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Monday’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting on space related activities from around the globe, plus a roundup of activities from the weekend. In Washington, NASA and other non-defense agencies avert a House sponsored rescission that would have recalled $325 million in 2012 space agency funding. Sir Richard Branson dreams large. The Arctic warms. Russia braces for the re-entry of a failed Mars probe. Russia launches a series of French satellites. A look into the workings of NASA’s Kepler alien planet finder. NASA ponders a new mission for the Deep Impact probe. NASA’s Dawn mission scans the asteroid Vesta for clues of the early solar system. A Los Angeles museum ramps up its Endeavour display plans. Comet Lovejoy survives a close encounter with the sun. A NASA scientist predicts 2012 will come and go without a stellar disaster. A look at space related activities planned for the week ahead.
1. From Spacepolicyonline.com, Dec. 18: The U. S. Senate rejects a House sponsored bill with a budget rescission that would have reclaimed $325 million from NASA’s $17.8 billion 2012 budget, a spending plan passed in November as part of the minibus appropriations measure. Applied to non-Defense agencies, the rescission would have paid for disaster aide.
http://bit.ly/vnT5LW
A. From The Hill, Dec. 17: The House rescission measure would be disruptive, says a lawmaker from Louisiana, a state hard hit by 2011 natural disasters.
http://bit.ly/rTJ4II
2. From the Wall Street Journal, Dec. 17: Sir Richard Branson embraces a dream, personal space travel — the next business frontier.
http://on.wsj.com/vRkbCB
3. From the New York Times, Dec. 16: As the Arctic warms, decaying submerged biomass sends bubbles of methane gas breaking through the ice and loading the Earth’s atmosphere with more greenhouse gases. NASA is among federal agencies assessing further studies.
http://nyti.ms/sgNn7a
4. From Spaceflightnow.com, Dec. 17: Russia’s failed Mars mission probe, locked in Earth orbit since its launching in early November, is destined to plummet back to Earth between Jan. 6 and 19, according to Russian experts. Experts estimate that 10-30 fragments will reach the surface. The craft is also loaded with toxic fuel that is expected to burn up high in the atmosphere.
http://bit.ly/v5Ov5d
A. From Space.com, Dec. 16: Russia’s failed mission to the Martian moon Phobos may help to improve international satellite re-entry prediction models.
http://bit.ly/sAHzXk
5. From Ria Novosti of Russia, Dec. 17: A Russian Soyuz rocket with several French reconnaissance satellites lifts off from the European Space Center in French Guiana.
http://bit.ly/tRe1Ai
6. From USAToday, Dec. 17: A look at NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope mission, the Kepler 22b planet discovery and what it means for an alien world to lurk in the habitable zone of another star. Near three years into Kepler’s mission, it seems there could be many planets like Kepler 22b in the Milky Way galaxy.
http://usat.ly/tC0uBt
7. From Spaceflightnow.com, Dec. 17: NASA assesses a proposal to send the Deep Impact probe on an observation mission to Asteroid 2002 GT, an Earth orbit crossing planetary body that could be a future destination for astronauts. If funding is approved, Deep Impact would aim for an encounter in early 2020. The spacecraft was launched in January 2005.
http://bit.ly/u8PJbY
8. From the Wall Street Journal, Dec. 18: NASA’s Dawn probe orbits close to the surface of the asteroid Vesta, which many experts consider a mini-planet with an iron core and complex topography. Vesta, the origin of a small percentage of meteorites that strike the Earth, could hold clues to the violence surrounding the solar system’s formation.
http://on.wsj.com/vX96Ha
9. From the Los Angeles Times, Dec. 19: The California Science Museum of Los Angeles plans to add shuttle solid rocket boosters and an external fuel tank to its display of the orbiter Endeavour. Title to Endeavour was provided to the science center earlier this year. Museum officials estimate it will take another $200 million in donations to add the rocket boosters and fuel tank.
http://lat.ms/tumdtu
10. From the Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 16: Comet Lovejoy survives a close encounter with the sun. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory provides visual proof the recently discovered comet defied predictions of a crash into the sun.
http://bit.ly/ucKFrf
11. From Discovery.com, Dec. 17: NASA dispels concerns of the Earth’s demise in a 2012 stellar explosion.
http://bit.ly/sywVDl
12. From Spacepolicyonline.com, Dec. 18: Space related activities scheduled for the remainder of the month.
http://bit.ly/vZOOto
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