February 23 – March 1, 2015 / Vol 34, No 8 / Hawai`i Island, USA

Southeast Asia Events Highlight Emerging Regional Opportunities for Pacific Space Access and Astronomy

Developing countries of Southeast Asia are actively seeking to enhance their positions, individually and cooperatively, as actors in 21st Century space access and competence. A series of events will bring regional leaders in astronomy and space development together to discuss current progress and emerging opportunities for the region to advance space access, science and education. Galaxy Forum SEA 2014 – Indonesia will take place on Feb 21 at the LAPAN office in Jawa Barat. The International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA) and Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB)-sponsored event will feature presentations by LAPAN Head Thomas Djamaluddin (R) on Indonesia Space Activities & Ambitions, and Sabirin bin Abdullah of ANGASKA on Malaysia Space Activities. On Feb 24, another Galaxy Forum event will be held in Bangkok, Thailand with presentations from Thai astronomy and space leaders such as Boonrucksar Soonthornthum (L) of NARIT, and Narut Soontranon of GISTDA. Representatives from Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Philippines will meet with ILOA Directors on Feb 26 in Singapore for the ILOA Southeast Asia Executive Meeting. The meeting will feature updates from representatives of each of the participating SEA nations, and an in-depth examination of how these countries can advance their astronomy and space ambitions through involvement in the ILO-1 mission to land an observation / communications device near the Moon South Pole. With rapidly advancing investment in space and the opening of the new Wenchang Satellite Launch Center in Hainan, China, Southeast Asia remains a prime region for the benefits of Pacific Space Access to be realized. (Image Credit: ILOA, ITB, LAPAN, Cri.cn, ME)

MONDAY

Feb 23 — ISS, LEO: Expedition 42 planning to perform 2 EVAs this week, preparing for ISS change of command & 3-person crew return to Earth Mar 10-11, transferring ~2,800 kg of cargo from Progress 58P, filling Progress 57P with waste; Soyuz TMA-14M & 15M currently docked to ISS.

Feb 23 — ARTEMIS, Moon Orbit: Two NASA spacecraft in elliptical equatorial orbits around Moon since 2007, operating nominally, observing solar wind, measuring pickup ions from exosphere, electrostatic charging of Moon surface & plasma wake.

Feb 23 — Cassini, Saturn Orbit: Mapping moon Titan with synthetic aperture radar & visible and infrared mapping spectrometer – almost half of Titan has been mapped; studying Enceladus, Dione, Rhea, Mimas, Saturn, its rings, magnetic environment, interactions with solar wind.

Feb 23 — Swiss Space Systems (S3), Payerne, Switzerland: NewSpace company working to provide orbital launches of SmallSats & human suborbital flights, planning for ZeroG flights to take place at new facility in Croatia in first half of 2016, wants to become tenant at the developing Spaceport Colorado.

Feb 23 — Spire, Singapore & San Francisco CA: Intends to launch 20 CubeSats in 2015, and 100 total by 2017 to provide nearly real-time weather data & up to 10,000 weather readings daily.

Feb 23 — Mars One, The Hague, The Netherlands: Moving forward with Astronaut selection process for one-way human missions to Mars starting 2024; new application round will open this year; Paragon mission concepts study on life support systems to be released this month.

Feb 23 — University of Arizona, Tucson AZ: Life in the Universe Lecture Series: Searching for Life in the Solar System; presented by Timothy D. Swindle of Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

Feb 23-24 — AIAA Greater Huntsville Section, Dynetics, Kord Technologies, PeopleTec, Huntsville AL: Civil Space Symposium: Focusing on Safety for Civil Space.

Feb 23-24 — SMi, Eutelsat, O3b, et al, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: MilSatCom Middle East & Africa.

Feb 23-26 — University of Hawai`i, Poipu HI: 2nd Workshop on Experimental Laboratory Astrophysics (ICE2015).

Asteroid Exploration for Planetary Protection, Resources and Science

The NASA Dawn spacecraft is set to arrive at dwarf-planet Ceres (950-km diameter) on March 6 after exploring minor planet 4 Vesta (525-km diameter). Together Ceres, Vesta, Pallas and Hygiea contain about half the mass of the Main Asteroid Belt which is believed to have a total mass equal to ~4% of the Moon. The Main Belt, located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter ~2.2 and 3.2 AU from Sun, is estimated to contain 200 asteroids larger than 100 km in diameter, 750,000+ asteroids larger than 1 km and many millions of smaller ones. The US$5M-a-year NEOWISE infrared-wavelength space telescope mission in LEO is working to locate unknown Near Earth Asteroids within 45M km of Earth, and characterize the size, albedo and thermal properties of ~2,000 known asteroids. JAXA Hayabusa 2 “Falcon” sample return mission, en route to 1999 JU3, is expected to arrive June 2018, depart for Earth December 2019 and return samples Dec 2020. The NASA ARM concept would bring a small asteroid to Moon orbit for further investigation and human exploration. Privately owned Planetary Resources is set to launch its first Earth-observation and asteroid-locating satellite Arkyd-100 to LEO August 18. The B612 Foundation, co-founded by Rusty Schweickart, Ed Lu and Piet Hut, will host a presentation on “The Sentinel Mission: Finding the Asteroid Headed for Earth” at Foothills College in California on March 4. Deep Space Industries is working to provide technologies for discovering, harvesting and processing NEOs. (Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, UCLA, MPS, DLR, IDA, William Crochot, Planetary Resources, B612, DSI)

Feb 23-27 — Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, Santa Barbara CA: Conference: Physics of Exoplanets – From Earth-sized to Mini-Neptunes.

Feb 23 — Asteroid 2014 EK24: Near-Earth flyby (0.041 AU).

Continued from…

Oct 16, 2014 – Jun 11 — NASA, University of Hawai`i, Mauna Loa HI: Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) Mission 3.

Feb 2-27 — Munich Institute for Astro- and Particle Physics (MIAPP), Munich, Germany: Dark Matter: Astrophysical probes, Laboratory tests, and Theory aspects (DARK MALT 2015).

Feb 17-27 — Paris Institute of Astrophysics, Network of European Observatories in the North (NEON), Asiago, Italy: 2015 NEON Observing School.

TUESDAY

Feb 24 — International Lunar Observatory Association, Space Age Publishing Co., Science Centre for Education, Bangkok, Thailand: Galaxy Forum Southeast Asia – Thailand 2015: Galaxy Education, Exploration and Enterprise in the 21st Century; 09:30 – 12:30 at Science Education Center, Bangkok Planetarium.

Feb 24 — Silicon Valley Space Center, Mountain View CA: Lecture: Disruption and Space Colonization: Getting from Here to There; presented by Jason Dunn, at Hacker Dojo.

Feb 24 — SETI Institute, Mountain View CA: SETI Weekly Colloquium: Mars and Life – A Special Evening Panel Discussion; presented by Marc Kaufman, Nathalie Cabrol and Ross Beyer, 19:00.

Feb 24 — The Space Show, Online / Tiburon CA: Dr. David Livingston talks with Dr. Eligar Sadeh on ITAR.

Feb 24-25 — Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group, NASA, Monrovia CA: 2015 MEPAG Face-to-Face Meeting; at Double-Tree Hotel.

Feb 24-26 — Kennedy Space Station, NASA Office of Planetary Protection, KSC FL: Course – Planetary Protection: Policies and Practices.

Feb 24 — Moon: 8.0° S of Pleiades, 18:00.

Feb 24 — Asteroid 2015 BA511: Near-Earth flyby (0.098 AU).