will develop a software-defined radio capable of performing signal processing tasks and change its configuration so operators can reroute a signal around adversarial interference.
SpaceWERX is also supporting space projects in partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit, a Pentagon organization that identifies promising technologies with potential military applications and fast-tracks prototypes in a streamlined acquisition process.
For example, both organizations collaborated on a “tactically responsive space” demonstration awarded earlier this year to Rocket Lab and True Anomaly.
DIU helped fund a $32 million contract for Rocket Lab to design, build, launch and operate a rendezvous and proximity operation-capable spacecraft in late 2025. The startup True Anomaly got a $30 million contract to build a second rendezvous and proximity operation-capable spacecraft for the demonstration. The company was selected from a pool of SpaceWERX-funded businesses that participated in a tactically responsive space challenge competition.
In the tactically responsive space challenge, SpaceWERX received 302 submissions and ended up awarding $34 million to 17 companies.
Aligned with operators’ needs
Grijalva notes that SpaceWERX is being strategic in how it selects projects based on actual operators’ needs. “We work with the program offices, we ask them what they need help with,” he says. Combatant command organizations, particularly U.S. Space Command and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, are increasingly informing SpaceWERX priorities.
Soon after taking over SpaceWERX, Grijalva says he heard from senior leadership in the Space Force that they had concerns that SBIR/STTR efforts were not aligned with service needs. “Even though we were making lots of investments throughout the ecosystem, we weren’t putting enough focus on the top priorities for the Space Force,” and that needed to change, he adds.
Whereas traditional military programs work on 10 to 20 year timelines, Grijalva says, SpaceWERX is focused on “now to five years out, on capabilities that we can deliver to the warfighter.”
Lessons from Orbital Prime
One of SpaceWERX’s early projects is Orbital Prime, launched in 2021 with a focus on in-space mobility and servicing technologies.
Grijalva says the program has provided useful lessons on the Space Force’s capabilities and limitations in trying to “birth a commercial market by making strategic investments into an area that we care about,” Grijalva says.
He cites Starfish Space as a notable success story from Orbital Prime, as the company is now working under a STRATFI agreement on a servicing vehicle for an on-orbit demonstration.
More than three dozen startups are still working on projects under Orbital Prime SBIR/STTR contracts.
SpaceWERX hired Ellen Chang, head of ventures at the consulting firm BMNT, to advise a cohort of Orbital Prime startups and help them network with government buyers and private investors. BMNT also provides SpaceWERX with a portfolio view of how the cohort companies are performing, assessing risks related to fundraising, product development and commercialization opportunities.
Chang says SpaceWERX’s leadership has shown a “willingness to try things” rather than adhering to business as usual. “They don’t think about just commercialization, they’re thinking about market creation,” she tells SpaceNews.
However, Chang cautions that despite some success stories, the broader impact of Orbital Prime in creating and “priming” a market remains to be seen. “I think we’re halfway. We still don’t have a vibrant commercial model funding all these companies yet. It’s going to take a while.”
The Orbital Prime initiative has sparked important discussions about SpaceWERX’s potential role in shaping market sectors, with emphasis on understanding the private investment climate, Chang says, warning that premature venture capital investment “before there is a market could be a disaster.”
Challenges in transitioning
The most frequent question Grijalva gets from startups and venture investors is about the transition process: What does it take for a small business that has scored SBIR/STTR wins to reach commercial viability and military programs of record?
He acknowledges that there are no easy answers. “A lot of these investments take time to mature and for us to actually pull those in.” Grijalva says he consistently emphasizes the importance of commercial viability.
“What I tell them is that while we appreciate what they do to help the Space Force, it’s crucial not to rely solely on government contracts,” he says, noting that SpaceWERX also wants to know if a company has a viable commercial strategy.
This thinking aligns with senior Space Force leadership’s vision of partnering with dual-use companies rather than expanding the traditional defense contractor base. Grijalva adds. “This is where we can provide the greatest value. Beyond providing contracts and resources, we facilitate connections to private capital and diverse customers, helping companies develop and showcase their innovations.”
As military spending tightens, the Space Force is counting on SpaceWERX to develop useful tools and technologies, he says. In that vein, the Space Force intends to leverage investments made by SpaceWERX, DIU and the Commercial Space Office “to pull commercial technologies into the missions.”
SpaceWERX meanwhile is trying to improve how it communicates “demand signals” to industry so private investors can better support companies that are seeking government contracts.
“Quantifying demand signals and converting future needs projections into tangible data is complex,” says Grijalva. “We’re implementing initiatives to track how expenditures translate into venture capital investment.”
Despite the challenges, Grijalva remains upbeat about SpaceWERX’s future. “These investments will pay off and make a tangible impact,” he predicts. “Our goal is to harness American innovation and channel it into Space Force programs. The opportunities ahead are significant.”
Commercial space stations go international
Jeff Foust
STARLAB RECREATES THE ISS PARTNERSHIP
Among the companies working on commercial space stations, Starlab Space has taken the biggest steps toward bringing in other countries. The company is itself a joint venture involving companies representing all Western ISS partners.
Starlab Space started last August when Voyager Space, the American company that won one of the NASA awards to support commercial space station development, joined forces with Airbus Defence and Space. The companies had already been working together on a revised concept for the Starlab space station that would use a large rigid module developed by Airbus, replacing an inflatable module from Lockheed Martin originally proposed for the station.
The companies saw the joint venture as more than a combination of technical expertise. For Voyager, bringing in Airbus was also a way to tap into European government and commercial markets. “We have great relationships with ESA, but clearly Airbus has much better relationships,” Matt Kuta, president of Voyager Space, said at the time. “It allows us to figure out how we can satisfy those customer demands more directly and successfully.”
This spring, two more companies joined Starlab Space. In April, Mitsubishi Corporation said it would take an equity stake in the joint venture, using Starlab for terrestrial product development and supporting other Japanese companies interested in accessing the station. In May, Canada’s MDA Space signed on, taking an equity stake while providing a robotic arm system based on the technologies it developed for the space shuttle and ISS.
“In the commercial space market, a number of these missions require strong teams,” said Mike Greenley, chief executive of MDA Space, in an interview, explaining why his company chose to become a partner on Starlab rather than just a vendor. “We can also bring our business skills and our general space mission experience to these strong corporate teams.”
In an interview after the MDA Space agreement, Kuta said bringing companies from Canada, Europe and Japan into the Starlab Space joint venture was a deliberate effort to create partnerships like those on the ISS today. “We’ve been very focused from the beginning of the strategy to recreate the ISS, but instead of it being owned by the government, it’s owned by the leading aerospace and defense corporations within those regions,” he said. “They understand the business of building a space station technically, understand how to manage the customer relationships and understand how to access government funding.”
That last point is important since other space agencies have expressed a reluctance to directly pay American companies for the use of commercial space stations, a departure from ISS barter arrangements that allow the agencies to spend money domestically.
“It’s very difficult for Europe or Japan to send hundreds of millions of euros or tens of billions of yen to an American company every year for 30 years and employ a bunch of Americans in Houston,” Kuta said.
There are also geopolitical factors to consider, as he cited China’s Tiangong space station. “They are working to capture market share. They’re working with the in-between countries to try to attract them to their sphere of influence as an extension of their Belt and Road Initiative,” he said. “Working together with these international companies as co-owners is a demonstration of sovereignty for the Western world, if you will.”
“Starlab is kind of fun because, in a sense, we’re putting the band back together,” said MDA Space’s Greenley. “We’re successfully creating a corporate joint venture here that puts the ISS nations back together and going off on a new commercial space station adventure.”
AXIOM PARTNERSHIPS
Axiom Space is already in the commercial space station business: it has flown three private astronaut missions to the ISS with a fourth scheduled for late this year, as it works on a series of modules it will install on the ISS that will be the precursor for a standalone commercial station after the ISS is retired.
The company has worked with companies and agencies among the ISS partnership and beyond. Thales Alenia Space is building the structures for Axiom’s space station modules in Italy, to be shipped later to Axiom’s Houston headquarters for outfitting. The company’s private astronaut missions have flown people from several countries, including one ESA reserve astronaut, Marcus Wandt, whose seat on the Ax-3 mission early this year was funded by Sweden.
Axiom has signed agreements with some ESA member states, such as Hungary and the United Kingdom, for future missions. It also has a separate agreement with ESA itself, announced in October 2023, to study ESA cooperation on Axiom’s station.
Boryung Corporation, a South Korean healthcare company, was a lead investor in Axiom’s $350 million Series C round in August 2023 and formed a joint venture with Axiom in January called BRAX Space Corporation to examine collaboration with South Korean companies on Axiom’s station.
“We have established a foothold to promote projects exclusively in South Korea with Axiom Space, which has the strongest competitiveness in the private sector in terms of LEO,” Jay Kim, chairman and chief executive of Boryung, said in a statement about the joint venture. “Beyond our financial investment in Axiom Space, we will continue to develop our relationship as close strategic partners.”
Axiom’s efforts to work with other governments on its space station include not just national agencies but those at a state and regional level. On June 26, Axiom announced it signed a letter of intent with Germany’s Bavarian State Chancellery to study collaboration that may include flying an astronaut or establishing a microgravity laboratory. The company added it was considering establishing its “European hub” in Bavaria.
VAST RACES TO CATCH UP
Vast Space got a late start in its efforts to develop a commercial space station: the company was not formed until after NASA made its Commercial LEO Destination awards in late 2021. However, it is racing to catch up, building an initial single-module station called Haven-1, scheduled to launch in late 2025, that will be able to support four-person crews for up to 40 days.
With funding from its billionaire founder Jed McCaleb and a focus on vertical integration, Vast has not brought in other companies as major partners or vendors for its planned stations beyond SpaceX, which will launch Haven-1 and provide Crew Dragon spacecraft for missions to it. However, the company is now starting to engage with space agencies and companies in other countries for partnerships.
At the ILA Berlin air show June 6, Vast announced it signed a memorandum of understanding with ESA to study potential use by ESA of Haven-1 and future stations. Vast said it would examine if European companies could provide some subsystems and consider using future European crew and cargo spacecraft for those stations.
Max Haot, chief executive of Vast, said in an interview that the agreement was part of efforts to bring in ESA and other space agencies as customers or partners for its space stations.
“The European ecosystem, led by ESA, is a very important partner to any future ISS replacement station,” he said. “A big priority for us is that we build to their requirements and we enable opportunities to fly their payloads and astronauts.”
The agreement, he said, could lead to “deeper links” that could include partnerships with European companies or even a Vast office in Europe. Having the agreement with ESA in place, he said, is “a first step, a signal that they see Vast as a credible partner.”
Vast actively started marketing both Haven-1 and its future, larger stations internationally last fall at the International Astronautical Congress in Azerbaijan. “We’re engaging all countries, including key ones that are part of the ISS,” Haot said. “ESA is the first, but we obviously hope to build momentum in Europe and other regions of the world.”
A VIEW FROM EUROPE
At ILA Berlin, Vast also signed an agreement with European startup The Exploration Company. Under that agreement, The Exploration Company’s Nyx cargo vehicle will go to Vast’s second space station — a larger successor to Haven-1 — as soon as 2028, transporting cargo to and from that station.
It was the latest in a series of agreements and contracts that The Exploration Company has won. In late May, Starlab Space signed a cargo services agreement with the company for three Nyx missions to Starlab. Last September, Axiom Space signed a “pre-booking” agreement for Nyx missions to its space station.
Work on Nyx is now backed by ESA, which selected The Exploration Company, along with Thales Alenia Space, for contracts in May to perform design work on their cargo vehicle concepts. The agency will seek funding from its member states at the next ministerial council meeting in late 2025 for further development, including test flights to the ISS.
“This historic initiative demonstrates ESA’s agility and willingness to act as an anchor client, hence combining public and private funding, like NASA did about 15 years ago,” said Hélène Huby, chief executive of The Exploration Company, in a statement after winning the ESA award. She was referencing NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program for cargo delivery to the ISS, which demonstrated the feasibility of such commercial services and also fueled the growth of SpaceX.
However, the future of Nyx and its Thales counterpart will depend on those commercial stations. With the ISS slated to retire in 2030, ESA is unlikely to buy services from those spacecraft for ISS operations. Those vehicles, then will need to find business from commercial stations, either through ESA or directly with the companies.
Huby said in an interview before the ESA award that the company understood the importance of the U.S. market. It has opened a U.S. office led by Mark Kirasich, a former NASA Orion program manager, to work with American customers and with NASA.
“I want to be strong in the U.S.,” she said. “It’s very important that we start as fast as possible in the U.S.”
This article first appeared in the July 2024 issue of SpaceNews Magazine.
Jeff Foust
July 3, 2024
Rendering of the Starlab space station in orbit. Starlab Space is a joint venture involving companies representing all Western ISS partners. Credit: Airbus
One of the most enduring achievements of spaceflight has been the partnership for the International Space Station. For more than three decades, the United States has worked with Canada, Europe, Japan and Russia to build and operate the station, overcoming technical and policy challenges to create a space station that has been permanently occupied for over 20 years.
That partnership, though, will end around 2030, when the ISS is decommissioned and deorbited over the South Pacific. The Western ISS partners will continue working together on elements of Artemis, like the lunar Gateway, but without a formal agreement about cooperation in low Earth orbit. (Russian officials say they will develop their own space station, although the country’s space program is showing signs of decay.)
As NASA supports the development of commercial space stations that will replace the ISS, American companies and international partners alike are trying to figure out how to work together under a new paradigm. Barter agreements among agencies will give way to agreements, contracts and joint ventures involving countries and companies. The companies developing those stations are taking different approaches to attracting ISS partners and other nations to their facilities.
One of the most enduring achievements of spaceflight has been the partnership for the International Space Station. For more than three decades, the United States has worked with Canada, Europe, Japan and Russia to build and operate the station, overcoming technical and policy challenges to create a space station that has been permanently occupied for over 20 years.
That partnership, though, will end around 2030, when the ISS is decommissioned and deorbited over the South Pacific. The Western ISS partners will continue working together on elements of Artemis, like the lunar Gateway, but without a formal agreement about cooperation in low Earth orbit. (Russian officials say they will develop their own space station, although the country’s space program is showing signs of decay.)
As NASA supports the development of commercial space stations that will replace the ISS, American companies and international partners alike are trying to figure out how to work together under a new paradigm. Barter agreements among agencies will give way to agreements, contracts and joint ventures involving countries and companies. The companies developing those stations are taking different approaches to attracting ISS partners and other nations to their facilities.
STARLAB RECREATES THE ISS PARTNERSHIP
Among the companies working on commercial space stations, Starlab Space has taken the biggest steps toward bringing in other countries. The company is itself a joint venture involving companies representing all Western ISS partners.
Starlab Space started last August when Voyager Space, the American company that won one of the NASA awards to support commercial space station development, joined forces with Airbus Defence and Space. The companies had already been working together on a revised concept for the Starlab space station that would use a large rigid module developed by Airbus, replacing an inflatable module from Lockheed Martin originally proposed for the station.
The companies saw the joint venture as more than a combination of technical expertise. For Voyager, bringing in Airbus was also a way to tap into European government and commercial markets. “We have great relationships with ESA, but clearly Airbus has much better relationships,” Matt Kuta, president of Voyager Space, said at the time. “It allows us to figure out how we can satisfy those customer demands more directly and successfully.”
This spring, two more companies joined Starlab Space. In April, Mitsubishi Corporation said it would take an equity stake in the joint venture, using Starlab for terrestrial product development and supporting other Japanese companies interested in accessing the station. In May, Canada’s MDA Space signed on, taking an equity stake while providing a robotic arm system based on the technologies it developed for the space shuttle and ISS.
“In the commercial space market, a number of these missions require strong teams,” said Mike Greenley, chief executive of MDA Space, in an interview, explaining why his company chose to become a partner on Starlab rather than just a vendor. “We can also bring our business skills and our general space mission experience to these strong corporate teams.”
In an interview after the MDA Space agreement, Kuta said bringing companies from Canada, Europe and Japan into the Starlab Space joint venture was a deliberate effort to create partnerships like those on the ISS today. “We’ve been very focused from the beginning of the strategy to recreate the ISS, but instead of it being owned by the government, it’s owned by the leading aerospace and defense corporations within those regions,” he said. “They understand the business of building a space station technically, understand how to manage the customer relationships and understand how to access government funding.”
That last point is important since other space agencies have expressed a reluctance to directly pay American companies for the use of commercial space stations, a departure from ISS barter arrangements that allow the agencies to spend money domestically.
“It’s very difficult for Europe or Japan to send hundreds of millions of euros or tens of billions of yen to an American company every year for 30 years and employ a bunch of Americans in Houston,” Kuta said.
There are also geopolitical factors to consider, as he cited China’s Tiangong space station. “They are working to capture market share. They’re working with the in-between countries to try to attract them to their sphere of influence as an extension of their Belt and Road Initiative,” he said. “Working together with these international companies as co-owners is a demonstration of sovereignty for the Western world, if you will.”
“Starlab is kind of fun because, in a sense, we’re putting the band back together,” said MDA Space’s Greenley. “We’re successfully creating a corporate joint venture here that puts the ISS nations back together and going off on a new commercial space station adventure.”
AXIOM PARTNERSHIPS
Axiom Space is already in the commercial space station business: it has flown three private astronaut missions to the ISS with a fourth scheduled for late this year, as it works on a series of modules it will install on the ISS that will be the precursor for a standalone commercial station after the ISS is retired.
The company has worked with companies and agencies among the ISS partnership and beyond. Thales Alenia Space is building the structures for Axiom’s space station modules in Italy, to be shipped later to Axiom’s Houston headquarters for outfitting. The company’s private astronaut missions have flown people from several countries, including one ESA reserve astronaut, Marcus Wandt, whose seat on the Ax-3 mission early this year was funded by Sweden.
Axiom has signed agreements with some ESA member states, such as Hungary and the United Kingdom, for future missions. It also has a separate agreement with ESA itself, announced in October 2023, to study ESA cooperation on Axiom’s station.
Boryung Corporation, a South Korean healthcare company, was a lead investor in Axiom’s $350 million Series C round in August 2023 and formed a joint venture with Axiom in January called BRAX Space Corporation to examine collaboration with South Korean companies on Axiom’s station.
“We have established a foothold to promote projects exclusively in South Korea with Axiom Space, which has the strongest competitiveness in the private sector in terms of LEO,” Jay Kim, chairman and chief executive of Boryung, said in a statement about the joint venture. “Beyond our financial investment in Axiom Space, we will continue to develop our relationship as close strategic partners.”
Axiom’s efforts to work with other governments on its space station include not just national agencies but those at a state and regional level. On June 26, Axiom announced it signed a letter of intent with Germany’s Bavarian State Chancellery to study collaboration that may include flying an astronaut or establishing a microgravity laboratory. The company added it was considering establishing its “European hub” in Bavaria.
VAST RACES TO CATCH UP
Vast Space got a late start in its efforts to develop a commercial space station: the company was not formed until after NASA made its Commercial LEO Destination awards in late 2021. However, it is racing to catch up, building an initial single-module station called Haven-1, scheduled to launch in late 2025, that will be able to support four-person crews for up to 40 days.
With funding from its billionaire founder Jed McCaleb and a focus on vertical integration, Vast has not brought in other companies as major partners or vendors for its planned stations beyond SpaceX, which will launch Haven-1 and provide Crew Dragon spacecraft for missions to it. However, the company is now starting to engage with space agencies and companies in other countries for partnerships.
At the ILA Berlin air show June 6, Vast announced it signed a memorandum of understanding with ESA to study potential use by ESA of Haven-1 and future stations. Vast said it would examine if European companies could provide some subsystems and consider using future European crew and cargo spacecraft for those stations.
Max Haot, chief executive of Vast, said in an interview that the agreement was part of efforts to bring in ESA and other space agencies as customers or partners for its space stations.
“The European ecosystem, led by ESA, is a very important partner to any future ISS replacement station,” he said. “A big priority for us is that we build to their requirements and we enable opportunities to fly their payloads and astronauts.”
The agreement, he said, could lead to “deeper links” that could include partnerships with European companies or even a Vast office in Europe. Having the agreement with ESA in place, he said, is “a first step, a signal that they see Vast as a credible partner.”
Vast actively started marketing both Haven-1 and its future, larger stations internationally last fall at the International Astronautical Congress in Azerbaijan. “We’re engaging all countries, including key ones that are part of the ISS,” Haot said. “ESA is the first, but we obviously hope to build momentum in Europe and other regions of the world.”
A VIEW FROM EUROPE
At ILA Berlin, Vast also signed an agreement with European startup The Exploration Company. Under that agreement, The Exploration Company’s Nyx cargo vehicle will go to Vast’s second space station — a larger successor to Haven-1 — as soon as 2028, transporting cargo to and from that station.
It was the latest in a series of agreements and contracts that The Exploration Company has won. In late May, Starlab Space signed a cargo services agreement with the company for three Nyx missions to Starlab. Last September, Axiom Space signed a “pre-booking” agreement for Nyx missions to its space station.
Work on Nyx is now backed by ESA, which selected The Exploration Company, along with Thales Alenia Space, for contracts in May to perform design work on their cargo vehicle concepts. The agency will seek funding from its member states at the next ministerial council meeting in late 2025 for further development, including test flights to the ISS.
“This historic initiative demonstrates ESA’s agility and willingness to act as an anchor client, hence combining public and private funding, like NASA did about 15 years ago,” said Hélène Huby, chief executive of The Exploration Company, in a statement after winning the ESA award. She was referencing NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program for cargo delivery to the ISS, which demonstrated the feasibility of such commercial services and also fueled the growth of SpaceX.
However, the future of Nyx and its Thales counterpart will depend on those commercial stations. With the ISS slated to retire in 2030, ESA is unlikely to buy services from those spacecraft for ISS operations. Those vehicles, then will need to find business from commercial stations, either through ESA or directly with the companies.
Huby said in an interview before the ESA award that the company understood the importance of the U.S. market. It has opened a U.S. office led by Mark Kirasich, a former NASA Orion program manager, to work with American customers and with NASA.
“I want to be strong in the U.S.,” she said. “It’s very important that we start as fast as possible in the U.S.”
This article first appeared in the July 2024 issue of SpaceNews Magazine.
Opinion
Save Freedom: We must stop the destruction of the International Space Station
July 2, 2024SPACENEWS
The International Space Station, photographed in 2021. Credit: NASA
Last week was incredibly depressing. For anyone paying attention, it finally became apparent that, unless a dramatic change occurs after decades of service, coming events may well push an American icon into the trash heap of history.
I am, of course, speaking of NASA’s decision to hire SpaceX to dump the International Space Station on the Earth. Truth be told, this decision has put me in a quandary. The greatest exploration entity in history is hiring the best space company in history to do the stupidest thing in its history.
As one of the few people on the planet with some small standing in the discussion, I’ve been against the idea of destroying the ISS since it was first announced. First, as one of the leaders of the Space Frontier Foundation, I helped lead an almost successful campaign in Congress to have it canceled in the early 1990s. Why? Because we believed the government shouldn’t build buildings and drive trucks (like the space shuttle). Also, by then, it was clear that President Reagan’s announced vision of the station as a spaceport to the Solar System, to be completed in the mid-90s for under $10 billion, was not going to happen. Judged by the expectations set by the President, the ISS was never finished, as construction on it stopped somewhere around the year 2010 after $100 billion had been spent by the U.S. and its partners. We lost the fight by one vote. Or, as my NASA friends say, they saved it by one vote.
Next, in 1995, having accepted this loss, and as part of an effort to leverage the taxpayer’s investment in the station, I called in my Alpha Town testimony in front of Congress for all transportation to and from the station to be commercially provided. NASA’s ISS supply and crew needs could be leveraged to help spur a competitive commercial space travel industry. At the same hearing, I called for private firms to build and operate all expansions and further facilities.
Finally, staying true to the Frontier Philosophy of not throwing anything away in space, the Foundation began a quest to save the Russian Mir space station. Eventually, I led a team to Moscow, underwritten by the visionary Walt Anderson, which resulted in the founding of MirCorp and leasing Mir as the world’s first commercial space station. After flying our first crew to survey the facility, and under extreme pressure from NASA and the U.S. government, Russian President Putin ordered it be de-orbited and dumped into the Pacific. It was a crushing blow, although the project led to the signing of Dennis Tito as the first Private Astronaut, whom we later transferred to fly on the ISS. I was in tears when it happened. A sad sign that there would be much more work needed to transform the psychology of space leaders from the existing use-it-and-throw-it-away mentality that has been the hallmark of recent human industrial society.
Since then, like most of us who follow such things, I have been impressed by the incredible work the agency and its partners have done aboard the orbiting lab. Amazing breakthroughs have flowed nonstop from the work of the astronaut and cosmonaut crews who have flown aboard her. And so has inspiration for millions of school children listening to thousands of lessons from space, lighting young imaginations around the world. The orbiting lab has become a beacon and evening star for the power of science. And yes, even as the world below has churned and boiled at the instigation of politicians, the spirit of the international “Right Stuff” has kept the candle of hope alive that humanity can work together to open the frontier of space to all
So, in an amazing, almost ironic twist of fate, a few years ago, I found myself taking the stand that the U.S. government cannot, must not, and, if I can do anything about it, shall not dump one of the most important buildings in human history on the planet that is home to those who built it.
The International Space Station must be preserved for future generations. It is without doubt nor question one of humanity’s greatest achievements, on par with and in many ways exceeding the value to our global society of the Pyramids, the Parthenon, Angor Wat, or any other World Heritage sites. Like them, it must be saved from the short-sighted silliness of bureaucratic bullies and their version of a space bulldozer.
Some will ask: Why is this so important? We need to get on with the tasks of constructing the new space stations on the orbital street, returning to the Moon, and even planning missions to Mars. Who cares about an old and useless building whose time has come and gone? The future calls!”
Yes, it does. And how we treat the heritage we create along the way to that future will, in many ways, help determine if that future is an extension of how we have treated the world from which we come — or if we have learned anything and aspire to do better.
If NASA dumps ISS on the Earth, it will be the worst public relations disaster in its history. At the very moment, new generations of eco-conscious young people are taking the reins of control, as the agency that has stood for a hopeful vision of the future will be trashing the planet. Ridiculous. Worse, one of the world’s most exciting companies will be spattered by the debris along the way. It is an awful decision, a terrible plan and a signal that America isn’t serious about staying in space. For if it were, it would protect such a treasured symbol of what went into making it happen.
Before I offer solutions (and there are many), let’s be clear about how we got here. Given that old-school industrial mindset I mentioned earlier, as ordered by Congress and the White House, NASA has done no serious work on how to save the facility. Their bosses in Washington began with and have stayed true to their primitive mindset. The groupthink at work here has been reinforced by artificially imposed budget constraints, created by bad decisions by Congress in other parts of the program, that are eating American’s tax dollars at an alarming rate. When asked, agency officials chum the waters with red herrings: the difficulties of maneuvering such a large facility upwards into a storage orbit, maintenance costs, even the altitude of such an orbit, using numbers based on higher-than-needed locations, and more.
In no particular order, here are the basics of my proposal:
1. The ISS be stripped of whatever of the billions of dollars of still-useful hardware and tech it has aboard. This can be auctioned to one of the several new commercial space station facilities, or even, if appropriate, transferred to NASA’s planned lunar orbiting “Gateway” facility. The U.S. government might even choose to use parts of this exercise as a way to put in place and create precedents for much-needed salvage laws that can then be applied to helping clean up low Earth orbit by creating paths that currently do not exist for space operators to transfer ownership of in-space assets to others.
2. The “tug” SpaceX is being contracted to build and operate be designed as an orbital tug rather than a single-use system. Such an important tool will prove to be invaluable over time, moving large payloads around in orbit once they are delivered by large space trucks like StarShip and Blue Origin’s New Glenn. Further, given plans to build massive orbital tanker farms and the sure-to-be growing number of private space stations now on the drawing boards, such an orbital tug will be an important safeguard when they face failures of their onboard systems.
3. Russia be provided the option to provide support to this effort, offering a chance for well-needed cooperation between our nations. If they choose to decouple their part of the station, what they do with it will be their decision. This will leave the original U.S. modules, once known as “Freedom,” for us to manage.
4. The facility be fitted with a basic kit of onboard thrusters, or its existing thruster system will be adapted to provide minimum control authority. This will prove to be a useful exercise for all involved, providing lessons useful for future large structures while drawing from existing knowledge developed by operators of large communication satellites.
5. The station be moved to a medium-high orbit, sealed, and declared a Universal Heritage Site. This new designation can also be applied to the Apollo, Russian Lunokhod, Chinese Chang’e and Indian Moon landing sites, as well as significant historical sites on Mars. If the world fails to do so, or if such a designation takes too long to implement, the U.S. can designate “Freedom” as a Federal National Heritage site.
There are many, many people in our space community who are much smarter than me who can solve these challenges. They have not been asked to do so.
Among such smart people are those building the new Commercial Leo Destinations (CLDs) or private space facilities. To date, they have been singing the NASA song that the ISS must die. This is for two prime reasons: a fear that anything looking like an extension of the facility’s life means it stays as a competitor to their plans; and the fact that they are caught in the NASA sphere of influence and that no one speaks against The Plan.
I get it. I believe this effort benefits all involved. Like any venerable historical building in any community anywhere, something deeply saddening will occur when the creator of their legacy is destroyed. ISS pioneered everything they are trying to do. Supporting this effort will cost them nothing, and it will say to a new generation that what they are building is part of something long-term and permanent.
This truth goes especially for NASA. If we are indeed and at last opening the Frontier to Americans and humanity, are we not doing so permanently? Do we not intend that the decades of our investments in space will result in expanding human communities beyond the Earth? Do we not then owe these future pioneers and citizens of the solar system the right to their legacy?
I can imagine a time in a hundred years when the children and grandchildren of today’s space heroes are living and working in an expanding bubble of life growing outward from the Motherworld of Earth. I can see a time when the citizens of the future decide that the venerable old station that gave them their first real foothold will be re-awakened. I see the moment, probably covered not just globally, but on media stretching from Earth to the moon, Mars, and the Free Space between, when the lights are turned back on and Freedom once again shines.
It is time for those of today who believe that what we are doing in space is not just a short-term set of camping trips and expeditions but a harbinger of the next phase of humanity’s existence to start acting like it.
Friends of Freedom, from her astronauts, to those who built and kept her flying, were inspired by the work done aboard her, or simply folks who believe in the importance of preserving historical monuments, and those who do not believe we should trash the Earth from space, need to organize and educate Congress and the White House as to why the current plan is bad, what the alternatives might be and how important this cherished piece of our history is and will be.
Rick Tumlinson Founded the EarthLight Foundation and SpaceFund, a venture capital firm. He Co-Founded The Space Frontier Foundation, was a founding board member of the XPrize, and hosts “The Space Revolution” on iRoc Space Radio, part of the iHeart Radio Network.
July 2, 2024
SPACENEWS
The International Space Station, photographed in 2021. Credit: NASA
Last week was incredibly depressing. For anyone paying attention, it finally became apparent that, unless a dramatic change occurs after decades of service, coming events may well push an American icon into the trash heap of history.
I am, of course, speaking of NASA’s decision to hire SpaceX to dump the International Space Station on the Earth. Truth be told, this decision has put me in a quandary. The greatest exploration entity in history is hiring the best space company in history to do the stupidest thing in its history.
As one of the few people on the planet with some small standing in the discussion, I’ve been against the idea of destroying the ISS since it was first announced. First, as one of the leaders of the Space Frontier Foundation, I helped lead an almost successful campaign in Congress to have it canceled in the early 1990s. Why? Because we believed the government shouldn’t build buildings and drive trucks (like the space shuttle). Also, by then, it was clear that President Reagan’s announced vision of the station as a spaceport to the Solar System, to be completed in the mid-90s for under $10 billion, was not going to happen. Judged by the expectations set by the President, the ISS was never finished, as construction on it stopped somewhere around the year 2010 after $100 billion had been spent by the U.S. and its partners. We lost the fight by one vote. Or, as my NASA friends say, they saved it by one vote.
Next, in 1995, having accepted this loss, and as part of an effort to leverage the taxpayer’s investment in the station, I called in my Alpha Town testimony in front of Congress for all transportation to and from the station to be commercially provided. NASA’s ISS supply and crew needs could be leveraged to help spur a competitive commercial space travel industry. At the same hearing, I called for private firms to build and operate all expansions and further facilities.
Finally, staying true to the Frontier Philosophy of not throwing anything away in space, the Foundation began a quest to save the Russian Mir space station. Eventually, I led a team to Moscow, underwritten by the visionary Walt Anderson, which resulted in the founding of MirCorp and leasing Mir as the world’s first commercial space station. After flying our first crew to survey the facility, and under extreme pressure from NASA and the U.S. government, Russian President Putin ordered it be de-orbited and dumped into the Pacific. It was a crushing blow, although the project led to the signing of Dennis Tito as the first Private Astronaut, whom we later transferred to fly on the ISS. I was in tears when it happened. A sad sign that there would be much more work needed to transform the psychology of space leaders from the existing use-it-and-throw-it-away mentality that has been the hallmark of recent human industrial society.
Since then, like most of us who follow such things, I have been impressed by the incredible work the agency and its partners have done aboard the orbiting lab. Amazing breakthroughs have flowed nonstop from the work of the astronaut and cosmonaut crews who have flown aboard her. And so has inspiration for millions of school children listening to thousands of lessons from space, lighting young imaginations around the world. The orbiting lab has become a beacon and evening star for the power of science. And yes, even as the world below has churned and boiled at the instigation of politicians, the spirit of the international “Right Stuff” has kept the candle of hope alive that humanity can work together to open the frontier of space to all
So, in an amazing, almost ironic twist of fate, a few years ago, I found myself taking the stand that the U.S. government cannot, must not, and, if I can do anything about it, shall not dump one of the most important buildings in human history on the planet that is home to those who built it.
The International Space Station must be preserved for future generations. It is without doubt nor question one of humanity’s greatest achievements, on par with and in many ways exceeding the value to our global society of the Pyramids, the Parthenon, Angor Wat, or any other World Heritage sites. Like them, it must be saved from the short-sighted silliness of bureaucratic bullies and their version of a space bulldozer.
Some will ask: Why is this so important? We need to get on with the tasks of constructing the new space stations on the orbital street, returning to the Moon, and even planning missions to Mars. Who cares about an old and useless building whose time has come and gone? The future calls!”
Yes, it does. And how we treat the heritage we create along the way to that future will, in many ways, help determine if that future is an extension of how we have treated the world from which we come — or if we have learned anything and aspire to do better.
If NASA dumps ISS on the Earth, it will be the worst public relations disaster in its history. At the very moment, new generations of eco-conscious young people are taking the reins of control, as the agency that has stood for a hopeful vision of the future will be trashing the planet. Ridiculous. Worse, one of the world’s most exciting companies will be spattered by the debris along the way. It is an awful decision, a terrible plan and a signal that America isn’t serious about staying in space. For if it were, it would protect such a treasured symbol of what went into making it happen.
Before I offer solutions (and there are many), let’s be clear about how we got here. Given that old-school industrial mindset I mentioned earlier, as ordered by Congress and the White House, NASA has done no serious work on how to save the facility. Their bosses in Washington began with and have stayed true to their primitive mindset. The groupthink at work here has been reinforced by artificially imposed budget constraints, created by bad decisions by Congress in other parts of the program, that are eating American’s tax dollars at an alarming rate. When asked, agency officials chum the waters with red herrings: the difficulties of maneuvering such a large facility upwards into a storage orbit, maintenance costs, even the altitude of such an orbit, using numbers based on higher-than-needed locations, and more.
In no particular order, here are the basics of my proposal:
1. The ISS be stripped of whatever of the billions of dollars of still-useful hardware and tech it has aboard. This can be auctioned to one of the several new commercial space station facilities, or even, if appropriate, transferred to NASA’s planned lunar orbiting “Gateway” facility. The U.S. government might even choose to use parts of this exercise as a way to put in place and create precedents for much-needed salvage laws that can then be applied to helping clean up low Earth orbit by creating paths that currently do not exist for space operators to transfer ownership of in-space assets to others.
2. The “tug” SpaceX is being contracted to build and operate be designed as an orbital tug rather than a single-use system. Such an important tool will prove to be invaluable over time, moving large payloads around in orbit once they are delivered by large space trucks like StarShip and Blue Origin’s New Glenn. Further, given plans to build massive orbital tanker farms and the sure-to-be growing number of private space stations now on the drawing boards, such an orbital tug will be an important safeguard when they face failures of their onboard systems.
3. Russia be provided the option to provide support to this effort, offering a chance for well-needed cooperation between our nations. If they choose to decouple their part of the station, what they do with it will be their decision. This will leave the original U.S. modules, once known as “Freedom,” for us to manage.
4. The facility be fitted with a basic kit of onboard thrusters, or its existing thruster system will be adapted to provide minimum control authority. This will prove to be a useful exercise for all involved, providing lessons useful for future large structures while drawing from existing knowledge developed by operators of large communication satellites.
5. The station be moved to a medium-high orbit, sealed, and declared a Universal Heritage Site. This new designation can also be applied to the Apollo, Russian Lunokhod, Chinese Chang’e and Indian Moon landing sites, as well as significant historical sites on Mars. If the world fails to do so, or if such a designation takes too long to implement, the U.S. can designate “Freedom” as a Federal National Heritage site.
There are many, many people in our space community who are much smarter than me who can solve these challenges. They have not been asked to do so.
Among such smart people are those building the new Commercial Leo Destinations (CLDs) or private space facilities. To date, they have been singing the NASA song that the ISS must die. This is for two prime reasons: a fear that anything looking like an extension of the facility’s life means it stays as a competitor to their plans; and the fact that they are caught in the NASA sphere of influence and that no one speaks against The Plan.
I get it. I believe this effort benefits all involved. Like any venerable historical building in any community anywhere, something deeply saddening will occur when the creator of their legacy is destroyed. ISS pioneered everything they are trying to do. Supporting this effort will cost them nothing, and it will say to a new generation that what they are building is part of something long-term and permanent.
This truth goes especially for NASA. If we are indeed and at last opening the Frontier to Americans and humanity, are we not doing so permanently? Do we not intend that the decades of our investments in space will result in expanding human communities beyond the Earth? Do we not then owe these future pioneers and citizens of the solar system the right to their legacy?
I can imagine a time in a hundred years when the children and grandchildren of today’s space heroes are living and working in an expanding bubble of life growing outward from the Motherworld of Earth. I can see a time when the citizens of the future decide that the venerable old station that gave them their first real foothold will be re-awakened. I see the moment, probably covered not just globally, but on media stretching from Earth to the moon, Mars, and the Free Space between, when the lights are turned back on and Freedom once again shines.
It is time for those of today who believe that what we are doing in space is not just a short-term set of camping trips and expeditions but a harbinger of the next phase of humanity’s existence to start acting like it.
Friends of Freedom, from her astronauts, to those who built and kept her flying, were inspired by the work done aboard her, or simply folks who believe in the importance of preserving historical monuments, and those who do not believe we should trash the Earth from space, need to organize and educate Congress and the White House as to why the current plan is bad, what the alternatives might be and how important this cherished piece of our history is and will be.
Rick Tumlinson Founded the EarthLight Foundation and SpaceFund, a venture capital firm. He Co-Founded The Space Frontier Foundation, was a founding board member of the XPrize, and hosts “The Space Revolution” on iRoc Space Radio, part of the iHeart Radio Network.
Last week was incredibly depressing. For anyone paying attention, it finally became apparent that, unless a dramatic change occurs after decades of service, coming events may well push an American icon into the trash heap of history.
I am, of course, speaking of NASA’s decision to hire SpaceX to dump the International Space Station on the Earth. Truth be told, this decision has put me in a quandary. The greatest exploration entity in history is hiring the best space company in history to do the stupidest thing in its history.
As one of the few people on the planet with some small standing in the discussion, I’ve been against the idea of destroying the ISS since it was first announced. First, as one of the leaders of the Space Frontier Foundation, I helped lead an almost successful campaign in Congress to have it canceled in the early 1990s. Why? Because we believed the government shouldn’t build buildings and drive trucks (like the space shuttle). Also, by then, it was clear that President Reagan’s announced vision of the station as a spaceport to the Solar System, to be completed in the mid-90s for under $10 billion, was not going to happen. Judged by the expectations set by the President, the ISS was never finished, as construction on it stopped somewhere around the year 2010 after $100 billion had been spent by the U.S. and its partners. We lost the fight by one vote. Or, as my NASA friends say, they saved it by one vote.
Next, in 1995, having accepted this loss, and as part of an effort to leverage the taxpayer’s investment in the station, I called in my Alpha Town testimony in front of Congress for all transportation to and from the station to be commercially provided. NASA’s ISS supply and crew needs could be leveraged to help spur a competitive commercial space travel industry. At the same hearing, I called for private firms to build and operate all expansions and further facilities.
Finally, staying true to the Frontier Philosophy of not throwing anything away in space, the Foundation began a quest to save the Russian Mir space station. Eventually, I led a team to Moscow, underwritten by the visionary Walt Anderson, which resulted in the founding of MirCorp and leasing Mir as the world’s first commercial space station. After flying our first crew to survey the facility, and under extreme pressure from NASA and the U.S. government, Russian President Putin ordered it be de-orbited and dumped into the Pacific. It was a crushing blow, although the project led to the signing of Dennis Tito as the first Private Astronaut, whom we later transferred to fly on the ISS. I was in tears when it happened. A sad sign that there would be much more work needed to transform the psychology of space leaders from the existing use-it-and-throw-it-away mentality that has been the hallmark of recent human industrial society.
Since then, like most of us who follow such things, I have been impressed by the incredible work the agency and its partners have done aboard the orbiting lab. Amazing breakthroughs have flowed nonstop from the work of the astronaut and cosmonaut crews who have flown aboard her. And so has inspiration for millions of school children listening to thousands of lessons from space, lighting young imaginations around the world. The orbiting lab has become a beacon and evening star for the power of science. And yes, even as the world below has churned and boiled at the instigation of politicians, the spirit of the international “Right Stuff” has kept the candle of hope alive that humanity can work together to open the frontier of space to all
So, in an amazing, almost ironic twist of fate, a few years ago, I found myself taking the stand that the U.S. government cannot, must not, and, if I can do anything about it, shall not dump one of the most important buildings in human history on the planet that is home to those who built it.
The International Space Station must be preserved for future generations. It is without doubt nor question one of humanity’s greatest achievements, on par with and in many ways exceeding the value to our global society of the Pyramids, the Parthenon, Angor Wat, or any other World Heritage sites. Like them, it must be saved from the short-sighted silliness of bureaucratic bullies and their version of a space bulldozer.
Some will ask: Why is this so important? We need to get on with the tasks of constructing the new space stations on the orbital street, returning to the Moon, and even planning missions to Mars. Who cares about an old and useless building whose time has come and gone? The future calls!”
Yes, it does. And how we treat the heritage we create along the way to that future will, in many ways, help determine if that future is an extension of how we have treated the world from which we come — or if we have learned anything and aspire to do better.
If NASA dumps ISS on the Earth, it will be the worst public relations disaster in its history. At the very moment, new generations of eco-conscious young people are taking the reins of control, as the agency that has stood for a hopeful vision of the future will be trashing the planet. Ridiculous. Worse, one of the world’s most exciting companies will be spattered by the debris along the way. It is an awful decision, a terrible plan and a signal that America isn’t serious about staying in space. For if it were, it would protect such a treasured symbol of what went into making it happen.
Before I offer solutions (and there are many), let’s be clear about how we got here. Given that old-school industrial mindset I mentioned earlier, as ordered by Congress and the White House, NASA has done no serious work on how to save the facility. Their bosses in Washington began with and have stayed true to their primitive mindset. The groupthink at work here has been reinforced by artificially imposed budget constraints, created by bad decisions by Congress in other parts of the program, that are eating American’s tax dollars at an alarming rate. When asked, agency officials chum the waters with red herrings: the difficulties of maneuvering such a large facility upwards into a storage orbit, maintenance costs, even the altitude of such an orbit, using numbers based on higher-than-needed locations, and more.
In no particular order, here are the basics of my proposal:
1. The ISS be stripped of whatever of the billions of dollars of still-useful hardware and tech it has aboard. This can be auctioned to one of the several new commercial space station facilities, or even, if appropriate, transferred to NASA’s planned lunar orbiting “Gateway” facility. The U.S. government might even choose to use parts of this exercise as a way to put in place and create precedents for much-needed salvage laws that can then be applied to helping clean up low Earth orbit by creating paths that currently do not exist for space operators to transfer ownership of in-space assets to others.
2. The “tug” SpaceX is being contracted to build and operate be designed as an orbital tug rather than a single-use system. Such an important tool will prove to be invaluable over time, moving large payloads around in orbit once they are delivered by large space trucks like StarShip and Blue Origin’s New Glenn. Further, given plans to build massive orbital tanker farms and the sure-to-be growing number of private space stations now on the drawing boards, such an orbital tug will be an important safeguard when they face failures of their onboard systems.
3. Russia be provided the option to provide support to this effort, offering a chance for well-needed cooperation between our nations. If they choose to decouple their part of the station, what they do with it will be their decision. This will leave the original U.S. modules, once known as “Freedom,” for us to manage.
4. The facility be fitted with a basic kit of onboard thrusters, or its existing thruster system will be adapted to provide minimum control authority. This will prove to be a useful exercise for all involved, providing lessons useful for future large structures while drawing from existing knowledge developed by operators of large communication satellites.
5. The station be moved to a medium-high orbit, sealed, and declared a Universal Heritage Site. This new designation can also be applied to the Apollo, Russian Lunokhod, Chinese Chang’e and Indian Moon landing sites, as well as significant historical sites on Mars. If the world fails to do so, or if such a designation takes too long to implement, the U.S. can designate “Freedom” as a Federal National Heritage site.
There are many, many people in our space community who are much smarter than me who can solve these challenges. They have not been asked to do so.
Among such smart people are those building the new Commercial Leo Destinations (CLDs) or private space facilities. To date, they have been singing the NASA song that the ISS must die. This is for two prime reasons: a fear that anything looking like an extension of the facility’s life means it stays as a competitor to their plans; and the fact that they are caught in the NASA sphere of influence and that no one speaks against The Plan.
I get it. I believe this effort benefits all involved. Like any venerable historical building in any community anywhere, something deeply saddening will occur when the creator of their legacy is destroyed. ISS pioneered everything they are trying to do. Supporting this effort will cost them nothing, and it will say to a new generation that what they are building is part of something long-term and permanent.
This truth goes especially for NASA. If we are indeed and at last opening the Frontier to Americans and humanity, are we not doing so permanently? Do we not intend that the decades of our investments in space will result in expanding human communities beyond the Earth? Do we not then owe these future pioneers and citizens of the solar system the right to their legacy?
I can imagine a time in a hundred years when the children and grandchildren of today’s space heroes are living and working in an expanding bubble of life growing outward from the Motherworld of Earth. I can see a time when the citizens of the future decide that the venerable old station that gave them their first real foothold will be re-awakened. I see the moment, probably covered not just globally, but on media stretching from Earth to the moon, Mars, and the Free Space between, when the lights are turned back on and Freedom once again shines.
It is time for those of today who believe that what we are doing in space is not just a short-term set of camping trips and expeditions but a harbinger of the next phase of humanity’s existence to start acting like it.
Friends of Freedom, from her astronauts, to those who built and kept her flying, were inspired by the work done aboard her, or simply folks who believe in the importance of preserving historical monuments, and those who do not believe we should trash the Earth from space, need to organize and educate Congress and the White House as to why the current plan is bad, what the alternatives might be and how important this cherished piece of our history is and will be.
Rick Tumlinson Founded the EarthLight Foundation and SpaceFund, a venture capital firm. He Co-Founded The Space Frontier Foundation, was a founding board member of the XPrize, and hosts “The Space Revolution” on iRoc Space Radio, part of the iHeart Radio Network.
CUTTING NOSE TO SPITE FACE
House spending bill cuts NASA science and
education programs
Jeff FoustJune 27, 2024
WASHINGTON — A House spending bill for fiscal year 2025 would cut funding from the administration’s request for science and education programs at NASA.
The commerce, justice and science (CJS) subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee favorably reported a draft of its fiscal year 2025 spending bill, which includes NASA, during a brief markup session June 26.
The bill, released by the subcommittee a day earlier, would provide nearly $25.18 billion for NASA in 2025. That is a 1.2% increase over what NASA received for fiscal year 2024, but $205 million less than what the White House requested for the agency in its budget proposal released in March.
The cuts in the House bill were focused on science and education. The bill keeps science funding at the same level as 2024, $7.334 billion, a cut of $231.5 million from NASA’s request for 2025. Education programs, formally known as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Engagement, would receive $89 million, a sharp cut from the $143.5 million requested, which was approximately the same as 2024 levels.
The bill did not outline how those cuts would be allocated among programs in those divisions. A fact sheet released by Democratic members of the committee stated that, in STEM Engagement, the bill would eliminate funding for the Minority University Research and Education Project, which received $46 million in 2024.
Many other parts of NASA, including exploration and space technology, received the same overall funding level as the agency’s request. The bill increased funding for space operations, which includes the International Space Station, by $83.8 million, but did not disclose the reason for the change.
The Aerospace Industries Association criticized the bill for the cuts to science and education. “Rather than continuing a growth trajectory that keeps pace with inflation, the committee missed important opportunities to extend America’s leadership in space exploration and scientific discovery by reducing funding for key initiatives in STEM,” Eric Fanning, president and chief executive of the organization, said in a June 25 statement.
During the brief markup sessions, members made only brief references to the NASA funding in the bill. “The moon is once again within our reach,” said Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chair of the CJS subcommittee. “This bill makes strategic investments in order to ensure NASA is not bound by the limits of gravity.”
“The bill prioritizes our science agencies and appropriately funds the advancement of space exploration at NASA,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chair of the full committee.
Democratic members said they opposed the bill, but discussed other portions of the bill that fund programs at the Justice and Commerce Departments. Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.), ranking member of the CJS subcommittee, also criticized more than $600 million in cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as “particularly troubling,” although the impact of those cuts on NOAA satellite programs was not immediately clear.
“This process does not end with the subcommittee action today,” he said. “As the process moves forward, we need to do much more in all of these important areas.”
Cartwright added that he was particularly critical of the bill at the subcommittee markup because, last year, the full committee never took up the bill as it and several others languished amid debates about spending caps and budget allocations.
Cole, who took over as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee earlier this year, said he regretted the lack of a markup by the full committee last year. “We will have those hearings and we will have a robust process,” he said. A schedule released by the committee last month includes a full committee markup of the CJS spending bill July 9.
Jeff Foust
June 27, 2024
WASHINGTON — A House spending bill for fiscal year 2025 would cut funding from the administration’s request for science and education programs at NASA.
The commerce, justice and science (CJS) subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee favorably reported a draft of its fiscal year 2025 spending bill, which includes NASA, during a brief markup session June 26.
The bill, released by the subcommittee a day earlier, would provide nearly $25.18 billion for NASA in 2025. That is a 1.2% increase over what NASA received for fiscal year 2024, but $205 million less than what the White House requested for the agency in its budget proposal released in March.
The cuts in the House bill were focused on science and education. The bill keeps science funding at the same level as 2024, $7.334 billion, a cut of $231.5 million from NASA’s request for 2025. Education programs, formally known as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Engagement, would receive $89 million, a sharp cut from the $143.5 million requested, which was approximately the same as 2024 levels.
The bill did not outline how those cuts would be allocated among programs in those divisions. A fact sheet released by Democratic members of the committee stated that, in STEM Engagement, the bill would eliminate funding for the Minority University Research and Education Project, which received $46 million in 2024.
Many other parts of NASA, including exploration and space technology, received the same overall funding level as the agency’s request. The bill increased funding for space operations, which includes the International Space Station, by $83.8 million, but did not disclose the reason for the change.
The Aerospace Industries Association criticized the bill for the cuts to science and education. “Rather than continuing a growth trajectory that keeps pace with inflation, the committee missed important opportunities to extend America’s leadership in space exploration and scientific discovery by reducing funding for key initiatives in STEM,” Eric Fanning, president and chief executive of the organization, said in a June 25 statement.
During the brief markup sessions, members made only brief references to the NASA funding in the bill. “The moon is once again within our reach,” said Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chair of the CJS subcommittee. “This bill makes strategic investments in order to ensure NASA is not bound by the limits of gravity.”
“The bill prioritizes our science agencies and appropriately funds the advancement of space exploration at NASA,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chair of the full committee.
Democratic members said they opposed the bill, but discussed other portions of the bill that fund programs at the Justice and Commerce Departments. Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.), ranking member of the CJS subcommittee, also criticized more than $600 million in cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as “particularly troubling,” although the impact of those cuts on NOAA satellite programs was not immediately clear.
“This process does not end with the subcommittee action today,” he said. “As the process moves forward, we need to do much more in all of these important areas.”
Cartwright added that he was particularly critical of the bill at the subcommittee markup because, last year, the full committee never took up the bill as it and several others languished amid debates about spending caps and budget allocations.
Cole, who took over as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee earlier this year, said he regretted the lack of a markup by the full committee last year. “We will have those hearings and we will have a robust process,” he said. A schedule released by the committee last month includes a full committee markup of the CJS spending bill July 9.
WASHINGTON — A House spending bill for fiscal year 2025 would cut funding from the administration’s request for science and education programs at NASA.
The commerce, justice and science (CJS) subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee favorably reported a draft of its fiscal year 2025 spending bill, which includes NASA, during a brief markup session June 26.
The bill, released by the subcommittee a day earlier, would provide nearly $25.18 billion for NASA in 2025. That is a 1.2% increase over what NASA received for fiscal year 2024, but $205 million less than what the White House requested for the agency in its budget proposal released in March.
The cuts in the House bill were focused on science and education. The bill keeps science funding at the same level as 2024, $7.334 billion, a cut of $231.5 million from NASA’s request for 2025. Education programs, formally known as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Engagement, would receive $89 million, a sharp cut from the $143.5 million requested, which was approximately the same as 2024 levels.
The bill did not outline how those cuts would be allocated among programs in those divisions. A fact sheet released by Democratic members of the committee stated that, in STEM Engagement, the bill would eliminate funding for the Minority University Research and Education Project, which received $46 million in 2024.
Many other parts of NASA, including exploration and space technology, received the same overall funding level as the agency’s request. The bill increased funding for space operations, which includes the International Space Station, by $83.8 million, but did not disclose the reason for the change.
The Aerospace Industries Association criticized the bill for the cuts to science and education. “Rather than continuing a growth trajectory that keeps pace with inflation, the committee missed important opportunities to extend America’s leadership in space exploration and scientific discovery by reducing funding for key initiatives in STEM,” Eric Fanning, president and chief executive of the organization, said in a June 25 statement.
During the brief markup sessions, members made only brief references to the NASA funding in the bill. “The moon is once again within our reach,” said Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chair of the CJS subcommittee. “This bill makes strategic investments in order to ensure NASA is not bound by the limits of gravity.”
“The bill prioritizes our science agencies and appropriately funds the advancement of space exploration at NASA,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chair of the full committee.
Democratic members said they opposed the bill, but discussed other portions of the bill that fund programs at the Justice and Commerce Departments. Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.), ranking member of the CJS subcommittee, also criticized more than $600 million in cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as “particularly troubling,” although the impact of those cuts on NOAA satellite programs was not immediately clear.
“This process does not end with the subcommittee action today,” he said. “As the process moves forward, we need to do much more in all of these important areas.”
Cartwright added that he was particularly critical of the bill at the subcommittee markup because, last year, the full committee never took up the bill as it and several others languished amid debates about spending caps and budget allocations.
Cole, who took over as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee earlier this year, said he regretted the lack of a markup by the full committee last year. “We will have those hearings and we will have a robust process,” he said. A schedule released by the committee last month includes a full committee markup of the CJS spending bill July 9.
NASA spots unexpected X-shaped structures in Earth's upper atmosphere — and scientists are struggling to explain them
A NASA satellite has spotted unexpected X- and C-shaped structures in Earth’s ionosphere, the layer of electrified gas in the planet’s atmosphere that allows radio signals to travel over long distances.
The ionosphere is an electrified region of Earth's atmosphere that exists because radiation from the sun strikes the atmosphere. Its density increases during the day as its molecules become electrically charged. That's because sunlight causes electrons to break off of atoms and molecules, creating plasma that enables radio signals to travel over long distances. The ionosphere’s density then falls at night — and that's where GOLD comes in.
NASA's Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission is a geostationary satellite that has been measuring densities and temperatures in Earth's ionosphere since its launch in October 2018. From its geostationary orbit above the western hemisphere, GOLD was recently studying two dense crests of particles in the ionosphere, located north and south of the equator. As night falls, low-density bubbles appear within these crests that can interfere with radio and GPS signals. However, it's not just the wax and wane of sunshine that affects the ionosphere — the atmospheric layer is also sensitive to solar storms and huge volcanic eruptions, after which the crests can merge to form an X shape.
In its new observations, GOLD found some of these familiar X shapes in the ionosphere — even though there weren't any kinds of solar or volcanic disturbances to create them.
Related: Oops! US Space Force may have accidentally punched a hole in the upper atmosphere
"Earlier reports of merging were only during geomagnetically disturbed conditions," Fazlul Laskar, a research scientist at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), said in a statement. Laskar is the lead author of a paper published in April in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics that described these unexpected observations.
"It is an unexpected feature during geomagnetic quiet conditions," he said.
This suggests that what happens in the lower atmosphere actually affects the ionosphere more than extreme solar or volcanic events.
In addition to the odd X's, GOLD also saw curved C-shaped bubbles appear in the plasma surprisingly close together. Scientists think they are shaped and orientated according to the direction of winds, but GOLD imaged C-shape and reverse-C-shaped bubbles as close as about 400 miles (643 kilometers) apart. To have wind patterns change so drastically over such short distances is quite unusual, according to the researchers.
RELATED STORIES
"It's really important to find out why this is happening," LASP research scientist Deepak Karan, lead author of a separate paper published in November in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, said in the statement. "If a vortex or a very strong shear in the plasma has happened, this will completely distort the plasma over that region. Signals will be lost completely with a strong disturbance like this."
This is not the first time NASA has sought to understand more about the ionosphere. Most recently, a project called Atmospheric Perturbations Around The Eclipse Path (APEP) investigated how a drop in sunlight and temperature affects Earth's upper atmosphere. During October 14's annular solar eclipse across the southwest U.S. and again during April 8's total solar eclipse across North America, NASA launched three suborbital sounding rockets into the eclipse path to measure changes in electric and magnetic fields, density and temperature within the ionosphere. The results of the mission are still forthcoming.
This article first appeared in the July 2024 issue of SpaceNews Magazine.
(Pixabay)
NEW GRAVITATIONAL INSIGHTS UNVEIL MYSTERIOUS RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SATELLITES AND EARTH’S CORE CYCLES
AVI LOEB·JULY 6, 2024
At an altitude close to 35,786 kilometers above the equator, a satellite circling the Earth moves at a speed of 3.07 kilometers per second and completes an orbit around the Earth in exactly one sidereal day. This means that such a satellite would appear motionless to an observer on the ground, making it geostationary if it follows the direction of Earth’s rotation. For that reason, communication, weather, or navigation satellites are often placed in geostationary orbits.
The gravitational tides induced by the Moon and the Sun, as well as the gravitational correction from the equatorial bulge induced by Earth’s rotation, generate precession of the orbital plane of geostationary satellites, with a period of 53 years and an initial rate of inclination change by about 0.85 degrees per year. This amounts to 1.63 times the angular diameter of the Moon every year. To correct for this drift, station-keeping maneuvers by thrusters are needed with a velocity kick of about 50 meters per second every year.
Today, I realized that there is another source for a minor correction that was not appreciated before. A new Nature paper suggests that the Earth’s core follows a 70-year cycle during which its rotation slows down and speeds up. By conserving total angular momentum, this generates a counter-cycle in the Earth’s mantle and crust surrounding the core.
REVEALING THE “DANCE” BETWEEN SATELLITES AND EARTH’S CORE
The inner core of the Earth is a solid, crystalized iron sphere of 70% the size of the Moon. It floats about 5,150 kilometers under our feet in a sea of liquid iron, nickel and other metals known as the outer core. The central temperature of Earth is about 5,700 degrees Kelvin, similar to the surface temperature of the Sun.
The new study shows that the inner core began to slow down around the year 2010, moving slower than the Earth’s surface. This conclusion is based on data concerning the arrival times of seismic waves from 121 earthquakes in the South Sandwich Islands between 1991 and 2023 obtained by seismographs in Canada and Alaska, as well as shock wave data from Soviet nuclear tests conducted between 1971 and 1974.
The resulting drift in the rotation of the mantle translates to about a millisecond in the duration of a day over a period of several decades. Given the velocity of geostationary satellites, this change in the rotation period of the Earth’s crust generates a slip by a meter per decade for a fixed point on Earth’s surface relative to a geostationary satellite in an orbit designed based on the assumption of a constant rotation period of Earth.
This drift is much smaller than other known effects that are routinely corrected for by station-keeping maneuvers. However, it could potentially be searched for in positioning data on geostationary satellites as a new way to measure changes in the rotation period of Earth’s inner core.
One can imagine a more direct but less practical way to probe the Earth’s core. If Earth were to trap a primordial black hole with the mass of a kilometer-size asteroid, the event horizon of the black hole would be of the scale of an atomic nucleus, and so it could travel back and forth through Earth’s inner core with negligible dynamical friction. Scientists could then use the seismic signal from this motion to map the internal structure of the Earth as the black hole completes a full trip from one side of the Earth to the opposite side and back every 84 minutes.
In the absence of an ideal probe of this type, it is tempting to imagine digging a tunnel with an average length of 12,742 kilometers through Earth’s center. Such a tunnel would have allowed us to reach the other side of Earth in 42 minutes by free-fall.
This brings three benefits. First, a straight line is the shortest path to the other side, with a length equal to the Earth’s diameter instead of (pi/2)=1.57 times this diameter as needed for an international flight around the Earth. Second, the journey’s duration of 42 minutes is shorter than with any other transportation vehicle at our disposal. And third, free fall is powered by gravity and does not require any fuel. The first 21 minutes of the journey will involve acceleration, followed by 21 minutes of deceleration after crossing Earth’s center, all the way to a full stop on the other side.
There is no better green-energy solution to travel around the globe. Unfortunately, no construction material would withstand the heat from the core at 5700 degrees, and the changing rotation of the inner core would twist the shape of such a tunnel as if it were chewing gum on a spinning wheel.
A less futuristic concept for travel is a space elevator. Here, a cable fixed to the equator and reaching out to pace has a counterweight at its upper end, which could keep its center of mass at the altitude of a geostationary orbit. In that arrangement, the cable would be kept upright by the upward centrifugal force induced by the rotation and an elevator can carry cargo up and down the cable. The main challenge for realizing this concept involves the required material strength of the cable, which cannot be met by known materials.
If humans ever inhabit smaller objects in space, like asteroids or moons, the same physical principles could be employed by space engineers to construct tunnels or space elevators on these platforms. Unlike the legal system, which varies geographically among different nations, the laws of physics are universal and cannot be broken. Imagining new applications of these laws is what makes us fragile creatures born on a tiny rock left over from the formation of the Sun so powerful. As Albert Einstein noted: “imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s – Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011-2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos,” both published in 2021. His new book, titled “Interstellar,” was published in August 2023.
Astronomers spot seven stars that may sport alien megastructures — but many are skeptical of aliens
Dyson spheres are still a hypothetical technology but a recent study highlights where they may lurk in the universe
By MATTHEW ROZSA
In the classic 1937 sci-fi novel "Star Maker," author Olaf Stapledon imagined a massive machine that could encompass an entire star, capturing its energy and harnessing it to provide near unlimited energy to space-faring civilizations. More than two decades later, Stapledon's creative thought experiment became a legitimate scientific concept when physicist Freeman Dyson published a 1960 paper in the journal Science. Dyson argued that, logically speaking, any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial civilization would develop such intense energy needs that they would need megastructures like those envisioned by Stapledon.
"It could just be normal old astrophysics at play."
Thus the concept of Dyson spheres was born, but they've remained theoretical — until perhaps recently. A study last month in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society using observations from star-observing programs Gaia , 2MASS and WISE suggests that Dyson spheres may exist around at least seven different stars.
The scientists say this is so because they discovered infrared heat signatures near these stars — all within 1,000 light year of Earth — that cannot otherwise be explained yet. Other experts, however, are not so sure. Barnard College theoretical cosmologist Dr. Janna Levin is among them, having publicly suggested that the heat signatures could be explained by factors like planetary collisions, a very young star with material spinning around it in a disk or a distant galaxy behind some of the stars. Those are not her only reservations.
"Dyson spheres are more likely to be Dyson swarms — a vast collection of solar-energy collecting satellites, each on independent orbits around the Sun," Levin told Salon. "Any instrument that collects energy wastes some in the form of heat. It’s the heat signature that scientists have recently searched for. Heat signatures are so generic in nature that it’s far from a smoking gun and there are many possible natural explanations."
Astrophysicist and science writer Dr. Ethan Siegel told Salon that although stars emit very large amounts of energy, the temperature at which they radiate is determined by the size of the surface area from which the energy is emitted.
"The larger the surface, the lower the temperature," Siegel said. "So if you find a star emitting a large amount of energy but at a very low temperature, it makes sense to conclude that there's either the star is very large and 'puffy,' or perhaps there's an external structure around the star that's radiating heat outward after absorbing the solar energy."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Siegel is skeptical that the seven stars identified in the new paper are actually surrounded by Dyson spheres.
"My personal view is that, out of the nearly ~2 billion stars that Gaia has catalogued, there was an explicit search for, 'Which objects are most consistent with the idea of this being a Dyson sphere?'" Siegel said. "And these were the seven best candidates. None of them are particularly compelling — it's just saying that if Dyson spheres are out there and have been built, could we find them and what is the best match, observationally, for that scenario."
He added, "Alternatively, it could just be normal old astrophysics at play, with no aliens, no megastructures, no Dyson spheres, and nothing exotic. When you have an extraordinary explanation and a mundane explanation for the same observed phenomenon, you really need more (extraordinary) evidence to favor the former explanation over the latter one, and we don't have that."
"I think a fascinating twist would be to consider that we have a swarm of satellites around our own Sun and they must emit some heat."
Dr. Erik Zackrisson. an associate professor in astronomy at Uppsala University and one of the study co-authors, explained to Salon that all scientists know for sure is that these seven stars possess excess infrared radiation and that the properties of said radiation are consistent with what we would expect from Dyson spheres. That, however, does not mean that they are Dyson spheres.
"They are the best Dyson sphere candidates we've come across so far, but this does not mean that they are Dyson spheres, or even that Dyson spheres represent the most likely explanation for the phenomenon we're seeing," Siegel said. "Dust around a newborn star, a chance alignment with an infrared-bright background object, or dust due to some sort of rare cosmic catastrophe in the planetary systems of these stars (colliding planets or something similar) may also constitute viable explanations. "
Like the other experts who spoke with Salon, Zackrisson was very skeptical that the most inspiring and fantastical outcome — that these heat signatures are proof of intelligent extraterrestrial life — will be how things turn out.
"Personally, I think these objects are very unlikely to be Dyson spheres," Zackrisson said. "Some of them have already been argued to be due to chance alignments with background sources. Such cases are astrophysically uninteresting, so my hope is that at least some of these sources will be confirmed to have intrinsic infrared excess fluxes — then we're at least onto something interesting, even if it eventually boils down to extreme astrophysics rather than aliens."
Even though the experts agreed that these are not likely to be Dyson spheres, Levin still believes the recent study has scientific value.
"I think a fascinating twist would be to consider that we have a swarm of satellites around our own Sun and they must emit some heat," Levin said. "Is someone looking at us wondering if they’ve found signatures of intelligent life? Fascinating. However, we’ve not been at this space industry for very long and so an alien civilization observing at us would have to be very nearby, within 50 light years. And even then, the signs would be too faint."
She added, "What could be more exciting and existentially terrifying than the discovery of alien life?"
Siegel echoed that observation.
"It's important to keep an open mind, and it's easy to understand why the most wild possibilities excite us," Siegel said. "But without stronger evidence, this is just another example of people getting hyped up over what's almost certainly going to be a big nothing-burger."
Dyson spheres are still a hypothetical technology but a recent study highlights where they may lurk in the universe
By MATTHEW ROZSA
Staff Writer
SALON
PUBLISHED JULY 6, 2024
SALON
PUBLISHED JULY 6, 2024
Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star (Getty Images/Love Employee)
In the classic 1937 sci-fi novel "Star Maker," author Olaf Stapledon imagined a massive machine that could encompass an entire star, capturing its energy and harnessing it to provide near unlimited energy to space-faring civilizations. More than two decades later, Stapledon's creative thought experiment became a legitimate scientific concept when physicist Freeman Dyson published a 1960 paper in the journal Science. Dyson argued that, logically speaking, any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial civilization would develop such intense energy needs that they would need megastructures like those envisioned by Stapledon.
"It could just be normal old astrophysics at play."
Thus the concept of Dyson spheres was born, but they've remained theoretical — until perhaps recently. A study last month in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society using observations from star-observing programs Gaia , 2MASS and WISE suggests that Dyson spheres may exist around at least seven different stars.
Scientists discover hidden population of stars that are the "bluest of blue"
The scientists say this is so because they discovered infrared heat signatures near these stars — all within 1,000 light year of Earth — that cannot otherwise be explained yet. Other experts, however, are not so sure. Barnard College theoretical cosmologist Dr. Janna Levin is among them, having publicly suggested that the heat signatures could be explained by factors like planetary collisions, a very young star with material spinning around it in a disk or a distant galaxy behind some of the stars. Those are not her only reservations.
"Dyson spheres are more likely to be Dyson swarms — a vast collection of solar-energy collecting satellites, each on independent orbits around the Sun," Levin told Salon. "Any instrument that collects energy wastes some in the form of heat. It’s the heat signature that scientists have recently searched for. Heat signatures are so generic in nature that it’s far from a smoking gun and there are many possible natural explanations."
Astrophysicist and science writer Dr. Ethan Siegel told Salon that although stars emit very large amounts of energy, the temperature at which they radiate is determined by the size of the surface area from which the energy is emitted.
"The larger the surface, the lower the temperature," Siegel said. "So if you find a star emitting a large amount of energy but at a very low temperature, it makes sense to conclude that there's either the star is very large and 'puffy,' or perhaps there's an external structure around the star that's radiating heat outward after absorbing the solar energy."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Siegel is skeptical that the seven stars identified in the new paper are actually surrounded by Dyson spheres.
"My personal view is that, out of the nearly ~2 billion stars that Gaia has catalogued, there was an explicit search for, 'Which objects are most consistent with the idea of this being a Dyson sphere?'" Siegel said. "And these were the seven best candidates. None of them are particularly compelling — it's just saying that if Dyson spheres are out there and have been built, could we find them and what is the best match, observationally, for that scenario."
He added, "Alternatively, it could just be normal old astrophysics at play, with no aliens, no megastructures, no Dyson spheres, and nothing exotic. When you have an extraordinary explanation and a mundane explanation for the same observed phenomenon, you really need more (extraordinary) evidence to favor the former explanation over the latter one, and we don't have that."
"I think a fascinating twist would be to consider that we have a swarm of satellites around our own Sun and they must emit some heat."
Dr. Erik Zackrisson. an associate professor in astronomy at Uppsala University and one of the study co-authors, explained to Salon that all scientists know for sure is that these seven stars possess excess infrared radiation and that the properties of said radiation are consistent with what we would expect from Dyson spheres. That, however, does not mean that they are Dyson spheres.
"They are the best Dyson sphere candidates we've come across so far, but this does not mean that they are Dyson spheres, or even that Dyson spheres represent the most likely explanation for the phenomenon we're seeing," Siegel said. "Dust around a newborn star, a chance alignment with an infrared-bright background object, or dust due to some sort of rare cosmic catastrophe in the planetary systems of these stars (colliding planets or something similar) may also constitute viable explanations. "
Like the other experts who spoke with Salon, Zackrisson was very skeptical that the most inspiring and fantastical outcome — that these heat signatures are proof of intelligent extraterrestrial life — will be how things turn out.
"Personally, I think these objects are very unlikely to be Dyson spheres," Zackrisson said. "Some of them have already been argued to be due to chance alignments with background sources. Such cases are astrophysically uninteresting, so my hope is that at least some of these sources will be confirmed to have intrinsic infrared excess fluxes — then we're at least onto something interesting, even if it eventually boils down to extreme astrophysics rather than aliens."
Even though the experts agreed that these are not likely to be Dyson spheres, Levin still believes the recent study has scientific value.
"I think a fascinating twist would be to consider that we have a swarm of satellites around our own Sun and they must emit some heat," Levin said. "Is someone looking at us wondering if they’ve found signatures of intelligent life? Fascinating. However, we’ve not been at this space industry for very long and so an alien civilization observing at us would have to be very nearby, within 50 light years. And even then, the signs would be too faint."
She added, "What could be more exciting and existentially terrifying than the discovery of alien life?"
Siegel echoed that observation.
"It's important to keep an open mind, and it's easy to understand why the most wild possibilities excite us," Siegel said. "But without stronger evidence, this is just another example of people getting hyped up over what's almost certainly going to be a big nothing-burger."
Do Byzantine coins Record the Supernova of 1054?
SN 1054 was one of the most spectacular astronomical events of all time. The supernova explosion eventually formed what is today known as the M1—the Crab Nebula. But in 1054 AD, the year it occurred, it was an ultrabright star in the sky and one of only eight recorded supernovae in the history of the Milky Way. However, it was only noted by half of the literate world. Primarily written about in the East, especially in China, SN 1054 was almost wholly absent from the Western record—except, potentially, for a subtle hint at it in the most unlikely of place: some Byzantine coins.
At least, that is the new theory according to a multinational group of researchers in the European Journal of Science and Theology. They found that a special version of a coin minted by Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX showed two stars around the emperor’s head—potentially representing a nod to the existence of SN 1054, despite any written evidence for the supernova’s existence elsewhere in the Christian world.
Scholars in Japan, China, and the Islamic world had no problem noticing the new bright star in the sky. So why didn’t the Christians? There has been an ongoing debate in the history of astronomy community surrounding this question for decades, with no definitive answer. However, the general consensus is that Christian scholars feared that pointing out a change in what, at the time, were thought to be the perfect and inviolable heavens would cause too much of a ruckus within the church. Theological doctrine held sway in the Christian world at the time, and calling into question any part of that doctrine could lead to excommunication or even death. It would have to be a brave scholar to risk such a fate for no tangible reward.
Which makes it even more interesting that a metalworker, or maybe one of the otherwise cowed scholars, might have had the nerve to do so. The researchers found a special edition of a coin, known in the technical jargon as the Constantine IX Monomachos Class IV coin, which has two stars compared to the single star noticeable on the other three classes of coins minted during the monarch’s reign.
The Class IV is thought to be minted between the summer of 1054 and the spring of 1055 and has two noticeable stars on either side of the monarch’s head. One star is thought to represent Venus, the Morning Star, while the monarch’s head itself is believed to represent the sun. The other star, though, could potentially represent the “guest star” (as Chinese observers called it) of the SN 1054 supernova.
What’s more, the size of the stars differs slightly between the 36 coins of that vintage the researchers were able to find in museums around the world. The researchers also hypothesize that the changing size of the star could reflect the gradual dimming of the supernova in the sky during this period.
If so, it would be a subtle but effective nod to the striking astronomical reality going on overhead at the time. But, as with much ancient history, it is hard to separate fact from speculation. The authors themselves point out that they don’t know how many Class IV coins were minted, nor their precise dates and they have no concrete proof that the second star represents a fantastic astronomical event. But, many romantics would like to think that, after whoever minted the coins took what might have been considered a massive risk at the time, a team of scholars over 1000 years later finally truly grasped why they did so. We can certainly appreciate that story, even if the factual basis for it is still up in the air.
Lead Image: Coins minted during the reign of Constantine IX
