First stage to fly for record 9th time KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (SpaceX PR) — SpaceX is targeting Sunday, March 14 for launch of 60 Starlink satellites from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The instantaneous window is at 6:01 a.m. EDT, or 10:01 UTC. This mission represents the first time SpaceX will be reusing a Falcon 9 first stage for the ninth time.  The Falcon 9 first stage supporting this […]

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (NASA PR) — Ask International Space Station facility engineers and payload operations teams at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, what makes them proudest as they look back on two decades of developing and testing science hardware and providing real-time support for experiments on orbit. Many will instinctively glance upward, as if the source of that pride might be passing overhead at that moment, 250 miles up.

Just as often though, they look to one another.

MOSCOW (Roscosmos PR) — On March 20, a launch of the Soyuz-2 launch vehicle with the Fregat upper stage is scheduled from the Baikonur Cosmodrome that will deliver 38 spacecraft (SC) from 18 countries into three sun-synchronous orbits:

MOSCOW (Roscosmos PR) — Glavkosmos (part of Roscosmos) and the Russian private company Orbital Express have signed an agreement on cooperation in promoting services to the global space market with the help of the Russian rocket and space technology. The document was signed on Thursday at the Glavkosmos headquarters in Moscow. 

“Glavkosmos welcomes the initiative of Russian private NewSpace companies to enter the foreign space market,” says Dmitry Loskutov, Director General of Glavkosmos. “We hope that the interaction between Glavkosmos and Orbital Express will be successful. We believe that it will have a positive impact on the development of Russian rocket and space technologies.”

NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I Award
Funding: up to $125,000
Study Period: 9 months

Regolith Adaptive Modification System (RAMs) to Support Early Extraterrestrial Planetary Landings (and Operations)
Sarbajit Banerjee
Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station
College Station, Texas

The “Regolith Adaptive Modification system (RAMs)” was conceived for selective reinforcement and fusing of native Lunar surface materials. The current concept was evolved from a previous NASA NIAC proposal focused on flexible lightweight landing platforms.

Much of the current Lunar regolith modification research is focused on using technologies that require significant presence and infrastructure for success, such as sintering and geo-polymerization. In contrast, the RAMs system is uniquely suited for supporting deployment during early landings, but can also be used for more mature construction activities after establishment of Lunar and Martian settlements.

First Virgin Galactic. Now Virgin Orbit.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Richard Branson has hired Credit Suisse Group AG and LionTree LLC to take Virgin Orbit public through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) at a valuation of up to $3 billion.

Data from the powerful science tool includes sounds of its laser zapping a rock in order to test what it’s made of.  

PASADENA, Calif. (NASA PR) — The first readings from the SuperCam instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover have arrived on Earth. SuperCam was developed jointly by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and a consortium of French research laboratories under the auspices of the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES). The instrument delivered data to the French Space Agency’s operations center in Toulouse that includes the first audio of laser zaps on another planet.

NanoAvionics US Inc. will include Accion’s TILE Ion Electrospray Propulsion System as a preferred option for all appropriate customer missions that require electric in-space propulsion.

BOSTON, Mass., March 12, 2021 ( PR) –  Accion Systems, a leading in-space propulsion manufacturer, has signed a new partnership agreement with NanoAvionics US Inc., a US division of the multinational nanosatellite bus manufacturer and mission integrator. The TILE in-space propulsion system will be listed as a preferred option for all appropriate missions that require electric in-space propulsion and Accion Systems will provide preferred pricing to NanoAvionics US Inc.

This unique opportunity will allow the Company to expand its research on its osteoconductive bone adhesive biomaterial.

LOWELL, Mass., March 9, 2021 (RevBio PR) — RevBio, Inc., announced that it has been awarded the opportunity to conduct an in vivo research experiment on the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory (ISS National Lab). This experiment will examine the biomaterial’s osteoconductivity when used in a microgravity environment where bone density and the ability to regenerate new bone tissue is significantly compromised. 

UCalgary TBone study reveals impacts of pre-flight and in-flight exercise on bone loss.

by Kirstyn MacGillivary
McCaig Institute for Bone and Joint Health
University of Calgary

CALGARY, Alb. — Escaping the Earth’s orbit and floating through space for a six-month mission results in an average bone loss equating to nearly two decades of bone loss on earth. That means a 40-year old astronaut returns to Earth with a 60-year old skeleton.

Findings from the TBone study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, reveal that bone loss progresses with the length of a space mission despite daily exercise programs designed to prevent bone loss.

RUAG Space has been awarded a contract from Ball Aerospace to provide a navigation receiver for a next-generation United States Department of Defense environmental satellite system

ZURICH, Switzerland (RUAG Space PR) — RUAG Space, a leading space supplier, has been awarded a contract from Ball Aerospace to provide a navigation receiver for Weather System Follow-on—Microwave (WSF-M), a next-generation Department of Defense (DoD) operational environmental satellite system. Ball is the prime contractor for WSF-M, which will address critical space-based environmental monitoring (SBEM) requirements.

NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I Award
Funding: up to $125,000
Study Period: 9 months

Exploring Uranus through SCATTER
Sigrid Close
Stanford University
Stanford, Calif.

SCATTER studies the capability for a parent spacecraft to transmit power and remotely manipulate a small probe spacecraft through a laser transmitter, entitled Sustained CubeSat Activity Through Transmitted Electromagnetic Radiation (SCATTER).