human spaceflight
NASA’s new human spaceflight chief is determined to make 2024 deadline
In this excerpt from a “fireside chat” at the third annual SpaceNews Awards for Excellence & Innovation Dec. 10, Doug Loverro discusses why he took on this new challenge and Jim Bridenstine explains why he believes Loverro is the right person for the job.
China developing new launch vehicle for human spaceflight, future moon missions
China unveiled a heavy-lift launch vehicle it is developing to carry a next-generation crewed spacecraft and power human spaceflight missions beyond low Earth orbit.
United Arab Emirates to establish human spaceflight program
The United Arab Emirates plans to establish its own astronaut corps in the next year, seeking to fly its citizens into space on other nations’ vehicles starting in the early 2020s.
Russia’s post-ISS plans a mystery at best
With the end of the International Space Station program looming just over the horizon, the national space agencies that back the project are scrambling to make plans for what comes next. Nowhere is this discussion more fraught than in Russia, where the issue of post-ISS efforts are wrapped up in questions about Russia’s entire future in space.
China’s long march to the moon
Chinese engineers are wrapping up work on the Chang’e-5 lunar mission for a targeted November launch atop a Long March 5 booster. It will depart from the newly completed Wenchang Space Launch Center in south China’s Hainan Province. If successful, this robotic mooncraft would carry the first lunar samples returned to Earth in over 40 years.
Industry committee to start work on human spaceflight safety standards
With the FAA restricted from developing safety regulations for people on commercial human spacecraft, an industry standards organization is moving ahead with plans to establish a committee to develop a voluntary set of standards.
NASA Considers Uses for Cislunar Habitat
As NASA works on plans to fly humans on long-duration missions between the Earth and moon in the 2020s, the agency is also starting to think about what astronauts would do on those flights.
NASA Begins Effort To Find Landing Sites for Human Mars Missions
With the first NASA human mission to Mars still at least two decades away, the space agency and planetary scientists have started looking for potential landing sites, a search motivated by both long-term planning requirements and urgency to take advantage of spacecraft already there.
Bolden: NASA “Doomed” if Next President Dumps Journey to Mars
As NASA provides more details about its long-term plans to send humans to Mars in the 2030s, the agency’s administrator warned that any attempt by the next administration to deviate from that plan would be disastrous.
Lockheed Martin Moves Ahead with Orion Assembly
Lockheed Martin is pressing ahead with full-scale assembly of the first lunar-orbit-bound Orion spacecraft even though a key review is still in progress.
Declassified: The NRO’s Abandoned Plans for a Manned Spy Satellite
The National Reconnaissance Office released Oct. 22 a trove of declassified records —including this video — from the 1960s about a military human spaceflight program.
China’s Space Station Planners Put out Welcome Mat
China is soliciting international participation in its future manned space station in the form of foreign modules that would attach to the three-module core system, visits by foreign crew-transport vehicles for short stays and the involvement of non-Chinese researchers in placing experiments on the complex.
NASA’s Humans-to-Mars Plans Win Publicity but Lack Details
NASA is taking advantage of a confluence of events, including the discovery of liquid water on the surface of Mars and the release of a Hollywood blockbuster about a Mars mission, to promote its long-term goal of sending humans there, even as it is slow to fill in the details about its plans.
Commercial Space Stations Face Economic and Regulatory Challenges
Proposals to develop commercial space stations in low Earth orbit that could serve as successors to the International Space Station face both an uncertain regulatory environment and questions about their economic viability, according to both those planning such stations and those who might regulate them.
Letter | Safety Can’t Come First if We Want To Put Humans on Mars
If humanity ever wants to send people to any deep-space destination in the solar system at any price, let alone one the nation or world can afford, we must be prepared to take risks and lose astronauts.
Op-ed | Weighing NASA’s Evolutionary Mars Campaign
NASA officials, to their credit, and despite catcalls from the outside, are not rushing into a plan — instead they are developing what they call an “evolvable Mars campaign.”
