In Today’s Deep Space Extra…Production of the solid rocket boosters for NASA’s first test flight of the Space Launch System exploration rocket and Orion crew capsule is underway.
Human Deep Space Exploration
First SLS Solid Rocket Booster Segment Is Cast
Colorado Space News (4/25): Orbital ATK has cast the first of the 10 solid fuel segments that will comprise the two solid rocket boosters assigned to NASA’s Exploration Mission-1 uncrewed flight test of the Space Launch System exploration rocket and Orion crew capsule. EM-1 is planned for late 2018 and will send the Orion capsule around the moon and back to Earth over a three week journey. SLS and Orion are to start astronauts on future missions of deep space exploration.
Space Science
Did Asteroid Impacts Incubate Mars’ Ancient Oceans?
Discovery.com (4/25): Evidence suggests large bodies of water on Mars accumulated from asteroid impacts during an era known as the Late Heavy Bombardment more than four billion years ago. The impacts would have melted Martian ice, creating an ocean that lasted for 200 million years. Timothy Parker, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, pieced together the hypothesis.
Hubble Telescope Captures Sharpest Image Yet of Mysterious Red Rectangle
Space.com (4/25): Baffled for three decades, astronomers are beginning to unravel the Red Rectangle Nebula, so named for its odd shape and hue. The nebula hosts a central star similar to the sun that is nearing the end of its life.
NASA’s Dawn probe may visit third asteroid after Ceres and Vesta
New Scientist (4/20): NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, now nearing the end of its primary mission visits to the main belt asteroids, Ceres and Vesta, may get a third destination, according to the report.
Low Earth Orbit
An overview of the American Space Renaissance Act (part 1) The Space Review (4/25): U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine’s American Space Renaissance Act would attempt to update U.S. national space policy on military, civil and commercial fronts by addressing the changing geopolitical and economic environments. In the first of three installments, Michael Listner, a space legal expert, examines the national security implications, including space communications and navigation as well as weather and space weather data gathering.
Last flight-qualified space shuttle external tank crosses Panama Canal
Collectspace (4/26): A flight qualified NASA space shuttle external tank entered the Panama Canal Monday on its journey by barge to the California Science Museum in Las Angeles, Calif., where it is to join a display that features the orbiter Endeavour. The tank’s journey began in New Orleans, where it was manufactured, on April 12.
Commercial to Orbit
Soyuz blasts off with environmental satellite, general relativity probe
Spaceflightnow.com (4/25): A Soyuz ST-A commercial launch vehicle with a European Earth radar observation satellite and a collection of smaller secondary science payloads lifted off successfully from French Guiana late Monday.
Draft House bill would scramble Air Force’s rocket engine plan
Space News (4/25): An authorization measure before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee would limit defense investments to a main stage rocket engine in the move to find a domestic substitute for continued imports of Russia’s RD-180 that is currently used to power the first stage of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V launch vehicle. The move would exclude federal spending on an upper stage engine, strap-on motors or launch vehicles that the U.S. Air Force has planned to co-invest in with SpaceX, Orbital ATK and ULA.