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Thirty years ago today, NASA suffered a spaceflight tragedy that stunned the world and changed the agency forever.

On Jan. 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after blasting off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center, killing all seven astronauts on board - including New Hampshire educator Christa McAuliffe, a civilian who had been selected to fly via NASA's "Teacher in Space" program.

NASA astronauts had died on the job before - Apollo 1 crewmembers Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee were lost when a fire broke out inside their command module during a launchpad exercise on Jan. 27, 1967 - but the Challenger disaster was something different altogether. [ Remembering Challenger: NASA's 1st Shuttle Tragedy (Photos)]

"The whole country and the whole world were in shock when that happened, because that was the first time the United States had actually lost a space vehicle with crew on board," said former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao, who flew three space shuttle missions during his career (in 1994, 1996 and 2000), and also served as commander of the International Space Station from October 2004 through April 2005.

"It was even more shocking because Christa McAuliffe was not a professional astronaut," Chiao told Space.com. "If you lose military people during a military operation, it's sad and it's tragic, but they're professionals doing a job, and that's kind of the way I look at professional astronauts. But you're taking someone who's not a professional, and it happened to be that mission that got lost - it added to the shock."

Changing the culture

(Image credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics artist)

Before Challenger launched on its ill-fated STS-51L mission, the space shuttle program had completed 24 missions in a row, starting with the April 1981 liftoff of the orbiter Columbia. That run of success bred a measure of complacency, Chiao said.

"There was a 'launch fever' at the time, to try to get these missions off on time, and get more missions going," he said.

That type of thinking played a significant role in the disaster, experts have concluded. Challenger was lost because a rubber "O-ring" seal on the shuttle's right-hand solid rocket booster failed, allowing hot gas to escape and damage the orbiter's external fuel tank, as well as the gear that attached the booster to the tank.

The O-ring failed in part because unusually cold temperatures on launch day caused the part to harden, investigators later determined. The temperature at liftoff time was 36 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) - 15 degrees F (8 degrees C) colder than any previous shuttle launch, NASA officials have said. [ ‪NASA Remembers Challenger (Video)]

"The decision to launch the Challenger was flawed. Those who made that decision were unaware of the recent history of problems concerning the O-rings and the joint, and were unaware of the initial written recommendation of the contractor advising against the launch at temperatures below 53 degrees Fahrenheit [11.7 degrees C] and the continuing opposition of the engineers at Thiokol [Morton Thiokol, which built the shuttle's solid rocket boosters] after the management reversed its position," investigators wrote in their report about the disaster, which is known as the Rogers Commission Report.

"They did not have a clear understanding of Rockwell's concern that it was not safe to launch because of ice on the pad," they added. (Rockwell International built the space shuttles for NASA.) "If the decision-makers had known all of the facts, it is highly unlikely that they would have decided to launch 51L on Jan. 28, 1986."

In a way, the accident jolted these decision-makers awake, Chiao said.

"A lot of things changed," he said. "The space shuttle had to be entirely re-certified. Every last little technical piece was re-analyzed."

This work took nearly three years. The shuttle program was grounded until the orbiter Discovery blasted off on Sept. 29, 1988.

(Image credit: NASA )

Fallen heroes

The Challenger disaster claimed the lives of seven people: commander Francis "Dick" Scobee; pilot Mike Smith; mission specialists Judith Resnik, Ron McNair and Ellison Onizuka; and payload specialists McAuliffe and Greg Jarvis.

They are still missed today, three decades later.

"Thirty years just seems like yesterday," said Barbara Morgan, who served as McAuliffe's "Teacher in Space" backup and eventually made it to orbit herself in 2007, aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. "These people are still with me all the time, every day."

Morgan said that McAuliffe and the "Teacher in Space" program had a huge impact, even though the STS-51L mission ended in tragedy.

(Image credit: NASA JSC Image Repository and Terry Slezak)

"It was a really bad time for education. A huge study had come out - a big document called 'A Nation at Risk,' and it talked about how bad our education system was, and it kind of painted all schools and all teachers with a big, broad, bad paintbrush," Morgan told Space.com. "There was a very popular saying at the time: 'Those that can, do. Those that can't, teach.'"

But McAuliffe helped change that perception, she added.

"Christa was just a wonderful teacher, a wonderful human being and a wonderful representative of our profession, and that made it so that it got turned around," Morgan said. "That's something that I'm really, really grateful for, and proud of."

Just a few months after the Challenger accident, the fallen astronauts' family members set up a nonprofit called the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, which seeks to spark students' interest in science, technology and math by giving them exciting, hands-on experiences in these fields.

The Challenger Center has reached nearly 4.5 million kids over the last 30 years, Morgan said.

The nonprofit is a "living legacy to education, carrying on the education mission that Challenger was all about," she said. "To me, that speaks volumes about what the crew was like and who they were, and it's reflected in their wonderful families as well."

Keep exploring

Sadly, Challenger was not the space shuttle program's only tragedy. On Feb. 1, 2003, the orbiter Columbia broke apart upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts on board.

These crewmembers were commander Rick Husband; pilot William McCool; payload commander Michael Anderson; mission specialists David Brown, Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark; and payload specialist Ilan Ramon, from the Israel Space Agency.

A piece of insulating foam had broken off Columbia's external fuel tank during the orbiter's launch more than two weeks earlier, damaging the shuttle's left wing. Investigators later determined that this damage allowed hot atmospheric gases to enter the wing's interior, leading to the shuttle's destruction. (Some complacency had crept back into the shuttle program by 2003, Chiao said; foam shedding had been observed during previous shuttle launches but had not been deemed a potentially catastrophic phenomenon.) [ Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster Explained (Infographic)]

Disasters such as the losses of Challenger and Columbia serve as reminders that spaceflight is an inherently difficult and risky proposition, Chiao said.

"I don't think space travel will ever be as safe as commercial air travel, just because the amount of energy you have to put into a vehicle to accelerate it to orbital speed at 17,500 mph [28,160 km/h] - any time you have to put that much energy into a vehicle, and then take it out again to bring it back, there's going to be risk involved," he said.

"Unfortunately, as much as we try to minimize and avoid these mishaps, every now and then we're going to have them happen," Chiao added. "What we have to do is, do what we can to learn from them, apply lessons learned and keep moving forward."

NASA's path forward does not include the space shuttle; the agency grounded its remaining orbiters for good in July 2011. American astronauts are currently dependent upon Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get to and from the International Space Station, though NASA has said it hopes private spacecraft developed by Boeing and SpaceX will be ready to take over this taxi service by late 2017.

NASA's human spaceflight program, meanwhile, is focused on getting people to Mars sometime in the 2030s (with a mission to a captured asteroid in lunar orbit in the 2020s currently envisioned as a sort of stepping stone).

The agency is developing a capsule called Orion and a huge rocket called the Space Launch System to make all this happen.

"I know we're going to get there," Morgan said of Mars. "It's taken longer than I think we all wished, but it's exciting."

You can learn much more about the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia tragedies here: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/DOR2016/index.html

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Challenger Disaster 30 Years Ago Shocked the World, Changed NASA

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Thirty years ago today, NASA suffered a spaceflight tragedy that stunned the world and changed the agency forever. On Jan. 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after blasting off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center, killing all seven astronauts on board - including New Hampshire educator Christa McAuliffe, a civilian who had been selected to fly via NASA's "Teacher in Space" program.

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Starlink is the name of a satellite network that the private spaceflight company SpaceX is developing to provide low-cost internet to remote locations. While SpaceX eventually hopes to have as many as 12,000 satellites in this so-called megaconstellation, the size and scale of the project have flustered astronomers and amateur skywatchers, who fear that the bright, orbiting objects will interfere with observations of the universe.

The initial plan

SpaceX's satellite internet proposal was announced in January 2015. Though it wasn't given a name at the time, CEO Elon Musk said that the company had filed documents with international regulators to place about 4,000 satellites in low Earth orbit.

"We're really talking about something which is, in the long term, like rebuilding the internet in space," Musk said during a speech in Seattle when revealing the project.

Musk's initial estimate of the number of satellites soon grew, as he hoped to capture a part of the estimated $1 trillion worldwide internet connectivity market to help achieve his Mars colonization vision. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted SpaceX permission to fly 12,000 satellites and perhaps as many as 30,000 eventually.

To put that into perspective, only about 2,000 artificial satellites currently orbit Earth, and only 9,000 have ever been launched in all of history, according to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.

SpaceX launched its first two Starlink test craft, named TinTinA and TinTinB, in 2018. The mission went smoothly. Based on initial data, the company asked regulators for its fleet to be allowed to operate at lower altitudes than originally planned, and the FCC agreed.

The first 60 Starlink satellites were launched on May 23, 2019, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The satellites successfully reached their operational altitude of 340 miles (550 kilometers) - low enough to get pulled down to Earth by atmospheric drag in a few years so that they don't become space junk once they die.

(Image credit: SpaceX)

Each Starlink satellite weighs 500 lbs. (227 kilograms) and is roughly the size of a table, according to Sky & Telescope magazine.

Rather sending internet signals through electric cables, which must be physically laid down to reach far-flung places, satellite internet works by beaming information through the vacuum of space, where it travels 47% faster than in fiber-optic cable, Business Insider reported.

Current satellite internet works using large spacecraft that orbit 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above a particular spot on the Earth. But at that distance, there are generally significant time delays in sending and receiving data. By being closer to our planet and networking together, Starlink's satellites are meant to carry large amounts of information rapidly to any point on Earth, even over the oceans and in extremely hard-to-reach places where fiber-optic cables would be expensive to lay down.

Musk said the Starlink network would be able to provide "minor" internet coverage after 400 spacecraft were up and running, and "moderate" coverage after about 800 satellites became operational.

Within days of the first launch, skywatchers spotted a linear pearl string of lights as the satellites whizzed overhead in the early morning. Web-based guides showed others how to track down the spectacular display.

"This was quite an amazing sight, and I was shouting 'Owowowow!' when the bright 'train' of objects entered into view," Netherlands-based satellite tracker Marco Langbroek previously told Space.com via email. "They were brighter than I had anticipated."

That brightness was a surprise to almost everyone, including both SpaceX and the astronomical community. Researchers began to panic and shared photos of satellite streaks in their data, such as this one from the Lowell Observatory in Arizona.

They expressed particular concerns about future images from highly sensitive telescopes such as the Vera Rubin Observatory (formerly known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope), which will study the entire universe in exquisite detail and is expected to come online in 2022. Radio astronomers are also planning for interference from Starlink's radio-based antennas.
Related: In photos: SpaceX launches third batch of 60 Starlink satellites to orbit
The International Astronomical Union expressed concerns in a statement released in June 2019. "Satellite constellations can pose a significant or debilitating threat to important existing and future astronomical infrastructures, and we urge their designers and deployers as well as policy-makers to work with the astronomical community in a concerted effort to analyse and understand the impact of satellite constellations," the statement said.

SpaceX received more backlash in September 2019, when the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that it had directed its Aeolus satellite to undertake evasive maneuvers and avoid crashing into "Starlink 44," one of the first 60 satellites in the megaconstellation. The agency took action after learning from the U.S. military that the probability of a collision was 1 in 1,000 - 10 times higher than ESA's threshold for conducting a collision-avoidance maneuver.

What SpaceX plans to do

SpaceX has stated that it will work with organizations and space agencies to mitigate the impacts of its megaconstellation and has continued its deployment of Starlink. The company launched a second batch of satellites in November 2019 and a third in January 2020, and it expects to begin broadband internet service by the end of 2020.

SpaceX has tried to assuage astronomers' concerns over Starlink's effect on the night sky. In the January 2020 batch, one Starlink satellite, called DarkSat, was painted in an experimental partially black coating designed to reduce its brightness.

"SpaceX is absolutely committed to finding a way forward so our Starlink project doesn't impede the value of the research you all are undertaking," Patricia Cooper, SpaceX's vice president of satellite government affairs, told astronomers at a January 2020 meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, Nature reported.

But the huge numbers of satellites in megaconstellations from SpaceX and other private space companies, such as OneWeb, suggest that these issues will continue, and advocates have called for greater regulations from government agencies.
Additional resources:
"Here is a gift for the leaders of the world, a task more non-partisan than any other which has come before: protect our skies," stargazer Arwen Rimmer wrote in The Space Review, a weekly online publication devoted to essays and commentary about space, in early 2020.

Watch this video describing the Starlink satellite project, from SpaceX.

Read how astrophysicist Ethan Siegel thinks SpaceX can fix the damage Starlink satellites are causing to astronomy, published in Forbes.

Follow the #starlink hashtag on Twitter to catch the latest news and opinions about Starlink.

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Starlink: SpaceX's satellite internet project

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Starlink is the name of a satellite network that the private spaceflight company SpaceX is developing to provide low-cost internet to remote locations. While SpaceX eventually hopes to have as many as 12,000 satellites in this so-called megaconstellation, the size and scale of the project have flustered astronomers and amateur skywatchers, who fear that the bright, orbiting objects will interfere with observations of the universe.

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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is starting a private space company called Privateer.

The company has been founded alongside Alex Fielding, who was a member of the first iMac team and founded "Wheels of Zeus" ('WoZ') in 2002 - a company that created wireless location trackers - but it is unclear exactly what the company will do.

Privateer's website is currently in "stealth mode", with more details to be revealed at the AMOS (Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance) 2021 conference, which starts today.

Mr Wozniak also shared a short video - a compilation of various space developments over time with inspirational voice over and music - that says that it's "up to us to do what is right and what is good ... so the next generation can be better together", alongside other generic platitudes.

Many private space companies, such as Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, are attempting to push space travel for private citizens, such as SpaceX's Inspiration4 voyage. Privateer, however, appears to be focused on space debris, which is becoming a major problem around the Earth.

In a press release for a 3D titanium alloy printer, spotted by Gizmodo, Privateer is described as a "satellite company focused on monitoring and cleaning up objects in space", with Mr Wozniak quoted as saying that "the team at Privateer Space will be able to achieve the affordability and lightweighting capabilities needed to pave the way for our satellite design and launch."

The number of active and defunct satellites around the Earth has increased from 3300 to over 7600 in the last decade, and that number could grow to as many as 100,000 satellites before 2030.

Such a substantial increase runs the risk predicted in 1978 by Nasa scientist Donald Kessler: that the domino effect of such an event could create an impenetrable layer of debris that would make terrestrial space launches impossible - essentially trapping us on Earth.

Earlier this month, a group of former astronauts, international space agencies, Nobel Laureates, and government officials across the world signed an open letter to stop anti-satellite weapons (ASAT) testing in order to try and hamper this eventuality.

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Apple co-founder announces private space company to clean space debris

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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is starting a private space company called Privateer. The company has been founded alongside Alex Fielding, who was a member of the first iMac team and founded "Wheels of Zeus" ('WoZ') in 2002 - a company that created wireless location trackers - but it is unclear exactly what the company will do.

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In-space manufacturing continues to drive progress for satellite development and beyond

The MakerSat-1 structure was printed in 2017 aboard ISS by the MIS Additive Manufacturing Facility.

Last month, the MakerSat-1 CubeSat, which is made of parts 3D printed aboard the International Space Station (ISS), was released alongside other experimental nanosatellites from a Northrop Grumman Cygnus craft.

MakerSat-1, a CubeSat designed by Northwest Nazarene University (NNU) students, was printed and assembled by astronauts on orbit. The satellite's frame was 3D printed on the ISS in 2017 by the Made In Space Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF). The mission is the first demonstration of an object 3D printed in orbit being implemented into a functioning satellite.

MakerSat-1 will provide important insight into how radiation in space affects the durability of 3D printed plastic. The nanosatellite began sending data to ground teams shortly after its release.

The NNU team is thankful that after persevering for five years, the MakerSat-1 additively in-space manufactured CubeSat, with parts that were 3D-printed by Made In Space, is performing well in its orbital polymer science mission! It is exciting to open the door to future additively-manufactured spacecraft and space structures.
Stephen Parke, Lead Principal Investigator

This is not the first time NNU and MIS have worked together. MakerSat-0, the precursor to MakerSat-1, was launched in November 2017 and collected real-time data on the space environment's effect on 3D printed polymer materials. Studying the degradation of these materials in space could inform decisions about materials to use for manufacturing larger structures in the future.

The MakerSat-1 CubeSat, photo courtesy Stephen Parke, NNU

Adding value through additive manufacturing
As seen with the MakerSat-1 mission, AMF is able to manufacture the structural frame of CubeSats in space. Once additional hardware components arrive at ISS, CubeSats can be assembled quickly by astronauts before the devices are deployed. MIS is developing new capabilities that would enable printing of electronics on orbit, alleviating the need for those CubeSat components to be launched.

3D printing in space enables customization and printing on-demand, features that can solve many of the challenges faced by deep space exploration missions, both short and long-term. AMF reduces the wait time for mission critical assets from months to hours. It also eliminates the need for a rocket to transport, lowering mission cost.
A critical asset for deep space exploration
The value of on-orbit manufacturing for space exploration has been demonstrated for the past six years on the International Space Station with MIS partnering with NASA to lead this innovation. MakerSat-1 is another example of how 3D printing on orbit can be used to create and optimize additional assets. Additionally, medical devices, replacement parts and other objects have all been printed on the space station, further validating the necessity of 3D printing capabilities for exploration missions.

As we venture further away from low Earth orbit, to destinations like the Moon and Mars , local manufacturing will be an increasingly important component of mission design and infrastructure to mitigate risk, maximize resource utilization and make missions safer and more cost-effective. The adaptability of the current manufacturing capabilities on ISS is a positive indicator of how these technologies can augment new infrastructure and platforms to enable sustainable exploration.

Relevant News: https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/02/03/cygnus-departs-space-station-deploys-cubesats/

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Satellite Parts 3D Printed On ISS Deployed in Functioning Satellite | Made In Space

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Last month, the MakerSat-1 CubeSat, which is made of parts 3D printed aboard the International Space Station (ISS), was released alongside other experimental nanosatellites from a Northrop Grumman Cygnus craft. MakerSat-1, a CubeSat designed by Northwest Nazarene University (NNU) students, was printed and assembled by astronauts on orbit.

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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nDfk9wdE482saQgHPix_p2wBP8LFuiGbetFDEK01HVE/edit#gid=0

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WASHINGTON - A startup developing a balloon-borne small launch vehicle has gone into "hibernation" after struggling to raise money, a fate that may be facing many other companies in the sector.

In a March 13 letter to the company's investors and other associates, Leo Aerospace said challenges raising funding and concerns about market timing led the startup to decide to suspend operations, with the understanding that it may never resume work.

"Yes, we have decided to shut things down for the time being," Dane Rudy, co-founder and chief executive of Leo Aerospace, confirmed in a March 16 email. "Funding was a major component."

In the letter, the California company said it struggled to raise money from outside investors. "Fundraising proves increasingly difficult as investors place greater emphasis on revenue-generating businesses with shorter time horizons," the company stated. In addition, the company had yet to receive a decision on a U.S. Air Force Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant it applied for last year. "After a four-month delay, we are at the end of our financial capacity."

A second factor, the company said in the letter, was that its plans to offer dedicated launches of very small satellites might be too far ahead of market demand. "Although growing at an incredible rate, our customers are early-on in a nascent market that continues to mature. Looking objectively at our timing, we believe that our focus on servicing such a specific niche is early."

Leo Aerospace was developing a small launch system designed to place up to 25 kilograms into a sun-synchronous orbit. The company's launch vehicle would use solid-propellant motors for its first two stages and a storable liquid propellant upper stage. The company planned to commercially source those propulsion systems.

What set the company apart is that the rocket would launch from a balloon flying at an altitude of about 18,000 meters. That concept, called a "rockoon," dates back to the early Space Age, but struggled because of the challenges of controlling the launch platform. Leo Aerospace said it had developed proprietary technology that provided a stable platform for the rocket, which after launch could descend back to Earth for reuse. The company also said the platform, known as Regulus, could also be used for supporting suborbital launches as well as high-altitude payloads.

In an October 2019 presentation at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Leo Aerospace said it would perform its first orbital launch in 2022. The company estimated that it would need to raise "low tens of millions" of dollars to get to that point. It hasn't disclosed how much money it had raised, although records filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission state that, as of early 2019, the company had raised less than half a million dollars.

Leo Aerospace was one of many dozens of companies pursuing small launch vehicles. The number of companies far exceeded any projections of demand for their vehicles, leading to belief among both industry executives and investors that a shakeout was inevitable.

"If you invest in one of the 40 ventures that are trying to build a rocket, why would your one of the 40 be the one that's going to win?" said Mark Rigolle, chief executive of satellite constellation startup KLEO Connect, during a panel discussion at the Satellite 2020 conference March 9.

Others on the panel said that venture capital firms may decide to stop supporting space startups in general that have limited prospects but still require significant additional funding. "I've been saying for the past year that we're at a breakpoint for a lot of the startup companies," said Chris Quilty, president of Quilty Analytics. "For those companies that have not been performing or hitting their expectations, I think there will be an opportunity where a lot of these VCs will just pull the plug."

Leo Aerospace did not cite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as a reason it was suspending operations. However, Sequoia Capital, a leading VC firm, called the outbreak the "black swan" of 2020, with unpredictable effects on the market. In a memo to its portfolio companies March 5, it warned that financing could be difficult if the pandemic causes a financial crisis.

"Private financings could soften significantly, as happened in 2001 and 2009. What would you do if fundraising on attractive terms proves difficult in 2020 and 2021?" the company stated in its memo. Since the publication of that memo, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a leading barometer of the overall stock market, has dropped by more than 20%.

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Small launch startup Leo Aerospace suspends operations - SpaceNews

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WASHINGTON - A startup developing a balloon-borne small launch vehicle has gone into "hibernation" after struggling to raise money, a fate that may be facing many other companies in the sector.

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LOGAN, Utah - No one has ever built a satellite in space, but thanks in part to a team of students from Idaho, that could soon change.

Other teams are building miniaturized satellites to look for missing sources of mass around our Milky Way galaxy, or find out how much deadly ultraviolet radiation hits alien planets, or zoom past Mars and track a bigger spacecraft as it descends to the Red Planet's surface.

Those are just a few of the science experiments detailed over the weekend here at the AIAA / Utah State University Conference on Small Satellites, better known as SmallSat.

SmallSat has become more of a big deal, thanks to the growing popularity and capability of pint-sized satellites that measure as little as 4 inches (10 centimeters) on a side. The 10-centimeter CubeSat specifications were established by Cal Poly and Stanford in 1999 to standardize the development of experimental nanosatellites by engineering students.

Back then, SmallSat was a small affair at Utah State, drawing hundreds of attendees in a good year. In contrast, this year's attendance is expected to break last year's record-setting turnout of 2,500 students, teachers, researchers and business leaders.

Many of the presentations at this weekend's workshops had to do with the technical points of nanosatellite design and operation, such as how to shrink an attitude control system into a box only a couple of inches wide. Others looked at lessons learned in a field where more than 20 percent of satellites are "dead on arrival" when they reach orbit.

But a good number of the presentations focused on ambitious scientific applications for CubeSats. Here's a look at four projects that are under way or being planned:

Students from Northwest Nazarene University in Idaho worked with San Francisco-based Made In Space on a 4-inch-wide satellite that tested how four different types of 3-D printer feedstock did in the vacuum of space. MakerSat-0 was launched last November from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base as a secondary payload aboard a Delta 4 rocket last November. Despite power-system problems, the satellite returned useful data about the rate of mass loss, which will be factored into follow-up experiments.

The project is meant to pioneer a manufacturing system in which satellite frames could be 3-D printed on the International Space Station, lightweight electronics could be sent up on a cargo ship, and astronauts could put together finished satellites for deployment into orbit. MakerSat-1, the next planned payload, could be "the first satellite ever manufactured in space," said Northwest Nazarene senior Connor Nogales, one of the project leaders.

"You can make the structure of your satellite, and maybe more parts of your satellite, much lighter with a much more efficient design," Nogales said. "Obviously you would save money."

Most of the universe is a mystery to us, in the form of dark energy and dark matter. But there seems to be something amiss about "ordinary" matter as well. When observations are matched up with the leading theory about cosmic composition, physicists can't account for 30 to 40 percent of the universe's baryonic matter, which comes in the form of such particles as protons and neutrons.

HaloSat, which was deployed into orbit from the space station last month, is equipped with three X-ray detectors to look for what's expected to be the signature of that missing matter in a hot halo that surrounds our Milky Way galaxy.

"We also want to have a certain understanding in which form this halo is - whether it's kind of diffuse ... or maybe it's more compact," said Anna Zajczyk, a member of the HaloSat team at the University of Iowa. The X-ray signature would lend support to the view that hot galactic halos account for most or all of the missing mass.

The Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat, or SPARCS, is designed to measure ultraviolet emissions from M-dwarf stars, also known as red dwarfs, using a 3.6-inch-wide (9-centimeter-wide) telescope that's "nothing short of revolutionary," said David Ardila, a member of the SPARCS team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The project is led by scientists from Arizona State University, but also involves researchers from JPL as well as the University of Washington, the University of Arizona, Lowell Observatory and the Southwest Research Institute.

SPARCS will be able to track radiation flares from M-dwarf stars for weeks at a time, providing data that can be used to assess the habitability of any planets orbiting those stars. That's a biggie, because M-dwarfs are thought to be a fertile field for exoplanets.

"What is the largest flare that has been produced? Is most of the energy in high flares, or is most of the energy in little flares that are very common?" Ardila said. "If you don't know what the activity is ... you are not going to understand what that means."

Two of the stars of the CubeSat show are MarCO-A and MarCO-B, also known as EVE and WALL-E, which are flying toward a November rendezvous with Mars in company with NASA's InSight lander. MarCO is short for Mars Cube One, and the $18.5 million piggyback mission is meant to test its CubeSat-sized communications system and thruster system. As they fly past Mars, the MarCO satellites will send progress reports about InSight's entry, descent and landing.

JPL's Anne Marinan, a member of the MarCO team, said the satellites are performing well halfway through their 6.5-month cruise to Mars. No uncommanded data resets have occurred, and the mission team has been able to cope with the effects of a leaky thruster valve on MarCO-B. "To date, we've downlinked hundreds of megabytes of data from the spacecraft, and that number gets higher and higher every day," Marinan said.

NASA's first interplanetary CubeSat mission is currently due to end after November's flyby, but Marinan said she and her colleagues are hoping for an extension. "Budget and personnel and interest," she said. "If those all align, then we would definitely love to keep flying the MarCO mission as long as possible, to gather more data and see when they fail and what causes it."
Stay tuned for further reports from GeekWire as the SmallSat Conference continues in Logan, Utah.

This year's GeekWire Summit will bring together some of the brightest minds in technology, business, science and entrepreneurship including Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, singer & entrepreneur Ciara, Angel investor & former CEO of Zillow Spencer Rascoff, and more. Experience the 2021 GeekWire Summit in-person at Block 41 in downtown Seattle, or tune-in virtually. Purchase tickets today!

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How small satellites tackle big challenges, from orbital manufacturing to exoplanets

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LOGAN, Utah - No one has ever built a satellite in space, but thanks in part to a team of students from Idaho, that could soon change. Other teams are building miniaturized satellites to look for missing sources of mass around our Milky Way galaxy, or find out how much deadly ultraviolet radiation hits alien planets, or zoom past Mars and track a bigger spacecraft as it descends to the Red Planet's surface.

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Our Sun is a 4.5 billion-year-old yellow dwarf star - a hot glowing ball of hydrogen and helium - at the center of our solar system. It's about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from Earth and it's our solar system's only star. Without the Sun's energy, life as we know it could not exist on our home planet.

10 things

The part of the Sun we see from Earth - the part we call the surface - is the photosphere. The Sun doesn't actually have a solid surface because it's a ball of plasma.

The Sun would have been surrounded by a disk of gas and dust early in its history when the solar system was first forming 4.6 billion years ago. Some of that dust is still around today, in several dust rings that circle the Sun. They trace the orbits of planets, whose gravity tugs dust into place around the Sun.

As a star, the Sun doesn't have any moons, but the planets and their moons orbit the Sun.

Once material leaves the corona at supersonic speeds, it becomes the solar wind, which forms a huge magnetic "bubble" around the Sun, called the heliosphere. The heliosphere extends beyond the orbit of the planets in our solar system. Thus, Earth exists inside the Sun's atmosphere. Outside the heliosphere is interstellar space.

In one of the Sun's biggest mysteries, the corona is much hotter than the layers immediately below it. (Imagine walking away from a bonfire only to get warmer.) The source of coronal heating is a major unsolved puzzle in the study of the Sun.

Solar activity can release huge amounts of energy and particles, some of which impact us here on Earth. Much like weather on Earth, conditions in space - known as space weather - are always changing with the Sun's activity. "Space weather" can interfere with satellites, GPS, and radio communications. It also can cripple power grids, and corrode pipelines that carry oil and gas.

Another solar flare on March 13, 1989, caused geomagnetic storms that disrupted electric power transmission from the Hydro Québec generating station in Canada, plunging 6 million people into darkness for 9 hours. The 1989 flare also caused power surges that melted power transformers in New Jersey.

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From our vantage point on Earth, the Sun may appear like an unchanging source of light and heat in the sky. But the Sun is a dynamic star, constantly changing and sending energy out into space. The science of studying the Sun and its influence throughout the solar system is called heliophysics.

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Origins of the Universe 101 | National Geographic

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Sept 10 (Reuters) - Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc (SPCE.N) on Friday flagged a delay to its first commercial research mission with the Italian Air Force to mid-October due to a potential manufacturing defect.

The company also attributed the delay in the mission, named "Unity 23", to the pending resolution of a probe by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Virgin Galactic said on Friday a third-party supplier warned of a potential manufacturing defect in a component of the flight control system during test flight preparations.

"At this point, it is not yet known whether the defect is present in the company's vehicles and what, if any, repair work may be needed," the company said, adding it was conducting inspections with the vendor.

The mission was initially set for late September or early October to carry three paying crew members from the Italian Air Force and the Rome-based government agency National Research Council. read more

The FAA is investigating the flight that took billionaire Richard Branson to space in July, and last week barred SpaceShipTwo flights until the agency approves the final mishap report or determines the issues do not affect public safety. read more

Reporting by Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Virgin Galactic sees delay to space mission with Italian Air Force

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Sept 10 (Reuters) - Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc (SPCE.N) on Friday flagged a delay to its first commercial research mission with the Italian Air Force to mid-October due to a potential manufacturing defect. The company also attributed the delay in the mission, named "Unity 23", to the pending resolution of a probe by the U.S.

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WASHINGTON - NASA has selected SpaceX to launch the last in a series of geostationary weather satellites that had previously been launched by United Launch Alliance.

NASA announced Sept. 10 that it awarded a contract to SpaceX for the Falcon Heavy launch of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) U spacecraft. The launch is scheduled for April 2024 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The agency said the contract is valued at $152.5 million.

GOES-U is the fourth and final satellite in the GOES-R series of satellites, which monitor terrestrial and space weather from geostationary orbit. GOES-R launched in November 2016 and was renamed GOES-16, operating from the GOES East slot at 75 degrees west in GEO. GOES-S launched in March 2018 and became GOES-17, operating from the GOES West slot at 137 degrees west. GOES-T is scheduled to launch in January 2022 and will replace GOES-17 because of problems with that satellite's main instrument, the Advanced Baseline Imager.

GOES-R and GOES-S each launched on an Atlas 5, and GOES-T is scheduled to launch on an Atlas 5. The NASA contract announcement did not disclose the reason for selecting SpaceX to launch GOES-U. The value of the GOES-U contract is slightly less than the award made to ULA in December 2019 for the GOES-T launch, $165.7 million.

ULA spokesperson Jessica Rye said the company withdrew its bid to launch GOES-U because it did not have any Atlas 5 vehicles available. "All of the remaining 29 rockets have been sold to customers for future launches so we had to withdraw our bid for NASA's GOES-U launch service," she said.

ULA is preparing to transition to the Vulcan Centaur rocket, whose inaugural launch is now scheduled for 2022. Tory Bruno, chief executive of ULA, has said recently the company is no longer offering the Atlas 5 after a final series of contracts announced earlier this year, such as an order for nine Atlas 5 launches by Amazon in April to launch part of its Project Kuiper broadband constellation.

During a panel at the Satellite 2021 conference Sept. 9, Bruno said the company did not expect to order additional Russian-built RD-180 engines used in the Atlas 5 first stage. "I have purchased all the RD-180s we require for the Atlas 5," he said. "There are 29 Atlases left. All of those RD-180s are safely ensconced in a warehouse in Alabama. I believe that is more than I need to transition smoothly to Vulcan."

The GOES-U win adds to a growing backlog of Falcon Heavy launches for SpaceX. In July, NASA awarded SpaceX a contract for the launch of the Europa Clipper mission to the icy, potentially habitable moon of Jupiter, also scheduled for 2024. Other NASA awards include the Psyche asteroid mission, the first two elements of the lunar Gateway and the Gateway Logistics Services contract, where SpaceX will use the Falcon Heavy for two launches of Dragon XL spacecraft to transport cargo to the lunar Gateway.

SpaceX also won a Falcon Heavy contract from Astrobotic in April to launch its Griffin lunar lander carrying NASA's VIPER rover as part of the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Falcon Heavy is part of SpaceX's National Security Space Launch Phase 2 contract awarded in August 2020, making the vehicle eligible for future national security launches.

Falcon Heavy has launched three times, all successfully, but the last launch was the Space Test Program 2 mission in June 2019. The next Falcon Heavy launch, on a U.S. Space Force mission designated USSF-44, is scheduled for no earlier than Oct. 9.

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SpaceX wins contract to launch weather satellite after ULA withdraws - SpaceNews

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WASHINGTON - NASA has selected SpaceX to launch the last in a series of geostationary weather satellites that had previously been launched by United Launch Alliance. NASA announced Sept. 10 that it awarded a contract to SpaceX for the Falcon Heavy launch of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) U spacecraft.

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Earth, in all its beauty, is just our starting place. Blue Origin is opening the promise of space to all.

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Curiosity is finishing up at "Glasgow," having spent almost exactly one month here. A decision will be made shortly whether to do another drill hole nearby, or possibly back at "Glen Etive," or forego another drill operation. The drill material would be used for a wet chemistry experiment by SAM before Curiosity leaves the clay-bearing unit. Once all the drilling is finished, Curiosity is scheduled to hit the road (in this case only figuratively, since no roads exist on Mars) toward the sulfate unit.

Meanwhile, it's that time of the Mars year (southern spring) when we expect more dust storm activity. The last Mars global dust storm started almost exactly two Earth years ago, and knocked out the plucky Opportunity rover. The reduction of sunlight during that dust storm, which grew to become global, was too much for that solar-powered rover. Fortunately, Curiosity had no issues, thanks to its nuclear power pack. Even so, global storms - which only occur in about one in three Mars years - are fascinating events to study, as we still don't fully understand how they begin or how they grow to become global. So the team has been watching for signs of another global storm by making more frequent measurements of 'tau' (the opacity of the dust column above the rover) and other indicators of local dust activity, and also by checking the shape of the daily pressure cycle, which is very sensitive to the planet-wide dust distribution. Over the weekend, tau rose slightly, but this sort of variability is typical of the past few months. It's still within normal seasonal values and does not indicate a major dust storm is beginning. The accompanying image is a horizon view from Sol 2772 showing decreased visibility inside the crater due to increased dust levels.

Never daunted by a little dust, Curiosity is busy packing in the last activities at "Glasgow." We are planning three sols of activity, and every single instrument gets in on the act. APXS will do an evening analysis of the dump pile, and an overnight observation of the drill tailings, with follow-up MAHLI images. ChemCam and Mastcam will do observations of "Hiort" and "Fishnish." ChemCam will take an RMI mosaic of "Ptarmigan," which is another view of the top of "Tower Butte." Mastcam will take a Sun tau measurement, and will take a multispectral image of the "Glasgow" dump pile. It will also image "Salmons Burn," a possible meteorite. MARDI will take an image of the ground below the rover, and Navcam will take dust-devil movies. CheMin and SAM both have activities supporting their experiments. DAN, REMS, and RAD will also take data.

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Mission Updates | Mission - NASA's Mars Exploration Program

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Curiosity is finishing up at "Glasgow," having spent almost exactly one month here. A decision will be made shortly whether to do another drill hole nearby, or possibly back at "Glen Etive," or forego another drill operation. The drill material would be used for a wet chemistry experiment by SAM before Curiosity leaves the clay-bearing unit.

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StarTalk Radio Show by Neil deGrasse Tyson

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About This Episode

How long would it take to cook a pizza outside on Venus? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice discuss the physics of surface temperature, the size of ~wAvEs~, and the meaning of horsepower. How many horses would you need to get to space?

What is temperature in the world of physics? We explore the temperature of light and how thermometers sense heat. How can you tell the temperature if you don't have any particles? How long would it take to cook a pizza on a windowsill on Venus? We calculate just how long it would take and what sort of factors you need to take into account while making the perfect Venusian pizza pie. How does what you're wearing impact your temperature? We talk about light absorption, the hottest parts of Earth's atmosphere, and what's going on in the ozone layer.

What are the wavelength sizes on the electromagnetic spectrum? What's a wavicle? Find out about wave-particle duality and how the human body detects different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Can our bodies sense more than just visible light? Discover microwaves and radio waves. How do we pick up on these types of waves? How do antennae work? We discuss the holes in your kitchen microwave and how electron microscopes work. How can we see something smaller than visible light?

We hop in our horseless carriages and take a ride down what it means for something to have horsepower. What is the power of one horse? We break down engines and the different metrics used to measure their power. What about watts? How much horsepower does a NASA shuttle rocket engine have? What would it take to get millions of horses to run fast enough to get into orbit? We discuss how the power of atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs are quantified. Exploding horses? Death stars? All that and more, on another Things You Thought You Knew edition of StarTalk!

Thanks to our Patrons Kyle W Odren, Frank Kotarski, John Pologruto, Corina Szabo, Shera, Bogdan Pop, Corey McKinney, Matthew Lichtenstein, and Richie Damiani for supporting us this week.

NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free.

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Things You Thought You Knew - Venus Pizza - StarTalk Radio

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How long would it take to cook a pizza outside on Venus? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice discuss the physics of surface temperature, the size of ~wAvEs~, and the meaning of horsepower. How many horses would you need to get to space?