|  Jeff Foust, COLORADO SPRINGS — The most contentious nomination process for a NASA administrator in the agency's six-decade history came to an end April 19 when the Senate voted to confirm Jim Bridenstine.
The Senate voted 50–49 to confirm Bridenstine, a Republican congressman from Oklahoma, as the agency's 13th administrator. The party-line vote for a NASA administrator is unprecedented, as past administrators have been confirmed by the Senate with little or no dissent.
The vote brought an end to a nomination process unlike any other since NASA was established in 1958. The White House formally nominated Bridenstine for the position Sept. 1 after a months-long search during which he was widely seen as a front-runner. The nomination had the support of much of the space industry.
| | |  Jeff Foust, COLORADO SPRINGS — A SpaceX Falcon 9 successfully launched a NASA science mission April 18 that will look for planets orbiting other stars.
The Falcon 9 lifted off on schedule at 6:51 p.m. Eastern from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch was scheduled for April 16 but postponed because of a guidance, navigation and control problem with the launch vehicle.
The launch, the eighth SpaceX mission of 2018, included a successful landing of the rocket's first stage on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
| | |  Jeff Foust, COLORADO SPRINGS — The chief executive of Blue Origin says he expects the company's BE-4 engine to complete qualification testing by the end of the year as the company ramps up work on its New Glenn orbital rocket.
In an April 19 interview during the 34th Space Symposium here, Bob Smith said testing of the BE-4 engine, which uses methane and liquid oxygen propellants, was going well as the company stepped through a methodical process of increased durations and thrust levels.
"We continue to roll through our test program and hope to qualify that engine by the end of the year," he said. | | |  Debra Werner, COLORADO SPRINGS — Future private space stations may be sponsored by major corporations, which prompted a spirited discussion during a panel on the future of low Earth orbit at the 34th Space Symposium here.
"I don't want the Taco Bell International Space Station," said Erin MacDonald, modeling and simulation engineer for Engility's Space and Mission Systems Group. "I think it goes against what the public perceives the space station is supposed to be like."
While the International Space Station is unlikely to be rebranded by Taco Bell or any other corporation, if a new commercial space station is "paid for by Taco Bell, it will be the Taco Bell Space Station," said Benjamin Reed, deputy director for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Satellite Servicing Projects Division.
| | |  Debra Werner, COLORADO SPRINGS — As the competition for the U.S. Air Force next generation weather satellite heats up, Harris Corp. is highlighting the virtues of an updated version of its legacy sensor, the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR).
"We have been trying to help the Air Force meet its mission needs for cloud characterization and theater weather imagery for the specific orbit the Air Force needs," said Eric Webster, Harris Environmental Solutions vice president for business development.
The Air Force has two weather sensor initiatives underway. Under the first one, known as Operationally Responsive Space-8, the service plans to award a contract in 2018 for a small weather satellite to launch around 2022. Under a separate program, Weather Satellite Follow-on electro optical infrared, or WSF-E, the Air Force is expected to spend approximately $450 million on a satellite to begin flying in the early morning orbit in 2024 and associated ground systems.
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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 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced a prize competition April 18 to demonstrate the ability to rapidly launch small satellites, a competition whose regulatory challenges may tower over its technical ones.
The DARPA Launch Challenge, formally announced at the 34th Space Symposium here but previewed at a February conference, will offer a top prize of $10 million to the team whose vehicle is able to perform two launches of small satellites, from two different sites, on short notice.
As currently envisioned, the competition will have teams perform a first launch in late 2019. The location of the launch site will be announced only weeks in advance, and teams will have only days to integrate and launch the DARPA-provided payload.
| | |  Milton "Skip" Smith — At the recent FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, if you were given a dollar every time the term "public-private partnership" was mentioned, you could have broken even on the annual gathering's increasingly substantial registration fee. Such partnerships, known as P3s, are alliances between a government entity and private enterprise to accomplish a common purpose.
P3s have been used fairly extensively and effectively for funding space activities, and P3s are attracting even more attention as sources of public financing grow scarce. It is inevitable that P3s will play a large role in future space activities.
It's time to examine the best practices and lessons learned from decades of experience with terrestrial infrastructure P3 projects and evaluate how best to adapt them to major space projects going forward, including projects with international participation.
| | |  Brian Berger, COLORADO SPRINGS — Cosine Measurement Systems on April 19 released the first images from its HyperScout miniaturized hyperspectral camera flying since February on the experimental GomX-4B nanosatellite.
The camera, developed by an international consortium led by the Dutch company Cosine, separates light into 45 wavelengths, a treasure trove of information for managing irrigation, monitoring fire hazards and detecting floods, among other change-detection applications.
The host satellite, built by Danish cubesat specialist GomSpace, is a so-called 6U cubesat measuring 20x30x10 centimeters and weighing roughly eight kilograms. In addition to HyperScout, the European Space Agency-sponsored GomX-4B satellite also carries a miniaturized startracker for Innovative Solutions in Space, aircraft- and ship-tracking antennas developed by GomSpace and an ESA radiation hardening experiment.
| | |  Sandra Erwin — Swiss aerospace firm Ruag is a major supplier of components to the U.S. space industry. In anticipation of more business from rocket and satellite manufacturers, the company is ramping up investments in its U.S. operations in Alabama, Florida and in a research center in California's Silicon Valley.
Ruag space revenues last year were around $380 million, one third of which came from U.S. sales. "Going forward, it is in the U.S. where we see most room for growth," CEO Peter Guggenbach told SpaceNews.
He noted that Switzerland is the sixth biggest foreign investor in the United States.
"Looking forward, we want to be the first choice supplier to satellite constellations," he said. The company specializes in hardware such as structures, thermal insulation, dispensers and ground support equipment. To increase its footprint in the space sector, it just announced a new line of on-board computers and electronics aimed at commercial satellites.
| | |  Debra Werner, COLORADO SPRINGS — York Space Systems, a Denver-based satellite manufacturer, announced plans April 18 to work with Swiss satellite and rocket component supplier Ruag Space on payload adapters for its satellites.
"We've worked with York on a payload adapter for a small satellite mission," Magnus Engström, Ruag head of marketing sales, told SpaceNews at the 34th Space Symposium here. "This is an off-the-shelf commodity we are supplying for the small launch industry."
Ruag plans to supply the new payload adapter for York's Harbinger Mission scheduled to launch later this year. Harbinger is designed to demonstrate York's S-Class platform, a three-axis stabilized spacecraft for payloads of 85 kilograms or less.
| | |  Jeff Foust — As NASA shifts its human spaceflight program towards a return to the moon, the programs supporting that new direction are creating opportunities for science both on and around the moon.
The agency's fiscal year 2019 budget proposal unveiled what NASA calls its "Exploration Campaign," which features a set of interrelated programs devoted to enabling a human presence in cislunar space and, eventually, on the lunar surface. Those initiatives range from the development of progressively larger lunar landers to the study of lunar samples that have remained sealed since collected during the Apollo program.
| | |  Caleb Henry, WASHINGTON — Russia's Proton rocket launched for the first time this year April 18 with a military communications satellite for the federation's ministry of defense.
Liftoff took place from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 6:12 p.m. Eastern. Russian state corporation Roscosmos confirmed separation of the satellite from the rocket's Breeze-M upper stage in its intended orbit approximately 10 hours later.
The federally operated Proton launch, handled by the rocket's manufacturer Khrunichev, carried the second of four Blagovest satellites designed for internet, television and radio services.
| | |  Caleb Henry, WASHINGTON — French fleet operator Eutelsat finished a lengthy 302 million euro ($372.9 million) sale of its stake in Spanish fleet operator Hispasat after gaining long-awaited approval from Spain's government.
The divestiture was first announced last May and expected to close that year, but required approval from Spain's Council of Ministers, which didn't occur until two weeks ago.
Hispasat on April 19 said that Eutelsat's 33.69 percent stake was split between Spanish toll road company Abertis and the Spanish government's Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI).
| | |  Caleb Henry, WASHINGTON — Arianespace on April 19 announced an agreement with Japan's Broadcasting Satellite System Corporation and satellite manufacturer Space Systems Loral to launch the BSAT-4b satellite on an Ariane 5 rocket in 2020.
The agreement follows the launch of BSAT-4a on an Ariane 5 in September 2017.
BSAT is building up its satellite infrastructure ahead of the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, which start in July 2020. Seeking to have BSAT-4b as an in-orbit backup ahead of the games, BSAT picked SSL to build the satellite last month.
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