| | | | |  Jeff Foust, WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab announced Jan. 11 it plans to make another attempt to launch its Electron small rocket on its second mission later this month.
Rocket Lab said the nine-day launch window for the mission at its New Zealand launch site will open at 2:30 p.m. Jan. 20 local time (8:30 p.m. Jan. 19 Eastern time). There will be a four-hour window each day, opening at the same time, for the launch. The company, headquartered in the United States but with launch and other operations in New Zealand, attempted to carry out the launch during a 10-day window in December. However, several attempts were postponed by poor weather. | | |  Sandra Erwin, WASHINGTON — When a big-ticket military weapon development or procurement goes off the rails for any reason, the Pentagon as a rule does not deflect media questions to the contractor that the government hired to do the work.
So reporters at the Pentagon were shocked on Thursday when the Defense Department's top spokesperson Dana White not only refused to comment on the apparent failure of a secret military space mission codenamed Zuma, but also told a journalist to direct his questions to SpaceX. | | |  Jeff Foust, WASHINGTON — An independent safety panel recommended NASA not certify SpaceX's commercial crew system until the agency better understands the behavior of pressure vessels linked to a Falcon 9 failure in 2016.
That recommendation was one of the stronger items in the annual report of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) released by NASA Jan. 11, which found that NASA was generally managing risk well on its various programs. The report devoted a section to the composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) used to store helium in the second stage propellant tanks of the Falcon 9. The investigation into the September 2016 pad explosion that destroyed a Falcon 9 while being prepared for a static-fire test concluded that liquid oxygen in the tank got trapped between the COPV overwrap and liner and then ignited through friction or other mechanisms. SpaceX has since changed its loading processes to avoid exposing the COPVs to similar conditions, but also agreed with NASA to redesign the COPV to reduce the risk for crewed launches. NASA has since started a "rigorous test program" to understand how the redesigned COPV behaves when exposed to liquid oxygen, the report stated. | | | Sandra Erwin, WASHINGTON — It should be no surprise that China is moving to challenge the United States for dominance in space, cyber, artificial intelligence and other key technologies that have wide national security applications. But the question that is still being debated is whether the United States is taking this threat seriously. This may not be a Sputnik moment, but the United States could soon be unpleasantly surprised as China continues to shore up its domestic capacity to produce high-end weapons, satellites and encryption technologies, a panel of analysts told the House Armed Services emerging threats and capabilities subcommittee. At the Tuesday hearing, Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said lawmakers are not entirely convinced that China's dominance in many technology sectors is a "foregone conclusion." But the committee does believe that China's technological accomplishments should inform U.S. policies and defense investments. | | | Caleb Henry, WASHINGTON — An on-orbit antenna issue identified during testing of the ViaSat-2 high-throughput satellite has Boeing and ViaSat searching for answers. Satellite operator ViaSat said Jan. 9 that the ViaSat-2 satellite launched in June to provide some 300 Gbps of throughput will need additional testing to find what's causing "some spot beams to perform differently than they did during ground testing." Boeing, manufacturer of the ViaSat-2 satellite, is working with ViaSat to identify the problem and find a solution. "Our advanced ground network, coupled with the flexibility features of the ViaSat-2 satellite, will help us manage the impact from the identified antenna issue if needed," Mark Dankberg, ViaSat's chairman and CEO, said in a statement. "We look forward to launching commercial service next month and bringing new higher-speed fixed and mobile services to market." | | | Debra Werner, AUSTIN, Texas – In the future, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may rely on a mix of large government owned and operated satellites, imaging instruments hosted on commercial satellites, small satellites in low Earth orbit and data purchased from commercial firms. That was one of the key findings of an extensive quantitative analysis NOAA's Satellite and Information Service performed over the last two years to identify ways to create an increasingly capable and resilient space-based architecture in light of budget constraints. The NOAA Satellite Observing System Architecture (NSOSA) study evaluated about 100 possible constellations, ranging from continuing its existing model of relying almost exclusively on a handful of large government owned and operated satellites to radical alternatives with swarms of small satellites. | | | Caleb Henry, WASHINGTON — Satellite fleet operator Intelsat kicked off the beginning of a partial constellation replenishment focused on replacing the company's Galaxy line of satellites with a Jan. 8 order to Orbital ATK for the Galaxy-30 satellite. Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital ATK will build Galaxy-30 in anticipation of an early 2020 launch with a yet-to-be-named launch provider. In a prepared statement, Intelsat's senior vice president of space systems Ken Lee said the Galaxy-30 satellite "will be the 11th satellite Orbital ATK has built for Intelsat, and represents the first satellite in the Galaxy fleet replacement program." | | | Jeff Foust, WASHINGTON — The White House formally resubmitted nominations for leaders of both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to the Senate Jan. 8, a procedural move even as the path to their confirmations becomes narrower. The administration announced late Jan. 8 that the nominations of Jim Bridenstine to be administrator of NASA and Barry Myers to be administrator NOAA were being resubmitted to the Senate, along with several dozen other nominees for government positions. Also included in the list was Jeffrey DeWit, who was first nominated Nov. 29 to be chief financial officer of NASA. The resubmitted nominations are a procedural move. The Senate, under its rules, returns nominations to the president at the end of its first session if they have not been either confirmed or rejected by the full Senate, unless the Senate agrees by unanimous consent to keep the nominations active. The president must resubmit the nomination if he still wants the Senate to consider them. | | | Caleb Henry, WASHINGTON — Reusable rocketry in Europe took a step forward last year with a funding boost for Prometheus, a program meant to develop a reusable engine manufacturable at one-tenth the cost of the Ariane 5's first-stage liquid engine. A parallel effort dubbed Callisto could test a European ability to launch, return and refly a rocket from the Guiana Space Centre in South America. The French and German space agencies (CNES and DLR, respectively) have for the past two years collaborated on a scaled-down rocket that would allow Europe to practice different aspects of recovery and reuse. Callisto's first flight is planned for 2020. Callisto officials said the goal of the program is not to create a new vehicle in 2020 — the Ariane 6 is scheduled to debut that same year — but to establish a base of knowledge for future launch vehicles that could, maybe, be reusable. | | | | | | |
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