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Tuesday’s CSExtra offers a roundup of the latest reporting and commentary on space developments from around the world. NASA makes plans to roll the shuttle Discovery back to the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center following a launch pad tanking test slated for no earlier than Friday. New commentary on the significance of the Falcon 9/Dragon test flight carried out by SpaceX on Dec. 8 under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. A Soyuz rocket strands ready to launch an American, Russian and Italian to the International Space Station on Wednesday, a reminder the U.S. will soon have no means of launching its own astronauts into orbit. NASA names a chief scientist, filling a long running vacancy in the post. NASA’s Voyager 1 flies to the far reaches of the solar system. Venus is bright enough to see in daylight.
1. From Spaceflightnow.com: Unusually cold and windy weather in Central Florida prompted NASA shuttle program managers to postpone Discovery’s tanking test from Wednesday to no earlier than Friday. The test will permit shuttle engineers to advance their troubleshooting into the cause of four small cracks in the stringer region of Discovery’s external tank. The cracks appeared during a Nov. 5 attempt to launch Discovery’s final mission, which was scrubbed by an unassociated hydrogen fuel leak. After the tanking test, Discovery will be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center, where the tank will be X-rayed.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts133/101213rollback/index.html
2. Three from latest edition of The Space Review, www.thespacereview.com
A. In “2010: The Year Commercial Human Spaceflight Made Contact,” Space Review editor Jeff Foust contends the Dec. 8 test flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9/Dragon under the auspices of NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program marked a major shift in the effort to make commercial human space flight a reality. No one was aboard, but SpaceX made a point with the flight that validates a controversial shift in space policy initiated by President Obama with his 2010 budget.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1743/1
B. In “Commercial Space and the Media,” author Andrew Young, who has written on NASA’s Apollo program, ponders the lack of network news attention to the successful Dec. 8 Falcon 9/Dragon demonstration mission sponsored by NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. The test flight marked the dawn of a new space age, Young writes. He finds the absence of attention a reminder of the news media’s short attention span following the Apollo 11 mission.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1740/1
C. In “The Case For a Human Asteroid Mission.” Louis Friedman, the retired executive director of the Planetary Society, makes the case for an accelerated human mission to an asteroid. President Obama asked NASA to aim for a 2025 landing. Friedman says aim for 2020 if you want to stimulate interest in human space flight and demonstrate U.S. leadership.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1742/1
3. From the Associated Press via WBOC TV and others: In Kazakhstan a Russian Soyuz spacecraft rolls by rail to a launch pad at the Baiknonur Cosmodrome, a reminder the venerable rocket will soon be the only means for Americans to reach Earth orbit. Wednesday, a Soyuz will start American Catherine Coleman, Dmitry Kondratyev of Russia and Paolo Nespoli of Italy on their way to the International Space Station. They will host the two final scheduled shuttle missions during their five-and-a-half month mission.
http://www.wboc.com/Global/story.asp?S=13662323
4. From the Associated Press via the Washington Post: NASA fills the agency’s chief scientist vacancy with a University of Colorado environmental researcher, Waleed Abdalati. It’s NASA first chief scientist since 2005.
http://www.exploredeepspace.com/uncategorized/environmental-researcher-appointed-nasa-chief-scientist
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/13/AR2010121306404.html
5. From the New York Times: A look at the scientific back and forth that developed in the aftermath of a Dec. 2 Science journal paper in which a NASA funded scientist, Felisa Wolfe-Simon, presented evidence for a bacteria that survives with toxic arsenic rather than phosphorus as part of the microbe’s DNA. Critics say Wolfe-Simon and NASA over-reached in their claims.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/science/14arsenic.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=NASA&st=cse
6. From the Associated Press via the Orlando Sentinel and others: NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977 and nearly 11 billion miles from the Earth, is finding the end of the sun’s influence.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/sns-ap-us-sci-nasa-voyager-1,0,5192605.story
7. From Space.com: Planet Venus is bright enough to see in the day time sky. The website explains how to witness the unusual display by walking outside before sunrise.
http://www.exploredeepspace.com/spacewatch/venus-visible-daytime-sky-101213.html
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