by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

Resplendent in a blue Virgin Galactic flight suit, Richard Branson was in an exuberant mood as he sat at the New York Stock Exchange doing a TV interview on Oct. 28, 2019. His space tourism company had just gone public in a $774 million merger with billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya’s Social Capital Hedosophia special purpose acquisition company.

Virgin Galactic now had an estimated market value of more than $2.2 billion despite never having flown a single passenger or earned any serious revenue in 15 years. Virgin Galactic would have $450 million to complete its flight test program and begin commercial flights — if the company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings were to be believed — in June 2020. Branson and the Mubadala Investment Company, an Abu Dhabi government sovereign wealth fund, would divide up $274 million to offset about $1 billion in investment made thus far.

PETERSON SPACE FORCE BASE, Colo.  (U.S. Space Command PR) –  U.S. Space Command held an exercise Aug. 1-5 at Patrick Space Force Base, Fl., in preparation for the upcoming launch of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5, targeted for no earlier than September 29, 2022.

As the Department of Defense’s Human Space Flight Support Manager, USSPACECOM coordinates global DoD support for the rescue and recovery of human exploration events for NASA’s Artemis and Commercial Crew Program missions.

LONDON (Inmarsat PR) — Inmarsat Government today announced that the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has awarded Inmarsat Government the U.S. Navy Military Sealift Command (MSC) Next Generation Wideband (NGW) Follow-On (FO) Contract for worldwide end-to-end commercial satellite communications services. An Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract, the ceiling value of the award is $578M over a 10-year period. Under the contract, Inmarsat Government will maintain and operate commercial communications infrastructure, which includes satellite systems, teleport services and terrestrial services.

For the past decade, Inmarsat Government, the leading provider of secure, global, mission-critical telecommunications to the U.S. Government, has demonstrated its ability to deliver highly robust, exceptionally reliable, global satellite communications (SATCOM) solutions to MSC. Under this newly awarded FO contract, the company will also upgrade the primary afloat network from Ku to the Global Xpress (GX) Ka-band system, paired with Inmarsat ELERA’s enhanced L-band Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (LAISR) service to provide a uniquely reliable, global back-up network. This combination of networks ensures that MSC has secure global communications, delivering a high-throughput, low size and weight solution.

LUXEMBOURG (Kleos Space PR) — Kleos Space Inc. (US subsidiary of Kleos Space S.A), a space-powered Radio Frequency Reconnaissance Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) and Mission-as-a-Service provider (MaaS), announces successful execution of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the Naval Surface Warfare Center Division, Crane (NSWC Crane) for joint data experimentation.

Under the CRADA agreement, Kleos will provide its radio frequency (RF) geolocation data in realistic test scenarios to improve maritime domain awareness for real-world challenges, including sanctions reporting, embargo, transshipment monitoring, search and rescue, resource management, fisheries control, smuggling, and border control.

They’re unidentified objects that fly…just don’t call them UFO’s!
They’re not saying it’s aliens…but they’re not saying it’s not
Congress holding first hearing in more than 50 years on Tuesday

Part II of II

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

During my recent visit to Roswell, NM, I toured a museum that posited the U.S. government covered up the crash of a spaceship with four aliens on a ranch outside the city 75 years ago. Although I came away far from convinced this actually happened, there was one thing I saw there that was seemed quite credible. (Part I: The Truth is Out There, Just Maybe Not in Roswell)

I wandered into the museum’s small theater, which was showing an Australian news report on what the Pentagon has labeled unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) — what back in the day were known as unidentified flying objects (UFOs). (Apparently the DoD decided a rebrand was needed to make them sound less crackpotty.)

The solid rocket motor manufacturer will use the investment to advance R&D and scale its production capacity to meet growing customer demand

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (Adranos PR) — Adranos, Inc, the West Lafayette, Indiana-based startup that manufactures next-generation solid rocket motors, today announced a $20 million Series A funding round with participation from Bob Bishop and other principals at Impala Asset Management LLC and several other entities, including Explorer1 Fund, Elevate Ventures, and Specific Impulse Capital. This round brings the total capital raised by the company to date to over $25 million.

By David Vergun
DOD News

Every operational plan in the Defense Department rests on an assumption that strategic deterrence is holding, and in particular, that nuclear deterrence is holding, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command said. 

“If strategic or nuclear deterrence fails, no other plan and no other capability in the Department of Defense is going to work as designed,” Navy Adm. Charles A. Richard, who testified today at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in review of the fiscal year 2023 Defense Authorization Request and Future Years Defense Program, said. 

Capella will demonstrate high-resolution SAR imagery capabilities as part of the National Reconnaissance Office’s Broad Agency Announcement Framework for Strategic Commercial Enhancements

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 20, 2022 (Capella Space PR) — Capella Space, an information services company providing high-quality, high-speed Earth observation data on demand, today announced a new contract with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to demonstrate the company’s synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery capabilities. Through this contract, Capella will work with the NRO to provide SAR data modeling and simulation, end-to-end regional imagery responsiveness demonstrations, theater downlink demonstrations and sample imagery delivery.

By Paul Cage
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

WASHINGTON  –  A joint-U.S. Naval Research Laboratory/NASA experiment prepares to investigate the origins of Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs) that could affect Navy satellites and harm personnel during future crewed missions to the moon and beyond.

Researchers will use a new instrument, the Ultraviolet Spectro-Coronagraph Pathfinder (UVSC Pathfinder) to try to understand the origins of these particles, how they’re generated close into the sun to provide accurate space weather forecasting when these events happen.

ARLINGTON, VA (AFNS) — The Space Force, working with the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, has selected 670 active-duty service members and 259 civilians to transfer into the Space Force during fiscal year 2022. These volunteers come from the pool of candidates who applied in March 2021 and members who are currently assigned to Army and Navy units slated to transfer into the new service.

These new selects join the initial tranche of 50 selects announced in June 2021 and once transferred into the Space Force, they will account for about seven percent of the service, which totals nearly 13,000 military and civilians today.

“Successfully integrating the units, capabilities and people from Sister Services into the Space Force is critical to our mission and was one of the driving forces in creating the new service,” said Gen. David D. Thompson, Vice Chief of Space Operations. “We look forward to welcoming these Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and civilians into our force and encourage them to apply their experiences and perspectives to help us meet the needs of the Joint Force and shape a unique service culture.”