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Tuesday’s CSExtra offers a roundup of reporting and commentary on space activities taking place around the world. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden offers new details about his fall visit to China and future cooperation in space with Russia. NASA’s faces more budget and legislative uncertainty. Satellite sensors aid farmers with irrigation. NASA teams with the University of Colorado on climate research. Pluto: dwarf planet, or planet? Is the debate over?
1. Aviation Week & Space Technology: In an interview, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden offers some but not a lot of insight into future cooperation with China and Russia in space. Bolden’s fall visit to China is likely to be reciprocated. But the timing of a trip to the U. S. by Chinese officials and the kinds of activities suitable for cooperation remains a topic left to the White House and its inter agency policy making mechanisms. As far as Russia, the U.S. is more interested in multi-national rather than bi-lateral cooperation. Bolden adds he has solid support from President Obama. http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?id=news/asd/2010/11/25/02.xml&headline=Bolden%20Treads%20Softly%20On%20China,%20Other%20Issues&channel=space.
2. Two from Monday’s The Space Review:
http://www.thespacereview.com/
A. In “NASA’s extended limbo,” Space Review editor Jeff Foust concludes NASA’s legislative future remains much undefined, largely because of an anticipated mis-match between the goals outlined in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, which has been signed into law, and the agency’s appropriations bill for 2011. The spending measure remains in the hands of a lame duck Congress. There is the prospect for a second continuing resolution that will hold spending and program priorities at 2010 levels and objectives, or a ramp down to 2008 spending levels.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1731/1
B. In “Year of the solar system” Until recently, the uncertainty over the future of NASA’s human exploration program has obscured similar concerns over the fate of robotic exploration, notes Louis Friedman, the retired executive director of the Planetary Society. That’s changing, however, with the cost overruns facing the James Webb Space Telescope. Future missions to Jupiter, Mars may be in jeopardy.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1733/1
3. From the New York Times: Satellite sensors are helping farmers determine how much water their crops need and how best to optimize the use of what is becoming a limited resource.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/business/energy-environment/29iht-rbogwater.html?_r=1&src=busln&scp=2&sq=NASA&st=cse
4. From the Boulder Daily Camera of Colorado: The University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center collaborate on the new Sun-Climate Research Center in Boulder. Scientists at the new center will attempt to distinguish between natural and human influences on the changing climate.
http://www.coloradodaily.com/cu-boulder/ci_16738482#axzz16lRUtiCW
5. From Space.com: Planetary scientist Alan Stern makes the case for Pluto as a planet rather than the more recent designation as a Dwarf Planet. Stern leads the NASA’s New Horizon’s mission, the first planetary probe with Pluto and other Kuiper Belt objects as a destination.
http://www.exploredeepspace.com/scienceastronomy/pluto-planet-debate-stern-qanda-101129.html
6. From Wired.com: A decade of comet studies suggest the presence of a Jupiter-sized object at the distant reaches of the solar system with gravitational influence steering ice and dust in the Earth’s direction.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/11/oort-cloud-companion/
7. From WFOR-TV, Miami: A look 60 feet below the waves of the Atlantic Ocean off Key Largo, Fla. Aboard Aquarius, an underwater research laboratory long operated by NOAA, NASA astronauts train for missions and test equipment for future space missions.
http://cbs4.com/local/aquarius.nasa.training.2.2027250.html
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