NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

April 10, 2024

Planets Around a Total Eclipse

What wonders appear when the Moon blocks the Sun? For many eager observers of Monday’s total eclipse of the Sun, the suddenly dark sky included the expected corona and two (perhaps surprise) planets: Venus and Jupiter. Normally, in recent days, Venus is visible only in the morning when the Sun and Jupiter are below the horizon, while Jupiter appears bright only in the evening. On Monday, though, for well-placed observers, both planets became easily visible during the day right in line with the totally eclipsed Sun. This line was captured Monday afternoon in the featured image from Mount Nebo, Arkansas, USA, along with a line of curious observers — and a picturesque tree.

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

NASA’s DC-8 Completes Final Mission, Set to Retire

APR 09, 2024

After 37 years of successful airborne science missions, NASA’s DC-8 aircraft completed its final mission and returned to the agency’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Building 703 in Palmdale, California, on April 1.

The DC-8 and crew were welcomed back with a celebratory water salute by the U.S Air Force Plant 42 Fire Department after completing an air quality study, the Airborne and Satellite Investigation of Asian Air Quality, or ASIA-AQ mission. The aircraft is set to retire after concluding operations in May.

As the largest flying science laboratory in the world, the DC-8 has been used to support the agency’s Airborne Science mission since 1987. This unique aircraft was first acquired by NASA in 1985 and collected data for experiments in support of scientific projects serving the world’s scientific community – including scientists, researchers, and students from NASA and other federal, state, academic, and foreign institutions.

The DC-8 will continue its educational legacy as it retires to its new home at Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho, where it will be used to train future aircraft technicians by providing real-world experience in the college’s Aircraft Maintenance Technology Program.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasas-dc-8-completes-final-mission-set-to-retire/

New NASA Strategy Envisions Sustainable Future for Space Operations

APR 09, 2024

To address a rapidly changing space operating environment and ensure its preservation for generations to come, NASA released the first part of its integrated Space Sustainability Strategy, on Tuesday advancing the agency’s role as a global leader on this crucial issue.

“The release of this strategy marks true progress for NASA on space sustainability,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy. “Space is busy – and only getting busier. If we want to make sure that critical parts of space are preserved so that our children and grandchildren can continue to use them for the benefit of humanity, the time to act is now. NASA is making sure that we’re aligning our resources to support sustainable activity for us and for all.”

For decades, NASA has served as a proactive leader for responsible and sustainable space operations. Entities across the agency develop best practices, analytic tools, and technologies widely adopted by operators around the world. The new strategy seeks to integrate those efforts through a whole-of-agency approach – allowing NASA to focus its resources on the most pressing issues. To facilitate that integration, NASA will appoint a new director of space sustainability to coordinate activities across the agency.

Key aspects of our approach include providing global leadership in space sustainability, supporting equitable access to space, and ensuring NASA’s missions and operations enhance space sustainability. 

Space environments currently are seeing the rapid emergence of commercial capabilities, many of them championed by NASA. These capabilities include increased low Earth orbit satellite activity and plans for the use of satellite constellations, autonomous spacecraft, and commercial space destinations. However, this increased activity also has generated challenges, such as an operating environment more crowded with spacecraft and increased debris. Understanding the risks and benefits associated with this growth is crucial for space sustainability. 

Developed under the leadership of a crossagency advisory board, the space sustainability strategy focuses on advancements NASA can make toward measuring and assessing space sustainability in Earth orbit, identifying cost-effective ways to meet sustainability targets, incentivizing the adoption of sustainable practices through technology and policy development, and increasing efforts to share and receive information with the rest of the global space community.

NASA’s approach to space sustainability recognizes four operational domains: Earth, Earth orbit, the orbital area near and around the Moon known as cislunar space, and deep space, including other celestial bodies. The first volume of the strategy focuses on sustainability in Earth orbit. NASA plans to produce additional volumes focusing on the other domains.

Learn more about the Space Sustainability Strategy at:

https://www.nasa.gov/spacesustainability

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/new-nasa-strategy-envisions-sustainable-future-for-space-operations/

SpaceX Starlink Mission

On Wednesday, April 10 at 1:40 a.m. ET, Falcon 9 launched 23 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

This was the second flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Crew-8, and now one Starlink mission.

https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=sl-6-48

https://www.spacecom.mil/Newsroom/News/Article-Display/Article/3735945/whiting-underscores-growing-partnerships-capabilities-required-for-competition/

Whiting underscores growing partnerships, capabilities required for competition, conflict at Space Symposium 39

April 9, 2024

U.S. Space Force Gen. Stephen Whiting, U.S. Space Command commander, opened the 39th annual Space Symposium at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colorado, April 9, 2024.

During his remarks, themed “Wining in Competition and Conflict,” he highlighted the importance of growing international and commercial partnerships and their contributions to a warfighting advantage.

“Relationships matter, and space is a team sport,” Whiting said. “At U.S. Space Command, we are committed to building a coalition of teammates to achieve a collective advantage, and we’re committed to being great teammates ourselves.”

This commitment is outlined in the command’s four focus priorities – showcasing how USSPACECOM prepares and postures to maximize combat readiness by 2027, improving its capabilities to counter threats that hold our modern way of life and national defense at risk, and building strong partnerships to not only achieve a warfighting advantage, but maintain and expand that advantage.

One powerful demonstration of this team focus can be seen through Operation OLYMPIC DEFENDER, the command’s named multinational operation intended to strengthen deterrence, optimize space operations, improve mission assurance, enhance resilience and optimize space assets by engaging with U.S. government partners and allies, through the sharing of information, data and resources.

The United Kingdom was the first nation to join OOD in July 2020, followed by Australia and Canada. During his remarks, Whiting announced that USSPACECOM invited three new Allies to join OOD, including Germany, France and New Zealand.

“Our international Allies and Partner nations provide strategic and operational advantages,” Whiting said. “I’ve been proud to work alongside Germany, France and New Zealand for many years, and I look forward to their consideration of our invitation to join OOD.”

Another vital and growing relationship the command leverages is the strength of the commercial industry, which is demonstrated through USSPACECOM’s Commercial Integration Cell and Joint Commercial Operations Cell. The CIC enables operational and technology exchanges between operators at the Combined Space Operations Center located at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

Commercial partners improve space domain awareness by providing real-time and near real-time information flow during daily routine operations and enable informed rapid responses to critical unplanned space events or other activities in and through space. Additionally, partnerships within the JCO enable commercial 24/5 space domain awareness at the unclassified level, providing indication and warning capability to augment the space protect and defend mission.

“The U.S. commercial aerospace industry is one of our nation’s biggest advantages, and it is an advantage that is growing,” Whiting said. “Today, we have multiple companies at our Commercial Integration Cell at Vandenberg Space Force Base. and I’m excited to announce today that we are inviting eight additional companies to enter the (Commercial) Integration Cell, so we can share information and gain insights into how each other’s constellations are operating.

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Finally, the command has shown further growth through expansion of its Space Situational Awareness sharing program, enhancing the safety, stability, security, and sustainability of spaceflight for all. Currently, the command has 185 SSA Data Sharing Agreements, and cosigned a new agreement with Uruguay at the symposium.

“By sharing space information with space-faring Allies and Partners and academic institutions we promote trust required for coalition unified action,” Whiting said.

Uruguay also became the 36th nation to sign the Artemis Accords Feb. 15, 2024, underscoring its commitment to the peaceful, safe, and transparent exploration and use of outer space, and plans to establish a national space agency in the future.

While partners provide a clear asymmetric advantage, Whiting also outlined the need for specific actions and increased capabilities to deter, and if required, defeat threats.

Those capabilities include dynamic space operations and on-orbit logistics that can sustain space maneuver – on-orbit satellite refueling, consumables replenishment, system repair, and forward sustainment.

Tactically Responsive Space and launch operations is another important U.S. Space Force capability that can be used to augment and reconstitute and replenish capabilities in support of combatant commanders.

"Today we've got a lot to do. We've got to make all of our constellations more resilient; we've got to protect and defend those constellations against the threats now arrayed against us; we have to protect the joint force from space enabled attack; and we must have a test and training enterprise that convinces us that these capabilities will work in a conflict which has never happened,” Whiting said, to name a few.

On the importance of simulating threat scenarios through maturation of testing and training environments, Whiting announced the achievement of the command’s Capability Assessment and Validation Environment, or CAVE, reaching minimum viable capability. CAVE is a modeling and simulation laboratory, which will be used to derive combatant command capability requirements and insights into multidomain joint warfighting concepts, improving how USSPACECOM deters and plans “a fight that has never happened and a fight we don’t want to happen,” Whiting said.

“U.S. Space Command does not want any war, let alone a war that starts in or extends into space, which would be particularly bad for our domain. We want to remain in enduring competition and not progress into crisis or conflict,” he said. “It’s our job to instill doubts, so that every morning (our adversaries) wake up and say, ‘today is not the day for armed conflict.’”

And to do that, Whiting emphasized the need to not only modernize capabilities and expand partnerships, but also to increase mutual trust through information sharing, an area the Department of Defense has made significant progress through its recently approved space classification policy.

“Together, these next necessary steps will ensure that all of us, as a team, win in competition and conflict,” he said. “We will work with a Coalition of peace-loving nations to ensure space remains, safe, sustainable and secure for future generations.”

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Space Command stands up new simulated environment for wargaming

APRIL 10, 2024

U.S. Space Command has created a dedicated modeling and simulation tool — dubbed the Capability Assessment and Validation Environment (CAVE) — to assist how the organization plans for and analyzes its operations.

“CAVE is our modeling and simulation laboratory which enables us to perform analysis on warfighting, on plans [and] on campaigning,” Spacecom Commander Gen. Stephen Whiting said Tuesday during his keynote at the annual Space Symposium. “We’ll use that to derive better ways of deterring and planning to conduct operations for a war that’s never happened, and a war we don’t want to happen.”

The platform recently achieved minimum viable capability at the combatant command’s headquarters in Colorado Springs, Whiting told DefenseScoop during a media roundtable following his speech.

“CAVE is really an office, if you will,” he said. “It’s both a modeling and simulation platform, but it’s also the modeling and simulation experts and analytics experts who can help us model our warfighting plans, our operations and our campaigning.”

As space continues to gain significance as a warfighting domain, both Space Command and the Space Force have highlighted the need for accurate modeling and simulation capabilities that can accurately replicate the space environment — particularly for training guardians and conducting wargames.

Separately from Spacecom’s CAVE, the Space Force is developing its own digital engineering ecosystem platform known as SpaceDEN. The tool will allow the service “to identify capability gaps, performance requirements and acquisition strategies to meet emerging threats,” according to the military branch.

CAVE, on the other hand, appears to be tailored more towards the operational needs of Spacecom. Along with conducting wargames for operations in space, Whiting said the platform will be used to understand Spacecom’s requirements and how space will fit into future joint warfighting scenarios across all domains.

“At fully operational capability, we’ll be able to assess all of our operations at all classification levels,” Whiting said. “Today, we can do a subset of that, and it’s an important subset, but we still need to grow that. But I think we’re on a good path.”

The command doesn’t have a defined timeline for when it wants to see CAVE reach FOC, he said, but it plans to continue building out the platform beyond minimum viable capability throughout 2024.

https://defensescoop.com/2024/04/10/space-command-cave-capability-assessment-validation-environment/

https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3735968/kendall-allvin-saltzman-urge-modernization-while-warning-senate-of-delayed-budg/

Kendall, Allvin, Saltzman urge modernization while warning Senate of delayed budgets

April 9, 2024

Department of the Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and the department’s two highest-ranking military leaders told a Senate subcommittee April 9 that the United States cannot withstand further budget delays if it expects to modernize and compete successfully against China.

“Continued failure to provide on-time authorities and appropriations will leave the Air Force and Space Force inadequately prepared,” Kendall told the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

“Time matters, but so do resources. The United States is also now facing a competitor with national purchasing power that exceeds our own, a challenge we have never faced in modern times,” Kendall said in a hearing which kicked off the lengthy congressional process designed to finalize a federal budget by Sept. 30. Kendall was joined by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin and Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman.

Kendall, Allvin and Saltzman’s official purpose during the hearing was to explain the department’s $217.5 billion budget request for the 2025 fiscal year which begins Oct. 1. They also added insight into what trade-offs were made and how the spending fits into the nation’s larger national security strategy and why having a new budget in place on time is critical.

Whatever Congress decides for a final budget amount, all three leaders said that there would be consequences to the nation’s security and international standing if Congress fails to approve the budget on time. The budget for the current fiscal year was finally enacted in March, more than six months late.

“As we look across the strategic landscape, we find ourselves in a time of significant consequence,” Allvin told lawmakers, adding, “Time is not on our side.”

While it is impossible to know the precise path budget considerations will take this year, Subcommittee Chairman, Sen. John Tester, D-Mont., acknowledged the dangers of a delayed budget and agreed with the three senior leaders that a similar history must be avoided.

“At last year’s Department of the Air Force hearing, I stressed the importance of getting the budget done on time. We failed. But we don’t need to fail this year. We need to get it done and get it done by the end of September, so you guys have the certainty you need and not to waste taxpayer dollars and to make sure the folks who serve under you have every tool to be successful,” Tester said.

“Timely enactment of the defense appropriations bill has never been more urgent,” Tester said.

By service, the budget proposal directs $188.1 billion to the Air Force and $29.4 billion to the Space Force.

Despite the thousands of individual facets and needs outlined in the Air Force and Space Force budget document, Kendall boiled down the latest budget proposal to a singular focus. The department, “needs immediate and significant capability modernization to keep pace with the growing military capabilities of the PRC,” Kendall said, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

Like Kendall, Allvin’s assessment was not ambiguous. Nor was Saltzman’s.

“The (fiscal year) 25 Air Force budget request reflects difficult choices,” Allvin told senators.

“We’ve made tradeoffs to keep the Air Force’s operational readiness today at the minimum acceptable to meet the nation’s demands, while seeking to preserve the previous years’ substantial advances in modernization and procurement. The Air Force budget request also invests in the Air Force’s most precious asset – its Airmen – to ensure they remain the decisive advantage upon which the nation depends,” he said.

In describing the plans and needs for space, Saltzman was also clear and emphatic.

“Against a near-peer adversary, space superiority is the linchpin. Without it, we cannot deter conflict. Without it, we cannot provide vital effects. Without it, we cannot protect the joint force. Until we have built the infrastructure to achieve space superiority, the Space Force is a work in progress,” he said.

“We remain committed to the (sixth generation aircraft) family of systems, particularly Collaborative Combat Aircraft, which will allow the Air Force to deliver the affordable mass required to be effective against the very capable PRC,” Allvin said, describing the newest generation of fighter aircraft and a suite of less expensive and autonomous aircraft. “We are also committed to building forward basing resilient enough to enable continued sortie generation, even while under attack.”

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For space, Saltzman said, “Our budget request is designed to build, train, and equip the forces we need to perform each activity, preserving freedom of action in space while deterring and denying adversarial objectives.”

Saltzman noted that the Space Force is by far the smallest of the nation’s military services but pointed out that the capabilities it provides and manages are essential to every service’s success.

“With only 3% of the (total defense) budget, the Space Force offers a tremendous value proposition to the nation,” he told senators. “Every dollar invested in space brings asymmetric returns, but that means every dollar cut creates asymmetric risk.”

He itemized in broad strokes the size of the budget as it relates to the service’s Theory of Success. The biggest portion, at 43.4 percent, is devoted to ensuring any “first strike against U.S. space capabilities (is) impractical and self-defeating.” That is accomplished, he said, by “investing in resiliency for missile warning and tracking; satellite communications; and positioning, navigation, and timing. Hybrid architectures and proliferated constellations impose a hefty cost on aggression.”

Saltzman also underscored the importance of the 24.7% of the budget dedicated to space superiority and noted that many more requirements remain unfunded. “We are still maturing into our role as a separate warfighting service, and we have had to make hard choices to maintain legacy space services at the cost of advancing this transformation,” he said. “Make no mistake, we will meet the vision for which the Space Force was established, but we must act with a greater sense of urgency.”

For the Air Force, the budget includes money to purchase more state-of-the-art F-35s and F-15EXs, “albeit with fewer than preferred quantities,” Allvin said. The reduction was triggered by an earlier budget agreement that the White House and Congress negotiated in 2023 that limited to 1% the increase in overall defense spending.

“The DAF (fiscal year) 25 budget request prioritizes nuclear modernization after decades of deferred modernization have left little room for error to maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent,” Kendall said.

At the same time, he acknowledged that work would continue on a new version of the land-based intercontinental ballistic missile known as Sentinel despite a 37% cost overrun that has triggered a mandatory review by Congress.

“Notably, the Sentinel ICBM program has experienced unacceptable cost and schedule increases and is currently undergoing a Nunn McCurdy review,” he said, using the name of the law that triggers a review when a cost overrun threshold is hit. “The DAF will work closely with the committee as that review reaches its conclusions.”

In addition to funding the Sentinel, Allvin said the proposed new budget also includes funding for developing a sixth generation, state-of-the-art system of fighters known as Next Generation Air Dominance and continued development of the Advanced Battle Management System.

That system, Allvin said, “will provide cutting-edge tools and an integrated digital architecture to enable effective C3 Battle Management in contested and degraded environments.”

As is common, a variety of topics were raised during the question portion, including those related to recruiting, plans for divesting aging aircraft and systems, supporting Air National Guardsmen currently performing space missions, the status of the new B-21 Raider and its development, how the department is “keeping pace with China’s modernization,” and the mission capability rates for the F-35 fighter and other aircraft.

On that last question, Kendall acknowledged that the readiness rate for the F-35, the Air Force’s top-of-the-line fighter, hovers around 60%. That status he said, is “the minimally acceptable rate” but he expects it to improve.

“We’re not where we want to be,” Kendall said.

When asked what “the department needs most to achieve strategic objectives” in the competition with China and protect America’s interests, Kendall ended the hearing where he began: “Timely appropriations,” he said.

“We have given up about a third of the time available over last 15 years when we could have been making progress. We’ve lost five years in 15 years. You cannot win a race when we move at that kind of pace. … Timely appropriations is critical to success. … We have a reasonable pace of modernization if we’re fully funded and promptly funded.”

https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3735968/kendall-allvin-saltzman-urge-modernization-while-warning-senate-of-delayed-budg/

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