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Today’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. NASA intends at least one launch annually of the new Space Launch System heavy lift rocket designed to start U.S. explorers on new missions of deep space exploration. NASA revamps mobile launch platforms for massive Space Launch System rocket. Apollo 7’s outspoken Walt Cunningham speaks out on the future of U.S. space exploration. Russia sizes up first member of new carrier rocket lineup. What’s with China and the Jade Rabbit? Planning for asteroid hazards. Asteroid 2000 EM6 passes near the Earth late Monday. New investments in powerful space telescopes stir opposition. NASA’s history making Voyager probes weathered precarious beginnings. Black holes must eat, too. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station release Orbital Sciences Corp’s ‘Orb-1’ re-supply capsule. Boeing’s CST-100 strides through Critical Design Review milestones. Entrepreneur Robert Bigelow looks to Virginia as launch site for future human missions.
Human Deep Space Exploration
SLS launch rate requires repetitive cadence: Gerstenmaier
NASAspaceflight.com (2/17): NASA’s Space Launch System heavy lift rocket, designed to start U.S. explorers on new missions of deep space exploration, will fly at least once a year, according to Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations. He addressed SLS pacing before a recent NASA Advisory Council gathering.
Meet NASA’s enormous rocket transporter
The Weather Channel (2/17): NASA upgrades the massive crawler transporters it developed for the Kennedy Space Center to move its large rockets to coastal launch pads. First it was the Saturn V, then the space shuttle. New effort, though are underway to upgrade the lift capability of the big machines from 12 to 18 million pounds for NASA’s Space Launch System, the heavy lift rocked intended to start U.S. explorers on news missions of deep space exploration. The upgrades should be complete in 2016, the Weather Channel reports.
“The All-American Boy”: Walt Cunningham speaks on Apollo 7 and more
The Space Review (2/17): The “more” in the headline includes the U.S. space program. “Cunningham argues that the young people of today have to be more daring if humans are going to once more stretch the frontiers and continue manned deep space exploration,” writes essayist Shane Hannon, of the retired NASA Apollo astronaut and former Marine Corps aviator. “In our day it was something we felt was worth doing, to go out and push the frontier. Today is a risk-averse society, young people don’t wanna take chances doing anything. We thought that was part of living, it was part of how you improve, it was part of how you move society forward,” says the former Apollo 7 crew member. His 1968 mission helped the agency recover from the Apollo 1 launch pad fire that claimed the lives of three astronauts.
Angara mockup installed on Plesetsk Cosmodrome’s launch pad
Itar-Tass, of Russia (2/17): Angara moves to launch pad at Plesetsk as symbol of Russian efforts to develop a new family of medium lift carrier rockets and possibly a super heavy lifter capable of placing 160 metric tons — and possibly more — in Earth orbit.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
The Space Review (2/17): Confused over the status of China’s Chang’e-3 lunar surface mission and its Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, rover. Space Review editor Jeff Foust traces the story that emerged early last week with suggestions of failure, followed by reports of recovery. Western media appear to have been over eager to speculate, and Chinese officials reluctant to be forthcoming, he writes.
Planning a planetary defense against asteroids
Newsweek (2/12): NASA, the U.S. Congress, private companies and the United Nations wrestle with the collision threat posed by near Earth objects, large and small. The hazards gained attention as the first anniversary of the Chelyabinsk meteor impact approached on Feb. 15.
WEBCAST REPLAY: Near-Earth asteroid 2000 EM26 and other space rocks by Slooh
Space.com (2/17): Program follows the asteroid 2000 EM26 as it pass about two million miles from the Earth late Monday. The Slooh observatory logged the event. This rock measures the width of three football fields.
New York Times (2/16): New optics technologies are merging with a burgeoning discovery of planets circling other stars. Whether they host or are suitable for life remains a mystery that will soon require significant timely investments in new space observatories, a prospect some scientists would rather skip, writes author Lee Billings in an op ed.
Voyager, the space triumph that nearly wasn’t
Los Angeles Times (2/18): Nothing made by humans has traveled through space as far as NASA’s twin Voyager missions. But as former Jet Propulsion Laboratory director Ed Stone explains, they almost didn’t make it because of technical, political and financial challenges. But on they fly — until their power sources give out in another decade or so. Each carries symbols and accounts of life on Earth.
New York Times (2/17): Next month, or the one after, will offer astronomers a rare opportunity to watch a massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy encounter a massive gas cloud. “This is a rare opportunity to witness spoon-feeding of a black hole,” said Avi Loeb, a theoretical astrophysicist at Harvard. “The experience is as exciting for astronomers as it is for parents taking the first photos of their infant eating.”
Low Earth Orbit
Spaceflightnow.com (2/18): Astronauts aboard the International Space Station release Orbital Sciences Corp’s Orb-1 commercial Cygnus re-supply capsule early Tuesday. Cygnus reached the station for berthing on Jan. 12 with more than 2,700 pounds of cargo. U.S. and Japanese astronauts Mike Hopkins and Koichi Wakata released the capsule at 6:41 a.m., EST.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
Boeing’s CST-100 passes two new milestones in development
Spaceflight Insider (2/17): The Boeing Co. achieves software safety test and hardware design review milestones in the company’s Houston-based efforts to develop a commercial passenger service for orbital destinations such as the International Space Station.
Salisbury Daily Times, of Maryland (2/17): Bigelow Aerospace proposes launchings of human spacecraft from Wallops Island, Va. The pace of activities in Virginia is just right for Robert Bigelow’s plans to place inflatable space stations in orbit.
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