Monthly Archives: April 2019

Space Policy

Space policy roundup – April.19.2019

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:

Webcasts:

**  #30: Space Force: Out of This World or The Future of Global Engagement? by What in the World? | Free Listening on SoundCloud

Houston, do we have a problem? President Trump announced the establishment of Space Force in February. Skeptics have asked, what could we possibly need a space military for when we haven’t found aliens to fight and what’s the difference between NASA and Space Force?. Guest experts, Victoria Samson and Krystal Wilson, discuss space security, space technology’s beneficial values, and the plans behind President Trump’s Space Force.

** Ep 101 | Can Space Force Stop Somali Rocket Pirates? | Guest: Anthony Colangelo – Something’s Off with Andrew Heaton – Omny.fm

Is a U.S. Space Force an inevitable step to protecting satellites and commercial space activities, or just an expensive exercise in shuffling Pentagon bureaucracies? Military and aerospace expert Anthony Colangelo joins Heaton to sort things out.

** The Space Show – Sun, 04/14/2019 – Jay Wittner talked about “Integrated Space Plan, human spaceflight development now and into the future, [and] why The Space Plan and human spaceflight is essential”.

** April 16, 2019 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast | Behind The Black

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Space 2.0: How Private Spaceflight, a Resurgent NASA, and International Partners are Creating a New Space Age

In Space Infrastructure, Living in Space, Space Systems

Videos: NASA “Space to Ground” ISS report – April.19.2019

A new episode of NASA’s weekly Space to Ground report on activities related to the International Space Station:

** A look at what is on the Cygnus spacecraft that berthed to the ISS this morning: Cygnus Carries Tech and Science Investigations to Space Station | NASA

** Part 2 of a tutorial on spacewalks:

During their time on the International Space Station many astronauts have the opportunity to participate in spacewalks, also known as Extravehicular Activities (EVA). These spacewalks play a critical role in keeping the station functional as it travels approximately 17,500 miles per hour 250 miles above the Earth’s surface. In this episode, Expedition 55/56 Flight Engineer Ricky Arnold talks about the critical parts of the spacesuit that keep astronauts safe as they perform maintenance in the harsh environment surrounding the space station. Visit https://nasa.gov/stemonstation for more educational resources that explore the research and technology of the International Space Station.

** A brief NASA video focusing on the importance of observing Earth from space:

“Space for U.S.” highlights some of the many ways that NASA’s Earth observations help people strengthen communities across the United States and make informed decisions about public health, disaster response and recovery, and environmental protection. For six decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to better understand our home planet and improve lives. By highlighting advanced technology from a global perspective, our data helps provide people achieve groundbreaking insights. “Space for U.S.” features 56 stories illustrating how our science has made an impact in every state in the nation as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and regions along the Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes. NASA freely and openly provides its Earth-observing data to those seeking answers to important global issues. The Applied Sciences Program in NASA’s Earth Science Division funds projects that enable innovative uses of NASA Earth science data, resulting in informed decision making to strengthen America’s economy and improve the quality of life worldwide.

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Outpost in Orbit: A Pictorial & Verbal History of the Space Station

Space business, Space Systems, Spaceflight & Parabolic Flight

Videos: TMRO Orbit 12.13 – “How we will survive out in Space”

The latest episode from the TMRO.tv Space webcasts: How we will survive out in Space – Orbit 12.13

Engineer Brittany Zimmerman of Paragon Space Development Corporation joins us to talk about the different ways Space wants to kill you. We cover how Paragon is working on Life Support And Environmental Control Systems, including water purification to help keep us all alive on out journey to Mars. This one is an eye opener including a lot of stuff that will be required if us ugly giant bags of mostly water are to colonize the solar system.

A recent space news report:

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Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past

Science and Technology

Sci-Tech videos: 3 Boston Dynamics robots, MIT Mini Cheetah, & Agility Robotics Cassie

A selection of items about robotics:

** The SpotMini looks to be Boston Dynamics‘s first major commercial robot. Here is a video released this week:

It only takes 10 Spotpower (SP) to haul a truck across the Boston Dynamics parking lot (~1 degree uphill, truck in neutral). These Spot robots are coming off the production line now and will be available for a range of applications soon.

** Boston Dynamics robots for warehouse work include Handle and Pick:

Handle is a mobile manipulation robot designed for logistics. Handle autonomously performs mixed SKU pallet building and depalletizing after initialization and localizing against the pallets. The on-board vision system on Handle tracks the marked pallets for navigation and finds individual boxes for grasping and placing. When Handle places a boxes onto a pallet, it uses force control to nestle each box up against its neighbors. The boxes used in the video weigh about 5 Kg (11 lbs), but the robot is designed to handle boxes up to (15 Kg) (33 lb). This version of Handle works with pallets that are 1.2 m deep and 1.7 m tall (48 inches deep and 68 inches tall).

Using a combination of vision sensors and deep learning software, Pick works with commercial robotic arms to palletize and depalletize boxes. Pick enables logistics, retail, and manufacturing companies to achieve high rates of box moving with minimal set up or training for both multi-SKU and single-SKU pallets.

** “Evolution of Boston Dynamics Robots“:

** Backflipping MIT Mini Cheetah – Mini cheetah is the first four-legged robot to do a backflip | MIT News

MIT’S new mini cheetah robot is the first four-legged robot to do a backflip. At only 20 pounds the limber quadruped can bend and swing its legs wide, enabling it to walk either right side up or upside down. The robot can also trot over uneven terrain about twice as fast as an average person’s walking speed.

** Cassie: Dynamic Planning on Stairs from Agility Robotics

This video shows the progression of increasingly complex gait strategies from ATRIAS through recent results with Cassie. Specifically, Cassie’s controller now includes planned footstep placements in addition to dynamic balancing, allowing access to substantially more complicated terrains.

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Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes

Amateur/Student Satellite, Space participation, The Moon

SpaceIL diagnosing landing failure and planning for next lunar mission

The attempt by SpaceIL, a private non-profit organization, to land the Beresheet craft softly on the Moon last week went awry just a few minutes before it was to set down onto the surface. Initial results of an investigation into what went wrong were released today:

See also:

** Final image taken by Beresheet released:

** Planning for a second Beresheet mission is now underway:

More at

** SpaceIL member participated in an Ask Me Anything session on reddit this week: Hi, my name is Ben Nathaniel, I work on the team of Beresheet, the spacecraft that Israel sent to the Moon on April 11 (as you may know the landing didn’t go so well). Ask Me Anything. – space/reddit.com.

** A vast knowledge database on Beresheet may have survived the crash: There may be a copy of Wikipedia somewhere on the moon. Here’s how to help find it – Mashable.com

The Arch Lunar Library contains 100GB, or 30 million pages of text and pictures, literally embedded in 25 nickel disks in the tiniest type you can possibly imagine. You don’t need anything more specialized than a microscope to read it, and the etchings should survive for billions of years. 

This library was supposed to be delivered to the surface of the moon — specifically, the Sea of Serenity — by Israel’s Beresheet Mission last week. The bad news: After a glitch that turned its engine off and on again at the worst possible moment, the Beresheet lander smashed into the moon at 300 miles per hour.

The good news: Those disks were designed to be indestructible. And the Arch Foundation is all but certain its payload survived the crash.

“We have either installed the first library on the moon,” says Arch Mission co-founder Nova Spivack, “or we have installed the first archaeological ruins of early human attempts to build a library on the moon.”

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First on the Moon: The Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Experience