Weekly Links
Down to Earth
SpaceX’s latest Dragon capsule left the ISS on March 19th and was successfully recovered by the company at sea.
A new exhibit about Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, has opened at the Science Museum in London.
The White House released their budget proposal for 2018, including proposed spending on NASA. The proposal funds NASA at $19.1 billion, which is a slight cut. Taking into account inflation, it comes out to a few percent less than what NASA is working under in 2017. If you really really love reading about budgets, here is a super long post from Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society breaking down the proposal.
The European Space Agency is having trouble with their only orbital launch site down in French Guiana as a general strike is causing most of society in the small French territory to grind to a halt. There had been an Ariane 5 rocket launch planned for last week that continues to be delayed.
In Orbit
There have been three successful orbital rocket launches since my last post on March 12th:
- March 16 – a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Echostar 23 satellite. Because it was headed into geostationary orbit, the rocket’s first stage was not recovered. The upgraded “block 5″ version will have enough power to be recovered on all missions.
- March 17 – A United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket launched a USAF communications satellite into geosynchronous orbit.
- March 19 – A Japanese H-IIA rocket launched a reconnaissance satellite into LEO.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is working towards their next rocket launch. The next Falcon 9 rocket will be a commercial launch of the SES-10 communications satellite. The exciting part of this mission is that it will be the first flight of a reused first stage booster. The static fire test was completed today, with launch scheduled for Thursday evening.
On the International Space Station, the Expedition 50 crew is very busy with a series of spacewalks that will serve as Commander Shane Kimbrough’s send off before he comes home in early April. The first spacewalk was conducted last Friday, March 24th, when Kimbrough and Thomas Pesquet spent six and a half hours outside conducting various repairs and upgrades.
One of the spacewalk’s tasks was to disconnect Pressurized Mating Adapter 3 (PMA-3) before it was robotically moved this past Sunday to its new home on top of Node 2 for future dockings of the Dragon and Starliner spacecraft.
The next spacewalk is this coming Thursday. here is an hour long briefing from last week that describes the spacewalk plans in detail (keep in mind the discussed arrival of the Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo craft has since slipped):
Next up is your weekly dose of awesome Twitter photos from the ISS crew (and go check out Oleg Novitskiy who posts exclusively to his Instagram account).
Incredible #EarthArt soil formations and compositions on the northern coast of Venezuela from @Space_Station. pic.twitter.com/SWLtnbbFZS
— Shane Kimbrough (@astro_kimbrough) March 16, 2017
Minimalist snow art in Russia. I cannot explain these km-long parallel lines https://t.co/o8reRsmhie pic.twitter.com/Nc9cQEc7wu
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) March 17, 2017
Denver at the feet of the Rocky Mountains that stop the plains of the Midwest in their tracks https://t.co/5FFeOGMhoT pic.twitter.com/jObJzzqhTi
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) March 18, 2017
It has become somewhat of a tradition with all the visiting vehicles recently: please bear with us for the requisite selfie
pic.twitter.com/3IIvopS4Ee
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) March 19, 2017
Snow on the summit of a volcano in Hawaii! #asongoficeandfire https://t.co/LbAiiME0kQ #Proxima pic.twitter.com/4XhxfQLNfW
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) March 19, 2017
Incredible view out of the @Space_Station windows this morning – Northern Lights #aurora. #MondayMotivation pic.twitter.com/q1VnuzsDOd
— Shane Kimbrough (@astro_kimbrough) March 27, 2017
Signatures of students and kids taking part in @NASAHUNCH: they work on space-related projects, also for use on the @Space_Station! pic.twitter.com/Or51LbIXyZ
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) March 27, 2017
Nice Airport, LFMN / NCE. Beautiful approaches along the coast, going around the landscape https://t.co/xEUnJ5tyNW #Proxima pic.twitter.com/mNV7lsU18Q
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) March 28, 2017
Our Soyuz in original lighting conditions: robotics operations were underway outside the @Space_Station, so lights were on. A rare sight! pic.twitter.com/9jZmhySvyx
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) March 28, 2017
Almost the same picture, but this time lit only by the moon! I'm fairly new to photography but having fun playing with light and colors
pic.twitter.com/S8tiFgdkwh
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) March 28, 2017