| | | | | |  | | By Jacqueline Feldscher | Presented by |  | | | With help from Bryan Bender | | | — NASA's Perseverance rover landing on Mars next week won't be televised, but the deep space communications network is getting an upgrade. — OP-ED: Drafting a long-term vision for the Space Force should be top priorities for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. — Argentine Earth-observation company Satellogic is ramping up its U.S. presence with its eye on working with the government. WELCOME TO POLITICO SPACE, our must-read briefing on the policies and personalities shaping the new space age in Washington and beyond. Email us at jklimas@politico.com or bbender@politico.com with tips, pitches and feedback, and find us on Twitter at @jacqklimas and @bryandbender. And don't forget to check out POLITICO's astropolitics page for articles, Q&As, opinion and more. | | | | A message from Northrop Grumman: What if you could get a second chance in space? Revitalize a satellite when it's low on fuel? Or move a spacecraft to another location? In our mission to Define Possible in space, we've built a spacecraft that can do just that: MEV. | | | | | | AMERICA'S SHOT AT MARS: After the United Arab Emirates and China both successfully put spacecraft into orbit around Mars this week, NASA's mission to the Red Planet has its moment of truth on Thursday when it attempts to land the Perseverance rover on the martian surface after a nearly seven month journey. Throughout the trip, the spacecraft has been checking in with operators on Earth daily using the Deep Space Network , a trio of large antennas in Australia, Spain and the U.S. that help terrestrials communicate with spacecraft beyond the moon. The network also communicated with the UAE mission, but had no involvement with the Chinese program, said Henry Giroux, program manager of the network at government contractor Peraton, which runs the communications system. The comms network will enable Perseverance to tell engineers if it landed successfully, but only after a delay. Right now, communications from the Earth to Mars take 20 minutes round trip: 10 minutes to get a signal from the Earth to Mars, and another 10 minutes to get an answer back from Perseverance, Giroux said. The antennas will also make sure Perseverance is on the right trajectory to Mars, and receive data the rover sends back from the Red Planet. So what will Thursday look like? If you're watching the livestream of Perseverance's landing on Mars, it will look and sound almost identical to the scene at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory when Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012, Giroux said. You'll see people huddled over consoles — spread out because of the pandemic — tracking the rover, but won't get any live video of the rover touching down. (NASA did, however, create an animation of what it will look like.) The Deep Space Network is undergoing upgrades so that when the first human steps on Mars, the world can watch, Giroux said. "The technology is there," he said. "The Deep Space Network is in the process of building antennas and deploying capabilities over the next four to five years, so that by the time we look at humans on Mars … the laser communications capability will become pretty mainstream by that point in time." ALSO: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has an online store for limited edition Perseverance merch, including a "concert tour" t-shirt that lists all of America's past Mars missions and an "astrobiologist in training" onesie. | | | A PENTAGON SPACE AGENDA: It's an understatement to say Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has a lot on his plate. But he must prioritize the space mission and add significant fuel to recent military efforts to maximize long-term success, two leading government space strategists write in a new POLITICO op-ed. One is simply to make sure the new Space Force and Space Command lay out a much more detailed plan for the years ahead, including long-term investments that go beyond the fiscal year that drives traditional budgeting, argue Mir Sadat, a former National Security Council official, and Michael Sinclair, a Coast Guard captain and former deputy legal adviser at the NSC who is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. And that means "visionary multi-year budget builds" and finally getting the acquisition of new space systems right. "Space systems are often notoriously slow to develop, myopically designed, and expensive to deploy, maintain, and upgrade," they write. "Space defense readiness authorities and appropriations must anticipate the foreseeable trend of greater numbers of space actors (including a likely growth in human space flight), acting farther out from Earth, while the United States still has the opportunity to lead in the domain. "Failing to do so may have a transformational, if not existential, impact on the United States' ability to successfully meet security and global competitiveness challenges over the next century," they warn. The Pentagon also needs to work much more closely with other agencies to make sure it doesn't do too much when so much of space expansion is civilian and commercial in nature. "The defense secretary must work across the federal government with space responsibilities such as NASA and the departments of State, Commerce, Transportation, State and Homeland Security, to nail down who is going to be responsible for what," they contend. KEEP DEMOCRATIZING SPACE INVESTING: There is also more to be done in Washington to help fuel the private space economy, including making it easier for small investors to help start-ups grow, Brant Arseneau, a founding partner of 9Point8 Capital, argues in a new POLITICO op-ed. "To achieve this, they need capital which is only forming in the nascent industry and where traditional venture capital is still scarce," he writes. He warns against rolling back recent regulatory changes by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's and amendments to the Jumpstart Our Business Startup Act, to encourage more "crowdsourcing" of funding from the public. "Under the original rules," he writes, "space-related companies could initially only raise $1.07 million a year, but in December 2020, the SEC voted for the limit to be increased to $5 million a year. These rule changes come at an important time and could help provide the capital fuel for a growing private space economy that may see a banner year in 2021. They also allow for the creation of a market that will democratize access to private investments for the public." Let's not stop now, he urges. "With the recent change of administrations a few members of Congress are asking that these amendments be rolled back or at the very least delayed," he says. "If this action is allowed to happen, it will impede capital formation, further exclude the public from participation in the capital markets and destroy progress in the democratization of the investing process." | | | |   | | | | | | NEW FACES ON SPACE COMMITTEES: The House and Senate committees that oversee NASA have both announced their full rosters, including several new faces. Three freshmen Democrats join the Senate Commerce Committee: Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Raphael Warnock of Georgia. New Mexico, which will be the gateway to space for tourists flying with Virgin Galactic, and Colorado, the current head of the military's national space missions, both have significant space interests. For Republicans, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming is the only newly elected member to join the panel. On the House side, two new Democrats joined the House Science Committee this week: Jamaal Bowman of New York and Deborah Ross of North Carolina. Ranking member Frank Lucas, who announced the panel's Republican members last month, also issued a statement this week that Brian Babin of Texas will continue to be the top GOP lawmaker on the panel's space subcommittee. Democratic subcommittee chairs have not yet been decided. | | | SATELLOGIC GROWS U.S. TEAM: Argentine Earth observation company Satellogic is looking to expand both its commercial and government business portfolio in the U.S., starting with two new hires announced Thursday . Thomas VanMatre is a former Maxar exec who is now the vice president of global business development, and Matthew Tirman, the former lead for government business at geospatial data firm Descartes Labs, is now head of Satellogic North America. There's still more demand for space imagery than the current U.S. market can fill, VanMatre told us. And Satellogic is poised to fill that gap with a few unique technologies, including full motion video from space and hyperspectral imaging, which observes the Earth using different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. For example, the technology can tell the difference between two different kinds of crops from space, which could be helpful for officials looking for illegal drugs, VanMatre said. The ability to collect video from space also has implications for national security; video can provide clues to intent and behavior that still snapshots lack, he explained. There are barriers to using this technology for sensitive missions because Satellogic is a foreign-owned company, Tirman noted. The company is free to sell its commercially-available imagery to the U.S. government, but could run into trouble when trying to work on classified programs. To be able to partner on classified programs or missions, Satellogic would have to establish a U.S. office, similarly to how the United Kingdom-based Airbus and Leonardo, which is headquartered in Italy, both set up American subsidiaries to work more closely with the government. "These are all steps that we are willing to take as we build into this market," Tirman said. QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Congratulations to Arthur Sauzay, a senior associate at Allen & Overy law firm, for being the first to correctly answer that Viking was the first NASA mission to successfully land a spacecraft on the surface of another planet when it touched down on Mars in 1975. This week's question: What is a Martian day called? The first person to email jklimas@politico.com gets bragging rights and a shoutout in the next newsletter! | | | | A message from Northrop Grumman: Space missions have always lived on a fixed timeline. Satellites carry a limited supply of fuel, so it's always been accepted that they'll eventually have to be retired. But now that Northrop Grumman has created the revolutionary Mission Extension Vehicle, we've defined a new era of possible for your satellites. MEV provides propulsion, so expensive satellites no longer have to be decommissioned while they're still useful. MEV-2 | | | | | | — NASA has finalized its decision to launch the Europa Clipper on a commercial rocket: Space News — Space Force planning to combine active and reserve service to give troops more flexibility: Air Force Magazine — Blue Origin could get more attention from Jeff Bezos as he steps down from Amazon: Washington Post — When will civilians vacation in space?: Forbes — Launch startup Astra goes public: Space.com — SpaceX wins contract to launch two pieces of the Gateway to the moon: CNN — NASA wants to trade Russia for a seat on its Soyuz spacecraft: Space News — Turkey sets out ambitious space plans, including 2023 moon mission: Associated Press — A "moon tree" was planted at Texas A&M: The Eagle — Astronaut Alan Shepard teed off on the moon 50 years ago: The Orlando Sentinel — A four-pound moon rock worth up to $350,000 is up for action: Barrons | | | SATURDAY: Bill Nye and the Planetary Society host the two-day virtual Planetfest '21 conference, including panels on the search for life in the universe and to explore beyond Mars. SUNDAY: A cargo ship is expected to launch from Kazakhstan to resupply the International Space Station. TUESDAY: NASA holds two days of briefings previewing the Perseverance rover's landing on Mars, including Q&As with students and a briefing on the Mars sample return mission. TUESDAY: Derek Tournear, head of the Space Development Agency, participates in a virtual discussion hosted by the Space Foundation. WEDNESDAY: Johann-Dietrich Woerner, the director general of the European Space Agency, speaks at a Space Symposium 365 event. WEDNESDAY: Gen. James Dickinson, head of U.S. Space Command, speaks to the Washington Space Business Roundtable. WEDNESDAY: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce hosts a virtual event on the future of crewed deep space exploration , including remarks from Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) and Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.) THURSDAY: The Perseverance rover is expected to land on Mars at 3:55 p.m. Eastern. THURSDAY: The Aerospace Corporation hosts its weekly space policy show on the Space Force. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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