In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA’s Juno spacecraft reaches Jupiter and brakes into orbit for close-up scrutiny of the solar system’s largest planet.
Human Deep Space Exploration
Insider exclusive: Precourt talks boosters, bovines and brilliance
Spaceflight Insider (7/2): Charlie Precourt, Orbital ATK executive and former NASA astronaut, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the successful June 28 ground test firing of the NASA/Orbital ATK solid rocket motor that will help to power the Space Launch System exploration rocket. The SLS is a cornerstone of NASA’s plans to resume human deep space exploration with missions to lunar orbit and the Martian environs.
Continuing the long march to the moon
Air and Space Magazine (7/1): China’s space program is postured for an increased presence in cislunar space, from the introduction of the new Long March 7 medium lift rocket and recent anti-satellite demonstrations to the planned assembly of a new space station and a lineup of lunar robotic missions. “Our deepest concern should not be Chinese presence in cislunar space but our absence from it,” writes Paul Spudis, a lunar scientist. “By leaving the way clear for China to dominate the Moon and cislunar space, we’re relinquishing our vital space leadership role and condemning America’s space pursuits to an uncertain future.”
Space Science
Success: NASA’s Juno probe enters orbit around Jupiter
Washington Post (7/5): After a five-year journey, NASA’s Juno spacecraft carried out a difficult 35-minute braking maneuver late on July 4 to become locked into polar orbit around giant Jupiter. Juno is the centerpiece of a $1.1 billion mission to unravel Jupiter’s makeup, as well as its influences on the solar system’s other planets.
What to expect during Juno’s mission to Jupiter
New York Times (7/4): NASA’s radiation-shielded Juno will orbit Jupiter 37 times over 20 months, diving below the colorful cloud tops. Is there water? “That’s in some ways our premier measurement,” said Steven Levin, the Juno mission project scientist.
A space pioneer, 79, is ready to track Juno for NASA
New York Times (7/4): Susan Findley, 79, of Pasadena, Calif., joined colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on July 4 to await signals from NASA’s Juno spacecraft announcing it was safely in orbit. That reassurance came in tones from the spacecraft relayed through a set of radio telescopes in Canberra, Australia. Findley joined JPL in 1958.
LEGO minifigures on NASA’s Juno Jupiter probe inspire design challenge
Collectspace.com (7/4): High-grade aluminum LEGO minifigures shared Juno’s travels to Jupiter. The three minifigures are a featured part of a NASA/LEGO educational initiative and represent the 17th century astronomer Galileo Galilei, the Roman god Jupiter and his wife, Juno.
NASA announces extension of 9 spacecraft missions
New York Times (7/2): NASA’s New Horizons and Dawn missions were among nine planetary science mission extensions announced by NASA on Friday. New Horizons, which sailed past Pluto in July 2015, is on its way to an encounter with a second Kuiper Belt Object. Dawn will continue to circle the large asteroid Ceres. Other extensions included the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and missions at Mars: the Curiosity and Odyssey rovers, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, MAVEN, Mars Odyssey and NASA’s contributions to the European Space Agency’s Mars Express.
Mars moons not captured asteroids after all?
Seeker (7/4): New research discounts a theory that the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, are really captured asteroids. The findings, published in Nature Geoscience, support the formation of Phobos and Deimos after previous generations of Martian moons crashed into the planet’s surface.
NASA confirms New Horizons is hurtling towards some barren space rock named 2014 MU69
Wired News (7/3): NASA has formally extended the New Horizons mission. Launched in January 2006, New Horizons became the first spacecraft to fly by Pluto in July 2015. The extension supports a flyby of a second Kuiper Belt Object, 2014 MU69, on Jan. 1, 2019.
E.T. phone home: China eyes hunt for alien life with giant telescope
Reuters (7/3): China has completed the assembly of the Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, in the province of Guizhou. The large radio telescope will be used to study the origins of the universe and search for signals from intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
Low Earth Orbit
NASA’s Rubins launching to International Space Station
Florida Today (7/2): The International Space Station is expected to resume six-person operations late this week, following the launch late Wednesday of new U.S., Japanese and Russian crew members. The newcomers include biologist and one-time cancer researcher Kate Rubins, who was selected by NASA for astronaut training in 2009, fellow space rookie Takuya Onishi, of Japan, and veteran cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin. Their Soyuz MS-01 is scheduled to lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday at 9:36 p.m., EDT.
Suborbital
Titanic NASA balloon reaches milestone
Science (7/3): NASA ended a high altitude super pressure balloon experiment on Saturday after 46 days in a mountainous area near the Peruvian coast. The super pressure balloon was designed to take telescopes and other payloads that would otherwise be launched into space to high altitudes for weeks of observations. The balloon’s travels did not go as intended as it veered away from the Southern Ocean for what was to be a flight of 100 days.
Major Space Related Activities for the Week
Major space related activities for the week of July 4-9, 2016
Spacepolicyonline.com (6/30): U.S, Japanese and Russian crew members are scheduled to dock with the International Space Station on Saturday at 12:12 a.m., EDT. NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Anatoly Ivanishin are due to liftoff atop a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan late Wednesday. In Washington, the U.S. House and Senate return to session this week.