In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA’s 2019 budget proposal defines efforts to establish a human outpost around the moon. A former International Space Station commander cautions against relinquishing the orbital lab too quickly. We may need to risk some terrestrial contamination of Mars if we are to search for life on the red planet. NASA’s budget stirring debate over new missions to Jupiter’s potentially habitable moon Europa.
Human Space Exploration
NASA rocket factory in Michoud completes test hardware for new deep-space rocket
Fox 8 of New Orleans (2/22): Another critical component of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, the intertank, is ready to move from its production facilities at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to the Marshall Space Flight Center for structural evaluation. The cylinder like structure houses rocket avionics and serves as the attachment hardware for the big rocket’s two solid rocket boosters.
Trump calls for a $2.7B space station to orbit the moon
Houston Chronicle (2/21): A White House strategy for combining the best of NASA, its international partners and the U.S. private sector would lead to the assembly of the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOPG), a lunar orbiting space station for astronauts, by 2023. The estimated cost is about $2.7 billion, according to estimates included in NASA’s proposed $19.9 billion budget for 2019, a spending plan yet to be addressed by Congress. The first component, a power and propulsion module, would be launched in 2022. Once staffed, the lunar station would provide astronauts with access to the lunar surface and someday as a departure point for deep space destinations, including Mars.
Elon Musk’s vision of our space-age future comes with a serious cost
Mashable (2/14): SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s optimistic commercial strategy for sending humans to Mars is bound to cost a bunch to execute and prepare for.
Astronaut: Trump’s plan for the space station a huge mistake
CNN (2/22): The Trump administration’s plan to transition human space exploration from low Earth orbit to deep space calls for an end to NASA’s direct involvement in the International Space Station in 2025. That is a mistake, according to Leroy Chiao, former NASA astronaut and Space Station commander. “The biggest technical challenge to sending astronauts on farther and longer missions is biomedical: How do we keep them healthy? We need the ISS to help us find out,” he says in an op-ed that also applauds efforts by NASA to work more closely with visionary private companies. “We need it as an engineering test bed, so we can learn how to build robust life-support and other systems for voyages to destinations like Mars.”
Mars exploration: Proceed with caution
Daily Press of Hampton, Virginia (2/20): The Apollo missions to the lunar surface passed quickly, but not memories of a fine grained lunar dust that seemed to settle everywhere, on the astronauts and throughout their lander. Mars could present the same challenge to astronaut health, surface operations, habitats and other equipment, cautions Joel Levine, a retired scientist from NASA’s Langley Research Center.
Space Science
NASA budget proposal continues debate on when and how to launch Europa Clipper
Space News (2/22): NASA’s proposed 2019 budget promises to stir further debate over the timing, cost and strategies for further exploration of Jupiter’s ice and ocean covered moon Europa. Some, including a staunch advocate and member of Congress with influence over NASA spending want to send the Europa Clipper, a multiple flyby mission, as well as a costly lander to determine whether the moon is habitable. One option to hasten the exploration would be to launch with NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS).
NASA planetary protection officer suggests loosening limits on exploring Mars for life
Science (2/22): NASA’s new planetary protection officer, Lisa Pratt, suggests scientists may have to risk the human contamination of some parts of Mars in order to determine whether there is microbial activity on the red planet. Traditionally, the role of the protection officer is to impose spacecraft standards that keep Earthly hardware from introducing microbes. However, we need to know more sooner than later about Mars’ habitability if we are to send humans, Pratt told a gathering of NASA’s planetary science advisory committee in Washington.
A brief history of Martian exploration as the InSight lander prepares to launch
The Conversation (2/22): In May, NASA’s Mars InSight lander is to launch and later this year join six functioning spacecraft at the red planet dispatched by NASA and three other space agencies. The overall fascination with Mars seems linked to the notion the planet is a place humans can explore, perhaps inhabit. InSight will attempt to explore the planets subsurface by drilling down with sensors to listen for quakes, meteor impacts and other seismic activities.
Improved Hubble yardstick gives fresh evidence for new physics in the universe
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center (2/22): Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope offer fresh evidence that the universe is expanding faster than ever, findings that could challenge conventional physics.
Other News
Army’s imaging satellite up and running, but its future is TBD
Space New (2/22): Kestrel Eye, a U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command developed small satellite deployed from the International Space Station in October, has been declared “up and running.” It’s the focus of an experiment to help determine whether military units in the field can benefit from capturing imagery directly from small satellites with a view of the terrain surrounding them. The Adcole Maryland Aerospace manufactured satellite is larger than a CubeSat but nonetheless more compact than the typical reconnaissance satellite.
SpaceX barely missed catching a rocket nose cone with giant net on a boat
Space.com (2/22): Launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on Thursday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 placed a Spanish radar imaging satellite and a pair of developmental broadband communications satellites in orbit. Efforts by SpaceX, however, to recover the fairings that surrounded the payload at liftoff were instructive but unsuccessful.