TYB
https://spacenews.com/congress-industry-criticize-faa-launch-licensing-regulations/
Congress, industry criticize FAA launch licensing regulations
September 10, 2024
Members of Congress and the space industry criticized the Federal Aviation Administration for implementation of launch licensing regulations they claim threaten American competitiveness in space.
A Sept. 10 hearing by the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee on “encouraging commercial space innovation while maintaining public safety” became a forum for complaints about a set of commercial launch and reentry regulations at the FAA, known as Part 450, intended to streamline the licensing process.
Many in the launch industry have warned since the regulations went into force in March 2021 that it was difficult for companies to obtain licenses under Part 450.
Industry officials raised concerns about Part 450 at an October 2023 hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee, with one witness, Bill Gerstenmaier of SpaceX, warning the “entire regulatory system is at risk of collapse” because of the difficulties getting licenses under the new regulations.
Witnesses at the House hearing made clear those concerns have not abated.
“The way it is being implemented today has caused severe licensing delays, confusion and is jeopardizing our long-held leadership position,” said Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an industry group whose members include several launch companies.
He cited specific concerns such as a long “pre-application” process with the FAA where companies, he said, “get stuck in an endless back-and-forth process” with the agency to determine how they can meet the performance-based requirements of Part 450 with limited guidance.
“This process is taking years,” he argued.
The FAA intends to address this through a series of documents known as advisory circulars, which outline ways license applicants can show compliance with the regulations. But Cavossa noted that the FAA has yet to publish many of the planned circulars.
Mike French, vice chair of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Group (COMSTAC), agreed with those concerns, noting that the committee had offered several recommendations to FAA on ways to address problems with the Part 450 regulations.
That included expanding the 180-day time period the FAA has to evaluate a completed license application to include some parts of the pre-application process as well as allowing companies to use existing legacy regulations for cases where there are no advisory circulars for the new regulations.
“We have a licensing regime with a lack of certainty, a lack of transparency and significant delays,” said Pamela Meredith, chair of the space law practice group at KMA Zuckert LLC.
Members on both sides if the aisle shared frustrations about Part 450. “License processing under the new Part 450 process is moving at a snail’s pace,” said Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), chairman of the subcommittee.
He said he was concerned about implications it could have for NASA’s Artemis program, since the Human Landing System landers being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin will launch using commercial licenses.
“I fear at this rate the Communist Party will launch taikonauts to the moon while U.S. industry remains tethered to Earth with red tape.”
“We are in a bureaucratic soup,” said Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) later in the hearing. “We know we’re not getting to the moon unless we get some commercial spacecraft. So something’s not working here.”
The only person defending the Part 450 regulations at the hearing was Kelvin Coleman, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation.
He said his office has developed new tools to help license applicants and continues to develop advisory circulars, as well as holds workshops and “office hours” on regulations.
A budget increase in fiscal year 2024 has allowed the office to grow to 158 people, and the FAA is seeking a further increase in 2025 to hire additional staff to help with licensing.
He acknowledged, though, that industry has moved only slowly to the new regulations, with 6 of about 30 existing licenses moving to the new regulations.
All existing licensees must transition to Part 450 by March 2026. “I will say that March 2026, at the moment, looks very challenging,” he said.
Coleman announced in February that the FAA would establish an aerospace rulemaking committee, or SpARC, to study ways to improve the Part 450 licensing process.
At the time he said he hoped to have the committee in place by the fall.
The SpARC is not yet established, but he said the charter for it is being reviewed. “We hope to have it stood up in short order.”
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SpaceX was not represented at the hearing, but its issues with launch licensing for its Starship vehicle came up during it.
The company published an update on its website while the hearing was in progress complaining of delays securing a license for its next Starship flight.
“The Starship and Super Heavy vehicles for Flight 5 have been ready to launch since the first week of August,” the company stated.
“We recently received a launch license date estimate of late November from the FAA, the government agency responsible for licensing Starship flight tests.
This is a more than two-month delay to the previously communicated date of mid-September.”
SpaceX said the delay was caused by a “superfluous environmental analysis” linked to issues like its water deluge system at its pad and a change in the splashdown location for the interstage or “hot-stage” section.
“The four open environmental issues are illustrative of the difficulties launch companies face in the current regulatory environment for launch and reentry licensing,” the company said. SpaceX also sent a separate letter to the committee on its licensing concerns that was entered into the record.
Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) mentioned the Starship licensing delays in the hearing. He said that the FAA had promised to make a determination on SpaceX’s license modification for the next flight by Sept. 17, but the company was informed a week ago that it would be delayed to Nov. 22 and, later, to Nov. 26.
That put the FAA on track to miss the 180-day deadline, he claimed.
Coleman mentioned the Starship license, which is under Part 450, later in the hearing. “SpaceX has four flights under its belt, three of which have been under modifications to the license that have been requested by the company,” he said.
Those modifications are caused by changes in the mission or the vehicle. “It is the company that is pushing mission-by-mission approvals. That’s what the pace is about.”
That answer was unsatisfactory for one member of the committee. “You do realize that technology changes literally every day?” Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) told Coleman.
“You’re in charge. You make the difference. You get to determine how fast these go through, and if what you’re doing is not working, you need to change.”
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Report highlights severe infrastructure challenges at NASA
September 11, 2024
A new report concludes that infrastructure and workforce challenges will soon require NASA to make tough choices about what missions to continue to conduct unless it receives a significant budget increase.
The “NASA at a Crossroads” report by a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, released Sept. 10, concluded that NASA, along with the administration and Congress, needs to reinvest in the agency’s infrastructure and provide better long-term planning to reverse problems caused by a focus on near-term issues.
“The extensive consultations, site visits, and interviews conducted in the course of the study lead the committee to conclude that NASA stands at a crossroads,” the report concluded.
“The underpinnings of the unique and critical capabilities the agency provides to the United States are eroding and will be inevitably lost if certain trends are not reversed.”
The report highlighted problems in three key areas: infrastructure, workforce and technology development.
They ranged from attracting and retaining a skilled workforce to aging facilities at NASA centers visited by committee members that were “some of the worst facilities many of its members have ever seen.”
The report also highlighted a lack of long-term planning to guide investments in technology and infrastructure.
The report concluded that much of that had to do with budget pressures that forced the agency to prioritize spending on specific missions and projects at the expense of spending on mission support.
The amount of NASA’s budget spent on mission support declined from 20% in 2013 to 14% in 2023.
That stems from having more projects on its books than funding for them, said Norm Augustine, retired chairman and chief executive of Lockheed Martin and chair of the committee, in a Sept. 10 webinar about the report.
“NASA’s solution to the problem has been to underinvest in infrastructure and so on in the future. That tactic, frankly, has run out of gas.”
“The bottom line of all this would be to say that, for NASA, this is not a time for business as usual,” he concluded.
“The concerns that it faces are ones that have built up over decades. NASA truly is, in our view, at a crossroads.”
The committee offered eight core recommendations, ranging from increasing NASA funding for mission support work to improved long-term planning.
It also recommended creation of a “working capital fund” to support NASA infrastructure and improvements in human capital strategies.
The report did not prioritize the recommendations, but Augustine, in an interview after the webinar, said he believed two of the recommendations were the most important.
One is for NASA to invest more in mission support though either overall budget increases or cutting back other projects.
The latter approach, he acknowledged, “is going to be really painful” and the committee did not attempt to suggest what parts of the agency should be cut back to fund infrastructure if budget increases aren’t forthcoming.
The other top recommendation, he said, is for NASA to reevaluate how it manages missions and the “checks and balances” between those at NASA Headquarters in the mission directorates and leadership of field centers where work is done.
The report concluded that headquarters staff were taking on too much management work compared to those at the centers, which could have “dire mission consequences.”
Augustine said that his committee briefed NASA leadership on the report before its public release. “Their response has been very encouraging,” he said. “Many of the things we talked about they are addressing.”
He added the committee has also briefed some congressional staff about the report. He expects to be called to testify about it at future hearings, although none have been scheduled yet.
Despite the dire warnings in the report, he said he remained upbeat about the agency’s future.
“I come out of this with a fair amount of optimism,” he said, in part because of the agency’s initial response to the report. Also, he added, “NASA is not going to have much of a choice.”
https://spacenews.com/report-highlights-severe-infrastructure-challenges-at-nasa/
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27519/nasa-at-a-crossroads-maintaining-workforce-infrastructure-and-technology-preeminence
JUICE Space Probe Confirms Earth Is Habitable
September 11, 2024
The European Space Agency's JUICE spacecraft has confirmed that Earth is, indeed, habitable.
So, we can all breathe a sigh of relief in our comfortable, life-sustaining atmosphere.
Of course, this isn't the mission's goal—JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) is headed to the solar system's largest planet to search for signs of life on its moons.
As the probe builds up speed for the trip, Earth presented an opportunity for a test run.
JUICE will provide planetary scientists with an unprecedented opportunity to investigate three of Jupiter's moons: Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.
Decades of study have provided strong evidence that these worlds have subsurface oceans that could theoretically support life.
JUICE has a raft of instruments that will characterize the oceans and search for the chemical signatures of living organisms.
The ESA expects JUICE to arrive in the Jovian system in 2031 with the help of gravity assists from Earth and Venus.
The first Earth flyby was just completed, and the team aimed two instruments—the Moons and Jupiter Imaging Spectrometer (MAJIS) and the Submillimetre Wave Instrument (SWI)—at our planet as the spacecraft shot past.
For the JUICE mission, habitable means having conditions necessary to support life as we know it. So, that could include environments that would be inhospitable to humans, including an extremely salty subsurface ocean.
However, Earth is a good control to test these instruments because we know it supports life. Earth is also the only habitable world we know, so the properties of our home planet helped inform the design of JUICE's instruments.
As JUICE passed by, the SWI scanned the atmosphere for signals that correspond to the "CHEOPS" elements (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur).
These are the most common constituents for life, so their presence is considered positive for habitability.
Meanwhile, MAJIS searched for important molecules like carbon dioxide, ozone, and water.
MAJIS is an imaging spectrograph that could also capture infrared images (above) and map surface temperatures.
"We are obviously not surprised by these results… it would have been extremely concerning to find out that Earth was not habitable!" said JUICE scientist Olivier Witasse.
"But they indicate that MAJIS and SWI will work very successfully at Jupiter, where they will help us investigate whether the icy moons could be potential habitats for past or present life."
Although JUICE won't investigate Jupiter's moons until the 2030s, the team will have a few more chances to take its sensors for a spin.
Next August, JUICE will catch a gravity boost from Venus, providing a non-habitable environmenh to test the instruments.
This will be followed by Earth flybys in 2026 and 2029, which will offer more chances to test the probe before showtime.
https://www.extremetech.com/science/esas-juice-probe-confirms-earth-is-habitable
Mysterious ‘UFO’ crossing the sky over NYC sparks talk of aliens — but there’s an explanation
Sep. 10, 2024, 5:04 p.m. ET
Count this Unidentified Flying Object as identified.
A mysterious orb of light with a sprawling, glowing tail was spotted soaring across the Big Apple skies early Tuesday morning, igniting theories that aliens were preparing to touch down.
Conspiracists were right: the strange object was, in fact, a spaceship — but not the kind with little green men inside.
Something similar was seen in Pennsylvania shortly after the Polaris Dawn launched from the Kennedy Space Station in Florida at 5:23 a.m., carrying NASA scientists and a daredevil civilian who will be the first non-astronauts to perform a spacewalk.
The crew — including second-time space flier, billionaire Jared Isaacman — will spend the next five days in outer space, setting their sights far beyond the International Space Station.
The spaceship can be seen in videos across the East Coast making its way steadily across the sky, seemingly moving horizontally instead of toward the stars.
In New York, some early birds unaware of the SpaceX journey questioned whether it was something other-worldly.
“That’s aliens dawg!” one person wrote.
“There are enough extraterrestrials in NYC, if you ask me,” wrote another.
The Polaris Dawn is setting off on a record-breaking journey that, at an altitude of 870 miles, would surpass the Earth-lapping record set during NASA’s Project Gemini in 1966.
Only the 24 Apollo astronauts who flew to the moon have ventured farther.
The ship will spend 10 hours at the height, filled with extreme radiation and riddled with debris before reducing orbit to about 435 miles.
The spacewalk — often considered one the riskiest stunts while in orbit — is scheduled for Thursday.
The four-person crew is equipped with SpaceX’s latest spacewalking suits given that the entire Dragon capsule would be depressurized during the two-hour spacewalk, exposing the whole crew to the ruthless vacuum of space.
https://nypost.com/2024/09/10/us-news/ufo-or-spacex-video-shows-spaceship-soar-across-nyc-in-pre-dawn-flight/
I do have that version as well.
Prince Phillip and His Encounter With An Alien Called Janus
Wednesday 11th Sep 2024
A new documentary about the Royal Family's interest in UFOs and the paranormal is now streaming worldwide on GAIA:
https://www.gaia.com/video/the-king-of-ufos
It's also coming to Amazon Prime and streaming on Tubi.
"The film looks at the interest that the late Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip had in UFOs and crop circles.
It delves into an episode where Prince Phillip was due to meet an alleged alien called Janus at a flat in Chelsea.
This Janus had already met with Phillip's query Sir Peter Horsley and he wanted to pass on information about saving the planet to Phillip.
The meeting never took place and it is most likely that this Janus character was actually a Russian Spy.
The film also interviews Richard Felix a historian known for starring in TV's Most Haunted. He talks about the Vatican having UFO secrets hidden in its archives. Felix states:
"The Queen has alleged to have requested documents from the Vatican Secret Archives.
The Vatican headquarters of the Catholic church as a well-known secret archive where documents go back thousands of years possibly, detailing the origins of Christianity and such like.
But also there's this allegations that they're holding the truth about the UFO phenomena.
53 miles of corridors full of secret documents and items including skulls of extraterrestrials down in the cellars of the Vatican and various other things.
In other words, they are into, although they believe the world to be 6,400 years old, they are into aliens.
They've got an observatory in Arizona. They have an observatory at the Pope's Summer palace in Rome.
The Vaticans always had an interest in UFOs. It's got his own Cardinal and Monsignors appointed to deal with first contact with extraterrestrials.
So it's always had an act of interest. So maybe that's because they know more.
There is some speculation that they were privy to a UFO landing in Sicily in the Second World War and Mussolini recovered this. So some say they actually may have a UFO.
And of course an orange saucer shaped ship craft has been seen on more than one occasion hovering over the Vatican. There is even talk that the pope is an alien. "
The film's writer and director Mark Christopher Lee also alleges that the UK has it's own UFO cover up which started with the Rendelsham Incident in 1980:
"I have recently spoken with the 2 witnesses to the 1980 Rendelsham incident who both claim to have been told by various authorities not to talk about or report what they had witnessed in 1980.
One person actually sawsomething land in forest and tried to report it on numerous occasions to the military who told him that nothing had happened."
The film also looks at the role that King Charles would play should we make contact with aliens.
https://pressat.co.uk/releases/prince-phillip-and-his-encounter-with-an-alien-called-janus-c3e2b97b413a8c8c3b852f71b538dc29/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szGw3MxzY0k