In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will urge the next presidential administration to stay the course with the agency’s deep space exploration plans.
Human Deep Space Exploration
Bolden seeks stability for NASA in upcoming transition
Space News (3/31): NASA Administrator Charles Bolden hopes the change that comes with a new U.S. presidential administration will not disrupt a current civil space policy focused on resuming human deep space exploration and a goal of reaching Mars with astronauts in the 2030s. Bolden told a Space Transportation Association gathering earlier this week, the agency will reach out to the candidates and their transition teams after party nominating conventions this summer in a bid to explain NASA’s direction. “If you want to change something, tweak it, but whatever you do, don’t break it,” he said. “That will be my message.”
A $2 billion Mars theme park experience in Las Vegas?
Las Vegas Sun (3/30): Space Tourism Foundation founder John Spencer envisions a Mars theme park in Las Vegas. Mars World could open to tourists by 2021.
Space Science
Geologists to drill into heart of dinosaur-killing impact
Nature News (3/31): Within days, geologists plan to drill into the massive remains of the Chixalub crater off Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, the scar left 66 million years ago by an asteroid impact. The collision is blamed for the demise of the dinosaurs and much of the life on Earth. Scientists hope to learn how the impact produced a peak ring, a feature prominent on the floor of impact craters across the solar system.
No Moon, no magnetic field, no life on Earth: study
Cosmos (4/1): An Earth, moon gravitational embrace keeps the Earth’s iron core molten. The molten core produces a magnetic field that protects life on Earth from harmful solar wind and radiation, according to studies by French scientists.
How a distant planet could have killed the dinosaurs
Christian Science Monitor (3/31): The gravity from a large outer solar system planet may be responsible for directing stray comets toward the inner solar system and periodically on a course that impacts the Earth, according to an Arkansas astrophysicist. The collisions may be responsible for “extinction events” in 27-million-year intervals.
Rivers of stars could point to cold dark matter in the Milky Way halo
Physics World (3/31): Streams of stars at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy are helping astronomers study the gravitational influence of mysterious cold dark matter. Two dozen of the streams have been charted so far.
Low Earth Orbit
Progress MS cargo craft heads to Space Station after successful liftoff
Spaceflight Insider (3/31): Russia’s latest resupply mission to the International Space Station was launched Thursday. Progress 63 is expected to make an automated docking with the six-person orbiting science laboratory on Saturday.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
United Launch Alliance narrowing lists of suspects in rocket anomaly
Spaceflightnow.com (3/31): United Launch Alliance believes a fuel system issue may have been responsible for the early shutdown of the Atlas 5 first stage rocket used in the Mar. 22 launch of Orbital ATK’s latest commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station. The Cygnus cargo capsule successfully rendezvoused with the orbiting science lab on Mar. 26. First stage engine cutoff occurred about six seconds sooner than expected.
Dream Chaser spaceship seems on a glide path to landing in Alabama
Huntsville Times (3/31): Sierra Nevada Corp. looks to Huntsville, Ala., as a possible landing site for Dream Chaser, the commercial spacecraft it is developing to carry cargo to and from the International Space Station under a NASA contract. The company is seeking markets beyond the cargo mission, including satellite servicing, space debris removal and scientific experiment flights as possible missions. Originally, Sierra Nevada Corp. competed for a contract with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program with a piloted version of the winged Dream Chaser.