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Today’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. Development of NASA’s Space Launch System picks up with a key milestone. NASA’s Orion crew capsule on the move to its next round of ground processing for Dec. 4 test launch. Strides in space favor bipartisanship. Scientists pitch landing sites for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover. Reaching Mars could alter Asian power equation. China to test space vehicle for future unmanned lunar sample return. Experts question claims of Nicaraguan meteor impact. Higgs Boson provokes new warning. NASA looks to Twitter for asteroid mission forum. NASA backs seven planetary mission extensions — if the funding emerges. Russians assemble recovery team to greet returning International Space Station crew members in Kazakhstan. New weather instruments to call International Space Station home. China launches spy satellites. Inspector general questions ground support for new NOAA spacecraft. Commercial space proposals finding Silicon Valley venture capital support.
Human Deep Space Exploration
Testing and development pace picks up for NASA’s giant Space Launch System rocket
America Space (9/8): NASA’s development of the Space Launch System heavy lift rocket achieves a recent milestone not reached since the space shuttle. The recent Key Decision Point-C milestone started the SLS toward production and a first unpiloted flight test by late 2018.
NASA’s first Orion crew capsule ready for flight
Spaceflight Insider (9/8): On Wednesday, the Lockheed Martin Orion flight test vehicle assigned to Exploration Flight Test-1 takes its next ground processing step at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The unpiloted EFT-1 two orbit test flight is scheduled for a Dec. 4 lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. Orion along with the Space Launch System heavy lift rocket are the cornerstones of NASA’s plan to resume human deep space exploration.
Opinion: Tone down the political rhetoric around space issues.
Spaceflight Insider (9/8): Op-ed urges a bi-partisan U.S. footing when it comes to space exploration. Conservatives and liberals alike draw benefits from an effectively managed space exploration agenda, writes Collin Skocik.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
NASA eyes potential landing sites for 2020 Mars rover mission
Space.com (9/8): NASA starts an assessment of about 50 landing site proposals for the Mars 2020 rover. The rover is intended to continue assessments of the habitability of the Martian environment as well as cache samples of the soil and rock for return to Earth on a future mission. “Nothing has been eliminated at this point,” a NASA official involved in the process told an agency advisory panel.
Reaching Mars: is it about great power status?
The Space Review (9/8): India is looking to Sept 24 for the arrival of its first mission to Mars. The mission is a low cost, forward looking attempt to vault the country to a higher standing in the complexity of Asian regional politics as well as to shed new light of the atmosphere of the red planet and perhaps the prospects for past or current Martian life, writes Ajey Lele, a specialist in international relations at the Institute For Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), of New Delhi.
China plans to launch recoverable lunar orbiter prototype this year
Space News (9/8): A re-entry test planned by China this year will lay the ground work for a lunar sample return mission in 2017. “The test orbiter mission involves a high-speed re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere as a precursor checkout for the Chang’e 5 sample-return mission,” Space News reports. “A specially designed re-entry capsule will return from the vicinity of the Moon into Earth’s atmosphere, take the heat and then land.”
NASA raises doubts about reports of Nicaraguan meteorite
National Geographic (9/8): The U.S. space agency questions reports of a meteorite explosion in Nicaragua near the airport in Managua over the weekend. Those reports raised a possible link to a house-sized asteroid that sailed close to the Earth on Sunday afternoon. The absence of a visible fireball and the time separation between the passage of asteroid 2014 RC and the meteor report challenges the basis of both claims, according to a NASA expert.
Stephen Hawking says Higgs Boson ‘God particle’ has the potential to destroy the universe
Laughing Squid.com (9/8): Hawking notes the destructive potential of the recently discovered fundamental particle in his latest book, Starmus: 50 years of man in space. However, the energy level to spark that release is quite, quite large.
In case all of Earth wasn’t a big enough platform, NASA is sending tweets into space
Washington Post (9/8): NASA looks to social media as a public forum to champion the far future of space exploration. A collection of suggestions proposed on Twitter and Instagram will accompany NASA’s OSIRIS-REx on its trip to the asteroid Bennu to collect samples. Launch is set for 2016.
NASA missions approved to go on
New York Times (9/8): The Times looks back at last week’s decision by NASA to extend the operations of seven planetary science missions, including the Curiosity rover on Mars and Cassini at Saturn. Nonetheless, the extensions depend on future sufficient funding.
Low Earth Orbit
Space crew returning from ISS guaranteed safe welcome on Earth
Itar Tass, of Russia (9/8): A recovery team of more than 200 personnel equipped with search aircraft and all-terrain vehicles will be at the ready late Wednesday, as NASA astronaut Steve Swanson and cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev descend to Earth in Kazakhstan aboard their Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft. The three men are returning after 169 days in space.
NASA sensor to aid hurricane forecasts from ISS
Florida Today (9/8): ISS-Rapid Scat, a new NASA weather sentry, is headed for the International Space Station on the next SpaceX cargo resupply mission, scheduled for a Sept. 19 lift off. The hurricane sensor will be followed by other weather and environmental instruments destined for a home aboard the six person orbiting science laboratory.
Clandestine spy satellite launched by China
Spaceflightnow.com (9/8): China launched a spy satellite equipped with optical or radar sensors on Monday.
Editorial | A breach waiting to happen
Space News (9/8): NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System, a key weather forecasting tool, is vulnerable to ground-based software gaps that engineers have been too slow to address, according to the U.S. Commerce Department’s inspector general.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
The startup-ification of commercial space
The Space Review (9/8): The spirit of Silicon Valley descends on commercial space, writes TSR editor Jeff Foust. He found evidence on display in late July at Start up Weekend Space. The trend is evidence that the era of startups with a single wealthy investor may be giving way to interest and support from a more diverse community of venture capitalists.
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