In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA and Lockheed Martin pronounce the Orion crew capsule ready to undergo launch processing for the Artemis I test flight. Innovative robotic devices coming along for future Moon and Mars exploration.
Human Space Exploration
Artemis I Orion spacecraft is ready to be fueled up
Coalition Member in the News – Lockheed Martin
SlashGear (1/15): Assembly and testing of the Orion spacecraft that will be used for the Artemis I mission later this year is now complete, marking formal transfer of ownership from Lockheed Martin to NASA. The agency’s Exploration Ground System’s team will now move to launch preparations. Lockheed Martin is NASA’s prime contractor for Orion.
How to watch NASA fire up its massive SLS Moon rocket on Saturday
Cnet (1/14): Before the first Artemis mission takes off, NASA needs to prove its SLS mega-rocket is up to the task. That calls for a Hot Fire of the rocket’s core stage, the eighth and final part of the Green Run test series. Targeted for Saturday, January 16, the Hot Fire will be broadcast live on NASA TV: https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive. Coverage starts at 4:20 p.m. ET. The two-hour test window opens at 5:00 p.m. ET.
Blue Origin launches New Shepard vehicle intended for crewed flights
SpaceNews.com (1/14): Blue Origin’s New Shepard reusable suborbital rocket successfully launched and landed on Thursday from West Texas to test spacecraft features supporting future crewed launches.
Space Science
NASA has given up on its ‘Mars mole,’ a revolutionary experiment designed to burrow 16 feet and take the planet’s temperature
Business Insider (1/14): NASA on Thursday said efforts to revive the “mole,” or the subsurface heat probe provided to NASA’s Mars InSight lander mission by the German Space Agency, have come to an end. InSight landed on Mars in November 2018 to carry out the first-ever studies of the Martian crust, mantle, and core. Long-running difficulties to pound the mole into the surface have halted efforts by the mission science team to keep trying to make the mole work.
U.K. firm to send crawling spider-like rover to the Moon
Coalition Member in the News – Astrobotic
The Engineer (1/12): British startup Spacebit has developed a small four-legged rover that is set for a Moon mission this year. It will be delivered by Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander as one of about 30 payloads launched as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
$3 million Martian ‘drone with claws’ set for Red Planet as NASA prepares to make aviation history
Forbes (1/14): Due to land at Mars on February 18, NASA’s Perseverance Mars 2020 rover has a passenger, the Ingenuity helicopter. NASA is already at work on a successor, RAVEN, a future drone explorer with claws to scoop up rocks, a LIDAR 3-D terrain mapper and a hyperspectral imager to inform decisions on where to explore.
Opinion
How Joe Biden can galvanize space diplomacy
POLITICO (1/15): The potential for future conflicts in space has grown as various governments are developing an array of counterspace capabilities, and the risk of damaging incidents in orbit has raised as a result of the expansion of commercial activity. The incoming administration has an opportunity to shape an international consensus on norms than could enhance safety and security in outer space, argue Stephen Flanagan and Bruce McClintock of the RAND Corporation and the RAND Space Enterprise Initiative, respectively.
Other News
Hot again: 2020 sets yet another global temperature record
ABC News (1/14): The Earth’s global average temperature in 2020 tied 2016 for the warmest ever, 1.84 degrees F warmer than a baseline established between 1951 and 1980. This signals a warming trend, according to an annual update from NASA.