There's so many exciting things happening in the space industry right now that just aren't getting the attention it deserves. So here I am, yelling into the internet abyss.

Let's start with SpaceX. It's hard to have the space exploration conversation these days without mentioning them. They came in and completely disrupted an industry where all the top dogs have been around since WWII. I still don't really get how they drove their rocket prices down so much. But they've got some cool things going right now like Starlink - a network of LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites to serve the globe with high speed broadband. They're slated to go live with 1500+ spacecraft in late 2021/early 2022 although they have FCC approval for up to 30,000! Another company, OneWeb was attempting a similar mission until they file for bankruptcy in the past few months so the competition is wide open.

Starship is also so absurd its hard to believe its real. A stainless steel spacecraft? What? It sounds crazy but its an interesting avenue to explore anyways I guess. Real Engineering has a great video on it here:

Next up, I'll talk a bit about my own company's project, Northrop Grumman's James Webb Space Telescope. An incredibly delicate and advanced piece of tech. This thing is going to have a mirror that will be opened up to within microns of accuracy and a delicate solar shield that will also have to deploy in a complex maneuver. This is probably the project that I am most nervous about. Delays and over budgets have plagued this program so it is absolutely imperative this mission succeeds not to mention the amount of raw science to be made possible that could put Hubble to shame.

NASA is also contracting out some ambitious missions that are well under way. We're going back to the moon! And we're gonna have a lunar gateway station! And there's three separate teams that are going to be working on it! Seriously, the Artemis program is so cool and really doesn't get talked about enough. I wonder if it was like that in the years leading up to Apollo. The SLS and Orion were initially supposed to be the path forward to the moon, but three more contracts have been awarded to SpaceX, Dynetics and Blue Origin (featuring our very own Northrop Grumman). There will be three different human landing services all targeted at landing on the moon by 2024 (very ambitious in my opinion). When Jim Bridenstine became the NASA administrator in 2017 after Trump's election there was a lot of doubt around a climate change denier leading space science efforts but I will admit he has been very adept at playing Congress for his goals. Instead of being bogged down by SLS (essentially a jobs contract that was heavily lobbied for), he's snuck in more teams that have a far more realistic shot of getting there. Gateway is also under development across international agencies, primarily with JAXA and the ESA, a space station that revolves around the moon to serve as a stopping point for our human explorers.

Here's a cool animation by NASA about the Artemis program.

Some other projects that are in work include the Perseverance Rover targeted for launch starting July 20th. It could very easily answer questions about the existence of life on Mars. How absolutely mind blowing would it be to learn life existed on planets other than ours in our lifetime? Also did I mention it has a deployable drone that will take flight on another planet in a brand new atmosphere/gravitation pull?

I haven't even mentioned some of the interplanetary missions that are under way providing us with data around the clock like Juno and New Horizons. Also we're STILL running the ISS, plenty of years after its expected lifetime. And there's talks about boosting it back up to keep it in service for longer.

Anyways, it's an exciting time to be into Space. I'd say besides for the late 60s/early 70s, civil space has never had so much on the horizon. My only hope is that administration changes don't affect the long term plans for NASA.