In Today’s Deep Space Extra… Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft the U.S.S. Gene Cernan departs the ISS early Wednesday. SpaceX’s launch to ISS delayed from December 8 to no earlier than December 12. NASA’s 3-D printed habitat challenge continues. Help name the NASA New Horizons next flyby target by midnight tonight!
Human Space Exploration
Live coverage: Cygnus supply ship readied for Space Station departure
Coalition Member in the News – Orbital ATK
Spaceflightnow.com (12/6): Orbital’s ATK’s eighth resupply mission to the International Space Station is to depart the six person orbiting science lab early Wednesday for a round of 14 small satellite deployments from a NanoRacks CubeSat deployer. The capsule, named for the late Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan, is to make a destructive descent into the Earth’s atmosphere on December 18. It launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on November 12 with more than 7,000 pounds of Space Station supplies and research equipment.
SpaceX targeting December 12 launch of ISS supplies from Cape Canaveral
Florida Today (12/6): NASA and SpaceX have slipped the launch of the company’s 13th NASA contracted resupply mission to the International Space Station from December 8 to no earlier than December 12 to accommodate payload and launch complex preparations.
Registration is open for NASA’s 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge
Bradley.com (12/5): Registration is open for Phase 3 of NASA’s 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge, which searches for ways to create shelters for astronauts on locations such as the moon and Mars. $2 million is up for grabs! Register your team here.
Space Science
Today is the last day to help nickname @NASANewHorizons’ next flyby target!
NASA.gov (12/5): Here is your chance to help nickname New Horizons’ next flyby target. Submit your suggestion by midnight ET December 6.
Planetary Resources’ prototype asteroid prospector set for January liftoff in India
GeekWire.com (12/4): The planned January launch of India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle will include Redmond, Washington, based Planetary Resources prototype satellite for asteroid prospecting. More than two dozen small satellites are anticipating launch on the PSLV-C40 launch vehicle.
Other News
ULA taps L3 for Vulcan rocket avionics
Coalition Member in the News – United Launch Alliance
Space News (12/4): United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket will feature avionics provided by L3 Technologies. ULA specified that the avionics are for Vulcan Centaur, the first iteration of the new rocket that uses a new first stage paired with the existing Centaur upper stage used on the Atlas 5.
The startup world’s debt to the public sector
Governing.com (12/5): There is a there is a tendency in the startup world to believe that the world’s biggest problems will all be solved by scrappy groups of developers surviving solely on ramen and Red Bull. What’s often overlooked, ignored or even unknown is the essential role the public sector and public policy plays in helping startups solve major problems. For example, across all of his companies, Elon Musk has received almost $5 billion in financial support from governments at all levels, everything from grants to tax breaks to payments from the Air Force and NASA for launching rockets. Musk is also the beneficiary of the years of research that occurred in publicly funded universities across the nation
Investor interest in space companies remains strong despite no big deals
Space News (12/5): Despite an absence of major space commerce transactions to date in 2017, investor interest in the commercial space industry remains strong, according to Carissa Christensen, CEO of Bryce Space and Technology, in opening day remarks Tuesday before the three day Space Commerce Conference and Exposition in Houston. Still, there is strong investment activity among venture capitalists in the field, Christensen told many of the 2,000 registered for the conference in a morning briefing. Investments in space “startups” reached $3 billion in each of the last two years.
NASA seeks developer for part of Mississippi space center
Associated Press via Sun Herald (12/4): NASA’s Stennis Space Center, a major test facility for NASA rocket propulsion systems, is seeking a developer to convert a 1,100 acre parcel into an industrial park to help lure more commercial activity.
Google Lunar X-Prize teams make last-ditch fundraising appeals
Space News (12/5): Two contestants in the $20 million Google Lunar X-Prize competition face major fund raising efforts to keep their chances of participating alive. They are Israel’s SpaceIL and India’s Team Indus. The winner would become the first commercial enterprise to land a rover payload on the Moon and communicate observations back to Earth.