1 Monday, Feb. 4, 2019: 2-3:30 pm PST (4-5:30 pm CST, 5-6:30 pm EST): No show for today.
2. Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2019: 7-8:30 pm PST (9-10:30 pm CST, 10-11:30 pm EST): We welcome back Robert Zimmerman for space news updates.
3. Wednesday, Feb. 6 2019: Hotel Mars. See Upcoming Show Menu and the website newsletter for details. Hotel Mars is pre-recorded by John Batchelor. It is archived on The Space Show site after John posts it on his website.
4. Friday, Feb. 8, 2019: 9:30-11 am PST (11:30 am -1 pm CST, 12:30-2 pm EST): We welcome back Mark Whittington on returning to the Moon, policy and more.
5. Sunday, Feb. 10, 2019: 12-1:30 PM PST (3-4:30 PM EST, 2-3:30 PM CST): Dr. Beth O’Leary and Lisa Westwood are with us to discuss preserving space historical sites and more.
Some recent programs:
** Fri, 02/01/2019 – Dr. Michael Schmidt and Dr. Thomas Goodwin discussed “Pharmacogenomics in spaceflight, personalize spaceflight genetics for safety and better effectiveness, drug issues in space, the Moon, Mars, risk factors, metabolism and much more”.
A sampling of links to recent space policy, politics, and government (US and international) related space news and resource items that I found of interest:
Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, has successfully launched and deployed its ninth satellite. NTU’s first foray into space began 20 years ago. The first project was a communication payload codenamed Merlion, while the main satellite body was developed by the University of Surrey, UK. The latest satellite, called the AOBA VELOX-IV cube satellite, was built by a team led by Mr. Lim Wee Seng, executive director of NTU’s Satellite Research Centre, while its new altitude determination and control algorithm was developed by Professor Cho Mengu’s research team at the Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan. It was launched from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Epsilon-4 rocket.
Two years of hard work came to fruition Wednesday morning when students from USI [University of Southern Indiana] watched their handmade satellite launched from the International Space Station.
The team was selected to design, build, and monitor the UNITE CUBE SAT satellite. The device is designed to measure plasma levels in the ionosphere, study the Earth’s orbit and measure temperature readings when the satellite re-enters the atmosphere.
“It was a lot of testing and development,” said Ryan Loehrlein, a USI senior and assistant team leader on the UNITE project. “We were doing prototyping with the boards. We were outside in below freezing temperatures at times just making sure the satellite would work. So actually seeing it launch today and getting to see it launched into space it’s one of those things that…it’s hard to let go of it because we’ve been doing it so long.”
Ben-Gurion University researchers have developed a new satellite imaging system that could revolutionize the economics and imagery available from space-based cameras and even earth-based telescopes.
“This is an invention that completely changes the costs of space exploration, astronomy, aerial photography, and more,” says Angika Bulbul, a BGU Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Prof. Joseph Rosen in the BGU Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
In a paper published in the December issue of Optica, the researchers demonstrate that nanosatellites the size of milk cartons arranged in a spherical (annular) configuration were able to capture images that match the resolution of the full-frame, lens-based or concave mirror systems used on today’s telescopes.
Development is nearly complete. The design for the PocketQube is finalized, and the hardware is now functional. There are still some integration processes and software work to do along with various testing requirements. We are also in the process of getting our licensing with the FCC, ITU, and other government agencies. We have spent nearly $50,000 getting to this point. To take it across the finish line, we need to raise $50,000 more. Our plan is to launch Discovery in 2019 into a 500 km (310 miles) Sun synchronous orbit. This location gives the Discovery optimal viewing of the Earth and makes it easier for us to retrieve data and upload new instructions. But in order to be ready to fly, we have to finish a lot of fine details between now and then.
My favorite conference series is back in action after a pause of a couple of years:
Space Access 2019 Conference The Technology, Business, and Politics of Radically Cheaper Space Transportation at the Fremont Marriott Silicon Valley, April 18-21
Space Access 2019 will be the next round of Space Access Society‘s conference on the technology, business, and politics of radically cheaper space transportation, brought to you this year in cooperation with the Bay Area’s own Experimental Rocket Propulsion Society.
SA2019 will feature a cross-section of the growing cheap access community, talking about what’s going on now and what happens next, in an intensive informal atmosphere, single-track throughout so you don’t have to miss anything. Space Access has been described as “Hackers” for rocket people, with better content than other space conferences costing many times more. It’s three days of total immersion in making the future happen.
(We’re rolling – this list represents over two-thirds of the final SA2019 three-day program. Stay tuned for additional details and a few more excellent program additions in the coming weeks.)
Rocket Lab/Amanda Stiles, Senior Mission Manager on The Electron Launcher & Multi-Burn Kick Stage
John Schilling will discuss Earth Orbit, Cislunar & Mars Practical Payload Capabilities Of Current & Near-Term Launchers
Rand Simberg will discuss A Co-Orbital Transportation Infrastructure Concept
Space Studies Institute Hosted Session covering SSI’s focus area of How To Get Things Done Once There, technology and business aspects of habitats, power generation, resource extraction, manufacturing etc.
Henry Spencer will discuss Transitioning From Standalone Spaceships To Space Transport Networks
Henry Spencer & Henry Vanderbilt will discuss Some Likely Characteristics Of Usefully Faster Near-Term Inner Solar-System Space Transports. Thermal rockets aren’t practically capable of high enough velocities to minimize cosmic-ray and other slow-transit problems. A look at some near-term approaches that may be usefully faster – and why they may not look at all like you might expect.
Jess Sponable will discuss Project History & Management Lessons From DC-X, X-40, and XS-1
Unreasonable Rocket/Paul Breed on Development Of A Low-Cost Modular Launcher
Pete Worden, Breakthrough Prize Foundation Chairman, on What We Might Do With A StarShot Capability
Panel Discussions
Extremely High-Velocity Propulsion Concepts: A Survey. Jim Benford, Gerry Nordley, Henry Spencer
How To Save Civilization and Make a Little Money, or, This Is All Jerry Pournelle’s Fault. Recalling Jerry’s significant part in the forty-year evolution from “Commercial rockets? Security, get this loon out of my office” to “Commercial rockets? How much do you want?” Aspects of the story as seen by some who were there. Larry Niven, Gary Hudson, Jim Muncy, Jess Sponable, Henry Vanderbilt
Space Startup Party Fouls – Common Startup Errors & How To Avoid Them, as seen by Rocket People. There are a thousand books that will tell you what Venture Capital people look for. Rocket people, not so much. Paul Breed, Ben Brockert, Henry Spencer, Henry Vanderbilt
NewSpace Meets Milspace – Both are evolving fast, with overlaps (both business and operational) likely growing with time. Some discussion of what the shared spaces may look like. Bill Bruner, Mitchell Burnside Clapp, Jess Sponable
We also plan Subject Concentrations this year on
SmallSat Launch Startups
Commercial Lunar Cargo Companies
Participants for both currently being recruited – if you haven’t yet heard from us, contact us at hvanderbilt@mindspring.com
We’re also interested in Student Space Project Presentations – we’re reserving a number of short (5-10 minute) timeslots in the main program track for student/amateur presentations on interesting (not necessarily directly access-related) space projects. Contact hvanderbilt@mindspring.com
Conference Registration
Basic SA2019 registration will be $180 through March 27th, more afterwards. Student full-conference rate $60. Seehttps://sa2019.erps.org/ for more details on Exhibitor and Patron rates, or go directly to SA2019 online registration.
Exhibition Space
We will have an Exhibitor Room across the hall from the main Presentations ballroom. Exhibitor memberships will get you one Regular membership, an 8′ table in a 10′ x 10′ area, and two chairs. Space is limited and will be assigned on a first come first served basis. When space is filled we will create a waitlist. Register at the $300 Exhibitor Rate at SA2019 online registration
Conference Hotel is the Fremont Marriott Silicon Valley.
Hotel Rooms We have negotiated a special deal for the convention, with a room rate of only $130 per night (in Silicon Valley!), so book your room early to keep you in the heart of the conference. Space is limited (it’s a very busy hotel). Mention “Space Access 2019” to get this rate and be in our room block. Conference-Rate Reservation cutoff is 27 March 2019.
Program Sessions will run Thursday & Friday, morning afternoon and post-dinner, and Saturday morning and afternoon, with socializing opportunities Saturday evening plus an extended Sunday networking brunch.
Conference Style
Space Access conferences are designed to let people who are serious about low-cost space transportation get together, trade information, make deals, and learn useful things. Dress averages business casual, and we don’t do rubber-chicken banquets – just an intensive single-track presentations schedule with relaxed on-your-own meal breaks, in a setting with comfortable places in the hotel and nearby to go off for food, drink, and talk – not least of these ERPS’s interpretation of our world-famous volunteer-run Space Access Hospitality Suite.
Space Access has been a useful productive conference over the years – companies started, talent recruited, deals made, ideas spread. Be here with us for the next round.
On Jan. 19, 2019, just 161 days after its launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completed its first orbit of the Sun, reaching the point in its orbit farthest from our star, called aphelion. The spacecraft has now begun the second of 24 planned orbits, on track for its second perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun, on April 4, 2019.
Parker Solar Probe’s position, speed and round-trip light time as of Jan. 28, 2019. Track the spacecraft online.
That these pits are all in a line, and that they also in line with a shallow straight depression, strongly suggests that they are skylights into a lava tube below. Located to the northwest of Arsia Mons, the southeast-to-northwest trend of the line reinforces this conclusion, suggesting that we are looking at surface evidence of an underground lava tube that flowed down from Arsia Mons, when that giant volcano was active, eons ago.
A giant, spiraling storm in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere is captured in this animation from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The storm is approximately 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) across.
The counterclockwise motion of the storm, called Oval BA, is clearly on display. A similar rotation can be seen in the famous Great Red Spot at the top of the animation.
Juno took the nine images used to produce this movie sequence on Dec. 21, between 9:24 a.m. PST (12:24 p.m. EST) and 10:07 a.m. PST (1:07 p.m. EST). At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was between approximately 15,400 miles (24,800 kilometers) and 60,700 miles (97,700 kilometers) from the planet’s cloud tops above southern latitudes spanning about 36 to 74 degrees.
Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran created this animation using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager.
In a new paper in Science, the researchers detail how they repurposed sensors used to drive the Curiosity rover and turned them into gravimeters, which measure changes in gravitational pull. That enabled them to measure the subtle tug from rock layers on lower Mount Sharp, which rises 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the base of Gale Crater and which Curiosity has been climbing since 2014. The results? It turns out the density of those rock layers is much lower than expected.
Just like a smartphone, Curiosity carries accelerometers and gyroscopes. Moving your smartphone allows these sensors to determine its location and which way it’s facing. Curiosity’s sensors do the same thing but with far more precision, playing a crucial role in navigating the Martian surface on each drive. Knowing the rover’s orientation also lets engineers accurately point its instruments and multidirectional, high-gain antenna.
A Mars Buggy and a Moon Buggy: Side-by-side images depict NASA’s Curiosity rover (left) and a moon buggy driven during the Apollo 16 mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Full image & caption ›
By happy coincidence, the rover’s accelerometers can be used like Apollo 17’s gravimeter. The accelerometers detect the gravity of the planet whenever the rover stands still. Using engineering data from the first five years of the mission, the paper’s authors measured the gravitational tug of Mars on the rover. As Curiosity ascends Mount Sharp, the mountain adds additional gravity — but not as much as scientists expected.
“The lower levels of Mount Sharp are surprisingly porous,” said lead author Kevin Lewis of Johns Hopkins University. “We know the bottom layers of the mountain were buried over time. That compacts them, making them denser. But this finding suggests they weren’t buried by as much material as we thought.”
On Jan. 4, 2019, at 4:37 a.m. EST the CAPER-2 mission launched from the Andøya Space Center in Andenes, Norway, on a 4-stage Black Brant XII sounding rocket. Reaching an apogee of 480 miles high before splashing down in the Arctic Sea, the rocket flew through active aurora borealis, or northern lights, to study the waves that accelerate electrons into our atmosphere.
CAPER-2, short for Cusp Alfvén and Plasma Electrodynamics Rocket-2, is a sounding rocket mission — a type of spacecraft that carries scientific instruments on short, targeted trips to space before falling back to Earth. In addition to their relatively low price tags and quick development time, sounding rockets are ideally suited for launching into transient events — like the sudden formation of the aurora borealis, or northern lights.
An animation of the CAPER-2 sounding rocket flight into the aurora borealis.
For CAPER-2 scientists, flying through an aurora provides a peek into a process as fundamental as it is complex: How do particles get accelerated throughout space? NASA studies this phenomenon in an effort to better understand not only the space environment surrounding Earth — and thus protect our technology in space from radiation — but also to help understand the very nature of stars and atmospheres throughout the solar system and beyond.
