A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs (find previous smallsat roundups here):
** A review of the Virginia Cubesat Constellation program in which a consortium of universities in the state built three cubesats: Virginia Cubesat Constellation, Mike McPherson, KQ9P
Three Virginia CubeSat Constellation spacecraft deployed from the ISS on July 9,2019.Three student members of the Virginia CubeSat Consortium show off the three program’s 3 CubeSats
Unfortunately, communications were only established with one of the three spacecraft. In the above video, McPherson discusses the communications problems.
** Staten Longo – I Am NASA Virginia Space Grant – Participation in the Virginia CubeSat program led to a career in aerospace
Staten Longo, graduate of the University of Virginia, participated in the Virginia Aerospace Science and Technology Scholars (VASTS) program as a high school student and then served as a program manager for the Virginia Cubesat Constellation project. This ‘I am NASA Space Grant’ video
New TQSL Version Provides Better LoTW Rover Support
AMSAT-EA Registering SanoSat-1 for AMSAT Nepal
ESA and LibreSpace Report: SDR’s for Small Satellites
Brazil Holds 430 and 1240 MHz Hearing
Upcoming Satellite Operations
ARISS News
Hamfests, Conventions, Maker Faires, and Other Events
Satellite Shorts from All Over
General CubeSat/SmallSat info:
Exolaunch signs agreement with SpaceX for launch of small satellites on a Falcon 9 rideshare mission – Exolaunch – “Exolaunch, a German rideshare launch and deployment solutions provider, signed a Launch Services Agreement with SpaceX to launch small satellites on a Falcon 9 as part of SpaceX’s SmallSat Rideshare Program. Under the launch contract, Exolaunch accommodates multiple microsatellites and cubesats on the first Falcon 9 smallsat-dedicated rideshare mission to sun-synchronous orbit, targeted for launch in December 2020.
Exolaunch will provide comprehensive rideshare mission management, deployment and integration services for its customers participating in this launch. Core customers who signed up for this launch through Exolaunch’s services will be announced in the coming weeks.”
Space Boffins Richard Hollingham and Sue Nelson celebrate Hubble’s 30th birthday with Shuttle astronaut Kathy Sullivan, whose mission deployed the space telescope, and hear from NASA engineer Jerry Woodfill about his warning alarm system for Apollo 13, celebrating its 50th lucky escape anniversary. The Space Boffins also meet Craig Clark, founder of AAC Clyde Space, and are shown around the cubesat pioneer’s HQ in Glasgow. All this with bonus space-themed added music….
Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** Look Back at Earth with NASA Astronaut Andrew Morgan
On Friday, April 6, 2020, NASA Astronaut Andrew Morgan began his day by taking a peaceful look back at our planet, out of the International Space Station’s cupola. The cupola serves as a place for astronauts to gaze back at Earth, and take photographs as a part of the Crew Earth Observations investigation. Images like the ones Morgan is taking here, can help us monitor how our planet is changing over time, and inform important scientific research. https://go.nasa.gov/2Vk48xC
** Expedition 62 Inflight Interview with the State of Maine – April 13, 2020
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 62 Flight Engineers Jessica Meir and Chris Cassidy of NASA, both natives of Maine, answered questions submitted by students from schools in Maine during an in-flight educational event April 13. Meir is completing a six-and-a-half month mission on the orbital outpost, heading for a landing in Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz spacecraft April 17. Cassidy arrived on the station April 9 to begin a six-and-a-half month sojourn.
** Expedition 62 to 63 Change of Command Ceremony – April 15, 2020
Expedition 62 Crew Hands over Space Station to Expedition 63 Command of the International Space Station was passed from Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos to Chris Cassidy of NASA during a ceremony on the orbital outpost on April 15. Skripochka is returning to Earth April 17 with Expedition 62 crewmates Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir in the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft for a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan. Skripochka and Meir will have completed 205 days in space, while Morgan will have spent 272 in orbit. Cassidy remains on the station as commander of Expedition 63 with crewmates Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner of Roscosmos.
** Expedition 62 Landing – April 17, 2020
International Space Station’s Expedition 62 Crew Lands Safely in Kazakhstan Expedition 62 Commander Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos and Flight Engineers Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan of NASA landed safely on Earth near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, April 17 after bidding farewell to their colleagues on the complex and undocking their Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft from the aft port of the Zvezda Service Module on the International Space Station. Skripochka and Meir completed 205 days in space, and Morgan wrapped up a 272-day mission on the orbital outpost.
Observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have revealed for the first time that a star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way moves just as predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Its orbit is shaped like a rosette and not like an ellipse as predicted by Newton’s theory of gravity. This effect, known as Schwarzschild precession, had never before been measured for a star around a supermassive black hole. This artist’s impression illustrates the precession of the star’s orbit, with the effect exaggerated for easier visualisation.
Observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have revealed for the first time that a star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way moves just as predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Its orbit is shaped like a rosette and not like an ellipse as predicted by Newton’s theory of gravity. This long-sought-after result was made possible by increasingly precise measurements over nearly 30 years, which have enabled scientists to unlock the mysteries of the behemoth lurking at the heart of our galaxy.
“Einstein’s General Relativity predicts that bound orbits of one object around another are not closed, as in Newtonian Gravity, but precess forwards in the plane of motion. This famous effect — first seen in the orbit of the planet Mercury around the Sun — was the first evidence in favour of General Relativity. One hundred years later we have now detected the same effect in the motion of a star orbiting the compact radio source Sagittarius A* at the centre of the Milky Way. This observational breakthrough strengthens the evidence that Sagittarius A* must be a supermassive black hole of 4 million times the mass of the Sun,”
says Reinhard Genzel, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, Germany and the architect of the 30-year-long programme that led to this result.
Located 26 000 light-years from the Sun, Sagittarius A* and the dense cluster of stars around it provide a unique laboratory for testing physics in an otherwise unexplored and extreme regime of gravity. One of these stars, S2, sweeps in towards the supermassive black hole to a closest distance less than 20 billion kilometres (one hundred and twenty times the distance between the Sun and Earth), making it one of the closest stars ever found in orbit around the massive giant. At its closest approach to the black hole, S2 is hurtling through space at almost three percent of the speed of light, completing an orbit once every 16 years.
“After following the star in its orbit for over two and a half decades, our exquisite measurements robustly detect S2’s Schwarzschild precession in its path around Sagittarius A*,”
says Stefan Gillessen of the MPE, who led the analysis of the measurements published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Most stars and planets have a non-circular orbit and therefore move closer to and further away from the object they are rotating around. S2’s orbit precesses, meaning that the location of its closest point to the supermassive black hole changes with each turn, such that the next orbit is rotated with regard to the previous one, creating a rosette shape. General Relativity provides a precise prediction of how much its orbit changes and the latest measurements from this research exactly match the theory. This effect, known as Schwarzschild precession, had never before been measured for a star around a supermassive black hole.
This simulation shows the orbits of stars very close to the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. One of these stars, named S2, orbits every 16 years and is passing very close to the black hole in May 2018. This is a perfect laboratory to test gravitational physics and specifically Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Research into S2’s orbit was presented in a paper entitled “Detection of the Gravitational Redshift in the Orbit of the Star S2 near the Galactic Centre Massive Black Hole“, by the GRAVITY Collaboration, which appeared in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on 26 July 2018.
The study with ESO’s VLT also helps scientists learn more about the vicinity of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
“Because the S2 measurements follow General Relativity so well, we can set stringent limits on how much invisible material, such as distributed dark matter or possible smaller black holes, is present around Sagittarius A*. This is of great interest for understanding the formation and evolution of supermassive black holes,”
say Guy Perrin and Karine Perraut, the French lead scientists of the project.
This result is the culmination of 27 years of observations of the S2 star using, for the best part of this time, a fleet of instruments at ESO’s VLT, located in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The number of data points marking the star’s position and velocity attests to the thoroughness and accuracy of the new research: the team made over 330 measurements in total, using the GRAVITY, SINFONI and NACO instruments. Because S2 takes years to orbit the supermassive black hole, it was crucial to follow the star for close to three decades, to unravel the intricacies of its orbital movement.
The research was conducted by an international team led by Frank Eisenhauer of the MPE with collaborators from France, Portugal, Germany and ESO. The team make up the GRAVITY collaboration, named after the instrument they developed for the VLT Interferometer, which combines the light of all four 8-metre VLT telescopes into a super-telescope (with a resolution equivalent to that of a telescope 130 metres in diameter). The same team reported in 2018 another effect predicted by General Relativity: they saw the light received from S2 being stretched to longer wavelengths as the star passed close to Sagittarius A*.
“Our previous result has shown that the light emitted from the star experiences General Relativity. Now we have shown that the star itself senses the effects of General Relativity,”
says Paulo Garcia, a researcher at Portugal’s Centre for Astrophysics and Gravitation and one of the lead scientists of the GRAVITY project.
With ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope, the team believes that they would be able to see much fainter stars orbiting even closer to the supermassive black hole.
“If we are lucky, we might capture stars close enough that they actually feel the rotation, the spin, of the black hole,”
says Andreas Eckart from Cologne University, another of the lead scientists of the project. This would mean astronomers would be able to measure the two quantities, spin and mass, that characterise Sagittarius A* and define space and time around it.
“That would be again a completely different level of testing relativity,” says Eckart.
A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images related to human expansion into the solar system (see also previous space settlement postings):
** NASA hang-out examined the role of civil engineering in developing the initial landing site on Mars: Paving the Road to Mars: Civil Engineering at the Human Landing Site – Feb.2020
Speakers from Bechtel, Kennedy Space Center, Langley Research Center, and NASA Headquarters join HLS2 steering committee co-chairs Paul Niles and Richard (Rick) Davis to discuss the use of Civil Engineering on Mars.
Speakers include:
• Pete Carrato (Bechtel, Fellow Emeritus) • Rob Mueller (Swamp Works Kennedy Space Center, Senior Technologist/Primary Investigator) • Michelle Munk (Langley Research Center, EDL System Capability Lead)
** More about building roads and structures on Mars from civil engineer Peter Carrato, who participated in the above hangout, in this recent Planetary Society Radio program: Building Our Future on Mars | The Planetary Society
How will we build the structures, roads and landing pads humans will someday need on Mars? Civil engineer Peter Carrato has been building grand structures on Earth for decades. He says the skills we’ve learned over thousands of years are well-suited for the much more challenging Martian environment.
Some people have claimed that a “business case” for profitable interplanetary trade with a Mars settlement, or at least the identification a saleable product for trade, is required before such a settlement can be established or supported by business or government. But there is no reasonable prospect for trade in any significant mass of physical material from a Mars settlement back to Earth in the near future due to the high transport costs. In his recent article in the National Review, “Elon Musk’s Plan to Settle Mars,” Robert Zubrin makes exactly the same point: a business case based on physical trade is not necessary and makes little sense. Later trade and commerce via non-physical goods such as software is probable once a settlement is fully operational. More significant and interesting economic situations will occur on Mars.
A good model for the expenditures needed to found colonies is the Greek and Phoenician expansion all across the Mediterranean and Black Sea areas in the period early in Greek history (before about 600 BC), leading to the founding of one of the greatest trading cities in history, Carthage. The cities who founded each colony did not expect immediate profit, but wanted good places for an expanding population and knew that, once the new cities were established, trade would also become established. Most of the cost was probably in building more ships. When European colonies were first established in the New World by Spain and Portugal, the emphasis was initially on a search for treasure, not production of products. English and Dutch colonies later led the way to commerce across the Atlantic, with tobacco, sugar, and cotton suddenly becoming a major part of world trade.
A look at some of the steps required to create a Mars settlement will help us understand at least a little about Mars settlement economics. For a Mars settlement, motivation and economics are interwoven. It is possible for at least a partial business case to be made for the transport of settlers and the materials they will need to initiate some phase of Mars settlement. This includes the current effort to create a large number of reliable, low cost, and reusable super-heavy boosters and spacecraft, able to take payloads of 100 tons or more of cargo and passengers to Mars and land them at the right location. Part of this development and construction cost will be defrayed by commercial and government uses of the same vehicles, such as placing very heavy payloads in LEO and taking equipment and passengers to and around the Moon.
We present a two-sphere dumbbell configuration of a rotating settlement at Earth-Moon L5. The two-sphere configuration is chosen to minimize the radiation shielding mass which dominates the mass budget. The settlement has max 20 mSv/year radiation conditions and 1 g artificial gravity. If made for 200 people, it weighs 89000 tonnes and provides 60 square meters of floor space per person.
The radiation shield is made of asteroid rock, augmented by a water layer with 2% of the mass for neutron moderation, and a thin boron-10 layer for capturing the thermalized neutrons. We analyze the propulsion options for moving the material from asteroids to L5. The FFC Cambridge process can be used to extract oxygen from asteroid regolith. The oxygen is then used as Electric Propulsion propellant. One can also find a water-bearing asteroid and use water for the same purpose. If one wants to avoid propellant extraction, one can use a fleet of electric sails. The settlers fund their project by producing and selling new settlements by zero-delay teleoperation in the nearby robotic factory which they own.
The economic case looks promising if LEO launch costs drop below about $300/kg.
I’ll note that SpaceX‘s Starship is aimed at achieving launch costs even below the $300/kg range at high flight rates.
A schematic diagram of the dumbbell design of a large space habitat. Credits: Pekka Janhunen via NSS
* Gateway Foundation releases an update on the design of a first-generation large scale space habitat, which they now call Voyager Station. This video discusses how the development of the SpaceX Starship could benefit the project.
The experts agreed that collaboration between terrestrial mining and commercial space will be crucial to the development technology and mission capabilities needed for a viable space resources industry.
Suggestions which might help jump start the collaboration process included a global competition based on the Google Lunar XPRIZE model and the development of ‘dual use’ Earth/space technologies.
Demand for space resources could potentially be driven by offworld outposts, space laboratories, Moon-based facilities and space tourism.
However, early development will require support from governments around the world, with sound legal agreements on ownership of resources and stable markets to sell them.
Governments and their agencies will also play a central role as the primary source of demand for this fledgling market.
The second Mining Space Summit was a great success, as was the whole Space Resources Week. By attracting more representatives from the terrestrial resources industry, it represents an important step forward towards establishing a meaningful connection between two industrial sectors, terrestrial resources and space resources.
With the attendance of more than 180 experts, we had a significant increase of participants, only limited by the size of the breakout session groups. One important metric was the participant representation -58% from space, including start-ups and global players, and 42% from mining, oil and gas industries, finance,and (non-space) government sectors.
The Summit focused on two challenges that are key in enabling the success of the space resources sector: the viability of their business models and the development of critical technologies and operations.
This summary paper has provided the major results of the discussions, and will help to set the foundation for future work.
The 2019summit was only an intermediate step of a long-term process to identify areas of collaboration between the two industrial sectors.Space Resources Week2020, announced at the end of the ESA ISRU Workshop, will happen between the 5thand 9thOctoberandwill build on these results.
The Lunar Polar Mining Outpost (LPMO) (see quad chart graphic) is a breakthrough mission architecture that promises to greatly reduce the cost of human exploration and industrialization of the Moon. LPMO is based on two patent pending inventions that together solve the problem of affordable lunar polar ice mining for propellant production.
The first invention, Sun Flower™ stems from a new insight into lunar topography. We have found multi kilometer landing areas in lunar polar regions on which the surface is likely ice rich regolith in perpetual darkness but with perpetual sunlight available at altitudes of only 100s of meters. In these landing sites, which we found and mapped in our Phase 1 study, deployable reflectors on towers a few hundred meters tall (lightweight and feasible in lunar gravity) can provide nearly continuous solar power.
A large lander, such as the Blue Moon vehicle proposed by Blue Origin or lunar ice mining outpost can sit on mineable ice at ground level in perpetual sunlight provided by lightweight reflectors. A single New Glenn launch can deliver a Sun Flower with over 1 MW of solar arrays, tower, and reflector in an integrated package.
The second enabling innovation for LGMO is Radiant Gas Dynamic (RGD) mining. RGD mining is a new Patent Pending technology invented by TransAstra to solve the problem of economically and reliably prospecting and extracting large quantities (1,000s of tons per year) of volatile materials from lunar regolith using landed packages of just a few tons each….
** Several other NIAC awards went to technology projects relevant to space settlement. For example,
Fueling a Human Mission to Mars – Caroline Genzale (Georgia Tech Research Corporation): Development of “a renewable, liquid, storage stable rocket propellant that can be produced and burned on Mars using bioorganisms to perform atmospheric in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). Utilizing 100% ISRU for propellant production, we aim to reduce the Entry Descent Landing (EDL) mass of a crewed mission to Mars by approximately 7 tons. This technology will enable long-term human presence on Mars and beyond because costly propellant deliveries from Earth would be unnecessary. We will genetically engineer organisms to efficiently convert the abundant CO2 in the Martian atmosphere into liquid hydrocarbons suitable for rocket propulsion and other energy needs on Mars. “
Aqua Factorem: Ultra Low-Energy Lunar Water Extraction – Philip Metzger (University of Central Florida) – To extract water from lunar polar crater floors, this proposal takes “advantage of the processing that the unique lunar geology has already performed. Micrometeoroid bombardment has already broken most solid material in the upper part of the regolith into fine grains. This includes solid material of all compositions, including the ice, which is as hard as granite at PSR temperatures and is therefore essentially another type of rock. These ice grains are intermixed with all the other minerals, so a simple, ultra-low-energy grain-sorting process can extract the ice without phase change. As another benefit it can extract the 1 wt% free metal known to be in lunar soil, again with very little energy. The ice can then be hauled to the chemical processing unit in solid phase and converted into rocket propellant. We estimate the 800 kW power needed for thermal extraction can be reduced to less than 100 watts using the new method. This affects the entire architecture of the mining operation producing extensive economic benefit, which we will quantify in this study.“
Instant Landing Pads for Artemis Lunar Missions – Matthew Kuhns (Masten Space Systems) – “The Masten in-Flight Alumina Spray Technique (FAST) Landing Pad changes the approach to landing on planetary bodies by mitigating the landing plume effects by creating a landing pad under the lander as it descends onto a surface. This approach uses engineered particles injected into the rocket plume to build up a coating over the regolith at the landing location. The hardened regolith would have greater thermal resistance and ablation resistance to reduce regolith erosion rates and deep cratering. This innovation would enable large and small landers to safely perform transportation to any region on the Moon without major risks posed by engine plume effects.“
Intuitive Machines (IM) engineers selected an area in Oceanus Procellarum near Vallis Schröterias the landing site for its upcoming IM-1 lunar mission with an anticipated launch date in October 2021.
Vallis Schröteri, also known as Schröter’s Valley, is the largest valley on the Moon (comparable in size to the Grand Canyon) and is surrounded by Oceanus Procellarum, the largest lunar maria on the Moon. Oceanus Procellarum, also called the Ocean of Storms, covers over 10 percent of the entire Moon and has a diverse array of geological features. NASA considered a site near Vallis Schröteri for Apollo 18; now, IM is taking up the baton to conduct the initial survey.
Nova-C, the first lander wholly developed by a private company, will deliver commercial cargo and five NASA-provided payloads to the lunar surface. These payloads will conduct scientific research and technology demonstrations as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, in preparation for sending astronauts back to the Moon in 2024.
Last week, NASA announced the selection of Masten Space (see post here) to
deliver and operate eight payloads – with nine science and technology instruments – to the Moon’s South Pole in 2022, to help lay the foundation for human expeditions to the lunar surface beginning in 2024.
The payloads, which include instruments to assess the composition of the lunar surface, test precision landing technologies, and evaluate the radiation on the Moon, are being delivered under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative as part of the agency’s Artemis program.
Masten’s XL-1 lander will incorporate lessons and technologies derived from the company’s long experience with vertical takeoff and landing rockets. In addition to the NASA payloads, Masten expects to carry payloads from commercial customers.
Scott Manley gives a video report on Masten and the company’s lander:
Xplore Inc., a commercial space company has announced they have won an Air Force award to study positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) solutions for cislunar space. The award category, for commercial and technical innovations between the Earth and the Moon — is entirely new for the Air Force, which is investigating the capabilities necessary to extend operations beyond geosynchronous orbit to now include cislunar space.
The Xplore plan would involve the company’s Xcraft, a standardized spacecraft platform that can be implemented for a variety of deep space missions:
Navigation considerations have been an integral part of Xplore’s development strategy since the company started rigorously developing its platform and multi-mission Xcraft™ — an ESPA-class space vehicle that will fly missions at destinations from Earth to the Moon, Mars, Venus, Lagrange points, near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and other locations across the inner solar system. Beyond the more obvious hardware requirements for operating in extreme environments, Xplore will maximize the full value of its orbital assets by designing a PNT architecture that mirrors the accessibility and reliability of GPS for cislunar space. The Xcraft’s ability to operate across these vast distances provides tremendous value to customers in academia, industry, civil space and national security agencies.
International Space Station astronaut Jessica Meir completed the first U.S. Naval Research Laboratory power-beaming demonstration [see video below] in orbit February 12, 2020, using relatively simple components suitable for STEM activities.
Meir showed how NRL’s LEctenna™, a light-emitting rectifying antenna, converted a wireless network signal, similar to home networks, into electric power. While the current generated and light emitted was a small amount, the setup proved the concept in space.
“While this is a cool device on its own, our collaborators [at NRL] have begun investigating the wide range of possible applications for this technology in the real world,” Meir said. “We could find ways to wirelessly charge our mobile devices or remotely power drones. But one of the most interesting applications that they’re looking into is space-based solar panel arrays.”
Led by electronics engineer Paul Jaffe, researchers at NRL are investigating space solar and power beaming as a potential source of clean energy for a variety of military and civilian applications.
Space solar is simply using solar panels in space to harvest the sun’s energy, where collecting rays would be unaffected by clouds or other interference. Power beaming would send the collected energy down to Earth, where it would be converted back – just like LEctenna™ did – to usable energy.
“Some people might know about power beaming, such as for their toothbrush, or putting their phones on a charging pad,” Jaffe said. “What’s really exciting about it though, is that power can be sent wirelessly over much larger distances.”
“NASA astronaut Jessica Meir demonstrates how the LEctenna™, a light-emitting rectifying antenna constructed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, converts electromagnetic waves into electric current on the International Space Station. Similar technology could be used on the Earth’s surface to convert electromagnetic waves beamed from space-based solar arrays.” Credits NASA via NRL
The LEctenna™ demonstration proved the concept of power beaming in space, but was primarily a STEM project to inspire the next generation of innovators launched by the Department of Defense Space Test Program mission. Its simple, relatively low-cost design to convert electromagnetic waves to electric power can be replicated by students.
“LEctenna™ was a cool demonstration to raise awareness,” said Elias Wilcoski, an NRL research physicist. “We want to show students that this is technology that they can do themselves. If we can get them excited about it and space solar and power beaming, we can help bring more scientists and engineers into the fields to ensure the viability of our future.”
Here is a brief tutorial on making your own LEctenna:
Want to be able to see invisible electromagnetic waves? It’s easy to make your own LEctenna in just a few minutes to allow you to do just that! NRL’s Elias Wilcoski shows you how.
Parts used in this video: An RF through-hole Schottky Diode (1N5711) A through-hole LED A plastic test tube
