Month: June 2016

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Pluto may still have an ocean under its ice

Image: Pluto faults
New Horizons spied extensional faults on Pluto, a sign that the dwarf planet has undergone a global expansion possibly due to the slow freezing of a subsurface ocean. (Credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI)

Pluto is one of the coldest places in the solar system, but scientists say geological activity could still keep an ocean’s worth of water liquid beneath the dwarf planet’s surface.

Brown University’s Noah Hammond and his colleagues lay out their argument in a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Readings from NASA’s New Horizons probe have shown that Pluto possesses mountains of water ice that rise as high as 11,000 feet, and there’s also evidence of tectonic activity associated with that ice. The newly published paper looks into the implications of those geological forces.

“Our model shows that recent geological activity on Pluto can be driven just from phase changes in the ice – no tides or exotic materials or unusual processes are required,” Hammond said in a news release. Depending on the depth of Pluto’s ice, the pressures far beneath the surface could keep water in a liquid state.

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Planetary Resources goes international

Image: Arkyd telescope
An artist’s view shows one of Planetary Resources’ telescopes in orbit. (Credit: Planetary Resources)

Planetary Resources says it will start ramping up an international asteroid-mining subsidiary in Luxembourg by the end of the year – and will think about expanding operations to other locales as well.

The Luxembourg deal was announced last week, but many of the details are still to be determined, said Chris Lewicki, Planetary Resources’ president and CEO.

To refresh your memory from geography class, Luxembourg is a tiny nation wedged between Belgium, Germany and France. It’s more than 5,000 miles away from Planetary Resources’ headquarters in Redmond, Wash. So, why Luxembourg?

“We are looking at things that amplify our presence in Seattle,” Lewicki told GeekWire today at the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace 2016 conference. By the end of the year, Planetary Resources plans to work out the details and make a “handful of hires,” he said.

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Space university will beam into Seattle

Image: Shuttle trainer
The Charles Simonyi Space Gallery at Seattle’s Museum of Flight houses a full-fuselage shuttle trainer that was once used to train astronauts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. (Credit: Museum of Flight)

For almost 30 years, the International Space University has prepared fans of the final frontier for executive jobs at places like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. This October, for the first time, ISU is bringing its weeklong Executive Space Course to Seattle.

The course is designed to give professionals in fields such as marketing, law and business management a quick grounding in the realities of the space business, touching upon science and technology as well as regulation and policy. It’s a condensed version of the graduate-level programs that ISU offers at its main campus in Strasbourg, France.

The Seattle program is due to run from Oct. 3 to 7 at the Museum of Flight, during World Space Week. The course will be taught by ISU faculty and guest lecturers, with an assist from Seattle-area universities and aerospace businesses.

Today’s announcement was timed to coincide with the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace 2016 conference in Seattle this week.

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Amazon’s Jeff Bezos wins Heinlein Prize

Image: Jeff Bezos
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is the founder of Blue Origin. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Amazon’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, has won the prestigious Heinlein Prize for his efforts to advance space commercialization at another company he founded, Blue Origin.

Bezos follows in the footsteps of SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Peter Diamandis, who played a lead role in creating the $10 million Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight. Diamandis was the first award-winner in 2006, and Musk was honored in 2011.

The prize serves as a tribute to the late science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, who championed private enterprise beyond Earth in such stories as “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” and “The Man Who Sold the Moon.” The Heinlein Prize Trust is funded by the estate of Robert and Virginia Heinlein.

This year’s award was announced today in conjunction with the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace 2016 conference in Seattle, and comes only a few days after Blue Origin put its reusable New Shepard spaceship through its fourth suborbital test flight to outer space and back. Blue Origin is also making progress on its BE-4 rocket engine, which is due to be used on future orbital launch vehicles.

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Spaceflight moves ahead on satellite portal

Image: Spaceflight Industries at work
One of BlackSky’s Pathfinder satellites undergoes final integration. (Credit: BlackSky)

Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries is moving ahead on two fronts to build an online portal for satellite imagery: It has secured $18 million in new venture capital, and is acquiring a Virginia-based company called OpenWhere to create the software platform for distributing the images.

“It’s all about the democratization of data about the planet,” Jason Andrews, CEO of Spaceflight Industries, told GeekWire.

The current round of Series B financing is led by Mithril Capital Management, a San Francisco investment firm founded by Ajay Royan and PayPal veteran Peter Thiel. (Yes, that Peter Thiel.) Other contributors to the round include previous investors RRE Venture Capital; Razor’s Edge Ventures; and Vulcan Capital, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s investment arm.

By the time the round is complete, Spaceflight Industries expects to raise as much as $25 million. That would bring cumulative investment in the privately held company to $53.5 million.

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Youngest planet spotted around alien star

Image: K2-33b
An artist’s conception shows K2-33b crossing the disk of its parent star. (Credi: NASA / JPL-Caltech)

Scientists say they’ve detected a giant planet circling a star that’s only 5 million to 10 million years old, which would make it the youngest exoplanet ever identified.

The super-Neptune-sized planet traces a super-close-in orbit, making a complete swing around its parent star every 5.4 Earth days, according a team of astronomers associated with NASA’s repurposed Kepler space telescope. The star, known as K2-33, is in the Upper Scorpius stellar association, about 500 light-years from Earth.

Infrared observations of K2-33 indicate that the star is still surrounded by the remnants of gas and dust from a protoplanetary disk. Such disks form around stars as they’re born and give rise to planets, but the disks are thought to dissipate after a few million years. That’s how astronomers figured out that the planet was so young.

“At 4.5 billion years old, the Earth is a middle-aged planet — about 45 in human-years,” Caltech astronomer Trevor David said in a news release. “By comparison, the planet K2-33b would be an infant of only a few weeks old.”

David is the first author of a paper on the discovery published online today by the journal Nature.

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NewSpace puts Seattle at center of the universe

Seattle and stars
“The sky’s the limit” for space ventures, according to the head of Washington state’s Office of Aerospace. This composite photo sets Seattle’s Space Needle against a field of stars. For more of photographer Mikul Eriksson’s work, visit MikulEriksson.com or click on the image.

There’s a neighborhood in Seattle that jokingly calls itself “the center of the universe,” but this week the title is no joke – at least when it comes to the entrepreneurial side of the space industry. The Space Frontier Foundation’sNewSpace 2016 conference is making it so.

The annual conference has been traditionally been held in California’s Silicon Valley. But from now on, the Space Frontier Foundation plans to bring the show to Seattle every other year. “If you guys mess it up, well, we’ll never come back,” Jeff Feige, the foundation’s chairman, told a group of Seattle space enthusiasts during a recent preview of the meeting.

John Thornquist, the director of Washington state’s Office of Aerospace, says no one will mess it up.

“Because of our burgeoning space community here, it makes sense to have it up here – and we look forward to having it in the years to come,” he told GeekWire. “I think it’s appropriate to recognize the state of Washington as a space hub on the West Coast because of the commercial work that we’re doing.”

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Solar Impulse begins four-day Atlantic crossing

Image: Solar Impulse takeoff
The Solar Impulse 2 airplane takes off from New York’s JFK Airport. (Credit: Solar Impulse)

The all-electric Solar Impulse 2 plane left America’s shores tonight and began what’s expected to be a 90-hour trip across the Atlantic Ocean to Spain.

This 3,600-mile leg of the solar-powered, round-the-world flight ranks as the longest single stretch since last summer’s Japan-to-Hawaii trip. During that earlier flight, Solar Impulse’s batteries overheated – forcing a months-long delay to make repairs and wait for the return of temperate weather.

The Swiss-led team says it has upgraded the batteries and added a cooling system to guard against a repeat. Nevertheless, this week’s over-ocean trip is likely to pose the biggest challenge left for the 15-month odyssey.

The fuel-free plane took off just after 2:30 a.m. ET Monday (11:30 p.m. PT Sunday) from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, with Solar Impulse co-founder Bertrand Piccard in the cockpit. His destination is Seville, which is near Spain’s Atlantic coast and the Strait of Gibraltar.

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Stratolaunch lifts veil on mammoth airplane

Image: Stratolaunch hangar
This view of Stratolaunch Systems’ hangar at Mojave Air and Space Port in California shows the massive airplane’s left-side fuselage and scaffolding. (Credit: Vulcan Inc.)

MOJAVE, Calif. – When you walk into the place where Seattle software billionaire Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch Systems is building the world’s biggest airplane, it feels as if you’re stepping into the Starship Enterprise’s construction zone.

“It’s jaw-dropping when you walk into that hangar,” said Chuck Beames, Stratolaunch’s executive director and president of Vulcan Aerospace, during a rare tour last week.

The plane’s wing, taking shape inside a 103,000-square-foot hangar at the Mojave Air and Space Port, stands three stories off the ground and measures 385 feet from tip to tip. That’s three times longer than the distance of the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight in 1903. If the Enterprise is ever built to its “Star Trek” TV dimensions, now or in the 23rd century, the starship would be only a few dozen feet wider.

It doesn’t take long for the numbers – and the view – to boggle the mind. But there’s another side to the Stratolaunch saga: What’s Paul Allen up to? Stratolaunch is designed to serve as a flying platform for sending satellites into orbit, but who will provide the air-launched rockets? What niche will Stratolaunch fill alongside SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and other space companies?

Like the plane, Paul Allen’s vision isn’t quite ready for its full reveal. But five years after its founding, Stratolaunch Systems is providing glimpses behind the veil.

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Blue Origin live-streams test flight to space

Image: Blue Origin launch
Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship rises from its launch pad. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Something went wrong during today’s test flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spaceship, and the world was able to watch how it was handled online.

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space venture intentionally disabled one of the three parachutes on the New Shepard capsule, and also introduced some added challenges for the vertical landing of the rocket-powered booster stage after separation. It’s all part of Bezos’ plan to test the safety systems thoroughly before putting people aboard.

Liftoff took place at 7:35 a.m. PT (9:35 a.m. CT) from Blue Origin’s Texas launch complex. “Beautiful launch of our New Shepard rocket here from West Texas,” launch commentator Ariane Cornell said during Blue Origin’s live video coverage. The video stream was provided via BlueOrigin.com and YouTube. At its peak, more than 15,000 viewers were tuning in.

The test flight lasted about 10 minutes, sending the capsule to an altitude of 331,501 feet (62.8 miles, or 101 kilometers), Cornell said. The capsule separated from the booster as planned. Then the booster made a successful landing, and the two-parachute system brought the capsule down safely, just as hoped.

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