In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA, White House leadership express concerns over achieving Congressional budget support for achieving an already challenging 2024 return to the surface of the Moon with human explorers. NASA leadership believes a so far successful SpaceX Demo-2 test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) with astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley could be extended into August.
Human Space Exploration
Pace, Bowersox worry about Atremis funding
Spacepolicyonline.com (6/10): Scott Pace, which chairs the National Space Council, and Ken Bowersox, NASA acting administrator for Human Exploration and Operations, expressed concerns Tuesday before two National Academy of Sciences’ panels about obtaining the funding increase and meeting technical milestones needed to achieve a White House directed 2024 return to the surface of the Moon with human explorers. NASA is seeking a 12 percent increase for the 2021 fiscal year that begins October 1. Further increases of that magnitude are unlikely, according to Pace, who believes NASA must work to transition oversight of International Space Station (ISS) based research and technology development to the private sector to become more efficient.
NASA anticipates August return for Hurley and Behnken
Spaceflightnow.com (6/9): Demo-2 astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken will likely remain aboard the International Space Station (ISS) into August, Ken Bowersox, NASA acting associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations told a pair of National Academies of Sciences’ committees during a virtual meeting on Tuesday. The two NASA astronauts launched and docked with the Space Station May 30/31 to begin a test flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon envisioned to last up to four months. The extended test flight expands what was a smaller than usual, three person ISS crew of one American and two Russians. The extension will enable Behnken to join Station commander and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy to undertake a series of spacewalks to complete the replacement of aging external solar power batteries in the coming weeks.
Astronaut Kathy Sullivan is first woman to dive to Challenger Deep
Collectspace.com (6/8): In 1984, retired NASA astronaut Kathy Sullivan, a geologist, became the first American woman to walk in space, during a 3 1/2 hour spacewalk to demonstrate satellite refueling while aboard the shuttle Challenger. Last Saturday, Sullivan achieved another milestone as she became the first woman and only the eighth person to dive to the lowest known location on the planet Earth, Challenger Deep, located seven miles deep at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Western Pacific Ocean.
Space Science
Tower extension test a success for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
Coalition Member in the News – Northrop Grumman
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center (6/9): The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA’s designated successor to the famed Hubble Space Telescope, is undergoing elaborate pre-launch testing at Northrop Grumman facilities in Redondo Beach, California, in preparation for launch as soon as March 2021, a target that is being assessed because of workforce restrictions in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The Deployable Tower Assembly, a critical component of the JWST, was recently successfully commanded to deploy and extend as it is designed to following launch.
NASA planetary defense efforts continue during pandemic
SpaceNews.com (6/9): The search for Near Earth Objects, asteroids and comets, that could pose an impact threat to the Earth has continued to progress despite the coronavirus pandemic. The spread of the disease did slow the search for a period being carried out by ground-based observatories. Since late March, the search has begun to pick up once again, program managers told an “Asteroid Day” webinar hosted by the Association of Space Explorers earlier this month. The effort had produced 1,222 discoveries through early June, about half the number for the same period last year.
NASA sun observatory spies Comet ATLAS in the solar wind. (Mercury, too!)
Space.com (6/9): NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory A, or STEREO-A spacecraft, which was launched in 2006, has managed to spot Comet ATLAS, which was predicted earlier this year to become naked eye visible. Discovered in late December, ATLAS instead began to fall apart during early 2020 as it neared the sun.
Rocks on Bennu are cracking because of the constant day/night cycling
Universe Today (6/9): Recent close up observations of the asteroid Bennu by NASA’s Osiris Rex spacecraft suggest the rocks and boulders strewn across the surface are cracked because of their constant exposure to day/night rises and falls in temperature rather than by weathering as on Earth. The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.
Scientists claim the universe is actually flat
Futurism (6/8): The determination that the universe is actually flat, is based on an assessment of dark energy, the mysterious force behind the expansion of the universe. The claim is based on a survey of more than a million galaxies and quasars by a University of Portsmith led research effort.
With an internet of animals, scientists aim to track and save wildlife
New York Times (6/9): External equipment installed outside the International Space Station (ISS) by spacewalking Russian cosmonauts in 2018 is about to be placed in service as part of International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space, or ICARUS. Monitors installed by the cosmonauts will track movements of animals including birds and insects on Earth from the Station’s 240 mile high orbit. Small sensors worn by animals will reveal their physiologies, migration paths and habitat needs.
Other News
SpaceX drops plans for Port of Los Angeles facility again
SpaceNews.com (6/9): For a second time in recent months, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has backed from a lease at the Port of Los Angeles for the construction of a facility to manufacture the reusable Starship. While other SpaceX activities at the port are expected to continue, it appears the company plans to make South Texas the hub for the manufacture and test of Starship. Recent tests of prototypes at the site close to the Gulf of Mexico have not gone well. In September 2019, Musk forecast a Starship orbital mission within six months. While that has not happened, he recently used social media to confirm plans to reach Mars with human explorers aboard a refuelable Starship in 2024.