Space Stories: Space Station Gap, Martian Job Losses, and Canadian Astronauts Announced for Upcoming Missions

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): ISS view of Cuba back in December 2013. What you see here is a Russian Soyuz spacecraft is docked to the station. (NASA)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—SpaceNews.com: “NASA Acknowledges Possibility of Short-term Post-ISS Gap“

While NASA seeks to maintain an uninterrupted human presence in low Earth orbit, an agency official said a short-term gap between the International Space Station and commercial successors would not be “the end of the world.” NASA’s current approach to its future in LEO counts on supporting development of commercial space stations with the goal of having at least one such station ready to support NASA astronauts and research by 2030, when the ISS is scheduled for retirement. A key question, though, will be whether any of the several companies working on such concepts will be ready by the end of the decade.

—KRON4 News: “Hundreds of California Jobs at Stake if NASA Mars Mission Axed“

Hundreds of tech and science jobs will be lost in California if NASA moves forward with a plan to cut funding from the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, according to state lawmakers. U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.-30), sent a letter on Wednesday to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson to reverse a decision to slash the mission’s funding. The funding cut would “result in the loss of hundreds of California jobs, prevent the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from making its 2030 launch window, and lead to the cancellation of billions of dollars in contracts supporting American businesses,” the lawmakers wrote.

—Space.com: “Canada Assigns Astronauts to Launch on Boeing’s Starliner, Back up Artemis 2 Moon Mission“

The Canadian Space Agency announced two astronauts will fly to space in the coming years on Wednesday (Nov. 22) as the country continues a historic ramp-up of its human space program in 2023. François-Philippe Champagne, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry of Canada, announced the assignments in front of a crowd of hundreds gathered in the lobby of Canadian Space Agency headquarters in Longueuil, Quebec.