Today’s Deep Space Extra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. Singer/composer David Bowie, who died at 69, draws space community tributes. Orbital ATK engineers explain changes to the shuttle solid rocket boosters that are transitioning to NASA’s Space Launch System exploration rocket. Researchers identify compounds to make concrete on Mars. Some decade-long space records could fall soon. New budget offers NASA opportunity to start work on a future deep space observatory. Planetary Resources demos use of space metals to make products with 3-D printing technologies. 2016 is due some exciting milestones in the exploration of Jupiter, Mars and the asteroids. A Florida astronomer proposes a source for the mysterious Wow signal from space. A global outcry over China’s 2007 anti-satellite test prompted Beijing to alter future test plans.
Human Deep Space Exploration
Tribute to a Starman: David Bowie mourned by astronauts, scientists
Space.com: (1/11): Singer David Bowie, whose death was widely reported on Monday, draws tributes from the world’s space community. “Ashes to ashes, dust to stardust. Your brilliance inspired us all. Goodbye Starman,” wrote Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, a former International Space Station commander, who covered Bowie’s Space Oddity while circling the Earth himself in 2013.
Four to five: Engineer details changes made to SLS booster
Spaceflight Insider (1/11): Orbital ATK’s five-segment solid rocket boosters are a critical component of NASA’s Space Launch System exploration rocket strategy. A more compact version of the boosters was an essential part of each NASA space shuttle launch. The SLS is intended to start U.S. astronauts on future missions of deep space exploration.
Pouring a foundation on Mars
New York Times (1/11): Researchers at Northwestern University identify two resources on Mars, soil and sulphur, that could be used by future human settlers to make concrete for Earth-like construction projects.
The 5 space travel records that matter (and why they matter)
Inverse (1/11): Some of the great space milestones were established decades ago by NASA’s Apollo crews as well as by contemporary astronauts and cosmonauts. The records could fall soon as NASA again heads to deep space with human explorers, according to the report.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
Accelerating the next, next space telescope
The Space Review (1/11): With the once troubled James Webb Space Telescope, a joint effort between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, now coming together and headed toward a late 2018 lift off, the astrophysics community has begun to look at its next deep space observatory, WFIRST, or the Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope. Equipped with optics from the National Reconnaissance Office and a coronagraph, the future observatory will be used to study planets around other stars and the nature of dark energy. The formulation phase has been moved up to February, thanks to funding in NASA’s recently approved 2016 budget.
Asteroid-mining company 3D-prints object from space rock metals
Space.com (1/8): The space mining company Planetary Resources has demonstrated the technologies needed to take metals from a space rock and turn them into useful objects with 3-D printing.
These are the space missions to watch in 2016
Space.com (1/12): Among the major activities in space planned for 2016 is the arrival of the NASA-led Juno orbiter at Jupiter on July 4. In mid-March, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission will lift off for the red planet with an orbiter and the prototype for a future lander/rover. In early September, NASA expects to launch OSIRIS-REx, a mission to the 1,650-foot-long asteroid Bennu. After reaching Bennu in 2018, OSIRIS-REx is to collect a small sample and return to Earth.
Infamous ‘wow signal’ from space may be comets, not aliens
NBC News (1/11): A Florida researcher has suggested that two then undiscovered comets may have been the source of an intriguing signal from space detected in 1977 by radio telescope. Some interpreted the code and wavelength as possibly generated by intelligent life.
Low Earth Orbit
U.S. Official: China turned to debris-free ASAT tests following 2007 outcry
Space News (1/11): A worldwide outcry over China’s infamous anti-satellite test in early 2007 prompted a change. China has not pursued further testing of the kind that produced thousands of pieces of space debris, according to Mallory Stewart, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for emerging security challenges and defense policy. During remarks on Monday, Stewart called the missile breakup of an aging Chinese weather satellite a “remarkable incident of irresponsible behavior.”