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Today’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. Neil Armstrong, the late Apollo 11 commander, was honored Monday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where the historic mission he led 45 years ago lifted off. Mars fits U.S. human space exploration plans like no other destination, according to the Mars Society’s Robert Zubrin. Google Lunar X-Prize stirs commercial interest in the moon. Astronomers prepare for new generation of powerful telescopes — anchored to the Earth as well as launched into space. U.S. led mission to Europa fills many niches. Preparing for a space economy. The moon: too rocky for China’s Yutu lunar rover? Evidence from U.S. reconnaissance satellites links Malaysian airliner crash to missile launch. NASA assembles satellite spares to fashion new wind sensor for International Space Station. British space investments paying off.
Human Deep Space Exploration
Neil Armstrong honored 45 years after moon landing
Spaceflightnow.com (7/21): Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong was honored Monday in ceremonies at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center that renamed the Operations & Checkout building for the late U.S. astronaut, test pilot, naval aviator and aerospace engineer. Apollo 11 crewmates Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins attended the dedication led by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.
Space News (7/21): In an op-ed, Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin offers the case for Mars as a worthy human space exploration goal in light of the recent National Research Council report on the topic. The NRC leans too much toward the moon, writes Zubrin.
The future of Moon exploration, lunar colonies and humanity
Space.com (7/21): The Global Lunar X-Prize is spurring commercial lunar exploration. So far, 18 teams of contestants from around the world are vying for $30 million in prizes that await the first competitors able to reach the lunar terrain with a mobile sensor equipped spacecraft.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
New York Times (7/20): The 2020s loom as a great new age for space observatories — both cemented to the planet Earth and lurking in space. At the space end of the spectrum are the James Webb Space Telescope and the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope-Astrophysics Focused Telescope, which promise to offer a glimpse at possible bio markers in the atmospheres of alien planets. JWST is progressing toward an October 2018 lift off. WFirst-AFTA, which began life as a U.S. reconnaissance satellite, could follow in the 2020s.
A generational opportunity for Europa
The Space Review (7/21): Enthusiasm for a NASA mission to Europa, the mysterious moon of Jupiter, is building beyond the scientific community. The agency’s current outer solar system missions, Cassini, at Saturn, and Juno, on its way to Jupiter, are scheduled to end in 2017. New Horizons will be well beyond Pluto, and a Europa mission would fill a void. Europa may also help to fill the manifest for NASA’s Space Launch System heavy lift rocket, writes Casey Dreier, of the Planetary Society.
New Fort Knox: A means to a solar-system-wide economy
The Space Review (7/21): Essayist Richard Godwin, publisher and Zero Gravity Solutions CEO, ponders a growing solar system economy based in part of resources like platinum mined from asteroids, aerospace grade aluminum harvested from the accumulation of manmade debris in Earth orbit and 3D printing.
China says Yutu lunar rover possibly damaged by rocks, sample return mission slips to 2020
Spacepolicyonline.com (7/21): China offers an explanation for its immobile Yutu lunar rover, which settled to the moon’s surface in December as part of the Chang’e-3 mission. Yutu, which still transmits, may have been damaged in a collision with lunar rocks. And plans for a robotic Chinese lunar sample mission slip from 2017 to around 2020, according to China’s Xinhua news service.
Low Earth Orbit
Satellites critical to collecting evidence in MH17 tragedy
Spaceflightnow.com (7/21): U.S. national security spacecraft appear to have played significant roles in linking the loss of a Malaysian airliner with nearly 300 people aboard over war torn Ukraine to a missile firing.
Earth science and climate monitoring | NASA finds key role for low-budget RapidScat mission
Space News (7/21): NASA’s low cost RapidScat instrument will measure global wind patterns from a perch on the International Space Station. Launch anticipated in September for the instrument assembled from NASA spares that will also serve as a calibration device for similar sensors flown by other countries.
Russian Progress space freighter undocks from ISS
Itar-Tass, of Russia (7/22): Russia’s Progress 55 resupply capsule departed the International Space Station late Monday. Departure leaves a docking port for a replacement. Progress 56 is scheduled to lift off from Kazakhstan on Wednesday at 5:44 p.m. EDT, for a six hour sprint to the six person station with supplies.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
U.K. space stimulus begins to show results
Aviation Week & Space Technology (7/21): Britain’s latest investments in the European Space Agency produce quick space technology returns.
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