Когда национальная безопасность и собственность в опасности даже на Луне и ОЛП

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https://spacenews.com/darpa-picks-14-companies-for-lunar-architecture-study/

DARPA picks 14 companies for lunar architecture study
Jeff Foust December 6, 2023


Sierra Space, one of the companies selected for the LunA-10 architecture study, will focus on ISRU technologies. Credit: Sierra Space

WASHINGTON — DARPA has selected 14 companies, ranging from small startups to established aerospace corporations, to participate in a study on developing commercial lunar infrastructure.

DARPA announced Dec. 5 that 14 companies will collaborate over the next seven months on its 10-Year Lunar Architecture, or LunA-10, study. The goal of the effort, announced in August, is to develop an integrated architecture to support a commercial lunar economy by the mid-2030s.

"LunA-10 has the potential to upend how the civil space community thinks about spurring widespread commercial activity on and around the Moon within the next 10 years," Michael Nayak, DARPA program manager for LunA-10, said in a statement.

The 14 companies selected are:

Blue Origin
CisLunar Industries
Crescent Space Services LLC
Fibertek, Inc.
Firefly Aerospace
GITAI
Helios
Honeybee Robotics
ICON
Nokia of America
Northrop Grumman
Redwire Corporation
Sierra Space
SpaceX

The companies, Nayak said in a statement, each offered "a clear vision and technically rigorous plan for advancing quickly towards our goal: a self-sustaining, monetizable, commercially owned-and-operated lunar infrastructure."

The companies, Nayak said in a statement, each offered "a clear vision and technically rigorous plan for advancing quickly towards our goal: a self-sustaining, monetizable, commercially owned-and-operated lunar infrastructure."

The statement did not elaborate on the roles of each company, but in a presentation last month at the Beyond Earth Symposium, Nayak said companies were selected for work in six areas: communications and navigation; construction and robotics; market analysis; mining and in situ resource utilization (ISRU); power; and transit, mobility and logistics.

Some of the companies have disclosed details about their roles in LunaA-10. CisLunar Industries, a Colorado-based startup, said it will work on what it calls the Material Extraction, Treatment, Assembly and Logistics, or METAL, framework for lunar resources as part of the study.

Firefly Aerospace said in a statement that it will outline an "aggregated hub of on-orbit spacecraft that dock together and offer on-demand services" based on its Elytra line of spacecraft. "We've identified a path to drastically improve on-orbit mission response times from years to days with scalable spacecraft hubs that can host and service spacecraft across cislunar space," Bill Weber, chief executive of Firefly, said in a statement.

Construction technologies company ICON said its role in LunA-10 would be to leverage its work in 3D-printed construction technologies. "By participating in LunA-10, we can understand what inputs are going to be available, when, at what cost, and in what quantities," said Evan Jensen, vice president of strategic research and development at ICON, in a statement.

Sierra Space said it will focus on integrating technologies for extracting oxygen from lunar regolith. "At Sierra Space we recognize that to enable humanity's extended exploration of space there is a critical need for ISRU oxygen technology on the lunar surface, given its strategic importance in terms of mobility, life support systems and potential commercial applications," said Tom Vice, chief executive of Sierra Space, in a company statement.

While companies are bringing individual technologies and expertise to the effort, the goal of LunA-10 is to combine them into an integrated architecture. "Can we bring about a portfolio of performers that communicate with each other as exemplars and representatives of this community and work together?" Nayak said at the symposium. By working together, the companies will be able "to tell you to the gram, to the watt, to the dollar, what a lunar economy could look like by 2035."

"DARPA finally did what the industry was waiting for," said Gary Calnan, chief executive of CisLunar Industries. "The LunA-10 team has done a great job bringing together 14 companies representing complementary parts of the future lunar economy. This effort will lay the foundation for a marketplace where the entire space domain can participate."

Neither DARPA nor the companies disclosed the value of the LunA-10 awards, but the solicitation released in August said selected companies would be eligible for agreements valued at no more than $1 million each.

The LunA-10 participants will discuss their work at an April 2024 meeting of the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium, a NASA-backed effort to develop technologies in many of the same areas as the DARPA study. The companies will provide a final report to DARPA in June 2024.

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https://spacenews.com/to-win-the-new-space-race-nasa-and-the-dod-need-to-shift-their-collaboration-into-high-gear/

To win the new space race, NASA and the DoD need to shift their collaboration into high gear
Colonel Matthew H. Beverly, Lt. Col (Ret) Patrick C. Suermann and Captain Arpan Patel December 22, 2023


Illustrations of astronauts working at an Artemis base camp on the lunar south pole. Credit: NASA

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy called to put a man on the Moon by decade's end, and to "shift our efforts in space from low to high gear." Clearly, the U.S. met his challenge; however, he was addressing a world very different from that of today. As he also said in his speech, "There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet."

We are in a new Space Race, where one key event is being the first to establish an occupied lunar camp. The Chinese and Russians have invited international partners to participate in their lunar base, which has an ambitious timeline. They expect to see site selection by 2025, a decade of construction, and then full operation after 2036. Counter this with the lethargic and slipping timeline of the U.S.'s effort to return a person to the Moon by 2024. This is not a race that the Western world can lose.  The country that arrives first will get to lead the discussion on the norms of interplanetary life—consider how the internet would be different if China had established initial norms.

To compete in this renewed Space Race, including the entirety of the U.S. government is critical. NASA is the lead, but there is a greatly overlooked opportunity within the federal government that should provide more consultation to the program, and that could do so without requiring the development of new programs: the Department of Defense (DoD).  While the Outer Space Treaty says the Moon and celestial bodies shall be used for "exclusively peaceful purposes" and "the establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications ... shall be forbidden," it also says "military personnel for scientific research or for any other peaceful purpose shall not be prohibited." Therefore, the use of military personnel, expeditionary experiences, and knowledge to assist NASA in planning and executing a lunar base are well within the confines of what's considered the peaceful use of space.

DARPA's recent LunA 10 project to identify risks and commercial solutions for a future lunar economy is a positive step towards incorporating DoD capabilities. However, this study is intended to bring in new technology to the race when there is already great, underutilized knowledge in the larger DoD. 

The DoD has extensive experience in planning, executing, and sustaining operating locations in harsh, contested terrestrial environments around the world at the extreme ends of long and contested logistics lines. Just consider the DoD's doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, education, personnel, facilities (DOTMLPF) investments, which have resulted in a significant infrastructure of strategic understanding and subject-area knowledge that could benefit NASA in its push for a lunar settlement.

The DoD heavily invests in doctrine and publications to plan for and conduct operations. For the space race, existing strategic documents and guidebooks including Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Planning, and Joint Publication 4-0, Logistics, are simply the highest-level examples of the documented intellectual capital, wargaming, experimentation, and lessons learned for remote operations with embedded concepts such as the Time Phased Force and Deployment Data (TPFDD) which is how the DoD organizes personnel and cargo movements over time around the world. Below this tip of the doctrine are a plethora of subordinate publications such as the Multi-Service Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Airfield Opening; and then, each Service has its own publications as well — all a wealth of knowledge not yet utilized in the race for a lunar outpost.

The DoD is organized for expeditionary, power projection capability. for example, personnel (operators, engineers, logisticians, etc.) in the U.S. Transportation Command, the Army's 82nd Airborne Division or Joint Task Force-Port Opening, or the Air Force's Air Expeditionary Task Force are trained, educated, and well-rehearsed to ensure remote operations are successful.

Working with the defense industrial base, remote basing materiel is one area into which the DoD has invested significant research, development, and purchasing over the last 20 years. The Army and Air Force both deploy and continuously improve self-contained base camp kits that include all electrical and mechanical fittings, life support facilities, and limited initial repair capability, all while working to minimize the transportation footprint. The DoD has also invested heavily in the development of soil stabilizing for helicopter landing zones to reduce the risk of brown outs. While obviously these cannot be directly employed on the lunar surface, the considerations and lessons learned that went into building out the requirements and the solutions could be applied with the assistance of the defense industrial base.

Behind all this research, development, doctrine, and materiel is a government and higher education research ecosystem that contains personnel, centers, and labs that outnumber the Artemis research labs seven times over (113 to 16, to be specific). If the research already accomplished by the DoD on remote basing planning, opening, and sustaining could be applied to the lunar basing research, and the different teams aligned to jointly focus on new challenges, the U.S. might have a chance to catch up. As in Kennedy's Space Race, the DoD does not need to take the lead. But without increased collaboration and prioritization across the federal government, the U.S. will not see the same success in this Space Race as it did against the Soviet Union.

Colonel Matthew H. Beverly is an Air Force Civil Engineer with 24 years of experience. He has planned and executed initial base construction, base expansion, and sustainment across the United States, Middle East, Africa, and the Pacific. Most recently he commanded the 1st Expeditionary Civil Engineer Group directing heavy construction and maintenance across nine Middle Eastern countries. He is a prior Assistant Professor at the U.S. Army War College where he taught military strategy and campaign plan development. He also co-led research sponsored by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD R&E) and Army Futures Command to improve the DoD's Science and Technology strategy.

Lt. Col (Ret) Patrick C. Suermann, PhD, is the Interim Dean of the Texas A&M School of Architecture. Before his appointment as interim dean, Suermann served for four and a half years as head of the Texas A&M Department of Construction Science. Suermann is an established researcher who has published numerous journal articles, national standards, book chapters and presented at various professional conferences including the American Society of Civil Engineers Construction Research Congress as well as the Earth and Space Conference, and more. Suermann retired from the U.S. Air Force in 2017 as a Lieutenant Colonel after a distinguished military career of building runways in remote areas of the world or teaching engineering to future leaders of character. Suermann regularly publishes in high profile journals on civil engineering, construction, and lunar construction/materials and was most recently quoted in the New York Times for the future of lunar architecture.

Captain Arpan Patel is the 560th RED HORSE Director of Operations in Charleston S.C. leading the highly mobile, heavy construction unit to build heavy horizontal or vertical infrastructure in austere locations world-wide. He previously served as the Branch Chief of the Air Force Airfield Pavement Evaluation Program where he and his teams were responsible for evaluating structural capabilities and conditions of over 200 airfields across 6 continents. Arpan additionally serves as a Board Director for the Society of American Military Engineers, a global organization that integrates government agencies with industry to improve relationships, build outcomes and streamline large infrastructure efforts and projects.

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https://spacenews.com/new-report-calls-for-dod-investments-in-lunar-space-infrastructure/

New report calls for DoD investments in lunar space infrastructure
Sandra Erwin January 17, 2024


3D simulation of the moon. Credit: NASA

WASHINGTON — The U.S. needs to flex its space muscles in the face of China's lunar ambitions, argues a new report from the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies released Jan. 17.

More specifically, the U.S. military should step up collaboration with NASA and support the development of infrastructure for scientific and economic activities in cislunar space, "as well as the means to secure those activities from potential threats such as territorial claims and irresponsible or hostile behavior," writes Charles Galbreath, senior fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute.

Cislunar space — the region of space between Earth and the orbit of the moon — is becoming increasingly important strategically and economically due to potential lunar exploration, space mining and other commercial efforts poised to ramp up in the coming years.

"The DoD must establish an infrastructure for the cislunar regime extending the types of services and capabilities currently in operation closer to Earth, such as space domain awareness, high bandwidth communications and cislunar navigation technologies," the report contends.

Galbreath suggests that DoD needs an additional $250 million in annual funding to devote to cislunar space activities.

"Modest, early investment will simultaneously accelerate U.S. efforts and reduce the future need for larger investments to overcome a Chinese advantage," he said.

While doing research for the paper, Galbreath spoke with U.S. Space Force leaders, "and none of them disagreed with the importance of cislunar space or the role that the military will ultimately have to have there," he said. But they don't have the resources to pursue these initiatives. "They don't have enough funds to get after the threats they're facing today, let alone prepare for something that will happen down the road."

He hopes Congress in the future turns more attention to this issue and adds funding in future budgets. "Taking small steps now to establish the infrastructure that we need to support the civil and the commercial activities will honestly be the best way to avert the need for a huge expenditure later," he said.

NASA and DoD have a history of collaboration
At a Mitchell Institute online forum Jan. 17, former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine endorsed the report's recommendations. He said DoD investments in sensors, communications and navigation systems are "the right approach" because they are "non combative in nature and increase transparency."

Bridenstine said he sees continued cooperation between NASA and DoD. "When you think about the history of NASA and the Department of Defense, going back to the Apollo era, there's been a lot of collaboration," he said. "Even today, a lot of our astronauts come from the United States military, from all branches. So I think the collaboration is there."

He noted that "NASA is not a tool of military power ... but NASA is a tool of diplomatic power and economic power, and all of those things are not achievable without the security in place. So I think largely NASA understands that security is critically important. And I think they welcome the idea of having domain awareness, communications architectures, and navigation capability."

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https://spacenews.com/china-to-launch-lunar-navigation-and-communications-test-satellites/

China to launch lunar navigation and communications test satellites
Andrew Jones February 7, 2024


The far side of the moon and distant Earth, imaged by the 2014 Chang'e-5 T1 mission service module. Credit: Chinese Academy of Sciences

HELSINKI — China is preparing to launch a pair of lunar experimental technology satellites for a planned constellation of satellites to support lunar exploration.

The Tiandu-1 and Tiandu-2 satellites are due to launch along with Queqiao-2, a lunar communications relay satellite to support upcoming Chang'e lunar far side and south pole missions.

Tiandu-1 and 2 will fly in formation in lunar orbit and conduct tests for navigation and communications technology verification. Tests will include satellite-to-ground laser ranging and inter-satellite microwave ranging methods.

The objective of the Tiandu satellites is to inform the design of China's proposed Queqiao lunar navigation and communication constellation. That system would provide supporting services to lunar surface operations. Robotic and crewed operations on the moon, particularly at the lunar south pole—an area of intense interest—or lunar far side face line-of-sight communications limitations.

Lunar constellations including positioning, navigation and timing services are also planned by Lockheed Martin and the European Space Agency. These systems will face challenges including linking up with both ground stations on Earth and the lunar surface, integrating navigation and communications, maintaining inter-satellite links and a harsher solar radiation environment.

Early visions of China's Queqiao constellation however envision a wider system of spacecraft stationed in circumlunar space and Earth-moon lagrange points, then expanding to form interplanetary staging stations.

The initial Tiandu tests are part of building infrastructure to support the China-led International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). That project aims to establish a lunar base in the 2030s and DSEL is active in attracting international partners. China is also aiming to put a pair of astronauts on the moon before 2030.

Establishing lunar infrastructure could provide the possibility for its developer to boost its space collaboration opportunities, soft power and space leadership.

Last year a senior Chinese space official called for the country to speed up its plans to develop lunar infrastructure or miss out on a never-to-be-repeated opportunity.

Lunar infrastructure, Tiandu payloads
China is beginning to grow its lunar infrastructure. The country already has an aging satellite orbiting Earth-moon Lagrange point 2, tens of thousands of kilometers beyond the moon. The 2018 mission supported the Chang'e-4 lunar far side lander and rover mission.

The new, larger Queqiao-2 mission will operate in frozen, elliptical orbits to support the Chang'e-4, 6, 7 and 8 missions. The Tiandu satellites will be the precursor to a larger system.

The 61-kilogram Tiandu-1 carries a Ka dual-band integrated communication payload, a laser retroreflector, a space router and other payloads. The 15-kilogram Tiandu-2 carries a communication payload.

Both Queqiao-2 and, separately, the Tiandu pair arrived at Wenchang in recent days. The multi-spacecraft Chang'e-6 probe was delivered in early January. The latter will launch on a Long March 5 rocket.

Chinese state media report that the launch of Queqiao-2 and the Tiandu sats will take place in the first half of the year. However, launch via a Long March 8 rocket from the coastal Wenchang spaceport is expected in February or March. This will allow time for commissioning of Queqiao-2 ahead of the launch of the Chang'e-6 lunar far side sample return mission around May.

The Tiandu satellites will enter translunar orbit with Queqiao-2. They will then execute a near-moon braking maneuver to enter a large, elliptical lunar orbit, Chen Xiao, chief commander of the Tiandu navigation technology test satellite at China's Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL), told Xinhua.

A launch over the last weekend may also have carried a satellite designed to test linking up between the Tiandu satellites and low Earth orbit (LEO). The DRO-L satellite was developed by IAMCAS under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). CAS scientists last year published a paper on requirements for satellite-to-satellite tracking between satellites in LEO and distant retrograde orbit (DRO).

The Tiandu satellites are the first to be developed by DSEL, also known as Tiandu in Chinese. DSEL was established under the China National Space Administration (CNSA) in 2022 to support China's lunar and deep space exploration plans. DSEL has also played a role in diplomacy for the ILRS.

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https://spacenews.com/blue-canyon-to-deliver-spacecraft-for-u-s-air-force-cislunar-mission/

Blue Canyon to deliver spacecraft for U.S. Air Force cislunar mission
Sandra Erwin February 12, 2024

WASHINGTON — Blue Canyon Technologies is preparing to deliver a spacecraft designed for the U.S. Air Force to demonstrate the capabilities of maneuverable satellites in deep space.

The company, a subsidiary of defense and aerospace contractor RTX, expects to soon complete production and testing of Oracle-M, an Air Force Research Laboratory experiment intended to fly beyond Earth's orbit to test satellite mobility and navigation capabilities in the cislunar region of space.

Oracle-M (Mobility) will be AFRL's first cislunar space mission. The Air Force is looking to demonstrate orbital change maneuvers and navigation in that largely unknown environment.

Blue Canyon is building the satellite under a $14.6 million contract awarded in November 2021.

"We are currently targeting a late July 2024 timeframe for delivery to the customer," said Chris Winslett, general manager for Blue Canyon Technologies.

A launch date has not yet been announced. Winslett said Oracle-M is now going through spacecraft-level integration testing. "We're getting pretty close," he said in a recent interview.

Flight heritage for Saturn bus

Oracle-M will fly to geostationary Earth orbit and then travel into cislunar space. "We're excited about this one because we'll be using our platform to demonstrate propulsion technologies and improve maneuverability," said Winslett.

"We see cislunar space as a key region where we're gonna see more interest from various customers," he added.

Blue Canyon builds all its satellite components in house except for the propulsion systems, which it acquires from suppliers such as ExoTerra.

For the Oracle-M mission the company used its Saturn-class ESPA-Grande bus. These are one of the largest in the small-satellite category, about the size of a small washing machine. The company also used the Saturn bus for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Blackjack program.

Four Blackjack satellites launched to low Earth orbit in June and are currently conducting experiments with optical inter-satellite links and autonomous on-orbit tasking software.

DARPA has been able to communicate with all four satellites and verify that they're operating correctly, said Winslett. Blackjack was a key project for the Saturn buses to acquire flight heritage in the space environment.

Blue Canyon anticipates more government contracts for the Saturn platform which, because of its size, is suitable for missions carrying advanced payloads for Earth observation, missile warning and secure communications. "Getting on-orbit heritage with that size bus is kind of opening up that market for us, for not only DoD, but other government customers on the civil side and the intelligence community."

Winslett said the company is actively looking to partner with satellite manufacturers and defense contractors competing for military satellite orders from the Space Development Agency, a Space Force organization building a large constellation of small satellites in low Earth orbit for communications, and for missile detection and tracking.

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https://spacenews.com/rhea-space-activity-to-fly-navigation-payloads-on-lunar-lander-mission/

Rhea Space Activity to fly navigation payloads on lunar lander mission
Jeff Foust March 6, 2024


The APEX 1.0 lander from ispace U.S. was designed to better accommodate payloads such as those flying on a NASA CLPS mission in 2026. Credit: ispace U.S.

WASHINGTON — A company developing cislunar navigation systems has won a grant to test its technology on an upcoming commercial lunar lander mission.

Rhea Space Activity announced March 6 it won a $750,000 NASA grant through the agency's TechFlights solicitation to fly two of its Jervis Autonomy Module (JAM) units on a lunar lander mission led by Draper scheduled to launch in 2026.

The JAM units will be installed on two spacecraft that will operate in lunar orbit, serving as communications relays for the APEX 1.0 lander that ispace U.S. will design and operate for the Draper-led mission to the far side of the moon as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The units will allow each spacecraft to autonomously determine its orbit though celestial navigation, taking images and calculating its position based on the celestial objects identified in those images.

"JAM allows deep space and lunar missions to autonomously maintain a desired trajectory by celestial navigation, which is 100% independent of the NASA Deep Space Network," said Shawn Usman, chief executive of Rhea Space Activity, in a statement. That helps users avoid the costs of accessing the DSN while reducing the burden on that network, which is often oversubscribed supporting NASA missions.

Each JAM will include a camera that Rhea Space Activity is also developing. Besides being used for celestial navigation, the cameras will be able to take high-resolution images of the lunar surface for mapping and other uses.

Ron Garan, chief executive of ispace U.S., said the JAM units are the first commercial rideshare payloads for that mission. The lander is flying three NASA geophysical and space science instruments as part of the CLPS award. "We look forward to hosting additional commercial payloads on future missions to bolster the U.S. commercial industry's expansion to the moon," he said.

Rhea Space Activity has been working on JAM for several years, and secured investment from SpaceFund in 2021 to support its development. The company also won Small Business Innovation Research awards from the U.S. Air Force to develop a "lunar intelligence dashboard" for monitoring spacecraft activities in cislunar space.

The company sees other applications for JAM beyond lunar missions. "This technology allows spacecraft to operate autonomously and undetected, even in environments without GPS, helping our defense network to operate seamlessly on orbit," said Samuel Lee, chief financial officer of Rhea Space Activity, in a statement. That includes versions of the technology that can "provide discrete navigation and communication capabilities on Earth, supporting ground, air and sea operations."

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https://spacenews.com/japan-creates-multibillion-dollar-space-strategic-fund-to-boost-space-industry/

Japan creates multibillion-dollar space strategic fund to boost space industry
Andrew Jones March 12, 2024


Japan's SLIM moon lander imaged by small rover LEV-2. Credit: JAXA/Takara Tomy/Sony Group Corporation/Doshisha University

HELSINKI — Japan has established a multibillion-dollar Space Strategic Fund to help develop the country's innovation, autonomy and international competitiveness in space.

Japan's cabinet approved a bill to establish a $6.7 billion (1 trillion yen), 10-year fund for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in November, aimed at supporting development, technology demonstration, and commercialization of advanced technologies in the space field. New details were presented in a Space Policy Committee meeting in February, including defining three areas for support: satellites, space exploration and space transportation.

Objectives include maintaining independence in space capabilities, strengthening technological superiority, and increasing supply chain autonomy. This is to be achieved by expanding the space-related market, solving global social issues through space technologies, and advancing knowledge and technological capabilities in space exploration. It answers a call in the Space Basic Plan, revised in June 2023, for JAXA to be able to support entities from the commercial and academic worlds.

Domestically, the move is driven by and part of a wider Comprehensive Economic Measures for Completely Overcoming Deflation policy introduced late last year. It also seeks to address international challenges.

"There has been the emergence of many space industry actors, including emerging space countries. The weakness of Japan's international competitiveness has become evident," Yui Nakama, a global fellow at the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI), told SpaceNews. "The lack of clear winning strategies against the vigorous space development in the other countries are major drivers."

"As a national strategy to overcome economic downturns, both [security and civilian] space domains are considered as frontiers where market expansion is anticipated, alongside being crucial areas for national security," says Nakama.

The strategy aims to enhance JAXA's capabilities in cutting-edge and fundamental technology development. It will also increase its role in funding technological development across industry, academia, and government sectors. The 10-year plan aims to provide long-term yet flexible and strategic support for private companies and universities to engage in advanced technology development and commercialization efforts in the space sector.

A supplementary budget for the Financial Year 2025 allocates 300 billion yen ($2 billion) to support space technology development. This includes contributions from various ministries, emphasizing a collaborative approach to advancing Japan's space capabilities.

Detailed plans for implementing the strategy include guidelines on outsourcing and subsidies, focusing on technological development themes that align with Japan's strategic goals in space. This includes considerations for the maturity of the technology and market, with the aim of fostering innovation and commercial success.

The document also connects with a Space Technology Strategy introduced last year. This includes a technology roadmap for development across security and civilian sectors, according to Nakama.

In terms of concrete targets, the strategy aims to develop a low-cost space transportation system that can accommodate a wide range of launch demands, including domestic and foreign satellites. This involves ensuring domestic launch capacity of a total of approximately 30 institutional rockets and private rockets per year by the early 2030s.

Japan's flagship H3 succeeded in reaching orbit on its second flight earlier this year following a 2023 debut failure. Japan aims for around 10 launches per year of the H3 by the early 2030s. Meanwhile private firms Interstellar Technologies and Space ONE are working towards first launches. The latter's Kairos four-stage light-lift solid rocket will attempt to reach orbit as soon as March 13 Japan time (late March 12 Eastern).

The country's launch record in recent years is patchy. It launched a national record six times in 2018, using its H-2A rocket. It plans to transition to the new H3, intended to be internationally competitive, but this has faced delays. Japan conducted no launches in 2022, and just three in 2023, including the damaging failure of the first H3 rocket. The 2030s goal would represent a dramatic change in fortunes and performance for Japan in an increasingly competitive launch market.

Japan is acting at a time of increasing competition and geopolitical tension. There is a growing sense of urgency within Japan to maintain its superiority in space in the APAC region. This is particularly in relation to industrial and political competitions with China, especially in the middle of the U.S.-China rivalry, according to Nakama.

India last year became the fourth country to land on the moon. It is now targeting human spaceflight capabilities, a space station and putting astronauts on the moon by 2040. China meanwhile is expanding its ambitions to include deep space exploration and an International Lunar Research Station and related diplomatic efforts. It is also fostering commercial space ecosystems. The country launched a national record 67 times in 2023 and aims for around 100 orbital launches this year.

Japan meanwhile landed its SLIM spacecraft on the moon and is part of the NASA-led Artemis program. JAXA and Toyota are collaborating on a pressurized rover for the lunar surface. Its deep space plans include the 2026 MMX mission to collect samples from the Martian moon Phobos.

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https://spacenews.com/dod-innovation-unit-to-assess-firefly-vehicle-for-missions-beyond-earth-orbit/

DoD innovation unit to assess Firefly vehicle for missions beyond Earth orbit
Sandra Erwin March 21, 2024

WASHINGTON — The Defense Innovation Unit announced March 21 it has signed an agreement with Firefly Aerospace to study the potential use of the company's Elytra orbital vehicle for missions beyond geosynchronous Earth orbit.

The Pentagon's commercial technology arm, DIU awarded Firefly a study contract that, once complete, could lead to as many as two flight demonstration missions in the region between GEO orbit and the moon, known as cislunar space.

The contract supports DIU's Sinequone project that aims to deliver cost-effective, responsive access to cislunar space through both launch and orbital transfer services.

"The Department of Defense must be poised to foster safe and secure commercial and civil growth in this region," DIU said of cislunar space.

Established in 2015, DIU acts as a bridge between the Department of Defense and the commercial tech sector. The project with Firefly comes on the heels of another space logistics project DIU announced March 20.

Deploying payloads in cislunar space

DIU's Sinequone project is exploring the use of commercial launch and orbital transfer systems to deliver capabilities and assets to one or more orbits in cislunar space.  In response to the Sinequone solicitation in 2022, DIU received 112 solution briefs from 94 companies, said Nathan Gapp, DIU program manager.

The agreement with Firefly "will enable the government to evaluate the technical feasibility and operational effectiveness of the company's responsive launch and delivery capabilities," said Gapp. "The demonstration will focus on the successful application of the  combined launch vehicle and orbit transfer vehicle technology and methodologies to meet the government's goal of delivering the initial space vehicles to orbit within 18 months of approval to proceed."

Under the contract, after the initial study, Firefly would deliver three to six orbital vehicles for one or more launches to orbits in cislunar space, with the goal of reducing the time to deliver for each subsequent mission.

Firefly also is under contract to the National Reconnaissance Office for a mission to deploy small payloads from the Elytra orbital vehicle.

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https://spacenews.com/white-house-directs-nasa-to-develop-lunar-time-standard/

White House directs NASA to develop lunar time standard
Jeff Foust April 2, 2024


NASA has been studying an architecture called LunaNet for lunar communications and navigation that could require a new time standard. Credit: NASA

WASHINGTON — A new White House policy instructs NASA to develop a strategy for a new time standard for use on cislunar missions to provide improved navigation and related services on and around the moon.

The Policy on Celestial Time Standardization in Support of the National Cislunar Science and Technology Strategy, released by the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy April 2, directs NASA to develop a strategy by the end of 2026 to create Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC), a new time standard based on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on Earth but adapted to operations on the moon.

"As NASA, private companies and space agencies around the world launch missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond, it's important that we establish celestial time standards for safety and accuracy," Steve Welby, OSTP deputy director for national security, said in a statement.

Simply using UTC in cislunar space is inadequate for precision operations, the policy notes. UTC is tied to Earth-based systems, but relativistic effects mean a second on the moon is not the same length as one on Earth. "For example, to an observer on the Moon, an Earth-based clock will appear to lose on average 58.7 microseconds per Earth-day with additional periodic variations," the policy states.

While that difference is imperceptible for most applications — it would take nearly 50 years to build up a one-second offset — it is a problem for navigation and related applications, like space situational awareness and proximity operations, where higher precision is required.

"A consistent definition of time among operators in space is critical to successful space situational awareness capabilities, navigation and communications, all of which are foundational to enable interoperability across the U.S. government and with international partners," Welby said.

The policy sets four major features for LTC: traceability to UTC, accuracy sufficient for precision navigation and science, resilience to loss of contact with Earth and scalability to environments beyond cislunar space.

The policy provides little technical guidance for establishing a lunar time standard but suggests it may be done like terrestrial time standards, which use a network of atomic clocks. "Just as Terrestrial Time is set through an ensemble of atomic clocks on Earth, an ensemble of clocks on the Moon might set Lunar Time," it states.

Besides providing a finalized strategy for a lunar time standard to the White House by the end of 2026, the policy directs NASA to also include the topic in its annual cycle of reviews of its Moon to Mars Architecture, which it unveiled nearly a year ago and updated earlier this year. NASA will work with several other agencies, including the Departments of Commerce, Defense, State and Transportation, on the lunar time strategy.

NASA has been working on a concept called LunaNet to provide communications and navigation services at the moon using an interoperable network that could include commercial and international contributions. NASA and the European Space Agency have produced several versions of a LunaNet Interoperability Specification that mentions the creation of a Lunar Time System Standard, although documentation for that has not been developed.

In May 2023, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) announced it was working with NASA to develop a positioning and navigation system for the moon. The goal, NGA officials said then, was to create a system for users on the moon that works "as accurately and as safely as GPS does on Earth." That announcement did not go into details about creating a lunar time standard.