In Today’s Deep Space Extra… NASA’s Super Guppy air transport delivers the Exploration Mission-1 Orion capsule to the Kennedy Space Center.
Human Deep Space Exploration
NASA’s `Super Guppy’ delivers EM-1 Orion to Kennedy Space Center
Spaceflight Insider (2/1): The pressure vessel for the next NASA/ Lockheed Martin Orion crew exploration vessel was flown from its initial assembly site at the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday aboard the agency’s Super Guppy transport aircraft. The capsule will undergo further assembly at Kennedy in preparation for Exploration Mission-1, an uncrewed test flight launched with NASA’s Space Launch System exploration rocket. The late 2018 flight will send Orion around the moon and back to Earth for an ocean splashdown and recovery.
Election 2016
The Planetary Society (2/1): The society’s website is tracking what the presidential candidates are saying about space exploration as the primaries, party conventions and November elections approach.
NASA names inside favorite new director of Marshall Space Flight Center
Huntsville Times (2/1): NASA Administrator Charles Bolden named Todd May as director of the Marshall Space Flight Center on Monday. May has been the acting director of the NASA installation that oversees development of the Space Launch System exploration rocket since mid-November, when his predecessor Patrick Scheuermann retired.
Space Science
NASA weighing dual launches of Europa orbiter and lander
Space News (2/1): NASA may be faced with dual launches in order to carry out Congressional instructions to include a lander as well as an orbiter on a future mission to Europa, the ice and ocean covered moon of Jupiter and a possible habitat for life beyond the Earth. Agency managers discussed the prospects of launching the primary mission’s orbiter and the lander separately before NASA’s Outer Planets Assessment Group in San Antonio, Texas. Only NASA’s planned Space Launch System exploration rocket could launch both the Europa Clipper orbiter and lander together. At that, the two spacecraft would face a lengthy gravity assist trajectory to reach Europa.
Tooling up for Mars
Cosmos Magazine (2/2): Australian scientist Abigail Allwood has developed instrumentation designed to seek evidence of life on Mars. The Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry will launch as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 rover. NASA’s Voyager missions and claims by NASA scientists in 1996 of fossilized evidence for past life on Mars in a meteorite recovered from Antarctica served as inspirations for Allwood.
Low Earth orbit
Successful launch expands China’s Beidou navigation system
Spaceflightnow.com (2/2): China successfully launched an addition to its Beidou satellite navigation system on Monday using a Long March 3C rocket. The latest satellite will help China expand its satellite navigation capabilities from regional to global.
Astronaut Onishi eager to board Space Station
Asahi Shimbun, of Japan (2/2): Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi awaits a June launch to the International Space Station with U.S. and Russian colleagues. Japan recently joined the U.S., Russia and Canada in approving an extension of station operations from 2020 to 2024.
Suborbital
A different kind of spaceport
The Space Review (2/1): Local government and the business community of Tucson, Ariz., plan a spaceport with the high altitude balloon company World View as a primary tenant. Without the hardware and risk of rocketry, World View plans to carry experiments and tourists aloft in high altitude balloons for a space flight like experience featuring views of the Earth and lasting several hours.