Reduce, reuse, regolith (2/14/23)

Greetings, space enthusiasts! Happy Valentine's Day from the vast and infinite reaches of the cosmos! As you admire the stars and dream of distant worlds, remember that love is the one constant that shines bright and endures, just like the light of a million suns.

May you find joy, comfort, and wonder in the wonders of space, and may your heart be filled with love and wonder this Valentine's Day.

Okay, so, the Payload team didn’t write that note—ChatGPT did. Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you from the bottom of our (human) hearts!

Today’s newsletter: 🔵 New Glenn x ESCAPADE🔗 Pathfinder #0035🔁 People on the move

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Blue Origin Reveals Interplanetary Initiatives

Blue Origin is opening up about some of its latest interplanetary work. Last week, the Washington company announced two science initiatives supporting humanity’s efforts to push outward into the cosmos.

On Thursday, NASA awarded Blue Origin a contract to provide launch services for the ESCAPADE mission to study the magnetosphere of Mars. And on Friday, the company shared more information about Blue Alchemist, a project that has apparently been producing solar cells and transmission wire from lunar regolith simulants for the past two years.

ESCAPADE

Last week, Blue announced that it won a NASA contract to launch the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission in late 2024 to study the Martian magnetosphere.

Blue snagged the launch deal through the agency’s Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) launch services contract, which are used for hardier payloads that can tolerate higher risk. This contract is worth up to $300M over five years across all 13 providers. ESCAPADE is slated to launch on New Glenn.

The Martian magnetosphere: As NASA plans for future crewed missions to Mars, it’s ramping up its research efforts to understand everything that could affect future pioneers. The magnetosphere, or the magnetized region of space around the planet, affects everything from communication signals to atmospheric escape, Robert Lillis, principal investigator of the ESCAPADE mission, told Payload via email.

“Understanding the space weather environment at Mars is one of the pieces of the knowledge puzzle necessary to sending humans there safely in the next decade or two,” said Lillis. “Why? First of all, the ionosphere can interfere with ground-ground and ground-orbit communications and GPS signals. Second, the magnetospheric configuration can affect the trajectories of high-energy solar protons that can pose a danger to astronauts in Martian orbit.”

ESCAPADE’s approach: Two spacecraft named Blue and Gold will orbit Mars together, measuring ions, magnetic fields, electrons, and thermal plasma, while also snapping thermal infrared images. Blue and Gold will exchange readings to observe divergent findings and gather more timely information.

“With two spacecraft, you can disentangle time versus space and be both upstream and downstream of Mars at the same time to measure the real-time effect of solar wind gusts on atmospheric escape from the red planet,” Lillis said.

Blue Alchemist

Lunar regolith, the dust and rock that makes up the surface of the Moon, is jam-packed full of materials that are useful for producing solar panels, rocket fuel, and other resources that could help us establish a sustained lunar presence. So far, though, there hasn’t been a ton of progress towards actually using regolith to build these products.

Now, Blue Origin says it’s made a breakthrough in manufacturing solar cells and transmission wire from simulated lunar regolith, which contains only materials found in actual lunar regolith. Blue used a process called molten regolith electrolysis, which pumps a current of energy through the regolith to extract materials including aluminum, silicon, and iron.

• “While typical silicon purification methods on Earth use large amounts of toxic and explosive chemicals, our process uses just sunlight and the silicon from our reactor,” the blog post reads.

Blue Origin is not yet working with NASA on this project. “Although our vision is technically ambitious, our technology is real now,” the company wrote. “Blue Origin’s goal of producing solar power using only lunar resources is aligned with NASA’s highest priority Moon-to-Mars infrastructure development objective.”

Pathfinder #0035, featuring Chuck Beames

When he was a senior Pentagon official, Charles “Chuck’” Beames and his fellow military planners would speak forebodingly about “a day without space.” The nightmare scenario would involve a wide-ranging attack, kinetic or otherwise, on space systems, which could produce cascading communications and navigation failures for the armed forces (and wreak havoc on civilian technology systems as well).

While that scenario hopefully never comes to pass, space is no longer a sanctuary nor uncontested higher ground. And securing civil, commercial, and military spacecraft is the order of the day.

On Pathfinder #0035, brought to you by Kepler Communications, Chuck joins Ryan for a conversation on reconnaissance, security, and the growing cyber threat in space. Among other things, Chuck is the executive chairman of SpiderOak, a startup focused on shoring up the digital defenses of satellites, space networks, and ground infrastructure. SpiderOak recently raised a $16.4M Series C to develop, test, and fly OrbitSecure 2.0.

SpiderOak employs two novel security approaches—zero-trust encryption and distributed ledger technology (DLT)—to secure space assets, along with the creation, communication, and management of data. OrbitSecure wraps up the company’s design philosophy and latest defensive techniques into one offering.

Rest of the resume in brief: Chuck is also the chairman of York Space Systems and the SmallSat alliance. He was formerly president at Vulcan Aerospace and a senior DoD exec, and before that, he served 23 years as an Air Force space and intelligence officer.

A sneak peek at our conversation

Chuck and Ryan talk about woodworking, bitcoin, Chinese spy balloons, and plenty more:

• The value of zero-trust and DLT

• Competing with other cyber firms to recruit the best engineers and hackers

• Why should startups trust SpiderOak with their most sensitive data and valuable assets?

• Supply chain attacks (e.g., the SolarWinds hack in 2020)

• Should space have its own “critical infrastructure” designation?

• How to avoid a day without space

Fresh off the press, Pathfinder #0035 is live now:

📺 Watch on YouTube🔊 Listen via web…🎧 …Spotify…📱 …or Apple.

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In Other News

• NASA cleared the Ax-2 crew to fly to the ISS.

• Chinese balloons have transited Middle Eastern airspace, a top US general said Monday.

• SpaceX recently set a new pad turnaround record.

• OSINT analysts geolocated a “secret” underground airbase in Iran using commercial satellite data.

• Related: the AP analyzed Planet ($PL) imagery that appears to show damage from an alleged Israeli drone strike on an Iranian military facility.

• The White House has not seen any “indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns.”

• Still, though, the Biden administration has drawn flak for not providing more information about the flying objects that were shot down.

• Meanwhile…China says US high-altitude balloons have overflown its airspace more than ten times since early 2022.

The View from Space