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SpaceX joins battle over satellite bandwidth

SpaceX’s Redmond office is the center for its satellite operations. (GeekWire photo by Kevin Lisota)

SpaceX has provided a rare update on its Seattle-centric plans to develop a multibillion-dollar Internet satellite network, saying that the work is now at a “critical stage.”

That assessment is part of the company’s argument against giving away the bandwidth required for such a network for another purpose – specifically, for 5G mobile broadband services that would be offered by Dish Network and other members of an industry coalition.

The Multi-Channel Video Distribution and Data Service Coalition filed a petition on Wednesday with the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday, asking that the Ku-band spectrum currently being reserved for satellite broadband should be reallocated for 5G services.

“There is simply no basis to jeopardize 5G deployment to give additional spectrum to a speculative NGSO (non-geostationary orbit) service that already has access to ample spectrum,” the MVDDS Coalition told the FCC.

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Maybe black holes aren’t as bad as we think

Here’s one concept for the look of a black hole. Image: Ute Kraus, [CC BY-SA 2.5] via Wikimedia Commons
Black holes may have gotten a bad rap. And wormholes just might be a realistic way to travel Star Trek-style after all.

Years ago, the traditional wisdom about those exotic cosmic phenomena was pretty forbidding: Once something fell into a black hole, it was gone for good. Not a trace of the information describing that thing could ever be recovered. This view gave rise to a famous saying from physicist John Wheeler: “Black holes have no hair.”

And wormholes? Sure, maybe you could theoretically create an extradimensional shortcut between two points in spacetime. But it would take loads of never-seen negative energy, and anything you sent through the wormhole would be blasted to bits by extreme tidal forces. Hence, movies ranging from “Contact” to “Star Trek” and “Interstellar” are far more fanciful than factual.

Two recently published studies run counter to those bits of traditional wisdom. They may shed new light on black holes – but don’t expect to rev up the wormhole time-travel machine anytime soon.

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Astronauts go inside their new pop-up room

NASA astronaut Jeff Williams works inside the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, the newest addition to the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA TV)

Nine days after the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module was blown up to its full volume, astronauts entered the bedroom-sized BEAM compartment for the first time today and started hooking up the utilities.

NASA astronaut Jeff Williams reported that the BEAM’s interior looked “pristine.” It was chilly inside, but there were no signs of condensation on the walls. The temperature was about 44 degrees Fahrenheit at the module’s bulkhead, as expected, according to readings received by ground controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Williams and Russian crewmate Oleg Skripochka took air samples, checked sensors, measured the module’s dimensions and began hooking up air ducts. Then they floated back through the hatch and closed the door. The job will continue over the next couple of days.

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Stage set for private missions to moon, Mars

An artist’s conception shows Moon Express’ MX-1 lander extending its robotic arm to take a “selfie” of the spacecraft on the lunar surface with Earth in the background. (Credit: Moon Express)

After months of discussion, federal agencies are closing in on a process to approve commercial missions to other celestial bodies – including the moon, Mars and asteroids.

The groundwork for the process was laid in April, when the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy told Congress that the Transportation Department was the most appropriate entity to approve new kinds of commercial space missions such as on-orbit satellite servicing and trips beyond Earth orbit.

Now the Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies are “working through the interagency process to ensure a mechanism is in place that permits emerging commercial space operations,” FAA spokesman Hank Price said in a statement emailed to GeekWire.

The issue was brought to a head when Moon Express, one of the companies chasing the Google Lunar X Prize, asked the FAA to review its plans to put a lander on the moon next year. The FAA is part of the Transportation Department. Its Office of Commercial Space Transportation is currently in charge of approving commercial space launches and re-entries, but not activities in orbit or in deep space.

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Space module puffs up like a bag of popcorn

A camera on the International Space Station shows the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, after inflation. (Credit: NASA TV)

It took almost eight hours, but NASA accomplished the first expansion of a pop-up module at the International Space Station today, by inflating the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM.

BEAM was built for NASA by Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace under the terms of a $17.8 million contract. It was sent up to the station last month in the unpressurized trunk of a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule. In its folded-up form, the cylinder-shaped module measures only 7 feet long, but when it’s pressurized with air, it can grow to twice its size.

NASA astronaut Jeff Williams started the job of filling BEAM with air on Thursday, but it was tough going: The module grew by only a few inches before NASA had to call off the operation for the day.

Mission managers surmised that the reinforced fabric on BEAM’s exterior had gotten stiff during prolonged storage. That led to “increased friction between the various layers … which is possibly causing this whole expansion process to just unfold a little bit slower than all of the initial predictions,” NASA spokesman Dan Huot said.

NASA let the fabric relax on Friday. Today, the pace was just as slow as it was two days earlier, but steadier.

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SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket leans in for a landing

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster stands on a drone ship after landing. (Credit: SpaceX)

For the third time in a row, a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster sent a payload into space and then came back for a landing on an oceangoing platform. But this time, the booster was a little shaken up.

Today’s launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida put the Thaicom 8 telecommunications satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit.

Minutes after liftoff at 5:40 p.m. ET (2:40 p.m. PT), the Falcon’s first stage fell away from the second stage. While the second stage continued into orbit with the satellite, the first stage went through a series of maneuvers aimed at braking its supersonic descent and putting itself down on an autonomous drone ship hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic Ocean.

Today’s success rounded out what could be called a hat trick in rocket reusability. SpaceX pulled off its first at-sea touchdown on April 8, and did it again on the night of May 5.

This one was a nail-biter: The launch to a high orbit meant the booster had to re-enter the atmosphere at an incredibly high speed.

In a series of tweets, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the booster was roughed up when it landed on the drone ship, known as “Of Course I Still Love You.”

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Expandable space module barely expands

The Bigelow Expandable Space Module, or BEAM, is designed to expand to twice its folded-up length, but during an initial attempt, it stretched out just a few inches. (Credit: NASA TV)

Update: NASA will make its second attempt to inflate the Bigelow Expandable Space Module starting at around 6 a.m. PT May 28. More details below. 

A multimillion-dollar pop-up room that NASA sees as the future of space habitats expanded just a few inches before the experiment fizzled at the International Space Station on May 26. The space agency said it would try again to deploy the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM.

BEAM was developed by Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace under the terms of a $17.8 million contract with NASA, and sent to the station last month in the unpressurized “trunk” of a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule.

The technology takes advantage of a concept that NASA developed in the 1990s. Bigelow Aerospace, founded by real-estate billionaire Robert Bigelow, licensed the concept and tested it with two free-flying modules that have been launched into orbit over the past decade.

After BEAM’s arrival at the space station, astronauts used the station’s robotic arm to hook up the folded-up module to a port on the Tranquility mode. On May 26, the crew tried releasing air into the module to expand it from about 7 feet to 13 feet in length. The module pushed out about 5 inches, but then it stopped.

After a couple of hours of effort, NASA called off the attempt.

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Jeff Bezos: Next spaceflight will include flaw

Blue Origin’s New Shepard crew capsule descends on the end of its parachute system during an uncrewed test flight in April 2015. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos predicts there’ll be a problem with a parachute the next time his Blue Origin venture flies its uncrewed New Shepard spaceship. He’ll make sure of it.

Flying with a bad parachute is part of Blue Origin’s plan to test the suborbital craft under stressful conditions, in preparation for flying passengers to the edge of outer space in as little as two years.

In today’s email update, Bezos said he and the rest of the team were “finishing our mission planning for another flight of New Shepard, which will be our fourth flight with this vehicle.”

The New Shepard propulsion module and crew capsule went through successful flights to space and vertical landings in November, January and April at Blue Origin’s West Texas launch facility. During last month’s test outing, the propulsion module didn’t relight its hydrogen-powered BE-3 rocket engine until just seconds before what would have been a crash landing. New Shepard made a soft touchdown nevertheless.

“On this next mission, we’ll execute additional maneuvers on both the crew capsule and the booster to increase our vehicle characterization and modeling accuracy,” Bezos wrote.

“We also plan to stress the crew capsule by landing with an intentionally failed parachute, demonstrating our ability to safely handle that failure scenario,” he continued. “It promises to be an exciting demonstration.”

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‘Space selfie’ project canceled; refunds offered

An artist’s conception shows how an Arkyd 100 space telescope would have taken a “space selfie” from orbit. (Credit: Planetary Resources via Kickstarter)

REDMOND, Wash. – Three years ago, Planetary Resources raised more than $1.5 million on Kickstarter to build a space telescope that would let users snap selfies from orbit. Today, the company says it can’t follow through on the project – and is offering full refunds to its 17,614 backers.

“It’s a decision that we make with a heavy heart,” Chris Lewicki, president and CEO of Planetary Resources, told GeekWire during a visit to the company’s Redmond headquarters.

Lewicki said the support received during the Kickstarter campaign exceeded their wildest expectations, but it wasn’t enough to fund everything that needed to be done to turn the promised system into reality.

“We evaluated a lot of different opportunities with businesses, with educational institutions, with different outlets,” he said. “What we didn’t find, since the campaign closed a few years ago, was the follow-on interest to take it from a project and scale it into a fully funded mission. … We’re going to wind down the project and bring it to a close.”

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Planetary Resources focuses on Earth imaging

Planetary Resources’ Chris Lewicki and GeekWire’s Alan Boyle mug for the camera behind two Arkyd 6 satellites being tested for flight in Planetary Resources’ clean room. (GeekWire photo by Kevin Lisota)

REDMOND, Wash. – Planetary Resources was founded as an asteroid mining company, but a fresh infusion of $21.1 million in investment puts the emphasis on a space frontier that’s closer to home: Earth observation.

“It leverages everything that we have been working on for the last several years … and it moves us forward in the direction of asteroid prospecting,” Planetary Resources’ president and CEO, Chris Lewicki, said this week during a tour of the company’s Redmond headquarters.

The Series A funding announced today will be used to deploy and operate Planetary Resources’ Earth observation program,known as Ceres. The lead investor is the OS Fund, founded by Los Angeles venture capitalist Bryan Johnson. Other investors include Idea Bulb Ventures, Vast Ventures, Grishin Robotics, Conversion Capital, the Seraph Group, Space Angels Network and Google co-founder Larry Page.

In a statement, Johnson said Ceres will represent “a seismic shift for the new space economy.”

Planetary Resources also announced it would be shutting down what was once a wildly popular Kickstarter project that would have enabled backers to take “space selfie” pictures with the company’s space telescopes. Lewicki said all 17,614 backers would be offered full refunds.

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