In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA’s Artemis I Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule are now at their Florida launch pad and preparing for a countdown rehearsal. The European Space Agency has parted ways with Russia’s space agency for the launch of the ExoMars mission.
Human Space Exploration
SLS rolls out to pad for countdown test
Coalition Member in the News – Jacobs
SpaceNews.com (3/18): On Thursday at about 5:45 p.m. EDT, NASA’s crawler-transporter with the Artemis I Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion crew capsule emerged from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to begin an overnight crawl to Launch Pad 39B. The Artemis I hardware arrived at about 4 a.m. EDT. Work at Launch Complex 39B will start with connecting the vehicle to interfaces at the pad and going through tests of various systems. “At Stennis we did two core stage firings, so we know the tank is sound, but that ground system is different from ours,” said Brad McCain, vice president and deputy general manager at Jacobs, the prime contractor for NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems, in an interview. That includes tests of both hardware and software systems on the vehicle and ground equipment. That will culminate in the Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) itself, when the SLS core stage is filled with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants and goes through a countdown that stops at about T-10 seconds, just before the core stage’s engines would ignite.
Russia to launch first all-Roscosmos cosmonaut mission to Station
NASAspaceflight.com (3/18): The Russian federal space agency Roscosmos is set to launch a Soyuz rocket with three cosmonauts to the International Space Station (ISS) Friday, March 18 at 11:55 am EDT. Utilizing a fast-track rendezvous, the all-Roscosmos crew will dock to the ISS approximately three hours after liftoff to start a six-month, long-duration mission. Soyuz MS-21 will be the first crew flight for Russia of 2022 and will mark the first time in the ISS’s history that a Soyuz crew mission launches with three Roscosmos cosmonauts and no international partner astronauts.
Space Science
ESA firmly says no to ExoMars launch this year
Spacepolicyonline.com (3/18): Early Thursday, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced a suspension in cooperation with Rosmosmos on the ExoMars mission, a lander/rover mission due to launch in September from Kazakhstan on a Russian Proton rocket. The decision came in response to sanctions imposed on Russia in light of its military incursion into Ukraine. Russia was providing the lander, Kazachok, to deliver ESA’s rover as well as scientific experiments and the radioisotope heating unit that keeps systems warm. ESA says the program is not cancelled, but “suspended.” The organization is looking for alternatives to get its Rosalind Franklin rover to the Red Planet.
Strange dwarf planet Ceres may have formed at the icy edges of the solar system
Space.com (3/17): Ceres is a dwarf planet tenant of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Unusually large for an asteroid belt object and with an abundant amount of ammonia on its surface, Ceres is a bit of a mystery. NASA’s Dawn mission spacecraft orbited Ceres, mapping and studying its surface and finding water ice as well as clay and carbonate minerals. A new study suggests Ceres may have formed beyond Saturn and was pulled into the asteroid belt as the solar system’s largest planets shifted places long ago.
Fridge-sized asteroid hit Earth two hours after it was first spotted, NASA says
USA Today (3/17): A small asteroid was discovered on March 11 by an astronomer using a Hungarian observatory. About two hours later, the small object entered the Earth’s atmosphere over Jan Mayen, a Norwegian island northeast of Iceland. It was only the fifth time an asteroid was spotted hours before it hit Earth and the first time it’s happened since 2019.
Other News
International talks on space norms to continue but U.S. will not engage directly with Russia
SpaceNews.com (3/17): An “open ended working group” established by the U.N. General Assembly in December and which aims to prevent an arms race in space, will hold its first session May 9-13 at the U.N. Office in Geneva, Switzerland. Eric Desautels, acting deputy assistant secretary of state for emerging security challenges and defense policy said bilateral U.S.-Russia space talks that had begun before the invasion of Ukraine are off the table for now. The working group, created in a resolution put forth by the U.K. with U.S. backing, is supported by 163 nations, and 12 countries voted against it, including Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. It is expected to meet twice in 2022 and two more times in 2023.
China launches second Yaogan-34 reconnaissance satellite
SpaceNews.com (3/17): China on Thursday launched a Long March 4C rocket with the classified Yaogan-34 remote sensing Earth orbiting satellite. Chinese state media reported that the new Yaogan satellites will be used to provide information services such as land census, urban planning, crop yield estimation and disaster prevention and reduction.
SNL star Pete Davidson will no longer fly to space after launch postponed
CNN (3/18): Saturday Night Live comedian Pete Davidson is no longer on the passenger list for the next Blue Origin suborbital New Shepard launch that is now scheduled for March 29, six days later than initially planned. Using social media to announce the changes, Blue Origin said Davidson was unable to launch with the change in dates.