The Space Roundup - Jan 2nd, 2022

Hello, hello, my dear space lovers!

Happy new year! :) Welcome to the first Roundup of the year 2022: 3, 2, 1, zero! Lift-off!

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JSWT updates

JSWT keeps successfully deploying piece after piece! Hurray! It’s been so successful so far that it is going to have enough fuel to extend the scientific mission (if everything goes well) well beyond the 10-year mark.

Moon updates

Passive thermal control for the moon! NASA has funded a company called Advanced Cooling Technologies with $5M to research ways to protect landers, rovers, and habitats from the extreme cold and heat of the moon without energy consumption. Currently, we need nuclear-based batteries to sustain thermal protection systems, but we’d need more efficient technologies if we want them to be sustainable. 

China and Russia are planning to sign a legally binding agreement to build an international scientific lunar outpost by 2035. Very very interesting. While the US focuses on the lunar orbit for a permanent base (the Gateway), they want to go directly to the surface of the moon. Will they be able to achieve it? We’ll see!

SpaceX

On the last day of the year, SpaceX raised $330 million, which takes the total funding of the year to approximately $1.85 billion. Starship development is expensive! 

Apart from being expensive to develop, it seems bureaucracy is also NOT helping a lot. The Federal Aviation Administration is postponing the permissions because it needs at least two more months to complete an environmental review of Starship orbital launches from Boca Chica. That means more delays. Sad 

ISS, good news!

The good news is that after all discussions and public speculation, the Biden administration has extended operations on the International Space Station through 2030. That gives the US eight additional years while they consider transitioning to other models. Nice. Remember they have recently started funding companies to explore the development of commercial stations in space.

The year ahead

Watch out for 2022! This year is going to bring us amazing missions.

Some of the missions that are the most exciting to me include the first SLS and Starship flights, JWST operations, China and India's solar observatories, and the first moon landings of the CLIPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program)