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Today’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. Journey to Space, a new giant screen documentary on the future of U.S. human deep space exploration, premiers Friday in Washington. Scientists offer evidence ancient Mars harbored a major ocean. NASA’s Dawn mission probe reaches the giant asteroid Ceres on Friday. Ceres may offer preview of Europa, Enceladus. Total solar eclipse coming Mar. 20. Explosion boots star from the Milky Way. Gravity lensing offers multiple views of distant stellar explosion. Telescopes penetrate galactic dust to find evidence that star systems matured faster than previously thought. New NanoSat launched from the International Space Station tests technologies that may lead to express deliveries from orbit to Earth. India prepares for the mid-2015 launch of reusable rocket demonstrator.
Human Deep Space Exploration
All on board for a Journey to Space: New film debuts
Coalition for Space Exploration (3/5): Journey to Space, a new Giant Screen documentary that looks to the future of human space exploration opens Friday at the Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C. and select theaters worldwide. Narrated by Patrick Stewart, of Star Trek fame, and including behind the scenes insight from U.S. astronaut Chris Ferguson, commander of the final space shuttle mission, and Serena Aunon, one of the nation’s newest astronauts, the production examines contributions from the space shuttle program and future plans to explore the asteroids and Mars.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
Mars had an ocean, scientists say, pointing to a treasure trove of new data
New York Times (3/5): Evidence of a vast ocean on early Mars lends support to prospects of a habitable environment in which microbial life may have arisen.
Ancient ‘blue’ Mars lost an entire ocean to space
Discovery.com (3/5): A NASA study of the Martian atmosphere finds evidence for a vast ocean in the planet’s ancient past. Much of an ocean that would have covered the planet with water to a depth of 137 meters was lost so space. The early water that remains is mostly locked in the ice caps at the planets north and south poles.
Mission to a mysterious dwarf planet
USA Today (3/5): NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will slip into the gravitational clutches of the large asteroid Ceres early Friday. Ceres will orbit for months gradually lowering its altitude. Dawn, launched in 2007, will study the role that Ceres and similar solar system bodies played in the evolution of the planets. “Dawn’s job is to tell all about Ceres, which was discovered more than 200 years ago but has let slip very little about itself,” USA Today reports. “Does it have polar ice caps? Does it have a liquid ocean? And could it have once harbored or could it still harbor — life?”
Mysterious dwarf planet Ceres may be ripe for life
Discovery.com (3/5): Measurements of Ceres’ density suggest the big asteroid/dwarf planet has a rocky core with an icy mantle. That makes Ceres similar to Europa and Enceladus, two of Jupiter’s icy moons that are believed to harbor underground oceans.
Total solar eclipse coming in March
USA Today (3/5): A rare total eclipse of the sun visible from the North Atlantic is coming Mar. 20.
Astronomers find star speeding out of the galaxy
Reuters (3/5): A fast moving star is being ejected from the Milky Way galaxy by the explosion of a massive companion star. The finding is reported in the journal Science.
Hubble telescope sees quadruple
Science News (3/5): Thanks to the powerful gravity of an intervening galaxy, the Hubble Space Telescope is able to see four images of an even more distant star explosion.
Galaxy in early universe grew up faster than expected (photos, video)
Space.com (3/5): A1689-zD1 is a distant galaxy that formed less than a billion years after the big bang. Observations made possible with gravitational lensing suggest it evolved much faster than previously theorized. Not that massive, the star system is forming stars at a faster than anticipated rate. Galactic dust has obscured previous opportunities for observation.
Low Earth Orbit
Nano satellite launched from Space Station tests space brake
Spaceflight Insider (3/5): NASA technology experiment leads to TechEdSat-4, a CubeSat launched from the International Space Station on Mar. 3. The small satellite technology could enable the dispatch of small payloads from an orbiting space station to Earth, using atmospheric drag rather than propulsive technology.
India to fly RLV tech demo by June
Space News (3/5): The Indian Space Research Organization envisions a two-stage to orbit fully reusable launch vehicle. The June launch will take an autonomous flight demonstrator to an altitude of 70 kilometers for a gliding descent and splashdown at sea.
Brought to you by the Coalition for Space Exploration, CSExtra is a daily compilation of space industry news selected from hundreds of online media resources. The Coalition is not the author or reporter of any of the stories appearing in CSExtra and does not control and is not responsible for the content of any of these stories. The content available through CSExtra contains links to other websites and domains which are wholly independent of the Coalition, and the Coalition makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or authenticity of the information contained in any such site or domain and does not pre-screen or approve any content. The Coalition does not endorse or receive any type of compensation from the included media outlets and is not responsible or liable in any way for any content of CSExtra or for any loss, damage or injury incurred as a result of any content appearing in CSExtra. For information on the Coalition, visit www.space.com or contact us via e-mail at Info@space.com.