A golden age may be coming for human spaceflight research as more astronauts than ever fly to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard commercial crew vehicles and through private companies, NASA officials said during an online conference Thursday (Aug. 27).

"We're going to have more people on the International Space Station than we've had in a long time, and [research and development] throughput is actually going to increase," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in opening prerecorded remarks for the ISS Research & Development conference.

Bridenstine was referring to a new era of human spaceflight that opened on May 30, when SpaceX launched its first-ever crewed mission, the Demo-2 test flight. Demo-2 sent NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS for two months, ending on Aug. 2 when SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule made the first American ocean splashdown from orbit since 1975.

Related: SpaceX's historic Demo-2 test flight in photos

Demo-2 was made possible by more than a decade's worth of work across several presidential administrations. The goal was to spur the development of private American spaceships to fill the shoes of NASA's space shuttle fleet, which retired in 2011 after 30 years of service.

The space shuttle typically ferried crews of seven astronauts to and from the space station. Russian Soyuz spacecraft, the only orbital crewed vehicle available for the past nine years until Crew Dragon came online, can carry just three people at a time.

Crew Dragon and Boeing's delayed (but forthcoming) CST-100 Starliner capsule will carry four astronauts apiece on their operational ISS missions for NASA. (Both companies won multibillion contracts from NASA's Commercial Crew Program in 2014.)

This boost over the Soyuz crew size will expand crew research time during long missions to 70 hours a week, NASA ISS program manager Joel Montalbano said in another set of prerecorded remarks broadcast at the conference. (Montalbano did not say how many hours ISS crews of three to six people typically perform today).

"For commercial crew vehicles, we're continuing to work with the teams," Montalbano added, saying the agency is aiming for a "steady cadence" between SpaceX and Boeing to send astronauts to the space station to perform science and research.

The first operational SpaceX crewed mission is set to fly in late October, and NASA is accelerating crew announcements for future flights such as one this week in which it named astronaut Jeanette Epps to the first operational Boeing Starliner mission to the space station, which is expected to launch next year.

These crews will arrive on the space station seasoned via a couple of years of training per astronaut. They'll also have the benefit of knowledge accrued over the past 20 years, during which the ISS has been continuously staffed by rotating astronaut crews.

Kathy Lueders, NASA's newly appointed head of human spaceflight, said she remembered an early space station assembly flight (Flight 2A in 1998) being derailed for five hours as crew and ground control discussed how to address a broken treadmill piece, the treadmill being critical to keep astronauts healthy through exercise. "Today it would be a very short conversation," Lueders said in live remarks at the conference Thursday. "The crew would fix it and move on."

Related: The International Space Station inside and out (infographic)

Lueders pointed out that NASA is getting more comfortable with continuing challenging space station work even during test missions. During Demo-2, for example, ISS crewmembers participated in an ongoing set of battery replacements to upgrade power on the station. "In the past, we would have been avoiding that," she said.

Increased crew autonomy and increased crew sizes are two things buttressing the possibility of more ISS research. Private modules and crews are also on the horizon.

In January 2020, NASA selected the Houston company Axiom Space to build a private ISS module, with a target launch date of 2024. In June, Axiom selected Thales Alenia to build that new module, which will be designed to fly independently when the station program comes to an end.

Space Act proposals for private astronaut missions are ongoing, Angela Hart, NASA's low Earth orbit commercialization manager, said in live remarks at the conference. These private astronauts will be distinct from space tourists; a handful of people have paid millions of dollars each for brief stays on the ISS or the Soviet/Russian space station, Mir, which was deorbited in 2001. The new private astronauts, however, would presumably be employed by a company to perform private research, similar to the payload specialist position that used to be open to outsiders early in the space shuttle program.

NASA has received proposals from multiple companies, and two proposals are being reviewed, Hart said, without disclosing details on what the evaluation metrics are and which companies are being considered for the opportunity. (That said, Axiom and SpaceX jointly announced earlier this year that they aim to fly four private astronauts to the ISS as soon as 2021, for a 10-day mission.)

Hart added that the selected companies will have opportunities to fly up to twice per year, for short-duration missions of 10 to 30 days apiece. A typical space station stay for NASA astronauts and international crews is six months.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

View original post here:

Commercial crews and private astronauts will boost International Space Station's science - Space.com

In this long exposure file photo from May 2019, a Falcon 9 rocket is seen streaking into space from Cape Canaveral, with its first stage booster returning to landing minutes later on a drone ship just offshore. Credit: SpaceX

Delays have set up the possibility of up to three rocket launches this weekend from different pads along Floridas Space Coast, including two SpaceX missions on Sunday that could set a company record for the shortest span between two Falcon 9 rocket launches.

But in the world of ever-changing launch schedules, numerous factors such as weather and technical issues could thwart launch plans this weekend.

The first in line is United Launch Alliances powerful Delta 4-Heavy rocket, which is scheduled to take off at 2:04 a.m. EDT (0604 GMT) Saturday from pad 37B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, which owns the U.S. governments fleet of clandestine spy satellites.

There is an 80 percent chance of good weather for launch of the Delta 4-Heavy Saturday, according to the U.S. Space Forces 45th Weather Squadron at Cape Canaveral. The publicly-released launch period extends until 6:25 a.m. EDT (1025 GMT), although the public period envelopes the actual launch window, which likely ends some time before then.

The Delta 4-Heavy was scheduled to blast off early Thursday, but ULA scrubbed the launch to evaluate an issue with a ground pneumatics system at the pad.

Due to the nature of its national security payload, the Delta 4-Heavy has priority on the U.S. militarys Eastern Range, which oversees safety, security and support functions for all launches originating from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and the neighboring Kennedy Space Center.

The Delta 4-Heavy has three days reserved on the range, including Saturday and backup opportunities Sunday and Monday. Most commercial launches get two days at a time reserved on the range.

Assuming ULA gets the Delta 4 off the ground Saturday, SpaceX is gearing up for two launches as soon as Sunday, according to weather forecasts and hazard area information released by the Eastern Range.

Other sources also indicated the possibility of two SpaceX launches Sunday, but a company spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

First, a Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to take off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 10:12 a.m. EDT (1412 GMT) with the next batch of approximately 60 Starlink satellites for SpaceXs planned network to beam worldwide broadband Internet signals from space.

Around nine hours later, a different Falcon 9 rocket could launch from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at around 7:18 p.m. EDT (2318 GMT) with Argentinas SAOCOM 1B radar observation satellite.

SpaceX plans to land the first stage booster from the Starlink mission on a drone ship positioned in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Cape Canaveral. The first stage from the SAOCOM 1B mission is due to return to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for an onshore landing less than 10 minutes after liftoff.

Both launches will employ previously-flown Falcon 9 rocket boosters.

SpaceX plans to perform a test-firing of the Falcon 9 rocket for the Starlink mission Saturday on pad 39A. The company is not expected to conduct a test-firing of the rocket for the SAOCOM 1B mission.

As of Friday morning, both SpaceX launches remained on track for Sunday, but the weather forecast is iffy.

The official launch weather forecast for Sunday mornings Falcon 9 launch predicts a 50 percent chance of favorable weather, with considerable mid-level and high-level clouds expected over Floridas Space Coast, forecasters wrote Friday. The prime weather concern for the Falcon 9/Starlink mission is the potential of violating the thick cloud rule.

Theres just a 40 percent chance of acceptable weather predicted for launch of the SAOCOM 1B satellite Sunday evening, due to the threat of evening thunderstorms and associated cloudiness over the launch area, according to the 45th Weather Squadron.

If ULA and SpaceX rivals in the U.S. launch business pull off the feat of three launches this weekend, it will set a record for the shortest period in history with three orbital missions departing from Floridas Space Coast.

If they both take off as scheduled, the dual Falcon 9 launches planned Sunday would also make history. The last time Cape Canaveral hosted two orbital launches in a shorter period of time was Nov. 11, 1966, when an Atlas-Agena and a Titan 2 rocket launched just 99 minutes apart from different pads, according toa launch log maintained by Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at theHarvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who tracks global satellite and launch activity.

The Atlas lofted the Agena target vehicle used for docking by the two-man Gemini 12 crew, which launched on the Titan 2 rocket the same day.

Speaking with reporters earlier this week, Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess commander of the 45th Space Wing which runs the Eastern Range said the range has shortened the time it needs to reconfigure between missions.

The launches are continuing to increase, Schiess said. Thats due in part to our national security space missions, and a huge part is our commercial missions.

We want to be a range thats resilient and reliable enough that any time anybody wants to launch, whether thats a national security payload, a civil payload with NASA, or a commercial payload, that were able to do that, Schiess said Tuesday.

At that time, the three launches all with unrelated payloads were planned a little more than 48 hours apart on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Those schedules quickly changed with further delays in all three missions.

While noting the launch manifest required some scheduling gymnastics, Schiess lauded the ranges partnership with ULA and SpaceX to help make it happen.

The advent of the autonomous flight termination systems, which would be activated to destroy a rocket if it flew off course, helps the range streamline operations required to support missions from Cape Canaveral. SpaceXs Falcon rocket family uses the automatic destruct systems, while ULAs Delta 4-Heavy uses an older flight termination system that requires a manual command to be sent from a control officer on the ground.

ULAs next-generation Vulcan Centaur rocket will have the autonomous flight termination capability, which allows the range to support launches with smaller teams. The automated safety system also allows the range to accommodate more than one launch on the same day.

Before the introduction of the automated flight safety system and satellite-based GPS tracking, a network of tracking radars were required to monitor each rockets flight path to ensure it stayed within predefined corridors. Coupled with concerns over aging range infrastructure, that often required a minimum of two days between launches from Cape Canaveral in recent decades.

Autonomous flight safety systems allow us to be much faster at this, so as the new rockets come online from ULA and others that will have autonomous flight system (systems), that will allow us to be even better at this, Schiess said.

It really just comes down to a collaboration effort and the ability to schedule everything, change the network over, Schiess said. Thats also some of the things were doing for the range of the future, to build us an architecture that will change over much faster, plug and play with our telemetry, and things like that.

The SAOCOM 1B mission is noteworthy in another sense because it will be the first rocket launch from Cape Canaveral since 1969 to fly on a southerly course to deploy its payload into a high-inclination orbit the flies near Earths poles. The unusual trajectory will require the Falcon 9 rocket to first fly south-southeast from Cape Canaveral over the Atlantic Ocean, then bend its course back to the west in a right turn to skirt the coast of South Florida.

Known as a dogleg maneuver, the right turn will ensure the rockets impact point never crosses Florida in the event of an in-flight failure that causes the vehicle to crash back to Earth. The launcher will then head over the Florida Straits and Cuba before placing the SAOCOM 1B radar satellite into orbit.

Range safety officials began studying the southerly launch trajectory after a wildfire at Vandenberg Air Force Base where nearly all the U.S. launches into polar orbit originate threatened launch and payload processing facilities in 2016. SpaceX elected to use the polar launch trajectory from Cape Canaveral to allow the company to reduce staffing levels at Vandenberg during a period with few launches there, Gwynne Shotwell, companys president and chief operating officer, told reporters last year.

SAOCOM 1B was previously scheduled for launch in March, but Argentine officials called off the mission due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. Engineers placed SAOCOM 1B in storage at Cape Canaveral until early July, when engineers returned to Florida from Argentina to finish readying the spacecraft for liftoff.

The launch of SAOCOM 1B was again delayed from late July because the range was not available for the launch, according to SAOCOM 1B team members. Sources said the delay was likely caused by range safety and overflight concerns with the classified payload mounted on top of ULAs Delta 4-Heavy rocket at a neighboring launch pad.

The southerly trajectory required for the SAOCOM 1B mission will take the Falcon 9 rocket closer to the Delta 4 pad than for a typical launch toward the east.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

Read the original here:

Up to three launches planned this weekend from Cape Canaveral - Spaceflight Now

Shorter sleep duration, more wakefulness, and changes in the sleep cycle brought on by microgravity make it tough for astronauts to get a good night's sleep while they're in outer space, a new study shows.

In research that has implications for earthlings as well as astronauts, scientists found that the "significant sleep changes induced by the extreme environmental conditions of spaceflight can magnify and help reveal similar, though potentially less noticeable, changes that are induced by the more moderate conditions of Earth.

"Our results support other studies indicating that sleep architecture can adapt to different environments. Also, the sleep deficits that our subjects were facing while working around the clock in a high-pressure environment provide further evidence for the danger of stress and shift-work schedules for humans anywhere," study investigator Oliver Piltch, an undergraduate researcher at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in a release.

The findings were presented at Virtual SLEEP 2020, the 34th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

The researchers studied sleep architecture in four cosmonauts and one astronaut before, during, and after missions to the Mir space station.

Using the NightCap sleep monitor, they recorded a total of 324 nights of sleep 112 pre-flight nights, 83 in-flight nights, and 61 post-flight nights.

Despite having the same "sleep opportunity" in space as on earth, the astronauts were on average sleeping an hour less each night during the space mission compared to when on earth before or after their mission (5.7 vs 6.7 hours; P < .0001).

In space, the astronauts also spent significantly more time awake in bed, leading to a 17.7% reduction in sleep efficiency.

Sleep architecture was also affected by spaceflight. In space, the time in nonrapid eye movement (nonREM) and REM sleep decreased by 14.1% and 25.8%, respectively. On average, it took about 90 minutes after falling asleep for astronauts to reach their first episode of REM sleep in space nearly 1.5 times longer than on earth.

"There were marked shifts in sleep architecture compared to baseline, and some of these evolved over the course of the mission," said Piltch.

"Our findings were consistent with previous studies that focus on the issue of sleep continuity. We found significant decreases in sleep efficiency during spaceflight despite similar times in bed," he noted.

Piltch said it's important to understand how sleep is affected by spaceflight in order to better equip astronauts for success on long-duration flights, such as a trip to Mars or the Moon.

He also pointed to a recent study in The Lancet Neurology that showed that 78% of the international space station crew take hypnotics on 52% of nights in space. "So it doesn't look like they sleep very well in space," he said.

Reached for comment, Camilo A. Ruiz, DO, medical director, Choice Physicians Sleep Center, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said the findings add to the "limited" data currently available on sleep in space and microgravity.

"To a certain point, the results of this study could have been expected, since sleep continuity and sleep architecture disruption is present during stressful periods of human life or in changes to the sleep rituals we hold dear, such as our beds and quiet bedrooms," said Ruiz, who was not involved in the study.

"The potential harm to astronauts from their sleep continuity and deranged sleep architecture is that the decreased alertness, performance, vigilance, and psychomotor skills they exhibit in that high-stakes environment such as space flight can lead to serious accidents that can jeopardize the safety of the crew and vessel," Ruiz noted.

"These research areas are on the forefront of space medicine that will allow mankind to lead successful interplanetary missions and colonization of these planets with long-term resident astronauts," he added.

The study was supported by funding from the Mary Gordon Roberts Fellowship, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institute of Mental Health, the MacArthur Foundation Mind-Body Network, and Healthdyne Technologies. Piltch and Ruiz have no disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

SLEEP 2020: 34th Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies: Abstract 0278, presented August 28, 2020.

For more Medscape Neurology news, join us on Facebook and Twitter.

Link:

It's Tough to Get a Good Night's Sleep in Outer Space - Medscape

SpaceX plans to launch another big batch of its Starlink internet satellites on Thursday (Sept. 3), and you can watch the action live.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket topped with 60 Starlink spacecraft is scheduled to lift off Thursday at 8:46 a.m. EDT (1246 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There's an 80% chance of good weather on launch day, according to the U.S. Space Force's 45th weather squadron.

You can watch the launch live here and on the Space.com homepage, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via the company. SpaceX's webcasts typically begin about 15 minutes before liftoff. The company also usually offers a separate livestream with mission control audio.

SpaceX has already launched about 600 satellites for Starlink, its burgeoning broadband constellation in low Earth orbit. And many more missions are in the offing; Elon Musk's company has permission to loft 12,000 Starlink satellites and has applied for approval to launch another 30,000 on top of that.

Related: SpaceX's Starlink satellite megaconstellation launches in photos

The spaceflight action on Thursday will be multilayered, as SpaceX will aim to land the first stage of the two-stage Falcon 9 on a "drone ship" in the Atlantic Ocean about 9 minutes after liftoff.

The company has also deployed one of its two net-equipped boats to recover the rocket's payload fairing, the two-piece protective nose cone that surrounds satellites during launch. It's unclear whether the net boat will aim to pluck a fairing half out of the sky or fish the equipment out of the sea.

SpaceX routinely lands and reflies Falcon 9 first stages, and the company has recently begun reusing payload fairings as well. Such reuse greatly reduces launch costs and turnaround times, Musk has said, and therefore has the potential to revolutionize spaceflight.

The Starlink launch was originally supposed to lead off a Falcon 9 doubleheader on Sunday (Aug. 30), with the second act being the evening liftoff of the SAOCOM-1B Earth-observation satellite. Bad weather scuttled Sunday morning's Starlink attempt, but the skies cleared enough for SAOCOM-1B to get off the ground nine hours later.

SpaceX then aimed to launch the Starlink satellites on Tuesday (Sept. 1) but pushed the mission back two more days to perform additional reviews.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

More:

SpaceX will launch 60 new Starlink satellites Thursday. Here's how to watch live. - Space.com

Virgin Galactic's spacecraft Unity fires its rocket engine and heads to space on Feb. 22, 2019.

Virgin Galactic

A Cowen survey found that more than a third of high net worth individuals would be interested in paying fora Virgin Galactic flight, giving a sense of the demand for the company's space tourism service once it begins flying customers next year.

"Cowen's proprietary survey highlights a high level of interest among high-net-worth individuals to fly to space at a ticket price of $250k or above," analyst Oliver Chen said in a note to investors on Monday.

The firm estimated that Virgin Galactic's suborbital flights have a total addressable market of about 2.4 million people, among individuals with a net worth of more than $5 million. Of those individuals, Cowen's survey found that about 39% are interested in paying at least $250,000 for a ticket.

Virgin Galactic co-founder Sir Richard Branson, CEO George Whitesides and Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya pose together outside of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) ahead of Virgin Galactic (SPCE) trading in New York, U.S., October 28, 2019.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Cowen noted that "Virgin Galactic will face supply constraints to serve all interested individuals, given the limited capacity to fly passengers." The company currently has one spacecraft flying and has announced plans to build as many as five more in the coming years, with two currently under construction. Each spacecraft can carry up to six passengers on a flight to the edge of space, in addition to the two pilots that fly it. Cowen estimated that, if Virgin Galactic builds 11 spacecraft by 2030, the company could "potentially fly ~3,400 passengers per year," with flights nearly every day.

"[Virgin Galactic] is uniquely positioned to benefit from the growing consumer interest toward luxury experiences, especially among high-net-worth individuals. We believe a substantial growth opportunity lies ahead with the commercial spaceflight business, which already has ~600 reservations," Chen said.

Shares of Virgin Galactic rose about 3% in trading from its previous close of $17.46.

Cowen began research coverage of Virgin Galactic on Monday, giving the stock an "outperform" rating and a $22 price target meaning the firm expects shares will rise 26% in the coming year. Virgin Galactic has two more test spaceflights it plans to conduct before flying founder Sir Richard Branson in the first quarter of 2021, which will market the opening of the company's commercial service.

See the original post:

There's big demand among the high net worth for Virgin Galactic spaceflights, Cowen survey shows - CNBC

Jeff Bezos started his rocket company, Blue Origin, back in 2000. And hes been selling Amazon stock to pump billions of dollars into the effort ever since. Like SpaceX, theyre prioritizing reusable rockets and spacecraft that can drastically reduce the cost associated with spaceflight.

Much of Blue Origins effort has gone into developing a pair of rockets: New Shepard and New Glenn.

New Shepard can carry six people inside a suborbital capsule some 60 miles (100 km) into space. Blue Origin has already flown a dozen test flights, and theyre still planning several additional tests before launching passengers. However, in March, Axios reported that Blue Origin could send passengers into space in 2020, though COVID-19 has caused delays across the space industry. If the company can still get its space capsule tested in 2020, it could be on course for paid flights in 2021.

Meanwhile, Blue Origin has announced that it will soon start selling tickets. The companys website doesnt list the price of a Blue Origin trip, but Bezos has previously said their space tourists can expect to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to fly in its New Shepard capsule.

The company is also working hard on their New Glenn rocket, a heavy-lift, reusable launch vehicle that Blue Origin has already invested more than $2.5 billion into developing. Its larger than SpaceXs Falcon Heavy rocket, but smaller than the rocket planned with Starship. That size could eventually enable regular passenger trips into orbit and even beyond. The company will need that capacity, too. Blue Origins goal is to one day have millions of people living and working in space.

See original here:

Six ways to buy a ticket to space in 2021 - Astronomy Magazine

Last month, Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas issued an amendment to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, calling for the Space Force to use the same system and rank structure as is used in the Navy. This threw a monkey wrench in the nascent military branchs plans to formally announce its rank structure. Most likely, it was to be that of the Air Force, whose officer and enlisted ranks it already uses.

Then, in an op-ed published last week that engaged the broader public, William Shatner likewise called for Space Force naval ranks. There was no Colonel Kirk wrote the actor who portrayed the celebrated captain of the Enterprise. He added: not even in the mirror universe (which is what 2020 feels like at times). The piece is written with Shatnerian pizazz, and his argument rests on our shared cultural understanding of space exploration.

As I have written previously here at ClearanceJobs, the Space Force is a blank slate, and more than when the Air Force was stood up as a branch separate from the Army, every decision made now has lasting consequences for what a Space Force means as an entity. When it comes to far reaching service branches, the Space Force matters a lot. By forcing discussion of its rank structure, Crenshaw and Shatner seem to take a hundred-year view to a present-day problem.

(To learn how you can be a part of the Space Force, check out the Clearance Jobs roundup of jobs now, or soon to be, available.)

The U.S. Air Force was born of the Army Air Forces, which was essentially its own service branch within the Army. It had a distinct culture and ethos. The National Security Act of 1947 simply formalized something that was already fact. Officers like Henry Hap Arnold spent years thinking about American air power represented as its own service branch. Moreover, the urgency of organizing air power in World War II gave the AAF de facto autonomy within the War Department.

Two atomic bombs ended any argument over what an independent Air Forces job would be beyond supporting ground forces, and it took no time for the U.S. Air Force to come into its own.

The Space Force was born of Air Force Space Command for no apparent reason except the president wanted it. He wasnt the first to call for such a thing, of course: Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama proposed an independent space-branch of the armed forces, and when Donald Rumsfeld became defense secretary in 2000 , it was not because of the terrorist threat that manifested on 9/11. Rather, Rumsfeld had chaired a prominent commission that studied the ballistic missile threat to the United States.

Among the Rumsfeld Commissions key findings was that the U.S. military needed a space equivalent to its land-sea-air approach. Decades earlier, the commander of Air Force Systems Command gave a speech seeking to reframe the Space Race with the Soviet Union, essentially asserting that rather than a civilian endeavor, the DoD should lead the effort, both with robotic and crewed spacecraft.

Discussions are one thing, but turning notion into reality is another, and the Space Forcewhich is an inevitabilitywasnt quite ready to come out of the oven. Nobody is sure, exactly, why there is a Space Force. It has no unique service culture. (Individual MOSes in the Army have cultures more distinct than the entire Space Force branch has from the Air Force). It had no atomic bomb equivalent that punctuated the need for autonomy within the DoD and defined its mission going forward. It is doing exactly the same thing it was doing in 2018 as Air Force Space Command.

All the stuff that was supposed to come first didnt. So the decisions made now are the ones that will echo for decades and possibly centuries, which is what makes the Space Force so interesting. And there is one fundamental question that the Space Force needs to answer: is it going to put people up there?

Which is why ranks matter. In the military, culture is everything. If the Space Force chooses naval ranks for its servicemembers, it makes human spaceflightwhich, already, seems like an inevitability for the servicethat much more likely, and that much sooner. What would they do up there? Nobody knows! Historically, the DoD has planned everything from moon nuke bases to orbital spy stations, but computers have obviated the need for either.

Understandably, there is great trepidation at the notion of militarizing space. Space is already militarized in the most consequential way. Those intercontinental ballistic missiles, which rely on sub-orbital space flight, can wipe out all of humankind. The problem is that the U.S. government is not serious about civilian space exploration. Though its highly visible successes suggest some massive slice of the pie, NASA claims a mere one-half of one percent of the federal budget (about $22 billion total). Imagine what it could do with Air Force money (about $194 billion)?

Well, youll have to keep on imagining because its never going to happen. When Neil Armstrong pressed bootprints into the lunar surfacethe greatest triumph in human historyNASA was working with a meager 2.3% of the federal budget.

Meanwhile, as the Space Force matures, does anyone believe it will maintain a fixed budget of $15 billion? If in its first two years the Space Force commands over 60% of the NASA budget, what does the far horizon look like?

Civilian space exploration will benefit immeasurably from a robust, well-funded Space Force. The NASA administrator should pray every morning that Space Force gets a $100 billion dollarsbecause, again, that money is never going to NASA. Space Force research and development will lighten NASAs R&D burden, just as the Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s enabled NASAs Faster-Better-Cheaper program in the 1990s. If the Space Force, with a human spaceflight mindset, wants to spend big dollars on human-rated transports and landers, thats great! Let them develop the hardwarethe expensive part of space exploration.

DoD dollars funding R&D with NASA Mars applications might actually succeed in putting astronauts on the ground. (As the joke goes, we have always been 20 years from going to Mars.) And, look, the Space Force will be a part of such a high profile mission, which is not really an issue. The majority of astronauts are already members of the military. Exactly one civilian has walked on the moon, so its not like this is unprecedented. The Space Force can put one of its astronauts on the lander that carries the first Americans to Mars, the same way the Air Force would, without anyone blinking.

Is this the way we want to do things? Nope! We want to turn NASA into Starfleet. But is this the way the real world works? It sure is! On November 1, 2020, humanity will have known not a single day in twenty years without humans in space. But its long past time to up our numbers, and though circling the Earth for two decades is a great achievementthe greatest since Apolloits time to get those humans exploring the final frontier again.

DoD dollars with a Navy mindset will make that happen. Naval ranks are the easiest way to give the Space Force a culture it woefully lacks. Captains need vessels, after all, and admirals need fleets. God willing, the story of humankind is only beginning. Eventually, we might find a way to become multi-planetary. The Space Force with a Captain Kirk, rather than a Colonel Kirk, is our best chance to do it now.

See the rest here:

Why the Space Force Must Use Navy Ranks - ClearanceJobs - ClearanceJobs

In a lockdown summer of downbeat aviation news, it is perhaps fitting that a highlight was a model aeroplane in a windtunnel. In turbulent times for aerospace, that aircraft is even named after a storm. But in showing some detail of the external shape of the Tempest future fighter, BAE Systems has also emphasised the UKs determination to ride out the technological, financial and geopolitical hurricanes which are set to shape the national defence challenges of the next few decades.

Those late August images from BAEs Warton, Lancashire test facility reveal an external profile designed for stealth at Mach 2, to carry a wide range of payloads and to cope with the internal heat from enough onboard electric power to anticipate exotic technologies like laser directed-energy weapons.

Whatever capabilities Tempest may ultimately bring to the Royal Air Force (RAF) with its planned service entry in 2035, BAE stresses that operational advantage and freedom of action is not about a platform but, rather, a connected system of systems across the air domain but also including the land, sea, cyber and space, domains.

In short, the RAF and its allies can no longer say the sky is the limit; projecting power or defending home territory increasingly means sustaining operations in orbit.

But while deciding to bring space into the operational domain is one thing and in that the UK mirrors the USA and France, as well as NATO actually creating an effective force is another matter. Spelling out Britains response to this air and space power challenge in a milestone July 2019 address, then-UK secretary of state for defence Penny Mordaunt announced the transformation of the nations Joint Forces Command into a Strategic Command overseeing all five domains. And, she said, the UK would be the first US ally to join its Operation Olympic Defender, an initiative dating to 2013 to coordinate allies efforts to protect key satellites.

Mordaunt also unveiled a 30 million ($40 million) investment to launch a small satellite constellation within a year. Small satellites packing huge performance thanks to modern electronics but cheaper to launch or replace than traditional big-beast units will, she said: Eventually see live high resolution video beamed directly into the cockpit of our aircraft, providing pilots with unprecedented levels of battle awareness.

That live video from space concept stems from a demonstrator satellite called Carbonite-2, launched from India in 2018 and built by Airbus subsidiary Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL). The RAF contributed 4.5 million to that mission, and the concept morphed into an RAF-led project called Artemis, with SSTL, Airbus, Raytheon, the US government and launch provider Virgin Orbit as partners.

More than two years since the Carbonite-2 launch and a year-plus since Mordaunts spacepower speech, there is still no sign of that constellation. Much depends on Virgin Orbit, which is to bring its Boeing 747-based air launch system to Newquay airport in Cornwall for commercial and rapid-response RAF launches for example, to quickly replace orbiting assets lost to malicious interference or accidents.

The California-based Virgin Group subsidiary failed in its maiden attempt over the Pacific earlier this year and may soon make a second try but there is no prospect of a flight from the UK soon. In any case, there is as yet no Artemis hardware to fly.

The RAF tells FlightGlobal: Current work as part of the Artemis operational capability demonstrator includes studies into the use of responsive horizontal launch. SSTL adds that Artemis contracts were signed just before lockdown and work continues.

Whatever the timetable, what is not in question is the UKs determination to be an independent player in space and that militarisation of space is inevitable. As the RAF puts it: We take the protection of our space capability very seriously and have measures in place to protect our military assets. And, while the UK Space Agency provides a lead on space critical national infrastructure, the Ministry of Defence provides the necessary support to protect [that infrastructure] as required.

A more comprehensive view of the challenge comes from Will Whitehorn, the former head of Virgin Galactic and now president of the trade association UKspace. As Whitehorn observes, from navigation, television and communications to every bank transaction and someday perhaps to more ambitious services like carbon-free in-orbit power generation a modern society like the UK cannot function without space-based equipment. And inevitably, he notes: When you industrialise in space were going to have to defend those assets.

Or, as Paul Day Raytheon UKs representative to the UK and European space agencies and a 25-year RAF veteran puts it, there is no longer a distinction between the military and commercial sides of space. The UK, he says, should own and operate assets where sovereignty is an issue while creating a stable commercial sector, all with a focus on security and resilience.

So as the UK moves into space as an operational domain, says Day, the country should invest in several independent capabilities. One is to monitor space weather the solar storms, for example, that can interfere with electronics and another is the ground- and space-based radar and telescopes needed to track what is in orbit. Cyber hardening of the assets and communication links is also key and, he says, the UK should invest in communication and computation to rapidly put space-acquired data to operational use.

All of those functions, he adds, are vulnerable to interference either by deliberate act or the simple fact that low-Earth orbit is increasingly crowded: You have to protect the assets.

See the rest here:

Why the sky is no limit for RAF's space ambitions - Flightglobal

Sept. 2, 2020 The National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA have awarded $3.2 million over three years to development of open-source solar atmosphere and inner heliosphere software models useful to predict space weather, a project led by The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System, with a UAH professor as principal investigator.

We will develop an innovative, publicly available software that would make it possible to perform space weather simulations starting from the suns photosphere and extending to Earth orbit, says Dr. Nikolai Pogorelov, a distinguished professor in UAHs Department of Space Science and the UAH Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR).

It is one of seven projects awarded. The project team includes UAH, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (co-principal investigator Brian Van Straalen), Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC; co-principal investigator Charles N. Arge), Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC; co-principal investigator Ghee Fry), and two private companies, Predictive Science Inc. (co-principal investigator Jon Linker) and Space Systems Research Corp. (co-principal investigator Lisa Upton).

The fastest NASA and NSF supercomputers will be employed. Dr. Pogorelov is one 49 awardees nationwide to get NSF-approved 2020-2021 supercomputing time on Frontera, the fastest NSF supercomputer. Time on Frontera is awarded based on a projects need for very large-scale computing and the ability to efficiently use a supercomputer on the scale of Frontera.

This project is aimed to develop a new data-driven, time-dependent model of the solar corona and inner heliosphere to predict the solar winds properties at Earths orbit, he says.

This software will have a modular structure, which will make it possible for its users to modify the individual components when new observational data sets become available from emerging space missions and our knowledge of the physical processes governing solar wind acceleration and propagation improves.

In addition to the inner heliosphere model, the team will develop a new solar surface transport and potential field models to describe the solar atmosphere. That work will be done at Predictive Science Inc. and Space Systems Research Corp.

All our codes will be easily extensible for further development, Dr. Pogorelov says. We expect that our software will serve the heliospheric and space weather research communities for many years.

Space weather prediction

The effort focuses on the physical and computational aspects of software development but the team will use MSFCs expertise to develop operational codes and add some features designed to simplify space weather community efforts to create new operational tools to improve space weather predictions.

The development of successful numerical models and their application to space weather modeling strongly depends on the observational data used to run the codes, says Dr. Pogorelov. The expertise of GSFC and MSFC in data assimilation and analysis, and operational software design, will be of major importance for this project.

Dr. Pogorelov is the leading developer of the Multi-Scale Fluid-Kinetic Simulation Suite (MS-FLUKSS), which will be used as a basis of the new software. He will coordinate software development and ensure a proper level of synergy. He will also promote the inclusion of the codes in students class projects.

Together with Dr. Pogorelov and a to-be-hired postdoctoral researcher, CSPAR researchers and co-investigators Dr. Tae Kim and Dr. Mehmet Yalim will supervise simulations in the inner heliosphere and perform quantitative evaluation of the simulation results.

Accurate space weather forecasting is important to a high-tech Earth, Dr. Pogorelov says.

The solar wind emerging from the sun is the main driving mechanism of solar events, which may lead to geomagnetic storms that are the primary causes of space weather disturbances that affect the magnetic environment of Earth and may have hazardous effects on space-borne and ground-based technological systems, as well as human health, he says. For this reason, accurate modeling of the solar wind is a necessary part of space weather forecasting.

Structuring of the solar wind into fast and slow streams is the source of recurrent geomagnetic activity, Dr. Pogorelov says. The largest geomagnetic storms are caused by solar coronal disturbances called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that propagate through and interact with the solar wind.

The connection of the interplanetary magnetic field to CME-related shocks and impulsive solar flares determines where solar energetic particles propagate, he says. Data-driven modeling of stream interactions in the background solar wind and CMEs propagating through it are necessary parts of space weather forecasting.

Currently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Prediction Center forecasts the state of the ambient solar wind and the arrival time of CMEs using an empirically-driven solar wind model.

The new models will provide more accurate solutions and will all be scalable on massively parallel systems, including Graphics Processor Units, he says.

In addition to improving space weather predictions at Earth, our developed models and software will be data driven. They will be based on the observational data and shed light onto physical processes occurring on the sun and in interplanetary space.

The research efforts will include conferences and training programs targeted to increase diversity and inclusion of under-represented groups, both inside the participating institutions and in the entire heliophysics community. Two users meetings will be organized at UAH, with up to 40 participants across the country.

The developed software will be promoted in classes and also through the US-Germany-South Africa Space Weather Summer Camp and NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) activity at UAH. Its advances will also be shared with the Alabama plasma physics community through the NSF Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) led by Dr. Gary Zank, chair of UAHs Department of Space Science and CSPAR director.

The project led by Dr. Pogorelov is the culmination of more than a decade of extraordinarily wide-ranging research activities that CSPAR and the Department of Space Science researchers have been engaged in, ranging from the physics of the large-scale heliosphere to particle acceleration models for solar energetic particles, heating of the solar corona and detailed solar wind models, Dr. Zank says.

Dr. Pogorelovs project combines all these elements and takes the research to a new level of predictive capability, Dr. Zank says. This is a remarkably exciting decade for heliophysics research and its very exciting that CSPAR and UAH are very much at the center of it.

For the announcement and image, visit https://www.uah.edu/news/items/uah-leads-3-2-million-solar-software-model-effort-to-aid-in-space-weather-predictions

Source: Jim Steele, The University of Alabama in Huntsville

Read more from the original source:

UAH Leads $3.2M Solar Software Model Effort to Aid in Space Weather Predictions - HPCwire

ALISO VIEJO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BrainChip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN), a leading provider of ultra-low power high performance AI technology, today announced that VORAGO Technologies has signed the Akida Early Access Program Agreement. The collaboration is intended to support a Phase I NASA program for a neuromorphic processor that meets spaceflight requirements. The BrainChip Early Access Program is available to a select group of customers that require early access to the Akida device, evaluation boards and dedicated support. The EAP agreement includes payments that are intended to offset the Companys expenses to support partner needs.

The Akida neuromorphic processor is uniquely suited for spaceflight and aerospace applications. The device is a complete neural processor and does not require an external CPU, memory or Deep Learning Accelerator (DLA). Reducing component count, size and power consumption are paramount concerns in spaceflight and aerospace applications. The level of integration and ultra-low power performance of Akida supports these critical criteria. Additionally, Akida provides incremental learning. With incremental learning, new classifiers can be added to the network without retraining the entire network. The benefit in spaceflight and aerospace applications is significant as real-time local incremental learning allows continuous operation when new discoveries or circumstances occur.

VORAGO Technologies is a privately held, high technology company based in Austin, Texas with over 15 years of experience in providing radiation-hardened and extreme-temperature solutions for the Hi-reliability marketplace, and recognized as one of Inc 5000s Fastest Growing Private Companies in America. VORAGOs patented HARDSIL technology uses cost-effective high-volume manufacturing to harden any commercially designed semiconductor component for extreme environment operation, and has created a number of solutions throughout Aerospace, Defense and Industrial applications. VORAGO Technologies opens up a new world of possibilities for customer designs, no matter how hostile the environment. http://www.voragotech.com

Louis DiNardo, BrainChip CEO commented, We are both excited and proud to participate in this Phase I program with VORAGO Technologies and support NASAs desire to leverage neuromorphic computing in spaceflight applications. The combination of benefits from the Akida neuromorphic processor and a radiation-hardened process brings significant new capabilities to spaceflight and aerospace applications.

Bernd Lienhard, VORAGO CEO added, We are thrilled and honored to partner with BrainChip to harness the radiation hardening capabilities of our patented HARDSIL technology for the Phase I program with NASA. Our ongoing mission of creating components with increased availability and unmatched solutions in aerospace and defense applications paired with the Akida neuromorphic processor will create unprecedented standards moving forward in the industry.

About Brainchip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN)

BrainChip is a global technology company that is producing a groundbreaking neuromorphic processor that brings artificial intelligence to the edge in a way that is beyond the capabilities of other products. The chip is high performance, small, ultra-low power and enables a wide array of edge capabilities that include on-chip training, learning and inference. The event-based neural network processor is inspired by the spiking nature of the human brain and is implemented in an industry standard digital process. By mimicking brain processing BrainChip has pioneered a processing architecture, called Akida, which is both scalable and flexible to address the requirements in edge devices. At the edge, sensor inputs are analyzed at the point of acquisition rather than through transmission via the cloud to a data center. Akida is designed to provide a complete ultra-low power and fast AI Edge Network for vision, audio, olfactory and smart transducer applications. The reduction in system latency provides faster response and a more power efficient system that can reduce the large carbon footprint of data centers.

About VORAGO

VORAGO Technologies is a privately held, high technology company based in Austin, Texas with over 15 years of experience in providing radiation-hardened and extreme-temperature solutions for the Hi-rel marketplace. VORAGO's patented HARDSIL technology uses cost-effective high-volume manufacturing to harden any commercially designed semiconductor component for extreme environment operation, and has created a number of solutions throughout Aerospace, Defense and Industrial applications. VORAGO Technologies opens up a new world of possibilities for your designs, no matter how hostile the environment. http://www.voragotech.com

Additional information is available at https://www.brainchipinc.com

Follow BrainChip on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/BrainChip_inc Follow BrainChip on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/7792006

Go here to see the original:

BrainChip and VORAGO Technologies Agree to Collaborate through the Akida Early Access Program - Business Wire