NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

July 19, 2023

Chandrayaan-3 Launches to the Moon

Birds don't fly this high. Airplanes don't go this fast. The Statue of Liberty weighs less. No species other than human can even comprehend what is going on, nor could any human just a millennium ago. The launch of a rocket bound for space is an event that inspires awe and challenges description. Pictured here last week, the Indian Space Research Organization's LVM3 rocket blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Sriharikota Island, India. From a standing start, the 600,000+ kilogram rocket ship lifted the massive Chandrayaan-3 off the Earth. The Chandrayaan-3 mission is scheduled to reach the Moon in late August and land a robotic rover near the lunar South Pole. Rockets bound for space are now launched from somewhere on Earth every few days.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?

DAF leaders join Royal Air Force at Royal International Air Tattoo 2023

July 18, 2023

RAF FAIRFORD, United Kingdom (AFNS) –

Department of the Air Force leaders joined the Royal Air Force and participants from more than 20 other nations for the Royal International Air Tattoo, July 14-16.

RIAT, hosted annually in July, usually at RAF Fairford, is heralded as the largest airshow in the world, typically attracting more than 150,000 spectators over the course of a weekend.

Throughout the event, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., and Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman met with U.S. and international Airmen and Guardians attending the event, conducted bilateral meetings with air and space chief counterparts and held various meetings with industry partners.

Participating in the annual airshow enables DAF leaders to engage face-to-face with allies and partners demonstrating the strength of the air and space forces’ global relationships and express appreciation for the DAF’s bilateral relationship with the RAF.

“Since the inception of the U.S. Air Force, we have always had a strong partnership with the Royal Air Force,” Kendall said. “Over the span of history, that bond now includes our Space Force. RIAT provides a key moment of fellowship and demonstrates our unity with other allies and partners who share our values and appreciate the strength of air and space power.”

While at RIAT, Brown presented a U.S. Legion of Merit medal to his outgoing RAF counterpart, Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Wigston, for exceptionally meritorious conduct as RAF chief of the Air Staff.

“I was honored to present the Legion of Merit to my friend, Sir Mike Wigston,” Brown said. “We first met nearly ten years ago when he was serving as commander of British Forces Cyprus, and I was the commander, U.S. Air Forces Central Command. Since then, we’ve enjoyed many years of collaboration,” he continued.

“As air chiefs, we signed a Shared Vision Statement that laid the groundwork for our forces to become integrated by design, and I am proud to say our partnership today is firmer than ever. His outstanding leadership as chief of Air Staff was instrumental in deepening and expanding ties between our air forces, and I cannot thank him enough for all the work he has done for both of our nations.”

The U.S Air Force sent numerous assets, including the KC-135 Stratotanker and KC-46A Pegasus, in keeping with RIAT 2023’s theme, “SKYTANKER,” which recognizes the 100th anniversary of aerial refueling.

“RIAT is always a fantastic opportunity to showcase our Airmen, aircraft, and weapons systems,” Brown said. “This year is particularly significant as we recognize a century of achievement in aerial refueling and the benefits it has provided to allied airpower, an increasingly important capability in a changing world. I thank our friends in the RAF for continuing to host this annual celebration of Airpower.”

Saltzman, who arrived in the UK earlier in the week to provide keynote remarks at the Global Air and Space Chiefs Conference in London and participate in various multilateral engagements, seized the opportunity to encourage continued cooperation, coordination, and opportunities for interoperability with allies and partners at RIAT.

“I am extremely proud to be a part of this community of like-minded nations,” Saltzman said. “I very much look forward to continuing to build on our substantial relationships and ensure space operations are effectively integrated into our collective defense.”

While expressing his appreciation for the Space Force’s RAF counterparts, Saltzman emphasized that mutually beneficial partnerships will remain an unmatched asymmetric advantage as the U.S. and its allies work to keep space safe, secure, stable, and sustainable.

https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3462594/daf-leaders-join-royal-air-force-at-royal-international-air-tattoo-2023/

LEO, MEO or GEO? Diversifying orbits is not a one-size-fits-all mission (Part 1 of 3)

July 18, 2023

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – All About Low Earth Orbit (LEO)

It may come as no surprise that most of the man-made objects in space can be found in Low Earth Orbit, also known as LEO. LEO is the orbital range closest to Earth, which also means it’s the easiest orbit to reach in terms of energy and rocket power. Satellites that orbit up to 1,200 miles above earth are in LEO. They include the International Space Station, the Hubble Telescope and some 4,000 Space X Starlink satellites, to name a few.

“LEO is used a lot for communications and imaging,” notes Kerstyn Auman, a space situational awareness analyst at the Aerospace Corporation. “One of the pros of this orbit is you have a really low latency (compared to other orbits) – how much time it takes to send out a signal and/or get one back. So when you’re thinking of things like voice communications or surfing the internet, you want it to be almost instantaneous.”

Because they’re so close to Earth, satellites in LEO also don’t need as much signal power to transmit and they can be much smaller in size, some as small as a Rubik’s cube (about 4” by 4” by 4”) and as light as three pounds. The trade-off is that you need a lot of them to sustain continuous coverage of a given area of earth. That’s because satellites in LEO don’t stay in one place for very long: they complete 16 orbits around the earth every 24 hours – about one orbit every 90 minutes. As a result, it can take hundreds or thousands of satellites in a LEO constellation to achieve continuous global coverage. But because the satellites are small, they are more cost efficient to produce and modern “ride shares” can launch multiple satellites on one rocket.

Once in LEO, satellites must travel at a rate of approximately 17,000 miles per hour to maintain the balance between momentum and gravity that is needed to keep it on course. If momentum lags, gravity can pull the satellite off-course.

Satellites in LEO are also subject to greater atmospheric drag. Like running against a strong wind, atmospheric drag can decrease satellite speed. As a result, satellites in LEO must burn fuel frequently versus other orbits to maintain their position or risk burning up as their orbit decays and they reenter Earth’s atmosphere.

“Drag is the biggest perturbing force that basically alters where you would expect your satellite to be,” Auman says. “It can be a lot more difficult to predict your future location in LEO because you have drag, and drag is affected by solar weather.”

Solar weather alters the composition of the earth’s atmosphere, which in turn alters the effects on a satellite in LEO.

“We have a general idea, but predicting that solar weather accurately is very difficult,” notes Auman. “Better measurements of a satellite position and velocity can improve the knowledge of where exactly a LEO satellite is, and thus where it is going. GPS satellites, with a vantage point from a higher orbit, can be used to track LEO satellites and improve location accuracy.”

Along with Medium Earth Orbit, LEO is the target destination for new missile warning, missile tracking and missile defense sensors currently under development at Space Systems Command. This is a significant departure from the current scheme, which utilizes very large satellites located 22,236 miles above the earth in Geostationary Orbit. In addition to spreading out risk by diversifying orbits, proliferated sensors operating closer to Earth will help to increase missile detection and tracking accuracy.

“By placing our sensors in varied orbits we gain multiple views of the same area and targets — enhancing our geometry with additional look angles and range,” says Col. Heather Bogstie, senior materiel leader for the Resilient Missile Warning, Tracking, and Defense Acquisition Delta at SSC.

The diversified orbital scheme for next generation missile warning, tracking and defense is based on a force design developed by the Space Warfighting and Analysis Center (SWAC) in direct response to emerging missile threats such as hypersonics which are more difficult to detect from GEO orbit.

“This design is based on improved sensor technology paired with an abundance of commercial space vehicles to give us affordable options to place more sensors closer to the targets we need to detect and track,” says Bogstie.

From LEO to GEO and orbits in between, Space systems Command is taking advantage of every lane in space to deliver more resilient space capabilities to combatant commands.

https://www.ssc.spaceforce.mil/Newsroom/Article-Display/Article/3462074/leo-meo-or-geo-diversifying-orbits-is-not-a-one-size-fits-all-mission-part-1-of

NASA Maintains ‘A’ for Investing in Small Businesses

July 18, 2023

During an Investing in America event Tuesday with NASA leadership, the Small Business Administration (SBA) announced the space agency earned an “A” for the sixth consecutive year for its work with small businesses, exceeding its goals by 18%.

In total, NASA has directly invested $3.6 billion in over 1,700 small businesses across the country, creating good-paying jobs and opportunities for Americans in all 50 states.

Hosted by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, SBA Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman unveiled the Fiscal Year 2022 Small Business Federal Procurement Scorecard at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The scorecard looks at how federal agencies rank on meeting their small business goals.

“We’re excited to receive yet another “A” in this year’s Small Business Administration’s scorecard. NASA is investing in America by partnering with small businesses around the country and in every single state,” said Nelson. “Small businesses are integral to everything we do from finding first galaxies to investigating Mars and the universe to sending a new generation of explorers to the Moon through Artemis. Together, every advancement and achievement we make is for humanity.”

SBA’s scorecard is an assessment tool that measures how well federal agencies reach their small business and socio-economic prime contracting and subcontracting goals set by the White House.

“NASA is one of the leading agencies in delivering on the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to make federal contracting and procurement opportunities more readily available and remove barriers faced by underserved individuals and communities,” said Guzman. “Space exploration opens endless possibilities for understanding our own world and our universe, and American small businesses are the engines powering the next exciting era of exploration and achievement.”

This year, NASA received a grade of “A” from SBA for investing more than $3.6 billion dollars directly to various socioeconomic small businesses, along with $3.5 billion subcontracted to small businesses from the agency’s large contractors. The $7.1 billion dollars obligated through its prime and subcontracts to small business equates to 36% of NASA’s total obligated dollars in Fiscal Year 2022.

“It’s the small business innovators, thinkers, and doers who are helping us imagine and prepare for the future of space exploration,” said Melroy. “Our work creates good-paying American jobs; strengthens innovation and development opportunities; and increases competitiveness; which in turn creates a robust and global space economy and sets the rules and norms in space.”

The agency’s Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP), led by Glenn Delgado, associate administrator for OSBP, works to integrate small businesses into the future of space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research. OSBP works in tandem with NASA’s Office of Procurement, led by Karla Smith Jackson, deputy chief acquisition officer and assistant administrator for procurement, to identify prime and subcontracting opportunities for the small business community to work with NASA.

Additional participants at the event included representatives from three small businesses working with NASA:

Timothy Richardson, FDSS-III program manager, OPR, LLC

Daryl Carrington, director of business development, OPR, LLC

Ed Aguayo, president, Newton, LLC

Justin Ward, vice president, Newton LLC

Ashok Jha, president, Adnet

David Morris, vice president, Adnet

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-maintains-a-for-investing-in-small-businesses