In Today’s Deep Space Extra… Vice President-elect Mike Pence may play a key space policy role in the Trump administration. Mercury astronaut John Glenn hospitalized.
Human Deep Space Exploration
Trump advisor sees Pence playing a major role in space policy
Space News (12/7): Vice President-elect Mike Pence is likely to help shape U.S. space policy under the next administration, according to Robert Walker, the former U.S. congressman and chair of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. One role Pence seems eager to embrace is as chair of a revived National Space Council, a cabinet-level policy group, Walker said. Earth sciences could be transitioned from NASA to other government agencies, according to Walker, who served in an advisory role to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The former congressman spoke Wednesday at a space law gathering.
Stopgap spending bill includes NASA hurricane repair funds
Space News (12/7): The next U.S. budget stopgap measure includes nearly $75 million in repair funds for NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, future launch site for human Space Launch System/Orion missions to lunar orbit and Mars. The current federal budget Continuing Resolution expires at midnight on Friday. Proposed legislation with funds to repair damages to Kennedy installations from Hurricane Matthew, would keep the federal government open through April 28, if the U.S. House and Senate and President Obama approve.
John Glenn, pioneering astronaut and former senator, is hospitalized
CBS News (12/7): Mercury astronaut John Glenn, 95, has been hospitalized at the Ohio State University James Cancer Center. On February 20, 1962, Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, an important step that led the Apollo astronauts to the lunar surface in 1969. Glenn, who went on to become a U.S. senator, launched once again at 77 in 1998 aboard the space shuttle Discovery.
Mars One says its first crew won’t land on red planet until 2032 but will they ever?
GeekWire (12/7): The Dutch Mars One venture announced a new timeline for its red planet colonization plan on Wednesday, just five days after the business side of the project made preparations to offer stock on Germany’s Frankfurt stock exchange. Once planned for the 2020s, the launch and landing of the first four Mars One colonists is now targeted for 2031-32, if funding becomes available.
Space Science
India’s Mars Orbiter Mission has a methane problem
Seeker (12/7): U.S. scientists believe India’s Mars Orbiter Mission, which maneuvered into orbit around the red planet in September 2014, may have carried instrumentation that cannot detect methane, an atmospheric gas whose sources include biological activity. Detection was a key mission goal.
These 17,000 rocks from the bottom of the world could unlock the secrets of existence
Washington Post (12/7): Secured in Maryland within the National Museum of Natural History’s support center are 17,000 pieces of rock recovered from Antarctica. The vast collection of meteorites includes fragments from space. Some are bits of other planets including Mars.
Dark matter not so clumpy after all
Space.com (12/7): New research conducted through the European Southern Observatory suggests that dark matter, a mysterious material estimated to comprise 27 percent of the mass of the universe, is not clumped as once believed. The distribution of dark matter could help to explain how the universe evolved.
Cassini sends back intriguing pictures of Saturn from new ring-grazing orbit
Los Angeles Times (12/7): Cassini, the long-running U.S./European mission in orbit around Saturn, is transmitting images back to Earth as it enters the mission’s final phases. The spacecraft is now dipping just outside the innermost rings of Saturn for the first time, offering close-ups from a never before seen perspective.
Low Earth Orbit
Report on cause of Progress’ loss published due to technical error
TASS, of Russia (12/7): Russia’s Mission Control said a report on Wednesday attributing the December 1 loss of the Progress MS-04/65 cargo mission to an emergency shutdown of the third stage was unintentionally published on its website. Results of the official investigation into the loss are to be released no earlier than December 20, according to the revision.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
U.S. launches its highest capacity military communications satellite
Spaceflightnow.com (12/7): A U.S. Air Force communications satellite, the Wideband Global SATCOM No. 8, lifted off on Wednesday at 6:53 p.m. EST for Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket dropped its payload off 42 minutes into flight.