In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine will announce astronaut assignments for NASA Commercial Crew Program test flights next week. Congress takes steps to re-authorize the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) as it overcomes cost and schedule issues. European scientists announce evidence for a pool of briny liquid water beneath the Martian south pole.
Human Space Exploration
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announcing commercial crew in Houston
Coalition Member in the News – Boeing
Houston Chronicle (7/25): The U.S. has relied on Russia and its Soyuz rocket and capsule to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station since July 2011, when NASA’s shuttle missions came to an end. On August 3, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine plans to announce the astronauts assigned to the first crewed test flights aboard the spacecraft developed by the agency’s Commercial Crew Program partners, Boeing and SpaceX, to restore a U.S. human space launch capability. The Johnson Space Center in Houston, home to the astronaut corps, will host Bridenstine for the announcement.
The cosmic radiation forecast could be bad for a human Mars mission
Bloomberg Business Week (7/26): The sun appears to be entering an unusual solar minimum, a period of little sunspot development and lower magnetic flux. That could mean a retreat in the sun’s influence across the solar system, allowing cosmic radiation from sources outside the solar system to rise. That could raise the radiation threat from cosmic sources to human explorers as they venture beyond the shield like protection of the Earth’s magnetic field and into deep space.
Space Science
Coalition Member in the News – Northrop Grumman
USA Today (7/25): The U.S. House Science, Space and Technology Committee hosted the first of back to back two day hearings on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and the observatory’s latest cost and schedule issues. Despite the problems lawmakers expressed support for the telescope that promises to explore the earliest formation of star systems and their evolution as well as peer into the atmospheres of extra solar planets for signs of bio markers. Launch is now set for March 2021 and the price tag for development has eclipsed an $8 billion cost cap set by Congress in 2011. Lawmakers must now re-authorize the project, which seems a given. NASA will likely have to shuffle other science mission plans, and the strategy may not emerge until the 2020 budget cycle.
NASA weighs delaying WFIRST to fund JWST overrun
SpaceNews.com (7/25): In order to fully fund the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) through its planned March 2021 launch, NASA may slow development of a companion, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which has also been slowed by technical and cost issues. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, outlined the prospect Wednesday before a U.S. House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing. “The idea of WFIRST presumed that JWST would be on orbit and delivering science,” he told the committee. “So it is my recommendation that we move forward with WFIRST after we move forward with JWST.”
A watery lake is detected on Mars, raising the potential for alien life
New York Times (7/25): Italian scientists Wednesday announced that radar soundings from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter point to evidence for a large body of liquid briny water beneath the ice and dust layers of the Martian south pole. The claim was published in the journal Science. The site could be an exciting new place to search for life beyond Earth, the Times reports.
Other News
The little ion engine that could
Bloomberg Business Week (7/26): In Boston, startup Accion Systems Inc., is at work developing an ion engine for orbital spacecraft that could lower propulsion costs and eliminate bulky fuel tanks, complex propellant valves and chemicals fuels. Ideally, the company’s Tile engine, about the size of a deck of playing cards, could also help to dispose of the growing numbers of satellites in orbit around the Earth as their operational lives come to an end.
Successful Ariane 5 launch fills out European navigation fleet
Spaceflightnow.com (7/25): The last of a discontinued version of Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket family placed four Galileo navigation satellites in Earth orbit, early Thursday, promising to fill out the European version of the U.S. GPS satellite navigation system and to begin global service in 2020. The launch occurred at the European launch complex in French Guiana.
SpaceX’s second launch in three days lofts 10 more Iridium satellites
Spaceflightnow.com (7/25): Early Thursday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 10 small Iridium communications satellites into Earth orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.