Category: Science

WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic continued its monthly cadence of commercial suborbital spaceflights Oct. 6, carrying three customers that included the first person from Pakistan to go to space.

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo vehicle, VSS Unity, took off from Spaceport America attached to its VMS Eve mothership at 11:28 a.m. Eastern. VSS Unity released from the plane at 12:10 p.m. Eastern, flying to an apogee of 87.5 kilometers before gliding back to a runway landing at the spaceport.

As with the previous flight, Galactic 03 on Sept. 8, Virgin Galactic did not provide a live broadcast, limiting itself to social media updates. Those updates themselves were published on a time delay: one post announcing ignition of the vehicle’s hybrid rocket motor was published at least 12 minutes after ignition, based on the timestamps in the images included with the post.

On board VSS Unity were three customers: Ron Rosano, Treavor Beattie and Namira Salim. The company did not release the customers’ names in advance of the flight, but all three disclosed their participation in the days leading up to the flight.

Rosano is an American who is involved in space education and also works for a property management company. Beattie is a British advertising executive and film producer who, according to a Virgin Galactic biography, accompanied company founder Richard Branson to a SpaceShipOne flight in 2004 and signed up for a Virgin Galactic flight “on the spot.” Salim, an adventurer and entrepreneur, is the first person from Pakistan to go to space, although she now lives in Monaco and Dubai.

VSS Unity was commanded by Kelly Latimer and piloted by CJ Sturckow. Beth Moses, the company’s chief astronaut instructor, also flew in the cabin with the customers, as on Virgin’s previous commercial flights.

The flight was the fourth for VSS Unity since the company started commercial service in late June. The company said it planned to maintain a monthly flight cadence for the foreseeable future, slowly working through its backlog of about 800 customers, some of whom paid deposits for their tickets more than 15 years ago.

“Our teams in New Mexico and California have delivered on our monthly spaceflight objectives,” Michael Colglazier, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, said in a statement after the flight. That statement added the company would turn VSS Unity around for its next flight, Galactic 05, but did not disclose a projected date for it.

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In the aftermath of the collapse of two dams in the Libyan coastal city of Derna, where floodwaters spawned by a powerful storm killed thousands of people, experts in engineering, environmental science, and other fields warn that global infrastructure must be adapted to deal with the climate crisis.

With a seasonal river running through it from the highlands to the south, Libya’s coastal city of Derna always had been vulnerable to flooding.

So, when engineers from the former Yugoslavia built a pair of dams near Derna in the 1970s, residents welcomed the project as a blessing—the protection they so badly needed from dangerous floodwaters that had devastated their lands in years past.

But now, the Mediterranean city of 90,000 is burying its dead after record-breaking rainfall from powerful Storm Daniel produced floodwaters that likely overwhelmed the two dams and led to their collapse.

After the dams failed, a wall of water several stories high ripped through the city, crashing into buildings, washing entire neighborhoods out to sea, and drowning thousands of people. More than 11,000 have died, according to the Libyan Red Crescent, and thousands more are missing. Officials fear the death count could reach 20,000.

In the aftermath of the latest blow to a country that has been mired in conflict and chaos for years, reports have surfaced that the two aging, clay-core embankment dams had not been properly maintained, making it likely they would collapse under intense pressure.

“Right now, that’s the big question—whether the dams were maintained,” says Jean Pierre Bardet, a professor of civil and architectural engineering for the University of Miami College of Engineering. “Dams are supposed to be maintained. It’s like a car—you can have a good design, but if you don’t maintain it, you are going to weaken it. In this case, many people are quick to say the dams were not maintained, but we need to be more patient and not jump too fast until we have more information.”

But whatever the cause of their failure, one thing is clear: From bridges and roads to dams and power plants, extreme weather fueled by climate change poses a serious threat to global infrastructure. This makes it critical for communities to adapt and become more resilient, experts agree.

“[The disaster in Libya] is in part a story about torrential rains dropping historical amounts of water. But it is, like nearly every climate resilience story, also one of a stressed community not having the capacity to account for new climate realities,” says Michael Berkowitz, executive director of the university’s Climate Resilience Academy and the chair in climate resilience.

Before it reached Libya, Storm Daniel transformed into what’s called a “medicane,” a tropical-like cyclone that occasionally forms over the Mediterranean Sea. “They were first formally observed about 40 years ago, but there have been over 100 of them just in the past 70 years or so,” says Brian McNoldy, a tropical cyclone expert and senior research associate at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. “They reach peak intensities of Category 1-2 hurricane equivalent, and they’re infamous for producing devastating flooding because most of the surrounding areas are rather dry.”

Climate change, according to some scientists, will produce more extreme events like Storm Daniel. And as it does, it “will test our historically based design standards,” Berkowitz says. “All communities around the world should be reexamining the design of their critical infrastructure with new and evolving climate projections in mind.”

As climate change intensifies, the importance of climate-proofing both new and existing infrastructure becomes even more critical to maintaining safety, says Katharine Mach, a professor of environmental science and policy at the Rosenstiel School. But while it is easier to integrate climate change mitigation and adaptation measures into new infrastructure, it is more difficult to adjust and adapt existing structures and facilities, she points out.

“Globally, we’ve seen some powerful examples of plans to make sure infrastructure can continue its functioning under continuing climate change,” says Mach, noting the Thames Barrier, the retractable barrier system constructed to protect the floodplain of most of London from high tides and storm surges.

“International development support has been an arena that made early breakthroughs in standards for climate proofing infrastructure investments,” Mach says. “For example, the World Bank innovated approaches to mainstreaming consideration of climate resilience for new projects. These efforts are critical.”

Existing infrastructure must not only be adapted, but also routinely inspected for wear and tear as it ages, stressed Esber Andiroglu, associate professor of practice in the College of Engineering’s civil and architectural engineering department.

“In most developed nations, regulatory agencies typically offer and require routine inspection and evaluation for such structures to ensure public safety and preservation of economic resources invested in such structures,” Andiroglu says. And when defects in infrastructure are found, those agencies implement repairs, he adds.

“Unfortunately, such guidelines and practices are not always in place in other regions across the globe,” he continues. “Libya falls into this category, with much of its built environment having been left unattended since its original construction.”

War and the absence of a central government left Libya with a compromised infrastructure, according to Shouraseni Sen Roy, a professor of geography and sustainable development, who specializes in climate change and geospatial analysis. “It’s a combination of an unstable political environment, crumbling infrastructure, and under preparedness that contributed to this massive disaster,” she says.

More countries, Andiroglu says, need to adopt and adhere to building and construction codes established by the International Code Council, a US-based membership association dedicated to developing model codes and standards in the design, build, and compliance process.

“The increasing frequency of extreme climate events,” he explains, “necessitates more frequent evaluation and retrofit of structures.”

Source: University of Miami

A new heat-resistant membrane could make separating molecules less costly.

Industry has long relied upon energy-intensive processes, such as distillation and crystallization, to separate molecules that ultimately serve as ingredients in medicine, chemicals, and other products.

In recent decades, there has been a push to supplant these processes with membranes, which are potentially a lower-cost and eco-friendly alternative. Unfortunately, most membranes are made from polymers that degrade during use, making them impractical.

To solve this problem, a University at Buffalo-led research team has created the new, sturdier membrane that can withstand harsh environments—high temperatures, high pressure, and complex chemical solvents—associated with industrial separation processes.

Made from an inorganic material called carbon-doped metal oxide, it appears in a study in the journal Science.

“The processes of separating molecules—whether for water desalination, the production of medicine or fertilizers—use an incredible amount of energy,” says the study’s corresponding author, Miao Yu, professor in the department of chemical and biological engineering in the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“What we have developed is a technique to easily fabricate defect-free, strong membranes that have rigid nanopores that can be precisely controlled to allow different-sized molecules to pass through,” adds Yu, a core faculty member in the UB RENEW Institute.

To create the membrane, the research team took inspiration from two common, but unrelated, manufacturing techniques.

The first is molecular layer deposition, which involves layering thin films of materials and is most often associated with semiconductor production. The second technique is interfacial polymerization, which is a method of combining chemicals that is commonly used to create fuel cells, chemical sensors, and other electronics.

“These methods are not new,” says Sengupta, “however the manner in which we apply them is, and that is the key to creating our new nanoporous membranes.”

In experiments, researchers merged two low-cost reactants—liquid ethylene glycol and gaseous titanium tetrachloride—on an aluminum-based support. Within minutes, the reaction created a thin-film.

To create the nanopores, they applied heat to the film. The heat burns off carbon, creating tiny, microscopic holes for molecules to pass through. The size of the nanopores can be anywhere from 0.6 to 1.2 nanometers in diameter—as determined by the calcination gas environment, as well as the amount and duration of heat.

The new membrane can withstand temperatures up to 284 F (140 C) and pressures up to 30 atmospheres when exposed to organic solvents. These attributes are key because they allow the membrane to separate molecules at high temperatures (for most polymer membranes to work, the temperature of the solvents must be lowered, which is costly from an energy standpoint).

“From this point of view, our membrane has the potential reduce the carbon footprint of many industrial processes,” Yu says.

To demonstrate the membrane’s effectiveness, the team showed it could separate boscalid, a fungicide used to protect crops, from its catalyst and starting reagent. The entire process occurred at 194 F.

The team is planning additional experiments to prove the membrane is capable of being scaled up for commercial products. Additionally, Yu plans to start a company to further the technology’s commercial viability.

Additional coauthors come from the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The work had support from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the university.

Source: University at Buffalo

Space weather disrupts nocturnal bird migration, a new study finds.

It’s well-known that birds and other animals rely on Earth’s magnetic field for long-distance navigation during seasonal migrations.

But how do periodic disruptions of the planet’s magnetic field, caused by solar flares and other energetic outbursts, affect the reliability of those biological navigation systems?

Researchers used massive, long-term datasets from networks of US Doppler weather radar stations and ground-based magnetometers—devices that measure the intensity of local magnetic fields—to test for a possible link between geomagnetic disturbances and disruptions to nocturnal bird migration.

They found a 9%-17% reduction in the number of migrating birds, in both spring and fall, during severe space weather events. And the birds that chose to migrate during such events seemed to experience more difficulty navigating, especially under overcast conditions in autumn.

The new findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide correlational evidence for previously unknown relationships between nocturnal bird migration dynamics and geomagnetic disturbances, the researchers say.

“Our findings highlight how animal decisions are dependent on environmental conditions—including those that we as humans cannot perceive, such as geomagnetic disturbances—and that these behaviors influence population-level patterns of animal movement,” says lead author Eric Gulson-Castillo, a doctoral student in the University of Michigan ecology and evolutionary biology department.

Earth’s magnetic field is regularly affected by solar outbursts that can trigger colorful auroras and that sometimes disrupt satellite communications, human navigation systems, and power grids.

But little is known about how those disturbances affect animals that depend on Earth’s magnetic field for migratory orientation and navigation. Previous experimental studies over several decades provide strong evidence that birds, sea turtles, and other organisms key into small changes in magnetic inclination, intensity, and declination when making orientation decisions and developing navigational maps.

One recent study examined millions of bird banding records and found that geomagnetic disturbances were associated with increased incidence of migratory bird “vagrancy,” that is, birds becoming lost during migration.

But most previous studies were narrowly focused in geographic extent, duration, and the number of species examined. The newly published study, in contrast, uses a 23-year dataset of bird migration across the US Great Plains to provide new insights at population and landscape levels.

The researchers used images collected at 37 NEXRAD radar stations in the central flyway of the US Great Plains, a major migratory corridor. The flyway spans more than 1,000 miles in the US, from Texas to North Dakota.

The research team selected this relatively flat region to minimize influences from mountainous topography or oceanic and Great Lakes coastlines. Their final datasets included 1.7 million radar scans from the fall and 1.4 million from the spring.

The community of nocturnally migrating birds in this region is primarily composed of a diverse set of perching birds (Passeriformes, 73% of species) such as thrushes and warblers; shorebirds (Charadriiformes, 12%) such as sandpipers and plovers; and waterfowl (Anseriformes, 9%) such as ducks, geese, and swans.

The NEXRAD radar scans detect groups of hundreds to thousands of migrating birds. Migration intensity—meaning the number of birds in each cluster—can be estimated and direction of flight can be measured.

Concurrent geomagnetic measurements were accessed through superMAG, a worldwide collection of geomagnetic ground stations. Data were collected from magnetometer stations near weather radar sites.

The researchers matched data from each radar station with a customized, spatiotemporally explicit index of geomagnetic disturbance that represents the maximum hourly change from background magnetic conditions.

Daniel Welling, assistant professor in the climate and space sciences and engineering department at the University of Michigan and Michelle Bui, a former University of Texas at Arlington undergraduate, compiled the space weather data and designed the geomagnetic disturbance index. Welling and Bui are coauthors of the new study.

“The biggest challenge was trying to distill such a large dataset—years and years of ground magnetic field observations—into a geomagnetic disturbance index for each radar site,” Welling says. “There was a lot of heavy lifting in terms of assessing data quality and validating our final data product to ensure that it was appropriate for this study.”

The data trove was fed into two complementary statistical models to measure the putative effects of magnetic disturbances on bird migration. The models controlled for the known effects of weather, temporal variables such as time of night, and geographic variables such as longitude and latitude.

“We found broad support that migration intensity decreases under high geomagnetic disturbance,” says senior author Ben Winger, assistant professor in the ecology and evolutionary biology department and a curator of birds at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology.

“Our results provide ecological context for decades of research on the mechanisms of animal magnetoreception by demonstrating community-wide impacts of space weather on migration dynamics.”

The researchers also found that migrating birds appear to drift with the wind more frequently during geomagnetic disturbances in the fall, instead of expending great effort to battle crosswinds.

“Effort flying” against the wind was reduced by 25% under cloudy skies during strong solar storms in the fall, suggesting that a combination of obscured celestial cues and magnetic disruption may hinder navigation.

“Our results suggest that fewer birds migrate during strong geomagnetic disturbances and that migrating birds may experience more difficulty navigating, especially under overcast conditions in autumn,” says Gulson-Castillo, who conducted the study as part of his doctoral dissertation. “As a result, they may spend less effort actively navigating in flight and consequently fly in greater alignment with the wind.”

Additional coauthors are from Cornell University, Colorado State University, and the University of Michigan.

The National Science Foundation supported the work.

Source: University of Michigan

An issue with the Inmarsat-6 (I6) F6 2 satellite could send the space insurance market deep into the red, pushing up rates that were already rising following news of ViaSat-3’s troubles just six weeks earlier.

While engineers are still working on salvaging at least some of the broadband capacity on ViaSat-3, insurers are bracing for a $420 million total loss. That would be nearly 80% of the $550 million premium income the market at one point expected for 2023, according to insurers who did not want to be named.

Meanwhile, insurers say a total I-6 F6 2 loss would set the market back $350 million.

Not much has been disclosed about the anomalies ViaSat-3 and I-6 F6 2 experienced after successfully launching toward geostationary orbit in April and February, respectively.

Boeing-built ViaSat-3 suffered an antenna deployment failure, and I-6 F6 2, built by Airbus Defense and Space, has an issue with its power subsystem. California-based Viasat was to operate both satellites for its multi-band connectivity constellation.

Viasat said Aug. 24 it was assessing whether I-6 F6 2 could still perform its primary mission to provide mobile connectivity services across maritime, aviation, and government markets.

The size of these two potential insurance claims easily eclipses other insured satellite failures so far this year.

Arcturus, the first satellite from startup Astranis that shared a Falcon Heavy rocket with ViaSat-3, suffered a separate issue with its solar arrays, likely resulting in a $40 million claim.

And the payout for Azersky/Spot-7, Azerbaijan’s first Earth observation satellite that failed nine years after launching into orbit, is only around $25 million.

That means the space insurance market is potentially looking at $835 million in total claims for 2023, with four months remaining.

The anticipated $550 million in premium income for 2023 also includes coverage for a second ViaSat-3 satellite that was secured ahead of its launch, which was planned for this year but could be delayed to allow for any design changes.

Rates hike

News in July of a potentially mammoth insurance claim for ViaSat-3 was already enough for some insurers to increase rates.

Despite having climbed following a string of launch failures around four years ago, rates are still at historically low levels — usually in low single digits as a percent of payload value, which some insurers see as unsustainable.

Richard Parker, co-head of space at underwriter Canopius, said his firm raised prices across the board after the Viasat-3 announcement.

“It’s not huge, but it’s meaningful,” Parker told SpaceNews shortly before news of I-6 F6 2’s issues hit the market, “and we’ve been carrying on. We’ve been writing business on that basis with higher rates.”

Space insurance is typically syndicated to a market with only around 30 underwriters specializing in the industry, so others were likely also raising prices.

“If I put my price up and no one else did, I just wouldn’t get any business,” Parker said.

Parker declined to specify sums insured but said news of I-6 F6 2’s issues “came like an earthquake,” adding that there have not been two potentially massive insured losses so close together for at least 20 years.

Higher prices might not be enough to keep some space underwriters in the game.

Operators “are not going to pay 20% insurance rates,” Parker said, “so I don’t know where we’re going at this point.”

According to data from underwriter AXA XL, the average net rate for launch +1 coverage has fallen from more than 20% roughly two decades ago to around 1.6% for 2022. The average annual net in-orbit rate has declined from just under 15% to 1% during this time.

Less competition among a shorter pool of underwriters would also drive rates higher while potentially lacking the capacity to cover sizable risks.

There are two main types of satellite insurance: Coverage for the launch plus one year of a satellite’s operations and in-orbit coverage that usually starts on the first anniversary of that launch and is renewed annually.

“Launch plus one” coverage is usually taken out two years or so before lift-off. Operators are currently holding off tapping the market for this coverage in the hope price volatility will settle down.

AST SpaceMobile chief strategy officer Scott Wisniewski said he had no concerns about accessing the market for future launches in an Aug. 18 email, even as its first five commercial satellites are due to fly in the first quarter of 2024.

However, on-orbit coverage can’t wait, and it’s here that operators face higher-than-expected rates in the near term as their policies come up for renewal.

While any savvy operator would leave room in their cost models to cater to price volatility, even small cost bumps are unwelcome during challenging economic conditions. Lenders also usually require operators to insure their spacecraft.

This article originally appeared in the September 2023 issue of SpaceNews magazine.

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HELSINKI — Azerbaijan signed up to China’s International Lunar Research Station project Tuesday, on the sidelines of a major international space conference.

Li Guoping, chief engineer of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and Samaddin Asadov, chairman of the Board of Azercosmos, Azerbaijan’s space agency, signed a joint statement on cooperation on the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) Oct. 3 during the 74th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), hosted by Azerbaijan, in the capital Baku. CNSA announced the agreement Oct. 8 via a statement on its webpages.   

The agreement, as with a statement released on South Africa joining the ILRS last month, does not provide specifics of the cooperation.

The statement said the agreement will see CNSA and Azercosmos carry out extensive cooperation in the demonstration, implementation, operation and application of the ILRS, as well as training and other areas.

The ILRS project aims to construct a permanent lunar base in the 2030s. The initiative is seen as a China-led, parallel project and potential competitor to the NASA-led Artemis Program.

China has now attracted around 15 signatories to its ILRS initiative, according to representatives of the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL) under the CNSA. However, a list of these partners is not yet available. The partners are known to consist of organizations and institutions as well as countries.

Russia, Venezuela and South Africa have signed up. The Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization (APSCO), Swiss firm nanoSPACE AG, the Hawaii-based International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA), and the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT) have also signed joint statements. Pakistan is also thought to have signed up.

China and Russia presented a joint ILRS roadmap in 2021 in St. Petersburg. Beijing has however since apparently taken the role of lead of the project since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

China is setting up an organization, named ILRSCO, in the city of Hefei in Anhui province to coordinate the initiative. DSEL said earlier this year that China aims to complete the signing of agreements with space agencies and organizations for founding members of ILRSCO by October.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is growing the number of signatories to its Artemis Accords. Last month Germany became the 29th country to sign up to the Accords, the political underpinning of the Artemis lunar program. 

The Accords have signatories from each continent. A working group from the Accords stated at IAC that it drafted ideas to boost transparency in lunar cooperation.

China is already working on a series of robotic missions to launch later this decade as precursors to the ILRS. The 2026 Chang’e-7 lunar south pole mission and 2028 Chang’e-8 in-situ resource utilization and 3D-printing technology test mission will lay the basis for the larger plan, according to CNSA. NARIT will be involved in Chang’e-7 through the Sino-Thai Sensor Package for Space Weather Global Monitoring payload.

China will next year also launch Chang’e-6, which will be a first-ever lunar far side sample return mission. Pakistan will be involved in a CubeSat to fly with the mission.

A relay satellite named Queqiao-2 will be launched ahead of that mission early in 2024. The Queqiao-2 satellite will provide communications support for the Chang’e-6, 7 and 8 missions.

Russia’s Luna 25 mission was nominally part of the ILRS. That mission launched in August this year, but crashed into the moon during an anomalous orbital maneuver.

Azercosmos was founded in 2010. It operates a pair of telecommunications satellites, while communication with its only remote sensing satellite, Azersky, launched in 2014, was lost in April this year. Chinese commercial telemetry, tracking and command firm Emposat operates two ground stations in Azerbaijan.

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WASHINGTON — When Russia launched the Luch Olymp K-2 geostationary spy satellite in March, analysts expected it would carry out signals intelligence-gathering missions much like its predecessor Luch Olymp-K-1 that has been in orbit since 2014. 

Slingshot Aerospace, a space data analytics firm focused on spaceflight safety, this week unveiled data that shows that Russia’s new spy satellite, also known as Luch-2, is conducting operations akin to those of its predecessor Luch-1, raising fresh concerns about espionage in space. 

The company’s space tracking software identified multiple maneuvers by Luch-2 that are highly reminiscent of the behavior exhibited by Luch-1, which in 2015 caused an international stir when it parked itself between two Intelsat commercial communications satellites for five months.

A series of manuevers that began Sept. 26, according to Slingshot, show that Luch-2 drifted westward at a speed of about 1 degree per day before slowing down Oct. 2 to visit another “neighborhood” of GEO spacecraft. 

Looking for abnormal behaviors

Slingshot’s vice president of strategy and policy Audrey Schaffer said these maneuvers were detected by the company’s automated software that tracks all satellites. 

“We weren’t necessarily watching this satellite. We were just looking for things that stood out, for abnormal behaviors,” Schaffer told SpaceNews. 

Slingshot did not disclose what satellites Luch-2 might have been spying on. But Schaffer said this information could be helpful for any government or commercial satellite operator concerned about security in space.

“We think that these insights are actionable, from a military and from a commercial perspective,” she said. Luch-2 does not get close enough to any satellite to set off a collision warning from the U.S. Space Force, known as a conjunction alert. “But just because it’s not close enough to be a safety threat doesn’t mean it doesn’t potentially present a security threat,” Schaffer said.

“If you are a commercial communication satellite company you may not want a Russian spy satellite listening in on your communications,” she added. 

According to Michael Clonts, director of space domain awareness initiatives at Kratos Defense, Luch-2 carried similar payloads to the earlier model. However, “with a decade of additional technology development available to Luch-2, it likely packs more advanced signals intelligence capabilities and operational techniques.”

Slingshot describes its space tracking software as a “machine learning-based object profiling engine” that pulls data from multiple sources. 

The system tracked Luch-2’s westward drift and predicted where it was headed, said Schaffer. 

Capabilities to predict a satellite’s trajectory are not easy to achieve, she  said. “The difficult aspect of maneuver detection is that when you look backwards, historically it can be obvious that a satellite maneuvered.” In real time, however, “it’s difficult to tell if a satellite is maneuvering on purpose or if it has been misplaced by data tracking systems.”

Slingshot’s algorithm was able to detect Luch-2’s maneuvers as soon as they were available in the data without having to look back at long-term patterns, she said.

The algorithm is trained to decide what is normal or abnormal for a particular orbit and sends a notification when something is unusual and needs to be looked at. “So we went back and tasked our sensors to essentially validate that what we were seeing from our algorithms was correct,” Schaffer added.

Inspector satellites like Luch-1 and Luch-2 are expected to drift by, take pictures, and continue on their way. A signals intelligence spy satellite will loiter for long periods of time near its target satellite or group of satellites. “That’s what we saw historically with the original Luch-1 satellite,” Schaffer said.

Luch-2 stayed in the same area from May until late September, when it started to drift, she said. “The takeaway is that its pattern of life is very similar to the pattern of life of the original Luch.”

Schaffer, a former White House space policy official, said these types of satellite manuevers raise suspicion. “There are a number of international conversations going on right now about what are the right norms of responsible behavior in outer space,” she said. “And activities like this should absolutely be considered when the international community develops those rules of the road that apply to space operators.”

It’s also notable, she said, that private companies are providing insights and space domain awareness that previously were only accessible from military systems. “But that’s really not true anymore,” Schaffer said. “You have companies that are generating their own space domain awareness data with their own telescope networks.”

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SAN FRANCISCO — In a dramatic expansion of the Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program, NASA announced Oct. 2 that seven companies will compete for contracts with a maximum value of $476 million over five years.

Airbus DS Geo, Capella Space, GHGSat, Maxar, PlanetiQ, Spire Global and Umbra were selected under the fixed-price, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract to provide Earth observation data and services. The contract includes an option to extend services for an additional six months.

NASA established a Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition pilot program in 2017 to see whether commercial observations could augment or complement government datasets. Once the space agency realized the datasets were valuable, contracting mechanisms and licensing agreements were established to ensure ongoing access.

In the past, NASA has purchased commercial Earth observation data from Maxar, Planet, Spire and Teledyne Brown Engineering. In addition, NASA purchases high-resolution Digital Elevation Models produced by the EarthDEM Project, a collaboration that includes the University of Minnesota’s Polar Geospatial Center, Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar Research Center, and the University of Illinois National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and based on Maxar satellite data.

NASA’s Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program is provides data for NASA’s Earth science research and application activities. NASA is particularly eager to obtain “data acquired by commercial satellite constellations, affording the means of complementing NASA’s Earth observations data with higher resolutions, increased temporal frequency or other novel capabilities,” according to the NASA news release.

Early in the Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program, NASA struggled with end user license agreements that constrained data sharing with other government agencies and international partners. Under the new contract, NASA will acquire data under “end user license agreements to enable broad levels of dissemination and shareability of the commercial data,” according to the news release.

Under a separate $18.5 million contract, NASA extended its purchase agreement for Planet Earth imagery through 2024. The contract gives researchers funded by U.S. civil agencies and agency employees access to PlanetScope, imagery captured by more than 130 satellites in Planet’s Dove constellation.

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WASHINGTON — The head of the Space Development Agency — a U.S. Space Force organization that uses unconventional procurement methods to acquire satellites and build a space network — is pushing back at critics who presumably don’t want the military acquisition culture to change, SDA’s director Derek Tournear said in a recent social media post. 

“Recently, I was told to stop playing the role of ‘bad cop’ on behalf of the Space Development Agency and our mission. It was suggested that I might damage relationships among my peers,” Tournear wrote. 

Established just four years ago, SDA is moving ahead with an ambitious plan to build a low-Earth orbit constellation of communications and missile-detection satellites by relying on a broad base of suppliers for commercially produced spacecraft and laser communications terminals. 

In its early days SDA faced opposition from Air Force leaders and skepticism on Capitol Hill. But it has since gained widespread support and has been recognized as a “constructive disruptor for space acquisition.”

SDA’s boss Frank Calvelli, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, has championed the agency’s methods of buying satellites as a model for the Space Force to follow in other programs.

“We really want to go fast, we have got to stop the traditional way of building satellites, and the sort of large seven-year cost-plus contracts and go to smaller systems that are more proliferated,” Calvelli said last year at an industry symposium.  

Blowback from the acquisition bureaucracy

Tournear’s post suggests the recent blowback is coming from inside the DoD bureaucracy.

He said SDA’s unconventional approach has helped achieve some progress — with two successful satellite launches achieved in 2023 — but is being met with resistance from defenders of the established system.

“While I’m proud of SDA’s progress, the path to two successful launches was paved with the challenges — and yes, sometimes scars — of building an acquisition ecosystem within, and opposed to, the status quo,” Tournear wrote. 

There are entrenched interests within the defense procurement establishment that feel threatened by SDA’s model, he noted. But to deliver technologies that DoD needs to modernize its space architecture, “we have no choice but to change,” Tournear added. “Change is hard; change is necessary. And nothing fights change like the paralyzing behavior of going along to get along.”

Traditional DoD space programs have focused on developing technologies no matter how long it took, Tournear added. “SDA flips that paradigm to deliver what is ready on schedule — when the warfighter needs it.” For that reason, “constructive disruption required someone to play the ‘bad cop.’”

Tournear in his post staunchly defended SDA’s approach, emphasizing that military forces need access to cutting-edge technologies in a timely manner and that the traditional methods often have fallen short.

“I cannot stand by and watch wasteful, thoughtless procedures that will only benefit our enemies by delaying delivery to the warfighter,” he wrote. “Calling that out won’t always make friends, but it will make our nation stronger.”

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Climate change that has occurred over the past 260 million years and brought about mass extinctions of life during these periods was due to massive volcanic eruptions and subsequent environmental crises, a team of scientists concludes .

Their new analysis, which appears in the journal Earth-Science Reviews, shows the eruptions released large amounts of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, leading to extreme greenhouse climate warming and bringing about near-lethal or lethal conditions to our planet.

Significantly, these phenomena—which occur every 26 to 33 million years—coincided with critical changes in the planet’s orbit in the solar system that follow the same cyclical patterns, the researchers add.

“The Earth’s geologic processes, long considered to be strictly determined by events within the planet’s interior, may in fact be controlled by astronomical cycles in the solar system and the Milky Way galaxy,” says senior author Michael Rampino, a professor in New York University’s biology department. “Crucially, these forces have converged many times in the Earth’s past to foreshadow drastic changes to our climate.”

The researchers caution that their conclusions have no bearing on 20th- and 21st-century climate change, which scientists have shown to be driven by human activity. The studied pulses of volcanic eruptions last occurred about 16 million years ago.

However, the analysis nonetheless supports the well-established impact of carbon dioxide emissions on climate warming.

The scientists focused on continental flood-basalt (CFB) eruptions—the largest volcanic eruptions of lava on Earth, with flows covering nearly half a million square miles—and other major geological events over the past 260 million years.

These included ocean anoxic events—periods when the Earth’s oceans were depleted of oxygen, thereby creating toxic waters—as well as hyper-thermal climate pulses, or rapid rises in global temperatures, and resulting periods of mass extinctions of marine and non-marine life.

They found that CFB eruptions frequently coincided with these other lethal geological phenomena, illuminating the larger impact of volcanic activity. The connection with astronomy is evidenced by the commonality of the multi-million-year regular cycles of volcanism and extreme climate with known cycles of the Earth’s orbit in our solar system and in the Milky Way galaxy.

The authors found that the agreement between the geological and astrophysical cycles is much too close to be merely a chance occurrence. A major remaining question, they add, is determining how the planet’s astronomical movements perturb the Earth’s internal geological engines.

“This is an unexpected connection and predicts a convergence of both astronomy and geology—events that take place on the Earth do so in the context of our astronomical environment,” Rampino says.

Additional researchers are from the Carnegie Institute for Science and Barnard College.

Source: NYU