A Mars Odyssey blog has an intriguing post on a possible mission by NASA to send a team of astronauts to asteroid 2000SG344 - which will pass near the Earth in 2030.
The plan involves sending astronauts for a six-month round trip to the giant space rock. They would spend a several weeks on the surface, conducting experiments and testing out new technologies.
Clearly, this mission lies beyond NASA’s plans to land humans back on the moon by 2020. However, it could be a stepping stone to a longer Mars mission. The mission also would help us better understand the composition of asteroids, which could make it easier to deflect one that is on a collision course with Earth.
Aviation Week’s Craig Covault also takes a look at China’s efforts at international cooperation, which will be limited until the country learns to open up.
“China’s secrecy-bound space program, increasingly capable of advanced operations, risks becoming an impediment to international, cooperative lunar and planetary exploration unless it becomes far more open, say top international space policy managers meeting with their Chinese counterparts here.
“Control by the People’s Liberation Army of virtually all Chinese space development will be a counterproductive factor ‘as the center of gravity for space exploration is beginning to move from the Atlantic to the Pacific,’ according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).”
NASA PRESS RELEASE
WASHINGTON — NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT, to announce the discovery of an object in our galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years. This finding was made by combining data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with ground-based observations.
To participate in the teleconference, reporters must contact the Chandra Press Office at 617-496-7998 or e-mail mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu. Live audio of the teleconference will be streamed online at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio
A video file about the discovery will air on NASA Television on May 14. NASA TV is carried on an MPEG-2 digital signal accessed via satellite AMC-6, at 72 degrees west longitude, transponder 17C, 4040 MHz, vertical polarization. NASA TV is available in Alaska and Hawaii on AMC-7 at 137 degrees west longitude, transponder 18C, at 4060 MHz, horizontal polarization.
After seven weeks of suspense, NASA has found a permanent replacement for Ed Weiler, the acting associate administrator for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. And the new chief is….
Ed Weiler!
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin removed the interim from Weiler’s title on Wednesday. The former director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center had been named to the post on March 26 following the resignation of his predecessor, Alan Stern.
“I’m very pleased to have Ed officially accept a more long-term position as science chief. His leadership style and 26 years of Headquarters experience will be vital to the success of upcoming science activities and missions,” Griffin said in a press release.
With only eight months left in George W. Bush’s term, it’s not clear how permanent the new position will be for Weiler. However, it is possible that John McCain might keep Griffin and his crew on board if he wins the presidency.
We’ve gotten our first look at the EVA suit that a Chinese taikonaut will use to conduct that nation’s inaugural spacewalk in October. Rob Coppinger has some images taken off Chinese television on his Hyperbola blog.
Aviation Week and Space Daily report that it looks a lot like the Russian Orlan EVA suit. Which is not too surprising because China’s Shenzhou spacecraft looks a lot like the Soyuz. Chinese officials claim the suit is their own design.
“Although seemingly a contradiction, both could be true,” AvWeek’s Craig Covault reports. “The Shenzhou spacecraft itself, for example, uses the basic Russian Soyuz design, but is significantly larger and carries major system design differences. The same is likely true for the Chinese EVA suits, which are about 25 years newer in design than the Orlan and probably incorporate major improvements.”
Officials in Hawthorne, California are hoping that SpaceX will help bring the city back its aerospace glory days, the Daily Breeze reports. Elon Musk’s company is now building Falcon rockets and Dragon spacecraft in the same building where Boeing once assembled 747 fuselages.
“I think SpaceX will basically bring Hawthorne back to the aerospace heydays,” Hawthorne councilman Gary Parsons tells the newspaper. “You have a major anchor like SpaceX, and then you’ll have other smaller companies coming to Hawthorne to serve SpaceX. It’s sort of returning to the aerospace renaissance of the good old days when Hawthorne was a central hub of aerospace activity.”
James Oberg has an interesting analysis of last month’s off-course Soyuz landing over at IEEE Spectrum. Although the investigation is ongoing, Oberg has examined internal NASA documents that indicate the near tragedy was caused by an incomplete separation between the descent and equipment modules.
“During the landing, space officials at mission control in Moscow and at the recovery site seriously worried for at least half an hour—and some even believed, briefly, that the crew had been killed. The landing seemed to be a replay of a near disaster from almost 40 years ago, and it threatened to have the first Russian in-flight fatalities since 1971.
“Although the officials’ worries soon turned out to be ill-founded, an examination of the craft’s flight path indicates that catastrophe had not been far off. Total disaster was avoided not by any real-time actions of the crew or ground teams but instead by the ingenious design and robust construction of the spacecraft.”
New Scientist has a report about Canadians efforts to help safeguard the planet against massive space rocks that could turn humanity into modern-day dinosaurs.
“Canada will launch a suitcase-sized satellite in 2009 to spot potentially dangerous asteroids near Earth’s orbit. It will be the first space mission devoted to hunting asteroids and may help find ones that are difficult to spot from the ground…The suitcase-sized Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) weighs just 60 kilograms and will cost a mere $10 million to build and launch.”
The orbiting satellite will supplement efforts by scientists on the ground to identify asteroids that cross the Earth’s orbit. Some of the objects are difficult to spot because of the distorting effects of the atmosphere.
Charles E. Miller and Jeff Foust have put forth Part II of their plan to save George Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration. (If you missed it, here’s the link to Part I.) It’s a little complicated, but their plan basically amounts to pursuing cheap and reliable access to space, whose acronym - CRATS - may well remind you of a domesticated pet, a Broadway musical, or a bodily function.
In the same edition of The Space Review, Greg Zsidisin takes a look at how we can avoid what he calls “another Apollo debacle” - developing massively expensive technology and then tossing it away for something much less useful.
Meanwhile, Rand Simberg analyzes both these posts at his Transterrestrial Musings blog.