|  Sandra Erwin, COLORADO SPRINGS — Boeing has decided to not challenge Lockheed Martin for the next production lot of up to 22 GPS 3 satellites.
"We have not put in a proposal for GPS 3," said Rico Attanasio, Boeing's director of Department of Defense and civil navigation and communications programs.
Bids were due this week. "As you can imagine, this was a very difficult decision for us," Attanasio told SpaceNews in an interview during the 34th Space Symposium.
| | |  Debra Werner, COLORADO SPRINGS — Open Cosmos, a British startup planning to manufacture and operate inexpensive cubesats, announced April 18 it raised $7 million in Series A funding in an investment round led by London-based BGF Ventures.
With the funding, Open Cosmos plans to expand its staff from 22 to 50 people and to establish new manufacturing facilities to produce 30 satellites per year. The firm currently is based at the European Space Agency's Harwell, England, incubator.
Open Cosmos, a startup founded by Spanish entrepreneur Rafael Jordà Siquier, is marketing four-kilogram cubesats for as little as $700,000, which it plans to deliver to customers within a year.
| | |  Jeff Foust, COLORADO SPRINGS — In his last major speech as NASA's acting administrator before retiring, Robert Lightfoot said he believes the space agency needs to do a better job assessing risks and making decisions in order to carry out its exploration plans.
In a keynote speech at the 34th Space Symposium here April 17, Lightfoot, who is retiring from NASA at the end of the month, said he regretted not doing more during his 15 months as acting head of the space agency to improve how it make decisions.
"I really think what we have to do is get better at assessing risk and decision velocity," he said. "This is an area that, frankly, I didn't make as much progress as I thought I would."
| | |  Sandra Erwin, COLORADO SPRINGS — In a surprise move last month, Congress inserted $600 million into the Pentagon's 2018 budget for the procurement of two Wideband Global Satcom satellites made by Boeing. The company already has produced 10, and is making preparations to begin work on the 11th and 12th satellites.
The production of two new satellites for the Air Force will "move faster" than the typical WGS schedule, said Rico Attanasio, Boeing's director of Department of Defense and civil navigation and communications programs.
"We've been working with the Air Force," he told SpaceNews in an interview at the 34th Space Symposium. "We've been telling them we can go fast. We can move on a commercial timeline."
| | |  Jeff Foust, COLORADO SPRINGS —As Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) prepares its Dream Chaser cargo vehicle for a first launch on an Atlas 5 in late 2020, the company expects to make a decision by the end of this year on the rocket that will launch later missions.
At a briefing during the 34th Space Symposium here April 18, company officials said development of the cargo version of Dream Chaser is on schedule for a first launch in the fourth quarter of 2020. That mission, the first of at least six missions to the International Space Station under a NASA Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract awarded in January 2016, will launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5.
"It is a very well proven rocket. We have a long relationship with United Launch Alliance," said Mark Sirangelo, executive vice president for SNC Space Systems. "We think it is a good way to start."
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Lockheed Martin Space develops best-in-class space architecture, from satellites and ground-based systems to interplanetary and human-rated spacecraft, unlocking the power of space for humanity. | | | |  Jeff Foust, COLORADO SPRINGS — The House Science Committee, after some unusual last-minute drama, approved a NASA authorization bill April 17 that offers more support to the agency's Earth science program.
The committee voted 26–7 to approve H.R. 5503, the NASA Authorization Act of 2018. The bill approved by the committee was an amended version of the one introduced April 13, authorizing funding for fiscal years 2018 and 2019 and including a number of policy provisions.
The markup of the bill, though, was interrupted by a recess — originally planned to last just five minutes but extending for more than a half-hour — where Republican and Democratic leaders of the committee privately discussed changes in the bill. When the markup session resumed, the committee's ranking member, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), expressed her displeasure on how the "deeply flawed" bill was developed.
| | |  Debra Werner, COLORADO SPRINGS — Countries establishing bilateral agreements to share Space Situational Awareness (SSA) data with U.S. Strategic Command hope the deals pave the way for future cooperation, according to speakers at the 34th Space Symposium here.
STRATCOM had established 82 international sharing agreements with nations, companies and intergovernmental organizations prior to the 34th Space Symposium. During the Symposium, STRATCOM plans to sign its 83rd bilateral pact with Denmark, Maj. Gen. Nina Armagno, STRATCOM director of plans and policy, said April 17.
"The purpose of these arrangements is to maintain and share an accurate account for all man-made space objects in order to ensure spaceflight safety for all spacefaring nations," Armagno said. "These agreements bring together our collective knowledge and contribute to the responsible use of space."
| | |  Elżbieta Bieńkowska — Europe is getting stronger and stronger as a global player in space and our two flagship programs, Galileo and Copernicus, are performing even better than we expected. In October 2016, we adopted a space strategy which set the European vision on space. Space matters in Europe and it is a top political priority. But the European Union's efforts to achieve autonomy in space don't mean we act in isolation.
During the extreme hurricane season experienced by the United States in 2017, the EU's Earth-observation program Copernicus turned out to be extremely useful and cooperation between the EU and U.S. went very well thanks to our agreement on data exchange signed in October 2015.
| | |  Sandra Erwin, COLORADO SPRINGS — Lockheed Martin picked a veteran missile defense engineer to lead the company's space research organization known as the Advanced Technology Center, in Palo Alto, California.
Nelson Pedreiro, formerly the chief engineer for strategic and missile defense systems and director of science and technology at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, is replacing Scott Fouse, who recently retired.
The ATC invests in technology that supports the company's military, commercial and civil space portfolio. It is one of Lockheed's major corporate labs, although not as well known as the more famous Skunk Works, which serves the aeronautics branch. The third corporate lab is the Advanced Technology Laboratories in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, known for cyber, materials science, robotics and data analytics.
| | |  Paola Leoni — The population of orbiting satellites has increased steadily in recent years and will skyrocket in the future, thanks to small satellites and megaconstellations. In addition to the stable population of comparatively large satellites in geostationary orbit, some 890 small satellites (weighing 500 kilograms or less) were launched to low Earth orbit between 2007 and 2016. In the coming decade, I estimate, more than 6,000 new smallsats will be orbited.
There's little doubt LEO orbits will become extremely congested, making operations more expensive, complex and dangerous.
Industry and academia, coordinated by the European Space Agency, are working on several innovative and effective solutions to manage the in-orbit debris population, through meeting such as the Clean Space Industrial Days that ESA held in October at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. Several active debris removal, or ADR, solutions have been presented from all European industrial prime contractors, with different spacecraft designs and mission concepts.
| | |  Sandra Erwin, COLORADO SPRINGS — The 18th Space Control Squadron at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, over the past year alerted foreign governments and private companies of more than 300,000 potential collisions in space.
Most recently, the squadron joined forces with space officials from eight nations to deal with the potentially dangerous reentry path of the Chinese space station Tiangong-1.
When it comes to monitoring space for incoming debris or nefarious activities, the more eyes on the sky, the better. "We face a more competitive and dangerous international security environment than we have seen in decades," said Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson. And the United States can't deal with this alone. "Countries with allies thrive, those without, wither," she said Tuesday in a keynote speech at the 34th Space Symposium.
| | |  Sandra Erwin, COLORADO SPRINGS — Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Stephen Kitay says ensuring U.S. leadership in space is a team effort. "We are working whole-of-government policies and strategies, in close partnership with the private sector and our allies," he told SpaceNews.
Top priorities include "protecting and advancing our vital interests in space to considering the future of space traffic management," said Kitay.
DoD is working with the National Space Council, the National Security Council and interagency partners to "advance our space policy priorities," he said. The administration "recognizes the importance of space to our country."
| | |  Caleb Henry, WASHINGTON — A satellite startup that today announced SoftBank, Airbus, Bill Gates and OneWeb founder Greg Wyler as investors says it has plans to field a constellation of hundreds of satellites to provide global video of the Earth, but provided few details on how it will accomplish that goal.
EarthNow spun out of the business incubator Intellectual Ventures last year with a mission to record the planet and provide video in real time to users on the ground. Airbus is the company's manufacturing partner, using production lines made to build thousands of telecom satellites for OneWeb in Toulouse, France and Exploration Park, Florida.
Russell Hannigan, EarthNow's founder and chief executive, told SpaceNews the company will provide 20 frames per second video at a "highly competitive" resolution in full color "and a little bit more."
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