Mantis Society Study Center: SpaceNews This Week | NASA picks New Frontiers finalists; Tax cut could imperil defense spending hike; Blue Origin a year away from crewed flights

Friday, December 22, 2017

SpaceNews This Week | NASA picks New Frontiers finalists; Tax cut could imperil defense spending hike; Blue Origin a year away from crewed flights

December 22, 2017

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NASA selects comet and Titan missions as New Frontiers finalists

Jeff Foust, DENVER – NASA has selected missions to return samples from a comet and to explore Titan with a drone as finalists for the next New Frontiers medium-class planetary science mission.

The two missions, selected from a pool of 12 proposals and announced by NASA Dec. 20, will receive funding for additional studies through 2018 before NASA picks one of them in the spring of 2019 for full development and launch in 2025.

One, called Comet Astrobiology Exploration SAmple Return, or CAESAR, would visit the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and collect a sample from its nucleus for return to Earth, the first such sample return mission. The mission would be managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center using a spacecraft built by Orbital ATK.

The other, Dragonfly, would send a spacecraft to land on Titan, Saturn's largest moon and a world with a dense atmosphere. That spacecraft, similar to a quadcopter drone, would be able to fly to several locations on the surface, tens to hundreds of kilometers apart, to study its composition and habitability. The mission would be managed by the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) of Johns Hopkins University, which would also build the spacecraft.

Top HASC Democrat warns tax bill effectively kills a military buildup

Sandra Erwin, WASHINGTON — The passage of a $1.5 trillion tax cut deals a devastating blow to future efforts to increase military spending, warned Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.).

The ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee told SpaceNews that the huge tax cut passed on Wednesday with only Republican votes makes it unlikely that leaders will have political capital or ability to support a military buildup. With the appropriations process severely broken and Congress deeply divided over spending priorities, Smith said, the tax cut only adds more poison to the atmosphere.

"I think this tax cut passed today means there is not going to be any significant increases in any spending," let alone the huge boost sought by the Trump administration and the defense committees.

Congress passed a defense policy bill that seeks a large increase in military spending — $634 billion in base defense spending for fiscal year 2018 — which is $30 billion more than the president requested and $85 billion above the spending limit set by the Budget Control Act.

SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell accepts the Corporate Leader of the Year award from SpaceNews staff writer Caleb Henry. Credit: Kate Patterson for SpaceNews

SpaceX takes top honors in SpaceNews Awards for Excellence & Innovation

WASHINGTON — SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell took home two awards at this year's SpaceNews Awards for Excellence & Innovation luncheon.

Shotwell was honored as Corporate Leader of the Year while SpaceX was honored as Company of the Year. SpaceX was also the runner up for Breakthrough of the Year for its successful reuse of the Falcon 9 first stage. The company was named a finalist for Turnaround of the Year for bouncing back from its October 2016 fueling accident to launch 17 times this year, with an 18th launch schedule for the evening of Dec. 22.

Other winners included International Launch Services, Kymeta, Maxar Technologies and Planet. The full list of winners can be found here.

Blue Origin a year away from crewed New Shepard flights

Jeff Foust, BROOMFIELD, Colo. — After carrying out a successful test flight of a new version of its New Shepard suborbital spacecraft, a Blue Origin executive said Dec. 18 that the company was now about a year away from starting to fly people.

Speaking at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) here, Jeff Ashby, a former NASA astronaut who is director of safety and mission assurance for Blue Origin, said the Dec. 12 flight of the vehicle from Blue Origin's test site in West Texas was a major milestone for the company.

That flight featured both a new version of the cylindrical propulsion module as well as "Version 2.0" of its crew capsule, now outfitted with the large windows that are a distinctive feature of the spacecraft. The capsule carried 12 experiments as well as a test dummy, dubbed "Mannequin Skywalker," to measure the environment a human would experience on those flights.

Trump's national security strategy to stress technological innovation

Sandra Erwin, WASHINGTON — President Trump is unveiling a new national security strategy that focuses on ensuring U.S. economic prosperity, defending the homeland and posturing the nation to compete against rising technological powers. In the strategy, the administration coins the phrase "national security innovation base" to describe a key asset that the United States must protect.

The president will roll out the strategy Monday afternoon in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center here. According to a senior administration official, Trump is "excited" about the strategy because it "accurately reflects his priorities."

There are four central themes in the strategy:

Protecting the homeland. This includes securing borders, combating extremists and jihadists, and transnational criminal organizations.

Promoting American prosperity. A broad theme is that economic security is essential to national security, thus the need to protect the "national security innovation base." This is term coined by the administration to capture the "broader ecosystem of activities that we need to make sure we protect so we can innovate," a senior administration official told reporters in a conference call. The strategy emphasizes "preserving our technological lead," the official said. "The national security innovation base needs to be protected."

Preserving peace through strength. The readiness and modernization of the U.S. military are key priorities, in conventional war fighting but also in cyber, space, and nuclear forces. "We are looking at threats posed by competitors in those areas," the official said.

Advancing American influence. The strategy calls for the United States to "find areas of cooperation with both allies and competitors," the official said. "'America first' does not mean America alone." The United States also will change how it promotes international development from a "grant-based mentality" to one that is driven by private-sector activity. Organizations like the United National and NATO are recognized in the strategy. "We believe in the importance of these institutions."