In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA’s Deep Space Gateway could use lunar orbit to prepare NASA and its partners for a human mission to Mars.

 

Don’t Miss Today’s Live Stream Event!

Please join us today for a unique “SpaceCafé” sponsored by the Coalition, featuring NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations William Gerstenmaier and former NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate / former astronaut John Grunsfeld. They will discuss how Exploration and Science work together to inspire and inform NASA’s journeys into deep space. The event will begin at approximately 5:45 pm MT, 7:45 pm ET, and can be accessed here: https://www.goalenwatch.com/space-symposium

 

Human Deep Space Exploration

NASA’s human spaceflight plans come into focus with announcements of Deep Space Gateway

Spaceflightinsider.com (4/1): The evolving Space Launch System (SLS) will play a crucial role in NASA’s plans to establish a Deep Space Gateway, a lunar orbital assembly of habitats, solar electric propulsion, power and logistics components envisioned for a Mars mission spacecraft. Exploration Mission-1, planned for late 2018-19 and possibly piloted, will introduce the SLS Block 1 with an Orion capsule as the primary payload. Upgrades will increase the ability of the SLS to carry secondary as well as heavier primary payloads to the lunar vicinity, establishing even deeper human space capabilities. In 2029, a year-long crewed mission in a lunar orbiting deep space habitat would set the stage for a human Mars mission in the 2030s. Commercial and international participation could be significant. Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, presented the blueprint before the NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee last week.

U.S., Russia have opportunities for expanding space cooperation despite tensions

Sputnik International (4/3): “Space is a good place for cooperation because it’s a place where it’s not that easy to live and to work, where we have to rely on each other, help each other,” observed Sergey Krikalev, executive director of manned programs at Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, in Colorado Springs, prior to the opening of the annual Space Symposium. “So even when the political difficulties began, our professional cooperation has continued as it was.” he noted of continuing cooperation aboard the International Space Station after Russia’s incursion into the Ukraine. The ties could lead to cooperation in human deep space exploration.

 

Space Science

Wheeler: Funding for NASA: We have to get it right

Houston Chronicle (4/1): In an op-ed, University of Texas astronomer J. Craig Wheeler urges policy makers to seek advances on a broad science front, based on fact driven science results. “Everyone should be concerned that we get this right, or lose our competitive advantage. As a bonus, we gain a deeper understanding of our place in the universe, writes Wheeler

Electric sand: How Titan’s dunes got their weird shapes

Scientific American (4/1): The deserts of Titan, the primordial Earth-like moon of Saturn, sport wind shaped dunes, features discovered with radar sensors on the Cassini mission spacecraft, a joint U.S. and European effort that has been orbiting the ringed planet since 2004.

Europa lander work continues despite budget uncertainty

Space News (3/31): NASA is moving ahead with efforts to develop a robotic planetary science mission that could land on Europa, the ice and ocean covered moon of Jupiter and a possible deep space habitable environment. The multibillion dollar mission was omitted from the Trump administration’s recent 2018 NASA budget proposal. A mission concept review is planned for June.  “We’re going to pursue the mission concept review and let the chips fall where they may as we proceed,” Barry Goldstein, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explained March 29 before the Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science at the National Academies.

Four candidates for Planet 9 located

Universe Today (3/31): A British/Australian citizen science project helps identify four possible candidates for Planet 9, a mysterious object believed to lurk deep in the solar system. Yet to be located, the object’s gravitational influence has been observed.

 

Low Earth Orbit

Trump’s Air Force pick says increasing space-threat awareness a priority

Space News (4/2): President Trump has nominated Heather Wilson as Secretary of the Air Force. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Wilson said that defending space would be a top priority for her. “It’s the development of strategies, techniques, and capabilities to be able to fight through, to be resilient, to be as crafty and successful in space as we are in air,” Wilson testified.

United Launch Alliance wins three U.S. government satellite launches

Spaceflightnow.com (4/1): The U.S. Air Force and NASA have purchased three United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 and Delta 4 launches for intelligence gathering and civilian polar orbiting weather satellite missions.

 

Major Space Related Activities for the Week

Major space related activities for the week of April 3-7, 2017

Spacepolicyonline.com (4/2): The Space Foundation’s annual Space Symposium gets under way Monday in Colorado Springs. On Tuesday, NASA will discuss plans for concluding the long-running Cassini mission at Saturn. In Washington, lawmakers face an April 28 deadline for deliberations on a 2017 federal budget. The current 2017 budget continuing resolution expires then, with a government shutdown possible in the aftermath.