Nextgov/FCW - Authors - Tim Fernholz

Watch a Space Robot Capture a Runaway Satellite With its Net

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 09:00:00 -0400

What to do about a drifting satellite?

When their missions are done, satellites are supposed to trash themselves—either burning up in the atmosphere, or flying into a parking orbit out of everyone else’s way. But older or malfunctioning satellites aren’t always able to take care of themselves. These can become dangerous obstacles to everything else in orbit, from other satellites to the International Space Station, as can other debris left in orbit by butter fingers.

An experiment designed by the University of Surrey demonstrates one potential clean-up tactic: Use a net to ensnare the errant satellite; its extra weight and broader aerodynamic profile will pull the old satellite down into the atmosphere for incineration. This video shows the net in action:

The experiment, known as Remove Debris, used a one-meter cube satellite built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. and launched by SpaceX to the International Space Station earlier this year. The largest satellite ever deployed from the orbital lab, Remove Debris contained the target satellite seen above, as well as another small satellite it will use to test range-finding sensors. Later, it will also shoot a tethered harpoon at a target that it extends from its body to test a different method of disposal.

These experiments will gave space engineers data about how to construct and deploy an orbital trash collector to deal with the growing problem. Space debris in low-earth orbit increases each year, and plans to launch huge new constellations mean it is only going to get more crowded.

Mission complete, the satellite will ultimately deploy a drag sail to pull itself back down into the atmosphere, where it too will be burnt up and destroyed.

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A Tiny Hole in the Soyuz Spacecraft Could Be a Huge Headache for NASA

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Sat, 08 Sep 2018 11:00:00 -0400

Flight controllers monitoring the International Space Station’s atmosphere detected a steady but small drop in pressure on Aug. 29. At the time, the six astronauts onboard were sleeping. Controllers didn’t wake them up right away—the station wouldn’t have run out of air for 18 days.

Once awake, the astronauts discovered a 2-millimeter hole inside the Soyuz spacecraft, which ferried the most recent expedition some 250 miles (402 km) up to the station in June. (Naturally, the hole was behind the toilet.) At first, the cause was assumed to be a micrometeoroid or other space debris, the bane of human spaceflight in low-earth orbit.

But the breach appears to have been caused by the errant drill of a Russian manufacturing technician, which skittered across the surface of the spacecraft. These types of quality control problems with the Soyuz—the only way for astronauts to get to ISS—will pile more pressure on the delayed efforts of Boeing and SpaceX to fly astronauts for NASA.

ISS Leak summary:

First thought was MMOD strike.

Then NASA released pics. Lots of people: "Hmmm, doesn't look like MMOD". NASA deleted the photos.

Top Russian news site RIA NOVOSTI reported - via sources but apparently confirmed by Mr. Rogozin - it was a drill hole. pic.twitter.com/520kHK0TMc
— Chris B - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) September 3, 2018

Instead of reporting the problem—which could have required a costly and time-consuming re-build—the technician apparently covered the hole with a patch, which ultimately gave way.

Cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev was able to re-patch the hole with gauze and epoxy, an effective temporary solution. Luckily, the breach is located in a section of the spacecraft that is jettisoned before it returns to earth—had it been in the segment where astronauts sit, the situation would be much more serious.

Dmitry Rogozin, the burly and aggressive head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, is a target of U.S. sanctions even as he now shepherds US astronauts into orbit. Rogozin has promised to get to the bottom of the issue. “Now it is essential to see the reason, to learn the name of the one responsible for that,” he said. “And we will find out, without fail.”

Ups and downs

“Despite the incredible capability and robust designs, Russian space technology production always suffered from quality problems,” Mark Albrecht, a longtime U.S. government space policymaker and former executive of a Lockheed Martin partnership, told me in 2017. That was during a discussion of the Proton rocket, built by a different company; the Soyuz has a longstanding record of reliability, with no failures in 90 flights since 1983.

An investigation into the Soyuz hole will include a careful examination of the assembly of that spacecraft to ensure it can still carry astronauts down in October, as well as the spacecraft launching a new crew of two Russians and one American shortly thereafter. If problems are suspected with either spacecraft, it may force some or all of the ISS crew to return to earth prematurely, because the station must maintain a reliable “lifeboat” for all six of its passengers.

With the U.S. still at least nine months from being able to fly more astronauts to the station itself using new spacecraft built by SpaceX and Boeing, the future of the station remains in the hands of the Russians and the Soyuz. “Our Russian partners have demonstrated their human and technological resilience many times throughout the history of their efforts in human spaceflight,” a NASA spokesperson told Quartz. “The International Space Station partners all participate in multiple reviews prior to every major station activity to assess and ensure the safety of all crew members.”

Even without errant drill holes, astronauts are facing challenges getting to orbit. In July, government auditors warned that SpaceX and Boeing were in danger of running out of time before a Soyuz flight scheduled for November 2019, the last with Americans onboard. NASA executives managed to push that flight to January 2020, and are also considering using test flights of the new vehicles in 2019 to carry additional astronauts to the station for long-term missions.But if delays continue to mount, it could leave the U.S. locked out of the station for months.

Cabin crew

NASA officials told the auditors that the ISS can’t function without astronauts onboard. That’s largely because the $150 billion station’s function is to keep humans alive so they can perform research projects. Kevin Metrocavage, a NASA operations manager for the ISS, describes the station as both a complex vehicle like an airplane, and a home.

“You’re changing out batteries in your smoke detectors, you’re changing out hardware, they’ve got filters…changing out toilet hardware, something that needs to be kept sterile and handled on a regular basis,” Metrocavage told Quartz. “Trouble-shooting anomalies is inevitable; we have hardware failures and leaks.”

But when it comes to maintaining the station’s position in space, “really mostly everything can be done from the ground,” he says. “We want to the crew to focus on the research.”

The real problem with an empty or under-crewed station isn’t that it might fall out of the sky, but that it would be a colossal waste. As it is, ISS astronauts are heavily scheduled, acting as lab technicians for research projects (which often include themselves), exercising to maintain their health, fixing and maintaining the station, installing new hardware, and squeezing in sleep and personal time when they can.

The vehicles being designed by SpaceX and Boeing are extremely welcome at NASA in part because they promise the ability to keep four U.S. astronauts on station at a time instead of just three, expanding the amount of work that can be done on station.

So if the U.S. astronauts are missing for any period of time, can the cosmonauts handle their tasks alone? “I think it would be tough for us operate without them or for them to operate without us without more extensive training,” Metrocavage says. “Hopefully that’s never a question we have to answer.”

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How Rocket-Makers Ensure 3D Printed Parts Are Strong Enough for Space

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Thu, 23 Aug 2018 12:00:00 -0400

Some people are skeptical about 3D printing machines like rockets. Their view is that hardware made by precisely spraying hot metal into shape can’t possibly be as strong as hardware assembled using fusion welding.

Still, cost-efficiency means most aerospace companies do make use of additive manufacturing in their supply chain. Relativity Space, a Los Angeles start-up, makes more use than most, and has promised to build almost an entire rocket with a large, custom-made 3D printer.

Relativity Space CEO Tim Ellis says his printer has passed an industrial standard for welding called AWS D17.1 Class A, which has stringent rules for quality. ”That’s the standard you would use for fracture-critical, mission critical parts that cannot fail,” he says. Ellis gave Quartz a rare look inside the process.

So how do you know if your 3D-printed part is strong enough? By checking your work with powerful X-Rays and a microscope. At first, you might see results like these, which are from metal parts that Relativity printed two years ago while still developing its technology. An X-Ray scan shows irregular formation and jagged edges:

Relativity Space

Then, the microscope reveals microscopic cracks in the surface of the hardware:

Relativity Space

Today, Relativity’s printer is producing far different results. X-Ray scans show a uniform part with clean edges:

Relativity Space

And the microscope shows no tiny fractures or pores in the surface of the metal:

Relativity Space

The stress of sending a rocket into space faster than the speed of sound is extreme, and even the tiniest flaws can lead to a disastrous failure. Getting the vehicle right means sweating the details—down to 500 micrometers.

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The U.S. Is Worried That a Russian Satellite Is Really a Weapon

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 10:58:10 -0400

When the satellite Cosmos 2519 was launched into space by Russia last year, the world did not know why.

Now, a U.S. diplomat warned a global arms control conference in Geneva on Aug. 14 that “we are concerned with what appears to be very abnormal behavior by a declared ‘space apparatus inspector.’ We don’t know for certain what it is, and there is no way to verify it.”

A Russian diplomat called the comment “slanderous.”

The official statement from Yleem Poblete, the top U.S. diplomat on arms control issues, suggests American intelligence agencies have reason to believe the satellite may be surveilling U.S. space assets—or practicing to attack them in the future.

After launch, Cosmos 2519 deployed two smaller satellites, and maneuvered to rendezvous with them. Because bringing propellant to space is difficult, most satellites are designed to fly to a designated orbit and then make small adjustments to their position. A satellite that can travel between orbits to check in on other satellites is relatively unusual.

Such a vehicle could be used for many purposes: To perform maintenance on or re-fuel older satellites, extending their lives, or to clean up space debris, even sending old satellites to storage orbits or to burn up in the atmosphere. It could also be used to spy on other satellites and attack them with lasers, robotic manipulators or simply by crashing into them.

The U.S. military is certainly tracking the Russian satellite’s position using ground-based radar, but the ability to ascertain what it is doing is limited. Powerful cameras at ground bases or on spy satellites can zoom in on passing spacecraft only if its orbit aligns with their field of view.

China and Russia have been performing more tests of “dual use” space hardware that could be innocuous or a weapon. Vladimir Putin announced a package of new weapons programs earlier this year, including an anti-satellite laser. That escalation is one reason why the U.S. is considering the creation of a dedicated military force for space.

The U.S., of course, has its own military capabilities in space. It tested an anti-satellite missile in 2008, and regularly operates the X-37B spacecraft, a miniature space shuttle that can also maneuver in space and whose purpose is the subject of much speculation.

Most valuable space assets—constellations of huge navigation, communications, surveillance and missile-detection satellites—are protected largely because they are so far away from Earth and orbiting quickly. As potential adversaries demonstrate the ability to reach out and touch these, they are far more vulnerable than they appeared just a few years ago.

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Space as a Service: NASA and SpaceX Find a New Way of Putting People Into Orbit

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 10:00:00 -0400

As soon as next year, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft will whip around the earth at 17,500 miles per hour, ferrying two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.

Those astronauts will have little piloting to do; the spacecraft is mostly automated, as its predecessor was on cargo runs going back to 2010. Indeed, when the Crew Dragon takes flight, its emergency control pad may contain just six physical buttons. Each one initiates automated crisis procedures, a sudden return to earth or retreat from the ISS among them. If something goes wrong and the astronauts must take control, it won’t be by joystick; the pilot will point his gloved fingers at a touchscreen to manually control the vehicle.

In the 1960s, the original Mercury 7 astronauts famously demanded that NASA add a window and more controls to their space capsule to make it more flyable. Today’s astronauts are playing as big a role in designing the next generation of spacecraft, but the model is different: SpaceX and Boeing are building spacecraft to effectively replace the Space Shuttle, but NASA is buying a transportation service, not a vehicle. The balance of power has shifted. The Crew Dragon astronauts wanted more controls than the ultra-simple configuration presented by SpaceX, but the company’s engineers won out.

So far, these controls have only been used in simulations. But the four astronauts chosen by NASA to ride in SpaceX’s vehicle—all experienced military aviators—are now training for the real thing, which could come as soon as April 2019. Therein lies the paradox: The most highly trained pilots and engineers in the world are needed to break in a vehicle that is designed to fly through space without human input at all.

NASA meets Silicon Valley

This new model of spaceflight is intended to put private companies to work replicating NASA achievements, such as flying humans to low-earth orbit, cheaply and efficiently, so that the space agency can set its sights on deep space exploration. SpaceX, in turn, can learn from the world’s premiere space agency, and tap into its public funding to achieve the broader aspirations propounded by founder Elon Musk, which extend to colonizing Mars.

“Human spaceflight was the reason that SpaceX was founded in the first place,” says Benji Reed, the SpaceX executive in charge of crew missions. “Every time we sit down…we always ask ourselves, would you fly on this, and more, would you put your family on this vehicle?”

The big question is whether companies operating can achieve the same reliability on a fixed budget as with traditional contracts that pay the full cost of a program plus a guaranteed profit. Both companies have talked about stripping the bells and whistles from the spacecraft, especially compared to the ultra-complex Space Shuttle. SpaceX also brings its own verve: Its spacesuit met all the requirements for being lighter and easier to work in than previous models, and in astronaut Doug Hurley’s words, is “pretty neat looking, too, which was not a requirement, but we certainly appreciate it.”

During a tour of SpaceX’s factory in Hawthorne, California, by the Crew Dragon astronauts on Aug. 13, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said the company would not launch “until we are ready to fly these folks safely.” She touched on a plan known as “load ‘n’ go,” to fuel the rocket when the astronauts are already strapped in on top. It had been criticized by some NASA safety advisers, but now meets their standards and those of the space agency.

“We were glad that we could provide the data to NASA as well as the safety advisory panel…to demonstrate to them that this was the right way to go,” Shotwell said, noting numerous safety features on the spacecraft, including that it is designed for an emergency escape from the rocket, even on the launch pad, if something goes wrong.

SpaceX is still working through other NASA safety requirements, like demonstrating a new engine pressurization system, that will need to be closed before crewed flight. Astronaut Bob Behnken, who will fly alongisde Hurley in the first Crew Dragon demonstration mission, compared his work with SpaceX to his time in the US Air Force, when he was a flight engineer helping develop the F-22 fighter aircraft. Both cases require significant partnership between government and private companies.

“You need a process in place that you can hang your hat on, that ensures the risks are appropriately assessed and that the folks that are going to be riding on the rocket, in our case, have the opportunity to voice concerns and have those addressed,” Behnken said. “We have a good process in place at NASA to do that.”

Training days

For now, the astronauts are focused on simulated missions in two different trainers, a low-fi version that is essentially a control board and a pair of seats, and a life-size module for high-fidelity training in their new space suits. The astronauts and their trainers will spend hundreds of hours understanding every aspect of the launch—down to tracking the sounds made by the rocket during uncrewed test flights—mainly so that they’ll know if something is going wrong during Crew Dragon’s maiden journey.

Astronauts traditionally seek a strong bond with the people who build their vehicles, even creating an award called the Silver Snoopy to recognize those who go above and beyond to keep them safe outside the atmosphere. Although SpaceX employees were barred from speaking to the press, they did turn out on Aug. 13 to meet the astronauts who are now their most important customers (In addition to Hurley and Behnken, Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover, who will fly in the first operational mission, were in attendance.) SpaceX founder Elon Musk, now facing a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation at his electric car company Tesla, was conspicuously absent.

Ironically, it was an astronaut who voiced a fear that must be on the mind of everyone in the program. They were asked as a group what they about their mission made them fearful, and (naturally) didn’t say riding a rocket into space.

“You don’t want to make a mistake,” Hopkins responded. “When you look around here, you see all of the thousands of people here, they’re depending on us, and the last thing you want to do is let them down.”

The feeling at SpaceX is mutual.

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How The Space Force Took Over Washington

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 17:16:35 -0400

With soldiers still fighting in the Middle East after 17 years, the White House obsession with creating a “Space Force” may seem odd. But in a speech at the Pentagon today, vice president Mike Pence confirmed that the administration plans to do just that. It’s a decision that, however bizarrely timed, is being driven by a potent mix of national security concerns, space spectacle, and pork-barrel spending.

Space is vital to U.S. national security and military power, even if very little of what you might consider “warfighting” goes on there now. America’s orbiting military computers are an incredible asset, providing communications and surveillance on a scale that its adversaries can’t rival (to say nothing of how important they are to the U.S. economy).

What’s protecting those orbital computers is mostly that they are tens of thousands of miles above the earth, orbiting at nearly two miles per second. But that’s not the comfort it used to be. Russia and China are demonstrating increasing abilities to get to space and take military action there, as a broader technological revolution makes it easier for small organizations of all kinds to disrupt space. On earth, jamming techniques used by countries like Iran are growing more sophisticated, while the maturing weapons program in North Korea requires new surveillance tools to protect Americans.

A number of lawmakers, particularly Alabama representative Mike Rogers, have been pushing for the military to do more in space. In response, the Air Force, currently responsible for most space missions, revamped its command structures. But these lawmakers want a dedicated military branch focused on space, an organization that would also be well positioned to pour money into the coffers of defense contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and SpaceX.

While the military, and particularly Air Force leaders, have resisted a more massive re-organization, the notion of a Space Force did capture the imagination of president Donald Trump. At a June event focused on shifting more space resources into civilian hands, Trump suddenly ordered the creation of a new, separate branch of the military. More recently, his supporters have started chanting “Space Force” at rallies.

It’s not that simple. One key problem is that this expensive decision will require congressional approval, which is why on Thursday, Pence announced everything but the creation of an independent space force. There will be a new space command, led by an Air Force general; a new space operations force, made up of a select group of the thousands of U..S military personnel and contractors already working on space issues; and a space development agency to help with the military’s primary mission in space: buying expensive space hardware from private companies.

Then, Pence says, the administration will push Congress to create an independent Department of the Space Force within the Pentagon by 2020. Whether lawmakers take the White House up on this remains to be seen, especially if partisan control of Congress changes hands in this fall’s election.

Trump’s Space Force also rests on the premise, largely false, that the U.S. lacks military power in space. “Our adversaries have transformed space into a war-fighting domain already, and the United States will not shrink from this challenge,” Pence said today. In reality, the US military has demonstrated anti-satellite weapons since the 1960s and as recently as 2008. The U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1980s and early 1990s was probably the largest military space effort in history. What’s different now is that potential adversaries are catching up to US capabilities, leading Pentagon strategists to search for new advantages.

It’s important to understand that the Space Force, at least at first, is an exercise in re-naming and re-organizing existing military space commands. NASA and its plans to fly astronauts next year are not part of the Space Force, and the Space Force will not be putting weapons in space yet because the U.S. doesn’t have any (publicly known) weapons that it could put there.

But increasing fears about North Korean nuclear weapons and Chinese hypersonic missiles have defense officials like Michael Griffin, a former director of SDI and administrator of NASA, considering the merits of a new constellation of threat-detecting satellites in space. That’s also important to understand: When you imagine a generation of space warfighters, don’t think of a Space Shuttle with lasers. Instead, picture a control room full of talented engineers, driving sophisticated orbital computers to watch over their enemies.

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A Toxic Fuel Leak on Boeing’s Spacecraft Will Ground U.S. Astronauts a Little Longer

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 17:23:59 -0400

Dripping toxic chemicals fouled an attempt to test the rocket engines on a Boeing spacecraft designed to replace the space shuttle and carry astronauts to the International Space Station next year.

The anomaly validates warnings that neither Boeing nor its rival SpaceX will be able to field operational spacecraft in time to maintain a steady flow of astronauts to the orbital lab next year, which NASA officials say could put the station in danger. The U.S. space agency is paying the two private companies more than $6.5 billion to develop low-cost, reliable space transportation for people.

Boeing is currently developing a space capsule called the CST-100 Starliner to fly into space on top of an Atlas V rocket booster. Spacecraft are designed to separate from their rocket booster in an emergency, allowing human passengers a chance to escape if something goes wrong.

The Starliner is equipped with four small rocket engines built by Aerojet Rocketdyne. They are mounted on the bottom of the spacecraft called the “service module” that contains the technical infrastructure to support the crew inside the capsule. In May, Boeing brought the service module to a missile-test facility, aiming to demonstrate that it could carry the astronauts away from an emergency.

It's about to get hotter in New Mexico!
The #Starliner team moved the service module onto the test stand ahead of its first @WSMissileRange hot fire test. pic.twitter.com/8xCIpzeXcH
— Boeing Space (@BoeingSpace) May 23, 2018

Ars Technica first reported that something went wrong following a June test. Boeing confirmed that a fuel leak developed after a successful firing of the engines. The fuel used in these engines, hydrazine, reacts violently when exposed to certain catalysts. That allows engineers to design a fairly simple, compact engine, yet hydrazine itself is extremely toxic and volatile—the last thing you want leaking on a human-rated spacecraft.

Boeing said it believes it understands the cause of the leak and how to fix it without re-designing the entire spacecraft. When asked about the status of a full test of spacecraft’s escape ability before news of the fuel leak broke, a Boeing spokesperson said the company was “currently evaluating possible dates for the Pad Abort Test.”

As of April, NASA estimated that Boeing would be certified to fly astronauts in December 2019, a month after the last U.S. astronauts return from the International Space Station on-board a Russian spacecraft—and more than two years after Boeing’s initial target.

Before then, Boeing must fly uncrewed and crewed demonstration flights, as must SpaceX. The first crewed flight tests are scheduled for the end of the year, and most people familiar with the program expect further delays. In early August, NASA is expected to announce which of its astronauts will fly first onboard the new spacecraft.

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SpaceX And Boeing Are Running Out of Time to Fly Astronauts Into Space

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 12:08:37 -0400

Pressure is rising on Boeing and SpaceX, the two companies trying to prove the U.S. can still fly humans to space. Both are expected to miss a November 2019 deadline for producing spacecraft certified as safe enough to transport astronauts—which means NASA, humiliatingly, could end up locked out of the International Space Station next year.

NASA’s multi-billion dollar effort to partner with private companies to fly astronauts, known as the commercial crew program, is the most serious effort to make space travel business as usual. If it fails to deliver, dreams of venture investment leading to lunar mining and orbital hotels will be even more unlikely.

The Government Accountability Office projected last week that the two companies’ vehicles won’t be certified for operational use until virtually the beginning of 2020. That could leave a gap of one or more months between the last U.S. astronauts to fly and return on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft, and the first flights of the private U.S. spacecraft.

The U.S. is currently dependent on Russia to reach the International Space Station. Since it takes years to arrange for a Soyuz flight, NASA has essentially no option to fill the gap, save delaying existing flights a month or two. Without U.S. astronauts on board to operate the space station, the ISS cannot function, according to the space agency, which is “brainstorming” new solutions.

“Spacecraft and rockets designed for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program must meet the agency’s safety and technical criteria before the companies will be certified to launch crews into space,” a NASA spokesperson told Quartz. “Successfully meeting those requirements has always taken precedence over schedule.”

What’s safe, exactly?

It’s dangerous to send people into space. Simply getting to orbit requires a vehicle that reaches 17,500 miles per hour or more, burning tons of kerosene and liquid oxygen in just a few minutes. And that’s when the fun starts, because one of the biggest dangers faced by astronauts are micrometeroids and debris that also orbit the earth and could damage or destroy their spacecraft.

The U.S. commercial crew program evolved to replace the Space Shuttle, which flew for the last time in 2011. In figuring out how to make sure the spacecraft it buys are safe, NASA came up with a metric called “Loss of Crew” that attempts to forecast the odds of a lost astronaut. Their analysts determined that the space shuttle had a 1 in 90 chance of losing a crew member, though the first space shuttle launch had a loss of crew probability of 1 in 12.

NASA has mandated a 1 in 270 requirement for these vehicles, but reaching that number is tough: NASA’s commercial crew program leader Kathy Leuders told me in 2017 she doesn’t expect either vehicle to make that standard. Instead, NASA expects they’ll receive waivers to operate at a safety threshold above a 1 in 150 chance of losing a crew member.

The new audit, however, notes there is no agreement about how to determine this number between the agency, the commercial crew program, its safety officer, and the specific contractors. Some are using old data about orbital debris, while others are using newer data with more space debris catalogued that makes reaching the safety benchmark more difficult. Some are including the effects of operational activities to reduce risk beyond the design of the vehicle, like inspecting the spacecraft for damage with high-definition cameras after they reach orbit, while others do not.

NASA conceded that multiple approaches could be “confusing,” but said that ultimately the commercial crew program would have final authority over the safety of the vehicles.

Crew Dragon arrived in Florida this week ahead of its first flight after completing thermal vacuum and acoustic testing at @NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Ohio.

A post shared by SpaceX (@spacex) on Jul 12, 2018 at 1:54pm PDT

Time flies

The commercial crew program grew from a public-private partnership with SpaceX and OrbitalATK that began in 2006, which allowed for regular cargo service to the International Space Station. In 2014, the Obama administration attempted to recreate this success with astronauts, signing final contracts worth $4.2 billion to Boeing and $2.6 billion to SpaceX following several years of small-scale development efforts with half a dozen companies.

At the time, SpaceX hoped to launch its first astronauts in 2016, and Boeing in 2017, with both ready for operations that year. Problems were already apparent: In its early years, the program received barely more than a third of its expected funding, which auditors say led to two years of delays. Now, Boeing says it will fly astronauts in November 2018 and SpaceX in December 2018, with both certified for operations in 2019. Privately, few in industry or the space agency have confidence in those dates.

The GAO report said that, in April, NASA’s average estimates were that Boeing would be ready to for operations in December 2019 and SpaceX in January 2020. As of mid-June, it said that NASA was “managing a multibillion dollar program without confidence in its schedule information.”

Publicly, the two companies remain confident about hitting their current milestones. Jessica Jensen, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management, told reporters last month that her team was preparing for an uncrewed test flight scheduled in August. A test of the Boeing spacecraft’s emergency abort system, expected for July, remains in limbo, with a spokesperson telling Quartz that its team is “currently evaluating possible dates.”

The delays are not all on the private sector side: To certify the vehicles, NASA engineers must perform extensive technical analysis after the test flights, but the organization lacks the people to do so with any speed.

Long path to the launchpad

In 2015 and 2016, SpaceX lost Falcon 9 rockets in explosive mishaps. As a result of the later failure, SpaceX redesigned a vital part of its Falcon 9 rocket: composite bottles which hold helium to pressurize the propulsion system. But those new bottles still haven’t flown. They are expected to make their debut in the first uncrewed demonstration of the Dragon II spacecraft, still scheduled for August.

As of April, SpaceX still needed to show the beefed-up engine it deployed for the first time this summer wouldn’t show any cracks in its turbopump blades after use. And the company must also demonstrate that it can safely load fuel into the Falcon 9 while astronauts are on-board, a plan that initially generated concern but now is seen by outside safety experts as a viable option.

Boeing, meanwhile, has dealt with adapting the Atlas V rocket (built by United Launch Alliance, its joint-venture with Lockheed Martin) to its spacecraft, called the CST-100 Starliner. That required making changes to address unexpected aerodynamic loads, and still NASA worries that it does not have enough info on “whether the Atlas V launch vehicle prevents or controls cracking that could lead to catastrophic failures.”

ULA has also been working to give NASA enough insight into its RD-180 engine, which is manufactured by a Russian company under an agreement that restricts information about how it is made and designed. NASA also fretted that when the Starliner returns to earth, it would jettison heat shielding that could impact and damage the parachutes designed to safely bring the astronauts back home. Now, a Boeing spokesperson tells Quartz that further analysis shows “the Starliner’s forward heat shield will never make contact with critical hardware during nominal flights.”

The race to orbit, delayed

Getting people into orbit has been at the center of the 21st century space enterprise—with middling results so far.

In 2004, the X-Prize demonstrated that a human could fly into on a comparatively small budget of about $20 million. Yet the effort to commercialize that technology through Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic has stretched on for more than fourteen years. The company’s effort to make suborbital space tourism a going concern is still in development, with the hopes of breaking out of the atmosphere again sometime this year.

Blue Origin, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos, is also tantalizingly close to putting people into space for a few minutes at a time on the New Shepard reusable rocket. But it has yet to put a human on the vehicle, and reports that it was considering ticket prices between $200,000 and $300,000 were denied by the company.

Elon Musk started SpaceX more pragmatically, building uncrewed rockets to fly satellites into orbit and cargo to the International Space Station. But his goal has always been taking humans into space, and by leveraging NASA’s vast experience and budget, it seemed SpaceX could build a cost-effective way to take people into orbit. The serious participation of aerospace giant Boeing in the commercial crew program helped validate the space agency’s decision to hire transportation services for its astronauts rather than fly them itself.

But Boeing will survive—even thrive—without commercial crew, thanks to its mastery of NASA’s traditional approach to space technology. SpaceX’s future depends on its ability to show that it can out-hustle that traditional model, even if the founder for whom NASA once required a special “key man” life insurance policy is busy at other companies and embroiled in social media squabbles.

With delays beginning to threaten the operation of the International Space Station, both SpaceX and Boeing will need to deliver. Both say they will fly two critical test flights and certify their vehicles in the next six months. If they stumble on this sprint, Houston will really have a problem.

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Donald Trump Nominated a Man With No Space Experience To Be NASA’s Second-in-Command

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 07:00:00 -0400

The White House announced today his intent to nominate James Morhard, a long-time senate aide with no experience in space technology, to be the deputy administrator of NASA.

In doing so, Trump is passing over Dr. Janet Kavandi, an astronaut and respected leader of one of the space agency’s research centers. Kavandi was the first choice of NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, who had called for her appointment publicly.

“This Administration is committed to American leadership in space, and I look forward to working with Mr. Morhard upon his confirmation,” Bridenstine said in a statement. Morhard will need to be confirmed by a majority of the senate before he can take up his job.

Quartz first reported that the White House was considering Morhard for the position earlier this week. Several officials familiar with the deliberations were concerned about the message that might be sent by the appointing a man with little experience in space technology after Bridenstine, a former lawmaker, was criticized for his lack of engineering experience.

Morhard, 61, is currently the deputy Senate sergeant at arms, responsible for technology and administration in the offices of 100 senators and 88 committees and subcommittees. Starting off as an accountant at the Pentagon, he began his career as a legislative staffer in 1983, earning an MBA and a law degree along the way. His time in the senate included work on the committee that controlled NASA’s budget.

He rose to become the powerful staff director of the Appropriations Committee under the late senator Ted Stevens, and forged close ties with Republican senators. Morhard was a passenger, along with former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe, in a 2010 plane crash that killed Stevens and four others.

Morhard’s background as a Capitol Hill operator, however, doesn’t balance well with Bridenstine’s similar background as a lawmaker. Previous presidents have sought to combine engineering know-how and political savvy by splitting those responsibilities roughly between the administrator and their deputy.

“Especially when the administrator is a politico like Bridenstine, the deputy should be more of a technical, chief operating officer for the agency,” says Phil Larson, a former Obama White House space adviser who is now assistant dean at the University of Colorado, Boulder’s engineering school. “It’s telling that Bridenstine was openly campaigning for someone with research and operational experience, but unfortunately, like many things this administration does, they appointed a friend of those in power who has no relevant experience.”

NASA, alongside operating the International Space Station and numerous space probes exploring the universe, is preparing to return human spaceflight to the United States for the first time since 2011. That will require the agency to sign-off on rockets built by private companies Boeing and SpaceX which will fly astronauts as a commercial service for the first time.

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NASA’s Chief Wants Former Astronaut Janet Kavandi to Help Run Things. Trump Is Looking at the Senate’s Admin Guy

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 13:57:47 -0400

How much space expertise does NASA need in its top office to launch humans safely into space?

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine is a former lawmaker, and he says he wants a former astronaut, Dr. Janet Kavandi, as his deputy. But Donald Trump, who makes the final decision, is leaning toward a man with no experience in space technology.

Five sources with knowledge of the deliberations tell Quartz that the White House is seriously considering James Morhard, a veteran senate aide. Their names have been withheld because they are not authorized to discuss the decision, but they worry that the wrong person in that job could create new problems for NASA. The agency is preparing to authorize private spacecraft built by Boeing and SpaceX to carry astronauts to the International Space Station in 2019—the first launch of astronauts from U.S. soil since 2011.

“The President selects the highest caliber of individuals from an array of backgrounds and experiences to fill positions in his Administration,” White House spokesperson Lindsay Walters said in a statement responding to questions about the deputy NASA administrator role.

What’s the right resume?

During testy senate confirmation hearings, Bridenstine reminded senators charged with approving him that previous administrators, including iconic leader James Webb, came from non-technical backgrounds. But the former lawmaker and military pilot promised that he would seek an experienced technologist for his leadership team if confirmed.

Presidents often balance NASA leadership between those who navigate political battles, and less partisan figures with space exploration experience. During the Obama administration, former astronaut Charles Bolden led the agency, while Lori Garver, a space expert who been a senior advisor at NASA during the Clinton administration, was his deputy. Before that, NASA administrator Michael Griffin, an aerospace engineering expert, was back-stopped by Shana Dale, an attorney who had worked in the Bush White House and Congress.

Bridenstine is seeking similar balance for his own political background: In June, he said Kavandi would make an excellent deputy administrator.“That’s the kind of person at this juncture, given how important everything is right now, that we need as our deputy, and I’m advocating for her,” Bridenstine said.

“Janet Kavandi is a lifelong space professional with high-level management experience and a strong technical background, and [Bridenstine] continues to believes she would be an excellent choice as NASA’s Deputy Administrator,” NASA press secretary Megan Powers told Quartz. “That being said, we are committed to fulfilling the President’s vision of sending humans back to the moon in a sustainable way and are looking forward to having a Deputy Administrator in place to assist with meeting that objective.”

The astronaut and the appropriator

Kavandi, 58, joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 1994. She had previously been an engineer at Boeing, and earned a P.h.D in analytical chemistry from the University of Washington in Seattle. She spent 33 days in space as an astronaut on three different space shuttle missions, then became the lead astronaut supervising work on the International Space Station and the deputy head of the astronaut office. In 2016, she became the director of NASA’s Glenn Research Center, which includes a huge vacuum chamber where SpaceX’s crew vehicle, the Dragon space capsule, is currently undergoing tests.

“While the President has not yet nominated a deputy administrator for the Agency, Dr. Kavandi is honored that the NASA Administrator expressed his confidence in her,” a spokesperson for Kavandi told Quartz.

Kavandi has attracted bipartisan kudos, with Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio praising Bridenstine’s choice. Ohio’s Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown told Quartz that “there’s no question Janet Kavandi is a highly qualified professional who knows the value of NASA Glenn and the importance of aerospace to the state of Ohio. She’d have my support.”

In his current job, Morhard, 61, is responsible for technology and administration in the offices of 100 senators and 88 committees and subcommittees. Starting off as an accountant at the Pentagon, he began his career as a legislative staffer in 1983, earning an MBA and a law degree along the way.

He rose to become the powerful chief of staff of the Appropriations Committee under the late senator Ted Stevens, and forged close ties with Republican senators. Morhard was a passenger, along with former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe, in a 2010 plane crash that killed Stevens and four others. He did not return a message left at his office.

Morhard received his current job from Senate leader Mitch McConnell, but when asked about Morhard’s future, McConnell’s spokesperson told Quartz that “we don’t comment on administration nominations that haven’t been made.”

One NASA official who spoke about the nomination with Quartz worried that Morhard lacks sufficient engineering experience to justify his nomination alongside Bridenstine, particularly on technical questions where NASA headquarters will need to play referee between competing teams of engineers.

Tough decisions loom

Boeing and SpaceX are the first companies to build human-rated spacecraft as a fixed-price commercial service for NASA, rather than executing NASA designs under a cost-plus contract. As a lawmaker, Bridenstine was a major proponent of these partnerships, citing SpaceX and Orbital ATK’s successful work carrying cargo to the International Space Station.

But flying humans into space is a whole new level of danger. NASA’s engineers have pushed both companies to meet a safety threshold more than twice as high as that of the Space Shuttle. That metric, known as loss of crew, is expressed as a probability of 1 in 270; the Space Shuttle at its best had a 1 in 90 chance of loss of crew.

Despite their efforts, neither Boeing nor SpaceX appears likely to meet the standard, though they will both field vehicles considered safer than the shuttle. The biggest problem for both companies is the constant danger of micrometeoroids in orbit, though each is working to resolve specific concerns NASA engineers have with their vehicle designs.

NASA is preparing to okay flights below the targeted standard because it simply may be impossible to reach; as Kathy Leuders, the commercial crew program manager, told me last year, “you have goals, and then you have engineering reality.” NASA is doing other work to help mitigate these risks, like installing high-definition cameras on the ISS to inspect spacecraft for any problems on-orbit. Bill Gerstenmaier, the NASA executive in charge of human exploration and operations, has written eloquently about the need for NASA to acknowledge that risk is central to space exploration.

The final decision to put astronauts on these rockets will come to Bridenstine’s desk. In the past, the disconnect between headquarters decision-makers and engineers on the ground was linked to disasters like the lost Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003. So the rest of NASA is watching closely to see who Bridenstine’s deputy will be.

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NASA Can’t Find Most of the Asteroids Threatening Earth, But It Has a Plan

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 08:00:00 -0400

If the movies teach us anything, it’s that the U.S. government has a small room with a few stressed-out bureaucrats worrying about every disaster that might arise. Volcanos? Absolutely. Pandemic influenza? You got it. Today, we heard from the killer asteroid team.

The bad news? NASA is not going to be able to find all the asteroids big enough to cause serious devastation on Earth by 2020—or even 2033. Also: For a hypothetical attempt to send a spacecraft to divert an seriously dangerous incoming asteroid, we’ll need a ten year heads-up to build it and get it to the asteroid.

The good news? They’re working on it. “If a real threat does arise, we are prepared to pull together the information about what options might work and provide that information to decision-makers,” Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer, told reporters.

The meat of the announcement today from was the conversion of a 2016 strategy document produced by the Obama administration into a set of coordinated goals across the government, from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the Department of Energy. Sensible stuff— figuring out how better to track asteroids; predict their behavior; re-route or break them apart; and work better with international partners to routinely improve the world’s ability to do this.

Even though asteroid impacts are rare, they’re serious. You might remember the 2013 impact of a meteoroid in Chelyabinsk, Russia, which exploded in the air and released enough energy to injure a thousand people, mostly due to shattered windows. It was fairly small: Just 20 or 30 meters across, which means the network of telescopes we rely on to hunt asteroids didn’t spot it before it entered Earth’s atmosphere—and probably won’t find others of that size, either.

NASA, under orders from Congress, is focused on finding asteroids bigger than 140 meters across—that is, those that are large enough to devastate an entire region. We still have a lot to do in that regard, per Johnson, who says that “we’ve found about 8,000 near-Earth asteroids at least 140 meters across, but two thirds of such objects remain to be discovered.”

The chart above shows that we’ve found most of the asteroids that could end life on Earth, but we’ve found far fewer of the smaller kind, which could still devastate life for millions of people.

NASA cites the 1908 airburst of a 40 to 60 meter asteroid over Tunguska, Russia, which leveled 2,000 square kilometers of forest. If that were to happen over New York City, it would cause millions of casualties.

NASA says it would be unlikely to detect an near-Earth object of this size with more than a few days of warning. That’s why the first big action item in this report is for NASA, the U.S. Air Force and the National Science Foundation to come up with a plan to invest in new telescopes to hunt these asteroids.

The amount of funds available for Planetary Protection is increasing, with the Trump administration requesting $150 million from lawmakers next year, mostly to fund a mission to demonstrate a spacecraft called DART that could deflect an Earth-bound asteroid. But strangely, Johnson would not discuss specific technologies for hunting asteroids during the media briefing on the report.

One option is NEOCam, a proposed telescope that would hunt for asteroids. But that program may be under stress now that important questions are being raised about its predecessor project, called NEOWise. That effort used a different telescope to measure near-Earth objects, but Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft technologist with a Ph.d in physics, has challenged the results, publishing a new peer-reviewed paper arguing that they are far more uncertain than NASA’s researchers suggest.

Johnson didn’t have much to say about the controversy when asked by a reporter, saying the NEOWise data “is extensively utilized by the overall scientific community as the best data available on the population of near-Earth asteroids as we know them.”

But as the graph above shows, the best is far from good enough.

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The U.S. Government Wants to Start Charging for the Best Free Satellite Data on Earth

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Wed, 16 May 2018 10:00:00 -0400

The U.S. government may begin charging users for access to five decades of satellite images of Earth, just as academic and corporate researchers are gaining the tools they need to harness them.

Nature reports that the Department of Interior has asked an advisory board to consider the consequences of charging for the data generated by the Landsat program, which is the largest continuously collected set of Earth images taken in space and has been freely available to the public since 2008.

Since 1972, Landsat has used eight different satellites to gather images of the Earth, with a ninth currently slated for a December 2020 launch. The data are widely used by government agencies, and since it became free, by an increasing number of academics, private companies and journalists. “As of March 31, 2018, more than 75 million Landsat scenes have been downloaded from the USGS-managed archive!” the agency noted on the 10th anniversary of the program.

Now, the government says the cost of sharing the data has grown as more people access it. Advocates for open data say the public benefit produced through research and business activity far outweigh those costs. A 2013 survey cited by Nature found that the dataset generated $2 billion in economic activity, compared to an $80 million budget for the program.

The Landsat data is considered especially valuable by companies that use machine learning to analyze Earth imagery because of the breadth of the database. While Sentinel, a European Space Agency program, provides similar data to Landsat, it only offers free imagery dating back to 2017. The growing corps of venture-backed Earth-imaging companies, like Planet and IceEye, can likewise only offer data captured in the last several years.

Descartes Labs, for example, has used Landsat data to train the algorithms that provide its clients, including academics, government agencies, oil companies and manufacturers, with useful intelligence from the satellites constantly monitoring our planet.

“I would argue that Descartes would probably have not gotten off the ground if there was a substantial price tag on this government data,” Karen McKinnon, a scientist at the company, told Quartz.

McKinnon described a project mapping the historical change of surface water in the U.S., which required pulling down 150 terabytes of Landsat data covering the U.S. from 1982 until the present day. Understanding those trends could allow environmental researchers, farmers, ecologists, and city planners work more effectively.

Water extent (shown in blue) across the continental United States from 1984-present. (Descartes Lab)

“This data is underused now,” McKinnon says. “There hadn’t, until now, been the ability to easily scale up in the cloud.” Just a few years ago, academics and small companies would not have been able to tackle her water identification project.

McKinnon had to develop the software to recognize that muddy river deltas, algae-covered ponds, and crystal blue lakes are all surface water. In previous years, Descartes chief technology officer Mike Warren says, the company would have also needed to fill a room with expensive servers, hire a team to manage them, and develop a custom protocol to run her program on a dataset that large. Advances in cloud computing commercialized by Google and Amazon allow researchers to pay cheap rent for computing power, enabling lean teams to tackle ambitious problems.

Now, just as they are able to bring powerful new tools to bear on the Landsat imagery, researchers may need face new charges for the data.

Warren notes that attempts to charge for the data may end up costing more than they return in profit, due to the complexities of satellite data—and the possibility of gaming the system. Most government data are not protected by copyright law. Back in the “early days of digital maps,” the U.S. Geological Service would mail researchers a CD full of topographic maps for a fee, but because the data weren’t copyrighted, users could band together to split up the data, each order one or two CDs, and then share them all for free.

“There may be some shenanigans involved in trying to protect from copying [Landsat data],” Warren says.

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Radar Satellites Spying on Farms From Space Is a Taste of the Future Economy

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 10:00:00 -0400

The images below, created by a radar satellite built and operated by a private company, are a taste of a future in which anyone can purchase the ability to monitor changes on Earth from space.

ICEYE, a company in Finland, shared these exclusive radar images with Quartz to demonstrate the capabilities of a satellite it launched into an orbit 500 kilometers above the planet in January.

In the two animations, you can see how agricultural fields outside of Havana, Cuba, reshaped between January and February 2018, reflecting changes in irrigation and harvests:

Images from ICEYE-X1 of fields near Havana, Cuba, between January-February 2018. (ICEYE)

It’s not an accident that ICEYE shared imagery of Cuba, where the agricultural sector is opaque and under stress. “When you have a satellite, you want to demonstrate that you can take pictures of places you wouldn’t otherwise image,” Pekka Laurila, the company’s co-founder, said.

Images from ICEYE-X1 of fields near Havana, Cuba, between January-February 2018. (ICEYE)

Technology that sees through clouds

The images are created by synthetic aperture radar, which bounces radio signals off the ground and detects their reflections, using computer models to construct images of the shape of things below. Its principal advantage over passive imagery is that it can peer through clouds, a key obstacle to imaging on a planet with a lot of water on it.

ICEYE shares the goal of potential competitors like Planet, which images the entire landmass of Earth daily: They want to speed up the commercial space-sensing industry, providing updates on ground activities frequently enough to see what is changing and how. Laurila wants to give his clients the ability to check in with a specific place every three hours.

That will have to wait until ICEYE has a full fleet of 20 satellites, perhaps by 2020. Later this year, it expects to launch two more demonstration satellites. ICEYE is working with the European Space Agency and has received investment from the U.S. Defense Department, which sees cheap radar satellites as vital to gaining advanced warning of enemy missile launches.

The challenge of a new kind of instrument

The company expects to provide not just agricultural data, but information about the environment, climate change, transportation and energy infrastructure, natural disasters and maritime activities.

The technological challenges remain daunting; this demonstration model of the satellite can only snap a few pictures an hour. Because radar requires transmitting signals to Earth and detecting their reflections, the satellite uses more power and a larger antennae than imaging satellites: Its mass is 70 kilograms, compared to Planet’s Dove imaging satellite at less than 10 kg. But traditional radar satellites weigh many tons, and are far more costly than the several million dollars the company needed to build their first spacecraft.

“We started with resistor-level components building this instrument and this satellite,” Laurila says. “This kind of instrument didn’t exist in the world and we needed one for our business case.”

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Drone Technology Is Now Dangerous Enough to Kill For

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 15:00:00 -0400

There are certain classes of technology that, by their nature, put those who possess their secrets in danger: Nuclear weapons. Ballistic missiles. Advanced encryption software.

Now, add unmanned aerial vehicles—drones—to that list.

A Palestinian electrical engineer who had published research on drones was assassinated in Malaysia, the Wall Street Journal reported. A helmeted person on a motorcycle fired 10 shots at 35 year-old Fadi al-Batsh, killing him as he walked to a mosque for morning prayers.

Palestinian militant organization Hamas blames Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, for al-Batsh’s death, and celebrated him as a martyr. Al-Batsh’s family said he was not involved with Hamas, but also blamed Israel for his death. Israel’s hard-right defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said al-Batsh was “no saint,” but denied Israeli involvement, suggesting al-Batsh died in intra-Palestinian skirmishing.

Al-Batsh received his doctorate from the University of Malaysia in 2015, and had published papers on extending the power supply in unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as on electrical grids and renewable energy more broadly.

Israel has also been linked to the 2016 killing of Mohammed al-Zouari, a Hamas member who reputedly supervised the organization’s drone initiatives. Unmanned aerial vehicles have been used by Hamas to attack Israel, and experts believe that drones could be used to bring missiles inside Israel’s “Iron Dome” air defense system, which defends the country from artillery and rocket attacks, or simply to track the movements of Israeli forces.

Drones have been regularly used by advanced militaries since the 1970s for surveillance and precision military strikes. In the past two decades, they have become a vital part of the U.S. wars in the Middle East.

Now, advances in consumer electronics are making drones available to armed forces without the resources to hire billion-dollar defense contractors. Hamas has used drones inside Israel for several years, and ISIS militants used consumer drones to drop grenades on U.S. allies in Syria. Last year, FBI director Christopher Wray warned Congress that terrorists could soon use drones inside the U.S.

That makes anyone with the know-how to construct or weaponize drones an unusual threat—unusual enough for Israel’s intelligence service to allegedly take the aggressive step of killing in a foreign country. Less violently but for with similar motivation, the U.S. Army banned the use of drones built by the Chinese company DJI in 2017, fearing they could be used to spy on American activities.

Drone tech is hardly the first military advance to compel paranoia and murder among governments, but it might be the first one that your kid can buy off the shelf without a license.

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Fuzzy Space Law Is Forcing the U.S. to Update its Orbital Regulations

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 13:00:00 -0400

The U.S. government is promising space companies it will make it easier for them to get into space by boosting its long moribund “Office of Space Commerce.”

After U.S. regulators belatedly forced SpaceX to shut off video cameras on its rocket during a March launch despite years of such broadcasts, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said it was time to update the 25-year-old rules about space cameras. Ross supervises the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees U.S. companies that observe Earth from space.

“This is silly and it will stop,” Ross told an audience of space industry executives, policymakers and military officers at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, backing the view of SpaceX and other rocket companies that the cameras on its rockets aren’t the equivalent of satellites dedicated to Earth views.

Ross said that his department’s various space regulatory responsibilities would be consolidated into an Office of Space Commerce under his direct supervision, including the rules governing remote earth sensing, satellite export and international coordination on satellite spectrum. The Trump administration also intends to give the office responsibility for space traffic management and space situational awareness, moving those jobs from military to civilian hands.

Earlier this year, the first satellites were launched without any government’s permission after U.S. regulators said they were not big enough to be tracked by U.S. government radars, another sign of the pressure space companies are putting on regulators to keep up with them. Meanwhile, a number of businesses are proposing huge new satellite constellations, which will make oversight over collision prevention and disposal of old satellites even more critical.

Under this new U.S. vision, the Federal Aviation Administration will continue to license commercial rocket launches, and the Federal Communications Commission will still license the use of satellite radio spectrum in the US.

Ross said the goal is for the U.S. to be the “flag of choice” for businesses working in space. Vice President Mike Pence, who chairs the National Space Council intended to coordinate extra-terrestrial policy across government, made similar comments April 17.

The question for space executives, who have clamored for more responsive government when it comes to licenses for launches and satellite operation, is whether increased funding will accompany the shifting responsibilities.

Speeding up bureaucracy means hiring more people, and projects like space traffic management demand investment in the technology to detect and track objects in orbit. While the Trump administration had adopted lofty rhetoric around its support for space business, it’s not yet clear that the White House has the needed clout to win congressional support—and federal dollars—for its proposals.

“It’s great to see this being focused on at high levels,” says Phil Larson, an assistant dean at the University of Colorado’s engineering school and a director of the Space Foundation. “The important question, though, is will the implementers be on board?”

Congress has largely ignored the White House’s space budget in the last two years, but that may change if Trump’s controversial nominee for NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine is confirmed in a vote expected later this week. His confirmation might signal more consensus on space policy, and will give the White House a key advocate for its approach to space.

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SpaceX’s Rocket Videos Are Technically Against the Law. The U.S. Government Just Noticed.

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 10:31:15 -0400

Since 2010, millions of space fans have devoured video shot from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket—but not the U.S. government agency charged with regulating videos shot from space.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration licenses surveillance systems launched into space by Americans. An agency spokesperson explained to Quartz that the agency had “only recently” noticed the immensely popular space videos broadcast by SpaceX for the past eight years. Other companies like United Launch Alliance, Orbital ATK, and Rocket Lab have published similar footage.

The rocket-makers did not seek licenses for their broadcasts because they didn’t consider their vehicles, which operate in orbit for just hours before being abandoned, in the same category as dedicated earth-imaging satellites launched by companies like Planet or DigitalGlobe.

Sometime this year, NOAA decided that SpaceX’s short-lived second-stage rocket required the same licenses as satellite platforms intended to orbit the earth for years, and instructed the company that it needed a license to share imagery from any launches not flown for government clients.

SpaceX submitted its first application to share video during a March 30 launch for satellite-operator Iridium. It only received a provisional license to the mission, and the host of SpaceX’s broadcast announced that NOAA had forbidden broadcasting the latter stages of the flight, which would have shown the gentle ejection of ten satellites from the rocket and into orbit.

Reporters called NOAA, whose spokespeople said they were unaware of any involvement in the launch. Six hours later, the agency said it had changed its interpretation of the law and instructed SpaceX to obtain a license.

Three days later, a NOAA employee reversed course again, claiming that the agency hadn’t chosen to impose the requirement on SpaceX: “It was SpaceX that came to us,” Tahara Dawkins, the head of NOAA’s satellite regulatory office, said at a public meeting. “It wasn’t NOAA that went out to them and said, ‘Hey, stop, you’re going to need a license.’”

That account belies NOAA’s own statements. “NOAA has only recently been made aware of private-sector efforts to live-stream footage from stage 2, while on orbit, to the public,” Christopher Vaccaro, a NOAA spokesperson, wrote to Quartz in an e-mail when asked to clear up the discrepancy. “Now, that NOAA has been made aware, it is obligated to enforce the provisions of the law and work with individual companies to ensure that they are properly licensed.”

Vaccaro did not say how NOAA finally became aware of the popular videos; many industry observers point to the spectacle of a Tesla roadster launched by SpaceX on the maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy,which broadcast images of earth for several hours before signal was lost.

Like the recent launch of four unauthorized satellites, this episode shows how the system for regulating the business of space is straining under new capabilities pioneered by private companies. A SpaceX spokesperson said the company is committed to working with NOAA to come up with a solution to resume the regular broadcast of footage from the second stage of commercial flights.

SpaceX normally uses the footage of its rocket to understand how it behaves in orbit, but broadcasting it has proven a popular enhancement for SpaceX’s image—and a powerful recruitment tool targeting young aerospace engineers highly sought after throughout the space industry.

SpaceX and other space companies are working with the Trump administration’s National Space Council in a highly-touted effort to streamline space regulations. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, the cabinet official responsible for NOAA, praised the new space companies earlier this year, saying that “the rate of innovation is extraordinary, so we need an adaptable and relatively permissive regulatory system for space commerce.”

For that reason, NOAA’s move to require SpaceX license its broadcast perplexed industry observers. “I think this reaffirms in clear resolution why these outdated and arcane regulations need to be updated,” Eric Stallmer, the president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, told Quartz.

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SpaceX Takes its First Step Toward Selling Americans Internet From Space

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Sun, 18 Feb 2018 12:00:00 -0500

SpaceX aims to launch two satellites of a new constellation on Feb. 18, the start of a network it expects to one day include more than 4,000 orbiting spacecraft beaming the internet to customers below—and generating billions of dollars in new revenue for the rocket maker.

Ajit Pai, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates satellite broadcasts in the US, endorsed the plan to “to unleash the power of satellite constellations to provide high-speed Internet to rural Americans.”

But SpaceX’s chief rival, a satellite company called OneWeb, says CEO Elon Musk’s latest plans are downright dangerous to humans on the ground and spacecraft in orbit, potentially created “for the purposes of delaying and frustrating a competitor.”

Welcome to the friendly race to sell the world satellite internet.

Both companies plan to invest billions in an unproven communications architecture: Rather than a dozen large, powerful satellites broadcasting to Earth from tens of thousands of kilometers away, they will utilize thousands of comparatively small satellites, less than 1,500 kilometers above the planet. The swarming satellites will be able to provide constant, low-latency internet connections to users—if their designers can handle the tricky task of managing the satellites and the signals passed between them and with ground stations below.

This idea had been tried in the 1990s, to resounding failure. Now a new generation of space entrepreneurs thinks that increasingly small and powerful electronics, lower launch costs and growing demand for internet access make a better business case.

Greg Wyler, a telecom entrepreneur who founded another successful satellite company called O3b, is the executive behind OneWeb, which owns key spectrum rights and has the backing of such diverse figures as Richard Branson, Masayoshi Son and Airbus. Wyler and Musk once contemplated working together, but their partnership fell apart and they became competitors.

Wyler’s team argues that it is advantaged by spectrum rights granted by the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations body that coordinates telecom regulation around the world. It has already won approval from the FCC to offer its service in the US, but it has yet to launch any satellites and reportedly will do so by the end of this year.

Launching the first demonstration satellites is a win for Musk, especially if it allows his company to bring its full constellation, known as Starlink, online earlier. One of the many challenges with these proposals is mass producing the number of satellites required. Wyler had contemplated launching this constellation with Google, but left over concerns about its manufacturing prowess. OneWeb is currently building a satellite factory in Florida, outside of Kennedy Space Center. In putting two satellites into space, albeit for testing purposes, SpaceX is showing off its production chops. (Neither SpaceX nor OneWeb responded to questions about their plans.)

But there’s more than just billions at risk in these projects—debris in orbit already threaten spacecraft, and adding thousands of new satellites could exacerbate the problem if not done carefully. That’s especially true as multiple companies prepare mega-constellations; beyond OneWeb, Boeing, Telesat and Space Norway are considering such schemes.

OneWeb in particular has complained to regulators about the “dramatically increased risk of collision” presented by SpaceX’s plans. In one November 2017 meeting with FCC officials, they portrayed SpaceX as refusing to answer questions about their constellation’s safety, saying it was “most troubled by [SpaceX’s] puzzling proposal to place its constellation in dangerously close proximity to (and interwoven with) OneWeb’s pre-existing constellation.”

Of course, in this case OneWeb means “pre-existing” as approved on paper, not actually in the sky—which underlines why SpaceX’s engineers are so eager to get their satellites up first. The company is counting on its reusable rockets to help it deploy satellites faster than competitors.

In an FCC filing, SpaceX said OneWeb’s concerns were “unfounded” and accused OneWeb of “once again seek[ing] to establish new and unwarranted orbital debris and casualty risk requirements that would also apply to SpaceX—and SpaceX alone.” Ultimately, SpaceX’s filings claim that its system “demonstrated that it will meet or exceed all existing US and international requirements for safety of operations in space and upon de-orbit of satellites.” Given the enthusiastic endorsement of the FCC’s head, it appears the company has at least satisfied the light-touch regulators of the Trump administration.

The move into operating its own constellation is a potentially lucrative one for SpaceX; leaked financials suggest it is counting on the project to generate the enormous amounts of money needed to realize Musk’s dreams of a multi-planetary human civilization.

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Donald Trump Wants to Shut Down the International Space Station and Get Ready for Private Space

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 15:05:34 -0500

The White House would cut off funding for the International Space Station in 2025 and lean into a future of commercially operated habitats in low-earth orbit, according to draft National Aeronautics and Space Administration budget documents shared with Quartz ahead of their official release Monday.

The documents show an administration that is eager to put a new emphasis on human space exploration, but unwilling to spend enough to dramatically speed NASA’s long-term—and long-delayed—plans to return Americans to space without leveraging growing private investment.

President Donald Trump’s 2019 budget request envisions NASA working closely with the private sector on every level, from outsourcing ground-to-space communications to landing on the moon, while focusing its own efforts on technology to take people into deep space. The budget would increase NASA’s spending by $375 million, to just under $20 billion annually.

The White House expects to stop spending on the International Space Station within seven years, and plans to create a new $150 million program to prepare private companies to take over operations on the ISS, or to replace it with their own space habitats. Bigelow Aerospace, which has a habitat hosted on the ISS and a dubious extraterrestrial research contract to boot, and Nanoracks, which works with NASA to launch satellites from ISS and with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to fly research payloads, have called for such programs for years.

Whether sufficient private demand for human time in space exists to finance these operations remains an open question. While the national lab onboard ISS remains underutilized, some companies (like Bezos, or the founders of Made in Space) think orbital manufacturing has a future, and others think space tourism or resource extraction could be lucrative.

The president’s budget also moves ahead to fund new partnerships with private companies to land robots on the moon, and accelerates a plan to launch the first segment of a moon-orbiting habitat on a private rocket by 2020. It would modestly increase spending on vehicles to explore deep space, particularly a rocket called SLS being built by Boeing and a spacecraft called Orion built by Lockheed Martin, which is expected to fly its first mission in 2020. It also funds new spacecraft, built by Boeing and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, that are expected to fly astronauts to ISS next year.

None of these changes are likely to significantly speed the return of astronauts to the ISS or beyond, though they could provide a boost to private companies that hope to move more rapidly than the government when it comes to space exploration.

To do all this, the White House budget cuts $100 million from ISS’s operating account, eliminates NASA’s independent education program, and reduces funding for earth science. Trump still wants to shut down DSCOVR, the climate-change monitoring satellite perched between the earth and the sun, as well cancel several future earth science satellites proposed by NASA scientists. The budget also directs NASA to replace the satellite ground systems it uses to communicate with its spacecraft with privately-operated alternatives.

The lawmakers who will finalize NASA’s spending plan in the months ahead are likely to make significant changes to this vision. Though its costs are seen by some as weighing down the entire space program, others are reluctant to decommission the ISS after investing billions of dollars in the project. Indeed, so far, Trump has been unable to even confirm his controversial pick, Oklahoma congressman Jim Bridenstine, to run the space agency.

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Did SpaceX or Northrop Grumman Screw Up a Secret Satellite Launch? It’s Classified

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Tue, 09 Jan 2018 14:05:46 -0500

Few people know what SpaceX launched into space on Jan. 7 when a Falcon 9 rocket carried a secret satellite called Zuma to orbit. Now, anonymous sources say that the satellite has failed or fallen to earth—but the real story may have nothing to do with SpaceX at all.

The mystery satellite hasn’t been publicly claimed by any US government agency or branch of the military. It was constructed by Northrop Grumman, the major aerospace contractor, which tapped SpaceX for its launch.

Unnamed government officials have told the Wall Street Journal and Reuters that the satellite failed to separate from the second stage of the rocket carrying it into orbit, with one saying that the satellite is “a write-off.”

Such a failure to separate could be blamed on the rocket. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell issued a statement this morning (Jan. 9) refuting such allegations, writing that “after review of all data to date, Falcon 9 did everything correctly on Sunday night. If we or others find otherwise based on further review, we will report it immediately. Information published that is contrary to this statement is categorically false. Due to the classified nature of the payload, no further comment is possible. Since the data reviewed so far indicates that no design, operational or other changes are needed, we do not anticipate any impact on the upcoming launch schedule.”

The Falcon 9’s first and second stages separated successfully, with the first returning to Earth to land back at Cape Canaveral.

SpaceX’s outspoken CEO Elon Musk hasn’t commented on the reports, but has shared photos of the flight, as he often does following a successful mission. SpaceX is also pressing ahead with another rocket launch later this month, which would be unlikely in the event of a launch failure. When SpaceX encounters problems with its systems, the company’s engineers scramble to solve them and then convince the Federal Aviation Administration and other regulators that their vehicle is good for launch.

Northrop Grumman, meanwhile, has declined to comment on the launch. It, too, may be carrying some egg on its face: According to documents obtained by Wired’s Robin Seemangal, Northrop built a custom adapter to mate the payload to the Falcon 9, rather than use SpaceX’s standard interface. In that case, a failure could be pinned on Northrop, too.

The confusion doesn’t stop there. The US Air Force database of satellites, which is publicly available to help operators protect their constellations, reported a new US satellite registered on its scanners the day after launch, suggesting that Zuma made it it to orbit for at least a short time. The details of that orbit are redacted, as they would be with most secret satellites. This wouldn’t be the first time the US government has lied about a spy satellite’s failure to preserve its secret mission.

Are you Zuma? A new entry in the USAF Satellite database. (Space Track)

One Dutch amateur astronomer who tracks secret satellites, Dr. Marco Langbroek, shared photos from a pilot that appear to show the Falcon 9’s second stage venting fuel prior to re-entry, a standard procedure to minimize environmental harm that may suggest a normal flight.

This is the image taken by Dutch pilot Peter Horstink, from his aircraft over Khartoum near 3:15 UT, 2h 15m after launch.
This is probably the Falcon 9 venting fuel.#Zuma pic.twitter.com/EEsl7e1sQP
— Dr Marco Langbroek (@Marco_Langbroek) January 8, 2018

Some of the speculation surrounding Zuma was that its mission was to maneuver with other satellites, potentially near the International Space Station, like another classified satellite launched in June 2017. It’s possible that something went wrong with the technology the satellite was designed to demonstrate after launch, contributing to a failure.

We may not know the truth for decades, until whatever program Zuma is part of is declassified, but if the recriminations over the mission are pulled into high-stakes debates over defense contracts, congressional aides may reveal further details ahead of time.

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Watch SpaceX Launch its First Reusable Rocket to the International Space Station

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 13:18:49 -0500

Elon Musk’s space company launched its fourth previously flown booster rocket today (Dec. 15) in a mission to the International Space Station. Then, while a Dragon spacecraft carried more than two tons of research and supplies to the orbiting lab, the booster attempted to return to land at Cape Canaveral for future re-flight.

Lift-off happened 10:30am US EST. You can watch all the action here:

This is the first time NASA has approved the use of a previously flown rocket booster on a mission to the space station; this one flew to space for the first time in June 2016. The US space agency has allowed SpaceX to fly recovered Dragon spacecraft back the lab before, and the vehicle on this mission is also a veteran, having made the trip to 254 miles (408 km) in altitude on a 2015 mission. The US government is paying SpaceX billions of dollars to carry supplies to the station. This will be the thirteenth attempted mission since 2012.

This also is the first time that SpaceX has flown a mission from this launch pad, called SLC-40, since it was largely destroyed in a fire that started during a test last year and also consumed a SpaceX rocket and a satellite. The mission faced delays for additional inspections of the pad, and to clean out the fuel system in the second stage of the rocket after impurities were detected in it.

After years of development, SpaceX is the only rocket company with a reusable first stage, which allows it to cut the cost of launch significantly. Competitors charge over $10,000 per kilogram of cargo in low-earth orbit, while a reusable SpaceX rocket can do the same for less than $2,000 per kg. So far, SpaceX has reused three of its recovered boosters to launch satellites, taking about six months to refurbish them. To truly drive down the cost of access to space, Musk has set a goal of turning around the boosters in just 24 hours.

This year, SpaceX has launched 16 successful missions, twice as many as last year, dominating the orbital launch business:

NASA’s decision to use a “flight proven” booster to service the space station is a sign of confidence in SpaceX from the agency, which has been a key patron and client for more than a decade. NASA is now officially under orders from president Donald Trump to return to the moon, but success will likely require partnerships with private companies that are working to make access to space cheaper.

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Why Donald Trump Wants to Go Back to the Moon

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Mon, 11 Dec 2017 17:02:19 -0500

Today Donald Trump will sign Space Policy Directive 1, an order to send humans back to the moon and beyond. A draft copy of the order seen by Quartz declares that “the United States will lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations.”

It’s a bold promise, timed to the 45th anniversary of Apollo 17, the final human mission to the moon. It’s also a promise that has been made by three previous presidents, each of whom was defeated by the political and financial challenges of deep space exploration.

Trump isn’t having an easy time so far: His nominee to run NASA, Jim Bridenstine, faces opposition from lawmakers. And real questions about the US return to the moon will be answered when NASA’s next budget is written, not today. The US space agency has not designed a moon landing vehicle or other infrastructure for taking astronauts to the moon, and it will struggle to perform a moon landing during Trump’s term in office. (NASA’s current deep space exploration plan includes a new heavy rocket called the Space Launch System and a space capsule, called Orion, which will fly astronauts around the moon in 2019; it is also considering building a new space station in lunar orbit as a kind of stepping-stone.)

One advantage Trump has over his predecessors is an array of private companies investing in space exploration beyond low-earth orbit. NASA is already working with closely with lunar exploration companies like Moon Express, which received regulatory permission for a moon mission last year, and Astrobotic, a Carnegie Mellon spin-off that says it has a $1 billion manifest (pdf) to deliver to the lunar surface.

“A permanent presence on the moon and American boots on the surface Mars are not impossible,” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president, said in October; the company’s founder, Elon Musk, has said his next rocketwill be designed around visiting the moon as well as his beloved Mars. “It’s time for America to return to the Moon—this time to stay,” Blue Origin executive Brett Alexander said in September, describing a lunar lander being developed by Jeff Bezos’ space company and promising additional investment if NASA was willing to partner with the firm. Meanwhile, Boeing’s CEO has promised the first astronauts to visit Mars will get there on one of his company’s rockets.

But why are so many interested in getting back to the moon, anyway?

Water and money

One irony about the Apollo astronauts is that they missed what newer robotic explorers didn’t: There is likely water, and perhaps quite a bit of it, on the moon.

The presence of water could make new activities: Cheaper long-term space habitation, thanks to the ability to grow food and create oxygen from water; and cheaper rocket propellant, if engineers can produce hydrogen and oxygen in space rather than bringing it up from earth. This could in turn bring futuristic business plans, like space tourism, asteroid mining, and orbital manufacturing, within reach of entrepreneurs. And, there may be other useful chemicals to be extracted from the moon, like Helium-3. George Sowers, who leads the space resources program at Colorado School of Mines, compares water on the moon to oil in the Persian Gulf, suggesting that there will be soon be an international scramble for claims on the moon.

Geopolitical tensions

Which brings us to a second motivator: China’s ambitious space program has announced that it wants to land humans on the moon by 2036. The European Space Agency has long argued in favor of a lunar village exploration concept. The US government doesn’t want to find itself left out a return to the moon, especially because American companies are likely to be among the first to stretch the current legal framework for space to its breaking point.

International space treaties, written in the early days of space exploration, leave much to interpretation and don’t account for commerce in space. Facts on the ground—or the lunar regolith—will matter in future debates over how people cooperate in space. US military is already talking up its new approach to space as a warfighting environment. Certainly, space entrepreneurs aren’t hesitant to invoke the international conflict. Robert Bigelow, who wants to build hotels on the moon, shared this slideshow during a recent conference to encourage the US to take action:

(Bigelow Aerospace)

Exploration and science

There are plenty of people in the space policy world who think that humans should set their sights directly on Mars and not waste time with a return to the moon. Yet lunar missions could enable, rather than hinder, more ambitious journeys into space.

Returning to the moon could help researchers understanding the health challenges faced by people who spend a long time in space. If ideas about water on the moon prove true, manufacturing propellant there could enable cheaper missions to Mars. Building out scientific infrastructure on the moon could create new opportunities for astronomers to get a clearer picture of the universe and planetary scientists to learn about the history of the earth. There’s still much to learn about the earth’s most important satellite.

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The Next Trump Legal Crisis: Who Is In Charge at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 12:56:04 -0500

Who will lead the only US financial regulator focused on protecting regular people? That’s a problem that will need to be solved by the courts, thanks to a legal mess created by president Donald Trump.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was set up after the financial crisis, when it became clear that part of the unraveling subprime mortgage bubble were exploitive contracts that led borrowers into loans they could never repay. But the CFPB’s advocacy for customers has led banks to fight the agency tooth and nail since its inception.

The agency’s first director, Richard Cordray, stepped down on Nov. 24, almost eight months ahead of his term’s expiration. Beforehand, he elevated his chief of staff, Leandra English, to the position of deputy director; this made her the acting director upon Cordray’s departure. Later same day, Trump tapped Mick Mulvaney, his director of the Office of Management and Budget, to be the acting director.

This set up competing authorities at the agency, and English has filed a suit asking for courts to confirm her as the true director and grant a restraining order to prevent Mulvaney from taking office.

BREAKING: Leandra English has filed suit, seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent Mick Mulvaney from taking control of the CFPB. pic.twitter.com/zSBWyYDZI1
— Pete Schroeder (@peteschroeder) November 27, 2017

This is no small distinction: English, a career civil servant, appears ready to execute the mission of the CFPB, whose enforcement actions have returned $12 billion to 29 million Americans. Mulvaney, while in Congress, voted to eliminate the agency. Like Trump, he has argued that if banks were able to save money on the cost of complying with rules (and presumably, profit from things like opening accounts that people didn’t authorize) they will reward consumers in the form of cheaper loans. Effectively, the question of who runs the agency is the question of whether it will function at all.

As English notes in her lawsuit,

Mr. Mulvaney has never previously served in any capacity in a consumer-protection enforcement or financial or banking regulatory agency at the state, federal, or local level. Mr. Mulvaney has described the CFPB as a “sad, sick joke,” has co-sponsored legislation proposing to eliminate the agency, and has said at a hearing in the House of Representatives: “I don’t like the fact that CFPB exists, I’ll be perfectly honest with you.”

The White House’s case is backed by a memo from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, perhaps most famous for authorizing torture under the Bush administration. In this case, the OLC argues that a law called the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA) allows the president to appoint a new acting director to positions that require senate confirmation.

However, this law was written before the CFPB was created. Georgetown law professor Adam Levitin argues that this is a key distinction, since the legislative record of the FVRA says that future laws that offer an alternative mode of succession won’t be covered by its procedures. The law that created the CFPB does outline its own plan for succession, with the deputy director stepping in as acting director; one of the law’s authors, former representative Barney Frank, said it was specifically designed so the president could not appoint an acting director without senate confirmation.

Thanks to English’s suit, the courts will pick which succession law takes precedence. Meanwhile, Mulvaney says he will show up the CFPB on Monday to take charge. That raises the other issue with Trump picking Mulvaney: He would be at once a White House adviser serving at the pleasure of the president, and the head of an ostensibly independent agency. Aside from the human capacity required to manage two important organizations, it’s an apparent conflict of interest.

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The US Is Funding Silicon Valley’s Space Industry to Spot North Korean Missiles Before They Fly

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 08:00:00 -0400

The US doesn’t have the information it needs to stop an attack by North Korea. But it knows where to get it, thanks to a small unit within the Department of Defense that works like a Silicon Valley investment firm.

North Korea’s recent ICBM test has analysts convinced that it can strike the US, possibly with a nuclear weapon. The US can’t reliably spot missiles before they launch, and North Korea’s use of mobile launchers makes it even harder. Spotting these mobile launchers in a timely fashion could allow the US to launch preemptive strikes, a plan known as “Kill Chain,” or evacuate threatened cities in time.

The only way to guarantee this kind of vision is to use space-based radar systems with enough satellites to provide blanket surveillance of the Korean peninsula. Satellites that take visual images can be confounded by the weather, and radar from planes and ground stations lacks the range and consistency.

The problem has always been money. In 2007, the Congressional Budget Office evaluated the costs of various space radar systems with observing North Korea in mind. The cheapest option weighed in at $27 billion; the most expensive, $94 billion. Predictably, lawmakers refused.

But imminent threats tend to focus the congressional mind. Andrew Hunter, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has worked in defense procurement at the Pentagon and in Congress, recalls that when troops in Iraq started falling victim to improvised explosive devices, “Congress and the Defense Department’s leadership said, ‘Oh yeah, we’re willing to spend tens of billions of dollars to protect our troops from this threat.’ Five years before, the decision was not to devote any resources to meet this threat. People were aware that it was out there; what changed was their understanding of the odds that of it happening. The odds of North Korean launch against the United States are much higher than we would like them be.”

On a traditional satellite procurement schedule, it could take five years to get the birds in orbit if the money were approved now. But a vibrant new space industry is springing up as trends in cheap, powerful electronics and batteries converge with ambitious business plans funded by US venture capitalists.

Non-governmental organizations have already used commercial satellite data from companies like Planet to monitor North Korea’s weapons programs. Planet launched its first test satellites in 2013; today, it operates 190 satellites, the largest commercial constellation in the world, and is well on the way to imaging the entire earth daily.

Tapping into this zeitgeist to surveil North Korea is the job of the “Defense Innovation Unit, Experimental,” or DIUx.

The organization isn’t quite a government-backed venture capitalist (that’s In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture-capital arm) but more like a friendly face for entrepreneurs with exciting technology who are daunted by the thicket of rules and regulations that come with working with the federal government. The office of about 50 staff concludes development contracts with young companies, giving them funding in exchange for their work on new technology, with the possibility for a full-fledged contract down the line. The model is similar to the public-private partnerships NASA used to fund SpaceX and OrbitalATK.

To tackle the North Korean threat, DIUx began by contracting with Orbital Insight in February 2017. The start-up, which is dedicated to turning advances in machine learning to the massive and growing accumulation of satellite imagery, will build tools for the government that can analyze images in real time.

Then, in March, DIUx signed a contract with Capella Space, which was founded by former government engineers, to develop a constellation of small radar satellites. These will use Synthetic Aperture Radar or SAR, which builds up high-resolution images by making repeated passes over the same spot. Capella’s CEO, Payam Banazadeh, told me in January that he expected to launch the first satellite of an expected 30 this year.

“Some very, very smart people that we respect highly in a variety of branches of the Department of Defense and intelligence community concluded that a) Capella’s technology was superior to anything on the market or that would be in the market and that b) it was ideal for that impressive technology to be operational in as many satellites as possible, as soon as possible,” says Matt Ocko, a partner at DCVC, Capella’s primary financial backer. Capella, like most earth-imaging companies, already envisioned doing business with the government, and Ocko says the DIUx contract accelerated these plans.

All this makes DIUx’s sequence of investments look a lot like the journey down the value chain we’ve seen Silicon Valley investors follow. It invested first in a software company working to better analyze existing satellite data. That led it to a satellite operator with plans to gather better, more frequent, or different data. In turn, that will lead it to work on improving the satellite launch business: Its next investment will be in a US company developing “a new breed of launch vehicles that are purpose built to deliver smaller payloads at a much smaller cost,” said a Defense Department spokesman in a statement.

Which company might that be? There are only a few obvious candidates. One, Vector Space, raised $21 million in a July investment round to develop its small rocket after a successful test flight earlier this summer. The round was led by Sequoia, a venture-capital firm that is also an investor in Orbital Insight. Bill Coughran, a partner at Sequoia, says he thinks the government is “also seeing value in these near-earth-orbit kind of small satellites, as opposed to some of the mega-satellites they’ve traditionally deployed.”

Another potential target is Rocket Lab, a US-New Zealand small-rocket firm. It too had its first test launch this summer and raised more than $75 million this year in a round led by DCVC, the Capella Space funder. “You may notice that we are also investors in a space access company, able to launch on very short notice, very inexpensively,” Ocko says. “We are hopeful but not requiring that our companies make beautiful music together.”

There are concerns that DIUx, a program that began under the Obama administration, might face turf wars with other government agencies as well as opposition from lawmakers who don’t like government intervention in the economy. Congress delayed some of its funding this year while asking for more information on what DIUx has got in return for its $71 million of investments so far. But the threat of North Korean missiles, and the lack of any other real capability to detect them, may leave the US with few other options.

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Will Democrats Need to Break Up Amazon And Google to Beat Donald Trump?

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 10:00:00 -0400

As Democrats prepare a program to win the legislature in the 2018 legislative elections, one issue stands out as new: The idea of breaking up large tech companies.

In an op-ed today, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer wrote that his party would “going to fight to allow regulators to break up big companies if they’re hurting consumers and to make it harder for companies to merge if it reduces competition.” Another Democratic senator with reputed presidential ambitions, Cory Booker, told Recode that “corporate villainy is reigning” and regulators should look to Google as a potential monopolist. And Democrat David Cicilline, who represents Rhode Island in the House of Representatives, is calling for hearings on the anti-competitive possibilities of Amazon’s planned purchase of Whole Foods.

All three lawmakers are using a complicated economic proposition to make a populist point ahead of their confrontation with the Republican party of Donald Trump: We’re in favor of helping out the little guy against modern corporations that are exploiting regular people.

“Our antitrust laws are designed to allow huge corporations to merge, padding the pockets of investors but sending costs skyrocketing for everything from cable bills and airline tickets to food and health care,” Schumer wrote.

Fixing the problem is a key plank in the Democrats’ “Better Deal” campaign platform, which envisions the creation of a new anti-trust advocate—a “trust buster”—to push regulators to crack down on monopolists. In a sense, they are catching up with party darling Elizabeth Warren, who outlined this agenda in a 2016 speech.

The anti-trust project taps intop latent questions about the digital economy, which is creating enormous amounts of value for investors without providing mass employment on the scale of previous American corporate renaissances. To its advocates, battling monopolies is the political rallying cry Democrats need to regenerate their populist appeal, which was famously lacking in the 2016 election. Besides tech companies, Democrats can highlight any number of corporate villains, from telecom giants to airlines, that leverage concentration to public consternation. They’ve even got a plan to fight beer monopolies and lower the prices on suds.

If the Democrats win the House in 2018, their power on this issue will still be limited mainly to conducting investigations as long as Donald Trump and his veto pen are in the White House. But the party could use that time to educate the public about the principle challenge that has left anti-trust enforcement a largely dead letter since Microsoft was sued by the US government in 1998—namely, legal interpretations that base the decision to enforce, or not, on the prices consumers pay.

It’s easy to demonstrate that tech companies have seized enormous amounts of market share in various domains, from search to online retail to social networking. But because many of Google’s services are ostensibly free and Amazon’s market share is driven by low prices, regulators have done little to stand in the way of these companies. Even in more traditional industries, this theory is used to justify consolidation that might have appalled earlier generations of Americans.

Critics of modern monopolies argue that the damage is felt by society in other ways—in shrinking new business formation and private investment; in growing income inequality; in the proliferation of personal data across digital platforms; and in the hollowing out of the media industry.

“For more than 35 years, both parties have embraced a competition philosophy that put the rich and powerful first,” Barry Lynn, who directs the Open Markets program at the New America Foundation, wrote in a statement. “Democrats must clearly reject the Chicago School philosophy of ‘consumer welfare.'”

In other words, Democrats will need to push new ways of thinking about and enforcing anti-trust laws if they want the public on their side.

Beyond the legal hurdles of taking on the digital behemoths, the politics of such a move would be risky. Tech company investors and CEOs have been a fertile source of campaign cash for the Democratic party; directly challenging their business model could prove costly. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi hails from San Francisco and is as protective of local industry as any lawmaker. And some Democrats looking for gains among Republican-leaning suburban voters turned off by Trump might fear that attacks on big business may come off as attacks on business itself.

Yet the embrace of trust-busting rhetoric by the party’s head honchos suggests at least one thing: It polls better than the alternative.

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U.S. Won't Launch a Military Space Corps—For Now

Tim Fernholz, Quartz — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 14:25:27 -0400

A handful of lawmakers are pushing for the creation of a new branch of the American military solely focused on deploying extraterrestrial power.

The members of congress, led by Alabama Rep. Mike Rogers, have included a provision creating a new Space Corps in the bill authorizing the next year of defense spending. The new branch would be a semi-independent force below the Air Force, as the Marine Corps is a subsidiary of the Navy.

Their efforts aren’t likely to succeed because of a lack of enthusiasm in the Senate, which must also approve the plan, and opposition from the White House. But they do send a message the U.S. is concerned about the orbital military aspirations of geopolitical rivals like China and Russia.

“Bottom line: Unless it gets introduced in the Senate, I don’t think the chances are very high of it making it all the way through,” Brian Weeden, a space expert at the Secure World foundation, told Quartz.

At the moment, the Air Force is responsible for most of U.S national security in space. The top brass there, backed by Defense Secretary James Mattis, have made clear they intend to hang on to their role, and that now isn’t the time for a major change in organization, calling the idea “a narrower and even parochial approach to space operations vice an integrated one we’re constructing.”

But in a signal that the concerns are being heard, the Air Force has reorganized its command structure to put a three-star general in charge of all its space programs. It has also made a point of trumpeting its advanced space vehicles.

Russian and Chinese anti-satellite weapons testing has raised the profile of space conflict in recent years after a post-Cold War lull in competition. Sophisticated electronic warfare technology used by Russia during its invasion of Ukraine to interrupt GPS and communications systems was another warning about the vulnerability of space systems. U.S. lawmakers want the military to be prepared.

The organizational problems these proposals are meant to solve—particularly that there are is no one person in charge of space security—are real. Coordinating budgets between the Air Force, the intelligence community and NASA has never been simple and has resulted in cost-overruns and conflicting regulations for companies that build space hardware for the government. A space command, its backers argue, could be a powerful voice to win funding from Congress for expensive space projects—which is one reason some of its opponents prefer to scotch it.

A middle ground, suggested by Weeden and others, is the creation of something more like a Space Coast Guard, that has law-enforcement and civil duties as well as military objectives when necessary. But perhaps because it offers a compromise, it hasn’t attracted major political backing.

One thing is for sure: This is only the beginning of the discussion of warfare in space. Cheaper access to orbit is likely to mean disruptive new conflicts in space, and the growing commercial importance of life beyond the atmosphere will naturally lead to more public attention. Rogers may not get his space corps this time around, but it doesn’t sound like he’s giving up yet.

“I’ve been shocked by the response from the Air Force leadership,” Rogers said at a recent hearing. “Did they miss where the Chinese and the Russians have already reorganized space operations?”

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