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Today’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. Changes to the human immune system during long spaceflights puzzle experts. Alien life: rare, or present but hard to find? NASA’s Curiosity rover copes with slippery Martian sand. Medium sized black hole discovery comes as a surprise. After Voyager 2 visit, distant Neptune all but escapes notice. Spacewalking cosmonauts deploy Peruvian CubeSat, work with external space station experiments. Sea plankton among tiny life forms found on space station exterior. China launches powerful Earth observing spacecraft. Astronaut cameras capture spectacular view along U.S. Gulf Coast. Northrop Grumman engineers back opportunity for launch cost reduction. NASA nears Commercial Crew Program selections. U.S. Air Force teams with Aerojet Rocketdyne on 3-D printing initiative.
Human Deep Space Exploration
In space, astronauts’ immune systems get totally confused
Washington Post (8/18): A new study suggests the experts are still trying to explain how the human immune system responds to lengthy periods of weightlessness. Studies of blood samples, collected from astronauts before, during and after spaceflight, suggest the status of the immune system will be a factor in future human deep space exploration.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
New York Times (8/19): Alien life with intelligence and technology may be rare, or just hard to find. How much do you invest to search?
Curiosity rover on Mars stalled by ‘Hidden Valley’ sand trap
Space.com (8/18): NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover encounters “slippery” sand in route to Mt. Sharp, the 3 1/2 mile rise the rover is assigned to climb. A new heading may be necessary for the six wheeled robot.
Black holes? I’ll take a medium, please
Time (8/18): Not far away on a cosmic scale — 12 million light years — lurks a medium-sized black hole. The find is a first, and a signal that black holes need not be super massive nor the remnant of a single exhausted star to have a place in the universe.
Dark spots in our knowledge of Neptune
New York Times (8/18): NASA’s Voyager 2 swept past distant Neptune a quarter century ago, providing stunning images of a vibrant world with moons and rings. No spacecraft has been back since and none is likely to return anytime soon. The Hubble Space Telescope has filled in some of the gaps. The James Webb Space Telescope may fill in more.
Low Earth Orbit
Spacewalkers deploy satellite, tend to experiments
Spaceflightnow.com, CBS News (8/18): Spacewalking cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev deploy a small Peruvian satellite then install and collect experiments outside the six person International Space Station.
Scientists find traces of sea plankton on ISS surface
Itar-Tass, or Russia (8/19): Russian scientists find evidence for living microorganisms and plankton on the outside of the International Space Station.
China launches HD Earth observation satellite
Xinhuanet, of China (8/19): China launches high definition Earth observing satellite into orbit for civilian purposes, according to the report. A smaller Polish satellites rides along.
Astronaut snaps stunning nighttime Gulf Coast portrait
Discovery.com (8/18): America’s Gulf Coast sparkles in night time photos taken by the astronauts living and working aboard the International Space Station.
Wanted: Unmanned space plane to fly on the cheap
Space.com (8/19): Engineers at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems sound an optimistic note for an opportunity to lower the cost of access to space. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s XS-1 program is affording an opportunity.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
CCtCAP Commercial Crew announcement expected soon
Spacepolicyonline.com (8/18): NASA hedges its bets on whether the agency will announce winners in its closely watched Commercial Crew Program competition by the end of August and reaffirms plans to choose its selections for the final phase in “late August-early September.” The absence of a 2015 budget agreement by the House and Senate, or a budget continuing resolution could be pacing items as might tensions between Washington and Moscow over the supply of Russian RD-180 rocket engines for the U.S. Atlas 5 rocket.
NASA closes in on Commercial Crew selection
Aviation Week & Space Technology (8/11-18): Speculation grows as NASA nears the selection of companies for the next round of its Commercial Crew Program. Will NASA select one or two of the three contenders, Boeing, Sierra Nevada and SpaceX? Is the choice of launch rockets, the Atlas V, or the Falcon 9, a factor? Can Sierra’s lifting body strategy compete with the capsule designs of Boeing and SpaceX? Can the rejected competitors continue development without NASA?
Aerojet Rocketdyne awarded defense contract for large scale additive manufacturing
Yahoo Finance (8/18): Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio contracts with Aerojet Rocketdyne to develop large scale 3D printing techniques for the production of liquid rocket engine components.
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