You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license.
Eating habits in winter may be better for our metabolic health than eating habits in summer, at least if you’re a mouse, researchers report.
They examined the metabolism and weight of mice exposed to both “winter light” and “summer light.”
“We found that even in non-seasonal animals, differences in light hours between summer and winter do cause differences in energy metabolism. In this case, body weight, fat mass, and liver fat content,” says Lewin Small, who carried out the research while a postdoc at Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research at the University of Copenhagen.
“We found this mostly in mice exposed to winter light hours. These mice had less body weight gain and adiposity. They have more rhythmicity in the way they eat over a 24-hour period. And this then led to benefits in metabolic health.”
The study is the first of its kind to examine light hours’ influence on metabolism in mice, that are not considered seasonal animals as like humans they do not only breed in specific seasons. Animals breeding in specific seasons gain weight before the breeding season to save energy supplies.
The researchers’ inspiration for initiating the study stemmed from the significant variation in daylight hours across various regions of the world.
“We study the influence of the time-of-day on aspects of metabolism such as exercise, obesity, and diabetes. However, most studies that investigate this link do so assuming an equal length of day and night all year round,” Small says.
Therefore, they wanted to find out what the seasonal light differences meant for the metabolism. Most people in the world live with at least a two-hour difference in light between summer and winter.
“I come from Australia, and when I first moved to Denmark, I was not used to the huge difference in light between summer and winter and I was interested in how this might affect both circadian rhythms and metabolism,” Small says.
“Therefore, we exposed laboratory mice to different light hours representing different seasons and measured markers of metabolic health and the circadian rhythms of these animals.”
Because the research was conducted using mice as the experimental subjects, it is not possible to assume that the same thing goes for humans.
“This is a proof of principle. Do differences in light hours affect energy metabolism? Yes, it does. Further studies in humans may find that altering our exposure to artificial light at night or natural light exposure over the year could be used to improve our metabolic health,” says senior author Juleen Zierath, professor at the Novo Nordisk Center for Basic Metabolism Research (CBMR).
Small adds that the new knowledge is important to understand how eating patterns are affected by the light and seasons which might help us understand why some people gain more weight or if people gain more weight in a specific time of year.
“Differences in light between summer and winter could affect our hunger pathways and when we get hungry during the day,” he says.
You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license.
Researchers studying multiple sclerosis in mice identified a protein that could reshape the understanding of MS treatments.
The protein boosts the aggressive migration of immune cells into the central nervous system, leading to MS, an autoimmune disease affecting about 1 million adults in the United States. The intrusion of a specific type of immune cell called Th17 is particularly harmful to the brain and spinal cord.
But when the researchers blocked the protein—integrin α3—it slowed immune cells from reaching and damaging the central nervous system and improved symptoms in mice, according to a study in Science Immunology.
“We were studying the role of another gene when we stumbled upon integrin α3,” says co-lead author Maria Ciofani, associate professor in Duke University’s integrative immunobiology department. “We found that when it’s missing, the Th17 cells don’t develop as effectively, and more importantly, they face difficulties entering the central nervous system. This means less damage.”
The Th17 cells, which are vital for the body to fight fungal and bacterial infections, don’t usually cause diseases. But for people with MS, these cells are mistakenly activated and end up attacking the central nervous system.
The research team is the first to reveal the abundance of integrin α3 on Th17 cells. The protein helps Th17 cells to form connections with other cells, which in turn helps the cells grow and become more aggressive.
But in the absence of the protein, Th17 cells get trapped outside the blood-brain barrier, the brain’s protective shield.
While probing inflammatory T cells and disabling a particular gene—a routine practice to grasp its function—researchers stumbled upon a surprise. The altered mice were fully shielded from the MS-like symptoms typically seen in such models.
“They were walking around like nothing happened,” Ciofani says. “When we looked carefully, we found that none of the Th17 cells were entering the central nervous system. It was an opportunity to look at the machinery that controls these cells.”
With the help of computational approaches, Ciofani’s team—including co-lead study author Eunchong Park—identified integrin α3. Park, a scientist at AstraZeneca, is a former graduate student in the integrative immunology department and a member of the Center for Advanced Genomic Technologies.
There’s currently no drug that targets integrin on Th17 cells, but the drug natalizumab does target another kind of T-cell, Th1, that can also cause MS. But natalizumab has its side effects, emphasizing the need for alternative treatments.
“One concern about targeting integrin α3 is that these Th17 cells are vital for our body’s defense against infections,” Ciofani says. “We’ve done preliminary tests to see if inhibiting integrin α3 stops Th17 cells from doing their protective roles, and so far, it seems they can still do their jobs.”
Since integrin α3 is so essential for the harmful actions of Th17 cells, it could be a potential target for new MS treatments.
Funding for the study came from the National Institute of Health and a Kwanjeong Educational Foundation Scholarship.
You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license.
Researchers may have solved the evolutionary mystery of extra legs in caterpillars, chubby abdominal appendages known as “prolegs.”
Adult insects, including butterflies and moths, typically have only three pairs of legs. As reported in Science Advances, researchers have now linked the novel proleg trait to crustaceans.
Caterpillars use their prolegs to grab on to twigs and leaves, while using their thoracic or “true” legs to hold on to other plant parts for feeding.
“The three main theories regarding prolegs suggested that they might be modified thoracic legs, completely novel traits, or modified lobes (endites) of primitive thoracic legs,” says Antónia Monteiro, professor from the biological sciences department at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Science.
“Our study proposes that prolegs are indeed novel traits unrelated to thoracic legs. However, they are derived from a genetic program that specifies lobes that were originally found in the proximal region of crustacean limbs, but had remained inactive in this limb region for millions of years.”
Caterpillar appendages
Lead author Yuji Matsuoka, who was formerly a postdoctoral research fellow in the biological sciences department at NUS and is now assistant professor at the National Institutes of Basic Biology in Japan, conducted experiments by disrupting a specific Hox gene, abdominal A, in various parts of the Bicyclus anynana butterfly larvae’s abdomen, where the prolegs are located.
The complete disruption of the Hox gene resulted in the absence of prolegs, whereas partial disruption in only the most lateral parts led to the surprising development of two distinct traits in the abdomen—both prolegs and a modified version of thoracic legs. The results indicate that these two traits emerge from different locations in the body, and cannot be the same trait.
“The removal of prolegs through the disruption of this Hox gene indicated that the gene played an important role in initiating proleg development, whereas the appearance of modified thoracic legs, that are disguised as a type of secretory gland when the gene was disrupted, indicated that the Hox gene was repressing these traits,” Matsuoka says.
This means that two traits can potentially coexist in the abdomen of butterflies and moths: prolegs when the gene is active, and glands (modified thoracic legs) when the gene is inactive.
Suriya Murugesan, a research fellow in the biological sciences department, then conducted further analysis to determine the similarities between caterpillar prolegs and other traits. He started isolating the genetic blueprint of various proteins, known as messenger RNAs (mRNAs), from various body appendages of caterpillars, including the horns, mouth parts, legs, and (larval) wings. He discovered that the pool of mRNAs expressed in prolegs was quite distinct from thoracic legs and most similar to the pool found in head horns instead, which is another novel trait in butterflies and moths.
Caterpillar proleg evolution
When the scientists examined the pool of genes that were uniquely expressed in prolegs, they discovered that some of these were known to be marker genes for endites. Endites are part of the appendages that are most commonly found today in the biramous, or two-branched, legs of crustaceans. Although these endites are still found in the mouthparts of insects, including butterflies, their presence in prolegs highlights an intriguing evolutionary connection.
“The evolution of the insect thoracic limb is quite complex. The Cambrian fossils indicate that limbs originated as appendages with a single axis of growth. Over time, these limbs became biramous and fused at their base. Subsequently, they developed internal-facing lobes close to the body wall, called endites,” Monteiro says.
“In some insect lineages, the thoracic limb reverted to a uniramous structure and lost these endites. The genetic program for these endites, which was never entirely erased from the genome, appears to have been reactivated again in the abdomen of caterpillars.
“This is an evolutionary story where limb complexity gradually develops during the Cambrian period. Some additions to the limb, such as these endites, evolved their own distinct genetic program.
“As evolution progressed and fresh water crustaceans transformed into land-dwelling insects, limbs became simplified, and these endite add-ons were removed from some body parts of insects but not others. In butterflies and moths, the endites got reactivated again to function as an entirely new type of limb in the abdomen, enabling the caterpillar to grasp and move on various surfaces.”
Evolution is known for being economical, typically repurposing existing traits. In this case, prolegs are novel because they did not exist previously. However, they stem from pre-existing instructions for making bits of primitive legs, as previously theorized.
Now, it appears that the mystery of the many-legged caterpillar has been solved: an ancient genetic network, responsible for the same type of limbs found in crabs, has been re-activated after millions of years to produce the chubby legs of caterpillars.
You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of sound waves to break down tumors—a technique called histotripsy—in humans for liver treatment.
Pioneered at the University of Michigan, histotripsy offers a promising alternative to cancer treatments such as surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, which often have significant side effects.
FDA officials awarded clearance to HistoSonics, a company co-founded in 2009 by engineers and doctors for the use of histotripsy to destroy targeted liver tissue.
A human trial underway since 2021 at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center and other locations has treated patients with primary and metastatic liver tumors via histotripsy, demonstrating the technology’s ability to meet the testing’s primary effectiveness and safety targets.
“Histotripsy is an exciting new technology that, although it is in early stages of clinical use, may provide a noninvasive treatment option for patients with liver cancer. Hopefully it can be combined with systemic therapies for a synergistic therapeutic effect,” says Mishal Mendiratta-Lala, professor of radiology with Michigan Medicine and principal investigator of the trial.
Alex Duryea, manager of applied research at HistoSonics, adjusts an ultrasound “phantom”—a gel mixed with red blood cells that serves as the test’s tumor—prior to performing a histotripsy treatment demonstration. (Credit: Erica Bass/Rogel Cancer Center/Michigan Medicine)
HistoSonics can now market and sell its histotripsy delivery platform, called Edison, to hospitals and medical professionals for use in liver treatments. The company is headquartered in Minneapolis, while its advanced research and development is located in Ann Arbor.
Histotripsy works by using targeted ultrasound waves to form microbubbles within the tumor. The forces created as those bubbles form and collapse cause the mass to break apart, killing tumor cells and leaving the debris to be cleaned up by the immune system.
What that could mean for patients is treatment without the physical toll of radiation or chemotherapy, fewer concerns with drug compatibility, far shorter recovery times than with surgery, and less treatment discomfort.
This is possible because it is much easier to ensure that histotripsy treatments are hitting the tumor, and not healthy tissue, compared to radiation or invasive procedures. Histotripsy relies on focusing acoustic waves of high energy ultrasound to concentrate the energy enough to form bubbles, and the Edison machine can make sure that region is confined to the tumor. In contrast, radiation affects everything in its path through the body.
Zhen Xu, professor of biomedical engineering, looks on as she explains a histotripsy treatment demonstration. (Credit: Erica Bass/Rogel Cancer Center/Michigan Medicine)
In addition, the histotripsy system has onboard diagnostic ultrasound imaging, the kind used to see babies in the womb. It is used to plan and observe the treatment in real time. Physicians have a live view of the “bubble cloud” and how tissue is responding to the therapy.
And histotripsy’s potential benefits go beyond tumor destruction. In the last year, a pair of preclinical studies in rodents suggest that in the clean-up process, the immune system learns how to identify cancer cells as threats. This can enable the body to continue fighting the initial tumor and help activate a natural immune response to the cancer.
In the first study, even after destroying only 50% to 75% of the liver tumor volume by histotripsy, the rats’ immune systems were able to clear away the rest, with no evidence of recurrence or metastases in more than 80% of animals.
Earlier this year, a second study showed that histotripsy breaks down the cancer cell wall’s “cloak”—revealing proteins that the immune system can use to identify threats, known as antigens. These antigens are removed during surgery or destroyed during chemotherapy and radiation. By instead destroying a cancer cell’s outer wall, histotripsy lays bare the tumor antigens for the immune system to identify and use for targeted attacks on other cancer cells.
“We want to leverage histotripsy’s immuno stimulation effects and hopefully combine them with immunotherapy or drug delivery,” says Zhen Xu, a professor of biomedical engineering, an inventor of the histotripsy approach, and a co-founder of HistoSonics.
“That will move histotripsy from a local therapy into one that can treat tumors globally all over the body and eventually into a cure. In terms of the cancer treatment, that will be the next step, and I feel very excited about the potential.”
Xu and the University of Michigan have a financial interest in HistoSonics. The company was formed with support from UM’s Coulter Translational Research Program and Innovation Partnerships, UM’s hub for research commercialization.
WASHINGTON — Urban Sky, a startup offering high-resolution imaging from small stratospheric balloons, has raised $9.75 million in a Series A round.
The Denver-based company announced the funding round Oct. 16, led by New Legacy Ventures, Lerer Hippeau and Lavrock Ventures. Several other funds participated in the round, which the company said was oversubscribed.
Urban Sky, which raised $4.1 million in a seed round in August 2021, plans to use the funding to expand its imagery services. The company collects visible and long-wave infrared images using small balloons called “microballoons” by the company that operate in the stratosphere.
The funding will help the company move into markets outside of Colorado, where it operates today. “The primary use of funding is to build what will effectively be a very refreshed, very high-resolution picture of some major metro areas in the United States,” Andrew Antonio, chief executive of Urban Sky, said in an interview.
Urban Sky is still determining where it will expand its imagery services, he said, but will likely be focused on the central and western United States based on demand. The company currently flies one balloon a week but expects to increase that cadence to one every two to three days.
Urban Sky currently offers color imagery at a resolution of 10 centimeters, but Antonio said the company will use the funding to develop cameras capable of better resolution as well as new infrared cameras, all while fitting into the constraints of the microballoon system that limits payload mass to 2.7 kilograms.
The company has seen strong demand from different markets for its color imagery, including environmental monitoring, property insurance and the oil and gas industry, and expects to see interest from others as it expands it services. “We want to build this really strong catalog of very high resolution, very frequently updated imagery over major cities. That can help new applications come to light where people can query that data,” he said.
He argued that Urban Sky’s imagery does not compete directly with those from commercial satellites. “There are no satellites that capture imagery at our resolution, and the markets we serve require the resolution that we offer,” he said, noting the company has few customers who are using Urban Sky’s imagery to replace satellite imagery.
That could change, though, as the company expands. “In areas where we do operate, we can provide a better product at a better price that a lot of satellite operators,” he said. “Over time, maybe we’ll see more business come to us that are already using major satellite imagery providers.”
One of Urban Sky’s customers is Skywatch, which resells imagery from nearly 20 companies that operate satellites and aerial platforms. “SkyWatch is witnessing an unprecedented surge in demand for very high resolution Earth observation data,” said James Slifierz, chief executive of Skywatch, in a statement. “However, satellite-based supply constraints have significantly curtailed our ability to satisfy this growing appetite,” a gap he said Urban Sky can help fill.
Antonio said the company is exploring other uses of its microballoons, citing as an example testing of a mesh network communications system. “We view it in a lot of ways as a payload agnostic system,” he said of those microballoons, although the primary focus remains using them for imagery.
There is also interest in the microballoon platform from the Defense Department, which has awarded the company several Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer contracts. Some of that interest, he said, came after the Chinese “spy balloon” that floated across the United States early this year.
Urban Sky’s microballoons, he noted, are far smaller than the Chinese balloon. “We’ve very different in technology, but it’s made the business easier to communicate to people who are not familiar with ballooning.”
Updated 12:45 p.m. Eastern about spacecraft establishing communications after launch.
WASHINGTON — A NASA spacecraft is finally on its way to a metallic main belt asteroid after a successful Falcon Heavy launch Oct. 13.
The SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 10:19 a.m. Eastern. Its payload, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, separated from the upper stage 62 minutes after liftoff. The launch was the eighth for the Falcon Heavy but the first by that rocket for NASA.
In a statement, NASA said controllers established two-way communications with the spacecraft at 11:50 a.m. Eastern, confirming the spacecraft was in good condition as it goes through initial post-launch commissioning.
Psyche is a Discovery-class planetary science mission whose destination is an object in the main asteroid belt also called Psyche. That asteroid is made primarily of metal and could be the core of a larger object whose outer layers were stripped away.
On its way to the asteroid, the Psyche spacecraft will conduct a technology demonstration. The Deep Space Optical Communications payload on the spacecraft will test the ability of lasers to provide high-bandwidth communications at interplanetary distances.
The launch took place more than a week into a three-week launch period. In late September NASA delayed the launch, once scheduled for Oct. 5, by a week after a review found concerns with the operating temperature of cold-gas thrusters used to maneuver the spacecraft. Engineers had to revise the operating parameters of the thrusters to avoid overheating.
“There would have been a potential risk of overheating the thrusters and damaging them” if the parameters were not changed, Henry Stone, Psyche project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said at an Oct. 11 briefing. “It was a serious issue that we had to deal with.”
The changes involve a “select subset of parameters” to the thrusters, he said, but did not elaborate on the changes. Those changes, he said, will not affect Psyche’s operations once at the asteroid. “The changes affected some of the timeline margins that we already had, but we’ll conduct the same operations when we get to the body.”
NASA rescheduled the launch for Oct. 12, but postponed it another day because of poor weather. The launch period ran through Oct. 25, with instantaneous launch windows each day.
While the problems with both Psyche and JPL have been corrected, they affected several NASA science missions. The 14-month launch delay pushed back the spacecraft’s arrival at the asteroid from 2026 to August 2029. The mission’s cost also increased 20% from $1 billion to $1.2 billion.
Psyche’s delay also affected Janus, an asteroid smallsat mission that was to fly as a secondary payload on the launch. The delay meant that Janus could not fly its original mission to go by two pairs of binary asteroids, and the mission could not find suitable alternative targets with its revised trajectory. NASA announced in July it was canceling Janus and putting the completed spacecraft in storage.
The institutional issues at JPL uncovered in the independent review of Psyche’s delays led NASA to delay the next Discovery-class mission under development at JPL, the Venus Emissivity, Radio science, InSAR, Topography, And Spectroscopy, or VERITAS. That mission, selected in 2021 for launch in 2028, is now scheduled for launch no earlier than 2031.
The Psyche delay and budget increase added stress to the overall NASA planetary science program already dealing with challenges like Mars Sample Return. In the agency’s fiscal year 2024 budget request, NASA said it was postponing a heliophysics mission, the Geospace Dynamics Constellation, citing “high budgetary requirements” from other programs.
The Psyche spacecraft will arrive at the asteroid of the same name in 2029. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
“A new kind of world”
NASA, and scientists involved with Psyche, said the mission is worth the wait and the additional cost. The spacecraft will spend 26 months orbiting at Psyche in four different orbits, studying the largest solar system body made primarily of metal.
“This will be our first time visiting a world that has a metal surface,” said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche principal investigator at Arizona State University, at a pre-launch briefing.
A key goal of the mission is to determine Psyche’s origins, said Ben Weiss, Psyche deputy principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We have two leading ideas about how Psyche formed,” he said, either as the core of a planetesimal that failed to become a planet, or as a primordial body enriched in metal for some reason.
“We are going to go into orbit around Psyche and measure its various properties at lower and lower altitudes,” he said. The spacecraft is equipped with a camera, gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer and magnetometer.
“It’s primary exploration of a new kind of world,” said Elkins-Tanton. “There aren’t that many completely unexplored types of worlds in our solar system to go see, so that is what is so exciting about this.”
The nonprofit, previously known as NewSpace New Mexico, runs an incubator for space startups around the country called NewSpace Ignitor. Working with the Defense Innovation Unit, U.S. Space Force and Air Force Research Laboratory, NewSpace Nexus also hosts annual conferences and workshops.
Casey DeRaad, founder and CEO of NewSpace Nexus Credit: NewSpace Nexus
NewSpace Nexus’ claim to fame, though, is Unite and Ignite Space, a “co-innovation hub” in Albuquerque funded by the State of New Mexico, Virgin Galactic, AFRL and the Space Force Rapid Capabilities Office. There, startups gain access to facilities, equipment, networking events and guidance. Entrepreneurs can learn, for example, how to pitch their ideas to investors or find potential government customers.
SpaceNews caught up with Casey DeRaad, the energetic founder and CEO of NewSpace Nexus. Prior to NewSpace Nexus, DeRaad led AFRL’s Tech Engagement Office, which links industry, academia and government agencies with AFRL scientists and engineers. Along with AFRL colleagues, DeRaad won the 2013 STEM Team Award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer.
What is NewSpace Nexus? And why is it no longer called NewSpace New Mexico?
Newspace Nexus is accelerating the pace of space innovation. We do this by both uniting and igniting the space industry. We bring together all the stakeholders to break down walls in collaborations. We also lead the State of the Space Industrial Base conferences and workshops. On the ignite side, thanks to some grants through the Air Force Research Lab and congressional funding, we’re able to help companies innovate faster. We’re trying to grow the commercial space innovation base from New Mexico for the nation.
Your organization was called NewSpace New Mexico. Why did you change the name?
We work with a number of companies to create this innovation pipeline. When we were called NewSpace New Mexico, a lot of people thought we only worked with New Mexico companies. Also, in leading these national industrial base conferences, some folks thought we were only talking about New Mexico. Even though our name changed, our vision remains the same: helping to put resources in place to grow the space industry. With our national efforts, we’re still doing a lot to grow the space industry here in New Mexico.
What is the NewSpace Ignitor?
New Mexico has a lot of great research and development, but companies need to get beyond research and development. With congressional funding, we set up collaborative facilities with workspaces, prototyping and conference areas. We also set up Ignitor, an industry demonstrator program. We help companies take their concepts to products and sales.
When companies come in, we do an assessment to figure out what resources they need. We are helping a couple of companies get rideshares. And we showcase companies to the money sources, whether that might be government contracts, investors or even large partners like primes.
We are concluding our first year of Ignitor. We have 23 space companies at different levels: Ignitor AA, Ignitor AAA and Ignitor Elite. We track attributable wins for companies. The 23 companies have gotten $17.7 million in government contracts or investments.
What is the NewSpace Alliance?
The NewSpace Alliance, one of our first initiatives that began in 2019, brings together space stakeholders: space companies; government, educational and research organizations; economic development and industry associations. Currently, there are 250 member organizations with 140 space companies. We have options for U.S. corporate members and individuals. We’ll start a global option in the next few months.
We have a growing list of individual members of the NewSpace Alliance. This is mainly to build a list for a future workforce connector on our website. The plan is that our Alliance organizations can post their job opportunities, and it will generate an email to the individual alliance list.
NewSpace Nexus CEO Casey DeRaad at NewSpace Ignitor AAA Pitch Day with Col. Joseph Roth, Space Systems Center Innovation and Prototyping director (right) and Dan Crouch, Innovation and Prototyping Delta deputy director. Credit: NewSpace Nexus
What are the opportunities for New Mexico’s space sector?
There are a lot of assets here. There’s a diverse workforce pipeline. New Mexico’s three research universities have 40 percent STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] graduates of color. There’s amazing intellectual property with the Los Alamos National Lab and Sandia National Lab. There are three space organizations with the Air Force Research Lab Space Vehicles Directorate, Space Systems Command’s Prototyping and Innovation Directorate and the Space Rapid Capabilities Office. Those three space organizations probably have at least a $2 billion budget.
Then, we have the Spaceport America. In our Ignitor program, we’ve had a number of innovative launch companies. We connect them to the Spaceport. It’s abutted to the White Sands Missile Range. Having that no-fly zone is another asset. There’s also the NASA White Sands Test Facility.
The bottom line is that there are lots of assets, lots of customers and a great workforce pipeline.
What challenges does New Mexico face in recruiting people to work in the space industry?
We’re a smaller state. We have a smaller population. Yet at the same time, New Mexico has the highest number of PhDs per capita. So, there’s access to a lot of brainpower.
Another challenge is awareness of the opportunity. We have an Intern Day. We bring together interns from New Mexico companies and organizations to show them that there’s a lot going on here. Rocket Lab is here. Virgin Galactic is here. Air Force Research Lab is here. One of the biggest challenges is telling the story of what all we have here. And we have to keep telling it.
The other challenge is with the space industry growing so much, there’s a lot of need for workforce. STEM is a big part, but we need all the different workforce areas. We need to get to that pipeline. We need to really expand that aperture to recruit our whole available workforce.
How is NewSpace Nexus trying to expand the workforce?
We’re leading a program called Pathways to the Stars. We’re trying to create the space industry sector’s first complete pathway from early education through early career. It includes participant support and industry engagement at each of the stages.
When I was at AFRL, I led their STEM outreach program. We had an internship program. We funded the University Nanosatellite Program. There were little pockets of great programs. With Pathways to the Stars, we’re starting in New Mexico, but the plan is that it can be expanded. We are first assessing what programs are in place, where there are gaps and where we might add programming. Or where there are good programs that we can amplify with more funding.
AFRL has an amazing K through 12 program. We wouldn’t reinvent that. We would work with the folks there and say, “How do we start putting in this structure to connect these different programs?”
We’re getting private companies to help support it. And we’re talking to the state. We have access to this whole industry innovation pipeline between our Ignitor companies, our NewSpace Alliance and all the companies that come to our Space Industrial Base conferences and workshops.
I tell the companies, “You can’t just think about the workforce when you’re doing job placement. You need to get in the trenches with us, whether you help with funding or with mentoring.” A number of companies are ready to start working with us.
You led the workforce study for the State of the Space Industrial Base report. What are some of the key takeaways?
We need this North Star vision for our national space workforce. It needs an all-of-government approach, and industry needs to be part of it as well. The National Science and Technology Council Committee on STEM education put together an interagency roadmap. It’s promising because it’s a government-wide look at how we deal with space-related STEM education and workforce.
We also need to be looking at new ways of getting the word out that there are many ways to get the right qualifications to make it into the space workforce. The four-year STEM degree is still important. But there are other ways.
One of the recommendations put forward is that we start implementing this Pathways to the Stars. Start in New Mexico but expand regionally. We’ve been running these Space Industrial Base conferences. We partnered with Space Northwest and Space Florida. NewSpace Nexus reached out to a number of organizations to put together a Space Industrial Base Council. We’re just getting it up and running.
This article originally appeared in the October 2023 issue of SpaceNews magazine.
WASHINGTON — Despite satellite malfunctions that are expected to lead to major insurance claims, the space insurance field is taking a cautious approach to servicing technologies that might be able to repair such spacecraft.
In a talk at the Global Satellite Servicing Forum Oct. 12, Mark Quinn, chief executive of WTW Global Inspace, a space insurance broker, acknowledged that several high-profile satellite malfunctions and other incidents will result a major loss for the field in 2023.
“It’s the worst market we’ve been in in the last 20 years,” he said. “In the last six months there’s been about $1 billion in claims against about $500 million in premiums.”
Those and other claims, such as satellites with malfunctioning electric propulsion systems, are creating what Quinn called a “market correction” for space insurance. The heavy losses in 2023 come after seven years of “very mediocre results” with little profit for insurers.
“When this bad year comes in, it causes the underwriters to look at the portfolio of all the business they write,” he said. “When they look at space, they’re reassessing how they’re going to approach this class of business in terms of how much capital they’re going to commit, what types of risk they’re going to underwrite and what premium rates they’re going to charge.”
Quinn spoke at a conference organized by CONFERS, an industry group promoting development of standards and best practices for satellite servicing and related applications. Some in the field have argued that satellite servicing could, in the long term, help reduce insurance claims, with insurers themselves potential customers of those services.
He suggested the space insurance field would take a cautious approach to satellite servicing given the lack of technical maturity and experience in the industry. Insurers, he noted, are looking for in-flight demonstrations and other flight-proven technologies, which he acknowledged is not always possible.
“In order to unlock significant capacity on new projects of very high value — new applications with hardware that actually hasn’t flown in orbit — we need to figure out a way to get insurers comfortable that something that is flying is going to work reliably the first time so they are willing to commit their capacity at a reasonable price with the coverage that is required,” he said.
Getting insurers comfortable with satellite servicing, he said, will be a long-term process. “They key is a multi-year, multi-touch process where you engage the insurance community, bring them in as a true partner,” he said, so they understand both the technology and the business opportunity.
As for whether insurers would be customers of satellite servicing, Quinn said it’s possible at some point. “It needs to be available, it needs to be reliable and it also needs to be cost effective,” he said of satellite servicing. “It needs to cost less than the alternative.”
Insurers, he added, may be open to eventually offering discounts on insurance policies for satellites designed to be more easily serviced. “The short answer is yes, but not right now,” he said, because of concerns about the effectiveness and cost of satellite servicing. “I do see that as something that could happen down the road.”
HELSINKI — China added to its series of Yunhai remote sensing satellites late Saturday with a launch from the Gobi Desert.
A Long March 2D rocket lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 8:54 p.m. Eastern, Oct. 14 (0054 UTC, Oct. 15). The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), confirmed launch success within an hour, also revealing the payload for the mission to be Yunhai-1 (04).
CASC’s Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology provided the launcher for the mission and developed the Yunhai-1 (04) satellite.
Chinese state media describe the satellite as providing “services for the detection of the atmospheric, marine and space environments, disaster prevention and mitigation, and scientific experiments.” This is a generally used description of Yunhai spacecraft
The Yunhai series are assessed to be military meteorological satellites by some Western analysts.
China launched the first Yunhai satellite in November 2016. Yunhai-1 series satellites operate in roughly circular, 780-kilometer-altitude sun-synchronous orbits (SSO). The hypergolic Long March 2D has a launch capacity of 1,300 kilograms to a 700-kilometer SSO. Yunhai-2 series sats orbit with a similar altitude with inclinations of 50 degrees.
Yunhai-1 (02), launched in 2019, suffered a suspected collision with a small piece of debris from a Russian satellite launch in March 2021. U.S. Space Force cataloged a total of 37 fragments in orbit, with 23 having reentered the atmosphere to date.
Yunhai-1 (04) was China’s 47th orbital launch of 2023. CASC stated early in the year it would aim to launch more than 60 times, and has so far completed 33 launches. Commercial firms have contributed to the launch total.
China has suffered one failure so far in 2023, seeing the loss of a Jilin-1 remote sensing satellite aboard a commercial Ceres-1 rocket from Galactic Energy.
China is currently preparing for the launch of the Shenzhou-17 crewed mission. That launch will see a new, three-person crew head to the Tiangong space station later in the month. The Shenzhou-16 trio currently aboard the space station will handover Tiangong to the Shenzhou-17 crew for the start of their six-month-long stay in orbit.
The country is also working towards the launch of its Einstein Probe, a wide-field x-ray space observatory designed to detect flashes from cataclysmic cosmic events.
The spacecraft passed thermal vacuum and other tests across July and August. China plans to launch it in December from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center using a Long March 2C rocket.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force is taking steps to bridge the gap between technology developers and operators, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman announced Oct. 13.
The Space Force will establish new “system delta” units in an effort to increase collaboration between units that use equipment and those that develop and acquire it, Saltzman said in a memo to the entire force.
The plan reflects Saltzman’s view that guardians operating satellites and ground systems should inform requirements for new systems and provide feedback during procurement.
The system delta concept is the second phase of a reorganization that Saltzman unveiled last month. Under a pilot program, the Space Force set up two integrated mission deltas — units overseeing all aspects of a mission area like training, procurement, and operations. One of the units will focus on electronic warfare and the other on positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) satellites.
The new system deltas — aligned under the Space Systems Command — will work alongside the integrated mission deltas.
Goal to create feedback loop
As Saltzman explained, these new units will “directly complement integrated mission deltas by developing, acquiring, and fielding capability that satisfies operational needs.” For example, the electronic warfare mission delta can collaborate with its system delta counterpart, creating a feedback loop between users and developers.
The goal is to sync technological advancement with real-time operator input. The two provisional integrated mission deltas were formally established October 12 under the Space Operations Command. The system deltas will follow in the coming months.
Saltzman noted this closer linkage between operators and acquirers is “essential to the Space Force’s effort to forge a service built for great power competition.” He said “old ways of doing business will not produce the results we need” and this new structure can “accelerate the development, fielding, and presentation of combat-ready forces.”
The delta prototypes address just two missions for now but could expand to others in the future, a Space Force spokesperson told SpaceNews. The concept will be tested using existing personnel and resources, without relocating units or altering core Space Operations and Space Systems missions.
