Today’s Deep Space Extra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. Presidential contender Jeb Bush calls on policymakers to provide NASA with an “aspirational” purpose. NASA this week established a Planetary Defense Coordination Office to lead the discovery and tracking of near Earth objects that may pose a collision threat. Pluto surprises. The Hubble Space Telescope spots merging galaxies. Solar system planets have atmospheres; just one though is capable of supporting intelligent life. Mars boasts rolling sand dunes. Future International Space Station commander plans to celebrate the orbiting lab’s unique history. U.S. Air Force re-schedules plans to launch an experimental missile warning satellite. Veggie, an International Space Station experiment, contends with fungus. Bigelow Aerospace, developers of a prototype inflatable space habitat, lays off as milestone launch nears.

Human Deep Space Exploration

Jeb Bush reiterates need for aspirational goals as Challenger anniversary approaches
Spacepolicyonline.com (1/7): Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush aligned with a 13-year-old during a primary campaign event in New Hampshire this week. “It’s not closed, but it’s lost its purpose. There is no big aspirational purpose,” Bush, a former Florida governor, said Wednesday of NASA during a stop in Portsmouth. Bush called for NASA, which is currently preparing to resume human deep space exploration, to embrace an “aspirational purpose.”

Unmanned Deep Space Exploration

NASA establishes Planetary Defense Coordination Office
Spacepolicyonline.com (1/7): NASA established a Planetary Defense Coordination Office on Thursday to lead the agency’s near Earth object detection and tracking activities and to coordinate with other government agencies in formulating a response to collision threats. The coordination office will be overseen by NASA’s science mission directorate in Washington. The move comes in response to external recommendations from the National Research Council, NASA Advisory Council and the agency’s inspector general.

Pluto has a lot more going on than we thought, say scientists
Christian Science Monitor (1/7): Signs of geological activity on distant Pluto surprise scientists. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft carried out the first ever flyby of Pluto in mid-July. The data and imagery gathered by the planetary probe launched in 2006 continue to trickle back to Earth. One thing is clear: Pluto’s landscape changes.

NASA’s Hubble captures image of 2 galaxies merging
USA Today (1/5): The merging star systems are forming a new galaxy, NGC 6052, located 230 million light years away and captured in new imagery provided by the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency.

What is the atmosphere like on other planets?
Universe Today (1/7): Each solar system planet has an atmosphere. Only the Earth’s is just right for life as we know it.

NASA releases breathtaking Mars panorama showing ‘dark-sand’ dune
Houston Chronicle (1/7): Photos of sand dunes from NASA’s Curiosity rover provide a stunning red planet panorama.

Low Earth Orbit

NASA astronaut to highlight history of the Space Station from orbit
Collectspace.com (1/7): Veteran NASA astronaut Jeff Williams plans to emphasize the history of the International Space Station during his third trip to the six person orbiting research laboratory that is scheduled to begin Mar. 18 with his launch along with two Russian cosmonauts, Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin. They will join U.S., Russian and European colleagues to oversee tests of an experimental inflatable module and efforts to establish docking ports for U.S. commercial crew vehicles among other activities.

U.S. Air Force pushes back experimental missile warning satellite 
Space News (1/7): The U.S. Air Force has pushed back by two years plans to launch an experimental missile warning satellite as a secondary payload. The Air Force pointed toward a launch in 2018-19 in a request for information published earlier this week.

Space fungus! Mold attacks Space Station plants
Discovery.com (1/7): NASA’s experiment with plant growth on the International Space Station confronts an obstacle, a fungus infection.

Commercial to Low Earth Orbit

Layoffs hit Bigelow Aerospace
Space News (1/7): In transition from research and development, Bigelow Aerospace lays off. Bigelow is nearing a milestone as the company’s Bigelow Expandable Activity Module awaits launch to the International Space Station and a long space trial. Inflatable modules could become a pivotal component of a future commercial Space Station as well as in space habitats or habitats on planetary surfaces.