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Deep Space Extra for Friday, July 22, 2016

July 22nd, 2016

In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA is at work on the countdown procedures for the Space Launch System exploration rocket. The SLS, scheduled to take flight in late 2018, is designed to start human explorers on future missions to deep space destinations.

Human Deep Space Exploration

SLS Launch Director outlines NASA’s big rocket countdown plan
NASAspaceflight.com (7/21): NASA’s Charlie Blackwell Thompson will direct the countdown activities leading to the launch of NASA’s Exploration Mission-1, an unmanned test flight of the Orion capsule atop a Space Launch System exploration rocket. The first test flight of the two cornerstones of NASA’s human deep space exploration strategy is planned for late 2018. Though the development of countdown procedures is still underway, there are some significant milestones for a mission that will boost Orion on a three-week mission around the moon and back to Earth. Currently, the plan calls for a two-day countdown.

NASA and Baylor join forces to discover new ways to protect astronauts
Sugar Land Sun, of Texas (7/21): NASA and the Center for Space Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston have initiated a six- to 12-year collaboration through the new NASA Transitional Research Institute. The institute will address the health challenges faced by astronauts assigned to future long-duration, deep space missions. The institute will open Oct. 1.

Space Science

Hubble telescope looks back in time to see far-off galaxies
New Scientist (7/21): Images from the Hubble Space Telescope take advantage of gravitational lensing, an effect predicted by Einstein, to look back billions of years in time.

How Big is the Great Red Spot?
Universe Today (7/21): Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot is shrinking. Actually a powerful atmospheric storm on the solar system’s largest planet, the red spot was 23,000 kilometers across when NASA’s Voyager 1 mission passed close during a 1970s flyby. More recently, the Hubble Space Telescope found the circular storm 16,500 miles across. Currently, the storm is under the watchful eye of NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which maneuvered into orbit on July 4.

NASA may build replacement instrument for Japanese astronomy mission 
Space News (7/21): On Mar. 26, ground controllers lost contact with Japan’s Hitomi X-ray space telescope, which was launched in February. In the aftermath, NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency have discussed the possibility of NASA providing a replacement for one of the telescope’s instruments, the Soft X-ray Spectrometer, on a new spacecraft. The launch of a successor to Hitomi could fall to the end of this decade.

Pew! Pew! Pew! Mars Rover Curiosity Can Now Fire Laser On Its Own
Space.com (7/21): Engineers have enabled NASA’s Curiosity rover to select some of its own rock targets for a laser analysis of their chemical composition, a time saver for mission planners. Curiosity landed in the red planet’s Gale Crater in August 2012 to seek evidence that Mars once had a more habitable warm, wet environment.

Even with most sensitive search yet, dark matter still proves elusive
Christian Science Monitor (7/21): Dark matter is believed to comprise about 80 percent of the mass of the universe. However, dark matter has avoided direct detection. A recent experiment furthering the search, the Large Underground Xenon dark matter detector, buried deep in a former South Dakota gold mine, has so far also come up empty.

This is what pictures from NASA’s WISE look like
Washington Post (7/21): Check out images of the comet Siding Spring from a NASA space telescope launched in December 2009.

Low Earth Orbit

Space explorers from around the world to land in Houston for 2019 meeting
Collectspace.com (7/21): The Association of Space Explorers, a worldwide organization comprised of astronauts and cosmonauts who have orbited the Earth at least once, will gather in Houston for the organization’s annual Planetary Conference in 2019. The more than 30-year-old ASE has met in the U.S. only three times previously. 2019 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

Commercial to Low Earth Orbit

ULA CEO: the Path to Vulcan is Clear
Satellite Today (7/20): New U.S. defense legislation should ensure sufficient imports of Russian RD-180 rocket engines for the launching of national security payloads atop the Atlas 5 rocket, according to Tory Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance, the Boeing/Lockheed Martin joint venture that produces the Atlas 5. The goal is to acquire enough of the Russian engines until ULA can complete development of the new Vulcan rocket, a successor to the Atlas 5 equipped with domestic rocket engines, by 2019.

Jack White Is Determined to Make ‘Vinyl History’ In Space
Time (7/20): Rocker Jack White intends to produce music in space. Details to come by the end of this month, according to the musician from White Stripes.

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