Day: July 7, 2021

Virgin Orbit is gearing up for a third launch this year — and an even busier 2022.

The company aced its second spaceflight in less than six months last Wednesday (June 30), lofting seven small satellites to orbit on a mission named “Tubular Bells: Part 1,” after the first track on the first album ever released by Virgin Group founder Richard Branson‘s Virgin Records.

Virgin Orbit is still analyzing the data from “Tubular Bells: Part 1.” But the early returns suggest that the flight was completely nominal, keeping the company on track for one more flight this year, likely in the fall, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart told Space.com. 

In photos: Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket for satellite missions

If all goes well with that third flight, the company aims to launch six missions in 2022 and boost the cadence significantly again the following year.

“As we go through next year, we will be hitting the gas, in our production team primarily, just to get some more rate, and ramping up to at least double that [launch rate] in ’23,” Hart said.

Virgin Orbit uses a 70-foot-long (21 meters) rocket known as LauncherOne, which is capable of lofting 1,100 lbs. (500 kilograms) of payload to Earth orbit. LauncherOne lifts off beneath the wing of a carrier plane known as Cosmic Girl, which drops the rocket after reaching a predetermined location and altitude.

This air-launch system provides flexibility, efficiency and responsiveness that has helped Virgin Orbit carve out a place in the competitive small-launch market, company representatives have said. (Fellow Virgin Group company Virgin Galactic, which is gearing up to launch Branson and several other people on a milestone suborbital flight this weekend, also uses an air-launch system.) 

Both of Virgin Orbit’s successful spaceflights to date have lifted off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in southern California. But the company will expand its geographic portfolio soon; it plans to launch missions from both Guam and England next year, Hart said. 

In addition, Brazil recently selected Virgin Orbit to fly from Alcântara Launch Center, on the country’s northern coast. The company is also in serious discussions to lift off from Japan, Australia and “half a dozen other countries,” Hart said. “It’s really an exciting time.”

Over the longer haul, he added, Virgin Orbit aims to have multiple 747 carrier planes stationed at various spots around the world. Such an expanded infrastructure would enable even higher launch rates, which is something that Virgin Orbit wants to achieve.

“We would like to be launching every week, or more,” Hart said. 

Virgin Orbit also plans to evolve and upgrade its launch system, allowing the delivery of payloads to higher Earth orbits, the moon and other planets, he added. In fact, a few years ago, the company formed a consortium with Poland-based satellite company SatRevolution (two of whose Earth-observing satellites went up on “Tubular Bells: Part 1”) and researchers from multiple Polish universities, with the goal of launching a cubesat mission to Mars in the next few years.

“We want to be part of the space economy, and we want to be an accelerator, to help this transformation that’s going on take place,” Hart said.

Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

The western United States is experiencing its worst drought this century, threatening to kill crops, spark wildfires and harm public health as hot and dry conditions are expected to continue this month.

More than 93% of the land in seven Western states is in drought conditions, and nearly 59% of the area is experiencing extreme or exceptional drought—the two worst conditions—according to the latest figures released by the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Both figures are the highest this century for the area that covers all of Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and most of Utah.

Before this year, the record for the amount of Western land in extreme or exceptional drought was 43%, set in September 2003.

The conditions have led to fire and fishing restrictions across the West and have prompted wildfire alerts. The National Interagency Fire Center is warning that the intensifying drought across the West is creating significant wildfire risk over the next three months from California to the Northwest and across the northern Plains.

“Last year, we had a lot of wildfire and a lot of smoke. It would be very surprising if that did not happen again this year,” Douglas Kluck, NOAA’s director of regional climate services in Kansas City, said in a virtual presentation last week.

Agriculture Department reports show that several crops, including wheat, sunflowers and barley, are threatened by the extensive drought, which is concentrated in the West but is also affecting areas as far east as the Dakotas, Minnesota and Iowa.

“We have huge concerns up in the northern Plains. Conditions are not good,” Dennis Todey, director of USDA’s Midwest Climate Hub, said during the presentation.

The Drought Monitor said drought-stricken ranchers are selling their cattle because of a lack of feed and poor forage conditions.

At least eight national forests in the West have imposed fire restrictions. Fishing restrictions have been imposed on many rivers because of low flows and warm waters.

Although drought conditions have been exacerbated by recent record temperatures in the West, Kluck said the current drought has been developing since the spring of 2020.

“This has been a very slow-developing drought … that we’ve been talking about since last year,” Kluck said. “Some can date it back to last spring. The super-hot temperatures aren’t helping much.”

Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2021. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

Tencent Games has rolled out a new initiative in China that forces players to submit to a digital face scan to verify they aren’t minors. This is the company’s effort to comply with the Chinese government in its bid to curb video game addiction among minors.

The software makes use of AI to determine if players are attempting to trick the system, forcing players offline if they either fail or reject the request for the scan. This applies to all Tencent’s games between the hours of 10 PM and 8 AM. The use of AI will allow the system to detect players using tricks to circumvent the check, while continually learning from fraudulent attempts that were successful.

The measure, called “Midnight Patrol,” is another system that Tencent has implemented since Chinese authorities drafted a bill of requirements aimed at curbing video game addiction among Chinese minors. This included the requirement to have games use real names for account creation, so that play time and spending could be monitored and restricted for players under the age of 18. These requirements were put in place after gaming-related incidents sparked the authorities’ interest, according to Sixth Tone.

Tencent is the largest publisher for games in China, accounting for 55% of gaming market share in the first-half of 2020. It also produces the country’s most popular mobile game, Honor of Kings (a MOBA inspired by League of Legends), which was the highest-grossing mobile game in 2019 and 2020. It was the game called out specifically by Chen Lina, an accounting executive in eastern Jiangsu Province, who praised the new facial-scanning technology.

Tencent is a big player internationally, too. The company owns Riot Games, makers of League of Legends and Valorant, as well as Klei, the creators of Don’t Starve. It also holds stakes in numerous development studios, with investments into Remedy Games, Dontnod, and Bohemia in 2021 alone. It’s also not the only company clamping down on minors and video games, with Minecraft receiving an above-18 age restriction in South Korea.

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