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Today’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. NASA looks to commercial space to reach the moon with robotic landers. A global space community settles on what to remember, celebrate in space exploration through the years. Can humans withstand the rigors of spaceflight? Property rights could spur lunar exploration. NASA explores scholarship opportunities for females in high school sharp in STEM. This week marks anniversaries of U.S. space tragedies. Former NASA mars program director Scott Hubbard explains science and technology values of U.S. Mars 2020 rover strategy. China’s imperiled lunar lander taking turn for the worse. Interest in the moon as a destination rising. Measuring the IQ of aliens. The Milky Way: Many stay, some go. Russian spacewalk goes “1 for 2” outside International Space Station. The U.S. and Japan collaborate on space based rain and snowfall measurements. United Launch Alliance scores 36 core booster builds for the Atlas 5 and Delta 4 with the U.S. Air Force. This year shaping up as critical to success of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Virgin Galactic striving for suborbital passenger flights in 2014.
Human Deep Space Exploration
NASA offers non-financial support for commercial lunar landers
Space News (1/27): NASA offers rocket hardware and federal testing facilities to spur U.S. commercial interest in reaching the lunar surface.
The Space Review (1/27): Increasingly, a maturing space culture can look to a year filled with anniversaries and celebrations. They begin however, with a chilling collection of anniversaries marking the deaths of 17 U.S. astronauts in a series of tragedies, the Jan. 27, 1967 Apollo 1 fire and the Jan. 28, 1986 Challenger and Feb. 1, 2003 Columbia shuttle tragedies. Essayist Ken Murphy, president of The Moon Society, examines the anniversaries and celebrations like Yuri’s Night on April 12, have grown over the years.
New York Times (1/27): NASA inaugurates a critical look at the health obstacles facing humans who choose to embark on missions of deep space exploration. A new focus examines changes in vision. Other concerns include radiation exposures, suppressed immune systems and the loss of muscle and bone strength.
Space property rights: It’s time, and here’s where to start
Space News (1/27): It is property rights, say commercial space entrepreneurs, which will draw, humans and a growing economy to the moon.
Application deadline approaches for NASA STEM program for high school girls
NASA (1/27): The U.S. space agency seeks female high school students who excel in the STEM fields for help in jump starting careers in aerospace. NASA’s Johnson Space Center will host a summer learning experience for 30 candidates.
NASA’s week of tragedy: Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia remembered
Orlando Sentinel (1/27): The week opens and closes with remembrances for the loss of 17 U.S. astronauts in the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia tragedies. The space agency’s “Day of Remembrance” for each of the men and women is planned for Friday.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
Mars 2020: Its origins, science and technology
Space News (1/27): Former NASA Mars director Scott Hubbard explains the exploration and scientific merits of the agencies planned 2020 Mars rover, which will rely on hardware and techniques employed by the successful Curiosity rover mission. Hubbard, a consulting professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University and former director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, takes issue with a recent less favorable assessment of the 2020 mission from Lori Garver, who departed the space agency in September as deputy administrator. The Mars 2020 Rover will be designed to cache samples of Martian soil and rock for eventual return to Earth for analysis.
China’s imperiled Jade Rabbit moon rover: ‘Goodnight, humanity’
CNN (1/27): China’s Chang’e-3 mission lunar rover has been confronted by technical problems. They could be mission ending.
A resurgent exploration of the moon’s surface
Washington Post (1/24): Interest in the Earth’s moon seemed to fade in the 1970s. However, there’s been a contemporary resurgence. Now, more than a dozen government and commercial entities are lining up missions over the next decade.
Extraterrestrial intelligence: The challenge of comprehending E.T.’s IQ
Astrobiology Magazine (1/27): How to assess the IQ of an alien life form? Time, perhaps, to begin that thought process, the publication suggests.
Strange, hypervelocity stars get ejected from Milky Way
Space.com (1/27): Not every star stays at home in the Milky Way. Some are booted out.
Low Earth Orbit
Camera problem persists after spacewalk setup
Spaceflightnow.com and CBS News.com (1/27): Cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazanskiy make a second attempt Monday to install Earth observing cameras outside the International Space Station for a Canadian led commercial concern. A video imager checks out, a still camera does not. The excursion follows a Dec. 27 spacewalk by the same cosmonauts in which they installed, then retrieved the cameras after difficulties with power and data cables surfaced.
Cosmonauts complete fourth Expedition 38 spacewalk
NASA (1/27): A six hour Russian spacewalk on Monday features the installation of two commercial Canadian Earth observing cameras. Transmissions difficulties that surfaced during a Dec. 27 spacewalk for the first attempt at installation persist for one of the cameras.
NASA, JAXA prepare rain and snow satellite for launch
NASA (1/27): The U.S. and Japanese space agencies are collaborating on orbital spacecraft that measure rain and snowfall from Earth orbit. The NASA built Global Precipitation Measurement Core Measurement spacecraft is nearing a Feb. 27 lift off atop a Japanese rocket. Among other studies, the spacecraft will examine flood and drought trends.
Stratcom signs SSA data sharing accord with France
Space News (1/27): France joins Canada, Italy, Japan and Australia in forging agreements with U.S. Strategic Command to exchange space situational information, including tracking information on the size, location and orbital path of objects circling Earth, upon request. The data can be used to avoid collisions that produce orbital debris.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
ULA signs deal to deliver three-dozen booster cores
Spaceflightnow.com (1/27): United Launch Alliance inks agreement with the U.S. Air Force for 36 booster cores. The price tag for the future Atlas 5 and Delta 4 launches is estimated at $4.4 billion through 2017.
Commercial crew’s critical year
The Space Review (1/27): 2014 promises to become a milestone moment in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program initiative, writes TSR editor Jeff Foust. With new bids in house this month, the space agency plans to award at least one and possibly two Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contracts by year’s end to advance the effort toward a test spaceflight with a goal of launching crews to the International Space Station by 2017. Funding is pacing the initiative. Among the most visible competitors, Boeing, Sierra Nevada and SpaceX, Sierra Nevada appears to be most active in identifying a Plan B, writes Foust.
Suborbital
Virgin Galactic expects to get FAA license to fly soon
Albuquerque Journal (1/28): Virgin Galactic is closing in on commercial suborbital space passenger travel. The company awaits FAA commercial license and completion of flight tests. Flights from Spaceport America could begin this year, the publication reports.
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