TOP NEWS

Taikonauts Complete Second Chinese Spacewalk, First In Support Of Space Station Construction

Taikonauts Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo have successfully conducted the second ever Chinese Extravehicular Activity (EVA), or spacewalk, and the first in a series to support of the construction of the newly launched Chinese Space Station (CSS).

The EVA began on July 4 at 00:11 UTC and completed at 06:57 UTC, for a total duration of six hours and 46 minutes. This duration is more typical of the regular spacewalks conducted outside the International Space Station (ISS) compared to China’s first EVA on Shenzhou 7, which lasted only 22 minutes.

Read more at: NASAspaceflight

No Quick Fix For Hubble Space Telescope’s Computer Glitch, NASA Says

NASA is struggling to fix a computer glitch that has left the Hubble Space Telescope offline for about two weeks — and its backup computer appears to have the same issue, too.

The Hubble Space Telescope, which launched in 1990, halted operations on June 13 just after 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT), following a problem with one of the telescope’s computers. While the spacecraft has stopped collecting science data, its other hardware and science instruments remain in good health, according to a statement from NASA.

Read more at: Space.com

Branson To Be On Next Spaceshiptwo Flight July 11

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson will be on the company’s next flight of its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle July 11, going to space days before fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos.

Virgin Galactic announced late July 1 that it had scheduled its next flight of SpaceShipTwo, called “Unity 22,” for July 11 at no earlier than 9 a.m. Eastern from Spaceport America in New Mexico. The flight will have pilots Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci at the controls, both of whom have previously flown SpaceShipTwo beyond the 80-kilometer altitude the company considers the boundary of space.

Read more at: Spacenews

Webb Passes Key Launch Clearance Review

This major milestone, carried out with Arianespace, the Webb launch service provider, confirms that Ariane 5, the Webb spacecraft and the flight plan are set for launch. It also specifically provides the final confirmation that all aspects of the launch vehicle and spacecraft are fully compatible.

During launch, the spacecraft experiences a range of mechanical forces, vibrations, temperature changes, and electromagnetic radiation. All technical evaluations performed by Arianespace on the mission’s key aspects, including the launch trajectory and payload separation, have shown positive results.

Read more at: ESA

Blue Origin Flight: Wally Funk, 82, To Join Jeff Bezos Space Flight

An 82-year-old woman who has spent six decades trying to reach space will join Jeff Bezos on the first human flight by his space company later this month.

Wally Funk, who underwent training in the 1960s, will become the oldest person to ever fly to space.

Mr Bezos has invited Ms Funk as an “honoured guest” and shared video on Instagram of him telling her the news. She will join the Amazon founder, his brother Mark and a mystery person who paid $28m (£20m) at auction for a seat.

Read more at: BBC

SPACE HAZARDS AND STM

A Satellite’s Impending Fiery Demise Shows How Important It Is To Keep Space Clean

Space is vast. But the area around our planet is getting crowded.

New technologies and the proliferation of competing rocket companies have made it cheaper to reach low Earth orbit. But more objects in space can also mean more spacecraft-damaging collisions. That could jeopardize satellites that connect rural and underserved areas with broadband, as well as those that take images that help farmers track their crops’ health. It even could endanger the International Space Station, its astronauts and research aboard that could fuel cancer treatments and the creation of organs for transplant.

Read more at: LAtimes

NASA Team To Study New Roles For The Agency In Addressing Orbital Debris

NASA has established a working group to examine what new roles the agency can take to mitigate the growth of orbital debris and promote space sustainability.

In a talk at the Secure World Foundation’s Summit for Space Sustainability June 23, Bhavya Lal, senior adviser to the NASA administrator for budget and finance, said she is leading a recently established team that will examine how the agency could take a larger role in efforts to mitigate and remediate orbital debris.

Read more at: Spacenews

NASA And ESA To Test Nudging Asteroids Off Collision Course With Earth

Of all the natural disasters that can strike at life on Earth, it is asteroid strikes that have the potential to wipe out life as we know it. Just as the dinosaurs met their fate with the help of a large asteroid some 66 million years ago, humanity would be in serious trouble if a similar event occurred. Luckily scientists are building up a picture of the near-Earth asteroids that could one day cause us problems.

Finding the asteroids is just the first part of the puzzle – but scientists also have some ideas about how to avoid potential future collisions.

Two new missions being launched by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are going to test a method of nudging Earth-bound asteroids off course.

Read more at: Euronews

China Begins Construction Of New Survey Telescope To Detect Space Debris

The construction of a survey telescope array, which will be mainly used to detect space debris in medium and high orbits, has begun in northwest China’s Qinghai Province, taking advantage of the plateau region’s clear night skies.

The multi-application survey telescope array, MASTA, developed by the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is under construction in the town of Lenghu, Qinghai, with an average altitude of 3,800 meters above sea level.

Slated for completion by 2023, the telescope’s spectrum is expected to fill China’s gap in this technology.

Read more at: Xinhuanet

Sun Erupts With Biggest Solar Flare In 4 Years In Early Fourth Of July Fireworks (Video)

The sun erupted with a surprise solar flare on Saturday (July 3), the largest since 2017, in an early explosion of cosmic fireworks ahead of the Fourth of July.

The solar flare occurred from a sunspot called AR2838 at 10:29 a.m. EDT (1429 GMT) on Saturday and registered as a powerful X1-class sun event, according to the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) tracking the sun’s weather. It caused a brief radio blackout on Earth, center officials said in an update.

Read more at: Space.com

NEW SPACE/COMMERCIAL

Branson’s Virgin Orbit Launches 7 Satellites from 747 Plane

Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit delivered satellites from three countries into space Wednesday, its second successful rocket launch from a plane.

The company’s modified 747 jet dubbed Cosmic Girl jet took off from California’s Mojave Desert, carrying the 70-foot (21-meter) rocket beneath its left wing. Once the plane was over the Pacific near the Channel Islands, the LauncherOne rocket peeled away, then fired its engine to head to space. The drop occurred at an altitude of about 37,000 feet (11,000 meters).

Read more at: ABCnews

Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic Target Crewed Suborbital Flights This Month

Only hours after Blue Origin named “Mercury 13” aviator Wally Funk to the long-awaited first crewed flight of its New Shepard rocket/capsule system on 20 July—in what is expected to see her become the oldest human ever to voyage into space—Virgin Galactic announced Thursday that its VSS Unity air-launched suborbital spaceplane is aiming for No Earlier Than (NET) 11 July to lift six crew to the edge of space.

Both flights include among their crews the respective founders of the two organizations, with Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos riding New Shepard and Virgin Galactic’s Sir Richard Branson doing likewise aboard Virgin Space Ship (VSS) “Unity”. On the face of it, this represents a desire of both billionaires to be “first”, but whichever vehicle flies first July promises a dramatic and historic month for commercial human spaceflight.

Read more at: Americaspace

Department Of Space’s Commercial Arm Newspace India Can Also Lease ISRO Assets

The NewSpace India Ltd, the commercial arm of Department of Space (DOS) apart from buying satellites from Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) can also lease assets from the latter, said K. Sivan, Secretary, DOS. Sivan, also the Chairman of ISRO told IANS: “NSIL will acquire three communication satellites- GSAT 20, GSAT 22 and GSAT 24- made by ISRO. The company will be the owner and operator of the satellites.” Queried about transferring ISRO’s other satellites to NSIL, Sivan said: “We are thinking about asset transfer on lease basis. Plans are there.”

Read more at: economic times

SpaceX Rolls Giant Super Heavy Rocket To Launch Pad For Testing (Video)

SpaceX is getting ready to test its giant new rocket for the first time. The first true Super Heavy booster was rolled out of its high bay to a launch pad Thursday (July 1) at SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas. The 230-foot-tall (70 meters) Super Heavy is the first stage of SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship transportation system, which the company is developing to help humanity colonize Mars, among other tasks. The upper stage is a 165-foot-tall (50 m) spacecraft called Starship, a prototype of which aced a 6.2-mile-high (10 kilometers) test flight in May.

Read more at: Space.com

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Starlink Aims To Let Astronauts Communicate At 3,500°F & Possibly Aid Mach 10 Gliders

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) plans to test its Starlink user terminals on its Starship next-generation launch vehicle system. Starship aims to fulfill SpaceX’s foundational aim of making humans interplanetary, and paying complement to its fast-moving culture, SpaceX is on track to conduct an orbital test flight of the system within a year of successfully launching and landing Starship’s upper-stage prototypes.

The narrative for these tests, which SpaceX submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), states that through Starlink, the company hopes to communicate with spacecraft that have reached extremely high temperatures while reentering the Earth’s atmosphere and, as a result, experience a communications blackout.

Read more at: wccftech

China’s Super Heavy Rocket To Construct Space-Based Solar Power Station

China plans to use a new super heavy-lift rocket currently under development to construct a massive space-based solar power station in geostationary orbit.

Numerous launches of the upcoming Long March 9 rocket would be used to construct space-based solar power facilities 35,786 kilometers above the Earth, according to Long Lehao, chief designer of China’s Long March rocket series, speaking during a presentation Thursday in Hong Kong.

The project would aim to establish a large collecting area receiving solar energy near constantly, without the atmosphere or seasonal changes affecting energy levels. Converted energy would be then transmitted to Earth via microwaves or lasers. The project would provide large-scale renewable energy and help tackle energy resource scarcity.

Read more at: Spacenews

1st Uncrewed Mission Of Gaganyaan In Dec: It”s Race Against Time For ISRO Now

The Indian Space Research Organisation is racing against time to launch the first uncrewed mission in December, as part of the human spaceflight programme ”Gaganyaan”, due to the adverse impact of the COVID-19-induced lockdowns that has disrupted hardware delivery schedules.

As part of the mandate of Gaganyaan, two uncrewed flights are planned to test the end-to-end capacity for the manned mission.

Officials of the Bengaluru-headquartered space agency said the first and second waves of the pandemic have “severely affected” the Gaganyaan programme.

Read more at: Outlook India

Europe Considering Concepts For Human Spaceflight

A bumper crop of applications for the European Space Agency’s astronaut corps is providing a boost to proposals for Europe to develop its own human spaceflight capability.

ESA announced June 23 that it received 22,589 applications in a solicitation that ended June 18. That’s far more than the 8,413 applications it received in the previous astronaut selection round in 2018.

“Having more than 22,000 applicants is quite a number,” Josef Aschbacher, ESA director general, said in a press conference about the application figures. “This is, I would call it, almost a historic moment for us that we have so many applicants that want to become astronauts. From that point of view, I’m more than satisfied. I’m extremely thrilled by these numbers.”

Read more at: Spacenews

Astroscale Breaking New Ground For On-Orbit Servicing Demonstration

Astroscale is joining forces with four satellite ground station providers to deliver the level of connectivity it needs for the world’s first commercial debris removal demonstration this year.

The Tokyo-based startup plans to use 16 ground stations in total to support its End of Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration (ELSA-d) mission, which comprises a 175-kilogram servicer spacecraft and a 17-kilogram client satellite that will act as a piece of debris.

After both spacecraft were launched March 22 to low Earth orbit (LEO), further testing to prepare for the debris removal demonstrations has pushed out plans to start maneuvers by two months to the end of July.

Read more at: Spacenews

New NASA Radiation Standards For Astronauts Seen As Leveling Field For Women

A blue-ribbon panel has endorsed NASA’s plans to revise its standard for exposing astronauts to radiation in a way that would allow women to spend more time in space.

A report by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released on 24 June encourages NASA to proceed with its plans to adopt a new standard that limits all astronauts to 600 millisieverts of radiation over their career. The current limit is the amount of radiation that correlates with a 3% increase in the risk of dying from a cancer caused by radiation exposure—a standard that favored men and older astronauts whose cancer risk from radiation was lower. The proposed standard would limit all astronauts to the allowable dosage for a 35-year-old woman.

Read more at: Sciencemag

NASA To Test New Solar Sail Technology With Launch In 2022

NASA says it plans to test new solar sail technologies in space by the middle of next year. NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) will deploy an apartment-sized solar sail from a toaster-sized cubesat in Earth orbit in mid-2022. The mission will refine technologies associated with solar sails. Such sails have been used in space before, most recently in the Planetary Society’s ongoing LightSail 2 mission, which has spent just over two years in orbit. “Just as a sailboat is powered by wind in a sail, solar sails employ the pressure of sunlight for propulsion, eliminating the need for conventional rocket propellant,” NASA officials wrote in a June 23 statement.

Read more at: Space.com

Space Log: How Robotic Arm Helps Taikonauts Walk In Space

Chinese astronauts on Sunday completed the country’s first spacewalk on the China’s space station, and the giant robotic arm attached to exterior was a big help in completing the mission.

It is the most intelligent, complex and technologically challenging robotic arm the country has developed, and the first one to function long-term in orbit.

“The robotic arm is expected to function for 15 years and assist different tasks. It means the arm needs to be able to cover the whole station,” said Liang Changchun, chief designer of the robotic arm’s control system at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. “We try to expand its capability in a flexible and economic way, that’s why we designed the arm to ‘walk.'”

Read more at: CGTN

What’s Special About China’s New Generation Spacesuits?

The spacesuits and the robotic arm for China’s space station were designed and produced in the country. The spacesuits are an upgrade to the suits used previously on the Shenzhou-7 mission.

Read more at: CGTN

SPACE POLICY

China Outlines Space Plans To 2025

China’s space administration has outlined its priorities in space science, technology, applications and exploration for the coming years.

Lunar, interplanetary and near-Earth asteroid missions, space station construction, a national satellite internet project and developing heavy-lift launch vehicles and reusable space transportation systems are noted as major projects for the period 2021-2025.

China National Space Administration (CNSA) Secretary General Xu Hongliang laid out the main activities and focus of the country’s civilian space endeavors in a press conference June 12.

Read more at: Spacenews

New Law Requires Return Of Spacecraft Parts

Rocket parts falling from the sky that land in Florida now remain the property of rocket companies that built them. That’s a change that goes into effect Thursday after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new bill into law.

The Senate during the Legislative Session approved HB 221, the Recovery of Spaceflight Assets Act, which the House approved in April.

With DeSantis’ signature, the law now requires Florida residents who find fallen spacecraft parts to alert law enforcement and then to allow authorities and the rocket companies come onto their properties to retrieve them.

Read more at: Floridapolitics

Why Is Russia Launching A New Module To The Space Station If It’s Pulling Out?

The Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, released photos on Monday showing the much-anticipated Nauka space station module enclosed in its payload fairing. This will be Russia’s first significant addition to the International Space Station in more than a decade, and it will provide the Russians with their first module dedicated primarily to research. “Nauka” means science in Russian.

This is a sizable module, including crew quarters, an airlock for scientific experiments, and much more. With a mass of about 24 metric tons, it is about 20 percent larger than the biggest Russian segment of the station, the Zvezda service module.

Read more at: Arstechnica

SPACE DEFENSE

The Space Force Wants To Use Directed-Energy Systems For Space Superiority

The head of the Space Force acknowledged that the U.S. is developing the “appropriate” directed-energy systems to maintain American space superiority, although he declined to provide details in the unclassified setting of a June 16 congressional hearing.

Noting that directed-energy systems could be a possible defensive tool for American satellites, Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., asked Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond whether the United States was adequately developing a directed energy portfolio “to be an effective capability for space dominance.”

Read more at: c4isrnet

U.S. Space Command Signs Data-Sharing Agreement With Libre Space Foundation

U.S. Space Command announced July 1 it has signed a data-sharing agreement with the Libre Space Foundation, a non-profit that promotes open access to information about space.

“Space situational awareness, which requires these types of cooperative agreements in order to achieve efficiency and effectiveness, is one of many approaches used to ensure all responsible space-faring nations continue benefitting from this critical domain,” the commander of Space Command Gen. James Dickinson, said in a news release.

Papadeas Pierros, executive director of the Libre Space Foundation, said the organization supports “open data and data sharing as a way to enhance space exploration and space safety.” He said the agreement with Space Command “is a step towards achieving safer space operations for all.”

Read more at: Spacenews

US Space Force Has New Guidelines For Working At And Around The Moon

The U.S. Space Force has a new primer for activities beyond Earth orbit amid increased NASA and international interest in moon exploration. A report published last Wednesday (June 23) by the Air Force Research Laboratory suggests that military officials should prepare for “cislunar space,” which is the zone roughly comprising the moon and the region around it. The Space Force, as the space service military branch of the United States, would presumably make up much of the report’s target audience.

Read more at: Space.com

The Space Development Agency Now Has Demo Satellites On Orbit. Here’s What They’ll Do.

The Space Development Agency has launched a handful of demonstration satellites into orbit, which will be used to test critical technologies for a new military-owned proliferated constellation.

The satellites hitched a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the Transporter-2 rideshare mission that took place June 29. That mission carried 85 satellites into orbit.

Read more at: c4isrnet

FAA And Air Force Sign Agreement On Commercial Launches From Space Force Bases

The Deptment of the Air Force signed an agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration designed to eliminate red tape affecting commercial rocket launches at U.S. Space Force ranges, the agencies announced June 21.

The two parties said the memorandum finished June 15 removes duplicative processes and approvals for commercial space activities originating from or returning to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Read more at: c4isrnet

U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps Service Members Selected To Transfer To Space Force

The U.S. Space Force announced June 30 it has selected 50 members of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps to transfer to the space branch, and hundreds more could be chosen in the coming weeks.

The group of 50 officers and enlisted personnel were tapped from among more than 3,700 who applied during the month of March, the Space Force said.

“We are overwhelmed by the number of applicants, and the outpouring of support our sister services have provided as we’ve partnered together to design the Space Force,” said Gen. David Thompson, vice chief of space operations.

Read more at: Spacenews

VARIOUS

How Ancient Greeks Set Humanity on the Path to Space Exploration

Business moguls Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos should be thanking ancient Greek astronomers for being able to realize their travel off the face of the earth and into space this month. Virgin Galactic’s Branson hopes to beat Amazon CEO Bezos to travel to space, announcing plans to be “Astronaut 001” on the firm’s July 11 test flight.

As civilized societies were just learning to use the wheel on earth, the ancient Greeks were aiming at the sky and the stars, contemplating outer space and how to measure it.

Read more at: Greekreporter

Launch 2020: A Year of Transition for Japan

It was a typical year for Japan with four successful launches and no failures. Japan has averaged 3.8 launches annually over the past decade. Last year also saw a Japanese astronaut become the first foreigner to fly aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Read more at: Parabolicarc

50 Years Later: Remembering the Mission, Sacrifice of the Soyuz 11 Crew

On the morning of June 30, 1971, near sunrise on the steppes of Kazakhstan, recovery crews prepared to receive the crew of Soyuz 11, which had completed a successful 24-day mission to the world’s first space station: Salyut 1. The Soviet leadership and public were eager to welcome cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolski, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev home after they broke the world spaceflight endurance record of 18 days, set a year earlier by their countrymen aboard Soyuz 9.

The Soyuz 11 descent module’s parachute system started to deploy as planned, at approximately 10 kilometers in altitude, and the main parachute deployed nominally. There had not been communications with the crew since before the deorbit burn, but ground crews were preparing for what they expected would be a nominal return from orbit.

Read more at: NASAspaceflight