Today’s Deep Space Extra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. A new NASA primer outlines a three step strategy for the human exploration of Mars. NASA’s Mars strategy will require high profile milestones. NASA considers a space habitat module as an essential part of a human journey to Mars. Mars’ immense Gale crater once hosted transient but long lasting bodies of water that raise the prospects for home grown life. Distant Pluto sports blue skies. Vanishing craters on Saturn’s moons puzzle scientists A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket places U.S. national security payloads in orbit. Russia greets space burger proposal with skepticism. California congressman Kevin McCarthy bows out of U.S. House speaker contest. Sierra Nevada plans to resume unpowered test flights of the Dream Chaser. Backers to seek FAA horizontal launch licensing for Spaceport Colorado near Denver.
Human Deep Space Exploration
NASA releases ‘Journey to Mars’ primer
Orlando Sentinel (10/8): NASA presented a new 36 page primer on the agency’s Mars exploration planning late Thursday. The three step advance starts with work aboard the International Space Station to study new technologies and issues affecting the physical and mental health of astronauts on long missions. Tests of deep space hardware follow in cis-lunar space, followed by human missions to the Martian environs.
‘The Martian’ and obstacles to manned space exploration
Wall Street Journal (10/8): High profile milestones may be a key element of NASA’s unfolding strategy to reach Mars with humans in the 2030s, according to an examination of the technology and budget challenges of advancing U.S. human space flight.
NASA may fly habitat with first Orion
Aviation Week & Space Technology (10/8): NASA’s deep space mission planners point to an in-space habitat as the next major piece of hardware needed for astronauts launching to Mars. Lockheed Martin is among companies looking into the requirement. The module could be launched on the first deep space test flight of the Orion spacecraft planned for late 2018. A version of the habitat could be placed in lunar orbit for use by astronauts during test missions.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
Mars once had great lakes and rivers, according to rover data
Washington Post (10/8): New findings from NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars provide evidence for ancient but long lasting bodies of water in environmental conditions suitable for microbial life. Curiosity landed in Gale, a large impact crater, in August 2012.
Mars rover finds Gale crater was once a big lake
Discovery.com (10/8): Mars’ Gale crater was host long ago to stable bodies of water, according to new research from more than 40 scientists associated with NASA’s Curiosity rover mission. The findings are based on the rover’s study of sediments on the floor of the large impact crater. The bodies of water in the crater lasted for hundreds to thousands of years, suggesting a warmer, wetter climate on Mars at about the same time life was emerging on Earth. Other places on Mars were wetter as well, according to Cal tech planetary geologist John Grotzinger, lead author of a research paper published in the journal Science.
Pluto: A world of blue skies and red ice
Discovery.com (10/8): Far off Pluto sports blue skies, a revelation from the latest imagery transmitted to Earth by NASA’s New Horizons mission. New Horizons carried out the first flyby of Pluto on July 14.
Why are craters on Saturn’s moons vanishing?
Space.com (10/8): Craters on the moons of Saturn appear to be disappearing, according to researchers, who published their findings in the journal Icarus. The NASA led Cassini and Voyager missions provided important imagery for the study. The erasing may be caused by geysers, tectonics, dust or actions of sub surface oceans,
Low Earth Orbit
Second Atlas 5 rocket launched in span of six days
Spaceflightnow.com (10/8): A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 successfully placed dual a U.S. National Reconnaissance Organization spacecraft payload in orbit early Thursday. The launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., included the release of CubeSat’s as well.
Space food planners back burgers for cosmic menu
TASS, of Russia (10/8): Russian space nutritionists weigh a proposal to place hamburgers on the menu of International Space Station crews. The proposal was met with skepticism because the fast food item is not a staple of the Russian diet.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
Commercial space supporter McCarthy drops House speaker bid
Spacepolicyonline.com (10/8): Favored to win, California Congressman Kevin McCarthy announced Thursday he will not run for House speaker and successor to John Boehner, who announced in late September he will leave the speaker’s post at the end of October. McCarthy, the House Majority Leader, is considered a commercial space advocate.
Sierra Nevada plans to resume Dream Chaser flight tests
Space News (10/9): Sierra Nevada plans to start unpowered flight tests of its upgraded Dream Chaser in 2016, Mark Sirangelo, the company’s corporate vice president, told the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, N.M. Sierra is competing for a NASA contract to launch supplies to the International Space Station with the winged reusable Dream Chaser. Damage to the test vehicle sustained two years ago at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., has been repaired.
Private spaceflight symposium gets update on Colorado Spaceport plans
Space.com (10/8): Backers of Spaceport Colorado will seek FAA licensing for horizontal, or runway, launches of space vehicles, from a facility near Denver, planners told those attending the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, N.M.