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Swarm Technologies stung by $900,000 fine

SpaceBEE satellite
As initially designed, Swarm Technologies’ controversial SpaceBEE satellites were each roughly the size of a sandwich. (Swarm Technologies Illustration via FCC)

The Federal Communications Commission says Swarm Technologies must pay a $900,000 fine and be subject to increased scrutiny for having a tiny set of satellites launched without authorization.

The penalties were laid out in a consent decree issued today.

“We will aggressively enforce the FCC’s requirements that companies seek FCC authorization prior to deploying and operating communications satellites and earth stations,” Rosemary Harold, chief of the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau, said in a news release.  “These important obligations protect other operators against radio interference and collisions, making space a safer place to operate.”

California-based Swarm is aiming to develop a constellation of miniaturized telecommunications satellites that would enable “low-cost, space-based connectivity anywhere in the world.”

The company drew the FCC’s ire after a four-pack of its sandwich-sized satellites, known as SpaceBEEs, was launched aboard an Indian PSLV rocket in January — even though the agency had turned down its application for authorization. FCC officials were concerned that the 4-inch-wide, 1-inch-thick satellites would be too small to be tracked in orbit.

The launch was facilitated by Seattle-based Spaceflight, which said it was not aware at the time that Swarm’s application had been rejected.

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Blue Origin plans to launch NASA science payloads

Blue Origin New Shepard
Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spaceship sits on its West Texas launch pad in preparation for a launch in July 2018. (Blue Origin Photo)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it plans to send nine NASA-sponsored payloads to space and back on the 10th uncrewed test flight of its New Shepard suborbital spaceship.

Liftoff was originally set for 8:30 a.m. CT (6:30 a.m. PT) Dec. 18 from Blue Origin’s suborbital launch complex in West Texas.

Update for 5:47 a.m. PT Dec. 20: After working through a ground infrastructure issue, Blue Origin has decided to put off the next launch of its New Shepard suborbital spaceship until early 2019.

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InSight lander sets first tool on Martian ground

Seismometer on Mars
An image from NASA’s InSight lander shows the probe’s robotic arm putting a seismometer on Mars. This is the first time a seismometer has been placed onto the surface of another planet. (NASA / JPL-Caltech Photo)

After three weeks of checking out the scene on the Red Planet, NASA’s InSight landerhas placed its first scientific instrument on the Martian surface.

The probe’s robotic arm pulled InSight’s seismometer, known as the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure or SEIS, from the spacecraft’s deck on Dec. 19 and slowly, gingerly set it down on a flat spot directly in front of the lander. The arm stretched out to nearly its maximum reach, 5.367 feet away from the deck.

Deploying SEIS is a major milestone for InSight’s two-year mission to monitor seismic activity and internal heat flow on the Red Planet. (The mission’s name is an acronym that stands for “Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.”)

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Space station trio rides slashed Soyuz back to Earth

Serena Aunon-Chancellor
NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor is carried to a medical tent shortly after she, Germany’s Alexander Gerst and Russia’s Sergey Prokopyev landed in their Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft near the town of Zhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. (NASA Photo / Bill Ingalls)

A Russian Soyuz spaceship that stirred up an international fuss over a drill hole and an air leak brought three spacefliers back to Earth from the International Space Station without a problem.

NASA’s Serena Auñón-Chancellor, Germany’s Alexander Gerst and Russia’s Sergey Prokopyev touched down in the snowy steppes of Kazakhstan at 11:02 a.m. local time Dec. 20 (9:02 p.m. PT Dec. 19), leaving three crewmates on the orbital outpost.

The homeward-bound trio rode the same Soyuz they took up to the station in June. It’s the same Soyuz that experienced an air leak in August, causing consternation in space as well as back down on Earth.

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Meteor flash gets mashed up with launch scrub

Rocket fans in California may have been disappointed by tonight’s scrub of a Delta 4 Heavy launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, but they received a nice consolation prize: a fireball that left what looked like a contrail hanging in sunset skies.

The bright squiggle in the sky may have mystified some, but savvy folks who spotted the flash recognized it as the signature of an exploding meteor, also known as a bolide.

It was pure coincidence that the fireball flashed at 5:34 p.m. PT, just before United Launch Alliance called off the launch of a classified spy satellite known as NROL-71 for the National Reconnaissance Office, due to elevated hydrogen levels that were detected during the countdown.

Video views captured from cars traveling in locales including Sacramento, Stockton and the San Francisco Bay Area helped solve the celestial mystery.

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NASA reviews security after data breach

Pleiades supercomputer network
NASA’s computer servers include the Pleiades supercomputer network. (NASA Photo)

NASA says it is reviewing its network security processes and procedures after a computer break-in exposed Social Security numbers and other personal information about the space agency’s current and past employees.

The breach was discovered in October, and its full extent and impact has yet to be determined. NASA says it will provide identity protection services to all those who have potentially been affected.

NASA Watch, an independent website founded by former NASA employee Keith Cowing, first brought the incident to light in a posting on Dec. 18 that quoted an internal NASA memo. The memo suggests that agency employees who were hired, transferred or left NASA between July 2006 and October 2018 may be affected.

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Spaceflight strikes deal for Brazilian satellite launch

Amazonia-1
An artist’s conception shows the Amazonia-1 satellite. (INPE Illustration)

Seattle-based Spaceflight says it’s struck one of its biggest deals for a satellite launch with Brazil’s space research institute, focusing on putting the Amazonia-1 satellite into low Earth orbit in mid-2020.

The contract was awarded on Dec. 18 during a ceremony in São José dos Campos, attended by Brazilian space officials as well as Melissa Wuerl, Spaceflight’s vice president of business development.

Amazonia-1 is designed to make observations of Brazilian territory, with a special focus on the Amazon region, for the National Institute for Space Research, known in Portuguese as the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais or INPE.

It’s the first Earth observation satellite to be completely designed, integrated, tested and operated by Brazil.

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Elon Musk shows off Boring Company test tunnel

Boring Company tunnel
A Tesla Model X electric car with retractable wheel gear sits inside the Boring Company’s test tunnel. The company’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk, says the apparatus turns the car into a “rail-guided train.” (Elon Musk via Twitter)

The Boring Company’s hole in the ground in Hawthorne, Calif., got a Hollywood-style debut tonight courtesy of the company’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk.

Musk stood just outside a 1.14-mile-long test tunnel, illuminated in blue light, and spoke glowingly to a VIP crowd about how tunnels could turn the “soul-crushing” gridlock of urban traffic into a sci-fi experience.

“They’re sort of like wormholes,” he said. “You’re driving around, you think, ugh, I need to get to the other side of L.A., New York, whatever. Drop down the wormhole, pshew, pop out the other side and you just drive normally. I think this is, like, really a panacea.”

Tonight’s first tours served as a curtain-raiser for Musk’s Loop concept, which involves building a 3-D network of tunnels, elevators and ramps  — and then sending autonomous electric cars equipped with retractable guide wheels zipping through those tunnels at speeds of up to 150 mph.

That’s a departure from Musk’s previous idea of using custom-built “skates” to carry cars and people.

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Tornado makes rare Pacific Northwest appearance

Tornado on Doppler image
Color-coded Doppler radar imagery shows where a tornado apparently touched down near Port Orchard, Wash. (NWS via @MorganKIRO7 / Twitter)

The Pacific Northwest is typically in the “bush league” when it comes to tornadoes, but the National Weather Service says a twister hit a grand slam today south of Port Orchard on Washington state’s Kitsap Peninsula.

Aerial views from Seattle television stations showed roofs ripped off houses, debris flying in the air and trees uprooted.

In a series of tweets, the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office said the storm caused “catastrophic damage in the Port Orchard area.”

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Trump authorizes revival of U.S. Space Command

Vice President Mike Pence
Vice President Mike Pence delivers remarks at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. (White House via YouTube)

President Donald Trump today authorized the Pentagon to set up the U.S. Space Command as its own combatant command, in preparation for creating a Space Force as a separate branch of the military.

The authorization for the Space Command came in the form of a memorandum that doesn’t require congressional approval. Creating the Space Force, however, is dependent on action in Congress — and with Democrats taking charge of the House, there’s a chance that the force may take a form different from what the White House originally envisioned.

Cost estimates for setting up a Space Force as the first branch of the military to be created since the Air Force’s birth in 1947 range from a few billion dollars to as much as $13 billion. Some policymakers favor less expensive alternatives — such as a Space Corps that would be created within Air Force, just as the Marine Corps was created under the Navy’s administrative aegis.

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