Today’s Deep Space Extra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. NASA prepares to announce new extra-terrestrial planet discoveries. Earth takes an early pounding that may have influenced habitability. NASA’s Space Launch System to launch with lunar and asteroid exploring CubeSats during the inaugural 2018 test flight with the Orion crew exploration capsule. U.S., Japanese and Russian astronauts return International Space Station to six person operations with Wednesday Soyuz launching and docking. Russia joins Canada in agreeing to U.S. proposal to extend International Space Station operations from 2020 to 2024. Soyuz mission patch pays tribute to final NASA Apollo mission.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
NASA to announce planet-hunting discoveries
USA Today (7/22): NASA intends to announce planet hunting discoveries on Thursday. The discoveries come from observations with NASA’s six year old Kepler space telescope. As recently as January, Kepler scientists announced the discovery of an Earth twin, just 500 light years away.
Astronomers explain why Earth is habitable and other planets aren’t
Discovery.com (7/22): An early pelting from asteroids may have prepared the Earth for life as we know it, according to Canadian scientists, who published their findings in the journal Nature Geoscience. The blows may have pulverized uranium and potassium on the Earth’s surface in ways that influenced climate and key geological processes.
NASA developing solar-sailing CubeSats for inaugural SLS launch
Space News (7/22): NASA is preparing a pair of solar sailing CubeSats as part of the first test launch of the Space Launch System heavy lift rocket, now planned for 2018. One of the small satellites, Near Earth Asteroid Scout, or NEA Scout, would conduct a 2020 flyby of asteroid 1991 VG. The second CubeSat, Lunar Flashlight, will use sensors to search for the presence of water ice in the polar regions of the moon.
Low Earth Orbit
Three astronauts reach International Space Station aboard Soyuz rocket
NBC News (7/23): Astronauts Kjell Lindgren, of NASA, Kimiya Yui, of Japan, and Oleg Kononenko, of Russia, docked successfully with the International Space Station late Wednesday, six hours after lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard their Soyuz spacecraft. The docking at 10:45 p.m., EDT, returned the orbiting space lab to six person operations for the first time since early June. Most of the trip to the station was flown with only one solar array extended from the Soyuz. The failure to deploy the solar array after liftoff had no impact on the flight.
Russia extends life of International Space Station until 2024
Sputnik International (7/23): Russia joins Canada among the International Space Station partner nations to join the U.S. in agreeing to extend operations from 2020 to 2024. The European and Japanese space agencies continue to consider the space station extension proposed by the Obama Administration in early 2014.
Russian rocket blasts off carrying 3 astronauts to Space Station
Orlando Sentinel (7/22): Russia’s Soyuz TMA-17M lifted off for the International Space Station on Wednesday at 5:02 p.m., EDT, with some question as to whether the capsule’s solar arrays deployed as it reached the initial orbit. NASA’s Kjell Lindgren, Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Kononenko were aboard. They docked six hours later.
Tale of two patches: Soyuz crew launching to Space Station pays tribute to Apollo
Space.com (7/22): The mission patch worn by NASA’s Kjell Lindgren, Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Kononenko as they launched to the International Space Station late Wednesday pays tribute to Apollo 17, the final moon landing in NASA’s Apollo series.