SpaceNews This Week | Tonight's Minotaur launch rekindles surplus ICBM motor debate

August 25, 2017 View this email in your browser Tonight's Minotaur launch rekindles surplus ICBM motor debate Michael Fabey — As Orbital ATK readies for its first scheduled Minotaur 4 launch from Cape Canaveral tonight, a debate is flaring up again about whether the company should be able to use converted surplus intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) motors to launch commercial satellites. Rekindling the argument is a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released this month examining the pros and cons of such a course and provides plenty of fodder for both sides. While surplus ICBM motors can be used for government launches, the 1998 Commercial Space Act forbids their use for commercial launches. The U.S. Air Force has a stockpile of about 720 surplus motors, the GAO says in its Aug. 16 report, "Surplus Missile Motors, Sale Price Drives Potential Effects on [Defense Department] and Commercial Launch Providers." SEE FULL STORY SpaceNews is establishing an annual awards program this year to recognize individuals, companies and organizations for excellence and innovation.   Winners will be featured in the Dec. 18 issue of SpaceNews. We seek to honor headline-grabbing breakthroughs as well as outside-the-limelight innovations that may have escaped our attention.   A formal announcement on the awards program — including eligibility, criteria, and selection process — will be made in September. SpaceX notches 15th landing after launching overdue Formosat-5 Jeff Foust — A SpaceX Falcon 9 successfully launched a long-delayed remote sensing satellite for the government of Taiwan Aug. 24, executing another first stage landing in the process. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 2:51 p.m. Eastern, at the beginning of a 42-minute launch window. SpaceX reported no technical issues during the countdown, and foggy conditions at the launch site earlier in the morning partially cleared by launch time. The rocket's only payload, the Formosat-5 remote sensing satellite, separated from the upper stage a little more than 11 minutes after launch. The satellite was deployed into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 720 kilometers. SpaceX, during the launch webcast, declared the launch a success. SEE FULL STORY Ukrainian government investigation concludes no engine transfers to North Korea Matthew Bodner — One week after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko ordered his government to investigate claims that North Korea may have procured rocket engines from a Ukrainian missile enterprise, the working group came back with an unambiguous answer: "Ukraine was not involved in the development of North Korea's ballistic missiles program." In a 1,300-word letter addressed to Poroshenko Tuesday, the Secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) Oleksandr Turchynov laid out his government's defense against a controversial New York Times story published last week. That story heavily referenced a report by Michael Elleman of the International Institute of Strategic Studies. In particular, Turchynov's letter addressed head-on the possibility that Ukraine's Yuzhmash rocket company – which built Zenit rockets for Sea Launch and components for Orbital ATK's Antares rockets – was involved in the transfer of Soviet-era RD-250 rocket engines to North Korea for use in the new Hwasong-12 and Hwasong-14 ballistic missiles tested this summer. SEE FULL STORY Descartes Labs raises $30 million for data refinery Debra Werner — Descartes Labs, a startup that specializes in applying machine learning to geospatial data, announced Aug. 24 that it closed a $30 million Series B funding round led by March Capital, a Los Angeles-based venture firm. With the financing, Descartes Labs plans to enhance its "data refinery," the cloud-based supercomputing platform it uses to draw useful information and insight from disparate datasets. A May article in The Economist publicized the idea of data replacing oil as the world's most precious resource and pointed out that like oil data becomes more profitable when it is refined.  "In addition to enhancing our data refinery, we plan on using most of the financing to grow our company," Mark Johnson, Descartes Labs chief executive, told SpaceNews by email. "We're currently at 40 full-time employees and plan to double the team within one to two years." SEE FULL STORY Iceye raises $13 million for radar microsatellites Jeff Foust — Finnish company Iceye announced Aug. 23 that it has raised $13 million to further development of a constellation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) cubesats. Iceye said in a statement that $8.5 million of the new funding came in a financing round led by Draper Nexus, an early-stage venture capital company with offices in California and Japan. Others participating in the round include True Ventures, Lifeline Ventures, Space Angels and Draper Associates. The other $4.5 million came from the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovations, known as Tekes, company spokesperson Aubrey Lerche said in an Aug. 24 email. Tekes funds research and development work by companies and organizations in Finland. The company has raised $18.7 million to date, including funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 program. SEE FULL STORY Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Advertise with Us | Privacy Policy | Subscribe Copyright © 2017 SpaceNews Inc., All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: SpaceNews Inc. 1414 Prince St, Suite 204 Alexandria, VA 22314