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Today’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. NASA’s planned Asteroid Redirect Mission is intended to lock in technologies for human Mars exploration. The moon is a critical part of human deep space exploration, according to a lunar science veteran. Japan considers robotic, human lunar exploration options. The Hubble Space Telescope’s silver anniversary inspires, raises expectations for an even more capable successor. NASA assembles a new organization to ponder extraterrestrial life. Canada’s leadership joins U.S. and Russia in backing an extension of International Space Station operations from 2020 to 2024. The annual Lyrid meteor shower coincides with favorable pre-dawn viewing. European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti goes Star Trek. NASA delays from June until September plans to announce new International Space Station commercial re-supply services contracts. Editorial urges careful thinking for new U.S. rocket engine development. Virginia’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport recovering from October commercial launch mishap.
Human Deep Space Exploration
Asteroid Redirect Mission to lay the technology foundations for deep space
NASAspaceflight.com (4/21): NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission planning emphasizes demonstrations of technologies necessary to reach Mars with humans. Those include Solar Electric Propulsion, the Space Launch System with and without an exploration upper stage as well as the Orion crew exploration capsule. An SLS/Orion test flight with astronauts is envisioned no earlier than 2024, according to the report.
Going back to the Moon: Q&A with planetary scientist Paul Spudis
Space.com (4/21): The moon should play a strategic role in the future U.S. human exploration of deep space, explains veteran planetary scientist Paul Spudis. Stores of lunar water could provide chemical propellant as well as life support, notes Spudis, who also raises concerns that China’s lunar intentions may be focused on a troubling control of the cis-lunar realm.
Japan’s space agency, eyeing Asian rivals, ponders moon landings, unmanned or manned
Associated Press via Toronto Star (4/21): The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency weighs options for robotic as well as human lunar exploration to remain competitive with its Asian neighbors in space, China, India and Russia. Budgets are a factor as Japan looks to the possibility of post 2025 human lunar exploration as part of an international partnership.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
Hubble’s successor will see universe’s first light
Discovery.com (4/21): The Hubble Space Telescope will mark 25 years in Earth orbit later this week. Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, promises even more spectacular discoveries as it peers back in time through infrared wavelengths. A late 2018 launching for the James Webb Space Telescope is planned.
NASA assembles unprecedented scientific team to find out if we’re all alone
Venture Beat (4/21): NASA launches an interdisciplinary effort, Nexus for Exoplanet System Sciences, to assess the prospects for extra-terrestrial life. The organization will be led by officials from NASA’s Ames Research Center, Exoplanet Science Institute and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and includes representatives from 10 universities and two research institutes.
Low Earth Orbit
Hubble Space Telescope marking 25th anniversary in orbit
Associated Press via New York Times (4/21): The silver milestone arrives Friday. After a difficult early start to its mission, the Hubble Space Telescope has touched the hearts and minds of humans like no other observatory, according to the report.
Op-ed | A not-so-final servicing mission
Space News (4/21): The Hubble Space Telescope will mark 25 years in orbit this week. An op-ed suggests a near term initiative to preserve the orbiting observatory with a crewed servicing mission flown with Dragon 2, or perhaps another commercial or NASA spacecraft. Astronauts would equip Hubble with new gyroscopes, raise the telescope’s altitude and install new instruments.
Canada’s federal budget extends support for International Space Station
Huffington Post (4/21): Top Canadian government officials back an extension of International Space Station operations from 2020 to 2024, as part of country’s latest budget. The U.S. proposed the extension in early 2014. Canada will join Russia as the only major partners to agree — so far. The European and Japanese space agencies are still considering the extension.
Look up! Here comes the Lyrid meteor shower
USA Today (4/21): Best viewing of the annual Lyrid meteor shower is in the predawn skies of Wednesday and Thursday. A crescent moon should dim the skies making the shower more visible. The source of the meteors is Comet Thatcher. One of the oldest known meteor showers, the Lyrids have graced the April skies for more than 2,600 years.
Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti wears ‘Star Trek‘ uniform in space (photo)
Space.com (4/21): European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti donned a uniform like that worn by the crew of the star ship Enterprise in the in the vintage Star Trek: Voyager television series.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
NASA delays award of Commercial Cargo follow-on contracts
Space News (4/21): NASA delays until September plans to announce a second round of International Space Station commercial re-supply services contract awards to permit additional time for the evaluation of proposals. The award date had moved from April to June previously, following the agency’s request for proposals in September 2014. Announced contenders include current providers Orbital ATK and SpaceX as well as newcomers Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Sierra Nevada. Multiple contracts are anticipated.
Editorial | Adjust schedule for RD-180 phaseout
Space News (4/21): The U.S. Congress must adjust its ban on the import of Russia’s RD-180 rocket engines for use by the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 to place national security payloads in orbit, according to a Space News editorial. The needs of the U.S. military and taxpayers should come first in the planning, according to the publication as it unsorts the many public and commercial interests at stake.
NASA Wallops flight facility’s pad OQ slowly recovering from Orb 3 accident
SpaceFlight Insider (4/21): Damage from the Oct. 28 Orbital ATK Antares rocket mishap are starting to fade. Repairs should have the Mid Atlantic Regional Spaceport launch pad on Virginia’s east coast ready for use again by March 2016. The explosion destroyed the company’s third re-supply mission to the six person International Space Station.
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