Minutes of May 10 Oklahoma Space Alliance Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met May 10, 2025, at the Cyber Hall and Gaming Lounge at Norman Computers in Norman, Oklahoma. Attending were Clifford McMurray, Adam Hemphill, John Northcutt, Tom Koszoru, Dave Sheely, and Syd Henderson. OSA President Clifford McMurray presided over the meeting. Clifford did an Update discussing links to material covered in the meeting and this is online at https://osa.nss.org/Update2505.pdf so I’ll cover the details that aren’t covered there.
In the proposed new NASA budget, astrophysics goes from 1.5 to .5 billion dollars.
The asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson, which Lucy flew by, is 5 miles by two miles.
Jared Isaacman thinks the Mars Sample Return should be outsized to private companies.
DAARPA’s LASSO (Lunar Assay via Small Satellite Orbiter) go as low as ten kilometers above the Moon’s surface for four years.
Companies losing out on Artemis 4 are looking for cooperation on the lunar surface.
There have already been 46 Falcon launches this year.
27 members of Congress from Texas want NASA to move HQ to Texas. Florida Representatives introduced a bill to require a move to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Ohio has also expressed an interest, but Florida or Texas seems more likely.
France seems to be getting heavily into military space.
If nothing is done, the Hubble Space Telescope will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere sometime in the 2030s. Kip thinks it will be saved somehow.
Space Force’s booklet on Space Warfare is 25 pages long.
We watched a video of the Lucy space probe’s flyby of 55246 Donaldjohanson. Donaldjohanson is the remnant of a long-ago collision and appears to be either two fused asteroids or a contact binary. [We’re finding quite a few of each., including the fused binary Arrokoth observed by New Horizons and the contact binary Selam (Dinkinesh I) which was discovered by Lucy herself.]
We watched a video on how Dream Chaser is better than Boeing’s Starliner. Dream Chaser is scheduled to start cargo flights to the ISS later this year and ten flights altogether from a 2016 contract.
Dream Chaser lands horizontally. Starship lands by parachute (though it is supposed to eventually land on a launch pad. Starliner lands in the water.
--Minutes By OSA Secretary Syd Henderson
Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Claire McMurray.
PO Box 1003
Norman, OK 73070
Webmaster is Syd Henderson.
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