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Today’s Deep Space Extra for Friday, October 21, 2016

October 21st, 2016

In Today’s Deep Space Extra… The new presidential administration must back NASA’s human Mars exploration ambitions with adequate financing and political support, writes Leroy Chiao, former NASA astronaut, International Space Station commander and member of the 2009 Review of Human Space Flight Plans Committee. A Soyuz capsule carrying three U.S. and Russian astronauts docked with the space station early this morning.

Human Deep Space Exploration

The Mars generation: Kicking the can down the road

Space.com (10/20): In an op-ed, Leroy Chiao, the retired NASA astronaut and member of the 2009 Augustine Commission appointed by then newly elected President Obama to assess the nation’s future in space, urges the next president and round of policy makers to aim for Mars by matching the goal with the necessary finances and political support. “… while it is true that NASA has received small increases in its budget and technological progress is being made, the funding and political resource commitments do not match the goal of landing humans on Mars in the 2030s,” writes Chiao.

NASA’s human Mars mission will require living off the land

Space.com (10/20): U.S. space agency researchers and planners realize that launching humans to Mars will require the knowledge and ability to support the explorers with resources derived from the red planet. Those resources include water from underground ice as well as oxygen and rocket fuels extracted from the thin Martian atmosphere and soil.

Space Science

Europe’s ExoMars enters Mars orbit, but lander feared lost

Space News (10/20): Available data suggests the European/Russian ExoMars mission’s Schiaparelli lander crashed as it descended to the Martian surface on Oct. 19, possibly because the parachute ejected early and the landing thruster system functioned only briefly. ESA quickly said the lander test provided a wealth of data that can be used during the next phase of the ExoMars European/Russian partnership that is to include the landing of a rover on Mars with instrumentation to seek evidence of biological activity. A 2020 launch of the next ExoMars orbiter and the rover is planned.

ESA’s Woerner: “I’m happy” with ExoMars even though fate of lander still unknown

Spacepolicyonline.com (10/20): European Space Agency Director General Jan Woerner praised the success of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which successfully maneuvered into orbit around Mars on Wednesday. TGO will function as a key communications relay asset when the second phase ExoMars orbiter and surface rover arrive at the red planet in 2020.

NASA learns more about how Mars is hemorrhaging water

Inverse (10/20): NASA’s Mars-orbiting Maven mission spacecraft is providing new insight into changes in the Martian environment. Those changes included the long-term loss of water molecules. Now cold and desert-like, the red planet appears to have been warmer and wetter during an earlier era that was perhaps conducive to biological activity.

Here are the last images we’ll ever see from Rosetta

Universe Today (10/20): The European Space Agency is providing a final set of images from the Rosetta mission spacecraft that descended to the surface of the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in September after more than two years of close-up scrutiny.

Brilliant X-ray flashes from faraway black holes?

Sky and Telescope (10/20): X-ray bursts of unexpected intensity led an astronomy team to the mysterious source, a class of intermediate black holes.

Getting a 3-D view of a Hubble ‘bubble’

Orlando Sentinel (10/20): The Hubble Heritage Project is giving iconic images from the famed space telescope’s three-dimensional makeovers.

Low Earth Orbit

Live coverage: Three-man crew docks with Space Station

Spaceflightnow.com (10/21): Russia’s Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft successfully docked with the International Space Station early Friday, restoring the orbiting science lab to six-person operations for the first time since Sept. 6. The docking at 5:52 a.m., EDT, delivered NASA’s Shane Kimbrough and Russia’s Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko. They were greeted by ISS commander Anatoli Ivanishin, of Russia, NASA’s Kate Rubins and Japan’s Takuya Onishi.

Interview: Space Station as base for exploring new frontier, says renowned U.S. scientist

Xinhuanet, of China (10/20): Space stations are a crucial stepping stone in the exploration of space, Edward Stone, a former director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tells China’s English language news service.

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