In many ways, DigitalGlobe is the original “new space” company, one that dared to create a new industry for commercial satellite Earth imagery more than 20 years ago. With a relentless focus on innovation and meeting critical mission requirements, we became a trusted partner of the U.S. government, its allies and a wide array of commercial firms and global development organizations.
In 1992, our founder, Walter Scott, started DigitalGlobe from a spare bedroom in his house with $3,000. In those days, few people outside of the Russian and U.S. governments had even seen a high-resolution satellite image, and no licensing regime existed. We were granted the first commercial remote sensing license, and we pursued private equity funding to build our first satellite. Click here. (12/8)
Editorial: Give Cost-cutting a Chance (Source: Space News)
Excess infrastructure and duplicative activities are an unnecessary budgetary drain that NASA can ill afford these days. It’s a longstanding problem that has proved to be very stubborn. Civil service rolls are notoriously difficult to trim and NASA often encounters stiff congressional resistance when it tries to shutter outdated facilities or consolidate functions at a single center. Actually closing a center is a political nonstarter.
NASA has had some success finding users for facilities it no longer needs. Examples include the lease of former space shuttle processing facilities at Kennedy Space Center to Boeing for its CST-100 commercial crew capsule and for the U.S. Air Force’s Boeing-built X-37B spaceplane; and the more recent lease of a large aircraft hangar at Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, to a company owned by Google.
Lawmakers have been receptive so far, but that could change once concrete proposals to reduce personal or transfer functions from a given center are laid on the table. Congress has contributed substantially to NASA’s budget woes by funding pet projects and blocking center consolidation efforts. Lawmakers owe it to the U.S. space program and taxpaying public to give fair and objective consideration to the forthcoming proposals from NASA's TCAT process. (12/8)
Time for U.S. Focus on Earth Observation, Space Industrial Base (Source: Space News)
In early November, the Earth Observation Industry Alliance (EOIA) — the only advocacy organization founded to exclusively promote the interests of the entire U.S. Earth observation sector — co-hosted a symposium on Commercial Space-based Laser Communications and the Space Data Highway with Airbus Defense & Space and General Atomics.
Many of the over 170 people who attended asked, why would EOIA work with a foreign aerospace prime contractor and a U.S.-based unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturer? The answer is that the commercial remote sensing and Earth observation environment has changed radically since its founding in the mid-1990s. Commercial technology development has accelerated rapidly, bringing new capabilities — like laser communications — that can benefit and enable this sector regardless of its origin. Click here. (12/8)
Object 2014-28E: Benign or Malignant? (Source: Space News)
Much ado has been made in recent weeks of a mysterious object that was launched last May along with three Russian military communications satellites. The object, designated 2014-28E and tracked by the North American Aerospace Defense Command as 39765, recently has performed intricate orbital maneuvers that suggest it is more than debris from the launch of the satellite.
Even more so, the behavior of 2014-28E has brought into question whether it is a prototype of a new co-orbital anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon. The suggestion that it might be such is not unreasonable considering that the Soviet Union performed numerous co-orbital ASAT tests that led to the deployment of the Istrebitel Sputnikov or co-orbital “satellite-killer” during the Cold War until it was taken out of operational service after the fall of the Soviet Union. Click here. (12/8)
Why India Has Become a Major Military Space Market (Source: Space News)
In a first, the heads of the world’s largest democracies, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Barack Obama got together to pen an op-ed declaring their commitment to a “robust, reliable and enduring” partnership among their respective nations. It’s a partnership whose time has come and is of particular significance in military and economic terms.
The economic significance is apparent on considering numerous reports, ranging from McKinsey to Global Policy, predicting a shift of the world’s economic center of gravity to Asia in general, and India and China in particular, by around 2025. The military significance is apparent given that the military center of gravity, in economic terms, has already shifted to India. Click here. (12/8)
NASA Opens Competition for SLS Cubesat Ride-Along (Source: Space News)
NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate is putting up a $5 million prize purse to encourage private teams to send small satellites to and beyond lunar space as ride-along payloads on the first launch of the Space Launch System and Orion crew capsule. NASA announced the so-called Cube Quest Challenge competition on Nov. 24 and will begin accepting entries Dec. 2.
Teams must be based in the US and complete the competition’s flight objectives one year after the first SLS-Orion launch, which will take the rocket and crew capsule to a distant lunar retrograde orbit. NASA has said this mission will probably not launch before late 2018. Satellites must be built in accordance with cubesat standards, which call for standardized modules that measure 10 centimeters on a side and weigh several kilograms each. (12/8)
Lockheed Martin Examines Cost-Cutting Options for SBIRS (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Air Force’s current-generation missile warning satellites each carry two main infrared sensors, but a new study by prime contractor Lockheed Martin concludes that a new version carrying a single sensor could offer nearly the same performance. The study was carried out as part of an Air Force effort to trim hundreds of millions of dollars from the cost of its next two Space Based Infrared System satellites, known as GEO-7 and -8.
On average, the current SBIRS satellites have taken about seven years to build at a cost of about $1.1 billion each, a figure that has drawn criticism from budget conscious lawmakers. Air Force officials want to cut the price tag of the next satellites by 30 percent or more and in March put Lockheed Martin under contract to study how to do so. (12/8)
Filing Suggests Jurisdictional Challenge in SpaceX Lawsuit Against Air Force (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Justice Department is arguing that a federal court lacks jurisdiction to hear some or all elements of a lawsuit challenging the Air Force’s $11 billion bulk purchase of rockets from United Launch Alliance, according to legal experts and recent court filings. In April, SpaceX asked the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to void a large portion of the sole-source deal, which was signed last year and includes the purchase of 36 rocket cores from ULA.
SpaceX, whose Falcon 9 rocket is undergoing Air Force certification to launch national security payloads, argues that it should have been given the opportunity to bid on a large number of those missions. The Justice Department, which is representing the Air Force in the suit, asked the court in June to dismiss the case, claiming SpaceX missed its window to appeal the contract. The judge presiding over the lawsuit, Susan Braden, apparently declined, and in July put media gag orders on all involved parties. (12/8)
Venus Express Spacecraft May Be Out of Fuel (Source: Space.com)
The end may be near for Europe's venerable Venus probe. On Nov. 28, mission controllers lost contact with the European Space Agency's (ESA) Venus Express spacecraft, which has been circling Earth's hellishly hot "sister planet" for more than eight years. Over the past few days, the team was able to re-establish limited contact and also downlink some data, confirming that Venus Express' solar arrays are pointed at the sun as desired. The reasons for the communications blackout remain unclear at the moment, but one possibility is that the probe has finally run out of fuel. (12/7)
Russian Upgraded Space Missile Defense System to Begin Operating Before 2020 (Source: Itar-Tass)
The Russian upgraded space-based missile attack warning system will begin operating before 2020, the designer-general of the Almaz-Antei company, Pavel Sozinov, said. Technical solutions are being tested to develop the space echelon of the ballistic missile attack warning system, and it is expected to begin operating before 2020, Sozinov said. (12/8)
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