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Today’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. NASA gathers a new capabilities team to economize. Europe’s Airbus will build the service module for NASA’s Orion crew exploration capsule. Explaining the physics of Interstellar. Lockheed Martin starts the assembly of NASA’s Insight Mars lander mission. James Webb Space Telescope components undergo testing at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Europe’s distant comet lander, Philae, may communicate again. Meanwhile, Europe celebrates with postmarks. NASA’s Dawn mission maps asteroid Vesta. Sending names on deep space missions grows in popularity. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station crank up first space 3-D printer. So many applications, so few astronaut openings. China readies space legislation. U.S. commercial spaceflight regulation likely to evolve. NASA’s Commercial Crew Program partners make strides. Germany joins push for Europe’s new Ariane 6 launcher. SpaceShipTwo team determined to recover from Oct. 31 setback.
Human Deep Space Exploration
NASA bringing on ‘capability leaders’ in February in latest attempt at right-sizing
Space News (11/17): NASA is assembling a capabilities leadership team to trim costs, according to agency Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot. Anticipated to be in place by February, the belt tightening could mean some facility closings or relocation, Space News reports.
Airbus wins contract for U.S. space capsule Orion
Reuters (11/17): Airbus Group will develop the service module for NASA’s Orion crew exploration capsule under an agreement between the U.S. space agency and the European Space Agency. The service module will be part of a joint NASA unpiloted test flight of the Orion capsule and the Space Launch System heavy lift rocket currently anticipated for 2018.
Interstellar: The cinema of physicists
New York Times (11/17): Interstellar, the feature film drama starring Matthew McConaughey, meets physicist Kip Thorne’s new book, The Science of Interstellar. The book examines the science behind the science fiction.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
Spaceflightnow.com (11/17): The spacecraft for NASA’s Insight mission to Mars has started the assembly phase, contractor Lockheed Martin announced on Monday. Insight, due a 2016 launch, will drill into the Martian terrain to study the planet’s internal processes.
Webb Space Telescope promises astronomers new scientific adventures
The Washington Post (11/17): NASA picks up the pace of its work with the James Webb Space Telescope. Major pieces of the JWST are undergoing pre-launch tests at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The more capable, designated successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is in line for an October 2018 launching. “The Webb will be both bigger and located in a darker part of space than Hubble, enabling it to capture images from the faintest galaxies,” the Post reports.
Images show Philae’s first bounce, Ulamec optimistic will hear from it again
Spacepolicyonline.com (11/17): Germany’s Philae lander, which history last week as it became the first spacecraft to touchdown on a comet, may communicate again, say project managers. Philae is part of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The lander bounded to a Nov. 12 landing but ended up in a shaded region of the comet. Battery power drained away.
Historic comet landing lands on Royal Mail postmark
Collectspace.com (11/17): The European Space Agency’s inspirational Rosetta Mission and Philae lander earn European post marks.
Best of Vesta: Scientists turn Dawn’s data into asteroid map
NBC News (11/17): NASA’s Dawn mission provides data to produce a map of the main belt asteroid Vesta. Finished with its work at Vesta in 2012, Dawn moved onto a second major asteroid, Ceres. The spacecraft was launched on its long mission in 2007.
Names in bottles: A new tool for exploration?
The Space Review (11/17): It’s quite popular now: space agencies from around the world are encouraging their followers to send their names, which are embedded on a chip and launched on exploration missions. Dan Lester, University of Texas astronomer, sizes up the trend and its roots.
Low Earth Orbit
World’s first zero-gravity 3-D printer installed on Space Station
Space.com (11/17): U.S. astronauts aboard the International Space Station set up the first 3-D space printer on Monday. Eventually, NASA hopes, a space functioning printer could assemble spare parts and components for crews on a deep space mission.
The Space Review (11/17): What happens when the passion and the drive to become a U.S. or Canadian astronaut falls short? Space Review editor Jeff Foust examines the journey for those that come close.
China expects to introduce space law around 2020
Xinhuanet (11/17): China charts provisions in space law that Beijing intends to introduce by 2020.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
Industry doesn’t expect consolidation of commercial space regulation
Space News (11/17): The U.S. regulation of emerging commercial space efforts is likely to remain fragmented, according to experts from the federal and private sectors. All participated in a recent University of Nebraska legal forum on the topic.
Myriad milestones completed and underway for NASA’s commercial partners
Spaceflightinsider.com (11/17): Four NASA backed U.S. commercial space transportation companies are progressing to restore a U.S. human launch capabilities. The goal is an inaugural commercial crew launch by late 2017.
Germany agrees to forgo Ariane 5 upgrade in favor of next-generation launcher
Space News (11/17): Germany, a powerful member of the European Space Agency, decides to back development of a new launch vehicle, the Ariane 6, rather than upgrade its predecessor.
Suborbital
SpaceShipTwo: The survival of a pilot and an industry
Spaceflightinsider.com (11/17): Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company, emerges from the Oct. 31 test flight accident in Mojave, Calif., which claimed the life of the co-pilot and injured the pilot. “There was no question it was a tragic setback, but it’s one from which we can recover,” said a company official.
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