In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA and its international partners gather in Tokyo to discuss Deep Space Gateway (DSG) and plans for future human exploration. News reports raise concerns of over possible Trump Administration plans to bring International Space Station operations to an end in 2025. Ariane 5 launch with two communications satellites and NASA science payload emerges from ground station signal drop out.

 

Human Space Exploration

This was a huge week for the NASA-Russia lunar Space Station and the future of spaceflight

Popular Mechanics (1/23): Representatives from NASA and its partner agencies in the International Space Station met in Tokyo this week to discuss plans for the Deep Space Gateway (DSG), a NASA proposed human lunar orbiting outpost, offering access to the moon’s surface while serving as a depot for missions Mars and other deep space destinations. Discussions over partner contributions are continuing. Russia would like to provide a multi-purpose module serving as a docking port, laboratory and airlock for spacewalks.

Nelson warns administration against terminating ISS in 2025

Spacepolicyonline.com (1/25): U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, top Democrat on the Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, warned the Trump administration not to terminate the NASA led International Space Station as part of his 2019 fiscal year budget proposal. A story in Verge earlier this week raised the prospect of a 2025 termination based on a look at draft budget documents. “If the administration plans to abruptly pull us out of the International Space Station in 2025, they’re going to have a fight on their hands,” cautioned Nelson in a statement that raised concerns about damage to the economy in his home state of Florida and commercial space in general.

NASA honors 7 killed on Space Shuttle Columbia 15 years ago

Associated Press via New York Times (1/25): An annual NASA Day of Remembrance tribute at the Kennedy Space Center for the seven astronauts that perished aboard the shuttle Columbia on February 1, 2003 included Tal Ramon, son of the first Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, one of the casualties. Ramon performed two songs and joined in other tributes.

 

Space Science

NASA’s next Mars lander passes key test ahead of May launch

Coalition Member in the News: Lockheed Martin

Space.com (1/25): InSight, NASA’s next Mars lander, is preparing to depart its Lockheed Martin birthplace in Littleton, Colorado, for a May 5 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Earlier this week, engineers at Lockheed Martin unfurled the spacecraft’s solar arrays in a test. InSight was designed to probe the Red Planet’s interior.

 

Other News

Ariane 5 rocket places 2 Satellites in orbit despite telemetry anomaly

Spaceflightinsider.com (1/25): A pair of commercial communications satellites, one carrying a first ever NASA “ride share” science mission payload, achieved orbit late Thursday following a liftoff atop an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana that soon grew suspenseful when communications were lost at second stage separation. It was not clear whether the SES-14 and Al Yah 3 satellites were in the correct orbit. If correctly deployed, both primary payload satellites were to continue to geosynchronous orbits. NASA’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) instrument, attached to the SES-14 communications satellite, is to carry out first ever high altitude observations of interactions between low altitude weather, solar activity and the Earth’s magnetic field in the planet’s ionosphere.

SES-14 in good health and on track despite launch anomaly

SES (1/26): The Luxembourg based communications satellite company reports it is develop a new orbiting raising strategy following the Ariane 5 launch of its SES-14 satellite with a NASA ride share science payload, the Global-scale Observation of the Limb and Disk instrument. The satellite is in good health but orbit raising activities are expected to take four week longer than planned.

X-Prize teams plan to keep shooting for the moon

Space News (1/25): Earlier this week, the decade long Google Lunar X-Prize announced it was ending its $30 million competition among global commercial companies to determine who could be first to land a spacecraft on the moon and conduct operations. Just five teams remained in the running. Moon Express, Synergy Moon, Team Indus, Space IL and Team Hakuto, of the U.S., India, Israel and Japan, intend to carry on with their missions. A new sponsor for the competition is possible as well.

Op-ed | Applauding the Google Lunar X-Prize

Space News (1/23): Bob Richards, CEO of Moon Express, one of the Google Lunar X-Prize’s U.S. legacy competitors, applauds the now suspended private sector competition. “I applaud X-Prize and Google for issuing a bold challenge with a big prize attached and sticking with it all these years,” write Richards. “The existence of the prize has been and will continue to be an important part of the history of humanity’s permanent return to the moon.”

NASA removes a piece of historic Mission Control as restoration efforts ramp up

Houston Chronicle (1/25): NASA is stepping up efforts to restore the agency’s original Mission Control room back to the way it was on July 20, 1969, the day Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land and set foot on another planetary body, the moon. The room was retired in 1992. So far, backers have raised $4 million of the $5 million needed to carry out the detailed restoration.