¶Innospace is about to bring Alcantara back to life. South Korean launch startup Innospace is nearing the launch attempt of its first orbital rocket, the HANBIT-Nano. The company recently received a modified license for its first orbital launch attempt—the first for a private South Korean company—with a launch window running through November 28th. Previously, the company successfully tested a suborbital single-stage configuration of the hybrid rocket, HANBIT-TLV, in 2023. The final version of the 22-meter-tall, two-stage paraffin/lox rocket will be capable of carrying 90 kg to space, putting it squarely at the small end of the small launch category (similar to Iran’s operational Qased and India's in-development Agnibaan). HANBIT-Nano is slated to lift off from Brazil’s somewhat languishing Alcântara launch site, the first orbital attempt from the facility since 1999. (The Brazilian VLS-1, which had an in-flight failure in ‘99, never left the pad again, with its next launch attempt in 2003 igniting one of its boosters spontaneously while on the pad and killing 21 people, effectively ending the program.) A new pad has been built for Innospace launches; hopefully, the diminutive rocket will finally bring orbital launches to Brazilian soil. This first mission, dubbed SPACEWARD, will carry 5 spacecraft (from South Korea, Brazil, and India) and 3 non-separating test navigation systems, plus an empty aluminum can for some reason (in “collaboration” with South Korean beverage company BREWGURU), to a 300 km low Earth orbit. |
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 | HANBIT-TLV, the predecessor to HANBIT-Nano, stands on its Alcantara launch pad ahead of its test launch in 2023. |
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¶Short Papers- Are the Sun’s 11-year solar cycles caused by the similarly-timed alignment of Venus, Earth, and Jupiter (paper)? And, could this help explain why our star is less active than many other Sun-like stars? “[Researchers] have developed a model that derives virtually all the sun’s known activity cycles from the cyclical influence of the planets’ tidal forces. [And have] now demonstrated that this external synchronization automatically curbs solar activity.”
- The complex organic molecules detected by Cassini in plumes rising from Saturn's moon Enceladus, which are often cited excitedly as evidence of the possibility of finding life there, may have formed on its surface due to radiation, not within its subsurface ocean (paper). On the other hand, another excited citation states: ‘Prospect of life on Saturn’s moons rises after discovery of organic substances’. We’ll probably have to go back there to see.
- 22.6%+ of lunar material ejected by impact events ends up hitting Earth (paper). This seems reasonable, if not a bit low? 💥
- A close stellar flyby early in the solar system’s evolution can explain the distribution of colors of Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), which seem to correlate with where in the original protoplanetary disk the objects formed and the local population of materials present (paper).
- The first evidence of lava tube entrances was spotted in old radar images of Venus (paper). (The last operating spacecraft at Venus, JAXA’s Akatsuki, was recently declared over after contact was lost in April 2024. ESA’s EnVision is targeting arrival in the early 2030s, while NASA’s DAVINCI and Veritas missions are deeply at risk with current NASA budget uncertainty.)
- When light travels through a magnetic field, its polarization is rotated due to the Faraday effect. Using this phenomenon, researchers have inferred distances and material environments from MeerKAT radio images, resulting in 3D CT-scan-like images of galaxies, black holes, and jet structures (paper).
- Rovers that are blown around Mars like tumbleweeds (paper).
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 | A field test of a prototype tumbleweed-like Mars rover in a quarry in Maastricht, The Netherlands. Soon Martians will be dodging these like the actual tumbleweeds Andrew was dodging in windy Nevada last week. Credit: Team Tumbleweed/Sas Schilten |
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| ¶News in brief. Hungary became the 57th nation to sign the Artemis Accords ● Airbus, Thales, and Leonardo proposed merging their space businesses into a new, currently unnamed company, a process expected to take until 2027 due to antitrust and other regulatory reviews ● SpaceX launched a Spanish communications satellite on a 20-plus-mission-vetran Falcon 9 rocket without returning the booster, a rare event these days, but an expendable flight profile was required to place the 6,100 kg payload into its geostationary transfer orbit ● Cyprus joined ESA as an associate member ● Astrobotic delayed their Griffin-1 lunar mission from this year to next ● Denmark proposed a record $420M funding for their space program and ESA contribution ● SpaceX settled a lawsuit with board game creator Cards Against Humanity over accusations of trespassing and damaging a plot of land purchased by the company in Texas—crowdfunders that supported purchasing the land will receive an Elon-themed card deck ● Space Quarters, a Tokyo-based startup, raised $5M in seed funding to develop construction systems for assembly of large orbital and lunar structures using robotic in-space welding ● An H3 rocket launched JAXA’s first HTV-X1, a 50% cargo capacity upgrade on their now discontinued HTV vehicle that carried cargo to the ISS from 2009 to 2020 |
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 | JAXA’s H3 rocket launching from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan with HTV-XL onboard. It is expected to reach the ISS in a few days, where it will be captured and berthed by the station’s robotic arm. |
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¶Etc.- With SpaceX’s 10,000th Starlink satellite launched to orbit, and 8,562 active as of Oct 20th, a staggering ⅔ of humanity’s active satellites in orbit are controlled by a single private company.
- Open Lunar launched the Lunar Ledger, an open database designed for operators to publish and cross-reference lunar mission information.
- Science YouTuber Steve Mould teamed up with NASA astronaut Don Pettit to test his chain fountain theory in zero gravity on the ISS.
- ‘Giant mirrors in space to reflect sunlight at night? No, thank you, astronomers [and biologists] say.’
- Startups and defense primes are rushing to get in on the mad $$$ from Trump’s Golden Dome program, which calls for space-based interceptors to shoot down ballistic missiles, akin to Reagan’s Star Wars program. Apex announced a self-funded mission to test home-grown interceptors mid next year.
- The South Atlantic Anomaly (SSA) is a region of the Earth’s magnetic field that is mysteriously weaker, posing a cumulative radiation risk to spacecraft and astronauts that repeatedly pass through it. ESA’s Swarm mission has been studying the SSA since 2013 and has shown that it has changed significantly since then, expanding by an area nearly half the size of continental Europe (paper). Simultaneously, the Earth’s northern magnetic pole has been moving toward Siberia, strengthening there and weakening over Canada. We live on a dynamic planet.
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That’s no moon… it’s a water world. Saturn’s small moon Mimas shows libration and pericenter precession, suggesting an ocean hiding beneath an ice shell 20-30 km thick. This ocean may only be 10-15 million years old, possibly making it the youngest ocean in the Solar System (paper). |  |
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