Most news servers don't give SSL as standard, many don't offer it and some charge extra to provide it.
AFAIK Astraweb don't provide it. The Q should be do you need it? Astraweb have anonymous posting and no usage logs kept, as do many providers and is the concern of people's "activities" being monitored. SSL is only useful if you want to prevent your ISP from inspecting the packets to see what's in them. ISP's won't usually do this unless ordered to by an authority, who usually must show them reasonable cause.