In Today’s Deep Space Extra… Utah and Hawaii are providing backdrops as experts develop the protocols for future explorers assigned to gather samples of Martian rocks and soil.
Human Deep Space Exploration
A dress rehearsal for life on Mars
Wall Street Journal (11/4): Participants in a Mars Society Mars mission analogue in Utah don’t leave the isolation of their habitat without their space suits. One recent crew included an astrobiologist, a science teacher and a health and safety officer.
Project to help develop Mars protocols
Hawaii Tribute Herald (11/6): Hawaii Volcanoes National Park will provide the setting as researchers develop protocols for collecting rock samples from Mars. The University of Hawaii at Hilo is directing the effort this month that will include time delays in communications of up to 20 minutes representing the lags that actual astronauts would encounter in their discussions with Earth.
Trump sets his sights on outer space as Election Day nears
Mother Jones (11/4): The U.S. presidential contender’s chief advisor on space, the former U.S. congressman Robert Walker, explains: Donald Trump would reach to the frontiers of the solar system by the end of the 21st Century. Mars may be too limiting. One destination beyond the red planet would be Jupiter’s ocean covered moon, Europa.
Sci-Fi epic ‘Arrival’ is best when it looks within
Village Voice (11/4): Arrival, a science fiction drama about a multi-alien spacecraft landing on Earth, opens in theaters on Friday. A young linguist, Louise Banks, and theoretical physicist, Ian Donnelly, attempt to break the language barrier with the alien heptopods before a global war breaks out. “…Arrival is entrancing, intimate, and moving. A sci-fi movie that looks not up at the stars but rather deep within,” writes reviewer Bilge Ebiri.
Space Science
Incoming! How NASA and FEMA would respond to an asteroid threat
Space.com (11/4): In late October, representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency joined with NASA to prepare for a hypothetical collision between the Earth and an asteroid. In the exercise, the threat was discovered much too late to mount a mission to divert the asteroid. The U.S. Air Force and Department of Energy participated in the table top exercise as well. “It’s not a matter of if, but when, we will deal with such a situation,” predicts Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s new Science Mission Directorate associate administrator. “But unlike any other time in our history, we now have the ability to respond to an impact threat through continued observations, predictions, response planning and mitigation.”
If a ‘big whack’ made the moon, did it also knock the Earth on its side?
New York Times (11/4): It’s long been proposed the Earth’s moon formed from a collision between a Mars-sized object and the Earth in the solar system’s early era. A new research effort that seeks to explain how the collision might account for some findings that draw the theory into question adds a new wrinkle. The impact knocked the Earth on its side and accelerated the spin rate. Over time, the tilt, separation and rotation rates became what they are now.
Sun hurls plasma cloud toward Earth
Spaceweather.com (11/6): A solar eruption on Saturday sent a Coronal Mass Ejection toward Earth. Plasma from the blast should reach the Earth on Tuesday, triggering geomagnetic storms and new auroral activity around the North and South poles of the Earth.
Undiscovered moons may lurk in our own solar system
Seeker.com (11/4): Two sources, the re-examination of data from flyby missions like NASA’s Voyager probes of the 1970s and powerful new telescopes, are turning up evidence of previously undiscovered moons in the solar system.
Arecibo observatory faces uncertain future
Sky and Telescope (11/4): The 1,000 foot wide, 53 year old radio telescope in Puerto Rico faces an uncertain future because of National Science Foundation flat budgets. NASA contributes $4 million to the annual operating budget of $12 million.
Low Earth Orbit
Rocket engine will need funds to reach lift off
Financial Times (11/6): U.K.’s Reaction Engines would rely on a hybrid air breathing/liquid oxygen rocket engine to boost a reusable single or two stage rocket into orbit. The brainchild of former Rolls Royce engineer Alan Bond is a potential competitor to SpaceX, whose reusable rockets would use traditional propulsion technologies.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
Musk predicts mid-December return to flight for Falcon 9
Space News (11/4): SpaceX founder Elon Musk pointed to a mid-December return to flight for the Falcon 9 launch vehicle, following an investigation into a Sept. 1 launch pad explosion of a Falcon 9 during preparations for a pre-launch engine firing. Musk pointed to the formation of helium ice within the Falcon 9’s second stage liquid oxygen propellant tank as the cause of the blast. In his Nov. 4 interview with CNBC on the matter, Musk did not identify the payload or the launch site selected for the planned return to flight.
Major Space Related Activities for the Week
Major space related activities for the week of November 7-11, 2016
Spacepolicyonline.com (11/6): The outcome of Tuesday’s U.S. elections, in Congress as well as the White House, promise to have an influence on future space policy. The House and Senate are in recess until after the balloting but have a round of 2017 budget matters awaiting. NASA will host briefings on the future of small satellites as part of future missions and on the upcoming launch of the CYGNSS small satellite Earth science constellation. The European Space Agency will host a briefing on the upcoming annual meeting of its ministerial council and actions pending on future European space initiatives.