Fire response after Piper N3586M became entangled in power transmission lines in Louisville Township, Scott County, Minnesota, 23 November 2019 (Scott County Sheriff)
Hundreds gathered in Bismarck to mark the first anniversary of a fatal aviation incident, according to the Tribune. On 19 November 2018 0330 UT, a Bismarck Air Medical flight departed Bismarck Airport for Williston’s old airport, Sloulin Field. However, at about 0340 UT, the 36-year-old Cessna 441, registration number N441CX, broke apart mid-flight, killing 3 onboard. 20 hectares of rural Morton County were showered with the shattered wreckage. The final NTSB report on the incident is expected early 2020.
The flipped classroom is just one of several modern teaching methods used for projects at Iowa State Aerospace Engineering (Iowa State University/Matthew Nelson)
Dr. Matthew Nelson (Iowa State) presented information about the M:2:I “Make to Innovate” initiative at Iowa State University’s Department of Aerospace Engineering.
The academic program recasts student aerospace projects as the work products of a technical elective, offered as a hands-on “flipped classroom” experience, with a common project management approach and support from Faculty and Industry experts.
What will lunar communications look like in a decade? One option is satellite swarms at Earth-Moon L1 and L2 – which opens up problems that are tricky to model and challenging to execute. (Missouri S&T/Henry Pernicka)
Dr. Henry Pernicka (Ohio Northern University) is studying how to corral swarms of small satellites when they’re tossed into a halo orbits at Earth-Moon L1 and L2.
Swarms solve some of the reliability problems always feared in solo spacecraft in “deep space” that can’t easily be replaced. But they’re also difficult to fly in formation near the Lagrange points, where even slight differences in trajectory can quickly turn a tight formation into an M. C. Escher painting.
750m resolution photometric data shows light pollution in the upper midwest, 2019. (Suomi NPP/Ohio Northern University/Bryan Boulanger)
Dr. Bryan Boulanger (Ohio Northern University) is a Civil Engineer active in the International Dark Sky Association, who shared developments in floodlight design and photometry, key parts of the battle to curb light pollution and return stars to the night sky.
The talk went beyond the familiar photos of Earth at night – one striking slide showed hard data taken at 750 meter resolution by the VIIRS instrument on the Suomi NPP satellite, showing the excessive light generation in places like Minneapolis-St. Paul and the industrialized portions of western North Dakota. The hard photometric numbers show just how much the problem has worsened – and where.
An Antares rocket carries Cygnus NG-12, SS Alan Bean, on a mission to the International Space Station, 2 Nov 2019 1359 UT (NASA TV)
Apart from 3729 kg of cargo bound for the International Space Station, CRS 12 was also the launch platform for ELaNa 25A, the latest in NASA’s ongoing university space access program, including missions from Montana and Minnesota: RADSAT-U and SOCRATES.
RADSAT-U
RADSAT-U internal structure (Montana State University)
How can you build a computer you can count on in deep space, where stray radiation can randomly crash the average PC? RADSAT-U, a 3U cubesat project from Montana State University, aims to demonstrate a radiation-tolerant computer hardware architecture that users can count on in space, an environment that’s never been kind to silicon wafers.
The final push to complete the computer experiment was lead by Chris Major, a computer engineer and Ph.D candidate in electrical engineering at Montana State, who picked up the effort from the previous student design team in the early months of 2019, running up to final completion and delivery for payload integration a few months before the launch.
In addition to the primary computing experiment, a second experiment aboard RADSAT-U studies how the effects of radiation environment affect solar cells. An additional solar cell of the same type used on the craft’s exterior is mounted inside the craft. Montana State undergraduates will study the experiment’s results.
Data from the craft will be relayed directly to the university in quarter-kilobyte packets transmitted over amateur radio frequencies. After Montana State’s SSEL calculates the pass time, a team member will be on hand to collect the data packets when the craft passes overhead.
Three members of the RADSAT-U team, including Major, attended the launch at Wallops Island, Virginia.
RADSAT-U is expected to be in orbit for up to two and a half years. The mission was student-built at Montana State University under the supervision of Dr. Brock LaMeres, with technical support from the university’s Space Science Engineering Laboratory and supplemental expertise from the Montana Space Grant Consortium.
SOCRATES internal structure (University of Minnesota / Kennedy Space Center)
SOCRATES is a project from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, a 3U cubesat that includes a gamma ray burst detector with a unique purpose.
How can spacecraft navigate without GPS in the far reaches of the solar system? SOCRATES, from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, is a 3U cubesat carrying an experiment to answer that question. At its heart are four bricks of Thallium-doped Caesium Iodide, which glow in the dark whenever a cosmic ray happens to pass.
Those flashes of light can become space-GPS by taking careful measurements and referencing the satellite’s highly accurate onboard clock, then exchanging information with other similar observatories. As members join the network, each spacecraft can determine its position relative to the others, based on the time each of them detected the gamma ray burst.
SOCRATES is expected to be in orbit for just over two years. A companion satellite, EXACT, is hoped to be launched while SOCRATES is still in space. Both are projects of the UMN Smallsat team supervised by Dr. Demoz Gebre-Egziabher and Dr. Lindsay Glesener at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics Department.
Chirstina Koch (red) and Jessica Meir service the Battery Charge Discharge Unit on the International Space Station, 18 Oct 2019. ISS EVA221 was the first spacewalk performed by two women. (NASA TV)
Dr. Stacey Henderson (University of Adelaide) speaks 18 Oct 2019, in a panel session on the topic of the Woomera Manual, at the 12th Annual University of Nebraska DC Space Law Conference (Credit: The Fargo Orbit)
The creation of the United States Center for Space Law, a non-governmental organization dedicated to the study of the laws of outer space, was announced 18 Oct 2019 at the 12th Annual University of Nebraska DC Space Law Conference. The announcement was made between panel sessions held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
The new institution will carry forward the work of the University of Nebraska Space Law Network, as well as facilitate a US-based institution similar to the International Institute for Space Law, and with no small amount of inspiration from the operations of the European Centre for Space Law, which is based at the ESA in Paris.
While ESA and the European Centre for Space Law have a clear and established relationship, the USCSL will be an independent 501c3 non-profit organization. It is not directly funded by NASA, but will be assigned some funds previously received by the University of Nebraska. The effort builds upon the University of Nebraska’s efforts to create law programs focused on space and telecommunications law, as well as efforts to build a national network of space law professionals.
The remainder of the conference was largely a conventional view on United States Space Policy, with a general sense of the need for American action to settle outstanding questions, with the sense of Europe and Japan as partners and fellow innovators, though there was also a sense that European policy was also expanding without clear focus, and centres of authority were proliferating.
Though the first
session’s insights into developing commercial space legislation in
the US and Europe were somewhat hampered by the unplanned absence of
a SpaceX representative, it was left to Audrey Powers of Blue Origin
to speak plainly about how the space industry felt about the FAA’s
recent effort to rush new commercial spaceflight rules out the door.
The panels continued with a featured panel of space lawyers from NASA, JAXA, ECSL, and CNES, who provided a comparative understanding of the complexities of international space cooperation. Japan’s approach, somewhat like the US, often requires policy changes to international initiatives at the space agency to pass through multiple government agencies for final approval. On the other hand, in France, CNES is authorized to sign, and change, space agreements on behalf of France.
The conference also
included insight on the spectrum issues in the satellite
communications industry, and the unique challenges when space-based
networks compete against terrestrial networks, and the vagaries of
negotiations at the ITU.
Finally, the conference included updates on efforts to the Woomera Manual, an effort of four universities, lead by Stacey Henderson at the University of Adelaide, to create a clear and complete compendium of the active, existing laws of war in space – an effort limited by the unclear positions of many states on key space policy questions, and by the propensity of many states to cloud their space programs, especially military space operations, in secrecy. Another challenge comes from how the field of space law continues to draw creative minds with active imaginations, which often spend valuable conference time not on settled law, but on other, as-yet unresolved questions, like whether astronauts could become prisoners of war, even when treaties presently accord them a diplomatic status.
The event was capped off by a lounge event celebrating Women in Space Law, on the very same day the first all-female spacewalk took place in orbit at the International Space Station. Overall, the conference demonstrated the continued leadership of Nebraska Law on legal matters in space. The evolution of the United States Center for Space Law will certainly be a factor in next year’s conference, already scheduled for 2 October 2020 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
After air searches ended on 18 October, a passing hunter found a missing Cessna aircraft in a ravine just 5 km from Aberdeen, at about 2310 UT 21 Oct 2019, the American News reports. The Brown County (SD) Sheriff Department confirmed the only deceased to be Gerald W. Seliski, 70, of Hecla, SD. Seliski owned the plane but only held a student pilot certificate.
