In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA’s sends exploration road map to Congress. Antarctica greenhouse produces vegetables in extreme cold. Parker Solar Probe sends its first data and it includes images of the Milky Way and Jupiter.

Human Space Exploration

NASA sends Congress long awaited human exploration roadmap

Spacepolicyonline.com (9/24): The report was called for by Congress in the 2017 NASA Transition Authorization Act and due originally by last December 1. The exploration road map lays out five broad, goals, each familiar: Transition low Earth operations to the commercial sector and make it able to support NASA needs and economic growth. Develop capabilities for lunar surface activities, while facilitating more distant missions. Robotically identify lunar resources. Return human explorers to the lunar surface. Use the Moon to demonstrate the capabilities for the human exploration of Mars and more distant destinations. The U.S. House and Senate have scheduled hearings on NASA space leadership for Wednesday.

Why NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) is indispensable

The Hill (9/24): The Space Launch System (SLS), the NASA entry into a future global heavy lift rocket arena that is to include China’s Long March 9 as well as U.S. commercial options like Blue Origin’s New Glenn and SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), is indispensable, writes Peter Huessy, director of Strategic Deterrent Studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies of the Air Force Association. He notes that the U.S. “all the eggs in one basket” launch strategy in place at the time of the 1986 shuttle Challenger tragedy forced the nation scramble to find launch services for its national security needs. The range of NASA and commercial options on the horizon should meet both the nation’s exploration and national security needs, according to Huessy.

Where no commercial satellite bus has gone before

SpaceNews.com (9/24): Sometime in 2022, NASA plans to launch the first element of a lunar orbiting, human tended Gateway, a power and propulsion module. NASA plans to launch the power module on a commercial rocket. So, it’s no accident the Gateway’s cornerstone module is likely to resemble a commercial communications satellite at liftoff. NASA is striving to make the Gateway a commercial and international partnership.

 

Space Science

Antarctica greenhouse produces cucumbers, tomatoes and more in Mars-like test

Space.com (9/24): Researchers associated with DLR, the German Aerospace Center, believe their Antarctic greenhouse experiment, EDEN ISS, could serve as a model for growing food for human deep space explorers. Their greenhouse produced lettuce, tomatoes, herbs and other vegetables during extreme cold temperatures over a South Pole winter.

Japan has launched a miniature space elevator

Science News (9/24): Cargo, launched from Japan on Saturday and on its way to a Thursday arrival at the International Space Station (ISS), includes a Japanese small satellite experiment intended to test the feasibility of a space elevator. STARS-Me consists of two satellites linked with a 10 meter tether to assess whether a small robot representing an elevator car can move along the cable as they fly in space. A functioning space elevator would lift people and payloads from the Earth’s surface to orbit.

A comet or Titan: The next New Frontiers mission

The Space Review (9/24): A look at the decision NASA faces between two compelling science missions on a par with the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the outer solar system, Juno to Jupiter and the Osiris-Rex asteroid sample return mission, all three now under way. The choices are between CAESAR, a return to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, first explored by the European Rosetta mission, to gather a sample for return to Earth and Dragonfly, a lengthy reconnaissance mission to Saturn’s moon Titan, which appears to have Earth-like qualities. Once launched, either mission would stretch from the mid-2020s into the late 2030s.

Dust storms on Titan spotted for the first time

NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (9/24): Observations from the Cassini mission to Saturn reveal the presence of dust storms on the moon Titan, a phenomena seen previously only on the Earth and Mars. Launched in 1997, the joint NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) Cassini mission came to an end in 2017.

Here are the first pictures from the Parker Solar Probe. Wait that’s not the sun

Universe Today (9/24): NASA’s Parker Solar Probe lifted off August 12 on a mission to study the sun and its dynamics closer than ever before. Now settling in on its mission, Parker has sent its first data, including images of the Milky Way and Jupiter.

 

Other News

Bridenstine says relationship with Roscosmos head Rogozin is positive

SpaceNews.com (9/24): During an appearance Monday before the Space Business Roundtable in Washington, D.C., NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine characterized as “positive” the relationship he’s forging with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency. That’s despite past rhetoric. Rosmosmos has taken the lead from contractor Energia for an inquiry into the causes of a small air pressure leak and hole found in the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) in late August. The small opening was quickly repaired. The incident has not slowed plans to launch Russia’s Soyuz MS-10 to the space station on October 11 with a NASA astronaut and cosmonaut, Bridenstine said. The two leaders will confer further at the MS-10 launch from Kazakhstan.