Today’s Deep Space Extra offers the latest reporting and commentary on space related activities from across the globe. NASA space shuttle rocket engines find new life aboard the Space Launch System exploration rocket. Aging NASA Apollo imagery stirs up memories of humanity’s first foray into deep space. NASA turns to optical communications to enhance exchanges with astronauts on future human deep space missions. Hubble Space Telescope imagery proves worthy of a second look. Neutrino mass confirmations wins Nobel Prize for physics. Aurora glow brighter than street lights near Earth’s Arctic Circle. Russian scientists pursue asteroid discoveries from Australian observatory. Mementos from Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, go to the Smithsonian. America’s space leadership emerges on the commercial front. The Satellite Industry Association urges Congress to re-authorize U.S. Export Import Bank. Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser competes for new flight opportunities. In Virginia, workers finish repairs to launch damage at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. World View’s taste of space from a high altitude balloon could be two years away.
Human Deep Space Exploration
NASA is recycling Space Shuttle engines for a very important purpose
Business Insider (10/6): NASA has long since retired its space shuttle fleet, but not the powerful rocket engines that helped to launch the winged orbiters. Four of the modified RS-25 engines will help to launch early versions of the Space Launch System exploration rocket now under development to start astronauts on future missions of deep space exploration.
Photos of shaving in space and other routine Apollo moments
New York Times (10/6): Seemingly mundane moments during NASA’s Apollo lunar explorations, like astronauts shaving, brushing their teeth and dining, seem striking in photos recently distributed by NASA on social media.
NASA Glenn developing enhanced communications for future Mars missions
Spaceflight Insider (10/6): At NASA’s Glenn Research Center, engineers are working on an Integrated Radio and Optical Communications (IROC) system to enhance communications during future human deep space missions, including those to Mars. “But before humans go there, it is essential for their success and survival that we greatly enhance our ability to communicate data over interplanetary distances,” according to the report.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
Light from universe’s first stars spotted in Hubble photos
Scientific American (10/6): It took a “second look,” but astronomers are finding evidence for the earliest star systems in the dark spaces between bright galaxies in maturing imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Two physicists earn Nobel Prize for discovering neutrino’s chameleon-like powers
Los Angeles Times (10/6): This year’s Nobel Prize in physics goes to a pair of scientists who discovered that neutrinos have mass. They are Takaaki Kajita from the University of Tokyo and Arthur B. McDonald of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada. Neutrinos are incredibly small, but what they lack in size, they make up for in number. There are so many neutrinos in the universe that trillions of them pass through your body every second.
“Urban auroras” dazzle Arctic cities
Spaceweather.com (10/7): Auroras so bright they rival city lights are glowing around the Arctic Circle due to interactions between a solar wind phenomena and the Earth’s magnetic field. The unusually bright display is expected to continue Wednesday and Thursday.
Russian astronomers hunting asteroids with new telescope in Australia
TASS, of Russia (10/06): Australia’s International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) has become the site for Russia’s search for asteroids from the Earth’s southern hemisphere. The ISON is an international project launched in 2001 to detect, monitor and track objects in space. ISON currently comprises about 95 telescopes within 37 observatories located in 16 countries.
Low Earth Orbit
Astronaut Sally Ride’s personal items and papers acquired by Smithsonian
Collectspace.com (10/6): Mementos and papers assembled by America’s first woman in space, Sally Ride, have been formally transferred to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Ride, who stressed the value of education, died of pancreatic cancer in 2012. Ride became the first American of her gender to launch into space in 1983 aboard NASA’s STS-7 shuttle flight.
Commercial to Low Earth Orbit
American leadership in space 2.0: op-ed
Space News (10/5): Those watching a U.S. space program in transition and possibly unable to recover its Apollo era edge are not seeing the strides underway on the country’s commercial space front, writes Brian Weedon, a technical advisor to the Secure World Foundation. “It is the U.S. commercial space industry, not government space programs, which will truly play to America’s strengths in a more competitive environment.” writes Weeden.
SIA: Ex-Im impasse killing U.S. contracts, Congress must fix
Spacepolicyonline.com (10/6): The Satellite Industry Association (SIA) has launched another push to convince Congress to re-authorize the U.S. Export Import Bank, a financial institution that finances foreign purchases of U.S. products, including communications satellites and launch services. The Ex-Im’s authorization lapsed June 30, rendering it unable to finance new satellite sales for companies like Boeing and Orbital ATK.
Dream Chaser still fighting for her place in space
NASAspaceflightnow.com (10/6): Sierra Nevada’s winged reusable space vehicle looks for a win in the second round of a NASA sponsored competition for the delivery of cargo to the six person International Space Station.
Workers complete $15 million in repairs to Antares launch pad
Spaceflightnow.com (10/6): Virginia’s Mid Atlantic Regional Spaceport was heavily damaged Oct. 28, 2014, when an Orbital ATK Antares launch vehicle exploded moments after lifting on a NASA contracted re-supply mission to the International Space Station. The damage has now been repaired, and Orbital is expected to launch again from Virginia’s Eastern shore in 2016.
Suborbital
World View’s balloon-based space tourism to lift off in 2017
Space.com (10/6): World View Enterprises, of Arizona, is two years from a new kind of space tourism. The company is developing high altitude balloon flights tailored for tourists as well as researchers. For the former it will be a chance to glance at the Earth’s curvature while gazing into the darkness of space or the majesty of the American west from a luxuriously appointed capsule.