In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA clears the Mars Insight lander’s heat shield for launch on Saturday. NASA looks to the U.S. private sector for future lunar lander missions. The annual U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit of NASA’s major projects finds that cost and schedule performance has declined.
Space Science
Managers clear InSight for launch after heat shield review
Spaceflightnow.com (5/1): Last month, engineers discovered a crack in the heat shield of NASA’s 2020 Mars rover, now more than two years from launch on a mission to find and cache soil and rock samples for eventual return to Earth. The find prompted another assessment of the heat shield on the NASA Mars InSight lander, which is slated to liftoff on Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The InSight heat shield, a crucial part of the spacecraft’s anticipated late November landing on the Red Planet, has been cleared for the mission. Insight’s launch window extends through June 5.
NASA’s Mars cubesats ‘Wall-E’ and ‘Eva’ will be first at another planet
Space.com (5/1): NASA’s next Mars lander, Mars Insight, will be accompanied by a pair of small satellites as it lifts off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, as soon as Saturday. Named Wall-E and Eva, the duo will help to chart new territory for small sats in deep space. Their task is to relay communications back to Earth as InSight attempts to land on Mars in late November to demonstrate their capabilities. Other spacecraft in orbit around Mars will serve as the primary communications relay during the landing. InSight’s launch period extends from May 5 to June 8.
ExoMars has sent back its first images from Mars
Universe Today (5/1): The joint European/Russian ExoMars mission’s Trace Gas Orbiter maneuvered into orbit around Mars in October 2016. The companion Schiaparelli lander crashed, but an initial wave of missions to find evidence for life on Mars continues with the orbiter. The orbiter’s first images, gathered April 15, have been transmitted to Earth.
Private companies took over rocket launches. Can they do the same for Moon landers?
Popular Mechanics (5/1): NASA recently cancelled plans for Resource Prospector, a robotic mission to the Moon to seek evidence for water ice and other potential resources for human explorers. Instead, NASA plans to turn to the commercial sector to carry out the missions with some of Prospector’s instruments, using a business model it forged with commercial resupply missions to the International Space Station.
Rare metals on Mars and Earth point to colossal impacts
Space.com (5/1): The Earth and Mars appear to share more than proximity in common, a high iron and iron related mineral content. A new study suggests both planets experienced impacts with high iron content objects during the late stages of their formation. The work was carried out by scientists in the U.S. and Japan and published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Sunspots are vanishing quicker than expected
Spaceweather.com (5/1): As the sun slumps into solar minimum, sun spot activity has diminished dramatically. The rapid change has some concerned that a subsiding solar wind will be accompanied by a rise in galactic cosmic radiation.
Other News
GAO finds little to cheer about in annual assessment of NASA’s major projects
Spacepolicyonline.com (5/2): The annual U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit of NASA’s major projects finds that cost and schedule performance has declined. The overall impact, however, is not clear because of uncertainties regarding the final cost of the Orion crew capsule. In all, 26 major projects with a total cost value of $61 billion were assessed, including the Space Launch System (SLS), Commercial Crew, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), WFIRST and a mission to Europa, an ocean covered moon of Jupiter. Plans for a human tended Lunar Orbiter Platform Gateway (LOPG) and Europa Lander add more uncertainty, the GAO said. NASA took exception, noting that in 2009 it instituted a Joint Cost and Confidence Level policy, which has greatly reduced project cost growth and schedule uncertainty.
Business Insider (5/1): In an interview, Amazon founder and multi billionaire Jeff Bezos declares his West Texas based rocket company Blue Origin his most important business venture. His goal, said Bezos, is to enable heavy industry to transition off the Earth and in to space to preserve the planet’s beauty. Eventually, millions of people will live and work in space, he predicts.