The tenth annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) is winding down in Yokohama, Japan. But stem cells have been in the news.
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Monthly Archives: June 2012
China space program to launch 1st female astronaut
China will send its first woman into space Saturday along with two other astronauts to work on a temporary space station for about a week, in a key step toward becoming the only third nation to set up a permanent base in orbit.
Liu Yang, a 34-year-old air force pilot, and two male colleagues will be launched Saturday aboard the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft, which will dock with the bus-sized Tiangong 1 space module now orbiting at 343 kilometres above the Earth.
"Arranging for women astronauts to fly is not only a must for the development of human spaceflight, but also the expectation of the public," space program spokeswoman Wu Ping said. "This is a landmark event."
Two of the astronauts will live and work inside the module to test its life-support systems while the third will remain in the capsule to deal with any unexpected emergencies. Wu said the mission will last more than 10 days before the astronauts travel back to Earth in the capsule, landing on Western Chinese grasslands with the help of parachutes.
The rocket began fueling Friday at the Jiugquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi desert in northern China, Wu told reporters at the centre. The launch is scheduled for 6:37 p.m. (1237 GMT) Saturday, she said.
Joining Liu, a major, is veteran astronaut and mission commander Jing Haipeng and newcomer Liu Wang, both air force senior colonels.
"You could say this mission is a combination of the old and the new and co-ordination between the male and female," Wu said.
Success in docking and in living and working aboard the Tiangong 1 would smooth the way for more ambitious projects, including the creation of a permanent space station and missions to the moon, and add to China's international prestige in line with its growing economic prowess.
China is hoping to join the United States and Russia as the only countries to have sent independently maintained space stations into orbit. It already is in the exclusive three-nation club to have launched a spacecraft with astronauts on its own.
The mission demonstrates China's commitment to "long-term human spaceflight" and marks a test of "the technological capabilities requisite for a future permanent space station," said Joan Johnson-Freese, an expert on the Chinese space program at the U.S. Naval War College in Rhode Island.
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China sending its first female astronaut to temporary space base
JIUQUAN, China China will send its first woman and two other astronauts into space Saturday to work on a temporary space station for about a week, in a key step toward becoming only the third nation to set up a permanent base in orbit.
Liu Yang, a 34-year-old air force pilot, and two male colleagues will be launched Saturday aboard the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft, which will dock with the bus-sized Tiangong 1 space module now orbiting at 343 kilometers (213 miles) above the Earth.
"Arranging for women astronauts to fly is not only a must for the development of human spaceflight, but also the expectation of the public," space program spokeswoman Wu Ping said. "This is a landmark event."
Two of the astronauts will live and work inside the module to test its life-support systems while the third will remain in the capsule to deal with any unexpected emergencies. Wu said the mission will last more than 10 days before the astronauts return to Earth in the capsule, landing on Western Chinese grasslands with the help of parachutes.
The rocket began fueling Friday at the Jiugquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi desert in northern China, Wu told reporters at the center. The launch is scheduled for 6:37 p.m. (1237 GMT) Saturday, she said.
- Chinese space program spokeswoman Wu Ping
Joining Liu, a major, is veteran astronaut and mission commander Jing Haipeng and newcomer Liu Wang, both air force senior colonels.
"You could say this mission is a combination of the old and the new and coordination between the male and female," Wu said.
Success in docking -- and in living and working aboard the Tiangong 1 -- would smooth the way for more ambitious projects, including the creation of a permanent space station and missions to the moon, and add to China's prestige in line with its growing economic prowess.
China is hoping to join the United States and Russia as the only countries to have sent independently maintained space stations into orbit. It already is in the exclusive three-nation club to have launched a spacecraft with astronauts on its own.
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China sending its first female astronaut to temporary space base
China set for space station launch
China is preparing to launch three astronauts to live and work on a space station for about a week, a major step in its goal of becoming only the third nation with a permanent base orbiting Earth.
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China sending its first woman in space to test module
Jiuquan, China— China will send its first woman into space Saturday along with two other astronauts to work on a temporary space station for about a week, in a key step toward becoming the only third nation to set up a permanent base in orbit.
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China's New Space Station Isn't Really A Space Station [Spacelopnik]
Sometime very soon, China will be launching three Taikonauts to their new space station, making them only the third country ever to accomplish such a feat. The station, Tiangong 1 (it means Heavenly Palace, which sounds like a place I have a take-out menu from) was launched back in late September of last year. If you were to compare it to the first space stations launched by the old Soviet Union and the US (which everyone will), it seems incredibly modest and small. But that would be doing the Chinese space program a disservice, since they don't really intend it to be a space station at all.
They have a much better plan in mind it's not really a secret, but it's also not the story given to most media right now.
It's really a prototype of a cargo ship for a future, real space station.
That may not be as exciting as saying it's an orbiting laser platform that tracks you by your iPhone device ID, but it's actually a really smart move on the Chinese Space Agency's part. The Chinese are taking a very slow and carefully measured approach to their space program; compared to America's (or Russia's) they're spending very little money. So they have to make each and every launch count. Space stations as a concept are well understood now the hardest work has been done by the nine space stations that have preceded it since 1971 (for fun, here are the nine manned space stations: Salyuts 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Mir, Skylab (which was huge), and the ISS).
This means the Chinese don't need to prove the concept, they need to just do it on their own. Even here they're standing on the shoulders of the Soviet program. Their manned spacecraft, Shenzou, is very much an improved, modernized Soyuz. Their future space station designs are based on the Salyut and Mir designs, though heavily modified and modernized. Tiangong, however, is different. It's not really based on the Salyut design, as a watcher of the Chinese space program would expect for their first station. It seems closer to a modified Shenzou.
Even though I preemptively chastised hypothetical other journalists from comparing Tiangong to other early space stations, that's exactly what I'm going to do now. But I give myself special permission. Let's first look at it compared to the very first space station ever, Salyut 1 from way back in 1971. Salyut 1 was basically a 40,000 lb pressurized cylinder with a docking port and 3500 cubic feet of internal volume for living, experiments, and what I suspect was the first 0g masturbation (of a higher primate I'm sure there was a reason there was no film of Ham the space chimp's flight). Tiangong 1, to compare, is a pressurized cylinder about 17,600 lbs and encloses about 508 cubic feet of habitable space. That's an awful lot less space for a crew of three to live and work in. And that's the first big clue this isn't a true space station.
If the Chinese could launch a 500 cubic foot cylinder, they could launch a 1500 cubic foot one or more without too much trouble. There's a good reason it's as small as it is. China is even referring to it as a "Target Vehicle" and space geeks are more likely to think of it as a "man-tended station" that is, it's a place you visit for a bit, not live in for long periods, like an actual space station. But all this is because it's a large cargo vehicle, not a small station.
As the Soviets demonstrated with Salyut 6, the key to living in space for really long periods of time is to have a spaceship with two or more docking ports and robotic resupply craft to keep sending up food, fuel, water, air, nudie mags, experiments, equipment, etc. The robotic craft they developed, the Progress, was a huge success and is still in use today. This is the vehicle the Tiangong 1 should be compared to, and in this context it makes total sense. It has about twice the interior, cargo-haulin' volume, and possibly many other advantages as well. We just don't know the details yet, but based on the Shenzou compared to a Soyuz, it's likely.
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China's New Space Station Isn't Really A Space Station [Spacelopnik]
China to send woman and 2 other astronauts to space module in most ambitious mission yet
JIUQUAN, China - China will send its first woman and two other astronauts into space Saturday to work on a temporary space station for about a week, in a key step toward becoming only the third nation to set up a permanent base in orbit.
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China to send woman and 2 other astronauts to space module in most ambitious mission yet
Astronauts to Hold Summer Olympics in Space
To mark the upcoming Olympic Games in London, a crew of astronauts due to launch to the space station this summer is planning an orbital sporting event for the occasion.
NASA astronaut Sunita (Suni) Williams, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency spaceflyer Akihiko Hoshide and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko are due to launch July 14 to the International Space Station.
Their planned four-month stay in space will overlap with the London 2012 Olympics July 27 to Aug. 12, so the sporty spaceflyers have something up their sleeves to celebrate the event.
"Something unique about our increment is we have a very huge sports event during our increment, so what we're talking about amongst ourselves is, why don't we do some kind of sports event onboard the station too?" Hoshide told reporters during a NASA preview the mission. "We're just tossing around ideas right now, what kind of sport event we can do. That's something I'm looking forward to."
Astronauts have staged orbital sports before. In fact, for the last Olympic Games, the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, the 11 astronauts aboard the space station and the space shuttle Endeavour, which was docked there at the time, recreated the event in orbit. [Video: Sports in Space]
The spaceflyers tried their hand at space skiing, the zero-Glugeand weightless figure skating, all the while beaming a video of their orbital Olympics to Mission Control.
"You are officially the only folks who are able to get more hang time than Shaun White," the American gold medal-winning snowboarder, Mission Control radioed to the astronauts.
This time around, the spaceflyers are still working out which orbital events to stage, given their limitations.
"We just thought it would be something fun to do on orbit," Hoshide said."We have limited space and limited equipment."
Williams herself has participated in weightless workouts before, when she ran along with the Boston marathon on the treadmill aboard the International Space Station in 2007. She completed the marathon infour hours, 24 minutes, all while orbiting the Earth at some 17,500 miles (28,163 kilometers) per hour.
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China poised for most ambitious space mission yet
China will launch three astronauts, including a mother of one who flies transport planes, to live and work on a space station for about a week, a major step in its goal of becoming only the third nation with a permanent base orbiting Earth.
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Liu Yang draws cheers as first Chinese woman set for space voyage
JIUQUAN, China (Reuters) - China will send its first woman into outer space this week, prompting a surge of national pride as the rising power takes its latest step towards putting a space station in orbit within the decade. Liu Yang, a 33-year-old fighter pilot, will join two other astronauts aboard the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft when it lifts off from a remote Gobi Desert launch site on Saturday ...
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Liu Yang draws cheers as first Chinese woman set for space voyage
China sending first woman in space to test module
China will send its first woman and two other astronauts into space Saturday to work on a temporary space station for about a week, in a key step toward becoming only the third nation to set up a permanent base in orbit.
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China is sending its first female 'taikonaut' into space
The space shuttle Shenzhou 9 is ready for liftoff. And for the first time in the history of Chinese space flight, it will be transporting a female astronaut into space. Beijing is cashing in on its promotional value.
The Shenzhou-9, which means "divine vessel," is due to be launched into space on Saturday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Chinas arid northwest. It will then dock with the space module Tiangong 1 ("heavenly palace"), which was launched last year.
This will be China's first docking maneuver with the module and a manned ship; but that is not the only reason this flight will be novel. Its the first time, China is sending a woman into space.
Officials named the "A team" on Friday and confirmed 34-year-old Liu Yang as part of the crew. Married with no children, she is a former Chinese air force pilot. She was selected at the beginning of 2010 as a candidate for the space program and was then trained.
No scars, nor cavities
Chinese media have been reporting on the strict selection criteria used in choosing female astronauts. Apparently candidates were not allowed to have any scars or dental cavities. Thick calluses on the feet are also said to be grounds for exclusion from the selection process.
Yang Liwei is a national hero
In total, 56 female astronauts have been sent into space so far; 46 from the US, three from the former USSR, as well as three Russians, two Canadians and two Japanese.
Bernd Dachwald, a space flight expert at the University of Applied Sciences in Aachen, told DW that women faced the same challenges as men when it came to space travel and that there should be no special criteria.
"The Americans put women into space all the time. They have almost as many female as male astronauts on their crews," he said, adding that the only real difference was the hormonal fluctuations caused by the menstrual cycle.
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China plans medical research aboard its space lab module
Beijing, June 15 (Xinhua-ANI): China will conduct space medical experimental research on Tiangong-1 space lab module in the upcoming manned space flight, China's manned space program spokeswoman Wu Ping said Friday.
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Secret Space Plane Returns?
The U.S. Air Force is standing ready for this week's much anticipated return to Earth of a robotic space plane that has spent more than a year in orbit on a secret mission.
Air Force officials say landing day for the unmanned X-37B space plane is imminent, and could occur on Friday (June 15). But weather conditions at its intended landing site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, as well as other factors, will determine when the spacecraft's will ultimately land.
"Team Vandenberg is prepared to safely receive the X-37B at a moment's notice," Air Force Lt. Austin Fallin told SPACE.com in an email this week. "Exact landing date and time depend on weather and technical considerations."
The X-37B spacecraft's landing window opened on June 11 and runs through June 18, with Friday being the next opportunity, Fallin said. The exact nature of the space plane's mission is classified, so aside from a brief May 30 statement announcing the upcoming landing in the mid-June timeframe, Air Force officials have remained mum on re-entry details. [Photos: Air Force's 2nd Secret X-37B Mission]
"More information will be released as it becomes available," Fallin said.
- Air Force Lt. Austin Fallin
The X-37B space plane set to land this week is known as the Orbital Test Vehicle 2 (OTV-2) and looks much like a smaller version of NASA's reusable space shuttles. Unlike NASA's shuttles, the OTV-2 is completely unmanned and is powered by a solar panel that allows it to stay in orbit for months at a time.
Air Force officials have said the estimated mission length for its X-37B space planes (there are currently two) is about 270 days, but the OTV-2 mission has far outlasted that timeframe. The OTV-2 mission launched into orbit on March 5, 2011 and has racked up more than 460 days in orbit so far.
The Air Force's X-37B space planes are built by Boeing and originally began as a NASA test program that shifted into the U.S military's control in 2006, first to DARPA and then to the Air Force, due to funding issues. Each X-37B spacecraft is about 29 feet long (8.8 meters) 15 feet wide (4.5 m), and has a payload bay about the size of a pickup truck bed.
The spacecraft are launched into orbit atop unmanned Atlas 5 rockets and are designed to guide themselves back to Earth on autopilot by re-entering the atmosphere and landing on a runway at Vandenberg. The OTV-2 mission and its predecessor were launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
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China's 'Red Ants' embrace RV culture
Zheyang Soohoo / Reuters
Men row a boat carrying a child on a lake in front of recreational vehicles (RVs), during a camping trip at an RV park on the outskirts of Beijing on April 14, 2012. Chinese buyers bought an estimated 1,000 RVs last year, but experts say the RV business is about to take off in the country.
Reuters reports Dong Xuemin can't wait for weekends when he heads out with family or friends to the mountains north of Beijing or to a lake for a picnic.
Terril Yue Jones / Reuters
Dong Xuemin poses in front of his RV and boat at his storage company in Beijing on April 17, 2012.
Dong is a "Red Ant" - a member of a club of urban Chinese who'll find any excuse to hit the road, not in ordinary cars, but in recreational vehicles, those quintessential Western chariots of leisure transportation used by "Snowbirds" in North America typified by white-haired retirees heading south for the winter.
Read more stories from China on Behind the Wall
"RVs have a long and glorious history in the West," says Dong, 41, who runs a logistics and storage business in Beijing where he stores his RV, boat, all-terrain vehicle and motorized surfboard. "Chinese are the same; we love the outdoors. So we're learning the American and Western RV culture." Read the full story.
Zheyang Soohoo / Reuters
Children sit around a table as they play inside an RV, during a camping trip at an RV park on the outskirts of Beijing on April 14, 2012.
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NASA | Goddard’s Innovation – Video
14-06-2012 12:19 For more than half a century, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has been at the forefront of discovery, creating new instruments and managing high-profile missions that have expanded our understanding of the world around us. Perhaps less well known is its enviable culture of innovation. Through its Internal Research and Development Program, Goddard technologists are pursuing new cutting-edge technologies — everything from nanotech coatings and miniaturized electronic components to lighter, more capable telescope mirrors — that will enable discovery in the future.
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NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Kicks Off 2012 Summer of Innovation At Columbia Middle School
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will return to his hometown of Columbia, S.C., June 18 to participate in a NASA Summer of Innovation (SOI) celebration at W. A. Perry Middle School and the nearby Challenger Center. Bolden attended Perry as a youth.
The SOI program begins at 9 a.m. at the school with a keynote speech by Cheryl McNair, the wife of fallen space shuttle Challenger astronaut, Ronald McNair. Administrator Bolden will address the students at noon and visit the Challenger Center at approximately 12:45 p.m.
Members of the media interested in attending the SOI events should contact Edith Caudle, Richland One School District public information manager at (803) 231-7510 by 4 p.m. Friday, June 15.
This is the third year for the SOI project that provides hands-on learning opportunities for underrepresented middle school students and professional development workshops for educators through NASA-unique science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) educational activities during the summer school break.
The two Monday events feature hands-on STEM activities for over 400 middle school students and 40 educators and will include NASA Digital Learning Network programs, the Greenwood Genetic Center Gene Machine Mobile Science Laboratory, a portable planetarium and other educational programs. STEM activities will also be held at the Richland One District Challenger Center in Columbia. Bolden, a Columbia native, graduated from C. A. Johnson High School there in 1964 and received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. His 34-year career with the Marine Corps included 14 years as a member of NASA's Astronaut Office. He flew four times aboard the space shuttle between 1986 and 1994, commanding two of the missions.
NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., manages the SOI program in South Carolina. NASA's SOI is a key component of the agency's broader education program to increase student interest in STEM courses, particularly among those in underserved sectors of the academic community.
For more information about the SOI project, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/soi
For more information about NASA's broader education program, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/education
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NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Kicks Off 2012 Summer of Innovation At Columbia Middle School
NASA Embraces AWS, Windows Azure Clouds After OpenStack Departure
June 15, 2012 -- Less than a month after NASA announced its withdrawal from OpenStack, NASA chief information officer Linda Cureton says the space organization has embraced the AWS cloud infrastructure for a variety of web applications.
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NASA Embraces AWS, Windows Azure Clouds After OpenStack Departure
NASA's NEEMO: Bringing Space to the Deep
The OpenROV (in blue) Moving Over Aquarius. Image: OpenROV
The name Nemo automatically brings to mind visions of the deep for many people. From the infamous anti-hero captain in Jules Vernes Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea to the lovable lost clown fish in Pixars Finding Nemo, the name has become linked to life in the ocean. For a dedicated team from a number of backgrounds, interests, and organizations, the name is linked to both the ocean and space exploration.
There is a project, coordinated by NASA, called the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, or NEEMO. I have spent the past week working in the NEEMO environment and it has been amazing. My work here was related to capturing part of the link NASA provides to monitoring the oceans along with the satellite program I am working on now called the Joint Polar Satellite System. I captured a great deal of incredible information and footage for my project but I want to take the time to educate our readers on NEEMO, the incredible work being done on the project, and the other amazing teams I was working alongside.
NEEMO is what NASA calls an Analog Mission. During an Analog Mission, a crew is put into a simulated mission under an environment simulating some of the conditions of a space mission while a Mission Control team works with the crew in a Mission Control Center, or MCC. The fact that this is an Analog Mission is an important distinction. There are a number of ways to test in conditions specifically analogous to spaceflight such as g-forces in a centrifuge or different pressure conditions in test chambers. The Analog Missions are important in that they are a simulation of the full end-to-end space mission. The crew is working for multiple days in an extreme environment and communicating with Mission Control in a way that is very similar to working on flying mission.
The Aquarius Reef Base during the NEEMO 14 Mission Image: NASA
The NEEMO Analog Missions are centered around the Aquarius Reef Base off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. The Aquarius Reef Base is owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and operated by the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. The Aquarius Base is an 85-ton habitat that supports a crew of up to six Aquanauts. Aquarius sits in about 62 feet of water in a sandy section of Conch Reef in the protected Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The habitat is pressurized to over twice normal atmospheric pressure both to keep the Aquanauts equalized to the water pressure at that depth and to allow for a moon pool where the Aquanauts can enter and leave the habitat without airlocks or hatches. Remember The Abyss? It is kind of like that but at 62 feet. On the surface, there is a large buoy called the Life Support Buoy, or LSB, which provides power generation, air compressors, communications, and other support equipment. At the end of a stay on Aquarius, since the Aquanauts are saturated at the pressure of 2.5 atmospheres, they undergo an almost 16 hour decompression process to bring them safely back to normal atmospheric conditions.
The Aquarius Life Support Buoy & Support Ships Image: Brian McLaughlin
When the NASA NEEMO team uses Aquarius for a mission they send a crew down consisting of astronauts and other personnel to work in the extreme environment and simulate a space mission. The extreme environment provides conditions where the crew lives in isolation and have to appropriately equip themselves for work outside the habitat. NEEMO places additional equipment around Aquarius to aid in the mission simulation. Back in Key Largo, a large, well-equipped trailer is brought in for the Mission Control end of the simulation. Called the Mobile Mission Control Center, or MMCC, the trailer provides an amazingly accurate Mission Control atmosphere. During mission operations, additional divers also go down to support different aspects of the mission, making for an amazing sight with the support divers and Aquanauts all working together in an well-choreographed dance.
NASA Mobile Mission Command Center Image: Brian McLaughlin
The current mission is NEEMO 16 and runs from this past Monday till the end of next week. During NEEMO 16, the team is simulating a mission to land on an asteroid. They are practicing a number of techniques for moving around the asteroid environment, such as moving from workstation to workstation, testing tools for different uses, and other activities. The communications loop with the MMCC is delayed to simulate the communications lag due to the speed of light a mission will encounter working on an asteroid. What makes NEEMO such a great place to run tests described above is the ability to provide feedback on a particular tool or procedure to the surface team, make modifications, and try the modifications the next day. It is an amazing rapid prototyping environment that is like a Hackathon on the ocean floor.
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Spy Satellite Telescopes Donated to NASA 'Came Out of the Blue'
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A pair of space telescopes that were donated to NASA from the secretive National Reconnaissance Office could be repurposed for a wide variety of science missions, NASA officials say, but it will likely be years before the agency's budget can accommodate them. Â
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Spy Satellite Telescopes Donated to NASA 'Came Out of the Blue'