Today’s Deep Space Extra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. Could NASA’s commercial models for launching supplies and humans to the International Space Station enable a near term, cost saving effort to establish a lunar base and reach Mars? Successful Kickstarter campaign will preserve Neil Armstrong’s space suit. Central Florida marks the 65th anniversary of the first Cape Canaveral rocket launch. Searching for extraterrestrial life could add meaning to life on Earth. Estimates for Earth twins in Milky Way rising, say experts. New Horizons spacecraft finds hazy atmosphere, glacier like movement on Pluto. China adds two satellites to its growing Beidou satellite navigation network with a Saturday launching. One time NASA astronaut Nicole Stott hopes to inspire with paintings based on her two trips to space. In Washington, the NTSB plans to meet Tuesday on the causes of the fatal Oct. 31, 2014 SpaceShipTwo crash. A look at key space policy activities scheduled for the week ahead.
Human Deep Space Exploration
Report says commercial partnerships can slash costs of human lunar missions
Space News (7/24): A public/private partnership based on the model NASA initiated to deliver cargo and soon humans to the International Space Station could be used to reach the moon and start a base within seven years at a cost of $10 billion, a steep reduction, according to a report from NextGen Space. The effort included funding from NASA’s office of chief technologist and the expertise of former space agency officials.
Success in Kickstarter campaign to save Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit
Associated Press via Christian Science Monitor (7/26): A brief Kickstarter campaign by the National Air and Space Museum was all that was needed to preserve the NASA spacesuit worn by Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong as he stepped to the surface of the moon 46 years ago this month. The crowd sourcing goal was raised from the initial $500,000 on Sunday to $700,000 to also preserve the suit worn by Mercury astronaut Alan B. Shepard on the first U.S. spaceflight.
65 years ago, Cape took flight with Bumper 8
Florida Today (7/25): Saturday marked the 65th anniversary of the first rocket launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., at the time a highly secret event. “It kind of leaked out that it was a missile and they were going to start launching a lot of them over there,” recalls Lee Starrick, a retired Kennedy Space Center firefighter. “That was basically the start of the space program in this area.” The Bumper 8 anniversary falls in an historic week for Central Florida and space, including the 46th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20 and the fourth anniversary of the final shuttle mission landing, July 21.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
Making contact with alien worlds could make us care more about our own
The Guardian (7/26): Breakthrough Listen, an initiative announced last week in London by Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner and physicist Stephen Hawking, to advance the search for extraterrestrial life, holds the promise of achieving a greater appreciation for the vastness of the universe and perhaps finding an advanced intelligence.
NASA estimates 1 billion ‘Earths’ in our galaxy alone
Washington Post (7/24): The estimates come from NASA scientists based on discoveries made with the Kepler space telescope. The latest, Kepler 452b, is the most Earth-like planet yet discovered around a sun like star, lying about 1,400 light years from the Earth. The estimates refer to planets in the so called habitable zones of their stars, regions where water, if present, should be in liquid form.
Pluto’s atmosphere is thinner than expected, but still looks hazy
New York Times (7/25): NASA’s New Horizons team has detected evidence that Pluto’s mostly nitrogen atmosphere is freezing and falling to the surface as the planetary object moves further from the sun. Pluto circles the sun once every 248 years. In a news briefing on Friday, New Horizons scientists also say they see evidence of a glacier like flow of ice on Pluto. Scientists have also not given up on the possibility that Pluto hosts a subsurface ocean.
Low Earth Orbit
China adds two more satellites to its homegrown GPS rival
AFP, of France, via South China Morning Post (7/26): China launch two additions to the country’s growing global satellite navigation network, Beidou, on Saturday. They are the 18th and 19th in a network now focused on the Asia Pacific but designed to cover the globe by 2020.
Insider interview: Nicole Stott talks leaving NASA, orbital artistry
Spaceflight Insider (7/26): “It wasn’t anything that is going to win me any prizes, but it was fun and….” says former NASA astronaut Nicole Stott of her experimentation with water coloring while in orbit. Earlier this year, Stott, an engineer, left NASA to pursue her interests in painting scenes she captured by camera during two shuttle missions. Apollo astronaut Alan Bean did as much and has been an influence for Stott, who began her career at NASA at the Kennedy Space Center.
Suborbital
NTSB ready to vote on final report on SpaceShipTwo crash
Spacepolicyonline.com (7/26): The National Transportation Safety Board is scheduled to meet Tuesday to review staff findings on the causes and contributing factors behind the Oct. 31, 2014 inflight loss of SpaceShipTwo and the life of one of two pilots. The proceedings, because the NTSB considers them of significant public interest, will be webcast.
Major Space Related Activities for the Week
Major space related activities for the week of July 26-31, 2015
Spacepolicyonline.com (7/26): From New York and Washington to Los Angeles, activities in the space policy arena are scheduled for this week. In Washington, the U.S. Senate could vote to reauthorize the Import-Export Bank, a measure of interest to the commercial space industry. NASA Advisory Committee panels are meeting at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and in New York, the U.N. will discuss a space code of contact.