In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA’s planning for the Asteroid Redirect Mission continues, though the U.S. House has cast doubt on further spending.
Human Deep Space Exploration
NASA planning asteroid mission reviews despite funding uncertainty
Space News (6/23): NASA’s Michele Gates, who leads planning for NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), tells a Seattle audience that efforts to support the initiative will continue though lawmakers in the U.S. House shaping the agency’s 2017 budget have withdrawn support. House lawmakers believe ARM, a mission to robotically collect a large boulder from the surface of an asteroid and deliver it to a lunar orbit, will not further NASA’s ambitions of reaching Mars with human explorers in the mid-2030s. NASA’s plan would launch a mission with astronauts in the 2020s to visit the lunar orbiting boulder. They would launch aboard an Orion capsule atop the agency’s Space Launch System exploration rocket. The robotic phase of the strategy is to undergo a formal review, called Key Decision Point B, on July 15.
SAFFIRE could provide valuable information for missions to Mars
Spaceflight Insider (6/23): Fires in the microgravity of space could be treacherous for astronauts assigned to long running, deep space exploration missions. To gauge the threat NASA intentionally set a small fire aboard the Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft on June 14, a few hours after the NASA contracted space freighter departed the International Space Station, following a stay of almost three months. The spacecraft was uncrewed but equipped with cameras and sensors to relay imagery and data to ground based researchers.
Space Science
NASA probe on brink of unearthing Jupiter’s cosmic secrets
USA Today (6/23): NASA’s Juno spacecraft will soon apply the brakes, slowing the spacecraft into orbit around Jupiter for an unprecedented look below the colorful planet’s swirling cloud tops. Signals confirming a successful braking maneuver should reach the mission’s control center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on July 4 just before midnight. Juno carries its instrumentation in a special titanium vault constructed to fend off the giant planet’s intense radiation. Operations are expected to continue through October 2017. Juno was launched in August 2011.
A dark vortex swirls in Neptune’s atmosphere in these new photos
Mashable (6/23): Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope finds evidence of a major storm in the atmosphere of distant Neptune.
NASA gives the Hubble Space Telescope another five years of life
Inverse (6/23): The nonprofit Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy will continue to lead the 26-year-old Hubble Space Telescope’s science efforts from the Space Telescope Science Institute, of Maryland, under a $196.3 million, five year extension. The deal will last beyond the scheduled late 2018 launching of Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope. Hubble was launched in 1990.
Low Earth Orbit
Atlas V ready to launch Navy satellite Friday morning
Florida Today (6/23): The launching of the U. S. military’s MUOS communications satellite, scheduled for 10:30 a.m., EDT, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., will mark a return to flight for the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5. A March 22 launch of supplies to the International Space Station overcame a premature shutdown of the first stage engine, prompting a delay in future launches to example a propellant valve.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
Former NASA ISS manager planning commercial space station venture
Space News (6/23): Previous International Space Station manager Mike Suffredini outlines a strategy for a future commercial version of the International Space Station. Suffredini, who retired from NASA in September to become president of the commercial space division of Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies, has co-founded a new venture to pursue the commercial station, Axiom Space LLC. Suffredini described the plan at the NewSpace 2016 conference, in Seattle. A module docked first to the Space Station would become the cornerstone, said Suffredini.
NASA picks Firmamentum to build a 3-D printer/recycler that works in space
Geek Wire (6/23): Firmamentum, a subsidiary of Tethers Unlimited, of Bothell, Wash., has been selected by NASA for a future 3-D printing demonstration aboard the International Space Station. The company’s Refabricator will demonstrate whether it can recycle plastics in space before their polymer content breaks down.
Opinion | Reviving the aerospace plane program
Space News (6/23): Rooted in the late 1950s, a revival of the single stage to orbit National Aerospace Plane could further efforts to establish an assured, lower cost access to Earth orbit, writes Unmeel Mehta, a research associate at the American Institute of Astronautics and Aeronautics. Previous efforts, dating to the late 1950s, were terminated. Currently, only the U.K’s Skylon program survives.