Today’s Deep Space Extra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. NASA contracts with Aerojet Rocketdyne to manufacture the rocket engines for the first stage of the Space Launch System exploration rocket. Planners must address human factors for Mars crews, say experts. Astronauts voice their concerns for the selection of a future Mars landing site. Mars missions are a first step in future human deep space exploration, according to advocate. Mars will likely have a future ring as the moon Phobos crumbles. One by one, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images Apollo moon mission landing sites. The National Science Foundation seeks partners in future Arecibo radio telescope operations. The European Space Agency re-organizes. U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee chair John McCain urges no ease up on restriction of Russian RD-180 rocket engine imports. Japan launches an H-2A rocket with a commercial satellites for the first time. Great Britain’s Tim Peake preps for six to months or more in orbit. Americans Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren will rehydrate their Thanksgiving Day food selections. Commercial suborbital space research nears. Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin successfully demonstrate vertical landing in suborbital test flight of the New Shepard.
Human Deep Space Exploration
Aerojet Rocketdyne gets $1.4 billion in contracts from NASA, Boeing
Sacramento Business Journal (11/23): NASA and Boeing announced propulsion agreements with Aerojet Rocketdyne on Monday. The first agreement, valued at $1.16 billion, is for the production of new RS-25 space shuttle main engines to serve as the propulsion source for the first stage of NASA’s Space Launch System exploration rocket. A first test flight is planned for late 2018. A second agreement valued at nearly $200 million with Boeing is for a propulsion system for the CST-100 Starliner, the spacecraft under development as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, for the transportation of astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
Manned mission to Mars must not ignore human struggles, expert stresses
Space.com (11/23): Astrotechture’s Marc Cohen says planners must take pains to deal with the stresses astronauts will face on a long mission to Mars, including confinement, absence from family and the natural environment as well as healthy separations from work. Cohen outlined his concerns earlier this month before NASA’s Future In-Space Operations working group. Aboard the International Space Station, U.S. and Russian crew members Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko are currently working with scientists to identify some of the challenges during a one year mission.
Mars astronauts: Don’t care where, just don’t kill us
Discovery.com (11/23): Safety ranks at the top of concerns held by NASA’s current astronauts as a factor in selecting a future landing site on Mars. The process of selecting a landing site, hosted by the Lunar Planetary Institute, got underway in October. Temperature, lighting conditions, dust levels, boulders and steep slopes contributed to the safety concerns, NASA astronaut Stan Love explained before a landing site workshop that included scientists as well as engineers.
Mars and the transport revolution
The Space Review (11/23): Space settlement advocate Frank Stratford, CEO and founder of Mars Drive, urges a focus on a range of propulsion and life support technologies that will make it possible for humans to reach Mars and further in the vastness of the universe. “Mars is simply a logical step in our progression into a bigger space economy,” writes Stratford. “It has its positives and negatives like any space idea, but ultimately its biggest positive is what it will do to unlock a much wider universe.”
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
Mars’ new bling could one day rival Saturn’s ring
USA Today (11/23): Mars could one day become the only planet in the inner solar system with a ring, say astronomers. The source of the ring material would be Phobos, one of two small moons. Phobos, about 1 percent the size of the Earth’s moon, is gradually closing its gap with Mars. The pull of gravity on the moon has generated fracture lines that could hasten the little moon’s breakup.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographs Apollo landing sites
Spaceflight Insider (11/23): NASA’s long running Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission has succeeded in photographing each of the NASA Apollo moon landing sites — all six from Apollo 11 to Apollo 17, with each revealing hardware left behind.
NSF seeks partners to help run Arecibo Radio Telescope
Space News (11/23): The National Space Foundation is seeking partners to continue operations of the organization’s famous 305 meter radio telescope observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Without an influx of funding the telescope may close in September 2016, when the current five-year management contract expires. The $12 million a year observatory’s clients include NASA, which used Arecibo to characterize asteroids that pass close to the Earth. SETI has used the observatory to search for signals from extraterritorial intelligence.
Low Earth Orbit
ESA reorganization groups directorates together
Space News (11/23): The European Space Agency will implement a reorganization in January. The changes were proposed by new director-general Johann-Dietrich Woerner who took over the 22 nation space agency in July. The re-organization includes a new Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration Directorate.
Tim Peake ‘ready’ for flight to International Space Station
BBC News (11/23): European Space Agency astronauts Tim Peake, of Great Britain, is eager to begin a more than six month mission to the International Space Station with a Dec. 15 launching. Peake will launch from Kazakhstan with veterans Yuri Malenchenko, of Russia, and Tim Kopra, of NASA. A former military test pilot, Peake has dreamed of a space mission since his youth.
Scott Kelly and team show off Thanksgiving meal
Houston Chronicle (11/23): International Space Station commander Scott Kelly and fellow NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren note they and their crew mates will have rehydratable Thanksgiving Day meal selections available on Thursday.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
McCain urges appropriators to uphold RD-180 ban
Space News (11/23): U.S. Sen. John McCain, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, urges appropriators to stick with restrictions limiting imports of Russia’s RD-180 rocket engine. The restrictions were enacted as part of Congressional sanctions imposed on Russia for interference in Ukraine. The RD-180 powers the first stage of the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket used to place U.S. national security payloads in orbit. McCain supports a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2016, now awaiting the signature of President Obama that would provide ULA with access to four more RD-180s.
Japanese H-IIA rocket carries first commercial satellite into orbit
Japan Times (11/24): Japan entered the competitive commercial space launch market early Tuesday with the launching of an H-IIA rocket with a Canadian telecommunications satellite.
Suborbital
Jeff Bezos’ rocket lands safely after space flight
CNN Money (11/24): Blue Origin’s New Shepard achieves a space test breakthrough. The rocket rose to an altitude of nearly 330,000 feet, or 62 miles. The capsule separated and landed under parachute. The BE-3 rocket then reignited its rocket engines at 5,000 feet to make a controlled upright descent and landing at the company’s Van Horn test site in West Texas.
Jeff Bezos on launching first fully reusable space rocket
CBS News (11/24): Amazon CEO and space entrepreneur Jeff Bezos says his rocket company, Blue Origin, successfully flew the first fully-reusable rocket to space and made a controlled landing back at the launch site. Bezos joins “CBS This Morning” from the launch site in West Texas to discuss the accomplishment he calls a “game changer” for space travel.
Jeff Bezos beats Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the reusable rocket race
Endgadget (11/24): Blue Origin succeeded Tuesday in launching its New Shephard rocket to an altitude of more than 329,000 feet into suborbital space, or 62 miles, then achieving a controlled vertical descent and landing by parachute and rocket engine. The test capsule separated and landed by parachute. The BE-3 rocket then re-started its rocket engine at 5,000 feet, enabling the rocket to descend as well, settling to Earth at a velocity of just over 4 mile per hour. The test unfolded at test facilities in the Van Horn community of West Texas.