In Today’s Deep Space Extra… The International Space Station is about to get a power upgrade. The Perseverance rover celebrates 100 Martian days.
Human Space Exploration
The International Space Station is about to get major power upgrade
Coalition Member in the News – Boeing
ClickOrlando.com (6/1): This week the International Space Station (ISS) will get a new set of solar arrays. The new ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays, or iROSA, are much smaller, but more powerful with new technology, and will eventually provide 120 kilowatts of power. The first two out of six iROSAs are scheduled to launch Thursday, June 3 on the next cargo resupply mission to the ISS. The iROSA solar arrays are developed by Boeing and Redwire.
Russian spacewalkers prepare for arrival of new Space Station lab module
CBS News (6/2): Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotor Dubrov ventured outside the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) early Wednesday to prepare the aging Pirs module for departure and open up a docking place for Russia’s Nauka Multipurpose Science Module, which is set to launch in mid-July. Once docked, Nauka will provide additional crew quarters and toilet as well as science volume.
NASA evaluating schedule, launch date forecasts for Artemis 2
Coalition Members in the News – Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman
NASASpaceflight.com (5/31): NASA is currently forecasting that Artemis II, the first crewed mission of the agency’s Artemis program and the second integrated test flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, will be ready to launch no earlier than (NET) September 2023. Assembly, integration, and testing of the Artemis II Orion and SLS flight hardware is progressing in the U.S. and Europe independently of Artemis I for now, but some Orion hardware from Artemis I is still expected to be needed for reuse. The global COVID pandemic could still have an effect on production activities, which could affect when Artemis II is ready to launch.
Space Science
Perseverance rover marks 100th Mars day on the Red Planet
Space.com (6/2): Perseverance’s first 100 sols have been action-packed: the rover has already tested all of its cameras and scientific instruments, sent back home more than 75,000 images, captured the first-ever true audio on the Martian surface, supported and documented the Ingenuity helicopter’s historic flight campaign, generated oxygen from the carbon dioxide-dominated Martian atmosphere and begun traveling to its first exploration zone.
JWST launch slips to November
SpaceNews.com (6/2): U.S. and Europe officials said yesterday that the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will likely slip from October 31 to at least mid-November because of delays linked to the Ariane 5, the rocket that will fly the observatory to space. Representatives from the European Space Agency (ESA) and Arianespace said they were finalizing reviews to correct a payload fairing problem found on two Ariane 5 launches last year.
Other News
Space Force gets $2 billion boost in FY2022 request
SpacePolicyOnline.com (5/29): The Administration’s budget request for the U.S. Space Force is $17.5 billion, a $2.1 billion increase, of which half is due to programs transferring in from the Air Force, the Navy, and the Army. Budget documents show that Space Domain Awareness (SDA) is one of the areas where the Space Force wants a significant increase as the service prepares to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) for new ground-based radars to track space objects.