In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA and Aerojet Rocketdyne advance plans for a more powerful upper stage for the Space Launch System exploration rocket.
Human Deep Space Exploration
MSFC propose Aerojet Rocketdyne supply EUS engines
NASAspaceflight.com (4/7): NASA’s Marshal Space Flight Center will look to Aerojet Rocketdyne to advance the development of the Exploration Upper Stage, a more powerful second stage rocket engine for the Space Launch System exploration rocket. The proposal would have the more powerful version ready to fly on Exploration Mission-2, the first crewed test flight of NASA’s SLS and Orion capsule.
Space Science
The $100 million hunt for alien life
Rolling Stone (4/7): Earlier this year, the most intensive search yet for evidence of extraterrestrial life got underway in an undeveloped stretch of Appalachia. Breakthrough Listen, financed by Russian venture capitalist Yuri Milner, features a radio telescope in Green Bank, W. Va. The observatory is listening for evidence of radio communication or intense bursts of energy originating from select nearby stars.
Record-setting Mars Odyssey orbiter launched 15 years ago today
Space.com (4/7): NASA’s Mars Odyssey marked its 15th anniversary in space on Thursday. The Mars orbiter lifted off on April 7, 2001 and marked a successful turnaround after two failed missions. In December 2010, Mars Odyssey became the longest running spacecraft at the red planet. Still healthy, Mars Odyssey discovered the presence of water ice close to the surface of Mars and charted radiation levels between the Earth and red planet, information that will be useful to future human deep space explorers.
Life’s building blocks created on lab-grown comet
Discovery.com (4/7): A French led research team has demonstrated that sugar compounds essential for life can be created in the environmental conditions found on comets like Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which was recently visited by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission.
A renaissance for Russian space science
Science (4/7): A rough global economy threatens a resurgence in Russia’s space science ambitions.
Low Earth Orbit
India to launch its reusable space plane in May
Spaceflight Insider (4/5): The Indian Space Research Organization plans to launch its first reusable launch vehicle in May. The spacecraft is a scaled down version of a larger single stage launch vehicle called Avatar. The prototype features an air breathing propulsion system.
The next big thing in space may be really, REALLY small satellites
Ars Technica (4/7): CubeSats just are not small enough for some space enthusiasts. On Thursday, Arizona State University researchers announced plans to go even smaller with FemtoSats, spacecraft weighing just 35 grams and occupying three cubic centimeters.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
SpaceX resuming deliveries to International Space Station
New York Times (4/7): NASA’s second commercial source for cargo deliveries to the International Space Station is set for liftoff on Friday at 4:43 p.m., EDT, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. It will be the first trip to the six person orbital laboratory for SpaceX since the company’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle exploded in flight on June 28, 2015. The supply mission’s 7,000 pounds of cargo includes the prototype for an expandable habitation module developed by Bigelow Aerospace. Orbital ATK’s most recent NASA contracted cargo mission to the six person space station berthed in late March.