In Today’s Deep Space Extra… Pros and cons and potential changes in NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission.
Human Deep Space Exploration
Will NASA’s ARM mission to an asteroid be cancelled?
Spaceflight Insider (6/1): As part of their budget deliberations, U.S. House appropriators have withdrawn support for the Asteroid Redirect Mission, NASA’s plan to robotically pluck a boulder from the surface of an asteroid and maneuver it into lunar orbit. Astronauts aboard an Orion capsule, launched atop the Space Launch System exploration rocket, would visit the boulder in the 2020s to help prepare the space agency for the human exploration of Mars in the 2030s. While some believe NASA should skip an asteroid mission as part of the agency’s Journey to Mars, others are wondering how the change might impact the Mars goal.
How to capture an asteroid and why we should go to such trouble
The Conversation (6/1): NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission is justified for a range of reasons, writes British professor of engineering Colin McInnes. The planning includes a demonstration of Solar Electric Propulsion, a new technique that could transport future astronauts to Mars, and a strategy for changing the course of an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth. Asteroids may include resources, such as water, that could be converted to rocket fuel, and other resources for humans living and working in space in the future as well.
Who were the first people to walk in outer space?
Discovery.com (6/1): In order to explore the moon, NASA’s early astronauts had to learn to walk in space.
Space industry officials to visit Ohio shop working on Orion space exploration program
Associated Press (6/1): Metalex Manufacturing, a small machine shop in Cincinnati, were visited by a key lawmaker, an astronaut, students and community leaders yesterday. Metalex is one of many small businesses contributing to the development of NASA’s Space Launch System exploration rocket and Orion crew capsule. Both will enable human explorers to travel to deep space destinations ranging from lunar orbit to Mars.
Space Science
In the heart of Pluto, some of the youngest terrain in the solar system
Los Angeles (6/1): Scientists believe the heat from radioactive decay is responsible for the unusually smooth expanse of terrain on Pluto called Sputnik Planum. The region of nitrogen ice was imaged as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft carried out the first flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015.
How was the solar system formed?
Universe Today (6/1): Empirical evidence suggests the sun and planets formed from a molecular clouds after a collapse nearly 4.6 billion years ago. Other planetary systems formed similarly.
Student discovers four new planets
Universe Today (6/1): Recent University of British Columbia graduate Michelle Kunimoto found four overlooked exo-planet candidates in data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope. The first planet is the size of Mercury, two are roughly Earth-sized, and one is slightly larger than Neptune. The largest of the four, 3,200 light years away from Earth, orbits its host star in the habitable zone.
NASA asteroid-sampling spacecraft being prepped for September launch
Space.com (6/1): NASA’s OSIRIS REx spacecraft is to begin its long round trip journey to the asteroid Bennu with a launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Sept. 8. Current pre-launch activities at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center include the fueling of OSIRIS-REx, testing of the software, scientific instruments, solar panels and other critical systems.
Low Earth Orbit
TASS: Russia delays next Soyuz, Progress launches
Spacepolicyonline.com (6/1): TASS, the Russian news service, reports that upcoming launches of Russian Soyuz crew and Progress re-supply missions will be delayed, while engineers evaluate a control system issue with the docking apparatus. The delays include the first MS upgrade of the Soyuz crew version of the venerable capsule, which was to launch June 24, with NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Anatoly Ivanishin. The Soyuz MS-01 lift off has been moved to July 7, according to TASS.
Beam me up…NASA experiments with inflatable modules
PBS News Hour (6/1): Working with Bigelow Aerospace, NASA has succeeded in deploying an expandable human rated habitat aboard the International Space Station for the first time. The Bigelow Expandable Activities Module (BEAM) has the volume of a small bedroom. Engineers will evaluate the fabric structure’s response to temperature, radiation and the orbital debris environment over two years. BEAM is one concept that could house astronauts as they travel to Mars and live on planetary surfaces.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
How the next astronauts (and tourists) will get to space
Washington Post (6/1): The U.S. is entering a “golden age” of space exploration, according to Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin and Amazon.com and owner of the Washington Post. He and others cite an array of new commercially and privately developed spacecraft on the horizon and intended to take astronauts to Mars as well as the International Space Station and tourists to new heights.