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Thursday’s CSExtra features the latest reporting and commentary on global space activities: Aboard the International Space Station, astronauts greet an unmanned Japanese supply ship. Astronomers find the oldest star system using upgrades to the Hubble Space Telescope made by NASA shuttle astronauts in 2009. In Congress, some lawmakers favor deep budget cuts that would leave NASA’s future uncertain. Other legislators are marking NASA’s National Day of Remembrance, an annual tribute to the astronauts who perished in the Apollo 1 fire and shuttle Challenger and Columbia tragedies, with a call to forge ahead with human exploration. A new report stresses an urgency for spacecraft like NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory to monitor international commitments to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
1. From Spaceflightnow.com: Early Thursday, astronauts aboard the International Space Station await the arrival of Japan’s unmanned HTV 2, with 5.3 tons of supplies and equipment. Catherine Coleman and Paulo Nespoli will be posted at the station’s robot arm ready to grapple the big space freighter known as Kounotori, or White Stork. Using the Canadian arm, the two astronauts will take several hours to berth the spacecraft to the station’s U.S. segment. Supply missions like those flown by Japan, Europe and Russia will become more important as NASA’s shuttle retires in 2011.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/h2b/htv2/110126rendezvous/
2. From the New York Times: Astronomers, using the Hubble Space Telescope, spotted the most distant star system. The galaxy appears to have formed 480 million years after the birth of the universe. The galaxy is 13.2 billion light years away in a universe that sprang into existence 13.7 billion years ago. The finding, reported in the British journal Nature, offers a new foundation for the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope which was designed to look back even further. The discovery was made possible with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, an instrument installed by NASA shuttle astronauts in 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/science/space/27galaxy.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Hubble&st=cse
3. From Spacepolitics.com: U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, the newly elected Kentucky Republican, proposes a $500 billion cut in 2011 discretionary spending. The measure goes little noticed in the hours before President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday. In NASA’s case, spending would fall 25 percent.
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2011/01/26/when-a-25-percent-cut-is-getting-off-easy/
A. From the Orlando Sentinel: U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who chairs the Senate Science and Space Subcommittee notes the 25th anniversary of the shuttle Challenger tragedy on Friday. Nelson, who flew as a payload specialist on the previous shuttle flight, said NASA must strive to explore.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/2011/01/nelson-25th-anniversary-of-challenger-reinforces-need-for-space-exploration.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+news%2Fspace%2Fspace_blog+%28Space+Blog+The+Write+Stuff%29
B. From Spacepolitics.com: Members of Congress who support human space exploration wanted more from President Obama than a historical references to Sputnik and the Cold War era race to the moon in Tuesday’s State of the Union address.
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2011/01/26/reaction-to-past-and-future-space-policy-in-the-state-of-the-union/
4. From USA Today: The global community will need satellites capable of accurately measuring green house gas emissions if they are to enter into meaningful agreements restricting their release, according to a new report from the JASON advisory panel. NASA’s replacement Orbiting Carbon Observatory could be one of those spacecraft.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2011/01/climate-treaty-verification-needs-cooperation/1
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