by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

Excess local tax revenues collected to support Spaceport America have been improperly spent on the facility’s operational costs, the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office has concluded.

By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, 

GREENBELT, Md. — Using observations from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has discovered a trio of hot worlds larger than Earth orbiting a much younger version of our Sun called TOI 451. The system resides in the recently discovered Pisces-Eridanus stream, a collection of stars less than 3% the age of our solar system that stretches across one-third of the sky.

OK, launch fans! Are you ready to RUMBLE! (Crowd roars) Roscosmos and SpaceX are scheduled to launch from Baikonur and Cape Canaveral on Sunday evening/Monday morning, depending your time zones. SpaceX is also planning a launch on Wednesday and Northrop Grumman will launch next Saturday. The boosters will launch Russian Progress and American Cygnus resupply ships to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX will also launch 120 satellite for its […]

DENVER (Voyager Space Holdings PR) — Voyager Space Holdings, Inc. (Voyager), a global leader in space exploration, today announced the appointment of Marian Joh to the company’s Board of Directors. Joh joins esteemed industry experts National Security Expert and four-star Air Force General William Shelton, leading investor Gabe Finke, world leading planetary scientist, Dr. Alan Stern, and former undersecretary of technology Dr. Cheryl Shavers. Joh will serve as an advisor to Voyager as the company moves closer to its overall goal of delivering any mission humans can conceive.

Joh joins Voyager on the heels of another recent appointment: in January, the company added noted public company director Dr. Cheryl Shavers to its Board. This continued momentum follows Voyager’s record-breaking 2020, which included the announcement of its intent to acquire X.O. Markets and its largest subsidiary, commercial space services provider, Nanoracks. Additionally, Eric Stallmer was tapped to lead Voyager’s East Coast expansion as Executive Vice President.

LOS ANGELES, Calif., Feb. 12, 2021 – Aerojet Rocketdyne recently received a contract award to deliver up to two Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (MMRTG) to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for use in future planetary science missions. MMRTGs are radioisotope power systems that have been used as reliable electrical power sources on multiple deep space missions, including NASA’s Perseverance Rover, which will land on Mars on Feb. 18.

HAMPTON, Va. (NASA PR) — Nearly six and a half months and 300 million miles since launch, NASA’s Perseverance rover will land on Mars Feb. 18, 2021, to begin its robotic exploration of the Red Planet. But before Perseverance touches down on the surface of Mars, it has to achieve a successful entry, descent, and landing (EDL).

TOKYO (JAXA PR) — Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (President: Hiroshi Yamakawa, JAXA) and Hitachi Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. (President and COO: Yoshio Mino) are the world’s first all-solid-state lithium-ion batteries in space. We have signed a joint research agreement on demonstration experiments for the practical application of the batteries.

• On 18 February, NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will land on the Red Planet
• ESA’s Mars orbiters – the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Mars Express – are supporting the landing
• TGO will relay important data from Perseverance to Earth as soon as four hours after landing
• Mars Express is monitoring the local conditions at the landing site, Jezero Crater
• Both ESA orbiters are providing context images of the region
• TGO will attempt to image the rover in the weeks after landing

NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is due to land on the Red Planet at 21:43 CET on 18 February 2021. In order to communicate with Earth from its landing site in Jezero Crater, the rover will rely on spacecraft orbiting Mars to relay the images and other data it collects back to Earth and pass on the commands from engineers beamed across space in the other direction.

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss., February 12, 2021 (NASA PR) — The core stage Green Run test team has completed refurbishment activities and is preparing the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s core stage and its four RS-25 engines for a second hot fire test.

After the first SLS core stage hot fire test on Jan. 16 at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, the team put the stand and core stage in a configuration so that the stage and stand could be refurbished. This involved installing platforms on the test stand so that technicians could inspect, access, and perform procedures on the hardware.

Space Nuclear Propulsion for Human Mars Exploration
National Academics of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine
National Academies Press
2021

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate requested the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene an ad hoc committee to identify primary technical and programmatic challenges, merits, and risks for developing and demonstrating space nuclear propulsion technologies of interest to future exploration missions. The particular systems of interest were specified as nuclear thermal propulsion and nuclear electric propulsion systems. The committee was also tasked with determining the key milestones, a top-level development and demonstration roadmap, and other missions that could be enabled by successful development of these systems.

WASHINGTON (National Academies PR) — Using nuclear propulsion technologies to support a human mission to Mars in 2039 will require NASA to pursue an aggressive and urgent technology development program, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

TOKYO (JAXA PR) — Axelspace Corporation (Representative Director: Tomoya Nakamura) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Chairman: Hiroshi Yamakawa, JAXA) are JAXA Space Innovation Partnership (J-SPARC). ) ^(*1), a memorandum of understanding was signed in December 2020 for the solution business using the small optical satellite constellation ^(*2), and together, “business concept co-creation activities” to create new business value. Through this initiative, we will consider cultivating the use of new satellite-mounted sensors, utilizing satellite data in the future, and linking small satellites and large satellites in observation missions.