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Thursday’s CSExtra offers a collection of the latest reporting on space related activities from around the world. China prepares for a launch Thursday of Tiangong-1, the precursor to a future space station. In Florida, safety teams prepare for the Nov. 25 launching of NASA’s nuclear powered Mars Science Laboratory. NASA’s exo-planet hunting Kepler space telescope will need money for an extended mission, says a key scientist. Lawmakers press NASA and the White House for information on future James Webb Space Telescope funding plans. Tips on how to safely observe the extra energetic sun. Virgin Galactic nears the selection of pilots for its suborbital passenger spacecraft. A youthful strategy for mapping dark matter emerges. A German satellite faces a November demise.
1. From Xinhua.net of China: China prepares for the launching of Tiangong-1, or Heavenly Palace, on Thursday. The orbital spacecraft is the center piece of a rendezvous and docking demonstration mission. The mission is intended to establish the groundwork or the assembly of a future Chinese space station.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-09/29/c_131166950.htm
A. From the BBC: China’s emerging space program instills national pride. A video report.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15101890
2. From Florida Today: Safety and emergency management teams finalize their plans for launching NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory. Headed for a Nov. 25 Florida lift off, MSL was designed to study whether the Martian environment was or is suitable for some form of life. The roving spacecraft’s travels and scientific activities will be powered with Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators. Heat from the decay of Plutonium 238 is converted into electricity.
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20110929/NEWS02/309290002/Safety-team-finalizes-plan-nuke-powered-rover-launch?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Home
3. From the Washington Post: NASA’s Kepler space telescope, nearing the end of a 3.5 year primary mission to identify Earth like planets around other stars, could have difficulty receiving a funding extension, according to a key mission scientist.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/carl-sagan-supported-kepler-but-nasas-planet-hunter-needs-money-to-keep-searching/2011/09/28/gIQA6ZST4K_blog.html
4. From the Orlando Sentinel: Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf, who chairs NASA’s House appropriations subcommittee, asks for more details from the White House on plans to fund the over budget James Webb Space Telescope. The House has proposed canceling the space observatory that is considered the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/2011/09/wolf-presses-white-house-on-webb-telescope-funding.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+news%2Fspace%2Fspace_blog+%28Space+Blog+The+Write+Stuff%29
A. From Spacepolitics.com: California congressman Dana Rohrabacher asks NASA for a study of space re-fueling depots. The lawmaker has championed the use of depots as an alternative to NASA’s recently announced Space Launch System heavy lift rocket. The depot strategy might permit many smaller commercial rockets to do the work of the larger SLS if they can be refueled after they launch, he contends.
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2011/09/28/rohrabacher-calls-for-release-of-nasa-depot-study/
5. From Discovery.com: The sun has been especially active recently, erupting in solar flares and unleashing energetic clouds of particles that can strike the Earth’s magnetosphere, illuminating the aurora. The science website offers some techniques for safely observing the sun.
http://news.discovery.com/space/have-you-really-seen-the-sun-110928.html
6. From Aviation Week & Space Technology: Virgin Galactic nears the selection of pilots to fly its suborbital commercial spacecraft.
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/asd/2011/09/28/10.xml&headline=Virgin%20Galactic%20Nears%20Spaceship%20Crew%20Choice
7. From the Wall Street Journal: A young professor of cosmology at the University of California at Irvine and a grad student come from behind in a competition to develop techniques for mapping dark matter in the universe.
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/09/28/zot-uc-irvine-team-proves-stellar-at-mapping-dark-matter/?KEYWORDS=NASA
8. From Space.com: Germany’s Rosat X-ray astronomy satellite is headed for an early November re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. The 2.4 ton spacecraft, which orbits between 53 degrees North and South latitude, was decommissioned in early 1999. About 30 pieces of the spacecraft are expected to survive re-entry. Rosat, launched in 1990, is smaller than NASA’s Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite, which re-entered over the Pacific Ocean during the weekend.
http://www.exploredeepspace.com/13111-falling-satellite-rosat-november-crash.html
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