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Today’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. New report this week from the National Research Council will assess U.S. human space exploration planning. Dutch nonprofit MarsOne, which plans to launch colonists to the red planet in the mid-2020s, enlists London production company for reality TV production. NASA’s inflatable parachute test to introduce technologies for future Mars landings. Astronomers find unexpectedly large Earth-like planet. Private group contacts long inactive NASA satellite, learn it may impact moon. U.S. Air Force selects Lockheed Martin to establish new surveillance, tracking network for orbital debris. Six astronauts on the International Space Station settle into science research agenda. Stratolaunch discusses air launch plans. Google talks dozens of small satellites to extend Internet to developing countries. NASTAR offers taste of suborbital spaceflight.
Human Deep Space Exploration
New report explores future of NASA human spaceflight
Coalition for Space Exploration (6/2): Coming Wednesday, the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences presents a key report: Pathways to Exploration: Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration. Congress requested the study of options beyond the International Space Station in 2010.
What will be the significance of the NRC’s human spaceflight report?
Spacepolitics.com (6/3): The impact of the National Research Council report, Pathways to Exploration: Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration, on Washington policymaking appears unclear.
Big Brother creators to turn the first Mars colony into global reality TV event
Independent (6/3): Mars One, the Dutch nonprofit with plans to colonize Mars in the mid-2020s, selects Darlow Smithson Productions, of London, an Endemol company, to develop a reality show for the selection and training of its initial red planet settlers. Earlier, MarsOne cut its global applicant pool to 705 people.
NASA to test flying-saucer-like device for Mars landings
USA Today (6/2): From afar, NASA’s prototype Low Density Supersonic Decelerator resembles a flying saucer. However, the large inflatable parachute concept may one day help a spacecraft carrying human explorers reach the Martian surface. A test flight in the Hawaiian Islands is planned this week, possibly Tuesday.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
Strange new world discovered: The ‘mega Earth’
Discovery.com (6/2): NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope identifies an unlikely planet. Kepler 10c checked out initially at 2.3 times the size of the Earth. That would make it Neptune like. But further studies suggest the mass of 10c is 17 times that of the Earth. That makes the discovery a very large rocky planet and not at all like Neptune.
Volunteers take command of old NASA craft, which might crash into Moon
Space News (6/2): Private group succeeds in re-establishing communications with NASA’s aging International Sun-Earth Explorer spacecraft in late May. However, the team led by space blogger Keith Cowing and businessman Dennis Wingo found the sun orbiting spacecraft on a possible course to collide with the moon.
Low Earth Orbit
Lockheed Martin lands $914M space fence contract
Space News (6/2): The U.S. Air Force selects Lockheed Martin to develop the nation’s next space surveillance network, a collection of ground-based radar and other sensors to track a growing accumulation of manmade junk in Earth orbit. The contract is one of the largest military space related contract awards in recent years.
Lockheed Martin wins ‘space fence’ contract
Washington Post (6/2): New U.S. Air Force space debris monitoring radar system will be constructed in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. It will be capable of tracking 200,000 objects, about 10 times the current number, and much smaller pieces of debris that could collide destructively with a satellite or human spacecraft. In 2012, the U.S. issued 10,000 collision warnings to spacecraft operators. The anticipated operational date for the new system is 2018.
New six-member crew ramps up science, familiarization work
NASA (6/2): Boosted last week from three to six members, the crew of the International Space Station gets down to science.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
Stratolaunch on schedule for 2018 first launch
Space News (6/2): The low profile U.S. company is on pace to air launch its first payload in 2014, according to company officials during a presentation at the National Space Symposium in late May. The company is looking to the launch of humans into orbit as well.
How Google just turned internet access into a space race
Washington Post (6/2): Google planning launch of small satellites to transmit wireless data to the populations of developing countries. Google plans to invest from $1 billion to $3 billion in the project, according to Washington Post and Wall Street Journal reports.
Suborbital
Blastoff! Amateur astronauts get a simulated taste of space travel
NBC News (6/1): At NASTAR, a training center in the Philadelphia suburbs, future SpaceShipTwo passengers get an early taste of spaceflight by boarding a centrifuge. “It’s the closest thing on Earth to the actual spaceflight,” explains Brienna Henwood, NASTAR’s director of space training and research.
Brought to you by the Coalition for Space Exploration, CSExtra is a daily compilation of space industry news selected from hundreds of online media resources. The Coalition is not the author or reporter of any of the stories appearing in CSExtra and does not control and is not responsible for the content of any of these stories. The content available through CSExtra contains links to other websites and domains which are wholly independent of the Coalition, and the Coalition makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or authenticity of the information contained in any such site or domain and does not pre-screen or approve any content. The Coalition does not endorse or receive any type of compensation from the included media outlets and is not responsible or liable in any way for any content of CSExtra or for any loss, damage or injury incurred as a result of any content appearing in CSExtra. For information on the Coalition, visit www.space.com or contact us via e-mail at Info@space.com.
