Today’s Deep Space Extra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. The world’s space powers are preparing to meet in Jerusalem in late October for discussions on the latest in exploration strategies and cooperation. Set to open in theaters Oct. 2, The Martian offers a fictional account of an astronaut’s struggle to survive after being stranded on Mars. NASA helped to furnish The Martian’s realistic themes, but the story also embraces the will to live. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft transmits new views of Pluto with frozen plains and ice mountains. Tips for seeing Sunday night’s supermoon eclipse, live and on the internet. How did the brightest galaxies form? Researcher offers an explanation for submillimeter galaxies. NASA’s Tim Kopra, sidelined by a broken hip from a bicycle accident four years ago, nears an opportunity to launch to the International Space Station and command. In China, a ranking government space official decries the proliferation of space debris and its threat to future activities in low Earth orbit. Aerojet Rocketdyne weighs raising $2 billion bid for United Launch Alliance, according to report.

Deep Human Space Exploration

World space leaders to attend Jerusalem outer space convention
Arutz Sheva, of Israel (9/24): The 66th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) will bring the leaders of the world’s top space agencies together Oct. 12-16 in Jerusalem. Representatives from the U.S., Russia, Japan, China, Europe and more are expected to attend. Discussions will focus on the latest advances in human exploration and international cooperation and include topics like medical care, safety and the growing popularity of small satellite missions.

Capturing NASA’s mindset is key to The Martian‘s success
New Scientist (9/24): The Martian, the intense film drama set to open in theaters Oct. 2, has exploited NASA’s enthusiasm for future human deep space exploration well, conjuring up habitats, spacesuits, spacecraft and launch vehicles that merge with NASA’s vision. “But it’s more than a love letter to science,” according to the New Science report. “It is an entertaining depiction of a way of behaving that keeps people alive in extreme circumstances: love your job; embrace the little you can do and do it; like it or not, death is always coming, so to hell with it.”

The Martian skips hard parts of NASA getting to Mars
Alabama.com (9/24): Producers of The Martian, a film drama about a NASA astronaut stranded on Mars and set to open Oct. 2,  consulted closely with NASA on the engineering and science challenges of the production’s premise. There are technical and financial challenges that loom large in the goal of reaching the red planet with humans. NASA, however, is focused on identifying and overcoming the challenges.

Unmanned Deep Space Exploration

NASA’s New Horizons probe glimpses Pluto’s icy heart

New York Times (9/24): Dramatic new images received from NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft reveal distant Pluto’s varied surface, from frozen plains to ice mountains. More is to come as New Horizons heads toward a new and vastly more distant destination in the solar system’s Kuiper Belt. New Horizons carried out the first ever flyby of Pluto on July 14.

Secrets behind Pluto’s pastels far from being answered
Spaceflightnow.com (9/24): Scientists say they are puzzled by the “snake skin” like appearance of distant Pluto in new images from NASA’s New Horizons mission released on Thursday. They show terrain that is ridged in blue and gray and interspersed with reddish gullies. Glacial flows may have shaped some of the terrain.

What’s up in space
Spaceweather.com (9/25): Sunday brings a rare supermoon eclipse, visible in the darkened skies of the Northern Hemisphere and also live on the Internet.

Mystery solved? How universe’s brightest-ever galaxies formed
Space.com (9/23): Submillimeter galaxies, discovered just over a decade ago, are large and bright in wavelengths absorbed by interstellar dust. New research published in the journal Nature, suggests how they managed to form.

Low Earth Orbit

NASA astronaut, five years after a bike accident cost him a ride into space, gets his chance
Houston Chronicle (9/24): In early 2011, a broken hip from a bicycle accident prevented NASA astronaut Tim Kopra from launching aboard one of the final space shuttle missions to the International Space Station. Kopra, though, is completing 2 1/2 years of training to launch in mid-December aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket to the station for a five month stay. Kopra will serve as commander.

Scientists find space rubbish nearing “critical point”
Xinhuanet of China (9/24): Liu Jing, vice director of the Space Debris Monitoring and Application Center under China’s National Space Administration, warns of the building threat of accumulating space debris in low Earth orbit. Some 17,000 fragments have been logged.

Commercial to Low Earth Orbit

Exclusive: Aerojet weighs higher offer for Lockheed-Boeing venture – sources
Reuters (9/24): Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings may increase its reported $2 billion offering for the purchase of United Launch Alliance, the Boeing/Lockheed Martin joint venture that provides U.S. military and national security rocket launches, according to the Reuters report. ULA publicly rejected a reported $2 billion offer from Aerojet earlier this month.

Aerojet to pay Orbital $50 million over Antares rocket accident
Reuters (9/25): The payment stems from the Oct. 28, 2014 explosion of an Orbital ATK Antares rocket moments after lifting off from Wallops Island, Va., on a cargo mission to the International Space Station. The rocket’s first stage was equipped with rocketry obtained from Russia but outfitted by Aerojet for Antares. The lost mission was the third of eight planned by Orbital under a $1.9 billion NASA contract to resupply the six person Space Station.