Thursday’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting and commentary on the future of U.S. space policy. British Petroleum agrees to establish an escrow fund for the Gulf oil spill that rivals NASA’s annual budget.
1. From Space News: Work at NASA on a heavy lift rocket would start in 2011 under the authorization bill taking shape in the U.S. Senate.
http://www.spacenews.com/civil/bill-would-direct-nasa-begin-work-heavy-lift-rocket-next-year.html
A. From Space News: An op-ed from Eric Sterner, a space policy analyst, takes a critical look at NASA’s deep space destinations. While they range all the way to Mars, NASA’s budget supports none of them, writes Sterner. It’s all rhetoric, he notes.
http://www.spacenews.com/commentaries/100616-blog-Destinations-in-Rhetoric.html
B. From Spacepolitics.com: The website sizes up efforts to save and cancel NASA’s Constellation back-to-the-moon program. In Alabama, the mayor of Huntsville wages a campaign to save the program. Meanwhile, NASA administrator Charles Bolden tells a southern California public radio station that Constellation was too limiting.
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2010/06/16/battling-for-constellation-and-looking-beyond/
2. From the Washington Post: The money British Petroleum has agreed to place in an Gulf oil spill escrow would cover NASA spending for one year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/16/AR2010061605529.html
3. From Space.com: Forecasters believe the Oct. 8, 2011 Draconid meteor shower will be intense, strong enough to sound warnings of potential damage to the Hubble Space Telescope as well as the International Space Station.
http://www.exploredeepspace.com/missionlaunches/draconid-meteors-2011-spacecraft-risk-100616.html
4. From Space.com: Scientists at the University of Arizona suggest a mission to look for fossils on the Jovian moon, Europa.
http://www.exploredeepspace.com/scienceastronomy/jupiter-moon-europa-fossils-robots-100617.html
5. From the Orlando Sentinel: SpaceX founder Elon Musk announces Wednesday his company has signed a record deal, worth $492 million, to launch commercial satellites for Iridium Communications Inc using the new Falcon 9.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/2010/06/elon-musk-spacex-signs-biggest-commercial-launch-deal-ever.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+news%2Fspace%2Fspace_blog+%28Space+Blog+The+Write+Stuff%29
6. From Discovery.com: The science website reports on a recent mystery and another development.
A. The June 3 flash on Jupiter observed by amateur astronomers was caused by a meteor, thanks to a follow up investigation using the Hubble Space Telescope. http://news.discovery.com/space/big-pic-hubble-jupiter-flash.html
B. Japan’s space agency, JAXA, releases a photograph of its IKAROS spacecraft following the deployment of a solar sail.
http://news.discovery.com/space/japans-solar-sail-photographed-in-orbit.html
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