Radar ribbon-cutting (1/31/23)

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In today's edition...📡 LeoLabs ground radar🏅 Congressional Space Medal🔁 People on the move

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Eyes on the Sky

Yesterday in Western Australia, LeoLabs pulled the curtain off a new project that’s been in the making for the last nine months: the Western Australia Ground Radar (WASR), built along with local partners to augment the company’s satellite and debris tracking capabilities.

WASR is now fully commissioned and includes two S-band phased array radars to track and monitor objects in the sky above the southern hemisphere.

LeoLabs’ strategy: The Menlo Park-based startup is building out the full stack of space situational awareness and space traffic management capabilities, from ground sensing to analytics and collision detection to user-facing tools, including an insurance tool that launched in beta last September.

LeoLabs CEO Dan Ceperley told Payload that he and his team started the company with the goal of building the first global network of radar sensors. “Nobody had contemplated a worldwide network of radars,” Ceperley said. “We're in the business because nobody else knew how to build radar sites quickly.”

Since founding LeoLabs in 2016, the team has grown to more than 100 employees across four continents, and now operates 10 radars at six sites: Alaska, Texas, Costa Rica, Portugal, New Zealand, and Western Australia.

These radars go up quickly—LeoLabs broke ground on the Western Australia site in April 2022, construction wrapped in November, and the radar was up and running in December. “It's kind of the new norm, where you've been able to advance the technology, advance the know-how, so that these radars can be rolled out,” Ceperley said.

Choosing Australia: Several factors go into choosing an optimal site for a ground radar, Ceperley said. First, the company had to consider the areas of the sky least covered by existing systems.

“It turns out the southern hemisphere basically wasn't covered for space tracking until we came along,” Ceperley said. “That's kind of crazy, because every single satellite in LEO spends half its time over the southern hemisphere.” LeoLabs opened its first ground radar in the southern hemisphere in New Zealand before cutting the ribbon on WASR.

Also on the decision table:

• Local partners. LeoLabs has a team of ~10 operating in Western Australia, and has partnered with the Wiilman indigenous community while setting up operations.

• Weather—though for radar, that’s not as much a concern. “We don't need perfectly clear skies, and radars operate through the clouds, they operate through weather,” Ceperley said.

Looking ahead: Now that WASR is up and running, the data it collects can be incorporated into the company’s full stack of products. And on the radar front, LeoLabs isn’t planning on slowing down—Ceperley said the company is eyeing several new openings in 2023 and 2024.

Bob and Doug to Be Recognized at White House

Later today, two trailblazing American astronauts will receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor at the White House.

The details: Vice President Kamala Harris will award former NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken the medal at 4:15pm ET today. The medal was last awarded to Robert Crippen, the pilot of the first Space Shuttle flight, in 2006.

“Hurley and Behnken will receive the award for bravery” in the Demo-2 mission, NASA noted Monday. The NASA/SpaceX Demonstration Mission-2 (Demo-2) to the ISS in 2020 restored the US’s ability to launch its own astronauts to orbit from US soil.

• The last Space Shuttle mission had flown in 2011.

• Bob and Doug worked with NASA and SpaceX for multiple years, providing guidance on the Dragon program, training protocols, and more.

• The two became the first to take a privately developed vehicle to orbit.

Rewind the tapes: When asked in 2022 about how Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon training differed from that of the shuttle, Hurley told Payload:

“The Falcon 9 had been flown a number of times by the time we started, and certainly it flew a lot more. But Crew Dragon was essentially started from scratch, so there were all the different things that you need to consider for the design and operational capability of the vehicle: How do you fly it? How does it interact with the space station? How do you interact with the vehicle? Where does stuff go?”

“Then, there’s the training to fly the vehicle, not only for the astronauts but for SpaceX mission control folks. It was all new,” Hurley said. Hurley had formerly piloted the STS-127 and -135 missions in July 2009 and July 2011, respectively. The latter, STS-135, was the shuttle's final flight.

How to watch: The ceremony will air on NASA TV and the agency's website, along with its main Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook accounts. For more on the astronaut duo, Commercial Crew, and Demo-2, check out Return to Space on Netflix.

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In Other News

• GHGSat announced plans to launch the first commercial carbon dioxide emissions monitoring satellite.

• Ada Limón, US Poet Laureate, will send a poem to Jupiter’s moon Europa aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper mission.

• Inmarsat’s newest geostationary telecom bird arrived in Florida ahead of its launch next month.

• NASA released its annual highlight reel of contributions from the ISS.

• Rolls-Royce tweeted a design for its nuclear Micro-Reactor for space travel.

• Perseverance dropped its tenth and final sample on the Martian surface for future recovery by Mars Sample Return.

The View from Space