Today’s Deep Space Extra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. Work on NASA’s Space Launch System exploration rocket changes the view from Huntsville. China plans new human spacecraft for future space station, Moon and Mars missions. Volunteers on Mars mission simulation adjust to confinement. Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens with plenty of energy in theaters Friday. 2015’s science discoveries include water on Mars and possible habitable environment on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The International Space Station welcome three new residents on Tuesday, including the U.K’s first professional astronaut. The U.S. Air Force awards new U.S. rocket engine research contracts.
Human Deep Space Exploration
NASA changes Huntsville skyline with soaring new Space Launch System test stand
Huntsville Times (12/15): As home to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville’s skyline is changing as the space agency develops the Space Launch System exploration rocket.
China develops next-generation crew vehicle
Sinodefense (12/15): China’s space industry plans a new manned spacecraft with a modular design that could launch two to six crew member on missions to the Moon, asteroids and Mars as well as to support China’s planned Earth orbiting space station in the 2020s.
Life on ‘Mars’ by Way of Hawaii: Q. and A.
New York Times (12/15): Six volunteers sharing close quarters on the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii are experiencing a simulated Mars mission. The year-long NASA-funded HI-SEAS project, which began in August, limits their activities to a small dome or a stroll in a space suit. “Now, being a bit further into the mission, I am mostly surprised as to how much being confined affects me,” says Christiane Heinicke, one of the participants.
‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ gets the nostalgia-novelty mix just right
The Washington Post (12/16): The latest chapter in the Star Wars series, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, opens in U.S. movie theaters on Friday with the same energy that distinguished the initial George Lucas’s trilogy from the 1970s and 1980s, the Post reports.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
Year in review: Best evidence yet for water on Mars
Science News (12/15): This year’s scientific discoveries included news of seasonal water flows on the surface of Mars. The briny water may increase the odds of current habitable environments on the red planet and serve as a potential resource for future human explorers.
Life-Friendly Chemistry Revealed Inside Saturn Moon
Discovery.com (12/15): The Cassini spacecraft’s dives through the geyser like spray rising from Saturn’s moon Enceladus this year points to an outer solar system planetary body with a habitable environment — a place for microbes. “This is really a world with a habitable environment in its interior,” planetary scientist Jonathan Lunine, with Cornell University, said at the American Geophysical Union conference meeting this week in San Francisco. Cassini is a joint effort by NASA, the European and Italian space agencies.
Low Earth orbit
Three crew members trek from Earth to space station
CBS News via Spaceflightnow.com (12/15): NASA’s Tim Kopra, European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko launched to and docked with the International Space Station on Tuesday. The three men will live and work aboard the station for five to six months.
Source: Russian spacecraft manual docking to ISS caused by engine lack of thrust
TASS, or Russia (12/15): As it prepared to dock with the International Space Station on Wednesday, the Soyuz spacecraft carrying U.S. astronaut Tim Kopra, Great Britain’s Tim Peake and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko lost thrust. Malenchenko manually piloted the capsule to a docking that would normally have been automated.
The UK just sent its first astronaut into space, officially
The Global Post, of London (12/15): The United Kingdom celebrated Tuesday as the country’s first professional astronaut, Tom Peake, a 43-year-old British test pilot and member of the European Space Agency’s astronaut corps, boarded the International Space Station.
Commercial to Orbit
U.S. Air Force Awards Three Engine Research Contracts
Space News (12/15): Under research contracts awarded by the U.S. Air Force this week, Tanner Research, of Monrovia, Calif.; Johns Hopkins University, of Baltimore; and Moog Inc., of East Aurora, N.Y.; will pursue the development of a new domestic rocket engine to replace imports of Russia’s RD-180, which powers the first stage of the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5.