Ball Aerospace has been selected to support a NASA small satellite technology demonstration, Solar Cruiser, the company reported on Wednesday. Ball will perform several mission-critical functions, including the integration and test of the satellite bus with the solar sail system that will form the completed Sailcraft. 

"Solar Cruiser will be an important step in the advancement of solar propulsion technology that could enable future missions studying the Sun, space weather and deep space," said Dr. Makenzie Lystrup, vice president and general manager, Civil Space, Ball Aerospace. 

Ball’s efforts will inform on the use of solar photons for propulsion in space. The Solar Cruiser will be one of four missions launching with the NASA Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), currently scheduled in 2025. 

Ball Aerospace will procure a Venus-class microsat commercial bus, define mission-specific modifications and perform the integration and test of the completed Sailcraft. Once in orbit, the spacecraft will deploy an 18,000-square-foot sail to catch solar radiation to propel the vehicle. Les Johnson, from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is the mission's principal investigator.  

“[Solar Cruiser] builds on our legacy as a long-time mission partner to NASA and the scientific community, at large, in the development of leading-edge science and technology to achieve science at any scale." 

In addition to Solar Cruiser, Ball Aerospace completed the spacecraft and payload assembly integration of NASA's Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) space-based astrophysics observatory, in Jan. 2021. With the completion, Ball will start environmental testing of the observatory, including instruments and the spacecraft bus.

The observatory has been scheduled to launch in late-2021. Once on orbit, IXPE will measure the polarization of cosmic X-rays. The measurements will enable NASA to improve the understanding of the fundamental physics of extreme objects in the universe, such as black holes.

IXPE is a Small Explorer (SMEX) mission, under NASA's Astrophysics Explorer Program, which is led by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and supported by Ball Aerospace, the Italian Space Agency (ASI), Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at University of Colorado Boulder and other partners.

Under the mission, Ball will deliver the IXPE spacecraft, mechanical and structural elements of the payload, observatory assembly, and integration and test. The spacecraft for IXPE is based on Ball's smallest Ball Configurable Platform (BCP) model. 

NASA has decided to renew and continue funding a Houston Texas-based research institute that focuses on technologies that maintain astronaut health. 

The Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) will receive funds worth $134.6 million between 2022 and 2028 for its continued operation, Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) said Tuesday. 

BCM leads the TRISH consortium with the help of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology. TRISH partners with NASA’s Human Research Program to address issues that challenge human performance in deep space.

“We are proud to be NASA’s partner in its human space exploration mission and to be supporting the research necessary to create new frontiers in health care that will benefit all humans.” said Dorit Donoviel, director of TRISH.

NASA's decision to renew TRISH follows the institute's successful program review in December 2020.

Neera Tanden, President Biden’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said information technology modernization and cybersecurity would be her top priorities once confirmed as director of OMB, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that advancing IT modernization will enable agencies to better support and meet the needs of citizens.

“We recognize the importance of this modernization during a global pandemic where we need to make sure that our agencies’ information and essentially the public’s privacy is protected and protected well,” Tanden said Tuesday during her nomination hearing.

She also cited the need to deploy modern platforms to better serve the public and challenges when it comes to funding IT modernization efforts.

“The real challenge here is, frankly, it takes an investment of resources in one year, because we don’t have capital budgets or systems that create some disincentives,” Tanden said. 

“But I appreciate the resources in the technology modernization fund, and it’s one of the reasons why the president has proposed a substantial increase in TMF, as well as the Information Technology Oversight and Reform [fund].” 

A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report says countries with large militaries, nonstate groups and other adversaries could use land-attack cruise missiles (LACM) to launch attacks against the U.S. and lowest-cost architectures composed of fighter jets, surface-to-air missiles and radars for homeland cruise missile defense would cost approximately $75 billion to $180 billion over two decades to purchase and operate.

CBO said in a report published Tuesday that deploying additional regional or local defenses to protect Hawaii, Alaska and U.S. territories would contribute to that cost. The report also cited the importance of positive identification of targets.

“Because many civilian aircraft fly in U.S. airspace, targets would have to be positively identified as threats before defenses could engage them,” the report reads. “However, very little time is available for defenses to act against LACMs, so any delay in achieving positive identification would significantly challenge the effectiveness of defenses, and even advanced battle management systems might be hard-pressed to respond in time.”

CBO said policymakers should look at the likelihood of an attack by adversaries using alternatives to LACMs when assessing whether and how much to invest in a wide-area cruise missile defense system.