In Today’s Deep Space Extra… The White House nominates Bill Nelson as NASA’s next Administrator. The Hubble Space Telescope captures weather changes on Saturn.

 

Human Space Exploration

Soyuz crew relocates spacecraft to new Space Station parking spot
Spaceflightnow.com (3/19): Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov were joined by NASA’s Kate Rubins in boarding their Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft docked to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday. They undocked from their Rassvet docking port and moved to the Poisk module docking port. The switch opened Rassvet for the arrival of Russia’s Soyuz MS-18 with two cosmonauts and NASA’s Mark Vande Hei, who are scheduled to launch on April 9.

 

Space Science

Asteroids named for diverse group of 27 trailblazing astronauts
Coalition Member in the News – Axiom Space
Space.com (3/21): The International Astronomical Union (IAU) Minor Planet Center has named a collection of asteroids after a group of astronauts and astronaut candidates from diverse backgrounds, as well as a Soviet-era cosmonaut. The idea of naming the asteroids for astronauts was submitted to the IAU by a team of scientists and students involved with the Lucy mission.

Hubble captures seasonal weather changes on Saturn
Digital Trends (3/21): Each of Saturn’s seasons is more than seven years long, but Hubble has captured small changes in the planet over the years which show its northern hemisphere transitioning from summer to fall. A NASA animation shows the changes.

 

Other News

Widespread support for Nelson nomination to lead NASA
SpaceNews.com (3/19): The Biden administration made it official Friday that Bill Nelson, a former U.S. senator and member of the House from Florida, will be nominated to serve as NASA’s next Administrator. The move quickly drew bipartisan political backing as well as support from the space industry.

Russia launches multi-satellite rideshare mission on commercial Soyuz flight
NASAspaceflight.com (3/21): The commercial arm of Russia’s space agency placed 38 satellites in orbit early Monday with the launch of a Soyuz 2.1a from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The mission’s primary passenger was South Korea’s CAS500-1 remote sensing satellite. Other payloads on the flight were Astroscale’s ELSA-d (End-of-Life Service by Astroscale demonstrator) and the Unisat-7 microsatellite from Italian company GAUSS.

Decommissioned NOAA weather satellite breaks up
Coalition Member in the News – Lockheed Martin
SpaceNews.com (3/20): The polar orbiting NOAA-17 weather satellite, which was launched in 2002 and decommissioned in April 2013, broke up on March 10. While the cause of the breakup is unknown, there is no evidence the event was caused by a collision. The debris pose little threat to the International Space Station or other orbiting satellites, according to NOAA.

Glynn Lunney, flight director who led from ‘trench’ to the Moon, dies
Coalition Members in the News – Boeing, Lockheed Martin
Collectspace.com (3/19): Pioneering NASA flight director Glynn Lunney passed away on Friday. An employee of NASA since its creation, Lunney worked on Project Mercury, oversaw the Apollo 11 ascent from the Moon, and was instrumental in developing a rescue strategy for the crew of Apollo 13 after an oxygen tank in the outbound spacecraft’s service module ruptured.

 

Major Space Related Activities for the Week

Major space related activities for the week of March 21-27, 2021
Spacepolicyonline.com (3/22): The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Space Studies Board meets Tuesday through Thursday on topics ranging from climate change to solar physics to planetary protection. The FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) meets Tuesday. NASA is hosting a virtual news briefing on the Mars 2020 mission’s Ingenuity helicopter on Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. EDT. The U.S. Senate is in session this week.