In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA is moving ahead with plans for a second Mobile Launch Platform (MLP) for Space Launch System (SLS)/Orion missions. Psychology as well as technology appears a likely challenge for human deep space exploration.
Human Space Exploration
Cabana hopes second Mobile Launcher under contract in 10 months
Space News (5/24): NASA intends to have a second Mobile Launch Platform (MLP) under contract for assembly within 10 months, a move intended to help accelerate and improve the pace of Space Launch System (SLS)/Orion missions. The agency’s 2018 appropriations bill included $350 million for the platform at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the SLS launch site. The plan would have the second platform ready to support SLS/Orion mission launches in about five years, Bob Cabana, Kennedy’s director told a Space Transportation Association (STA) luncheon in Washington on Thursday.
Why we won’t get to Mars without teamwork
American Psychologist/American Psychological Association (5/24): Psychology could be just as significant as technology to those planning future human deep space exploration, including missions to Mars that will require many months of confinement and isolation from Earth. Researchers are finding that stability, openness to new ideas, resilience and a sense of humor are among the needed human qualities. Technologies capable of identifying points of friction among explorers may be needed as well.
Space Science
Scientists shrink chemistry lab to seek evidence of life on Mars
NASA/Goddard (5/24): Scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center are among experts globally working to equip ExoMars, a joint European/Russian Mars rover mission with a life detection experiment, the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer. Slated to launch in 2020, the ExoMars rover is to extract soil from below the Martian surface and test the material for the presence of organics. “The ExoMars Rover’s two-meter deep drill will provide MOMA with unique samples that may contain complex organic compounds preserved from an ancient era, when life might have gotten started on Mars,” explains MOMA Project Scientist Will Brinckerhoff, of NASA/Goddard.
Correction maneuver puts NASA’s InSight lander on path to Mars
Spaceflightinsider.com (5/24): The planned 40 second post launch maneuver of NASA’s Mars Insight launder on Tuesday refined a course that is to place the spacecraft on the Red Planet’s surface in late November. InSight was successfully launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on May 5. InSight is to probe Martian subsurface processes for the first time. Five more similar maneuvers are planned.
Johns Hopkins engineers helping NASA restore links to long-lost ‘zombie’ satellite
Baltimore Sun (5/25): Long considered lost, NASA’s IMAGE spacecraft was spotted in January by an amateur astronomer. Efforts to regain regular contact with IMAGE, however, are proving difficult. A team from the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University has joined in. IMAGE was launched in March 2000 to study interactions between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere.
Other News
Trump signs Space Policy Directive-2 initiating reform of commercial space regulations – update 2
Spacepolicyonline.com (5/24): Signed by the President Trump on Thursday, Space Policy Directive-2 implements policy changes discussed by the National Space Council while meeting at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in February and intended to strengthen U.S. space industry competitiveness. They affect primarily Department of Transportation and Commerce regulations and licensing requirements for commercial rocket launches and re-entries, space remote sensing, radio frequency assignments and export licensing.
Former Google Lunar X-Prize teams focused on new commercial and government opportunities
Coalition Member in the News – Astrobotic Technology, Inc.
Space News (5/24): Earlier this year, organizers of the Google Lunar X-Prize competition, a contest to encourage the development of commercial lunar landers with a $20 million prize for the first competitor able to place a spacecraft on the lunar surface, lost their sponsor. That’s not deterred competitors like Astrobotic, of Pittsburgh, and Moon Express, of Florida. They see new opportunities under NASA’s recently announced Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, in which NASA intends to purchase payload space on small commercial lunar landers for scientific instruments and other experiments. The effort was a topic at the Space Tech Expo in Pasadena, California, this week.