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A Russian nuclear anti-satellite weapon could render low Earth orbit unusable for most satellites for a year, a Pentagon official warned. Testifying Wednesday at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee's strategic forces subcommittee, John Plumb, assistant secretary of space policy, suggested that if detonated, a nuclear ASAT could make low Earth orbit unusable for satellites that are not hardened against radiation for a long time, perhaps a year, but added more modeling and simulation of the weapon were needed to better understand its effects. Plumb declined to elaborate on the weapon's launch readiness, suggesting these details be addressed in a classified session, but said it was not "an imminent threat." [SpaceNews]
A report by NASA's inspector general disclosed new details about damage to Orion's heat shield on the Artemis 1 mission. In a report released Wednesday, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) said there were more than 100 locations on the heat shield where material broke away unexpectedly during the reentry, the cause of which NASA is still investigating. NASA had said it was studying those issues, which it emphasized were not a safety risk, but had not released those specifics or the images of the heat shield included in the report. The OIG report also discussed other technical issues from the flight, including "unexpected melting and erosion" around separation bolts in the base of the heat shield. [SpaceNews]
BAE Systems has won a $365 million contract to develop an air quality sensor for future weather satellites. The company's space and mission systems division, the former Ball Aerospace, won the contract Wednesday to develop the Atmospheric Composition instrument, or ACX, for NOAA's GeoXO series of geostationary weather satellites. ACX is a hyperspectral instrument that will provide hourly observations of pollutants emitted by sources including power generation, transportation, oil and gas extraction, volcanoes and wildfires. [SpaceNews]
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson is asking Congress to provide full funding for a space station deorbit vehicle in a supplemental spending bill. While NASA requested $180 million for the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle (USDV) for the International Space Station in its 2024 budget request last year and $109 million in its 2025 request, Nelson told the House Science Committee this week that NASA wanted the full $1.5 billion for the vehicle as part of a domestic supplemental spending bill proposed last fall by the White House but yet to be taken up by Congress. Funding the USDV should be part of emergency spending, he said, "because we don't know what Vladimir Putin is going to do." He told members at the hearing there was little NASA could do about proposed cuts in various agency programs in the 2025 budget request, citing overall spending caps that remain in place. [SpaceNews]
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A Crew Dragon spacecraft is moving from one ISS port to another this morning. The Crew-8 Crew Dragon was scheduled to undock from the forward port on the Harmony module to the zenith port at 8:55 a.m. Eastern, an hour behind schedule after controllers studied a potential pressurization issue with the spacecraft. The maneuver, scheduled to last less than an hour, frees up the forward port for the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft on its upcoming crewed test flight, as that spacecraft's flight software is currently approved only for docking at that port. [NASA]
The first in a new generation of NRO reconnaissance satellites is scheduled to launch later this month. The agency is targeting a May 19 launch for the mission designated NROL-146 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, said Troy Meink, the NRO's principal deputy director, during a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee's strategic forces subcommittee. The satellites were built under a classified $1.8 billion contract awarded by the NRO in 2021 to SpaceX and Northrop Grumman. The NRO did not disclose how many satellites will be launched on this mission or the overall size of the constellation. [SpaceNews]
The Pentagon's top space acquisition official is calling on United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin to step up flights of the Vulcan Centaur rocket. Frank Calvelli, assistant Air Force secretary for space acquisition, said at the House Armed Services Committee's strategic forces subcommittee hearing that he was pushing ULA to perform a second certification flight of Vulcan this year to avoid delays in launches of three national security payloads. He said Blue Origin also needs to scale up production of the BE-4 engines used on Vulcan's first stage. ULA said it will be ready to launch Vulcan in the middle of this year but is waiting on Sierra Space's Dream Chaser, with the launch now scheduled to take place by October. [Bloomberg]
After vetoing a United Nations resolution regarding the placement of nuclear weapons in space, Russia says it will offer its own resolution on space weaponization. The draft resolution would call on nations to not deploy weapons of any kind in space, or on Earth intended for use against space objects. Russia and China have previously proposed treaties that would ban the placement of weapons in space, which the United States and some other nations have opposed because of problems with verification. [AP]
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"Do you have any advice for a guy who would love to follow your tracks into space some day as a doc and pilot? Just let me know. I'll be happy to meet with you."
"We need medical doctors to go to Mars."
"I'm sure a lot of my constituents would like to send me there."
– An exchange between Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), a doctor and pilot, and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson during a House Science Committee hearing on Tuesday.
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