Keith’s note: In case you are interested in other ways that NASA is going to do the Lunar landing thing, this is the NASA Procurement notice for “Commercial Lunar Payload Services – CLPS” “NASA’s release of a draft request for proposal for the delivery of lunar payloads to the Moon via commercial services is the latest step in the agency’s expanding efforts in Lunar Exploration combined with support for the […]
FYI all of the Trump political appointees at @NASA HQ now answer directly to #NASA CFO @JeffDeWitAZ pic.twitter.com/BzVgxa3vAt — NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) April 30, 2018
Keith’s note: We’ve all heard about those misleading campaign ads on Facebook. Well, while the campaign ads are under scrutiny big aerospace companies are quietly luring people to websites that are not what they seem to be at first glance. This ad is currently running on Facebook. According to the coding embedded in the link it is “campaign=acquisition_newsletter_tier-two-space-race-b” and I am an “enthusiast”. When you go to the link it […]
Blue Origin’s New Shepard Goes To Space – And Back – Again (with video) “New Shepard flew again for the eighth time on April 29, 2018, from Blue Origin’s West Texas Launch Site. Known as Mission 8 (M8), the mission featured a reflight of the vehicle flown on Mission 7. The Crew Capsule reached an apogee of 351,000 feet (66 miles, 107 kilometers) – the altitude we’ve been targeting for […]
Keith’s 29 April update: Looking back at my original posting I realized something that I had totally overlooked – something that someone like me should have paid much more attention to. In looking at @JimBridenstine tweets I saw speech patterns that I did not associate with the way that Jim Bridenstine talks. Of course, I did not stop to think that @NASAWatch – and NASAwatch.com – have a voice that […]
We’re committed to lunar exploration @NASA. Resource Prospector instruments will go forward in an expanded lunar surface campaign. More landers. More science. More exploration. More prospectors. More commercial partners. Ad astra! https://t.co/FaxO6WUDow — Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) April 27, 2018 A series of questions was sent to NASA HEOMD, SMD, and PAO. No response back. Is this tweet the official @NASA response on Resource Prospector cancellation? Is it actually cancelled or […]
LEAG Letter To NASA Administrator Bridenstine Regarding Resource Prospector Mission “We wrote to Drs. Gerstenmaier and Zurbuchen to describe the community-wide support for RP on 2 March 2018, after the redirection for this initially HEOMD-led mission to be shared with the new Lunar Exploration and Discovery Program within SMD. We now understand RP was cancelled on 23 April 2018 and the project has been asked to close down by the […]
Former NASA Administrator Weighs in on New Space Agency Head, EOS “Eos: Why wouldn’t Jim Bridenstine have been your first choice? Bolden: He would not have been my first choice because he’s a politician. And he is the first person, to my knowledge, ever selected from political office to become the NASA administrator. I don’t think it’s healthy for the agency to have someone who’s a partisan in that position. […]
NASA OIG Audit of Commercial Resupply Services to the International Space Station “However, despite a requirement to compete task orders among all contractors, NASA approved sole-source awards for all 31 CRS-1 missions and the 8 CRS-2 missions awarded as of December 2017. With the addition of a third contractor under CRS-2, we believe NASA has more flexibility to compete task orders or possibly open the contract to new entrants through […]
Gerstenmaier–now thinking we will fly EM-2 on SLS with ICPS. EM-2 will not carry PPE now, will get cmrcl launch for that. Learned from study we did re flying crew on EM-1 last yr that not as costly as we thought to human rate ICPS. — Marcia Smith (@SpcPlcyOnline) April 25, 2018 Gerstenmaier explained that EM-2 will, in fact, happen sooner than planned because of the 2nd MLP. But that's […]
