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Today’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden is thrilled after an early post-test flight look at the Orion capsule’s heat shield. Europe shapes a civil defense strategy around an asteroid impact. International Astronomical Union ready to sponsor votes on names for alien planet discoveries. Scientists hustle to measure masses of twin neutron stars. French scientists point to stellar nurseries as possible source of organic molecules. International Space Station crew members take refuge in Russian segment following possible ammonia coolant leak in U.S. modules, Russian news sources report. New NASA satellite will measure moisture in soil from orbit. European Space Agency prepares for February test flight of experimental re-entry vehicle. Cape Canaveral, Fla., poised to become world’s busiest spaceport. Boeing scores patent for packaging electric satellites.
Human Deep Space Exploration
What did NASA learn from Orion’s first test flight? NASA Administrator Bolden tells America Space
AmericaSpace.com (1/14): With the post-flight analysis of the NASA/Lockheed Martin Orion crew exploration capsule that flew on Dec. 5 under way, engineers are finding that the heat shield performed better than expected upon re-entry. While in orbit, the unpiloted spacecraft required little of its fuel for maneuvers. “The heat shield was in incredible shape,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told AmericaSpace.com after joining Mike Hawes, Lockheed Martin vice president, for a firsthand look at hardware at the Kennedy Space Center and the Pennsylvania supplier for heat shield materials. Orion is to be mated to a NASA Space Launch System heavy lift rocket for its next unpiloted test flight in 2018.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
What can we do if an asteroid threatens Earth? Europe starts planning
Space.com (1/13): Europe makes plans to deal with a destructive meteor encounter like the 19-meter-wide asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February 2013. The European civil defense strategy takes into account an encounter with little advanced warning.
Want to name a planet or crater? Time’s running out
NBC News (1/14): The International Astronomical Union is moving ahead with plans to lend the public a strong voice in the naming of alien planets. The first 20 planetary bodies eligible for names will be selected next month. Voting begins in June. Register with the IAU to propose a name by mid-May. The winning names will be announced by the IAU in August.
Wonky, warped and weird: Pulsar vanishes in space-time
Space.com (1/13): Scientists achieve first measurement of a pulsing neutron star pair.
Space chemistry could be cooking up icy building blocks of life, study says
Los Angeles Times (1/13): Look to star forming processes as the site for the creation of the organic molecules that nurtured life on Earth, say French scientists who developed their theory with laboratory experiments.
Low Earth Orbit
Space Station crew shelters in Russian segment after possible ammonia leak
Moscow Times (1/14): Astronauts aboard the International Space Station exit the U.S. segment living quarters in response to leak of ammonia coolant. U.S. and European astronauts take refuge in the Russian segment. The U.S. segment has been sealed off, the newspaper reports. Six astronauts are living and working aboard the orbiting science laboratory.
Oh SMAP! NASA plans to get the dirt on soil moisture with new satellite
Spaceflight Insider (1/13): NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite mission is nearing a Jan. 29 lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. SMAP’s mission is intended to reveal how much moisture is locked in the Earth’s surface soil. The findings are intended to improve crop yields and improve predictions for flooding and drought.
Launch campaign resumes for ESA space plane
Spaceflightnow.com (1/13): After a two-month break for a safety review, the European Space Agency is looking to Feb. 11 for the launch of an experimental re-entry vehicle from its spaceport in French Guiana. Though suborbital, the test flight of the Intermediate Experimental Vehicle is intended to provide engineers with information that could shape the design of re-entry vehicles used in exploration, microgravity research, Earth observation and the mitigation of orbital debris.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
Cape expects to be world’s busiest spaceport in 2015
Florida Today (1/14): Florida’s Cape Canaveral looks to be the world’s busiest spaceport this year, according to U.S. Air Force Col. Thomas Falzarano, commander of the Air Force’s 45th Operations Group. He forecasts two dozen launchings from Central Florida, possibly more.
Boeing wins U.S. patent for stacking electric satellites on rocket
Space News (1/13): New patent covers a process that permits multiple electrically powered satellites to be stacked within a rocket fairing. The patent concept will be featured in a February satellite launching of Boeing-built communications satellites.
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