Chandrayaan 2 launch.

Saturday, October 10 marks the conclusion of this years International Space Weekan annual celebration of science and technology as well as their contribution towards the betterment of the human condition. Over the past few decades, exponential growth in science and technology has allowed humanity to take gigantic leaps in understanding our planet and exploring far-off cosmic worlds that lie beyond our physical reach. In return, space science has helped humanity advance in all fields of science and ameliorate human conditions.

India too, over recent years, has become a notable contributor to the field of space science and exploration. In addition to the incredible research from Indian astronomers, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has been taking the nation to greater heights and unexplored territoriesquite literally. With a hunger to explore more and understand better, the Indian space agency has no intentions of slowing down any time soon. And while the COVID-19 pandemic may have delayed some plans to an extent, ISRO has some major projects lined-up just for the next two years.

Here are ISROs five upcoming space missions that it aims to launch by the year 2022:

The first of ISROs upcoming missions will be the Radar Imaging Satellite 1A, or RISAT-1A. A land-based mission, this remote sensing satellites primary application will be in terrain mapping and analysis of land, ocean, and water surface for soil moisture.

RISAT-1A will be the sixth in the series of RISAT satellitesIndian radar imaging reconnaissance satellites built by ISRO that provide all-weather surveillance using synthetic aperture radars (SAR).

These radars can be used for Earth observation irrespective of the light and weather conditions of the area being imaged. RISAT-1A will provide continuity of service for RISAT-1, which was launched on April 26, 2012.

The satellite will carry payloads (instruments) for three categories, each consisting of different parametersLand (Albedo and reflectance, soil moisture, vegetation, and multi-purpose imagery), Ocean (Ocean topography/currents), and Snow & Ice (Ice sheet topography, Snow cover, edge and depth; Sea ice cover, edge, and thickness).

While its launch date is yet to be confirmed, reports indicate that it may take-off by late 2020 or early 2021, using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).

Last year, the Chandrayaan-2 mission not only took India to the Moon, but it also made ISRO a household name across the country. And while the failure to perform a soft landing on the lunar surface prevented the mission from being a 100% success, those incomplete objectives will soon be achieved through ISROs next lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3.

Chandrayaan-2 was a reasonably successful mission, said Dr Abhay Deshpande, a Senior Scientist working for the Government of India and the Honorary Secretary of Khagol Mandal (a non-profit collective of astronomy enthusiasts). The only setback we have faced is that through Chandrayaan-3, we now have to repeat some of the work that was supposed to be done by Chandrayaan-2. This has effectively delayed ISROs timeline and postponed some of its future missions. But other than this, there is nothing that needs to be done differently for Chandrayaan-3. I believe we will take all the necessary precautions, and achieve success in this mission, he added.

C3 is expected to retain the heritage of its predecessor while sporting a configuration that allows robust design and capacity enhancement for mission flexibility. Further, considering the C2 Orbiter continues to function optimally, the C3 mission will only consist of a lander and a rover. This also makes the mission more economical, with ISRO chairman K. Sivan estimating it to be worth 615 crore rupees. In comparison, C2 cost India 970 crore rupees.

The type of payloads C3 will carry remains unknown as of now, but if it retains all the main objectives of C2, it is likely to consist of payloads identical to those within Vikram Lander and Pragyan Rover that were destroyed during the hard landing.

The mission is likely to be launched somewhere in early 2021, as per an announcement made by Jitendra Singh, the Minister of State for the Department of Space, in early September 2020.

Having made strides in the field of unmanned space exploration, ISRO is now on the verge of launching the Indian Human Spaceflight Programme through its Gaganyaan mission. The Gaganyaan, which means Sky Craft in Sanskrit, is a crewed orbital spacecraft jointly manufactured by ISRO, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), and the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).

Representative image

In the maiden crewed mission, which has been scheduled for December 2021, the 3.7-tonne capsule will orbit the Earth at a 400 km altitude for up to seven days, with a crew of one to three persons on board. Prior to his crewed mission, however, ISRO has also planned two uncrewed orbital test flights of the Gaganyaan capsulethe first in December 2020 and the second, July 2021.

While the crewed launch is still more than a year away, the biggest challenge of the entire mission may arrive much before the launchduring the human training phase, according to Dr. Deshpande.

Shedding light on this potential block, he told The Weather Channel: At present, the Indian astronauts are preparing for the mission in Russia, training in a simulated zero gravity environment to get accustomed to the harsh conditions of space. But at some point of time, we will have to train them on the Indian soil, for which we will have to create our own simulation and training centres. This could be one of the toughest parts of the mission, considering our lack of experience and data in this field.

While these challenges do lie in the way, they are manageable, and the overall Gaganyaan mission is expected to proceed smoothly. In fact, its successful completion will mark Indias entry to the human spaceflight programs, while simultaneously boosting the countrys space ambitions and opening doors of imagination for many Indians. For more information on the mission, click here.

So far, the year 2020 has been the year of Solar Physicsin January, US-based National Science Foundation's Inouye Solar Telescope released the most detailed images of the Sun ever; a month later, NASA and ESA launched their Solar Orbiter; and just last month, the Parker Solar Probe made its closest approach to the Sun, managing to get within 13.5 million kilometres of the solar surface.

India, too, hopes to add to these achievements and contribute its own share to the field by January 2022 through Aditya-L1, the first Indian Solar Coronagraph spacecraft mission to study the solar coronathe outermost part of the Suns atmosphere. While ISRO initially envisaged it as a small low-Earth orbiting satellite with a coronagraph, the scope of the mission has since expanded to make it a comprehensive solar and space environment observatory.

Five Lagrangian points. Position of Telescope at L2. Aditya will be at L1.

Aditya will be placed near the Lagrangian Point L1, one of the five points between the Earth and the Sun where the gravity seems to balance. This very fact allows any spacecraft placed on such Lagrangian points to go around the Sun-Earth system without requiring much fuel.

Aditya will have seven payloads: Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC), Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT), Aditya Solar wind Particle Experiment (ASPEX), Plasma Analyser Package for Aditya (PAPA), Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer (SoLEXS), High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer (HEL1OS), and Magnetometer.

Together, these payloads will help Aditya-L1 observe the Sun's photosphere, chromosphere, and corona; the magnetic fields of the solar wind and solar magnetic storms; and the overall space environment around Earth, among other phenomena. They will also help us gain a comprehensive understanding of the dynamical processes of the Sun, while addressing some of the outstanding problems in solar physics and heliophysics. For more information on the mission, click here.

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) is a joint project between NASA and ISRO to co-develop and launch the first ever dual-frequency synthetic aperture radar on an Earth observation satellite. With an estimated total cost of US$1.5 billion, it is likely to be the world's most expensive Earth-imaging satellite.

Artist's Concept of NISAR

NISARs main objective will be to observe and measure some of the Earth's most complex natural processes, including the evolution of Earths crust, ecosystem disturbances, ice-sheet collapse, changing climate, and natural calamities like earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, etc. To do this, it will use advanced radar imaging to map the elevation of Earth's land and ice masses at resolutions of 5 to 10 metres.

All data collected by this satellite will be made available for all 1-2 days after observation, and even within hours in case of emergencies and disasters.

ISROs role in the mission will be to provide the satellite bus, an S band synthetic aperture radar, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services, whereas NASA will supply the L band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), a high-rate telecommunication subsystem for scientific data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and a payload data subsystem.

It will be launched from India aboard a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle in September 2022, with a planned mission life of three years.

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Space Week: From Human Spaceflight to Studying Sun, ISRO's Upcoming Missions Aim to Transform Indian Space Exploration - The Weather Channel

The United Arab Emirates has joined the roll-call of nations looking to visit the moon, with a lunar rover named Rashid scheduled to launch in 2024.

The announcement comes while the nation's first mission beyond Earth orbit, a Mars spacecraft called Hope, is still trekking out to the Red Planet. That mission is a science-minded endeavor meant to study how Mars' climate and atmosphere work from orbit. The new lunar mission is of a different flavor, focused more on developing technologies and evaluating concerns before crewed and longer-duration exploration missions leave Earth and land on other worlds.

"There are many scientific objectives behind this mission that will help us to better understand the moon," Adnan AlRais of the UAE's Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) told Space.com, "but also in the long run to support our ultimate goal, sending humans to Mars and building settlements on Mars."

Related: The United Arab Emirates' Hope Mars mission in photos

AlRais heads up the agency's Mars 2117 program, which was established in 2017 to target landing humans on Mars within a century. As part of the program, the UAE is developing a "Mars Science City" in the desert and taking part in practice Red Planet missions at analog facilities, among other activities.

Meanwhile, the nation's astronaut program is selecting two new spaceflyers to double its ranks. The UAE currently has two astronauts, one of whom spent a week on the International Space Station in 2019, and recently sent them to NASA's Johnson Space Center for additional training.

And that's all going on while the UAE prepares for the Hope spacecraft's orbital arrival at Mars in February.

For a space program less than two decades old, the newly announced lunar mission marks a foray beyond the existing focus areas of Earth-observation satellites, human spaceflight and Mars exploration.

The decision to target a lunar rover stems from the international recognition of the moon as a stepping stone to Mars, a nearby world to test technologies before committing to the monthslong voyage to the Red Planet.

"It makes sense to go to the moon," Hamad Al Marzooqi, project manager for the new lunar mission, told Space.com. "The moon is nearer to Earth than Mars and it will allow us to do high-frequency missions," although he declined to elaborate on what sort of future missions the agency is considering.

The team's current focus, he said, is on this initial lunar rover, dubbed Rashid after the late Sheik Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the current sheik's father and one of the founders of the UAE, according to the Associated Press. The UAE has not yet selected the rocket that will launch the rover in 2024.

The team also still needs to select a landing site from among five finalists, Al Marzooqi said. Those candidate sites, all located in the equatorial region of the near side of the moon, are locations that have never been visited by landed spacecraft, he added.

"We plan to go and explore new areas that have not been explored during previous missions and that will allow us to do interesting science," Al Marzooqi said.

The four-wheeled rover's task list is a bit of a smorgasbord, determined more by the landing site and the instruments the team believes it can manage than by an overarching scientific narrative. Rashid will carry a high-resolution camera, a thermal imager and a microscopic imager to tell scientists about the dusty lunar regolith (moon dirt) and the probe's surroundings.

It will also carry a Langmuir probe, an instrument that will study a particularly strange phenomenon on the moon. The solar wind, a constant stream of charged particles flowing off the sun, continually bombards the dayside lunar surface, since the moon has no atmosphere to stop these particles. The result is a slight positive charge to the dayside surface and in turn, a negatively charged photoelectron sheath about 3 feet (1 meter) tall above it.

The phenomenon may contribute to the stickiness of lunar dust that so frustrated Apollo-era exploration, a potential concern already on the minds of those looking to return to the moon. Al Marzooqi said no Langmuir probe has ever reached the lunar surface and he hopes Rashid's will address this ongoing mystery.

The rover will also test experimental spacesuit materials to evaluate how they withstand the harsh lunar environment. And although Rashid's primary mission will last just one lunar day (about 14 Earth days), the rover will carry experimental software that will monitor instruments' temperatures and regulate their power, with the goal of waking them up again once the frigid lunar night ends, Al Marzooqi said.

Related: Hazzaa AlMansoori: The 1st Emirati astronaut's space mission in photos

To date, three nations have successfully soft-landed on the moon: the then-Soviet Union, the U.S. and China. Two countries attempted to join that list last year but failed: Both Israel's Beresheet lander and the Vikram lander of India's Chandrayaan-2 mission experienced glitches during the landing process and didn't slow down enough to survive the impact.

Al Marzooqi said those missions were on the Rashid team's mind looking ahead to a 2024 landing attempt.

"I was disappointed to see those failed missions," he said. "When you see failed missions before your mission, you need to understand the risk better in order to make sure that we don't follow the same path."

But that risk is also the price of admission, the UAE knows.

"There is no space mission with 100% success rate," Al Marzooqi said.

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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UAE will launch its first moon rover in 2024 - Space.com

Have you ever wanted to help scientists find exoplanets, worlds orbiting distant stars? Well, nows your chance! NASA has just launched a new citizen science website called Planet Patrol,a collaboration between NASA, the SETI Institute, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and Zooniverse. Volunteers will assist astronomers by looking through images taken by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), NASAs newest planet-hunter, which was launched in 2018.

As described on the Planet Patrol website:

NASAs Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission will take pictures of more than a million stars to search for planets orbiting them, called transiting exoplanets. We expect this mission will see thousands of these transiting exoplanets when they pass in front of nearby stars and periodically block some of the starlight.

But sometimes when a star dims like that, its not because of a planet. Variable stars, eclipsing binary stars, blended stars, glitches in the data, etc., can cause a similar effect. We need your help to spot these imposters!

At Planet Patrol, youll help us check the data from the TESS mission, one image at a time, to make sure that objects we suspect are planets REALLY are planets.

Artists illustration of TESS. Planet Patrol uses data from the space telescope to search for exoplanets orbiting far-away stars. Image via NASA/ Goddard Space Flight Center.

The objective is twofold: search for planetary candidates in the data, as well as planetary imposters, other objects or phenomena that could be mimicking a planet. Project leader Veselin Kostov of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center said in a statement:

Automated methods of processing TESS data sometimes fail to catch imposters that look like exoplanets. The human eye is extremely good at spotting such imposters, and we need citizen scientists to help us distinguish between the look-alikes and genuine planets.

This also explains why human volunteers (3,968 at the time of this writing!) are needed in the first place. TESS collects a lot of data, hundreds of thousands of images in a year. Since according to scientists most stars have planets,each image could contain thousands of unseen planets. When you multiply that by the thousands of images, it becomes a daunting task to try to find the stars where planets are transiting in front of them, from our viewpoint (keeping in mind that many planets will have orbits that dont transit). Computers can detect many or even most of such transits, but they are not perfect. This is especially true for smaller planets, like Earth, in larger orbits far out from their stars.

Scientists have discovered over 4,000 exoplanets so far, of many different kinds, as represented in this artists concept. With the publics help, they should find many more as well. Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech).

The Planet Patrol volunteers will help find the planets that the computer algorithms miss, but they will also assist with something just as valuable: weeding out false positives. Sometimes, what appears to be a planet transiting its star isnt actually a planet at all. Other possibilities include binary star systems, where two stars orbit each other around their common center of mass, and so alternately eclipse each other periodically. Other times, what seems to be a transit is actually just changes in brightness of a star itself. Still another kind of false alarm is simply errors or quirks in the observing instruments themselves.

All of those possibilities need to be eliminated before a candidate planet can actually be declared a confirmed discovery.

It can be tricky, of course, separating the real planets from the false ones, but on the new website, volunteers can ask questions about each image they study. This helps the TESS team narrow down the list of potential planets to the ones that are the most promising. Theres also the Planet Patrol Talk community where participants can discuss their findings with each other as well. As Marc Kuchner, Citizen Science Officer for NASAs Science Mission Directorate, described the process:

Were all swimming through the same sea of data, just using different strokes. Planet Hunters TESS asks volunteers to look at light curves, which are graphs of stars brightness over time. Planet Patrol asks them to look at the TESS image directly, although we plan to also include light curves for those images in the future.

Veselin Kostov of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, Project Leader at Planet Patrol. Image viaVeselin B. Kostov.

Over 4,000 exoplanets have been discovered so far in our galaxy, ranging from scorching hot Jupiters to smaller and cooler rocky worlds like Earth. Astronomers now estimate that almost every star has at least one planet and that the total number of planets may outnumber the stars in our galaxy. Thats a staggering thought.

Planet Patrol is not only a new way to help find distant worlds that might otherwise be missed; it is also a great way for the public to become involved and engaged. There are still many planetary candidates from TESS to be examined, and TESS is expected to find thousands more, so this is a great time to learn how to go planet-hunting.

Bottom line: NASA has launched a new website called Planet Patrol where volunteers can help search for exoplanets.

Via NASA

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NASAs Planet Patrol wants you to join the search for exoplanets - EarthSky

While launch schedules are beginning to return to normal, the satellite industry will likely be feeling long-term effects from the pandemic. Under strict lockdown regulations, many satellite developers have been unable to continue development at pre-COVID-19 speed, and taken together with issues up and down the supply chain, the industry will certainly see a broad impact in speed of development. In this background, flexibility is critical to combating the unpredictability of timelines and implications they have on launch schedules, believes Grant Bonin, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Spaceflight Inc.

Before the pandemic, a Bryce report found that 100% of all commercial smallsat launches experienced some form of launch delay. Delays leave satellite developers unable to get revenue-generating assets on orbit on time and unable to demonstrate a satellites capabilities, limiting opportunities for future funding. While launch delays will never disappear completely, flexibility can mitigate negative impacts, he explains.

Initially, a lot of VC-backed companies press pause and take austerity measures, but as the current pandemic has drawn out, it is being observed that commercial companies are recognizing that the best way to create value is by launching and operating their satellites. So were seeing the market rebound in a fairly powerful way. The industry has proven more resilient than even we thought there are many great companies out there, and great companies will always get funded and need launch, he underlines. Of course, there could be a ripple effect in this regard that wont fully be understood for another six to 12 months.

In an exhaustive interview, Bonin talks about the impact of the pandemic on the industry, and how Spacelight is providing the much-needed flexibility in launches that the industry so desperately needs to tackle some of the unpredictable challenges.

ALSO READ: Satellogic teams up with European Space Imaging and others to launch global consortium of imagery

In the short term weve seen a lot of disruption to the majority of launch schedules this year. However, were now seeing launches pick back up again. For example, the VV16 Vega mission was supposed to launch in the spring of 2020, following a failure on a previous launch, but this mission was delayed following a variety of lockdowns across the globe. The mission successfully launched in September, sending more than 50 satellites to orbit. Spaceflight has three more launches scheduled this year, with several others slated for quarter one of next year.

With longer-term effects, I anticipate well see some disruption in satellite readiness for launch dates scheduled before the pandemic. Under strict lockdown regulations, many satellite developers have been unable to continue development at pre-COVID-19 speed, and taken together with issues up and down the supply chain, we certainly see a broad impact in speed of development. We fully expect to see a ripple effect in this regard that wont fully be understood for another six to 12 months: but thats where Spaceflights launch flexibility really becomes of substantial value.

When delays occur, we can re-manifest our customers on another launch via our global launch vehicle network. Additionally, we recently announced several other programs, including multi-launch subscription services for launch, fully-transparent pricing, a Book My Launch platform, new vehicle and launch contracts, and our next-generation Sherpa orbital transfer vehicle, to take customers from the airport to the hotel in comfort. All of these programs are designed to help our customers get to exactly the orbit they want, exactly when they want. Spaceflight offers launch schedule assurance and greatest flexibility to smallsat customers needing frequent, reliable, and cost-effective ways to get spacecraft on orbit.

The biggest impact Spaceflight experienced was the disruption to launch schedules. For many of our clients, we execute the integration of satellites, so we are on site for launches and supporting weeks of integration work leading up to the launch. Even with the lockdowns, we serviced the customers above and beyond. Now were seeing things return to normal with regards to launch schedules.

From the booking perspective, things have not slowed. We are still working with many clients, existing and new, to schedule upcoming launches. Similar to many organizations, our team is largely working remotely (though as with many in the aerospace sector, we have been deemed essential and engineering activities continue at our Auburn facility). Before the pandemic struck, we were already set up to work across time zones to service customers, so we adapted to it with ease and have continued to keep everything on track with our customers. Finally, with the recent introduction of our Mission Control platform, an online portal that allows customers to easily access mission statuses, learn about key deliverables and view updates, has enabled our customers to see the progression of their mission online and provides an easy way for them to coordinate with their mission manager.

Weve been making our moves into the digital realm quickly, to make sure that in this new world we all find ourselves in, were still reliable and easy to book launches through.

The major downside for us, as with many companies, has actually been the loss of in-person water-cooler conversations. The team at Spaceflight thrives on internal and customer interactions; we miss hanging out!

Spaceflight intends to change the way customers get delivered into orbit. Conventional approaches to booking (and paying for) launch are arcane and transactional. Were drawing on the best insights of the best service providers across many different industries to revolutionize the launch experience.

First, our new overall booking process was born out of a desire to create a customer experience that is seamless and convenient. Our online booking portal allows customers to easily find launch options and book the ones that suit their needs, much as they would book (or change) any other flight. Next is the ability to move spacecraft from one launch to another launch in the case of a delay. This entails moving from one vehicle and integration facility to another and the launch sites can be a country apart. The team at Spaceflight has deep expertise across a variety of launch vehicles, ensuring a smooth integration process for customers. Finally, our Sherpa OTV program completes the picture, letting us provide the much-advertised but not yet realized last mile delivery service, enabling satellites to reach almost any exact orbit from any launch to common orbits.

Spaceflight is changing the way people think about launch deals by offering exactly that: subscription services for launch. Price is always critical, but in this industry, cash is king. Spaceflight has pioneered new launch deal structures that give maximum flexibility as well as correspondingly great cashflow terms to customers. The aerospace industry has always traded on being the pointy end of the sword technically, but virtually all other industries have surpassed it in terms of customer service. We aggressively learn from other sectors about how to best serve customers, and putting customers first.

ALSO READ: Satellite data nails Chinese fishing fleet near ecologically sensitive Galpagos Islands

Now more than ever, cash is king in the space industry. As the acceptance of subscription models rises for consumer and business goods in other industries, from everything from software and entertainment to pet food, we believe its a model that could also benefit the space industry. In an industry as unpredictable and risky as the space industry, subscription models provide certainty. Under our new ownership, we are uniquely poised to offer it, to the benefit of both our customers and our launch providers.

For launch vehicle providers implementing a subscription model allows launchers to gain predictable insight into their own cash flow. It helps them capitalize on the compounding value of customer relationships and commit to providing exceptional service. Predictability, like cash, is highly valued in our business.

For satellite developers, subscriptions can help them maintain some schedule consistency and predictability. Developers can have an extra level of flexibility by securing capacity on a wide range of launch vehicles rather than just one, enabling the payloads to easily spread across multiple vehicles to minimize risk.

While conventionally, the space industry is inherently inflexible and quite challenging, subscription models bring consistency and reliability for both launchers and satellite developers.

Spaceflight has recently signed a number of multi-launch agreements, which enables us to offer our smallsat customers a diverse portfolio of launch options and extensive launch capacity. In June, we signed a multi-launch agreement with SpaceX. This agreement secures rideshare capacity to launch payloads on several SpaceX missions through the end of 2021. Additionally, we signed a launch services agreement with Firefly Aerospace in April 2020 to maximize launch capacity on the commercial Alpha mission.

We are always evaluating new vehicle entrants and securing capacity with the goal to open space access for more smallsats.

Our Sherpa orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) product will enable satellites to be deployed to anywhere on orbit, even if the initial launch drops them off in a non-ideal orbit. Satellites that require a specific orbit dont often have many launch options available, so if they are able to catch a ride to a common orbital destination and finish in an orbit that is harder to reach, the number of launches available to them will increase dramatically.

Other companies have been advertising this for years, but we generally find either their technology is intrinsically flawed, their business model is unsustainable, or they cant access the broad range of launch vehicle providers that Spaceflight can. Spaceflights Sherpa program pre-dates almost all in-space transportation solutions, and weve revamped it with the current state of the art in propulsion, radiation-tolerant avionics, and high-accuracy control and telemetry systems to deliver customers quickly (hours to days) and accurately to their final destination in space, in a way no one else can achieve.

Typically, launches that meet satellite developers orbit requests are pricey and may warrant purchasing a whole rocket, but recent innovations in hardware development have proven a promising future to make last mile delivery possible. Specifically, orbital transfer vehicles, such as Spaceflights Sherpa-FX vehicle, are paving the way to create flexible manifest changes, enabling deployment to multiple altitudes and orbital planes, all while offering rapid launch solutions.

The debut of Spaceflights Sherpa-NG (next generation) program will occur later this year, with its first OTV, Sherpa-FX, launching 16 satellites. This hardware is one of the many innovative solutions coming to the market that will allow smallsat payloads to ride on large vehicles, which offer low-cost options, while getting to their preferred orbit coordinates.

The Sherpa-NG program will host a family of space vehicles, continuing the tradition of Spaceflights first orbital free flyer on the SSO-A mission. The new orbital transfer vehicle, Sherpa-FX, will be capable of executing multiple satellite deployments to multiple orbits, as well as providing independent and detailed deployment telemetry for customers and flexible interfaces. Spaceflight delivers value that outweighs the premium costs for launch.

Be flexible. There are countless ways businesses are affected by the pandemic and its important to be adaptable and flexible and find innovative solutions. And that flexibility is something we are constantly focused on offering to our customers. That flexibility may help them manage the impacts of pandemic and find a new launch that better suits their needs. We are hopeful that businesses will survive these unique circumstances and that the industry will bounce back stronger.

At the same time, be aggressive: unfortunate as our current global circumstances are, there are huge opportunities that arise from hardship that can allow companies to create great value and improve the world.

One striking thing about all our customers is that they want to do something importantwhether its defending their country or improving it, everyone who comes to us with launch needs tends to be passionate and devoted to their cause. Space is our shared high-ground, and excitement for what we can do up there hasnt diminished. We would lastly encourage companies to be bold, take big swings, and remember that history isnt a spectator sport. Our achievements up there long-outlive our companies and lives down here.

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Why flexibility is critical for launch industry to tide over current unpredictabilities - Geospatial World

Arianespace's Vega rocket is scheduled to fly tonight (Sept. 2) for the first time in more than a year.

The four-stage Vega last launched in July 2019, and that mission did not go well. The 98-foot-tall (30 meters) rocket's second-stage motor suffered an anomaly, resulting in the loss of the Vega and its payload, the United Arab Emirates' Falcon Eye 1 Earth-observation satellite.

But Vega is set to end its long spaceflight hiatus in grand style. The rocket's return-to-flight mission, which will deliver 53 satellites to orbit, is scheduled to launch tonight (Sept. 1) from the Guiana Space Center in South America at 9:51 p.m. EDT (10:51 p.m. local time; 0151 GMT on Sept. 3). You can watch the action live here at Space.com, courtesy of Arianespace, or directly via Arianespace on YouTube.

Related: Europe's Vega rocket in photos

Tonight's mission is known as both the Small Spacecraft Mission Service proof-of-concept flight and Flight VV16. It will loft into sun-synchronous orbit seven microsatellites that weigh between 33 lbs. and 330 lbs. (15 to 150 kilograms), as well 46 smaller cubesats.

The payloads, which represent 13 nations and 21 different customers, are intended for Earth observation, telecommunications, science, technology and education. All 53 satellites will be deployed by about 1 hour and 45 minutes after launch, if all goes according to plan.

Initially scheduled to launch on June 18, Flight VV16 has been delayed several times due to unfavorable wind conditions at the Guiana Space Center. The current launch window runs from tonight through Friday (Sept. 4), according to a statement from France-based Arianespace.

"With this mission, Arianespace is underscoring its comprehensive range of innovative and competitive services to address the nano- and microsatellite market sub-segment, serving both institutional and commercial needs," the statement reads.

Arianespace plans to launch more such rideshare missions using its next-generation launcher, Vega-C, which offers enhanced payload performance, company representatives said.

Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Vega rocket launching on return-to-flight mission tonight: Watch it live - Space.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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

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

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

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

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

Related: SpaceX's Starlink satellite megaconstellation launches in photos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Virgin Galactic

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

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

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

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

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Space weather prediction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Jim Steele, The University of Alabama in Huntsville

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About Brainchip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN)

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

About VORAGO

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

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

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

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

Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken are seen Sunday aboard a helicopter that carried from the SpaceXs Go Navigator recovery ship in the Gulf of Mexico to Naval Air Station Pensacola, where they boarded a NASA jet for a flight back to their home base in Houston. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Two days after becoming the first U.S. space fliers splash down in the sea in more than 45 years, astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on Tuesday described their fiery ride back to Earth aboard SpaceXs Crew Dragon capsule to cap a flawless test flight, setting the stage for operational flights beginning later this year.

Riding in their commercial Crew Dragon spacecraft, which they named Endeavour, the astronauts parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico Sunday after plunging through Earths atmosphere on a return trip from the International Space Station.

I personally expected there to be certainly not issues with the vehicle but some challenges, some things that were maybe not quite what we expected, said Hurley, the Crew Dragons spacecraft commander, and a veteran of two prior space shuttle flights. I mean, even on our shuttle flights we had things that happened something that you certainly wouldnt have expected in a real flight.

My credit once again is to the folks at SpaceX, the production folks, the people that put Endeavour together, and certainly our training folks, Hurley said. The mission went just like the simulators. Honestly, from start to finish, all the way, there were really no surprises.

Hurley and Behnken launched May 30 on top of a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, becoming the first astronauts to launch into orbit from U.S. soil since the retirement of the space shuttle nearly a decade ago. The next day, the duo docked with the space station to join commander Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner.

Behnken joined Cassidy on four spacewalks in June and July to finish a multi-year effort to upgrade batteries on the space stations solar power truss. Hurley assisted with operating the stations Canadian-built robotic arm, and both Dragon astronauts helped perform maintenance, scientific experiments and other tasks during their two-month stint on the orbiting research lab.

But the prime objective of Hurley and Behnkens mission designated Demo-2, or DM-2 was to verify the performance and capabilities of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. They were the first astronauts to fly into space on a Crew Dragon, following the unpiloted Demo-1 test flight to the space station in March 2019.

The final major task for the Crew Dragon Endeavour spaceship was the return to Earth.

Hurley and Behnken floated into the capsule Saturday, and the ship autonomously detached from the space station. A series of maneuvers using the Dragons Draco thrusters steered the capsule a safe distance from the station and lined up with the targeted recovery zone in the Gulf of Mexico roughly 34 miles (54 kilometers) off the coast near Pensacola, Florida.

A final 11-minute deorbit burn allowed the Crew Dragon to drop back into the atmosphere. A thermal shield protected the capsule and the astronauts inside from the scorching heat of re-entry, and temperatures outside the spacecraft were expected to reach up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,900 degrees Celsius).

As expected, a sheath of plasma around the spacecraft blocked communications for several minutes between the astronauts and SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California. Mission control regained contact with the crew moments before the capsule deployed two drogue parachutes to stabilize its descent through the atmosphere, then unfurled four large orange and white main chutes to slow the capsule to about 15 mph (24 kilometers per hour) for splashdown.

Hurley and Behnken were the first U.S. astronauts to return to Earth for a water landing since the Apollo-Soyuz mission in July 1975.

The Crew Dragons return to Earthwas more than what Doug and I expected, said Behnken, who served as the spacecrafts pilot.

As we kind of descended through the atmosphere, I personally was surprised at just how quickly the events all transpired, Behnken told reporters Tuesday. It seemed just like a couple minutes later after the (deorbit) burn was complete, we could look out the windows and see the clouds rushing by at a much accelerated rate.

Once we descended a little bit into the atmosphere, Dragon really came alive, Behnken said. It started to fire thrusters and keep us pointed in the appropriate direction. The atmosphere starts to make noise. You can hear that rumble outside the vehicle, and as the vehicle tries to control, you feel that little bit of shimmy in your body. And our bodies were much better attuned to the environment, so we could feel those small rolls, pitches, and yaws. All those little motions were things we could pick up on inside the vehicle.

It took just 12 minutes from the time that the Crew Dragon encountered the uppermost reaches of the discernible atmosphere until splashdown. NASAs winged space shuttles made a more gradual descent, taking roughly 30 minutes from the start of re-entry until touchdown on a runway.

As we descended, through the atmosphere, the thrusters were firing almost continuously, Behnken said. I did record some audio of it, but it doesnt sound like a machine, it sounds like an animal coming through the atmosphere with all the puffs that are happening from the thrusters and the atmospheric noise. It just continues to gain magnitude as you descend down through the atmosphere. I think we both really, really noticed that aspect of things.

Behnken, a 50-year-old veteran of two space shuttle missions, also described what the crew felt when the Crew Dragons trunk section jettisoned just before the deorbit burn, along with the sensations inside the spaceship when mortars fired to deploy the parachutes.

All the separation events, from the trunk separation through the parachute firings were very much like getting hit in the back of the chair with a baseball bat just a crack, and then you get some sort of a motion associated with that, Behnken said.

He said that feeling was pretty light for the trunk separation, but with the parachutes it was a pretty significant jolt, and a couple of jolts as you go through dis-reefing (expansion) of the parachutes as well.

Behnken said he quoted to Hurley during the re-entry a humorous scene from the 1985 comedy filmSpies Like Us,where Chevy Chase asks DanAykroyd if he wants some coffee after training in a spinning centrifuge.

I took a line from an old movie that Doug and I were both familiar with at one point, he said. Under the G-load of about 4.2 Gs, I said, Want to get some coffee, much like wed seen in an old movie that we had watched because that was really the feeling that we had. Thats the best way to describe if youve seen an old movie that happened to have some guys whod been in a centrifuge. Thats what we felt like.

The Crew Dragon capsule is equipped with an altimeter to estimate the ships altitude using GPS navigation data, and the astronauts were watching the display during the final descent under the parachutes.

Its not super-accurate everywhere that youre located, so we got below zero for our altitude on that indicator, which was a little bit surprising, and then we felt the splash and we saw it splash up over the windows. It was just a great relief, I think, for both of us at that point, Behnken said.

SpaceX provided audio recordings from the Crew Dragons first orbital test flight to help prepare Hurley and Behnken for the ride during launch and re-entry. Behnken said that helped the astronauts know what to expect as the rode the Crew Dragon for the first time.

We were really comfortable coming through the atmosphere even though it felt like we were inside of an animal, Behnken said.

He said it was difficult to see out the windows, which are located near the astronauts feet, during the period of entry with the highest G-loads. Instead, the astronauts focused on their touchscreen displays.

The thermal control system inside the capsule was designed to keep the temperature below 85 degrees Fahrenheit, or 29 degrees Celsius, as temperatures reached their hottest outside the spacecraft during entry.

I do feel like I felt some warming of the capsule on the inside, Behnken said.

Behnken offered a similarly vivid account of the ride into orbit on top of SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket. The astronauts were the first people to rocket into space on a Falcon 9.

By the time the capsule was through the hottest part of re-entry and the G-forces subsided, the capsules windows were blackened from the ordeal. Scorch marks were also visible on the outer skin of the crew capsule, and those were anticipated by SpaceX and NASA.

You can see from just an overall view of the capsule that re-entry is a pretty demanding environment, with the different scorches on the vehicle, and the windows were not spared any of that, Hurley said. To look out the windows, you could basically tell that it was daylight but very little else.

Hurley said the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft was rock solid during the descent back to Earth.

Personally, I expected the entry to diverge somewhat from what we saw in the simulation, Hurley said. What I mean by that is as the capsule gets into the thicker atmosphere just prior to the drogues (parachutes) with Dragon, I expected there to be some divergence in attitude control because its a real tough problem for the ship as it gets into thicker air to maintain perfect attitude control.

He expected the vehicle might command the drogue parachutes to deploy a bit early to help stabilize its attitude, or orientation. That wasnt required Sunday.

The vehicle was rock solid right up until the nominal drogue deploy altitude, Hurley said. You could feel it, you felt the decel (deceleration), you knew the drogues both worked, and then it was the same with the mains. We felt the different stages of dis-reef, and then right to the impact in the water We kind of had a feeling that it would not be as much (of an impact) as a (Russian) Soyuz landing as it was described to us, but it was going to be a pretty firm splashdown, and then even how we bobbed in the water, and how the vehicle sat in the water.

By all accounts, the Crew Dragon aced the test flight. NASA expects to convene a review in late August or early September to formally certify the Crew Dragon for operational crew rotation flights to and from the space station.

Three NASA astronauts and a Japanese astronaut are training for the first operational Crew Dragon mission, known as Crew-1, for launch on a six-month expedition to the space station as soon as late September. Sources said the late September launch schedule is somewhat optimistic, and theres a chance SpaceXs Crew-1 launch might be delayed until after the launch of the next Russian Soyuz crew capsule, which is set for Oct. 14.

So my compliments to SpaceX and the commercial crew program. The vehicle performed exactly how it was supposed to, and you feel really good about Crew-1, and what they should expect and what they should see when they fly their mission, Hurley said.

For now, NASA and SpaceX officials say they remain hopeful for a Crew-1 launch before the end of next month.

After splashdown, the crew waited for SpaceXs recovery team to arrive at the capsule and hoist it onto a recovery vessel. Once on-board the boat, the astronauts waited the SpaceX team to ensure there were no toxic vapors leaking from the capsules propulsion system, then technicians and medical personnel opened the hatch to help Hurley and Behnken out of the spacecraft.

Hurley said the astronauts took some time after splashdown to test out a satellite phone they had on-board. If they had landed off course well away from SpaceXs recovery team, they could have used the phone to call rescue forces.

The astronauts first tried calling SpaceX mission control in California.

When we called they said standby, Hurley said. Sowe decided we would exercise our judgment and use our phone to call some other folks.

Hurley joked Sunday night that the astronauts were making prank satellite phone calls to whoever we could get ahold of, which was kind of fun.

They called NASAs flight director and their wives both veteran astronauts at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Hi, this is Bob and Doug. Were in the ocean.'

This was a great chance to reassure them that we were in the water, we were ok, we were feeling good, Hurley said. And at that point, we were still waiting on SpaceX, so we just decided to call a few other people that we knew their phone numbers.

After getting out of the SpaceX capsule, getting out of their pressure suits and completing initial medical checks, the astronauts rode in a helicopter from SpaceXs recovery vessel to Naval Air Station Pensacola, where they got on a NASA jet for the trip back to their home base in Houston to be reunited with their families.

Their first meal back on Earth? A pizza.

Amid an exercise protocol to help readapt to Earths gravity, the astronauts said they are looking forward to spending time with their families. The astronauts began training for the mission in 2015.

Theres a lot of stuff to do in the next few weeks, Hurley said. Were hoping at some point to take some time off and share some more time with our families since they were the ones that really had to sacrifice over the last five years.

The astronauts said their experience flying the Crew Dragon gives them confidence the spacecraft is ready for regular crew rotation flights, pending analysis of all the data from the Demo-2 mission.

They do need to look at the data from our entry, Behnken said. Its not just the end users anecdotes of how well it performed. They will do a very thorough review, both on the SpaceX side and the NASA side, to make sure that theyre comfortable. But from a crew perspective, I think its definitely ready to go.

There are things that could be improved to make things a little bit more comfortable, or a little bit more efficient inside the vehicle for those crews. But from a crew perspective, I think were perfectly comfortable that Crew-1 is ready when they finish the engineering and analysis associated with certification, Behnken said.

Hurley added that the extension of the Demo-2 missions duration from several days to two months also offered a chance of engineers to gather more data on the capsules performance, increasing confidence that the spacecraft will be ready for the roughly-six Crew-1 mission beginning later this year.

Theres a certification process that Endeavour hasnt completed yet, and it will likely be weeks, Hurley said. From my experience of flying fighters and testing fighters theres a lot of scrutiny on a first light, and theres a lot of work that goes into a first flight, but you cant let your guard down, and youve got to take a look at the data, youve got to listen to the hardware, and its probably going to take a few flights.

We certainly did our best, and I think the teams did their best, to script this flight to be a full-up test flight, but there are certainly things on Dragon that could be tested more, Hurley said.

Behnkens wife is astronaut Megan McArthur. NASA announced last week she will be the pilot on the Crew-2 mission, which is slated launch in the spring of 2021 and will use the same reusable Crew Dragon spaceship flown by Hurley and Behnken on the Demo-2 test flight.

For me, I think in the short term I transition into a support role, Behnken said Tuesday. Illdefinitely be focused on making sure that her mission is as successful as possible and supporting her just as she did for me over the last five years with the uncertainty in our launch dates and the uncertainty in our return dates.

Its definitely her turn to focus on getting her mission, while I take care of the things that need to be taken care of for our home life, said Behnken, an Air Force colonel and flight test engineer.

Throughout their flight, Hurley and Behnken shared images on Twitter of daily life on the International Space Station and spectacular snapshots of planet Earth, showing views of cities, mountain ranges, oceans and tropical cyclones.

The perspective that you have from low Earth orbit of our planet is just one of just complete awe, said Hurley, a retired Marine Corps colonel and fighter pilot. First of all, of how beautiful the planet is, that there are no borders that you can see from space that the atmosphere is so thin.

The United States, and the world, has been dealing with so much chaos and drama, and the pandemic, and all the things that have been going on in the world, Hurley said. If it were me, it would make me feel better to see these pictures from space, so we just felt like it was a way to have folks maybe have a distraction for awhile, and also to appreciate the planet that weve been given.

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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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Dragon astronauts describe sounds and sensations of return to Earth - Spaceflight Now

Alumnus Helping NASA Return to the Moon by2024

No one on Earth has stepped foot on the Moon since Apollo 17 landed there in December 1972. But NASA is relying on the new space exploration program, Artemis, to change history and take the first woman and the next man to the moonby 2024.

Georgia Southern alumnus Andy Warren (87) is one of the engineers helping NASA return astronauts to the moon. He started his career with the space agency in 1988, two years after the space shuttle Challenger disaster.

I was looking for a job and they were hiring. Honestly it was never something I thought about doing growing up but it gets in your blood, Warren said. Its very exciting and fulfilling work. I have a passionfor it.

Warren works at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, as manager of the Cross-Program Integration team for NASAs new rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). A team at MSFC is designing the powerful SLS rocket that will send the crew in the Orion spacecraft to the moon and eventually to Mars. The Orion crew capsule is being developed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and the ground systems including the launch pad are being handled by a team at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Warren said the cross-agency team ensures that the systems, including the rocket components, all work together when the flight vehicle gets assembled and launchedat KSC.

Prior to the Artemis program, Warren worked on the Space Shuttle program in various capacities from 1988 through the last mission in 2011. In his early years, he worked on ground systems including the large cranes that were used to assemble the shuttle. After that, he served as the management intern to the launch director, the person who gives the final go for launch on launch day.

I sat right next to him in the control room during several shuttle launches, said Warren, who grew up in North Augusta, South Carolina. It was an amazing experience because you could just feel the raw power. You could actually physically feel it rumbling off the launch pad.

Warren was a Georgia Southern student when he watched the Challenger explosion. It was later determined that the accident was caused by the solid rocket booster O-rings not working properly at cold temperatures. During Shuttle mission STS-132 in May 2010, Warren served as the solid rocket booster representative on the Shuttle Mission Management Team and gave the final concurrence (go) that the solid rocket boosters were safe forlaunch.

It was one of the highlights of my career, he said. When talking with students, I present it in the context that theres nothing special about me, but you never know where youll end up and the opportunities that youll have in the future if you apply yourself.

As the Cross-Program Integration manager for the SLS program, Warren is excited about the upcoming test of the ambitious rocket that has been in development for the past decade. The SLS relies on long-proven hardware from the space shuttle, including the engines and solid-fuel boosters. But the rocket is different in that it has been designed for launching both astronauts and robotic scientific missions for deep space exploration hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth, while the space shuttle was designed for travel a few hundred miles above the Earth.

Our first flight will be a test to demonstrate the ground systems, rocket and crew systems. It will go around the back of the moon next year, Warren said. Then about two years later, well launch astronauts in the Orion crew capsule beyond the moon and back to Earth. Thats further than any humans have ever been from Earth. Then well launch a crew, which will land on the moon.

As NASA embarks on this next era of space flight, Warren is confident it will inspire a new generation of explorers.

I think the future is really bright, he said. In the 60s, we had the beginnings of space flight and ever since we went to the moon, people have been dreaming of going to Mars and deep space exploration. And now were actually building the rockets. We dream big and were currently building a really big rocket to achieve thosedreams.

Warren is an active Georgia Southern alumnus. He serves on the College of Science and Mathematics advisory board and returns to campus every year to meet with students, professors and administrators. SandraBennett

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To the Moon and Back Again - Georgia Southern University Newsroom

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Two special guests looked on as NASA successfully launched its Perseverance Mars rover on July 30, beginning a nearly seven-month journey to the Red Planet.

Those onlookers were Alex Mather, a 7th-grade student from Virginia, and Vaneeza Rupani, a high-school senior from Alabama, and they earned their vantage point on the roof of an engineering building at Kennedy Space Center in an unusual way: with names.

In advance of the launch of what was then known only as the Mars 2020, mission, NASA challenged children in grades K-12 to suggest a name for the six-wheeled, car-sized rover and write a compelling essay as to why their moniker was the best choice. The winner would not only get to name the rover, but also travel to Florida to see it launch.

Related: NASA's Mars Perseverance rover mission to the Red Planet (photos)

Alex and Vaneeza were both finalists, and in March of this year, NASA announced that Alex's name, Perseverance, was the winner. Shortly afterward, the agency revealed that Vaneeza's suggestion, Ingenuity, would adorn the rover's small travel companion, the first interplanetary helicopter.

The two students traveled to Florida with their families to watch the launch full of excitement for the mission.

"We were a little disappointed [that my name wasn't chosen]," 17-year-old Vaneeza said when asked how she felt about her name being selected for the helicopter. "And then I got the call for the helicopter."

"There was a little disbelief at first but mostly excitement," she added.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the students weren't sure they would be able to travel to the launch, but Vaneeza said her whole family was very excited and fortunate to be here. "I'm very, very excited and trying to [stay] calm," she said.

Vaneeza is an aspiring engineer and says her interest in space blossomed at a young age. She attributes this to her father, stating that his passion for space helped spur her interest. "Ever since I was little, I have been reading about space and interested in it," she said. "I take a lot of it from my dad."

She first found out about the contest while reading headlines on the NASA website and decided to give it a go. Vaneeza said that when coming up with her name, she tried to answer the question of how it's possible to do science and engineering on other planets. "I thought ingenuity answered that question best," she said.

Alex Mather, a 14-year-old, said he was beyond excited to be at the Kennedy Space Center for the launch. "This is an amazing place, with amazing people, doing amazing things," he said.

When asked about why he chose the name Perseverance, he explained that to him this mission was just as much about humanity as it was exploring Mars.

"Mars missions take a lot of perseverance, but this mission to me is a lot about being human," he said. "One of our greatest qualities is perseverance."

Alex said he grew up obsessed with science but his fascination for space came later, after a visit to Space Camp in Alabama. His time there fueled his passion for space, he said, and when the competition popped up he knew he had to enter.

Since winning the contest, Alex had been able to meet a few of the members of the Perseverance team, describing them as his role models in life.

Related: The search for life on Mars (a photo timeline)

His trip to Florida to watch the rover take flight almost didn't happen as the pandemic swept the nation. Alex said his first priority this spring was to figure out how he was going to finish the school year; once that was settled and his family thought they could travel safely, the trip to Florida was on.

"Just being here, it's absolutely worth it," he said.

Alex and Vaneeza and their families were able to watch the launch from Kennedy Space Center property. Standing on the balcony of the Operations Support Building II, the duo watched in awe as the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket took flight. It was each student's first launch.

Following blast-off, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator of science, chatted with Alex and Vaneeza in a short video posted to Twitter.

"I'm over the moon," Vaneeza said, describing her feelings after the launch. "That was probably the coolest thing I've ever seen and I can't wait to see it land on Mars in February."

Alex agreed. "It was just so overwhelming on a sensory level," he said. "It's indescribable."

Follow Amy Thompson on Twitter @astrogingersnap. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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Teens who named Mars rover and helicopter are 'over the moon' following launch - Space.com

A 35-minute film exposure captures people in Piedmont, N.C., bathed in the glow of astronomers red flashlights and observing the Perseid meteor shower during its peak in August 1994.

Heres one thing coronavirus cant cancel.

The annual Perseid meteor shower, which NASA calls the best meteor shower of the year and which inspired singer John Denver to write Rocky Mountain High nearly 50 years ago peaks early this week.

Depending on the weather and where viewers watch, the celestial spectacle could deliver as many as 50 to 75 shooting stars per hour over California and much of the United States with the most expected between Tuesday night after sunset until to the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The Perseids are a reliable meteor shower, said Andrew Fraknoi, emeritus chairman of the astronomy department at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills. And its in August, when we have warm summer nights, when most kids arent in school. Its a great time for families to be able to go outside and take a look.

The Perseid meteor shower, first documented by Chinese astronomers in 36 A.D., is visible every year between late July and mid-August.

But the shooting stars arent really stars. The meteor shower occurs every year when Earth, as it orbits around the sun, crosses a trail of dust, dirt and other debris from a famous comet, Swift-Tuttle, which itself orbits the sun once every 133 years. The comet is just a huge ball of ice, with rocks, dust and other debris inside it. With each pass around the sun, some of that debris breaks away, and is left behind in the comets wake, creating a giant oval that extends from beyond Pluto to around the sun.

As Earth passes through that debris field each year, some of those tiny bits of sand, metal and rock burn up when they come into Earths atmosphere, creating the flashing trails we see across the night sky.

Thats right: What looks like a huge streak of fire in the night sky an astounding, powerful pyrotechnic marvel is usually just a little piece of grit, smaller than a thumbtack, miles up in the sky. But it is moving at 132,000 miles an hour, or nearly 37 miles per second, and burning at up to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it fizzles.

What you are seeing burning up is a little piece of dirt which is part of the original pieces that formed the solar system 5 billion years ago, Fraknoi said. Its kind of neat.

So how should you watch it?

The best way is to dress warmly, go outside, turn off lights and look for a broad patch of sky, away from trees. If you can drive to a rural location, like a road or park in the hills around the Bay Area, youre chances of seeing more are better.

Pick an observing spot away from bright lights, lay on your back, and look up! said Emily Clay of NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in a blog post Thursday. You dont need any special equipment to view the Perseids just your eyes.

Its better not to use binoculars or a telescope. Their field of vision is too narrow.

And, says Fraknoi, be sure to give your eyes at least 15 minutes to adjust to the dark.

The mistake people make most often is that they dont allow their eyes to adapt, he said. They get out of the car, they look out and say the newspaper lied to me! And they give up. In a movie theater you cant see whats on the floor until your eyes adapt. Not waiting is a mistake.

Fog or clouds can block the view, so locations away from the coast are best.

Apart from inspiring people about nature and space for hundreds of generations, the Perseids also inspired a famous song. In 1971, singer John Denver and several friends took a camping trip to Williams Lake, near Aspen, Colorado, to watch the Perseids. Denver, then 27, was so moved he wrote Rocky Mountain High, which became a smash hit for lyrics like Ive seen it raining fire in the sky and shadow from the starlight is softer than a lullabye.

Imagine a moonless night in the Rockies in the dead of summer and you have it, he wrote later in his autobiography. I had insisted to everybody that it was going to be a glorious display.

Denver died in 1997 after a light plane he was piloting crashed into Monterey Bay. Ten years later, state legislators named his Perseid-inspired ballad one of Colorados two official state songs.

The Earth is just one planet among many, and we are in a cosmic setting, said Fraknoi. That can help make our problems seem a little bit smaller. Kids find astronomy and dinosaurs to be the most exciting parts of science. Stars, planets, Mars, and space exploration are really exciting to them. We cant show them dinosaurs any more, except in museums. But we can still show them the sky.

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Perseid meteor shower 2020 How to watch what could be the best show of the year - The Mercury News

A scorched Dragon capsule swooped from the heavens on Aug. 2 to restore Americas prominence in human spaceflight. Tucked safely inside were two NASA astronauts and one giant piece of baggage for the U.S.-Russia relationship:

Both countries now have a ride to the International Space Station.

This station has housed Americans and Russians, living and working side by side, for nearly two decades. But for the past nine years, Russia alone could fly people there. Its pride and budget were bolstered by the U.S. purchasing rides into space.

No longer. As the U.S. resumes launching astronauts from its own soil an ability it does not wish to lose again policy experts are watching to see if this affects the countries relationship.

On HoustonChronicle.com: NASA, SpaceX bring astronauts home in Gulf of Mexico splashdown

Through their civil space programs, Americans and Russians have sidestepped election meddling and economic sanctions to cooperate on a greater good. This relationship has helped bridge the two cultures, with astronauts learning Russian and cosmonauts visiting their counterparts homes in Houston.

Its one of the few areas that have been somewhat immune to the tensions that we see in other areas and domains, said Gregory Miller, an associate professor at the U.S. Air Forces Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. If you take that away or reduce that cooperation, its just one less restraint on further tensions.

To be clear, Miller does not think the U.S. launching astronauts will start a war. Victoria Samson, a space policy expert at the Secure World Foundation, similarly called it a ripple in our relations but not necessarily a catastrophic tidal wave.

NASA said its in active discussions to fly cosmonauts on U.S. spacecraft owned by SpaceX (and later Boeing) and to continue flying astronauts on Russian spacecraft. Its important to have people on both the U.S. and Russian segments of the International Space Station.

Building on our solid relationship with Roscosmos aboard the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit, Im hopeful there are opportunities for NASA and Roscosmos to expand our collaboration farther into the solar system, including the moon, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement.

But Samson and others said the introduction of commercial companies makes Russia uncomfortable. And with NASA no longer buying seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, its Roscosmos space agency loses an important source of funding for its space budget thats already a fraction of what NASA receives.

For now, Russia and the U.S. remain interdependent on the International Space Station. But this station will eventually get retired it's set to operate through 2024, though that will likely be extended leaving a big question as to what U.S.-Russian relations will look like once astronauts and cosmonauts no longer share a home some 250 miles above Earth.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon didnt just revive U.S. human spaceflight. It introduced a new partner: SpaceX founder Elon Musk, an outspoken billionaire who is eager to show that commercial entities can build, own and operate the vehicles that carry people into space.

On May 30, the day SpaceX launched NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, Musk couldnt help but take a jab at Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos.

The trampoline is working, he said.

It was the punchline six years in the making: Rogozin, upset about U.S. sanctions in 2014, suggested that Americans use a trampoline to reach the space station.

Musk called his comment an inside joke, and Rogozin initially said he loved it. He congratulated NASA on the launch.

But a few days later, he released a lengthy op-ed in which he criticized the space shuttle (its 2011 retirement began U.S. dependence on Russias Soyuz spacecraft) for its immense costliness and unforgiveable failure rate. He touted Russia in the piece that ran in Forbes for staying alone for the humanity to support the International Space Station operability and deliver the crews there.

And he did not appreciate the humor.

When our partners finally managed to carry out a successful test of their spacecraft, we didn't get anything but jokes and mockery, Rogozin said, although it would not be out of place to thank our Soyuz, its Soviet developers and Russian engineers who continued modernizing this most reliable spacecraft in the world. It would not be out of place to thank us that despite personal and sectoral sanctions we did not go to pieces and preserved cooperation in space.

Roscosmos did not respond to email requests for comment.

SpaceX, with its ability to replace the Soyuz, makes Russia uncomfortable because it threatens a pillar of Russias culture and identity, said Pavel Luzin, who lives in Perm, Russia, and has a doctorate in international relations. Luzin has studied space policy since 2008.

He said that for Russians, the space program is a yardstick they use to judge the countrys political and economic system if its doing well they view the government more favorably.

Thats why (the) Kremlin hates Elon Musk: he shows that the freedom of business activity, the market economy and the political freedoms are much more effective, Luzin said in an email. Therefore, Dmitry Rogozin in his papers and interviews tries to belittle Musks achievements and tries to show that private investments of SpaceX and other commercial space companies are nothing without huge spending of the American government.

Russia has long been opposed to a commercial space sector; a sentiment first voiced by the former Soviet Union when drafting the Outer Space Treaty that provided a framework for governing the exploration and use of space.

This treaty was signed in 1967 after the Soviet Union placed the first satellite and man into space in 1957 and 1961, respectively, and before the U.S. put the first man on the moon in 1969.

At that time, the Soviet Union did not want the private sector operating in space, but allowed for a compromise: Governments would be responsible for overseeing any non-government entities.

The relationship slowly moved from competitive to cooperative cosmonauts and astronauts shook hands in space in 1975 but had its ups and downs. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, former President George H. W. Bush was looking for new ways to collaborate.

Space was an obvious area, said John Logsdon, a retired professor and founder of George Washington Universitys Space Policy Institute. And in particular, the Russians needed money.

On HoustonChronicle.com: International Space Station: an orbiting home and lab for two decades

The U.S. didnt want Russia selling its technology or having its rocket workforce moving to Iran or North Korea, Logsdon said, so America began allowing commercial satellites to launch on Russian rockets.

And then Russia proposed merging its plans for a next-generation space station with Americas plans for Space Station Freedom. Around that time, Russia had more experience operating space stations than NASA.

The Russians involvement in the program was a major factor in order to be successful in the International Space Station, said George W.S. Abbey, senior fellow in space policy at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and a former director of NASAs Johnson Space Center.

Also important was the countrys tried-and-true Soyuz rocket and spacecraft.

Todays Soyuz-2 rocket (which shares the same name as the spacecraft it propels into space) can directly trace its lineage to the rocket that launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, said Phil Smith, a space industry analyst at Bryce Space and Technology.

The R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile has been the basis for 25 variants of the Soyuz rocket that have launched more than 1,900 times.

Its a workhorse, Smith said. Its one of the most successful rockets ever built.

There is no equivalent track record in America, he said, as modern rockets dont trace their lineage directly back to the early days of space exploration.

Its the future priorities of Russias civil space program that are being questioned. Russia says its building a vehicle to replace the Soyuz spacecraft that has had some 170 successful flights, as well as additional modules for the International Space Station, but both projects are underfunded and behind schedule.

There have been lots of proclamations of Russian future plans, Logsdon said, but not much evidence that theyre following through on those proclamations.

Luzin said Russias focus on maintaining access to the International Space Station, which Roscosmos did without placing enough emphasis on a long-term strategy for space exploration, has weakened its position. As the U.S. develops a new spacecraft, rocket and orbiting facility for the moon, Russia will have little to offer in a partnership, Luzin said.

It was unable to use these years for developing its own manned spacecraft and launch vehicle for replacement of the old-fashioned Soyuz, he said. The main issue in U.S.-Russia relations in space now is how to continue the partnership after the ISS-era.

Its lesser budget doesnt help, either. Based off budget documents and his own analysis, Luzin said Russias space budget was roughly $3.2 billion last year. Of that, $1.4 billion was for the countrys civil space program, $1 billion was for its military space program, $437 million was for its global navigation satellite system and $358 million was for its rocket launch sites.

For comparison, NASAs budget was $21.5 billion in fiscal year 2019. Its more than $22.6 billion for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

In the fall of 2019 and spring of 2020, NASA paid nearly $86 million for each astronaut launched into space (Jessica Meir in September and Chris Cassidy in April). The agency will pay $90.3 million to launch Kate Rubins in October, a fee that also covers training and other services related to launch.

The American payments were highly important for Russias space industry and for Russias civil space program, Luzin said, and now the industry lost the source.

Samson said U.S.-Russia cooperation doesnt have to be in human spaceflight. The countries could partner on science missions, or they could share information for tracking satellites and space debris.

Ultimately, the money NASA saves by flying with commercial companies could be put toward its Artemis program seeking to return humans to the moon. Houston, the home of human spaceflight, would certainly benefit from this, said Bob Mitchell, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership.

It potentially equates to additional people working, he said.

On HoustonChronicle.com: NASA shares its vision for creating sustained human presence on the moon

Miller suggested the U.S. use the money its saving to help subsidize another countrys space program.

He said providing funding for another country, for instance the United Arab Emirates, to fly on the Soyuz would help keep Russias space program funded, preventing its knowledge and technology from being sold to more adversarial countries, while developing U.S. ties with a new international space partner.

We dont want to sever ties in space or do anything that might reduce cooperation when there is this other competitor, for lack of a better term, he said.

That other competitor is China. In June, the U.S. Department of Defense said China and Russia present the most immediate and serious threats to U.S. space operations as they develop counterspace capabilities which may disrupt, degrade or destroy space systems and have military doctrines that view space as import to modern warfare.

Samson said she doesnt think Russia and China will get too cozy as partners in space. Like the U.S. and Russia, the two countries have their own complicated relationship. Rather, she said Chinas rise in space capabilities means there are more players that make the U.S. uneasy (in space and elsewhere) that America now has to monitor and manage relationships with in space.

The biggest thing thats changed since the cold war is that this is no longer a bilateral conversation, Samson said. Its multi-lateral.

andrea.leinfelder@chron.com

twitter.com/a_leinfelder

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Space race? America's new path to the ISS could affect relationship with Russia - Houston Chronicle