1. Monday, Nov. 4, 2019; 2 pm PST (4 pm CST, 5 pm EST) We welcome Dr. Melissa Trainer to discuss the Mars 2020 project.
2. Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019; 7-8:30 pm PST (9-10:30 pm CST; 10-11:30 pm EST): We welcome Dr. Hal Doiron and Dr. Tom Wysmuller, retired NASA Apollo engineers & scientists, now part of the project known as The Right Climate Stuff, to speak about climate, space, NASA and more.
3. Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2019; Pre-recorded Hotel Mars Program with John Batchelor. See Upcoming Show on The Space Show website for details.
4. Friday, Nov. 8, 2019; 9:30-11 am PST (11:30 am-1 pm CST, 12:30-2 pm EST): We welcome Dr. Ella Atkins, Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan, where she is director of the Autonomous Aerospace Systems (A2SYS) Lab.
5. Sunday, Nov. 10, 2019; 12-1:30 pm PST (3-4:30 pm EST, 2-3:30 pm CST): We welcome back Dr. Christopher Morrison, and Dr. Marcelo Vazquez to discuss human spaceflight radiation concerns and medical research tests for simulating human radiation exposure in space.
** Tue, 10/29/2019 – Dr. Umair Siddiqui discussed the Phase Four “radio frequency plasma thruster, plasma science, Hall thrusters, LEO, comsats, mega satellite constellations and more”.
A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs (find previous smallsat roundups here):
** NG Cygnus carries HuskySat-1, built by Univ. Washington students, to ISS.
HuskySat-1 is being developed by an interdisciplinary team at the University of Washington and will be launched into Low Earth Orbit to become the first amateur satellite from Washington state. This CubeSat will demonstrate the capabilities of new technologies being developed at the University of Washington and expand the capabilities of CubeSats as a whole. In particular, a high-thrust pulsed plasma thruster (PPT), and high-gain communications system will form the core technology suite on board the satellite. The HuskySat-1 will also be flying a newly developed Amateur Radio Linear Transponder developed by AMSAT which will contribute to the worldwide communication networks built and operated by ham radio enthusiasts.
Some of the student-built parts will still be in test mode. A custom-built thruster uses sparks to vaporize small amounts of solid sulfur as a propellant. The thruster will fire about 100 times as the satellite passes over Seattle, only enough thrust to provide a slight nudge. A high-bandwidth communications system built by former graduate student Paul Sturmer, now at Blue Origin, transmits at 24 Gigahertz, allowing the satellite to quickly send reams of data. That system will send down a test packet from space.
“Usually people buy most of the satellite and build one part of it. We built all the parts,” Northway said. “It was a pretty serious undertaking.”
On Saturday, seven small research satellites, or CubeSats, developed by students from eight universities across the nation will fly on Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops, Virginia, targeting a launch at 9:59 a.m. EDT.
All seven CubeSats were selected through NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) and are a part of the 25thEducational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) mission. CSLI enables the launch of CubeSat projects designed, built and operated by students, teachers and faculty, as well as NASA Centers and nonprofit organizations. ELaNa missions provide launch and deployment opportunities and ride-shares to space for CubeSats selected through CSLI. Students are heavily involved in all aspects of the mission from developing, assembling, and testing payloads to working with NASA and the launch vehicle integration teams. The ELaNa CubeSats are held to rigorous standards similar to those adhered to by the primary spacecraft.
Five of the CubeSats were developed through NASA’s Undergraduate Student Instrument Project or USIP.
The 5 USIP CubeSats flying on Antares are:
RadSat-u – Montana State University – Bozeman
Phoenix – Arizona State University – Tempe
SOCRATES (Signal of Opportunity CubeSat Ranging and Timing ExperimentS) – University of Minnesota – Minneapolis
HuskySat-1 – University of Washington – Seattle
SwampSat II – University of Florida – Gainesville
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The additional two CubeSats flying through CSLI are:
Argus-02 – St. Louis University – Missouri
HARP (Hyper Angular Rainbow Polarimeter) – University of Maryland, Baltimore County – Baltimore and Utah State University – Logan
A constellation of South African nanosatellites will be put in orbit next year to monitor shipping to prevent the poaching of marine resources such as abalone and sharks, while they will also track fires so ground-based personnel can move livestock out of harm’s way and prevent the spread of the fire.
The technology for this constellation is being proven right now as the ZACube 2 research nanosatellite from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) will log its 300th day in orbit on the 23rd October 2019. ZACube 1, also known as TshepisoSat, was launched on 21st November 2013 and is still communicating with the ground station.
…
The ZACube 2 satellite is performing well in orbit and proving the technology that the university has developed,” Professor Robert van Zyl, the Director of French South African Institute of Technology (FSATI) said.
A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images dealing with space transport (find previous roundups here).
** Northrop Grumman Antares successfully launches Cygnus cargo spacecraft. This is the 12th Cygnus mission to the the ISS. The craft is to dock with the ISS at 4:10 am EST on Monday, Nov. 4th.
Aevum, an Alabama startup designing a drone-launched rocket in a former textile mill, went from winning a $50,000 study grant to landing a $4.9 million U.S. Air Force launch contract in the span of three weeks.
About a month later, on Oct. 10, Aevum then became one of eight launch service providers qualified by the Air Force to compete for $986 million worth of small- and medium-sized launch missions over nine years.
Ravn Releases Rocket – Aevum
** Virgin Orbit promotes LauncherOne for beyond earth orbit missions:
With the addition of a third stage housed within the rocket’s fairing, LauncherOne can send cutting-edge satellites on a ride past LEO into deep space. We’ve run the numbers, and we think we’ve got a solid engineering plan for ways to use a third stage to launch payloads not only into LEO, MEO, and GEO, but even towards the Moon, any of the Earth-Moon LaGrange points, various main-belt asteroids, Venus, or Mars. With this simple adaptation, LauncherOne unlocks the ability to deliver enough mass to interplanetary destinations to conduct some really valuable smallsat missions, whether that’s studying the potential for extraterrestrial life or learning more about the chemical composition of far-flung worlds.
“For long enough people have thought of Mainers as, ‘We do great lobster, we do, heck, we do great beer,'” Sascha Deri, founder of bluShift, said. “It’s time for us to show the world that, ‘No, we do a lot of really cool things too like, rockets.'”
Components for China’s third Long March 5 rocket arrived at the country’s southern launch base this week as teams prepare for the first flight of the heavy-lift launcher since a 2017 mission ended in failure.
The return-to-flight mission, expected in the second half of December, is a major test of the heavy-lift rocket before China commits to launching a Mars rover and a lunar sample return mission on Long March 5 vehicles next year.
** French space agency tests Frog, a prototype vertical takeoff & landing vehicle: Successful captive flights for FROG – CNES. It is jet powered but serves to teach the VTOL techniques needed for rocket landings.
Both demonstrations in captive flight take-off and landing were a success. FROG is a small scale flight demonstrator designed to test vertical landing algorithms for future reusable launchers.
The project team is currently preparing the Free Flight Fitness Review (RAV) which will take place in October and will allow free flight tests, without gantry or safety cable.
Premières images de FROG, le démonstrateur de vol 🇫🇷 qui teste des algorithmes d’atterrissage pour les futurs lanceurs réutilisables européens 🚀🇪🇺 Bientôt les 1ers vols libres 😉 https://t.co/1zVqpE0tRHpic.twitter.com/hCcmzvQPHf
FROG jet powered VTOL prototype in tethered tests.Schematic diagram of the FROG VTOL demonstrator.
** Japan preparing the RV-X vertical takeoff and landing rocket vehicle for test flights. The RV-X is essentially a re-start of the RVT (Reusable Vehicle Test) program of the late 1990s, early 2000s. See my interview with Yoshifumi Inatani, who led the RVT program.
The RV-X will use a single 40 kN LH2/LOX engine for suborbital flights. Ground tests are already underway, and flight tests are scheduled for next year!
Here is a set of program overview slides in Japanese (pdf). Note that CALLISTO mentioned on the slides refers to a VTOL suborbital rocket vehicle under development by the French and German space agencies. See CALLISTO – Reusable VTVL launcher first stage demonstrator, E. Dumont et al, 2018 (pdf).
** Exodus Space pursues two-stage space plane RLV design. Here is an overview by Fraser Cain:
The ISEC has had an impact. In the last 6 years the technical maturity and engineering substance of the Space Elevator has solidified and become organized; most notably as the Galactic Harbour. ISEC’s Technology Development and Maturation approach has melded a better definition of the Space Elevator Engineering solution(s).
The Elevator is no longer a mystery. Engineering approaches for the Tether Climber, the Earth Port, the GEO Region, and the Apex Anchor have been expressed in terms everyone understands; a harbor. The last technology hurdle – strong material for the tether – was conquered.
** Next Falcon 9 launch of Starlink satellites set for Nov. 11. Presumably these Starlinks will be operational spacecraft rather than the demo prototypes on the first launch. Over the coming year, SpaceX hopes to get into a routine of Starlink launches about every two weeks. 2nd Starlink Mission Launch Campaign Thread : spacex/reddit.com.
[ Update: “What’s Up” for November 2019 from NASA JPL:
Highlights of the November sky include how to watch as Mercury transits the Sun on Nov. 11, plus how to observe the regular dimming and brightening of the “Demon star,” Algol, with your own eyes. Additional information, along with still images from the video, and the video transcript, are available at https://go.nasa.gov/34hp376 . Algol animation is licensed as CC-BY-SA 3.0. Video credit NASA-JPL/Caltech.
In November, hunt for the fainter constellations of fall, including Pisces, Aries, and Triangulum. They will guide you to find several galaxies and a pair of white stars. Stay tuned for space-based views of spiral galaxy M74 and the Triangulum Galaxy, which are shown in visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light.
** What’s in the Night Sky November 2019 – Alyn Wallace
This week’s episode of NASA’s “Space to Ground” report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** Down to Earth – NASA Johnson
In “Down to Earth – The Overview Effect” NASA astronauts discuss a shift in worldview from their time living and working in space. The phenomenon is described in space philosopher Frank White’s book, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution.
** Expedition 61 Inflight Event with Eastern Aroostook School Unit 39 – October 29, 2019
Astronaut Jessica Meir discusses life in space with students in her Maine hometown.
