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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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Report: SpaceX raising $500M for Starlink satellites

SpaceX Starlink satellites
SpaceX’s two prototype Starlink satellites are seen on either side of their carrier in advance of February’s launch. (SpaceX via YouTube)

SpaceX is set to raise $500 million in new investment to boost the development of its Starlink internet satellite service, The Wall Street Journal reported today.

The funding round sets the California-based space company’s valuation at $30.5 billion, the Journal quoted unnamed sources as saying.

One source familiar with the terms of the round told the Journal that SpaceX and investors have agreed on the financing terms, but the money hasn’t yet been sent to the company. The investors are said to include existing shareholders as well as Baillie Gifford, a Scottish investment firm that is the third-largest shareholder in Tesla, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s other big business concern.

Today’s report about the investment round came just weeks after SpaceX took out a $250 million high-yield leveraged loan, in a private deal reportedly managed by Bank of America. At the time, sources suggested that cash would go toward development of Starlink as well as Starship, the super-heavy-lift launch system formerly known as the Big Falcon Rocket or BFR.

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Solar system’s farthest-out known object is … Farout

Farout
An artist’s conception shows the distant object known as 2018 VG18 or “Farout.” (Carnegie Institution for Science Illustration / Roberto Molar Candanosa)

Astronomers say they’ve discovered the most distant body ever observed in our solar system, a potential dwarf planet that’s about 11 billion miles from the sun.

Its nickname? “Farout.”

The far-out object — which is also known by its more official but less colorful designation, 2018 VG18 — was detected with Japan’s 8-meter Subaru Telescope in Hawaii during a campaign to look for extremely distant solar system objects, including a hypothetical Planet X or Planet Nine.

Further observations to confirm Farout’s distance and determine its brightness and color were made with the 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The observations were reported today in a circular distributed by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.

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Boeing’s board boosts dividend by 20 percent

Boeing sign
Boeing’s board of directors has approved an increase in the company’s quarterly dividend. (GeekWire Photo)

Boeing Co. reported today that its board of directors approved a 20 percent increase in the company’s quarterly dividend, to a level of $2.055 per share.

The board also boosted its authorization for share repurchases from $18 billion to $20 billion.

The increases reflect Boeing’s optimistic outlook as the company gets ready to close the books on 2018 with a traditional year’s-end rush. As of Nov. 30, Boeing’s tally of commercial airplane deliveries came to 704, closing in on last year’s record of 763 deliveries. The 11-month tally for net orders stood at 690, compared with 912 for all of last year.

On the space and defense side of business, Boeing is on the verge of delivering its first KC-46 tanker to the Air Force, after years of delay and billions of dollars of cost overruns. This fall, the company won three blockbuster contracts for military aircraft, and it’s also getting ready to put its Starliner space taxi through a crucial series of test launches for NASA.

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Boeing and Embraer set terms for joint ventures

Boeing and Embraer jets
The Boeing-Embraer deal would add regional jets such as Embraer’s E190-E2 to a lineup that also includes Boeing’s 737 MAX 7 and larger jets. (Embraer Illustration)

Five months after announcing a tentative deal, the Boeing Co. and Brazil’s Embraer aerospace company say they’ve approved the terms for a joint venture that would take in Embraer’s commercial aircraft and services operations — plus another joint venture to promote and develop new markets for Embraer’s KC-390 military transport plane.

Boeing would acquire an 80 percent ownership stake in the commercial joint venture for $4.2 billion, the companies said. That amount is 10.5 percent higher than the figures cited for the tentative agreement announced in July: Back then, Boeing said it would take an 80 percent share of a joint venture valued at $4.75 billion, which would have worked out to a value of $3.8 billion for Boeing’s share.

The CEOs of both companies hailed the approval of the terms today in a news release.

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Rocket Lab sends 13 satellites to orbit

Rocket Lab liftoff
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket rises from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand. (Rocket Lab via YouTube)

Rocket Lab has sent its first payloads for NASA into orbit from its New Zealand launch pad, atop a low-cost Electron rocket powered by 3-D-printed engines.

Liftoff from Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula came at 7:33 p.m. Dec. 16 New Zealand time (10:33 p.m. PT Dec. 15), after a two-day delay due to weather concerns.

Ten of the 13 small satellites packed aboard the rocket were funded through NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites program, or ELaNa. The other three came along for the ride, and are designed to test new imaging technologies and study how high-frequency radio signals travel through Earth’s ionosphere.

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What’s next for commercial spaceflight? Passengers

Richard Branson and astronauts
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson, center, celebrates this week’s successful test flight of VSS Unity with test pilots Rick “CJ” Sturckow at left and Mark “Forger” Stucky at right. Branson says he’ll be Unity’s first commercial passenger. (Virgin Galactic / Quasar Media Photo)

MOJAVE, Calif. — The first suborbital space passenger is less likely to be a billionaire like Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson or Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos, and more likely to be an as-yet-unnamed employee at one of their companies.

That’s despite Branson’s promise, reiterated in the wake of Dec. 13’s successful test flight past the 50-mile altitude mark, that he’d be the first commercial passenger on Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity within the next few months.

The word “passenger” is key: We’re not talking about the people who are actually flying the spacecraft, such as the two test pilots who were at Unity’s controls this week. Rather, we’re talking about folks who will be seated in Virgin Galactic’s Unity rocket plane, behind the pilots, or in Blue Origin’s New Shepard crew capsule.

“Suborbital” is key as well: There have already been a good number of passengers on orbital spacecraft, going back to the days of Russia’s Mir space station in the 1990s. Seven people have paid their own way for trips to the International Space Station, with the official status of spaceflight participants. Looking ahead, passengers may get their chance to purchase seats on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon or Boeing’s Starliner space capsule.

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Orbiter spots InSight lander on Mars’ surface

Mars InSight spottings
NASA’s InSight lander (at center, with its two solar arrays), its heat shield (at right) and its parachute (at left) were imaged on Dec. 6 and 11 by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Click on the image for a larger version. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona Photo)

Two weeks after NASA’s InSight lander touched down on Mars, its precise location on Elysium Planitia has been pinpointed, thanks to pictures from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

And it’s not just the car-sized lander: The orbiter even identified the sites where the spacecraft’s heat shield as well as its backshell and attached parachute ended up.

In today’s mission update, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the lander, heat shield and parachute are all within 1,000 feet of one another on the “heavenly plain” where InSight is gearing up to monitor Mars’ seismic activity and heat flow.

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Virgin Galactic plane takes 51-mile-high spaceflight

Virgin Galactic spaceflight
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipOne rocket plane, dubbed VSS Unity, fires its hybrid rocket motor for a 51-mile-high flight. (MarsScientific.com / Trumbull Studios)

MOJAVE, Calif. — Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, dubbed VSS Unity, has become the first privately funded vehicle in 14 years to carry people to the edge of space — depending on how you define space.

“I’m not allowed to say this, but hopefully we’re going to space today!” Virgin Galactic’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, said just after the flight took off from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port today.

Over the course of almost an hour, SpaceShipTwo and its White Knight Two mothership rose to a launch altitude of about 43,000 feet. Just before 8 a.m.. PT, the rocket plane was dropped from White Knight Two’s underbelly and lit up its own hybrid rocket motor.

The rocket blasted for 60 seconds, sending Unity upward at supersonic speeds as high as Mach 2.9 and powering test pilots Mark “Forger” Stucky and Rick “CJ” Sturckow to a height of 271,268 feet. That translates to 51.4 miles, or 82.6 kilometers.

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Allen Institute expands into immunology

Thomas Bumol in lab
Thomas Bumol, far left, executive director of the Allen Institute for Immunology, meets with his team prior to the institute’s launch. When fully staffed, the institute will have 60 to 70 employees. (Allen Institute Photo)

Billionaire philanthropist Paul Allen died two months ago, but before he passed away, he passed along a $125 million commitment to a new research frontier: the Allen Institute for Immunology.

The Allen Institute’s newest division, unveiled today at the institute’s Seattle headquarters, will focus on the human immune system and how it can be tweaked to fight cancer and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.

“None of this would have been possible without the extraordinary vision and generosity of our late founder, Paul Allen,” Allan Jones, president and CEO of the Allen Institute, said at the unveiling. “Paul challenged us to go after the really hard problems, to unravel the complexities of biology, and make a lasting impact on science that advances health.”

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