Tag: NewSpace

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Space for Humanity seeks citizen astronauts

Space travelers
An artist’s conception shows two high-flying travelers looking at the curving Earth below. (World View Enterprises Illuastration via Space for Humanity)

RENTON, Wash. — Space for Humanity is looking for more than a few good astronauts.

The Colorado-based nonprofit group today opened up an online application processfor expense-paid trips to the edge of space, with the goal of giving citizen astronauts a sense of planetary perspective known as the Overview Effect.

This is actually Space for Humanity’s second solicitation, following up on an initial call that went out two years ago. Like that earlier campaign, today’s follow-up was unveiled in conjunction with the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace conference.

The objective of the campaign is to raise global awareness about the Overview Effect — a feeling of spiritual connectedness that has often been experienced by astronauts looking down at the planet below.

Space for Humanity says as many as 10,000 candidates could be selected for the project, with the expectation that those who travel to the high frontier will serve as ambassadors for the Overview Effect once they come back down to Earth.

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Blue Origin pushes ahead with moon lander engine

BE-7 engine test
Blue Origin’s BE-7 rocket engine executes a test firing in June. The green flame is produced by the engine’s ignition system. (Blue Origin Photo)

RENTON, Wash. — Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it has test-fired its BE-7 rocket engine for the total six-minute duration it would need for a landing on the moon.

Patrick Zeitouni, Blue Origin’s head of advanced development programs, said the milestone for cumulative firing time was reached during a test conducted just a few days ago at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama — part of a series of tests that began a month ago.

“We’re very excited,” Zeitouni said here at the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace conference. “That means we’re getting a whole lot closer to getting that engine fielded,” he said. “And as you guys know, propulsion, rocket engines are extremely important. They’re the long pole in the tent when you’re trying to develop a new system and bring it online.”

A single hydrogen-fueled BE-7 engine would power Blue Origin’s Blue Moon landerfor payload deliveries to the lunar surface, packing up to 10,000 pounds of thrust.

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Olis and Tethers Unlimited team up on space robots

Robot arm and Refabricator
An artist’s conception shows a Mantis robotic arm at work on Tethers Unlimited’s Refabricator 3-D printer and recycler. (Tethers Unlimited / Olis Robotics Illustration)

Two space tech companies that are headquartered in the Seattle area, Olis Robotics and Tethers Unlimited, are joining forces to create a new kind of remote-controlled robotic system that could be used on the International Space Station or other off-Earth outposts.

The companies say they’ve signed an agreement to explore further development of the system, in an arrangement that follows up on past collaborations.

Seattle-based Olis Robotics’ software platform allows robots to perform some tasks autonomously and reduce operator workload on other tasks. The platform makes it possible for robots in remote locations to execute their prescribed tasks safely even if their links with remote operators are subject to time delays or data dropouts.

That’s just the kind of resiliency that’s required for space operations, Olis CEO Don Pickering said. “Our variable autonomy software platform allows operators anywhere in the world to command new levels of precision, safety and efficiency in remotely operating robotics in space,” he explained in a news release.

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New space station ventures are on the rise

Kate Rubins in Bigelow's BEAM
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins conducts tests and replaces parts inside the International Space Station’s Bigelow Expandable Activity Module in 2016. (NASA Photo)

RENTON, Wash. — NASA’s plan to expand commercial ventures on the International Space Station is attracting lots of interest — and not just from would-be space tourists, according to the agency official who’s keeping track of the proposals.

One of the ideas that’s most intriguing to Doug Comstock, a NASA deputy chief financial officer who serves as the liaison for commercial activities in low Earth orbit, has to do with growing artificial retinas in zero gravity.

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Private ventures enlisted for space race revival

Lunar landing system
An artist’s conception shows a landing system in lunar orbit. (NASA Illustration)

RENTON, Wash. — Fifty years after the landmark Apollo 11 mission blasted off for the climax of the U.S.-Soviet space race, officials from NASA and the Air Force highlighted the role of commercial space ventures in running a new race for American leadership on the final frontier.

Clayton Turner, deputy director of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, noted that the space agency was born a little more than 60 years ago, in the wake of Sputnik’s launch and the dawn of the first space race.

“For a lot of that time, NASA was the only player in town. NASA and DOD [Department of Defense] were the only players in town,” he said here today at the Space Frontier Foundation’s annual NewSpace conference. “For the next 60 years, the next 100 years, that is not going to be the case, and that is a great idea.”

Turner said most of the airplanes flying around the world today are built by commercial enterprises, with governments purchasing services as needed. “That’s what we want to think about for space development,” Turner said.

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How a satellite snafu led to a new launch policy

PSLV rocket
India’s PSLV-C40 rocket stands on its launch pad in advance of January’s liftoff. (ISRO Photo)

When India’s PSLV rocket launched a host of satellites into orbit in January, one big piece was missing: the Federal Communications Commission’s authorization for Swarm Technologies’ super-miniaturized satellites.

The FCC had nixed Swarm’s application on the grounds that the wallet-sized communications satellites, known as SpaceBEEs, were too small to be tracked properly. But Seattle-based Spaceflight, which had arranged for the launch, didn’t know that.

January’s unauthorized launch of the SpaceBEEs resulted in a regulatory slap for Swarm, and no small embarrassment for Spaceflight.

Curt Blake, the launch logistics company’s president, vows it won’t happen again.

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Blue Origin targets moon landing by 2023

A.C. Charania
A.C. Charania, Blue Origin’s business development director, addresses the NewSpace conference with a picture of his company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, looming in the background. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, is laying out a plan to support the creation of permanent settlements on the moon, starting with a lunar landing mission within the next five years.

The Kent, Wash.-based company’s roadmap was laid out most recently last week during the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace conference in Renton, Wash.

Blue Origin’s business development director, A.C. Charania, said the company’s Blue Moon program is “our first step to developing a lunar landing capability for the country, for other customers internationally, to be able to land multi metric tons on the lunar surface.”

“Any permanent human presence on the lunar surface will require such a capability,” he said.

Charania said “we’re actively working on the descent stage for Blue Moon, the capabilities, the partnerships that are required to enable that service … to start going back to the moon with larger and larger payloads.”

Blue Moon could help answer longstanding scientific questions about the moon’s origin and evolution, delve into lunar resource identification and extraction, and “enable human lunar return,” Charania said.

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Simulated moon dirt turns up real challenges

Simulated moon dirt
Off Planet Research’s co-owners, Vince Roux and Melissa Roth, hold samples of lunar dirt and moon rocks. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

RENTON, Wash. — When commercial ventures start setting up shop on the moon, they may well run into nasty clouds of grit that clog up airways and gum up equipment.

Those are just the sorts of unpleasant surprises that Off Planet Research wants to help those ventures avoid.

The Lacey, Wash.-based company produces simulated soil that can be used for earthly testing of lunar operations.

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Virgin Orbit gets ready to start test launches

Stephen Eisele
Virgin Orbit Vice President Stephen Eisele talks about his company’s air-launch system during the NewSpace conference in Renton, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

RENTON, Wash. — British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit venture is getting ready to put its LauncherOne rocket system through its first flight test in a little more than a week, the company’s vice president for business development said today.

The first flight will be a captive-carry test, Virgin Orbit’s Stephen Eisele said during the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace conference in Renton. That means an inactive LauncherOne rocket would be attached to a pylon built onto a converted Boeing 747 jet that’s known as Cosmic Girl.

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Why SpaceX and Boeing can sell extra seats to orbit

Sunita Williams in SpaceX Dragon mockup
NASA astronaut Sunita Williams wears a SpaceX spacesuit as she sits in a mockup for a Crew Dragon spaceship. (SpaceX Photo)

RENTON, Wash. — When NASA’s Phil McAlister worked out the contracts with SpaceX and Boeing to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, he made sure they could make some money on the side.

The contracts contain a clause that allows the companies to propose putting a private spaceflight participant in one of the extra seats aboard SpaceX’s Dragon craft or Boeing’s Starliner spaceship, said McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA Headquarters.

“Contractually, we put a hook in there,” McAlister said today at the Space Frontier Foundation’s annual NewSpace conference in Renton. “I made sure it was there. It was very important for that capability to be in the contract.”

The clause kicks in once SpaceX and Boeing get their space taxis certified for flight, which could happen as early as next year.

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