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The coronavirus pandemic crisis shows no signs of abating, even with a vaccine coming on to the markets. Were still facing severe social lockdown policies, with a number of states (such as California, Minnesota, and Michigan) forcing even harsher restrictions on this round than previously.Its a heavy blow for the leisure industry that is still reeling from one of the most difficult years in memory. The difficulties faced by restaurants are getting more press, but for the cruise industry, corona has been a perfect storm.Prior to the pandemic, the cruise industry which had been doing $150 billion worth of business annually was expected to carry 32 million passengers in 2020. Thats all gone now. During the summer, the industry reeled when over 3,000 COVID cases were linked to 123 separate cruise ships, and resulted in 34 deaths. After such a difficult year, its useful to step back and take a snapshot of the industrys condition. JPMorgan analyst Brandt Montour has done just that, in a comprehensive review of the cruise industry generally and three cruise line giants in particular."We believe cruise shares can continue to grind higher in the near term, driven overwhelmingly by the broader vaccine backdrop/progress. Looking out further, operators will face plenty of headwinds when restarting/ramping operations in 2Q3Q21, but significant sequential improvement of revenues/cash flows over that period will likely dominate the narrative, and we believe investors will continue to look through short-term setbacks to a 2022 characterized by fully ramped capacity, near-full occupancies, and so far manageable pricing pressure," Montour opined.Against this backdrop, Montour has picked out two stocks that are worth the risk, and one that investors should avoid for now. Using TipRanks Stock Comparison tool, we lined up the three alongside each other to get the lowdown on what the near-term holds for these cruise line players.Royal Caribbean (RCL)The second-largest cruise line, Royal Caribbean, remains a top pick for Montour and his firm. The company has put its resources into facing and meeting the pandemics challenges, shoring up liquidity and both streamlining and modernizing the fleet.Maintaining liquidity has been the most pressing issue. While the company has resumed some cruising, and has even taken delivery of a new ship, the Silver Moon, most operations remain suspended. For Q3, the company reported adjusted earnings of -$5.62, below consensus of -$5.17. Management estimates the cash burn to be between $250 million and $290 million monthly. To combat that, RCL reported having $3.7 billion in liquidity at the end of September. That included $3 billion in cash on hand along with $700 million available through a credit facility. Total liquidity at the end of Q3 was down more than 9% from the end of Q2. Since the third quarter ended, RCL has added over $1 billion to its cash position, through an issue of $500 million senior notes and a sale of stock, putting an additional 8.33 million shares on the market at $60 each.In his note on Royal Caribbean, Montour writes, [We] are most constructive on OW-rated RCL, which we believe has the most compelling set of demand drivers... its extensive investments in premium priced new hardware, as well as consumer data, all set RCL up well to outgrow the industry in revenue metrics, margins, and ROIC over the longer term.Montour backs his Overweight (i.e. Buy) rating with a $91 price target. This figure represents a 30% upside potential for 2021. (To watch Montours track record, click here)Is the rest of the Street in agreement? As it turns out, the analyst consensus is more of a mixed bag. 4 Buy ratings and 6 Holds give RCL a Moderate Buy status. Meanwhile, the stock is selling for $69.58 per share, slightly above the $68.22 average price target. (See RCL stock analysis on TipRanks)Norwegian Cruise Line (NCLH)With a market cap of $7.45 billion and a fleet of 28 ships, Norwegian Cruise Line found its relatively smaller size as an advantage in this pandemic time. With a smaller and newer fleet, overhead costs, especially ship maintenance, were lower. These advantages dont mean that the company has avoided the storm. Earlier this month, Norwegian announced a prolongation of its suspension of voyages policy, covering all scheduled voyages from January 1, 2021 through February 28, 2021, plus selected voyages in March 2021. These cancellations come as Norwegians revenues are down in the third quarter, the top line was just $6.5 million, compared to $1.9 billion in the year-ago quarter. The company also reported a cash burn of $150 million per month.To combat the cash burn and minimal revenues, Norwegian, in November and December, took steps to improve liquidity. The company closed on $850 million in senior notes, at 5.875% and due in 2026, during November, and earlier this month closed an offering of common stock. The stock offering totaled 40 million shares at $20.80 per share. Together, the two offerings raised over $1.6 billion in new capital.On a more positive note, Norwegian is preparing for an eventual resumption of full services. The company announced, on Dec 7, a partnership with AtmosAir Solutions for the installation of air purification systems on all 28 vessels of its current fleet, using filtration technology known to defeat the coronavirus.JPMs Montour points out these advantages in his review of Norwegian, and sums up the bottom line: This coupled with a relatively newer, higher-end, brand/ship footprint would generally lead us to believe it was in a good position to outperform on pricing growth, though its demographics skewing to older age customers probably will remain a drag through 2021. Ultimately, NCLH is a high-quality asset within the broader cruise industry, with a higher beta to a cruise recovery, and it should see outperformance as the industry returns and investors look further out the risk spectrum.Montour gives the stock a $30 price target and an Overweight (i.e. Buy) rating. His target implies an upside of 27% on the one-year time frame.Norwegian is another cruise line with a Moderate Buy from the analyst consensus. This rating is based on 4 Buys, 4 Holds, and 1 Sell set in recent months. Like RCL above, the stock price here, $23.55, is currently higher than the average price target, $23.22. (See NCLH stock analysis on TipRanks)Carnival Corporation (CCL)Last up, Carnival, is the worlds largest cruise line, with a market cap of $23.25 billion, more than 100 ships across its brands, and over 700 destination ports. In normal times, this giant footprint gave the company an advantage; now, however, it has become an expensive liability. This is clear from the companys fiscal Q3 cash burn, which approached $770 million.Like the other big cruise companies, Carnival has extended its voyage cancellations, or, in the companys terms, the pause in operations. The Cunard line, one of Carnivals brands, has cancelled voyages on the Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Elizabeth through early June of next year. Carnival has also cancelled operations in February from the ports of Miami, Galveston, and Port Canaveral, and pushed back the inaugural voyage of the new ship Mardi Gras to the end of April 2021. These measures were taken in compliance with coronavirus restrictions.Carnivals shares and revenues are suffering deep losses this year. The stock is down 60% year-to-date, despite some recent price rallies since the end of October. Revenues fell to just $31 million in the fiscal third quarter, reported in September. Carnival reported a loss of nearly $3 billion in that quarter. The company did end the third quarter with over $8 billion in available cash, an impressive resource to face the difficult situation.This combination of strength and weakness led Montour to put a Neutral (i.e. Hold) rating on CCL shares. However, his $25 price target suggests a possible upside of 23%.In comments on Carnival, Montour wrote, [We] believe that some of the same relative net yield drags it saw in 2018-2019 due to its sheer size will likely become top of mind on the other side of this crisis However, given CCLs relative share discount, less pricing growth ahead of the crisis, and geographical diversification, we see it as the company with the least downside over the next few months and are not surprised by its recent outperformance. We believe this will reverse in the 2H21. Overall, Carnival has a Hold rating from the analyst consensus. This rating is based on 10 reviews, breaking down to 1 Buy, 8 Holds, and 1 Sell. The stock is selling for $20.28 and its $18.86 average price target implies a downside potential of ~7%. (See CCL stock analysis on TipRanks)To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights.Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

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Houston Spaceport Slated to Become Home to the World's First Commercial Space Station Builder - Yahoo Finance Australia

File photo: Chandrayaan 2 launch.

Even though the year 2020 would be known for the COVID-19 pandemic, it could also be termed as the defining year for the Indian space sector to put it in a different orbit with the private sector as a co-traveller of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

As a part of that, the Department of Space (DoS) recently signed an agreement with Chennai based small rocket company Agnikul Cosmos Pvt Ltd to access the facilities and technical expertise available in ISRO centres.

According to DoS, this is the first of its kind agreement to be signed after the establishment of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), the authorisation and regulatory body for enabling private players to undertake space activities in India.

Under the agreement, Agnikul Cosmos will be provided access to the facilities and technical expertise available in ISRO centres to proceed with their launch vehicle/rocket development program. A couple of days later, Syzygy Space Technologies Pvt Ltd, commonly known as Pixxel, signed up with NewSpace India LtdDoS' commercial armto launch its first satellite using ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket in early 2021.

Pixxel plans to have its Firefly constellation consisting of 30 small earth observation satellites by the end of 2022. The DoS has also come out with three draft policiesDraft Space Based Communication Policy of India 2020 (Spacecom Policy-2020), Draft Space Based Remote Sensing Policy and Revised Technology Transfer Policy Guidelinesto enable the private sector play a greater role in the space field.

File photo of Chandrayaan 2

The DoS Secretary and ISRO Chairman K. Sivan said a policy for launch vehicles and rockets, space exploration and also a comprehensive Space Act will also be announced.

In effect, after the insipid first half, the year 2020 turned a bit interesting after the Central government decided to open up the sector for private players.

During the start of 2020, Sivan had said that ISRO had planned to have 25 launches, including Aditya-L1 satellite, Geo Imaging Satellite (GISAT-1), realisation of Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) or small rocket (carrying capacity 500 kg), navigation satellite with indigenous atomic clocks and Indian Data Relay Satellite System (IDRSS), and GSAT-20 satellite with electric propulsion.

Sivan also said that India will embark on its third moon missionChandrayaan-3and attempt to land a lander on the lunar surface sometime in 2020-21.

The year began well for ISRO with the launch of the 3,357 kg communication satellite GSAT-30 by the European space agency Arianespace rocket Ariane 5 on January 17.

Vyom Mitra, the humanoid for ISRO's crewless Gaganyaan Mission.

ISRO also showcased its robot/half-humanoidVyommitrawhich was part of its human space mission programme 'Gaganyaan'. The first setback of the year for ISRO came on March 4, when it had to call off the launch of GISAT-1, a day before its actual launch, owing to technical reasons.

The ISRO did not share any detail about the technical reasons, or the glitch, and its rectification since then. It is also not known when the satellite with a very good camera would be launched.

Then came the COVID-19 lockdown within and outside India that had its cascading impact on ISRO's core plans like the realisation of SSLV, launch of GISAT-1, delay in the first test-flight of the rocket as part of GaganyaanIndia's human space flight mission.

Meanwhile, two positive developments happened for ISROsecuring an Indian patent for its liquid cooling and heating garment (LCHG) suitable for space applications and for its method of manufacturing highland lunar soil simulant or simply lunar/moon soil.

On May 16, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the Indian private sector will be a co-traveller in India's space-sector journey and a level-playing field will be provided for them in satellites, launches, and space-based services.

She also said that a predictable policy and regulatory environment will be provided to the private players.

Future projects for planetary exploration, outer space travel and others are to be opened up for the private sector, and there will be a liberal geo-spatial data policy for providing remote-sensing data to tech-entrepreneurs subject to various checks.

ISRO Launch Rocket PSLV

On June 24, the Union Cabinet decided to set up IN-SPACe, making ISRO focus on research and development (R&D) of new technologies, exploration missions, and human spaceflight programme.

The IN-SPACe would provide a level playing field for private companies to use Indian space infrastructure.

As a part of the rejig, DoS' commercial arm New Space India Limited (NSIL) will endeavour to re-orient space activities from a 'supply driven' model to 'demand driven' model, thereby ensuring optimum utilisation of the country's space assets.

"The best is to establish an independent regulatorSpace Regulatory Authority of India (SRAI)which will create a level-playing field for many of the emerging players," Narayan Prasad, Chief Operating Officer, satsearch, told IANS.

Establishing an independent regulator could allow a systematic review and reforms on a continuous basis rather than one-off announcements, Prasad said.

As per current scheme of things, IN-SPACe will have its own directorates for technical, legal, safety and security, monitoring as well as activities promotion for assessing the private sector's needs and coordination of the activities. IN-SPACe would have a board and representatives from industry, academia and the government, Sivan said.

"Initially, IN-SPACe will be manned by people from the existing space setup. Later, people from outside will be taken in. It will have its funds from the budgetary allocations for the DoS. The new body may not need big financial allocations," Sivan remarked.

Meanwhile, ISRO restarted its satellite launch operations on November 7 by putting into orbit the Earth Observation Satellite EOS-1, formerly RISAT-2BR2, and nine other foreign satellites in a text book style, using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C49).

With this launch, ISRO put into orbit a total of 328 foreign satellites, all for a fee. On December 17, ISRO orbited India's 42nd communication satellite-CMS-01 (formerly named GSAT-12R) with its PSLV-C50 rocket.

While that was the last space mission for India in 2020, Sivan told IANS that the first quarter of 2021 will see Indian space agency's cash till ringing with the commercial launch of Brazilian satellite Amazonia as well as three Indian satellites.

"End of February or early March 2021, we will be sending our rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle-C51 (PSLV-C51). The primary payload will be the Brazilian satellite called Amazonia an earth observation satellite," Sivan said.

"The PSLV-C51 mission will be a very special mission not only for ISRO but also for India as the rocket will be carrying the earth observation satellite Anand made by an Indian startup called Pixxel (Incorporated as Syzygy Space Technologies Pvt Ltd)," he added.

File photo from one of ISRO's launches.

The PSLV-C51 will also carry a communication satellite - Satisat - built by the students of city-based Space Kidz India and another satellite, Unisat, which is built by a consortium of three Indian universities.

According to Sivan, Team ISRO has a busy schedule ahead for the launch of Aditya L1 satellite, third moon mission Chandrayaan-3, Gaganyaaan - India's human space mission, and realisation of small rocket Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV).

He also said the SSLV will carry EOS-02 (Earth Observation Satellite), and Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-F10 (GSLV) carrying EOS-3.

The other Indian satellites that are ready for launch are GISAT and Microsat-2A.

**

The above article has been published from a wire agency with minimal modifications to the headline and text.

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From Delayed Missions to Bringing Private Sector Onboard: Here's How ISRO Fared Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic | The Weather Channel - Articles from The...

Canada plans to send two astronauts on moon-bound missions.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) announced Wednesday, Dec. 16, that a Canadian astronaut will fly around the moon in 2023 on the Artemis 2 mission the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program that will test NASA's Orion spacecraft in lunar orbit to prepare for a 2024 landing. A second CSA astronaut will participate in a subsequent mission to NASA's forthcoming Gateway space station in lunar orbit.

The forthcoming flight announcements are part of a larger memorandum of agreement between Canada and NASA, also announced Wednesday, formally pledging collaboration on the Artemis moon program that Canada said it would commit to nearly 18 months ago.

Related: Canadian Astronauts Talk Apollo 11 and Canada's Future in Space

Simply put, Canada will provide robotics to NASA, and in exchange NASA will give CSA astronauts opportunities to fly lunar missions, potentially even with more astronauts landing on the moon in the future, officials said in a virtual press conference.

"This will make Canada only the second country after the U.S. to have an astronaut in deep space and send the first Canadian around the moon," Navdeep Bains, Canada's government minister of innovation, science and industry, told reporters in the press conference.

The only people who have ventured out of Earth orbit so far are a handful of American Apollo astronauts, over nine missions between 1968 and 1972, but NASA wants its Artemis program to include extensive international participation.

Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques evoked the historic Apollo 8 mission of 1968, which tested some of the major spacecraft systems in lunar orbit ahead of the first human landing in 1969, as the parallel for Artemis 2.

"It's a mission to test the [spacecraft] equipment and the navigation; as you can imagine, navigation from the planet will be one of the biggest challenges," Saint-Jacques said during the press conference (in French, translated into English). Another challenge the Artemis 2 astronauts will face is a high-speed re-entry in Earth's atmosphere, he added.

Canada will pay for its astronaut seats through its traditional route, which is providing handy space robotics to assist with NASA's missions. Canadarm3, a future robotic arm, will be mounted on the Gateway space station to do remote maintenance even when astronauts aren't there.

Canadian robotics giant MDA who also maintains Canadarm2 on the International Space Station received a contract just last week to establish the technical requirements for Canadarm3, which CSA first pledged to contribute to the Artemis program in March 2019. The new arm will be equipped with artificial intelligence so that the robot has a measure of autonomy in performing scans of Gateway and possibly, assisting with repairs.

The moon-bound Canadian astronauts haven't been named yet, but Canada has a choice of four Saint-Jacques (who flew to the International Space Station in 2018-19), Jeremy Hansen (selected in 2009 and still waiting for a mission), and newer 2017 recruits Jenni Sidey-Gibbons and Joshua Kutryk, who both qualified for full astronaut status earlier in 2020 after completing standard astronaut candidate training.

Notably, Hansen coordinated the entire 2017 astronaut class training schedule and acted as a mentor to the recruits, a first for a Canadian that shows NASA's confidence in Hansen's work. He also helped with the planning for several recent tricky spacewalks, including the complex procedures associated with repairing and upgrading a dark-matter detector on ISS known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

During the press conference, Bains also said Hansen is a "tremendous ambassador" for Canada in promoting the country's space strategy to policy-makers. Hansen himself spoke to the importance of Canada's participation in international space missions, too.

"Setting big goals in space exploration for example, the International Space Station that has strengthened our ability to collaborate, and that same collaboration is required as we tackle big global challenges like climate change," Hansen said in the same press conference.

"Canada, in my opinion, just has so much to offer the global community Space is changing rapidly. The commercial opportunities are immense. There are even new commercial opportunities now around human exploration, and even space robotics. What I would really love to communicate to our Canadian youth, minister, is that they should know our future in space is bright. We are leveraging decades of experience and commitment to the major players in this emerging economy. I think it is visionary."

"As Canadian astronauts, I think that we're particularly proud to be representing Canada in this context," Kutryk added during the same press conference. "We're also proud to have built here at the Canadian Space Agency our core of highly trained and ready professional astronauts, all of whom are ready for these missions and the ones that will follow."

Canada anticipates using its lunar opportunity to test out technologies such as rovers on the surface, and also to practice geology from orbit. Apollo astronauts historically received some of their geology training in Sudbury, Ont. and all current Canadian astronauts have participated in work with Canada's Western University, a leader in space geology that periodically does expeditions in the Arctic to practice science-gathering in remote environments.

"Canada's scientists are really interested in studying the geological record of the moon and the geological processes that formed the moon's surface," Sidey-Gibbons said in the same press conference. "That gives us hints not only as to how our own moon formed, but also lets us know about the composition and characteristics of other terrestrial planets in our solar system. We learn about other moons icy moons of other planets and even smaller objects like asteroids."

Canadian robotics have been in space since the dawn of NASA's space shuttle program, paying for astronaut seats as they were built. The second space shuttle mission, STS-2 in 1981, successfully tested out the Canadarm, which was used for spacewalks and robotic operations for shuttle missions for the next 30 years. Its wild success led to NASA inviting Canada to form an astronaut program, and the first Canadian Marc Garneau flew only three years later in 1984.

Canadarm2 was mounted on the space station in 2001 and a robotic hand, Dextre, was added in 2008, securing Canada's commitment for human space station missions for decades. Both are still functioning and later in its career, Canadarm2's mandate of spacewalk assistance and space station scans expanded to include helping to capture robotic cargo spacecraft. Canada also began to perform more robotic operations from its own space center in Montreal, rather than in the United States.

While Canada has a crucial contribution to ISS, its 2.3% equivalent financial commitment pales beside the more giant international partners of NASA, Roscosmos, the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

As commercial crew missions and Artemis missions begin to take shape, more international opportunities do appear to be forthcoming since there are simply more astronaut seats to be had for all missions. But for more than a decade, Canada's small contribution meant that ever since the space shuttle retired in 2011, the smaller Russian Soyuz spacecraft only had the room to haul Canadians into orbit every five to six years. The last two Canadians Saint-Jacques and now-retired astronaut Chris Hadfield flew in 2018 and 2012-13, respectively.

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

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Canadian astronauts will start flying to the moon in 2023 with NASA's Artemis missions - Space.com

Most people dont know that Earths magnetic field has a weak spot the size of the continental United States hovering over South America and the southern Atlantic Ocean.

Were safe from any effects on the ground, but our satellites arent so lucky: When they zip through this magnetic anomaly, they are bombarded with radiation more intense than anywhere else in orbit. There is reason to believe that this dent in the magnetic field, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, is only getting bigger.

This anomaly is far from the only unusual feature of Earths magnetic field.

Hundreds of times in Earths history, our magnetic field has reversed, switching north and south in a planetary flip-flop. Earths magnetic North Pole keeps drifting too, stumbling around the Arctic in a chaotic dance. And scientists have detected pulses of Earths magnetic fieldcalled geomagnetic jerksthat can undermine our navigation systems.

Yet forecasting these changes remains a challenge. Just like weather forecasts, you cant predict the evolution of the core beyond a few decades, said Julien Aubert, a researcher at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics.

But scientists want to know how Earths magnetic field will change further into the future than that. Without a magnetic field, satellites could be lost, and tools that rely on careful magnetic models for navigation could go askew.

The answers cant come soon enough. The magnetic field protects Earths atmosphere from harmful radiation emitted from the Sun. Scientists are learning that the Sun is capable of emission eventssolar flareseven more destructive than we ever thought possible, and understanding our magnetic field strength and variation is vital for knowing how at risk we could be from the next big solar storm.

The puppeteer that drives the magnetic field is Earths core, the superheated heart of our planet, which burns as hot as the surface of the Sun.

In the core, molten metals are constantly in motion as hot buoyant plumes of lighter material rise outward. At the very center lies a small hardened inner core that has been growing as Earth cools.

The mathematics of the geodynamo are so messy that Albert Einstein did not believe it.This planetary anatomy sets the stage for an active magnetic field. The cores constant need to cool itself, and thus convect, drives our planets electric generator. The generator produces a self-sustaining magnetic field through a process called the geodynamo. The mathematics of the geodynamo are so messy that Albert Einstein did not believe the theory when one of its founders, Walter M. Elsasser, proposed it to him.

The geodynamo works because the natural convection of the liquid core pushes metals through a weak existing magnetic field, exciting an electric current. Because of the relationship between electricity and magnetism, the current produces a second magnetic field, and the process repeats. This process has been self-sustaining for most of Earths history.

Although the core sits thousands of kilometers beneath our feet, the magnetic field it produces stretches far into space, surrounding the planet like armor. But our planets armor isnt perfect, and the results can be heartbreaking.

On an early spring day in 2016, teams of engineers in Japan watched as their prized satellite spun out of control.

The teams behind Hitomi, a satellite launched just 5 weeks earlier, had hoped the spacecraft would observe black holes, galaxy clusters, and other high-energy features. The satellite even had a prized X-ray calorimeter, a triumph of 3 decades of engineering.

But a cascade of events that began with encountering the South Atlantic Anomaly seemed to spell doom for Hitomi. Passing through the anomaly, the onboard system that controlled the satellites orientation glitched while it was pivoting to observe a new star cluster. The maneuver kicked off a series of software errors that left Hitomi spinning madly. Before long, the satellite broke into 11 pieces.

Its a scientific tragedy, Richard Mushotzky, an astronomer at the University of Maryland in College Park, told Nature at the time.

Other spacecraft have fallen prey to the South Atlantic Anomaly. The magnetic field intensity at the altitude of many satellites is half as strong in the anomaly compared with elsewhere, and the weak field does not repel radiation as effectively. The inner Van Allen radiation belt, a doughnut-shaped disk of radiation around Earth that traps high-energy particles, hugs much closer to the surface at the anomaly because of the weakened field.

Any satellite in near-Earth orbita common altitude for Earth observing satellitesmust travel through the anomaly. The Hubble Space Telescope spends 15% of its life in the regionand routinely shuts down its light-sensitive cameras to avoid damage. Some instruments, like NASAs Ionospheric Connection Explorer, power down electrical components of an ultraviolet photon detector every time they pass through. In the early days of the International Space Station, the anomaly would crash astronauts computers.

But sometimes a satellite is just unlucky. Ashley Greeley, a postdoctoral scholar at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, recalled a CubeSat that died shortly after launch. During start-up checks and the commissioning phase, we think that an energetic particle hit it in the wrong place at the wrong time, and we never got data, unfortunately, she said.

Researchers discovered the South Atlantic Anomaly in 1958 when satellites first began measuring radiation in space. Now the region shows up prominently in most models, said NASAs Terence Sabaka. Everybody is pretty much in agreement on its size, shape, and strength. Although its still a matter of speculation, there is some evidence that the anomaly has been around since the very early 19th century and maybe even earlier.

The real debate surrounds what the anomaly will do next.

The dent may be splitting, or perhaps another weak spot is emerging and biting into it.Greeley took her first look at the anomaly during her doctoral work. Peering through 20 years of satellite data, she calculated the extent of the anomaly during each pass of the Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer. Satellites in low Earth orbit pass through the region every week or so, and the transit lasts for several minutes, she said.

Over time, Greeley found that the South Atlantic Anomaly is moving westward (at about 1 longitude every 5 years) and ever so slightly northward. Eventually, the bulk of it will be over land, she said. The bulls-eye of the anomaly will pass over Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Paraguay.

A forecast from NASA scientist Weijia Kuang and University of Maryland, Baltimore County professor Andrew Tangborn shows that in addition to migrating westward, the anomaly is growing in size. Five years from now, the area below a field intensity of 24,000 nanoteslas (about half the normal magnetic strength) will grow by about 10% compared with 2019 values. The dent may also be splitting, Kuang said, or perhaps another weak spot is emerging independently and biting into it.

Although the dent is projected to grow in the next 5 years, its impossible to make predictions further into the future, said Kuang. Fluid movement in Earths core is so turbulent that a small perturbation to the system could lead to a cascade of outcomes that we cant foresee. The further you go in time, the more runaway situations abound.

Although the future is uncertain, studying the anomaly provides a very good window for us to understand not only the core dynamics, said Kuang, but also the regional properties of this area.

Luckily, the anomaly cant hurt life on the surface, said Kuang. But if it continues to weaken over time, this may eventually impact us. The hole in our field would expose us to high-energy particles that could surge power grids and eat away at protective gases in our atmosphere.

Chengli Huangs daughter would often hear a familiar story at bedtime.

One day, four blind men decided to go to the zoo to visit an elephant. Theyd never met one before, and they wanted to know what it looked like. The first man approached the elephant, felt its trunk, and declared it a curved paddle. The second touched its tail and concluded it was like a stick. The third man gingerly patted the body and pronounced that the animal looked like a wall, whereas the fourth felt its leg and said it was like a pillar.

Separately, the four men understood only one part of the elephant. But together, they had a clearer picture of the elephants true nature.

Explorers of old perished trying to set up monitoring stations in far-flung locales.Huang tells this story to colleague Pengshuo Duan, too. As astronomers peering into Earths interior, there is no way for them to feel the true nature of the core. But they can probe different aspects and collaborate and compare with others to make a more complete picture.

Scientists have long been on this quest, sometimes with fatal consequences. Explorers of old perished trying to set up monitoring stations in far-flung locales, like the doomed English explorer Sir John Franklin, whose expedition to take magnetic observations of the North Pole in 1845 ended with 129 men dead and two ships lost.

As soon as long-lasting ground observatories sprung up around the world, scientists noticed strange deviations in the field, including for example, that our magnetic North and South Poles roam freely around the planet. Its true that the poles sit off-kilter to Earths rotational axes because of the uneven and turbulent flow in the core, but they also drift gradually as the cores dynamics swirl field lines. Last century, the magnetic North Pole paraded through the Canadian Arctic, and since the 2000s, its been sauntering across the Arctic Ocean.

But occasionally, this gradual movement accelerates seemingly at random, and the drift of Earths magnetic field skirts in another direction. These diversions are called geomagnetic jerks.

Scientists also call the jerks V-shaped events based on their appearance in plots of the fields rate of change over time. The events usually last between 1 and 3 years, and the first documented case was recorded in 1902. Dozens of jerks have happened since.

The last jerk was in 2016, when it jostled the field and dramatically shifted the North Pole drift. The event was rather inconvenient because scientists had just issued a 5- year model of Earths magnetic field called the World Magnetic Model (WMM). The WMM team had to update the model ahead of schedule to avoid unacceptable navigational errors.

Although the origin of jerks is a subject of active research, a recent study in Nature Geoscience by Aubert and Chris Finlay at the Technical University of Denmark suggests that jerks may originate from the push and pull of forces in Earths interior (bit.ly/jerks-research). When a hot plume shoots up through the outer core, the delicate balance between planetary, rotational, and electromagnetic forces careens out of whack. The off-balance forces send a shudder along magnetic field lines in the form of waves.

The next jerk may already be under way. A recent analysis by Huang and Duan predicted that the next event would occur in 2020 or 2021.

If thats the case, scientists may need to update magnetic maps on which industry and government activities rely. Companies drilling for oil and gas, for example, use fine-tuned magnetic models to dig boreholes. But not all jerks cause directional changes, so time will tell what the outcome will be.

Jerks may illuminate the cores thermal properties, a hotly debated topic that affects our ideas about everything from the age of the core to the onset of plate tectonics.Its too soon to know whether a jerk is happening right now, however. Finlay, part of a group that publishes magnetic field models every 6 months, said its impossible to identify geomagnetic jerks until well after theyve happened because researchers must look at the data over time. It would take about 2 years to know for sure, Finlay said.

Regardless of whether the next event is upon us, geomagnetic jerks are one part of seeing the elephant of Earths magnetic field. Jerks may illuminate the cores thermal properties, a hotly debated topic that affects our ideas about everything from the age of the core to the onset of plate tectonics.

Solving the mystery of the jerks origin will remove a stumbling block of future magnetic field predictions, said Aubert, something well sorely need to better understand our planets protective armor.

Vladimir Airapetian does not mince words when it comes to apocalyptic scenarios and our magnetic field.

In one grim scenario, a catastrophically massive solar flare envelops Earth and knocks out the ozone layer, exposing us to damaging ultraviolet radiation known to cause cancer. In the 612 months it would take to rebuild our ozone layer, wed live like nocturnal animals, Airapetian said.

Youd have to go underground and go out during the nighttime, said Airapetian, a NASA scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Thats the Hollywood-type scenario.

Tales of our field catastrophically failing are part of the lore of working on Earths magnetic field. People always want to know, When is the really, really bad stuff happening? said Aubert.

Although the prevailing science suggests that these doomsday scenarios are possible, they are highly unlikely. Earths magnetic field is fickle, cratered, and ever changing, but scientists have no reason to believe that the field wont protect us for decadesand most likely centuriesto come.

Even one of the most dramatic of the scenarios, a magnetic reversal, is implausible in the foreseeable future. The last reversal occurred 780,000 years ago, and over the multibillion-year lifetime of the magnetic field, researchers guess that the poles have switched hundreds of times.

Our star may be capable of shooting out a flare of epic proportions.But scientists have no compelling evidence to suggest that a field reversal is upon us, said Catherine Constable, a scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who studies magnetic reversals. The field changes so gradually that well have fair warning, at least a few decades, Constable said.

Perhaps the more worrisome danger comes from space. The magnetic field is our main line of defense against the onslaughts of high-energy particles from the Sun. Recent research by Airapetian suggests that gigantic solar flares are possible in our solar system. Observations of other stars similar to the Sun reveal that our Sun may be capable of shooting out a flare of epic proportions.

Congress passed PROSWIFT (Promoting Research and Observations of Space Weather to Improve the Forecasting of Tomorrow Act) in 2020 to pour money into space weather research, which the acts authors called a matter of national security. Heliophysics is the smallest division at NASA, so Airapetian is so excited for the additional funding and support to discover what space hazards lie ahead.

Until then, our magnetic field will continue to do what it does best: drift, shiver, and morph into its next grand configuration.

Jenessa Duncombe (@jrdscience), Staff Writer

Eosthanks Weijia Kuang, who generously provided a forecast of the South Atlantic Anomaly upon request.

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The Herky-Jerky Weirdness of Earth's Magnetic Field - Eos

LEBANON, Pa. (AP) When SpaceXs Dragon rocket launched on Dec. 6 bound for the International Space Station, it brought a piece of Lebanon County with it.

A patch created by 4th-grader and Lebanon native Joshua Ferguson, a student at Milton Hershey School, was selected to be sent on SpaceXs Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station as part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program.

Joshua created the patch in 2019 when he was still in 2nd grade.

Joshua was ecstatic when he learned that his patch was chosen. I jumped a lot and was screaming a lot, he recalled. I had so many emotions, like woahhh is this really happening, I cant believe that this is going on!

At Milton Hershey, located in Hershey, more than 370 total patches were submitted as part of the contest, 143 created by first- and 2nd-grade students and 231 by 3rd- and 4th-graders. One patch from the first two grades and another from the second two grades were selected by the school to be sent to the space station.

The mission taking Joshuas art to the ISS also contains art from another Milton Hershey student, Zoya Johnson, now in 6th grade.

Students in kindergarten through 4th grade and also teachers voted for the winning patch during lunchtime, where they were displayed to vote. Joshuas patch was one of the two winners, even though he doesnt usually spend his time drawing, preferring Legos and miniature soldiers. The other patch was created by Zoya Johnson, now in 6th grade.

In total, sixty-seven patches were selected out of a total of 21,200 submitted on an international level, with entries reflecting the international in the stations name: students from Brazil and Canada also saw patches included in the launch.

I saw another patch of NASAs that had a rocket on it, so wanted to do that but wanted the rocket to be the main part of the patch, Joshua replied after being asked about the design of his patch. Jupiter is in the background, because its a planet. Saturn had too big of rings and Jupiter is large, so I could fit the M and S in it. The two letters stand for Milton Hershey School.

Joshua Fergusons art contains Jupiter, Saturn, the SpaceX rocket, the International Space Station, Earth and elements meant to celebrate Milton Hershey.

Milton Hershey applied to partner with the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program in 2019 and was selected by NASA to participate. That year, high school students at the school saw their gravity-related experiments sent into space and returned to Earth.

Joshua wants to be an aerospace engineer when he grows up. When I heard about the patch, in Mr. Crowleys room, I said that if I win this, I want to devote my life to space, he said.

He added that the sheer size of space and the fact that most of it remains a complete mystery makes him want to devote his life to the topic. Joshua is getting a telescope soon. I probably cant find unknown stuff, but I want to learn the basics, he said.

More than 1 million people, including Joshua, watched the launch via a video livestream at 9:45 a.m. last Sunday. According to the student space program, the spacecraft is set to land on Earth again on Jan. 8, although it is as yet unknown when Joshuas patch will return to Earth.

But he is anticipating the day it does. When it comes back, we will probably buy a pretty expensive frame and hang it up in the house, he predicted.

___

Online:

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4th-graders art patch sent to the stars on SpaceX rocket - Greenwich Time

A Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from pad 39A at 8:25 a.m. EDT (1225 GMT Sunday. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX launched 60 more Starlink internet relay platforms into orbit Sunday as the company ramps up network testing in Washington state and touts a streak of nearly 300 satellites launched since June without a spacecraft failure.

Nine Merlin 1D engines fired up and powered the Falcon 9 rocket off pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8:25:57 a.m. EDT (1225:57 GMT) Sunday, marking the 14th Falcon 9 mission dedicated to deploying satellites for SpaceXs Starlink broadband network.

The kerosene-fed engines throttled up to produce 1.7 million pounds of thrust, driving the Falcon 9 rocket to the northeast from the Floridas Space Coast. Two-and-a-half minutes later, the first stage booster shut down its engines and detached to begin descending toward SpaceXs drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Atlantic Ocean.

The second stages single Merlin engine ignited to continue the mission into orbit, and the Falcon 9s two-piece nose shroud jettisoned nearly three-and-a-half minutes into the flight.

The 15-story first stage booster nailed its landing on SpaceXs drone ship around 400 miles (630 kilometers) northeast of Cape Canaveral. It was the sixth trip to space and back for this particular booster designated B1051 after its debut on an unpiloted test flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft in March 2019.

At the same time, the Falcon 9s upper stage delivered the 60 Starlink internet satellites into a preliminary orbit. The upper stage engine later reignited to maneuver the payloads into a near-circular orbit 172 miles (278 kilometers) above Earth, with an inclination of 53 degrees to the equator.

The 60 flat-panel satellites separated from the rocket at 9:29 a.m. EDT (1329 GMT) to conclude SpaceXs 70th straight successful mission. A camera on the upper stage showed the 60 satellites each with a mass of about a quarter-ton flying free of the Falcon 9 over the Indian Ocean.

Great way to start off a Sunday, said Andy Tran, a production supervisor at SpaceX who hosted the companys launch webcast Sunday.

SpaceX said its two fairing recovery ships caught both halves of the fairing from Sundays launch as the clamshells came back to Earth under parachutes. The net on one of the vessels gave way as the fairing settled into orbit, but SpaceX said its ocean-going recovery team was OK.

With the satellites launched Sunday, SpaceX has placed 835 Starlink broadband relay stations into orbit, including prototypes that wont be used for commercial service. That extends SpaceXs lead in operating the largest fleet of satellites in orbit.

The new Starlink spacecraft, built by SpaceX in Redmond, Washington, were expected to unfurl solar panels and activate krypton ion thrusters to begin raising their altitude to roughly 341 miles (550 kilometers), where they will begin providing broadband service.

SpaceX plans to operate an initial block of around 1,500 Starlink satellites in orbits 341 miles above Earth. The company, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, has regulatory approval from the Federal Communications Commission to eventually field a fleet of up to 12,000 small Starlink broadband stations operating in Ku-band, Ka-band, and V-band frequencies.

There are also preliminary plans for an even larger fleet of 30,000 additional Starlink satellites, but a network of that size has not been authorized by the FCC.

SpaceX says the Starlink network designed for low-latency internet service is still in its early stages, and engineers continue testing the system to collect latency data and speed tests. In a filing with the FCC dated Oct. 13, SpaceX said it has started beta testing of the Starlink network in multiple U.S. states, and is providing internet connectivity to previously unserved students in rural areas.

On Sept. 28, the Washington Military Department announced it was using the Starlink internet service as emergency responders and residents in Malden, Washington, recover from a wildfire that destroyed much of the town.

Earlier this month, Washington government officials said the Hoh Tribe was starting to use the Starlink service. SpaceX said it recently installed Starlink ground terminals on an administrative building and about 20 private homeson the Hoh Tribe Reservation.

Weve very remote, saidMelvinjohn Ashue, vice chairman of the Hoh Tribe. The last eight years, Ive felt like we have been paddling up river with a spoon and almost getting nowhere with getting internet to the reservation.

It seemed like out of nowhere, SpaceX just came up and just catapulted us into the 21st century, Ashue said Oct. 7. Our youth are able to do education on line, participate in videos. Tele-health is no longer going to be an issue, as well as tele-mental health.

In an FCC filing last week, SpaceX representatives wrote that the company had successfully launched and operated nearly 300 new Starlink spacecraft since June without a failure.

SpaceX continues investing in its rapid network deployment, including launching as many as 120 satellites a month and installing extensive ground infrastructure across the country, SpaceX told the FCC.

SpaceX appears to be on pace to launch more than 120 satellites in the month of October.

The company added 60 satellites to the Starlink network with a Falcon 9 launch Oct. 6, and put up another 60 spacecraft Sunday. A Falcon 9 rocket is tentatively scheduled for liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 12:36 p.m. EDT (1636 GMT) Wednesday with another flock of Starlink satellites.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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SpaceX launches another batch of Starlink satellites Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

NASA will touch a space rock tomorrow (Oct. 20) in a milestone event for what the agency considers a crucial field of study: asteroid science.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has spent two years orbiting a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu in preparation for the big moment. But that mission, more formally known as the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer, is just one of a host of asteroid missions on NASA's agenda.

"While the planets and moons have changed over the millennia, many of these small bodies of ice and rock and metal haven't," Lori Glaze, head of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said during a news conference held on Monday (Oct. 19). "So the asteroids are like time capsules floating in space that can provide a fossil record of the birth of our solar system."

Related: Photos: Asteroids in deep space

But just as paleontologists need to study a range of fossils to learn about different species and epochs, scientists need to visit a host of asteroids to paint a detailed picture of how our solar system got the way it is, Glaze said.

"There are so many of these small bodies out there," she said. "Looking at the diversity of those different types of objects can really help put that puzzle together."

And NASA has several missions tackling that big picture. OSIRIS-REx's sampling attempt is a key piece of that science agenda, since the spacecraft will bring the asteroid pieces back to Earth for scientists to examine with much more sophisticated instruments than can be sent into space.

In particular, scientists are looking forward to analyzing amino acids and other carbon compounds that play a vital role in life here on Earth in the sample once it arrives later this decade. "We have really good reason to believe that the Bennu sample, when it returns, is going to contain a lot of these organic molecules, these building blocks," Jamie Elsila, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said during the news conference.

There's no life to be found on Bennu, she emphasized. "But we're looking for those building-block molecules, because those are going to help us understand what the ingredients were in the early solar system, when life arose on Earth, and how those organic molecules might have been delivered to the Earth's surface and maybe to elsewhere in the solar system as well."

But while sample analysis in terrestrial laboratories is scientifically incredibly valuable, scientists can't bring home a piece of every space rock that catches their eyes. "Bringing samples back is a real challenge," Glaze said.

That's where NASA's other asteroid missions, the ones that only journey one way, come into the picture. In particular, NASA is launching two key asteroid science missions this decade: Lucy in 2021 and Psyche in 2022.

Lucy will visit one object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, then focus its attention on two special clusters of space rocks that orbit ahead of and behind Jupiter, called the Trojans, which scientists have never been able to examine up close.

"The Trojans, despite the fact that they're in a very narrow region of space, are very different from one another they have different colors, different spectra," Hal Levison, the Lucy mission principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, said during the news conference.

And Lucy, over the course of its mission, will visit seven Trojan rocks on five different stops. If all goes well, the spacecraft will give scientists observations of about as many Trojans as main-belt asteroids that spacecraft have visited to date.

But main-belt asteroid missions are continuing, including with the 2022 launch of NASA's Psyche mission, which will visit an asteroid by the same name. Out of the 2 million objects in the asteroid belt, the asteroid Psyche is one of nine known objects that are primarily metal, rather than rock or ice. Scientists aren't sure how that came to be their primary hypothesis is that the object was once the core of a planet that somehow lost its less-dense outer layers.

"It's an entirely unique object in our entire solar system," Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the Psyche mission's principal investigator at Arizona State University, said in the news conference. "One thing I can promise you for sure is that when we arrive, we will be surprised."

The observations of these missions grouped together, scientists hope, will help them to decipher the history of our solar system at large.

"We used to believe the planets sort of formed in the region we now see them. Really, what happened is that it's as if somebody picked up the solar system and shook it real hard," Levinson said. "So these objects that are leftover have moved a lot and have witnessed a lot."

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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NASA's about to scoop up some asteroid dirt on the space rock Bennu. Scientists are thrilled. - Space.com

SpaceX is almost ready to start building a permanent human settlement on Mars with its massive Starship rocket.

The private spaceflight company is on track to launch its first uncrewed mission to Mars in as little as four years from now, SpaceX's founder and CEO Elon Musk said Friday (Oct. 16) at the International Mars Society Convention.

"I think we have a fighting chance of making that second Mars transfer window," Musk said in a discussion with Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin. You can watch a replay of the talk here.

That window Musk referred to is a launch opportunity that arises every 26 months for mission to Mars. NASA, China and the United Arab Emirates all launched missions to mars in July of this year. The next window opens in 2022 with Musk referring to the 2024 Mars launch opportunity.

The mission will launch to the Red Planet on a SpaceX Starship vehicle, a reusable rocket-and-spacecraft combo that is currently under development at the company's South Texas facility. SpaceX is also planning to use Starship for missions to the moon starting in 2022, as well as point-to-point trips around the Earth.

Related:Starship and Super Heavy: SpaceX's Mars-colonizing vehicles in images

Musk has long said that humans need to establish a permanent and self-sustaining presence on Mars to ensure "the continuance of consciousness as we know it" just in case planet Earth is left uninhabitable by a something like a nuclear war or an asteroid strike.

But SpaceX doesn't have any plans to actually build a Mars base. As a transportation company, its only goal is to ferry cargo (and humans) to and from the Red Planet, facilitating the development of someone else's Mars base.

"SpaceX is taking on the biggest single challenge, which is the transportation system. There's all sorts of other systems that are going to be needed," Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin said during the convention.

"My personal hope is that we're gonna see Starship in the stratosphere before this year's out, and if Elon is right, reach orbit next year or the year after," Zubrin added. "This will change people's minds as to what is possible. And then, you know, we'll have NASA seeking to fund the remaining pieces of the puzzle or entrepreneurs stepping forward to develop remaining pieces of the puzzle."

If Musk's projections are correct he is known for offering overly ambitious timelines SpaceX's first Mars mission would launch in the same year that NASA astronauts return to the moon under the Artemis program. SpaceX is also planning to fly space tourists on a Starship mission around the moon in 2023. NASA has also picked SpaceX as one of three commercial teams to develop moon landers for the Artemis program.

Musk said Friday that if it weren't for the orbital mechanics that call for Mars launches every 26 months, SpaceX "would maybe have a shot of sending or trying send something to Mars in three years," Musk said, adding that Earth and Mars won't be in the best position. "But the window is four years away, because of them being in different parts of the solar system."

Musk unveiled plans for SpaceX's Starship plans in 2016. The project aims to launch a 165-foot (50 meters) spacecraft atop a massive booster for deep-space missions to the moon, Mars and elsewhere. Both the Starship and its Super Heavy booster will be reusable.

This year, SpaceX launched two test flights of Starship prototypes, called SN5 and SN6, from its Boca Chica test site in Texas. Those flights reached an altitude of 500 feet (150 meters).

SpaceX is currently preparing another Starship prototype, called SN8, for a 12-mile-high (20 kilometers) test flight in the near future.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her on Twitter @hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom and onFacebook.

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Elon Musk says SpaceX's 1st Starship trip to Mars could fly in 4 years - Space.com

There are a lot of things very exciting in space today, NASA Astronaut and Clark County native Michael Barratt said during a recent talk about the space agencys future plans.

Barratt was participating in a virtual discussion Oct. 15 featuring him, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, to talk about NASAs latest spaceflight program and answer questions from students at two Clark County schools: Vancouver ITech Prep and Camas Odyssey Middle School.

Both Barratt and Bridenstine talked about the Artemis Program, which NASA is planning on using to send astronauts back to the moon and beyond. Bridenstine said American astronauts have been in low-Earth orbit for close to 20 years aboard the International Space Station, adding that the next step for NASA was returning for a sustained presence on the moon.

We want to go to the moon to stay, Bridenstine said.

Unlike the Apollo Program, which saw the first men on the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Artemis which is named after the twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the moon in Greek mythology plans to have the first woman on the moon in 2024, and will result in permanent habitation of Earths biggest natural satellite.

Bridenstine added that also differing from Apollo, Artemis will feature international and commercial partners that werent available during the prior program that ended almost a half-century ago. He said part of NASAs goal was to use the resources of the moon, saying there were hundreds of millions of tons of ice on the moons south pole, which is where the program aims to land.

Sustained occupation of the moon wasnt the last step, as Bridenstine added that NASA was looking toward going to Mars. He said that recent discoveries of complex organic compounds and potentially liquid water 12 kilometers below the surface of the planet makes the chance for even more discoveries on the planet tantalizing, which future astronauts would be able to do after learning the sustained habitation of the moon.

Bridenstine explained that any manned missions to Mars would likely have to stay on the planet for years given the window of time missions there have every 26 months, though he said advances in propulsion technologies may change that.

Herrera Beutler introduced the Camas-based Barratt, with her notably-excited oldest child seen in the video feed.

This program is something that I think captures all of our imaginations, whether were older or younger. Its a big deal, Herrera Beutler said.

The congresswoman said that not only did the event highlight the work and plans of NASA but also reinforced the importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education integral to the work the space agency does.

Herrera Beutler said that while in the past Southwest Washington had relied on timber forests for its economy, what I like to say now is that we have a growing silicon forest because of the growth of our tech industries, adding nearly 40 percent of the gross regional product of Southwest Washington was in STEM-related industries.

When most people think of NASA they think of astronauts, which is an important part of the agency, but it also includes researchers and scientists and doctors and engineers, which are absolutely vital in running NASAs many programs, Herrera Beutler said.

Barratt joined NASA in 1991 and has participated in two space flights totalling 211 days in space, including two spacewalks. He was a NASA flight surgeon before being picked as an astronaut in 2000, launching both from the Russian Soyuz rocket and on the last flight of Space Shuttle Discovery.

Barratt said the main use of the ISS was for scientific research, with the station serving as a laboratory that has rendered a host of discoveries over the decades.

When you remove gravity, you find things, Barratt remarked, and we have found so many things way beyond what we expected out there.

Barratt said one of the biggest differences between what space exploration was developing when he was a kid and what is happening now was the amount of different players, pointing out a handful of private companies including Boeing that were designing spacecraft. With all the new developments he said there was a paradigm shift in astronautics from the past several decades, highlighted by the goals of the Artemis Program.

Its time to break orbit and go explore, Barratt rsaid.

He mentioned a few of the craft being developed for the Artemis Program, including the Orion Capsule, a Gateway Station in the lunar vicinity and a human landing system, the last of which Barratt has provided medical input on its development.

Barratt likened a sustained presence on the moon as a god-given space station to allow for further exploration, including Mars.

Barratt brought the conversation back to the importance of STEM, pointing to a quote from Carl Sagan from 1990 We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

I would say that is more true now, Barratt said. There is a bit of a gap in the public awareness of that science and technology that really fuels us our economy, our exploration, our whole lives.

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'It's time to break orbit' Clark County astronaut, NASA admin talk Artemis Program with Herrera Beutler - The Reflector

We could end up getting an amazing ground-level view of the first crewed moon landing since 1972.

NASA's Flight Opportunities program has just awarded a $650,000 grant to the team behind Lunar ExoCam, an imaging system designed to eject from moon landers during descent and record video of their touchdowns from the otherworldly gray ground.

If development continues to go well, Lunar ExoCam could be ready to fly on some of the private robotic landers that are scheduled to launch toward the moon in the next few years, said the project's principal investigator, Jason Achilles Mezilis. And he'd love to get the camera system aboard NASA's Artemis 3 mission, which aims to land two astronauts near the lunar south pole in 2024.

Related: What is NASA's Artemis program?

Lunar ExoCam's observations would help researchers better understand how lander engines kick up moon dirt and rock, as noted by NASA's award announcement, which was released on Wednesday (Oct. 14). The deployment system the team is developing could also be used to get other payloads down on the lunar surface, Mezilis said. But the motivations for the project extend beyond scientific and engineering gains.

Watching a moon lander come down toward you, especially one carrying astronauts, "would just be really, really cool," Mezilis told Space.com. As would watching those astronauts step down onto the gray dirt, imagery that Lunar ExoCam could provide as well.

Mezilis is a professional musician, but he's not a space neophyte. He's on the team that informed the design of a microphone built into the entry, descent and landing (EDL) system of NASA's Mars 2020 rover Perseverance. If that microphone works, it will record the sounds of Perseverance screaming through the thin Martian atmosphere and touching down inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater in February 2021. (Perseverance carries another microphone, too, which is part of its rock-zapping SuperCam instrument.)

The Lunar ExoCam project is a team effort as well, pulling in people from Arizona State University, Honeybee Robotics, Ecliptic Enterprises Corp. and Masten Space Systems. The lead organization, Zandef Deksit Inc., is a company that Mezilis set up in 2017 to handle his consulting work with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Perseverance's EDL microphone; he's the sole employee. (The name means nothing but still seems appropriate, Mezilis said. He described it as "a little Zaphod Beeblebrox-y," referring to a character from Douglas Adam's famed "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series.)

Though work began on Lunar ExoCam less than a year ago, the Southern California-based team already has some milestones under its belt. For example, the researchers have built and tested a prototype system, which consists of a GoPro MAX 360-degree camera encased in a cushioning wire cage.

In one of those tests, Mezilis and his colleagues used a drone to drop the prototype from a height of about 150 feet (46 meters). It survived the fall just fine and recorded video as planned.

In another trial, team members took three of the caged cameras to Masten's facilities at the Mojave Air and Space Port in the Southern California desert. They arrayed the cameras around a test stand holding a Masten vehicle, which fired up and hovered for more than a minute. The prototypes recorded the resulting dust plumes, as operational Lunar ExoCams would on the surface of the moon.

The newly awarded NASA funding will allow the team to take the testing to another level. Sometime next year, Mezilis and his team will put a Lunar ExoCam prototype on a Masten Xodiac vehicle, which will lift off into the Southern California sky. The camera will eject at an altitude of 50 feet (15 m), hitting the ground at about the same speed it would during a landing on the moon, whose gravitational pull is just one-sixth that of Earth.

Related: Here's where commercial landers will land on the moon for NASA

An operational Lunar ExoCam system would ideally employ at least three cameras, Mezilis said. The imagers would eject in the final moments of the moonward descent probably 10 to 15 seconds before touchdown at most and capture the descent and touchdown process in unprecedented detail.

"We'll start filming before we release it," Mezilis said. "So, basically, you'll be able to watch it fall off the lander, which is pretty insane."

Though the project's official name is Lunar ExoCam, Mezilis' ambitions extend beyond Earth's nearest neighbor. He'd like to get a version of the touchdown camera aboard Mars missions someday especially a lander carrying astronauts down to the Red Planet's surface.

The coolness factor of that Mars imagery would be off the charts. It would create a lasting impression in the minds of many, which is what Mezilis aims to do.

"Ultimately, my goal is to inspire all the five-year-old kids out there plant that seed for a lifelong love of science and space," he said.

Lunar ExoCam is one of 31 projects to receive funding in the latest round of Flight Opportunities awards. You can read about all of them including the experiment that New Horizons mission principal investigator Alan Stern will conduct in suborbital space in the NASA award announcement here.

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.

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'Lunar ExoCam' project aims to film spacecraft touchdowns on the moon - Space.com

NASA astronaut Christina Koch reflected on her participation in the first all-woman spacewalk ahead of its one-year anniversary on Sunday (Oct. 18).

A year ago, Koch and her colleague Jessica Meir, who were both part of the 2013 astronaut class the first and only astronaut class to be 50% women took part in the first-ever spacewalk conducted entirely by women. NASA hadn't orchestrated the event, rather, it was a chance pairing, the result of an increasing number of women in the astronaut corps.

"It was such a momentous moment and I think the year has really made me realize that," Koch told Space.com. "It's really been interesting how 2020 has become this year that has symbolized inclusion in so many ways."

"We kind of almost were kicking it off in some ways, unknowingly," with the spacewalk, she said, referring to spacewalking as historically male-dominated.

On Monday (Oct. 19), the Guinness Book of World Records officially recognized Koch and Meir for their historic spacewalk, and Koch specifically for her mission, the longest single spaceflight by a woman to date.

Related: The 1st all-woman spacewalk: photos, videos and tweets

"Not only is aerospace and technical industry [an area] that has often had under-representation by women, but spacewalking, in particular, is a really stark example of that," Koch said. "I think there have been about 15 women that have ever done a spacewalk, and there are over 200 men that have done a spacewalk."

This event made "sure that NASA was really committed to, like I like to say, answering humanity's call to explore by everyone. And so it was just a wonderful thing to have the honor to participate in. And I think that we're just so appreciative still to receive the support that we still receive every day about it," she said.

In looking to the future, Koch remarked on what she hopes the next generation of astronauts and spacewalkers like herself will face and how things will be different. She noted that, with this spacewalk, things seem to be starting to turn a corner and a new era is approaching "where no matter who comes on as an astronaut candidate, the expectation that's placed on them that they're going to be a great spacewalker is the same," she said. "There's no excuses, there's no lower bar of expectations."

Koch also noted that she hopes to one day "see a world where we focus on mentorship, where we're paying forward to the future explorers I see a world where women are selected into the astronaut corps and it's not even a surprise."

Besides this being a historic spacewalk, there were a few other elements of the event that stood out to Koch. "It was my only spacewalk being on the robotic arm. It was one of the few spacewalks that I was the lead spacewalker. And it was the first time that I was going out on a spacewalk with someone whose first spacewalk it was," she said.

It was "the first time my spacewalk buddy was seeing it through their eyes for the first time," she said. She also shared that, unsurprisingly, "the moment of being on the robotic arm was great."

Additionally, as the excursion was an unexpected spacewalk planned on short notice to replace a faulty power regulator that failed after the installation of new batteries, Koch appreciated "the fact that we had to just come together, it was such teamwork. We worked back and forth with the ground for the week prior to the spacewalk honing in on what procedures we would use. It was a great interactive thing, because we really were able to give a lot of input."

But out of all of these moments and triumphs, Koch noted her favorite.

"The best moment was when Jessica and I both came out of the airlock. And before we left our eyes kind of caught each other and we knew what an amazing moment it really was, and I smiled," she said. "We were talking to the ground like normal and no one knew that we had that moment, but that was a really special thing I'll never forget."

In February, Christina Koch completed a record-breaking 328-day stint in space aboard the International Space Station. So, in reflecting on her historic spacewalk she also shared her feelings about the fact that the orbiting lab she called home for so many days is celebrating its 20th anniversary of a continued human presence.

"I love thinking about how there wasn't a single day in the last 20 years, when every human was on the planet," she said. "We made sure that we were utilizing this amazing resource of our microgravity laboratory every single day."

"I see it as a science amplifier, because the space station allows us to achieve scientific discoveries that really are not possible on Earth," Koch said. In particular, she pointed to the fact that technology and science done on the space station is directly informing and supporting future missions back to the moon, to Mars and more.

"The fact that we prioritize that, as a world, is really exciting," she said.

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Luxembourg, 14 October 2020. Rideshare provider Spaceflight will execute three customer missions on two upcoming launches in the next weeks, the Seattle-based company announced today.

Spaceflight will execute two launches on two different continents, the company said, one aboard a Rocket Lab Electron and the other on NewSpace India Limiteds PSLV. For both missions, Spaceflight arranged the launch and is providing mission management and rideshare integration services for its customers Canon Electronics, Kleos Space and Spire.

The next mission, dubbed RL-5, will launch from Rocket Labs Launch Complex 1 at the southern tip of Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand in October. The other mission is slated to lift off in the first half of November from Indias Satish Dhawan Space Center, Spaceflight said.

Since its founding, Spaceflight has launched more than 300 satellites and executed 32 rocket launches, the company said. Spaceflight works with a large portfolio of launch vehicles, including Falcon 9, Antares, Electron, Vega, and PSLV and has recently expanded its global portfolio of launch vehicles to include NSILs SSLV, Relativitys Terran 1 and Fireflys Alpha.

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Spaceflight to serve Canon, Kleos and Spire on two launches - SpaceWatch.Global

The University of Florida is helping to launch a new era in space research with a plant experiment aboard Blue Origins New Shepard rocket that blasted off from the companys West Texas site Tuesday morning.

Rob Ferl and Anna-Lisa Paul have been studying how plants respond to stressful environments for decades, placing their genetically engineered mustard plants on high-flying planes, on the space shuttle and on the International Space Station.

But the Blue Origin project is the first time UF has worked directly with a commercial launch provider, marking an important shift in how universities conduct space-related research, Ferl said.

This is one of the first wave of projects where a university is contracting directly with a commercial space flight provider to launch science experiments, he said. Previously, NASA handled all of the arrangements.

NASA still funds much of the research, but the new process enables universities to negotiate with multiple companies to get just the right fit, both in terms of the science and the cost.

For some experiments, suborbital might be the best platform, for others it might be orbital or lunar, Paul says. Instead of providing all the rides, NASA is now facilitating the relationship with the commercial providers. This frees up NASA to focus on getting us back to the moon and to Mars.

For this particular experiment, Ferl said Blue Origins New Shepard rocket was the perfect platform for studying how living things adjust their metabolism from Earths gravity to no gravity and back again.

In the early 1990s, Ferl and Paul, both plant molecular biologists with UFs Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, began experimenting with reporter genes that allowed them to see when plants were experiencing certain environmental stresses. By splicing a gene from a fluorescent jellyfish into Arabidopsis mustard plants a model species often used in plant genetics experiments they have been able to make the plants glow in response to various stresses and to track those responses using specialized cameras.

What they found when they sent their plants to space was that they respond dramatically, turning certain genes on and off and modifying how their roots grow. That could have important implications for human space flight.

About half of the genes in our bodies encode the exact same proteins in plants, explained Paul. Thats very exciting, because it means that as we look at how plants behave in the absence of gravity, we can translate many of those basic biological processes to humans.

Through their work with NASA and commercial space companies, Ferl and Paul have become as much engineers as plant scientists, learning to design and build the sophisticated capsules in which their tiny botanical astronauts travel.

Using reporter genes is everyday stuff in the lab, says Ferl. The real challenge of deploying this technology is to take all of this equipment and shrink it down into a unit that is capable of being lofted into space, where we might not be there to look after it.

The researchers have reduced their laboratory to a box about six inches square by a foot long. Inside, light emitting diodes bathe the plants in only the wavelengths they need to thrive.

For the Blue Origin mission, the researchers didnt have to wait long to check on the experiment. The entire flight took roughly 11 minutes from liftoff to the capsules parachute landing a few miles away. Ferl and Paul were among the first to the capsule, hustling their plants back to the on-site laboratory to see how they responded to the sudden changes in gravity.

The flight is just part of the experiment, Paul says. Weve got lots of new data to analyze about how our plants responded to their mission.

Ferl said the growth of commercial space companies opens new vistas for university research.

In the past, the opportunities to get an experiment on the space shuttle or up to the International Space Station were very limited because there were so few launches and so many worthy experiments, Ferl said. Now, with multiple carriers launching dozens of rockets per year, a lot more experiments can hitch a ride.

Joe Kays October 13, 2020

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With New Shepard launch, space researchers become space customers - University of Florida

Since the beginning of the space race a fierce rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s over which country would pioneer space travel American astronauts have competed on both an international stage and against each other for unprecedented achievements in manned space exploration, including being the first man in space. Shortly after a Soviet Union astronaut won the title of first man in space" in 1961, however, the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) finalized their plans to launch their first human space flight. For NASA, it wasn't a question of if they were going to send an American to space, but rather a question of whom. Disney+'s The Right Stuff tells the true story of this historic competition between seven American astronauts vying for the opportunity to fly among the stars. If you're watching the series and can't wait to find out who makes it, here's the answer: on May 5, 1961, the race ended when Alan Shepard became the first American in space.

In the opening scene of The Right Stuff, we see Shepard (played by Jake McDorman) and John Glenn (Patrick J. Adams) two of the seven competing American astronauts known as the Mercury Seven going through their morning routines just hours before a historic rocket launch that will make one of them the first American in space. But, out of the two of them, only one of them can be chosen to go and while the show leaves the decision of who is chosen a mystery in the first few episodes, we know that Shepard was chosen to pilot the first 15-minute human spaceflight on May 5, 1961, crowning him the first American in space.

On Feb. 20, 1962, Shepard's competition, Glenn, became the first American to orbit the Earth and the third American in space. Both men carry historic significance in the story of our country's space exploration, but as The Right Stuff reminds us, they were also everyday people with everyday problems. The story of how they went from pilots to history-book legends is just getting started on the Disney+ hit show, and while we already know who won the title of first man in space, we can't wait to follow along and see just how their stories both individually and collectively unfold.

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The Right Stuff: Read This If You Can't Wait to Find Out Who Makes It to Space First - POPSUGAR

Russia is getting into the reusable rocket game.

The nation's space agency, Roscosmos, announced last week that it aims to develop a two-stage rocket called the Amur, whose first stage will return to Earth for vertical, powered landings like those performed by SpaceX's Falcon 9 boosters.

Indeed, the Amur bears a remarkable resemblance to the Falcon 9, down to the stabilizing grid fins on the rocket's first stage and the desire to launch each booster up to 100 times eventually.

Related: The history of rockets

There are differences, however. For example, the Amur will be considerably smaller and less powerful than the Falcon 9, standing just 180 feet (55 meters) tall with the ability to loft 11.6 tons (10.5 metric tons) of payload to low-Earth orbit (LEO). The Falcon 9 is 230 feet (70 m) tall and can deliver 25.1 tons (22.8 metric tons) to LEO, according to the rocket's SpaceX spec sheet.

The Amur's first stage will feature five engines, according to the Roscosmos announcement, compared to the Falcon 9's nine. And whereas the Falcon 9's Merlin engines are powered by liquid oxygen and kerosene, those of the Amur which have yet to be built will swap kerosene out for methane. (There are yet more SpaceX parallels here, though: SpaceX's next-generation Raptor engine, which will power the company's Starship vehicle, is methane-fueled.)

The Amur will launch from Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Amur region (hence its name). Landings of the reusable first stage will take place at several sites, which are still being determined, Roscosmos officials said. The agency is currently not planning to conduct any touchdowns on floating platforms, as SpaceX does with its two "drone ships," because the neighboring Sea of Okhotsk is notoriously rough. But that option will remain open going forward.

The plan calls for the Amur to be developed for no more than 70 billion rubles (about $900 million US at current exchange rates), fly for the first time in 2026 and feature a per-launch cost of $22 million, Roscosmos officials said. For comparison, a Falcon 9 mission with a completely new rocket currently goes for about $60 million, and one with a used first stage is about $50 million.

"If all the key indicators of the Amur program are implemented, we plan to provide the majority of commercial launches in the light and medium class with our new rocket," Alexander Bloshenko, Roscosmos executive director for long-term programs and science, said in the statement.

The Amur's development timeline may make it tough to accomplish this goal, however, even if everything goes according to plan. SpaceX is already test-flying early prototypes of Starship, a huge, fully reusable vehicle that company founder and CEO Elon Musk believes has the potential to revolutionize spaceflight via ultralow launch costs.

"It's a step in the right direction, but they should really aim for full reusability by 2026. Larger rocket would also make sense for literal economies of scale. Goal should be to minimize cost per useful ton to orbit or it will at best serve a niche market," Musk said via Twitter last week, referring to the Amur plan (and in response to a tweet by Ars Technica's Eric Berger.)

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.

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The Government Actuarys Department (GAD) has been at the centre of helping set up the new spaceflight launch industry in the UK.

Experts from GAD have provided the UK Space Agency, Department for Transport (DfT) and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) with support in terms of setting insurance requirements and providing risk analysis for this new frontier.

The work has been carried out ahead of spaceflight launches which are set to take off from the UK in the early 2020s. In preparation for this, DfT, UK Space Agency and CAA have launched a consultation on legislation and insurance requirements associated with launch activity.

Safety is at the heart of the proposed regulatory regime under the Space Industry Act 2018. Launch from the UK is a new activity that presents new and different risks from those posed by traditional aviation.

Operators will be required to demonstrate that the risks their activities pose to the uninvolved general public are as low as reasonably practicable. They will also need to demonstrate that the residual risk is at a level that is acceptable to the regulator. If an accident does happen, insurance therefore provides an important resource to meet potential claims.

GAD has helped to develop the methodology to enable the spaceflight regulator to assess the amount of third-party liability insurance which spacecraft operators will have to buy to cover the unlikely event that a spaceflight accident impacts on third parties.

The UK government is proposing to use a Modelled Insurance Requirement (MIR) approach to assess the impacts of a range of accident scenarios to tailor the insurance required to the specific risks of each launch. The MIR calculation takes into account the following areas:

Nick Clitheroe, the GAD actuary who led the project said: We were asked to help UK Space Agency establish a set of financial values for each of these categories that could be applied in the MIR. While a similar approach is used in the USA, the MIR needed to reflect the UKs compensation system and different launch risk profile.

Given the inherent uncertainty about who or what might be impacted in an accident, the methodology needed to take a large range of variables into account. These helped the UK government to determine a single figure for each category.

The aim was to derive a robust figure that reduced the risks of over- or under insurance for operators and minimised the governments contingent liability.

This is important because the insurance market does not have sufficient capacity to cover all of the risk that may arise. Above an upper limit of insurance required for each launch, the government would take on the liability.

The UK Space Agency undertook the modelling of potential events leading to third party claims and GAD advised on the average payment that courts would likely award in the event of death, injury or property damage.

GAD built a detailed model which placed values based on the current level of earnings. We also worked out how much would be paid as a lump sum in the event of death or serious injury. The information and data came from the Office for National Statistics and from the Ogden tables.

GAD has been working with the UK Space Agency on the insurance and risk analysis as a way of further quantifying how much incidents may cost. As part of this, we devised an average payment for each incident and the UK Space Agency was able to apply that to their modelling.

The current consultation asks people to provide comments on the MIR approach and the approach to limiting operator liabilities. It lasts 4 weeks and will close on 10 November.

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GAD assists development of UK spaceflight industry - GOV.UK

NASAs SpaceX Crew-1 crew members are seen seated in the companys Crew Dragon spacecraft during crew equipment interface training. From left to right are NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, mission specialist; Victor Oliver, pilot; and Mike Hopkins, Crew Dragon commander; and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi, mission specialist. Credit: SpaceX

NASA said Saturday that the launch of four astronauts on SpaceXs first operational Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station has been delayed from Oct. 31 until no sooner than early-to-mid November, allowing time for SpaceX to resolve an issue with Falcon 9 rocket engines that halted a recent launch attempt with a GPS navigation satellite.

The engine concern appeared during an Oct. 2 launch attempt of a Falcon 9 rocket with a GPS satellite at Cape Canaveral, prompting computers controlling the final seconds of the countdown to abort the mission just two seconds prior to liftoff.

Elon Musk, SpaceXs founder and CEO, tweeted after the abort that the countdown was stoppedafter an unexpected pressure rise in the turbomachinery gas generator, referring to equipment used on the rockets Merlin main engines. The gas generators on the Merlin 1D engines drives the engines turbopumps.

While the Falcon 9 launch of the U.S. Space Forces next GPS navigation satellite remains grounded, SpaceX proceeded with the launch of a different Falcon 9 rocket Oct. 6 from a neighboring pad at NASAs Kennedy Space Center. That mission successfully placed 60 more Starlink internet satellites into orbit.

In a statement Saturday, NASA said the Crew Dragon launch delay from Oct. 31 will allow SpaceX more time to complete hardware testing and data reviews as the company evaluates off-nominal behavior of Falcon 9 first stage engine gas generators observed during a recent non-NASA mission launch attempt.

The Crew Dragon mission will use the same type of Falcon 9 rocket as the GPS and Starlink launches.

NASA said it has full insight into SpaceXs launch and testing data. SpaceX developed the Crew Dragon spacecraft and flies the capsule under the auspices of a multibillion-dollar contract with NASA.

We have a strong working relationship with our SpaceX partner, said Kathy Lueders, associate administrator of NASAs Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. With the high cadence of missions SpaceX performs, it really gives us incredible insight into this commercial system and helps us make informed decisions about the status of our missions. The teams are actively working this finding on the engines, and we should be a lot smarter within the coming week.

NASA commander Mike Hopkins, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Shannon Walker, and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi will fly aboard Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, kicking off an expedition lasting about six months. The four-person crew will blast off from pad 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center.

The crew has named their Crew Dragon spaceship Resilience.

The reusable crew capsule was secured to its expendable unpressurized trunk section Oct. 2 at SpaceXs processing facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Hopkins and his crewmates will join NASA flight engineer Kate Rubins and Russian cosmonauts SergeyRyzhikov andSergey Kud-Sverchkov on the space station.Ryzhikov,Kud-Sverchkov, and Rubins are scheduled for launch Wednesday on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The first operational Crew Dragon flight, named Crew-1, follows a 64-day Crew Dragon demonstration mission with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken. Hurley and Behnken launched to the space station May 30 and returned to Earth on Aug. 4 with a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, marking the first flight of astronauts into orbit from a U.S. spaceport since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011.

With the test flights now in the books, SpaceXs Crew Dragon is set to begin a series of regular crew rotation flights to the space station, ending NASAs sole reliance on Russian Soyuz missions for crew transportation.

NASA said Saturday that the launch of the U.S.-European Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich oceanography satellite on a Falcon 9 rocket remains scheduled for Nov. 10 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. And a Dragon resupply mission to the space station is targeted for launch in late November or early December from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, a delay from a previous launch date of Nov. 15, according to NASA.

NASA and SpaceX will use the data from the companys hardware testing and reviews to ensure these critical missions are carried out with the highest level of safety, the space agency said Saturday.

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Northrop Grummans Cygnus supply ship is grappled by the Canadian-built robotic arm at the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV / Spaceflight Now

A Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship arrived at the International Space Station on Monday, delivering nearly four tons of supplies and experiments to the research lab and its crew, including a $23 million titanium toilet and a high-definition virtual reality camera planned for use on a future spacewalk.

Capping an automated laser-guided rendezvous sequence, the Cygnus cargo freighter moved within 40 feet (12 meters) of the space station early Monday, close enough for the labs Canadian-built robotic arm to reach out and grapple it.

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, assisted by Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner, took control of the 58-foot-long (17.7-meter) robotic arm to capture the Cygnus spacecraft at 5:32 a.m. EDT (0932 GMT) Monday.

Northrop Grumman named the Cygnus supply ship the S.S. Kalpana Chawla in honor of the first woman of Indian descent to fly into space. Chawla flew on two space shuttle missions, and she died with her six crewmates on the space shuttle Columbia in 2003.

In the name of space exploration, all have given some, some have given all, Cassidy said after capturing the Cygnus spacecraft Monday. Its an honor to welcome the good ship Kalpana Chawla. Welcome aboard the International Space Station, KC.

Ground controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston took control of the robot arm later Monday morning to attach the Cygnus spacecraft to a berthing port on the space stations Unity module, where it will stay for around two months.

Cassidy and his crewmates will open hatches leading to the S.S. Kalpana Chawlas pressurized cargo compartment to begin unpacking the supplies and experiments inside.

The arrival of the S.S. Kalpana Chawla supply ship Monday marked the 14th delivery of cargo to the space station by a Cygnus spacecraft since 2013.

The Cygnus cargo mission blasted off Friday night from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport aboard an Antares rocket, following delays earlier in the week caused by bad weather and a ground software issue.

The S.S. Kalpana Chawla is packed with 7,829 pounds (3,551 kilograms) of supplies and experiments heading to the International Space Station. Heres a breakdown of the cargo manifest provided by NASA:

The Cygnus supply ship will remain berthed Unity module until mid-December, when it will be released by the stations robotic arm.The automated cargo carrier, loaded with trash after its departure from the station, will perform an in-flight combustion experiment before re-entering the atmosphere and burning up over the South Pacific Ocean to end its mission.

The fresh food packed inside the S.S. Kalpana Chawla supply ship includesprosciutto, chorizo, salami, summer sausage, brie, smoked gouda, smoked provolone, and fruits and vegetables.

Among clothing and other crew provisions, the Cygnus mission will deliver an upgraded toilet to the space station, allowing astronauts to test its functionality before a similar commode flies on the Orion crew capsule to the moon.

The new toilet, or Universal Waste Management System in NASA-speak, is roughly the size of a camper commode. Its about 65 percent smaller and 40 percent lighter than the toilet currently on the space station, according toMelissa McKinley, logistics reduction manager for the agencys advanced exploration systems division.

NASA partnered with Collins Aerospace to develop the new toilet, which officials said is better suited for female crew members than the existing commode on the space station. Engineers made parts of the toilet out of titanium to withstand acid used to pre-treat urine before the fluid is recycled back into drinking water for the astronauts, said Jim Fuller, the toilets project manager at Collins Aerospace.

On Earth, we have gravity that helps pull the feces and urine away from our body and into the toilet, Fuller said. In space, where we have microgravity, we dont have that luxury. The dual fan separator actually creates the motive force by creating a strong airflow that helps pull the urine and feces away from the body.

When the astronauts have to go, we want to allow them to boldly go, Fuller said.

Designers wanted the new toilet to be easier to use for women flying on the space station,

The funnel design was was completely re-contoured to better accommodate the female anatomy, McKinley said. And particularly, this is a concern when the crew members are trying to do dual ops, when theyre theyre doing both defecation and urination at the same time, just the alignment of all of that at once Trying to make that more appropriate for female use was a big driver.

Theres also a virtual reality camera flying to the space station that will capture imagery of a future spacewalk.

The cosmetics companyEste Lauder is also flying 10 bottles of its Advanced Night Repair serum to the space station, where the bottles will be photographed with Earth as a backdrop.Este Lauder says it will use the images in social media and marketing campaigns, and then plans to auction the serum returned to Earth from the space station, with the proceeds going to charity.

Its part of a new NASA program that dedicates 5 percent of space station cargo capacity and crew time to commercial marketing activities.Este Lauder will reimburse NASA around $128,000 for the space station resources used in the night serum marketing initiative, according to Phil McAlister, NASAs director of commercial spaceflight development.

Northrop Grummans Cygnus spacecraft shares space station resupply duties with SpaceXs Dragon capsule, the Russian Progress resupply freighter, and Japanese cargo missions.

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Four-time space shuttle astronaut Steve Smith loved professional adventurers when he was a child. In the 1960s, Jacques Cousteau explored the ocean while astronauts were making their first journeys into space during NASA's Mercury program, which paved the way for the first astronauts to land on the moon in 1969.

It is this early world of spaceflight and the test pilots who made up the first astronauts that came to the fore in "The Right Stuff" the 1979 book by Tom Wolfe, the 1983 Hollywood movie and the new National Geographic TV series that launches on Disney Plus today (Oct. 9) to cap World Space Week 2020.

In an interview with Space.com, Smith said that reading the book as a young man increased his commitment to space exploration "1000-fold," allowing him to persevere as initial rejections came in from NASA and the United States Air Force.

Related: 'The Right Stuff' lifts off on Disney Plus, takes flight from book, film

Smith recalled seeing Ed White perform the first American spacewalk in 1965, which spurred the 7-year-old's "singular goal" to fly in space one day. Other factors were exposing Smith to aerospace as well. A friend's father took him flying in a small airplane, and he spent significant time on commercial jets while his family was assigned to live in Japan for two years requiring a lot of time going back and forth to the United States over the Pacific.

"But I knew nothing of behind the scenes. I knew no details about what the astronauts were like, nor what the path was to become one. 'The Right Stuff' changed everything for me. The book filled a huge void," said Smith, who spoke about his spaceflight experiences Tuesday (Oct. 6) as part of The Virtual Astronaut online series.

"The Right Stuff" book and movie duo was influential to a generation of engineers and scientists, including the astronauts of NASA. Some, like Smith, took the movie as inspiration for exploring space and for overcoming obstacles along the way.

Related: How Tom Wolfe inspired a generation of astronauts

"I found the book compelling, extremely interesting, and oftentimes humorous, as I would mentally place myself in the flight suits of these men who were to become the first," Clayton Anderson, who flew twice in space as a NASA space shuttle astronaut and International Space Station crew member, told Space.com.

The movie scene that stuck out to him most, however, was a humorous rendition of the early medical procedures that the astronaut candidates went through to prepare them for spaceflight procedures which have changed substantially since the 1960s.

"[My] takeaway was that if I was ever to become a real astronaut, I wanted no one to see my bare-naked rear end, fully exposed in the revealing flap of a single-tie hospital gown, as I sprinted down a hospital hallway in search of an 'enema-tic' release of supernova proportions. I guess that means I may not have really had 'the right stuff'," Anderson joked, presumably having never needed to undergo that scenario himself during his astronaut career a generation later.

Two-time NASA space shuttle astronaut Danny Olivas, who will speak on The Virtual Astronaut series Oct. 14, recalled another portion of the medical testing in the movie.

"There is a section where the astronauts are being evaluated for their lung capacity by having them blow into a medical device. All the astronauts were competing with one another to see who could sustain their airflow longer. After virtually all of them exhaust themselves, they look over at John Glenn, who is quite easily continuing to exhale," he told Space.com.

"That segment encapsulates what I saw as the level of competition to become an astronaut, not just between their peers, but as individuals. It was that mindset that informed me. If I wanted to become an astronaut, I would have to be prepared to compete at a very high level, and push myself to my own limits. I still think about that scene to this day, and continue to push myself."

Related: What it's like to become a NASA astronaut: 10 surprising facts

But the medical scenes of the movie also underlie some of the controversy of "The Right Stuff" film, which some of the older astronauts said was not an accurate rendition of their training. "Tom Wolfe's coverage of it was pretty good. The movie was lousy, but Tom Wolfe's coverage in the book, I thought, wasn't bad at all," Glenn, who died in 2016, told NASA in a 1997 oral interview.

Fellow Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, another of the main characters of the book and the movie, told NASA in 1999 that he had "great affection" for Wolfe, but some troubles with the movie based upon his book.

"He is a bright, bright, fine man; and I think the film is a great film," said Carpenter, who died in 2013. "I'm asked about it frequently, and people say, 'Does it tell the truth?' And I say what I believe: that the book and the movie, for that matter, are truthful ... both of them take some literary license with facts, but only nonessential facts. The important details portrayed by both the book and the film are presented accurately."

The movie also provoked strong opinions from some of those who joined the NASA astronaut corps later in the 1960s, during the Gemini and Apollo programs. Those astronauts interacted directly with the real-life people featured in "The Right Stuff," allowing them to think critically about the story's accuracy.

"I haven't read the book critically. I'm not sure I've read it all," Gemini astronaut and Apollo 11 moonwalker Neil Armstrong, who died in 2012, told NASA in 2001. "I did see the movie. I thought it was very good filmmaking, but terrible history. The wrong people working on the wrong projects at the wrong times. It bears no resemblance whatever to what was actually going on."

NASA space shuttle astronaut Joe Allen was selected to join the astronaut corps in 1967 and became familiar with many of the personalities portrayed in the book, which he talked about in a NASA oral history in 2003. "These [people] are, in many ways ... personified by the description of Tom Wolfe in the book 'The Right Stuff'. He exaggerates it ... but he underscores a mindset of these people. They're a very extraordinary group, and they, no choice of their own, found themselves in an extremely high-profile job because of the wild enthusiasm in the eyes of the American public [for] this extraordinary undertaking and adventure."

Mindset was also what Gemini and Apollo astronaut Jim McDivitt focused on in his NASA interview in 1999. "If you've seen 'The Right Stuff', that [training approach] really came out of the [U.S. Air Force] Test Pilot School," McDivitt said. "We taught each other. We just sort of divided up the things that we wanted to [and] thought we ought to learn, and then one of us would bone up on that and then we'd teach the other guys."

At least some astronauts, however, used "The Right Stuff" as cultural touchstones to discuss milestones in their training. Gerald Carr was selected by NASA in 1966 and flew during the Skylab 4 space station mission in 1973.

"Our [qualification] physical was very much like the one that they show in the movie 'The Right Stuff', just about all the same stuff," Carr said to NASA in 2000; he died earlier this year. "We didn't have any of the comedians like [astronaut] Pete Conrad in the movie, but there was lots of good memories about that. It's an unforgettable experience, I'll tell you."

John Blaha, a space shuttle astronaut of the 1980s, recalled a different facet of "The Right Stuff" after his STS-29 crew was invited to The White House in 1989 to meet then-President George H. W. Bush, during a presidential phone call to the space shuttle.

"Did you see that movie, 'The Right Stuff'?" Blaha said during his NASA interview in 2004. "You know that one area in there where one of the wives says something to the effect of, 'I can't wait until we go to the White House and see Jackie [First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy],' or something like that. Well, that was true of space flights. So now when [Bush] said that on-orbit, it was kind of like, 'Hey, we get to go to the White House and see George.' "

Blaha, who eventually took Bush up on the invitation, laughed at the memory. "That was a fun thing," he added.

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These astronauts read Tom Wolfe's 'The Right Stuff' and flew in space. Here what it meant to them. - Space.com

Newswise Scientists have made significant progress in understanding the sources of radiation events that could impact human space-flight operations. Relativistic Electron Precipitation (REP) events are instances when high energy electrons move through areas of space at significant fractions of the speed of light. These REP events may pose challenges to human spaceflight, specifically during extravehicular activity (EVA).

These hazards motivate the question of whether REP events can be forecasted in order to avoid unnecessary human exposure to radiation. In order to predict REP events, their cause must first be determined.

A scientific team led by researchers at the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) in Japan has made strides in answering that question. Their findings were published on August 14 in theJournal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics.

Ryuho Kataoka, the lead author of the study and an associate professor at NIPR, pinpointed the cause of REP events and emphasized that REP events must be accounted for in human spaceflight missions.

"The importance of understanding REP events has been increasing since the REP events have been clearly identified at International Space Station (ISS)," Kataoka said. "REP events are important because they cause radiation dose during EVAs."

It has been hypothesized that electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) waves play an important role in REP events at the ISS. It was still an open question, however, whether other mechanisms played a role in REP event generation. EMIC waves are electromagnetic waves that propagate through the plasma in Earth's magnetosphere, causing disturbances in the charged particles within the plasma.

Using multiple sensors aboard the ISS, as well as data from the Arase satellite, the research group was able to show that at least three separate processes contributed to REP events. One is indeed EMIC waves. But the data also suggested two other sources: Whistler mode chorus waves and electrostatic whistler waves. Whistler mode waves can be excited by high energy electrons associated with auroral activities, such as the Northern Lights.

"It turned out that REP events at the ISS are caused not only by EMIC waves but also by whistler mode waves, which makes the space weather forecast more difficult," Kataoka said.

With a better understanding of the physical causes of REP events, Kataoka and his team are working towards ways to predict future events. "The next step is the space weather forecast of REP events at the ISS by modeling different kinds of plasma wave activities. The ultimate goal is to obtain a unified theory to understand the interaction between energetic particles and plasma waves, and their impact of radiation dose on the atmosphere, space craft, and human beings."

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About National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR)

The NIPR engages in comprehensive research via observation stations in Arctic and Antarctica. As a member of the Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS), the NIPR provides researchers throughout Japan with infrastructure support for Arctic and Antarctic observations, plans and implements Japan's Antarctic observation projects, and conducts Arctic researches of various scientific fields such as the atmosphere, ice sheets, the ecosystem, the upper atmosphere, the aurora and the Earth's magnetic field. In addition to the research projects, the NIPR also organizes the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition and manages samples and data obtained during such expeditions and projects. As a core institution in researches of the polar regions, the NIPR also offers graduate students with a global perspective on originality through its doctoral program. For more information about the NIPR, please visit:https://www.nipr.ac.jp/english/

About the Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS)

The Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS)is a parent organization of four national institutes (National Institute of Polar Research, National Institute of Informatics, the Institute of Statistical Mathematics and National Institute of Genetics) and the Joint Support-Center for Data Science Research. It is ROIS's mission to promote integrated, cutting-edge research that goes beyond the barriers of these institutions, in addition to facilitating their research activities, as members of inter-university research institutes.

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On the trail of causes of radiation events during space flight - Newswise