In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA’s latest human exploration planning envisions a human mission to Mars orbit in 2033.
Human Deep Space Exploration
NASA continues journey to Mars planning
Spacepolicyonline.com (3/29): Top NASA human spaceflight executives briefed the NASA Advisory Council Tuesday in Washington on the agency’s latest human Mars exploration planning involving the Space Launch System, Orion capsule as well as lunar and deep space habitats. After test flights in lunar orbit, a NASA launched crew would set out for Mars orbit in 2033. The strategy incorporates international and commercial partners as they emerge and space habitats that could be tended rather than permanently staffed.
NASA looking at spaceport in lunar orbit as deep space gateway to Mars
USA Today (3/28): NASA’s Deep Space Gateway initiative could provide a stepping stone for the human exploration of Mars. Gateway, a lunar-orbiting astronaut tended habitat and hardware test facility, would replace the Asteroid Redirect Mission that was cancelled in the Trump Administration’s 2018 NASA budget proposal delivered to Congress last week. Gateway could support future human exploration of the lunar surface as well as Mars.
New Russian spacecraft designed for lunar missions to be run by fail-safe computer
TASS of Russia (3/28): Russia’s Federation spacecraft, an advanced human space transport, will be equipped with a computer and software with “profound redundancy,” according to Mark Serov, head of the Flight Test Center at Energiya Space Rocket Corporation. Federation will support human spaceflight to the moon as well as Earth orbit.
Space Science
White House seeks near-term cuts to NASA and NOAA programs
Space News (3/28): NASA’s science program could face a $50 million cut, at the request of the Trump administration, if Congress approves an appropriations bill for fiscal year 2017, which got under way October 1, 2016, without a budget in place for most of the federal government.
After dino-killing asteroid impact, life re-emerged quickly
Space.com (3/28): Much of life on Earth perished 66 million years ago in a famed asteroid strike that claimed the dinosaurs and left the submerged Chixulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico near Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Surprisingly, life appears to have bounced back quickly, 30,000 years later or so, according to research provided at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, earlier this month. In 2016, scientists drilled into the underwater crater rim for samples.
Low Earth Orbit
Cygnus mission delayed to mid-April
Space News (3/29): Once targeted for an early March lift-off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, Orbital ATK’s seventh NASA contracted re-supply mission to the International Space Station is unlikely to unfold until mid-April, according to comments from NASA on Tuesday presented before the NASA Advisory Council. The launch has been delayed so experts can troubleshoot issues with hydraulic systems in ground support equipment and the first stage of the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 launch vehicle. A spacewalk by NASA’s Peggy Whitson and the European Space Agency’s Thomas Pesquet, previously targeted for April 6, will be delayed as a result. Orbital’s OA7 Cygnus capsule cargo includes an avionics box that is to be installed outside the Station with a spacewalk after it arrives.
Dial-up space communications system gets ‘high-speed’ upgrade
Space.com (3/28): A potential one-hundred-fold increase in the speed of space communications is the goal of NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration, a satellite project scheduled for launch into Earth geosynchronous orbit in 2021. The optical communications technology promises to support future human deep space as well as Earth orbital missions, including the International Space Station.
Decommissioned Earth science satellite to remain in orbit for decades
Space News (3/28): The NASA’s Earth Observing-01 satellite will be decommissioned Thursday after nearly 17 years in orbit, including several mission extensions. The decommission decision earlier this month recognized the satellite will remain in orbit inactive for possibly another four decades, longer than the 25 year multinational re-entry goal to help constrain orbital debris.
Twin solid rockets, reused veterans of spaceflight, set for Endeavour display
Spaceflightnow.com (3/28): Orbital ATK is donating flown space shuttle solid rocket booster hardware to the shuttle Endeavour display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. The unfueled booster segments will join the orbiter as well as an external tank for vertical display.