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Today’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. The U.S. House is poised to consider a NASA authorization bill Tuesday, a measure that would offer the Senate food for thought this year on guiding NASA’s future. Congress, the FAA and private sector look for commercial incentives to explore the moon and asteroids. Scaled rocket tests are planned to verify the Space Launch System’s thermal protection system. Support for a NASA robotic mission to Europa stirs enthusiasm, cost challenges and talk of a possible Space Launch System boost. Europe’s Rosetta probe watches as Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko warms up. Launching of the joint NASA, NOAA and U.S. Air Force DSCOVR solar sentry slips to Tuesday evening. Orbital Sciences and ATK complete a commercial space merger. Google Lunar X-Prize competition signals enthusiasm for commercial space well beyond low Earth orbit.
Human Deep Space Exploration
House to quickly consider new NASA authorization bill
Space News (2/9): The U.S. House could vote as soon as Tuesday on a new authorization bill for NASA with bipartisan support under a suspension of rules. Much like an authorization measure approved by the House last year, the latest measure’s quick passage would allow the Senate time to deliberate.
New York Times (2/9): The FAA and Congress look for a strategy to encourage commercial activity on the moon and the asteroids without altering two major treaties that ban countries from staking claims. Bigelow Aerospace, of Las Vegas, and two other companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, are interested in establishing a lunar base and mining the asteroids for valuable materials, such as platinum.
NASA fires up mini rockets for SLS base heating tests
Spaceflight Insider (2/9): NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and contractor CUBRC are developing scaled down hardware testing to assess thermal conditions for the Space Launch System heavy lift rocket. The SLS is under development for a 2018 unpiloted test flight and eventual launchings of humans on missions of deep space exploration.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
The gift of a Europa mission may have a cost
The Space Review (2/9): Space community enthusiasm is building over a 2016 White House budget proposal for a robotic mission to Europa, the ice and ocean covered moon of Jupiter. But the opportunity to explore whether Europa’s watery environment may be favorable for life could come at the cost of extended missions for spacecraft presently at Mars and the moon.
Inside the ‘Europa Clipper’ mission that NASA is planning to send past Jupiter
Popular Science (2/9): The prospect that Europa harbors a watery environment, possibly favorable for the emergence of biological activity, has boosted enthusiasm for a robotic mission to the far away moon of Jupiter.
NASA’s big new rocket, built to send humans to Mars, may start with robotic probes
Houston Chronicle (2/9): Some experts believe growing enthusiasm for a NASA mission to the Jovian moon Europa could mean new missions for NASA’s Space Launch System, the heavy lift rocket already under development to start human explorers on future missions of deep space exploration. An SLS launch would cut the travel time for a robotic probe to distant Europa from five to two years.
Rosetta’s comet really “blows up” in latest images
Universe Today (2/9): Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, with the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft nearby, is growing increasingly active as it speeds toward the sun. Jets of material are shooting from crevices in the comet. Rosetta will dash within four miles of the comet’s surface on Saturday for a closer look.
DSCOVR launch date set for Feb. 10
Spaceflight Insider (2/9): The joint NASA, NOAA, U.S. Air Force launching of the DSCOVR solar weather sentry slipped from Sunday to Monday then Tuesday night because of a problem with ground radar tracking equipment, then a bleak weather outlook. Lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., for the spacecraft proposed by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore is set for Tuesday at 6:05 p.m., EST.
Merging white dwarf stars march to supernova doom
Discovery.com (2/9): Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile find two white dwarf stars on the verge of a cataclysmic merger. However, not for another 700 million years.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
Orbital and ATK complete merger, now Orbital ATK
Spacepolicyonline.com (2/9): The two companies completed a merger effort initiated in 2014. The merged company is known as Orbital ATK.
Commercial space exploration: no longer an oxymoron!
The Space Review (2/9): The Google Lunar X-Prize is demonstrating that the lure and promise of commercial space extends well beyond low Earth orbit, writes Derek Webber, Google X-Prize judge and former Inmarsat executive.
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