2022 Potpourri Edition
Cosmic Cliffs taken by James Webb Space Telescope (Courtesy of NASA)
“Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you really are”
Happy Holidays everyone! It looks like 2022 will go down as the first “normalcy” year in this post-COVID 19 era. Personally, I went to my first professional conference in over three years and it felt so good to see people again! It is also very heartwarming to know that many people will be on the roads this holiday season, no longer having to delay those in-person reunions! For the Outer Space industry, this year was another busy one, so here’s my annual year-end updates on previous topics.
Artemis-1: A Resounding (Albeit Delayed) Success
On the cold Sunday morning of December 11th, 2022, Artemis-1’s Orion space capsule successfully splashed down off of the coast of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. This event marked the end of a long-delayed but historic mission that saw NASA’s closest return to the Moon since Apollo 17—the last Apollo mission. Little did anybody knew back then that it would take NASA more than 50 years before one of its spacecrafts would fly near the Moon again. Living in San Diego, I must say that I felt a tinge of sadness that our local weather prevented the capsule from splashing down just off our coast—its primary landing location.
Even though I wrote a special piece on SLS’s inaugural launch earlier this year, I am still in awe of this moment as it was a day that I was beginning to think would never happen… especially with all of the delays and malfunctions that Artemis-1 experienced on the launchpad. But somehow NASA pulled it through, and I have to give the agency a lot of credit for managing an almost problem-free mission apart from a temporary communications issue. The spacecraft also had quite a few accomplishments as well. It set the record for the fastest and hottest reentry ever by a spacecraft and performed the first-ever skip reentry (where it literally bounced off of Earth’s atmosphere to attempt to lose some energy).
Artemis Accords Gaining Traction
With Artemis-1’s success, NASA’s return to the Moon by this decade’s end is becoming more of a reality. To that end, NASA is also busy building up its alliance for deep space exploration to the Moon (and beyond) via the Artemis Accords. Since I wrote about this program, many more countries have signed up to the Accords. In fact, 2022 saw this agreement’s membership nearly double in size. Just this year alone, Israel, Romania, Bahrain, Singapore, Colombia, France, Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, and Nigeria all signed the accords. With the latter two being the first African nations to agree to the Artemis’ principles. With Artemis Accords’ signatories standing at 23, it is definitely trending in the right direction.
Space Tourism Continue to Ride the Sky
Speaking of trends, 2021 was seen as the year that space tourism took off and in celebration of that occasion, earlier this year, I chronicled the first 20 years of space tourism. Albeit at a much slower pace, the space tourism industry continued its upward movement this year. Blue Origin led the way with three tourism flights in 2022, carrying a total of 17 first-time space tourists. In partnership with SpaceX, Axiom Space made its inaugural space tourism flight this year, carrying three passengers to the International Space Station.
However, the news was not all good for this industry. Blue Origin had to pause its space tourism program during the third quarter when one of its flights experienced a major malfunction. Luckily, it was an unmanned flight and the escape system worked as designed. Meanwhile Virgin Galactic did not get off of the ground this year and its first commercial flight is now scheduled for no earlier than spring of 2023.
As for me personally, I hope space tourism will continue its popularity because my latest space law article is written about this field and should be due out by middle of next year, stay tuned!
Satellite Internet Booming
Space tourism was not the only flights ruling the launch industry this year. There were also several satellite constellation launches. In the three years since I first wrote about satellite internet constellations, this sector has continued to bloom. Looking at the major players, SpaceX, via Starlink, has not relinquished its lead and is forging ahead with plans for even more satellites. In fact, late this year, it received FCC approval to launch 7,500 of its second-generation satellites. While this is just a small chunk of the 29,988 satellites that SpaceX had requested, it should help Starlink to improve its slowing internet speed as more users are onboarded onto its network. But unfortunately, it looks like this constellation is still in the red as Musk revealed that Starlink is still cashflow negative.
But, having SpaceX as a reliable launch partner to Starlink will likely ensure the latter’s continued competitiveness in this sector. However, the launch division is not making the constellation division’s life easy as it helped to launch satellites for one of Starlink’s indirect competitors: OneWeb. While OneWeb performed a Phoenix-like act by rising from the ashes of a bankruptcy late last year, it ran into trouble this year when it could no longer use Soyuz as its launch vehicle. However, it was able to resolve this issue when SpaceX agreed to launch OneWeb’s satellites instead. And so in early December, a Falcon 9 successfully delivered 40 of OneWeb’s satellites into Outer Space. While Starlink and OneWeb are not direct competitors, with the former focused on B2C and the latter on B2B, it still puzzled many observers in the satellite communications industry.
Falcon Heavy Delayed but not Forgotten
While Falcon 9 is continuing to be a popular workhorse, it isn’t the only rocket that SpaceX is currently operating. While we haven’t heard much about its Falcon Heavy since its maiden voyage more than 4 years ago, it finally took off again this year. After a long three-year hiatus, Falcon Heavy carried out a successful mission for the United States Space Force in November of this year. The long delay can be partly attributed to the lack of demand for such a heavy-lift rocket and partly to payload delays for its scheduled missions. For instance, the USSF-44 mission that finally went up this year was originally supposed to have launched in December of 2020. But this gap in operational tempo did not affect Falcon Heavy’s performance at all. While the core stage was unrecoverable due to the payload’s destination orbit, the two side boosters landed successfully and will be reused for the next mission, USSF-67, expected to happen in January 2023.
United States Space Force Gets a Song
Oh and speaking of the United States Space Force, it’s definitely coming along quite well as the newest branch of the United States military—and way faster than I anticipated four years ago. To wit, in September of this year, it released its official song: Semper Supra (Latin for Always Above).
New Space Debris Directive
With so many constellation satellites being launched, the space debris problem I wrote about five years ago is becoming more and more of an issue. Recognizing the problem, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has significantly modified its rule on how long defunct satellites can remain in orbit after their missions are completed. Instead of allowing them to remain in orbit for 25 years, the FCC cut it down to 5 years. However, this rule change did ruffle some feathers. Some in Congress are worried that such a dramatic cut—without NASA’s input—might create conflicting guidelines and is now scrutinizing the rule change to ensure it was implemented appropriately.
Unkind Year for Public Space-related Stocks
Speaking of all these enterprises operating in Outer Space, early last year, I listed several space-related companies that are in the public markets. Well, this year has been unkind to many of these companies and ETFs. Since I am long several of these companies and, admittedly, got caught up in the stock buying frenzy, I, too, am down on many of these stocks…. Unfortunately, it seems like I will never be able to recoup my initial investment from some of these bets.
The issue with space companies is that they are more growth-oriented speculative stocks, and in a downtown or recessionary environment, it’s harder for these companies to get access to the capital that they need to break out and become successful companies. For instance, Astra Space Inc., a rocket launch company, has already received a delisting warning in October for failing to maintain its stock price above one dollar. Astra had traded as high as around $18 last year, but several launch failures have seen its stock fall to the ground. This just shows how Outer Space startups are still risky ventures that are not for the faint of hearts—and I am definitely learning this the hard way!
Asteroid Redirect a Success
Speaking of not for the faint-hearted, three years ago, I wrote about how scientists are thinking about how we can guard against Near-Earth Objects (NEO). Late last year, NASA took a step in this direction when it launched its first ever planetary-defense related mission: attempting to deflect an asteroid off of its current orbit. Named DART, which stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, this mission took a spacecraft to a pair of asteroids, Dimorphos and Didymos, some 7.18 million kilometers away from Earth. Well, the spacecraft arrived at its destination in September of this year and made a direct bulls eye hit on Dimorphos. NASA was hoping that this impact will cause enough change in speed that will alter the motion of Dimorphos around the larger asteroid, Didymos.
It looks like NASA was successful in its first attempt at redirecting an asteroid as it reduced the orbital time of Dimorphos by 32 minutes to 11 hours and 23 minutes. While the measurement has an uncertainty of plus or minus 2 minutes, it was a resounding accomplishment for NASA as its primary objective was any change over 73 seconds. This means NASA exceeded its goal more than 25 times over.
Modeling Wormhole Dynamics
More on the topic of frontier research, related to my thought experiment post this year on time dilation resulting from black holes as an explanation to the Fermi Paradox, physicists have successfully modeled wormhole dynamics through the use of a quantum computer. Using quantum bits via a Google Sycamore processor, the Quantum Communication Channels for Fundamental Physics consortium was able to virtually construct a wormhole that acted as a communication bridge through two simulated black holes. Under this experiment, this quantum computer essentially acted as a sandbox that could simulate gravitational dynamics that exists in our three-dimensional world. Through this theoretical model, the research team, led by Dr. Maria Spiropulu, was able to observe, through calculations, the characteristics and dynamics of a trip across a wormhole.
While we are still very far away from creating a physical wormhole, these types of successful experiments are critical stepping stones for scientists and researchers to construct more complex models of the universe. These would enable them to better understand the theoretical underpinnings of quantum gravity theories and leading to further technology breakthroughs in the field of quantum entanglement.
