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Wednesday’s CSExtra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space activities from around the globe. The debate over NASA’s proposed commercial space initiative grows. A look at a prominent science project headed for the International Space Station aboard NASA’s final scheduled shuttle mission. A novel solar sail experiment, and more.
1. As Congress reconvenes in Washington this week, the debate over NASA’s future and especially the new commercial space transportation initiative is heating up. Here are several blogs, op-eds and news reports on the steering currents likely to shape future discussion. President Obama made the commercial initiative a center piece of NASA’s proposed 2011 budget last February. Congress has yet to appropriate the funding.
A. From Wayne Hale’s blog via Space News: In op-ed style, Hale, a retired NASA shuttle program manager and flight director, expresses concern for yet-to-be-released NASA regulations guiding the development of new commercial space transportation systems. He finds them unnecessarily overwhelming.
http://www.spacenews.com/commentaries/101116-fromwires-former-nasa-official-warns.html
B. From the Houston Chronicle: The Chronicle digests Hale’s outlook, which suggests that commercial space transportation enthusiasts are headed for a “train wreck” as they confront burgeoning NASA regulations in the making.
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2010/11/are_elements_within_nasa_conspiring_to_kill_commer_1.html
C. From the Washington Post Writers Group: Columnist Esther J. Cepeda argues against cuts to NASA’s commercial space development initiative, one of the recent recommendations from a bi-partisan budget cutting commission. “I guess the post-Sputnik drive to have the best national space program in the world is officially being laid to rest,” Cepeda laments.
http://www.postwritersgroup.com/archives/cepe101115.htm
D. From Space News: Guest columnist Joan Johnson-Freese, professor of national security studies at the Naval War College, predicts tough sledding for NASA with the new Congress. The nation must look to change in order to expand the frontiers of human and robotic space exploration, which is a low priority in tough economic times. Innovation, lower costs and acceptance of a more prominent role for the commercial space sector are key, she writes.
http://www.spacenews.com/commentaries/101115-blog-reality-bites.html
E. From the Orlando Sentinel: NASA Inspector General Paul Martin outlines the space agency’s top management challenges in an annual report made public on Tuesday. Most of the issues are well known to the space community. At the top is the complicated transition away from the space shuttle. However, the agency is also confronted by chronic cost overruns and schedule delays in other programs as well as aging buildings and labs, some under utilized and in need of expensive maintenance.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/2010/11/nasa-watchdog-identifies-agencys-top-six-challenges.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+news%2Fspace%2Fspace_blog+%28Space+Blog+The+Write+Stuff%29
F. From Florida Today: At the American Astronautical Society’s two day conference in Port Canaveral, Fla., participants focus on how to encourage wider use of the International Space Station. After $100 billion and 12 years of construction, the station is ready to open its labs to those well beyond the 15 countries that led the effort.
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20101117/NEWS02/11170340/Space-station-s-future-use-topic-of-debate
2. From the New York Times: A look behind the man and the motives for the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, an external observatory slated for launching to the International Space Station aboard NASA’s final scheduled shuttle mission on Feb. 27. The AMS has been 16 years and $1.5 billion in the making, largely through the efforts of MIT physicist Sam Ting, a Nobel prize winner. With the AMS mounted to the station, Ting hopes to reveal the mysteries of dark matter, a little understood substance that comprises a substantial amount of the universe.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/science/space/17dark.html?_r=1&hp
3. From Spaceflightnow.com: A research team anticipates a Friday launch from Alaska of a compact satellite with a solar sail. The experimental Nano Sail-D is a prototype for a kind of “parachute” that could become part of future satellites. Once deployed the solar sail could drag an aging satellite out of orbit, eliminating the growing accumulation of inactive satellites and hazardous man made debris now circling the Earth.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/minotaur/stps26/101116nanosail/
4. From the Los Angeles Times: Cosmologist Allan R. Sandage, who spent much of his career attempting to calculate the age of the universe, has died. The quest often placed him at odds with fellow astronomers who thought his calculations suggested a more advanced age for the universe. Sandage, 84, died of cancer in San Gabriel, Calif. He was affiliated with the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena.
http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/scimedemail/la-me-1117-allan-sandage-20101117,0,2018900.story
5. From Space.com: The latest on the mysterious contrail spotted off the southern California coast last week. NASA scientists probe the mystery using imagery from weather satellites and other resources that suggest the cloud like feature came from an aircraft, rather than a missile.
http://www.exploredeepspace.com/scienceastronomy/mystery-contrail-satellite-image-101116.html
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