Jason Rhian

August 21st, 2017

Artists rendition of Orion Exploration Flight Test 1. Image Credit: NASA

Officials with NASA sat down with SpaceFlight Insider to discuss the current status of the Orion Program, which evolved into discussions on how the space agency is working to spread the word about the new crew-rated capsule as well as the ties that the program has with past effortsand more.

SpaceFlight Insider first spoke withNASAs Orion Program Manager, Mark Kirasich, who was in New York City in conjunction with the Intrepid Museums Space & Science Festival. Kirasich spoke at length about the spacecraft, the speeches given at venues, and what the future holds for NASAs crewed spacecraft.

NASAs new Orion Program Manager Mark Kirasich began his NASA career in 1983 at the agencys Johnson Space Center in Houston as a member of the Space Shuttle flight operations team. Photo & Caption Credit: NASA

SFI: Can you start by telling us a bit about where you are at todayand why youre there?

Mark Kirasich:Were here as part of an Intrepid space and science special event this week, so its going to be a lot of fun to meet people and talk about NASAs plans.

SFI: So, obviously, the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, and [the Space Shuttle] Enterprise is all very cool, but I want to pick your brain about something that is more recentOrion.

Mark Kirasich:Wow, you and me both! Im ready!

SFI: Provide our readers with just a brief update as to where Orion stands in terms of EM-1, EM-2. Where are we at this present stage?

Mark Kirasich:All right, great. Mind if I just take a step back and tell you where weve been, then where were going?

SFI: That sounds perfect.

Mark Kirasich: Two test flights are behind us and two are in front of us. We flew our first test, our abort system, in May of 2010 from the White Sands Test Facility, and it was incredibly successful. Then we flew Exploration Flight Test One [EFT-1], which was our first overall flight test in December of 2014, and it went amazingly well. Since that time, weve been focused on our next two flights: Exploration Mission One, in which Orion will fly for the first time on the Space Launch System, which is our countrys new heavy-lift launch system and its being put together by Marshall Space Flight Center and their prime contractor Boeing.

That will be the first time an Orion capsule flies on SLS and also goes beyond Earth orbit. So were very excited about that. Thats going to be a lunar-orbital mission. And then the flight after thatactually Im going to tell you how were going to accelerate itis Ascent Abort 2. Its the second test of our abort system, where were going to actually launch the capsule and the abort system on a booster rocket that will simulate SLS and will test an in-flight abort.

So those two flights are upcoming. After we have that, well be ready for our first human launch, Exploration Mission Two, also on SLS. And thatll be the first time humans travel beyond Earth orbit since the last Apollo mission. Thats my roadmap. Right now we are in the thick you would not believe how much hardware we have in the pipes. I say across the country, I really need to say around the world because we have [] European partner[s]the European Space Agency and Airbus.

SFI: Can you get our viewers up-to-speed about the latest in terms of Orion and NASAs Exploration Mission 1?

Mark Kirasich:Sure. The Exploration Mission 1 Crew Module is in the Kennedy Space Center O&C [Operations and Checkout] building, where our Lockheed Martin Orion final assembly building is and it is going really well. I dont know if youve seen a picture lately, but its beautiful. All of the plumbing is installed, all of the propellant systems, the ECLSS systems, power, secondary structure. We are today installing the avionics boxes. A slew of them have arrived in the last week or two, and we are heading for a first power-up later this month. It will be the first time were going to power up the Exploration Mission 1 spacecraft, so its doing great.

The other were building in the O&C Building is the called the Crew Module Adapter. Its what goes on top of the ESA Service Module, and then we put the Crew Module on top of that. Its coming together, its doing well.

Traveling to Bremen, Germany. I believe you know about our ESA partners. The ESA Service Module is being assembled by Airbus in their factory in Bremen, Germany, and it is coming along well. Its a beautiful piece of flight hardware. Theyre working some suppliers, some supplier challenges, getting some of their components delivered. So theyre working through that.

So weve got all of the EM-1 hardware coming together: the launch abort system [LAS]; the jettison motor will be poured here in a month or two. The abortits an inert motor on EM-1. It is nearly fully assembled, so its coming together well. On top of that, we have our structural test articlewhich right now has a service module, a crew module, and a LASare all being structurally tested. Pushed and pulled and shaken and exposed to acoustic loads. And then, in about a month, we put together the integrated stack, to stack those things together, and thats in Denver. We have a parachute drop test in the desert. We are doing recovery tests with help from the Coast Guard in the Gulf of Mexico. So everywhere you look, every day theres something going on with Orion. Theres a lot of activity going on.

The Orion crew module for NASAs Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) is secured in a workstation in the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building high bay at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft is being prepared for its first integrated flight atop the Space Launch System rocket on Exploration Mission-1. Photo & Caption Credit: Leif Heimbold / NASA

SFI: There was a rash of stories about NASA doesnt have the money to send astronauts to Mars, so. The question I have there is, is that an accurate assessment and, more importantly, if it is, then what other side missionsand Im a Moon-first person myselfis that the sort of thing youre looking at? How will Orion be used for its first missions?

Mark Kirasich:Im not sure Im smart enough to answer your specific question about Mars. Im really focused on the near-term horizon, which is the path to get to Mars, and we just this past year announced a really good plan that involves some cislunar operations as a way to prepare humans to travel to Mars for the first time. Orion and SLS are key elements of that. We have the moneywe have the funding we need. We have the support in Congress and were really pleased by the new Presidents enthusiasm for space exploration.

At the funding levels were getting, Orion, SLS, the Ground Ops piecesall of the elements of the current architecturecan support their parts in this business and this new capability where we travel to cislunar space first, and well learn in lunar orbit how to live and work in a way where were really not close to the Earth. We cannot be Earth-dependent, so well build up capabilities there, well stay there for longer and longer periods of time, and well develop the technologies we need: the environment control, the regenerative way of environmental control, the propulsion capabilities, the ion engines, that are part of the cislunar plan. All of those pieces are coming together now.

Our boss, Bill Gerstenmaier in Human Exploration, is putting together this architecture. Right now, I can tell you with the funding we have, we can do our piece of that. Right now thats my horizon, through the late 2020s, to make sure we can demonstrate cislunar missions.

SFI: Okay. Were curious if NASA is looking at a Moon, Mars, and beyond kind of philosophy here

Mark Kirasich:Yes.

SFI:which a lot of us old-time space people are saying, Orion is really good, and SLS is great for developing a highway out into the Solar System. You start nearby and you eventually go further and further. Do you see Orion being used for more and more of that, or are we more Journey-to-Mars-centric?

Mark Kirasich:Let me make sure I get all your points. From day one weve tried to make Orion as flexible and capable as possible. Weve worked really hard to get mass out, to get weight out []. Generally what weve seenand you know over the past few years weve had a variety of different missionsno matter what the mission, Orion has always been able to fill that mission. What I would call a flexible path first to Moon and then to MarsOrion absolutely fits into that picture, Orion can support and perform all of those missions.

The avionics and the equipment, the redundancy in the systems, when we do our probabilistic risk analysis, it shows that these systems can reliably [operate] for very long periods of time. Our systems are regenerative. And then the performance capabilitythe propellant, where we can go, the orbits we can go intonow clearly we couldnt go to Mars by ourselves, there will be additional elements of the architecture. But Orion can and, I envision, will be part of these missions first in cislunar and then as we push farther to Mars.

The European Service Module that will power NASAs Orion spacecraft to the Moon and beyond is taking shape in the assembly hall at Airbus Defence and Space, Bremen, Germany. The spacecraft module will provide propulsion, electricity, water, oxygen and nitrogen, and thermal control. Photo & Caption Credit: Airbus DS / ESA

SFI: Okay, Ive got an easier question for you. ESAs already contributing the Service Module for EM-1, and a lot of us in the community look at this as: It has to be a partnership. It cant be a unilateral effort. So can we expect to see these missions to the Moon and Mars; instead of it being NASAyou know, you plant the flags and youre on your wayits more of a NASA-ESA-Canadian-and-other-space-agency initiative?

Mark Kirasich:Yeah, I think Bill Gerstenmaier, whos assembling this, believes that to do these very challenging missions, we do need international collaboration. Thats why, in 2013, we forged the very first international partnership in the new exploration program with the European Space Agency. Theyre part of Orion, and theyre not just any old part, they are a really critical part.

They built something we call the ESA Service Module, and it has some really key functions in it. It has all of the propellant[s] for our translation maneuvers; it includes the solar arrays and power generation equipment, so all of the electrical power generation on orbit is done from there. And the cooling system, the radiators on the Service Module are a really critical piece, and we put them in a really integral, critical-path role in Orion and exploration. And from the start, the intent was to expand the collaboration to the future elements, beyond Orion, beyond SLS, beyond the Ground Systems; the elements that well need to put in lunar orbit, the elements that well need for Mars.

SFI: Okay, so youre on the deck there [on Intrepid], youre probably going to be seeing Enterprise later today. In closing, tell us a little bit about your feelings on the deck there, and how we had this one great program we retired a few years ago and now were on to the new big thing. One of the questions we always close with is: If you had to relay the most salient, important point to the general public, what would be about Orion and SLS?

Mark Kirasich:When I walk around the decks here, the reason Im with NASA today is [that] when I was a kid, in 1969, I watched when Neil and Buzz stepped foot on the Moon for the first time. And then I watched the military airplanes because they were really pushing the state of the art, and thats what motivated me. It motivated me to want to get interested in technology, science, and engineering, and come in and do these really bold things. And when I walked through Intrepid today, many of these aircraft, even many of these submarines that I watched as a kid, I found here today.

Thats what motivated me to do what I did, and I believe our generation of scientists and engineerswhether youre in the aerospace industry or the computer world or the biomedical industrytheyre pushing the state of the art. What our countrys done over our generation has an amazing [role] in taking our country forwardand I think thats what especially the Apollo program did for meI believe thats what SLS and Orion are going to do for the next generation, especially the young.

People are going to be extremely excited about these missions. And its going to motivate people to get into the science and math and engineering, and they may or may not come into the space program. They may become doctors, theyll become gene slicers, but theyll be the ones who take what were living and push it forward. Im really convinced of that. You mentioned you were at EFT-1. That day in December 2014I dont know about you, but for me it was magical. It was like unbelievable for me and it feltI might be exaggeratingbut for a few minutes it felt like the whole world stopped and watched what we did. And boy, if you think that was exciting for that short-duration flight, just wait til you see what happens when we lift off on the Space Launch System for the first time.

SFI then spoke with NASA astronaut Lee Morin about the significant outreach efforts that are required to not only keep those involved with the various human space flight efforts involved but also to keep them inspired as well. Tune in to SpaceFlight Insider tomorrow for Morins views on this subject.

Tagged: EFT-1 EM-1 Lead Stories NASA Orion Space Launch System

Jason Rhian spent several years honing his skills with internships at NASA, the National Space Society and other organizations. He has provided content for outlets such as: Aviation Week & Space Technology, Space.com, The Mars Society and Universe Today.

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Orion update: Lighting the fire of awareness Part 1 - SpaceFlight Insider

Sweat, urine, poop, and the other fun byproducts of the body are normally treated as waste to be discarded. But if humans are serious about expanding our civilization to the Moon, Mars, and other frontiers, we will need to learn how to optimize every available resource for survival, including the junk created by our own bodies.

Crews on the International Space Station (ISS) have already pioneered this approach by filtering their pee and sweat into drinkable water. Now, Mark A. Blenner, a bioengineer and assistant professor at Clemson University, has taken this "waste not, want not" attitude to the next level by demonstrating that the yeast strain Yarrowia lipolytica can be tweaked to turn bodily excretions like urine into handy materials, like nutrients or plastics.

Blenner will be presenting his research on Tuesday at the 254th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society in Washington, DC.

"The Spacefaring Power of Pee" explainer on research into Y. lipolytica. Video: PBS/Reactions

"We chose [ Y. lipolytica] because it has a combination of favorable properties for using waste and to make a variety of useful products," Blenner told me in an email. "It has a robust metabolism for several sugars and for different types of nitrogen, as well as fatty wastes. It tolerates a number of inhibitory chemicals. It has enough genetic engineering tools to enable us to make different products."

In other words, the yeast is hardy, creative, and can be rigged to manufacture a wide variety of products that could benefit astronauts on long duration space missions, making it an exciting potential crew member.

Y. lipolytica thrives on nitrogen, which can be mined from urea, a compound found in urine, and carbon, which could be harvested from the carbon dioxide gas exhaled by astronauts, or from other in situ sources such as the Martian atmosphere. Blenner and his colleagues have demonstrated that this workhorse yeast can use these ingredients to make omega-3 fatty acids, a nutrient that boosts cardiovascular and brain health, among other medical benefits.

If packed on a spacecraft as supplements, these fatty acids would expire in just a few years. But generating them with Y. lipolytica would provide a renewable source of nutrients on the spot, to fit the needs of the crew at any point in the mission.

"This yeast is really good at making lipids and oleochemicals [like omega-3 fatty acids] which could both benefit astronauts," Blenner told me. "It should also be good at making other molecules from the building blocks that make up lipids."

Blenner and his colleagues have shown that Y. lipolytica can be engineered to generate monomers, which are molecules that can be linked together to produce useful polymer materials. These building blocks could be fed into an onboard 3D-printer to make on-demand plastic parts and tools by future spacecraft crews.

Read More: Scientists Want to Mine Our Poop for Gold

There's still much research to be done before these yeast powerhouses will be ready to supply astronauts with ready-to-grow essentials on their endeavors beyond Earth orbit. Scientists will need to figure out how to optimize production and manage any wasteful byproducts of this microbial alchemy. This particular species will need to be road-tested in outer space, like previous yeasty astronauts, such as the baker's yeast that was sent to the ISS in 2011.

"We don't know how [the yeast] will perform relative to Earth," Blenner said. "We are planning to try to get our yeast to the International Space Station in next couple of years."

If your interest is piqued, check out this live YouTube press conference on the research, starting at Tuesday at 2PM ET. And the next time you take a leak or work up a sweat, perhaps you'll have a new appreciation for the potential value of the ingredients in bodily waste that we normally take for granted.

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Yeast Can Be Engineered to Turn Astronaut Pee Into Spaceflight Materials - Motherboard

Jim Sharkey

August 22nd, 2017

Photographers setting up outside the NASA Ames Conference Center for the 2017 eclipse viewing event. Photo Credit: Jim Sharkey / SpaceFlight Insider

MOFFETT FIELD, California A crowd of about 1,000 people attended a public event at NASAs Ames Research Center to observe the August 21, 2017, solar eclipse. Attendees gathered outside the Building 3 Conference Center at Ames wearing eclipse glasses provided by the space agency. Inside the Conference Center, attendees could watch NASA TVs extensive coverage of the celestial event.

Image Credit: Vikash Mahadeo / SpaceFlight Insider

The eclipse crossed the continental United States, from Oregon all the way down to South Carolina, over a period encompassing almost two hours. People watching in the 70-mile-wide (110 km) path of totality across 14 states experienced about two minutes of darkness.

Those watching at NASA Ames saw a partial eclipse, with a coverage of approximately 74 percent of the Sun occurring at 10:15 a.m. PDT.

NASAs televised coverage of the eclipse included views from research aircraft, high-altitude balloons, satellites, and specially modified telescopes. It also included live reports from Charleston, South Carolina; Salem, Oregon; Idaho Falls, Idaho; Beatrice, Nebraska; Jefferson City, Missouri; Carbondale, Illinois; Hopkinsville, Kentucky; and Clarksville, Tennessee.

NASAs Eclipse Balloon Project,which was led by Angela Des Jardins of Montana State University, sent up over 50 high-altitude balloons launched by student teams across the U.S. to live-stream footage of the eclipse. A research group at Ames conducted a low-cost experiment,called MicroStrat, on 34 of the balloons to simulate lifes ability to survive beyond Earth and possibly even on Mars.

The August solar eclipse gives us a rare opportunity to study the stratosphere when its even more Mars-like than usual, said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters. With student teams flying balloon payloads from dozens of points along the path of totality, well study effects on microorganisms that are coming along for the ride.

Some of the first views of the eclipse were provided by a specially-modified Gulfstream III jet from NASAs Armstrong Flight Research Center flying at an altitude of approximately 25,000 feet (7,620 meters) in the vicinity of Lincoln City, Oregon.

The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission is studying how solar material moves, gathersenergy, and heats up as it travels through the Suns lower atmosphere. IRIS Flight Operators were at the event to discuss their mission, which is controlled from Ames.

During the eclipse, we can do calibrations on some scientific instruments that we cant do at any over time, said Flight Operator Michael Iatauro. We are also coordinating our observations with ground-based and aerial telescopes. When they are observing the Suns corona during the eclipse, we can observe activities occurring on parts of the Sun that are blocked by the Moon from their point of view.

As the eclipse began at 9:01 a.m. PDT, gray clouds began to drift in front of the Sun. For much of the next hour, the Sun peeked through the clouds occasionally; however, by the time the eclipse reached maximum coverage at 10:15 a.m. PDT, a large portion of the sky had cleared allowing observers to see the crescent Sun.

Video courtesy of NASA

Tagged: Ames Research Center Eclipse 2017 Great American Eclipse The Range

Jim Sharkey is a lab assistant, writer and general science enthusiast who grew up in Enid, Oklahoma, the hometown of Skylab and Shuttle astronaut Owen K. Garriott. As a young Star Trek fan he participated in the letter-writing campaign which resulted in the space shuttle prototype being named Enterprise. While his academic studies have ranged from psychology and archaeology to biology, he has never lost his passion for space exploration. Jim began blogging about science, science fiction and futurism in 2004. Jim resides in the San Francisco Bay area and has attended NASA Socials for the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover landing and the NASA LADEE lunar orbiter launch.

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NASA Ames hosts eclipse viewing event - SpaceFlight Insider

The Falcon 9 rocket slated to launch Aug. 24 with the Formosat 5 satellite test-fires its nine main engines Saturday. Credit: SpaceX

A commercial Falcon 9 rocket in the final stages of launch preparations fired its nine Merlin main engines Saturday at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, verifying its readiness for liftoff with a Taiwanese Earth-imaging payload Thursday.

SpaceX engineers rolled out the two-stage rocket Friday to Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg, and the Falcon 9 launch team oversaw a computer-controlled countdown and fueling sequence ahead of Saturdays static fire test.

Restraints kept the rocket firmly grounded on its hillside launch pad overlooking the Pacific Ocean as the Merlin 1D engines throttled up to 1.7 million pounds of thrust for several seconds.

The hold-down firing is a customary part of all SpaceX launch campaigns, used by engineers to confirm the readiness of the launcher and ground systems, and as an exercise of the ground team.

The next step in SpaceXs launch campaign at Vandenberg will be the removal of the rocket from the pad for attachment of the Formosat 5 spacecraft, a Taiwanese satellite designed to test out the countrys domestic aerospace manufacturing capability and collect a range of black-and-white and color imagery of Earth.

Developed and funded by Taiwans National Space Organization, or NSPO, Formosat 5 weighs around 1,047 pounds (475 kilograms) with a full load of fuel, according to information posted on NSPOs website.

After flying south from Vandenberg, the Falcon 9 rocket will send the Formosat 5 satellite into a 447-mile-high (720-kilometer) sun-synchronous orbit that passes near Earths poles.

Liftoff is scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 24, at 11:50 a.m. PDT (2:50 p.m. EDT; 1850 GMT) at the opening of a 44-minute launch window.

The launch will be the fifth time a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will blast off from Vandenberg, an Air Force-run base on Californias Central Coast northwest of Los Angeles. It will be the 40th Falcon 9 launch overall, including flights departing from SpaceX launch pads in Florida.

We are proud to provide a safe and secure launch location for our mission partners, said Col. Gregory E. Wood, vice commander of the Air Forces 30th Space Wing at Vandenberg. This mission is the practical demonstration of the professional spirit and teamwork found in the everyday operations of Team Vandenberg and SpaceX.

SpaceX plans to return the Falcon 9s first stage to a drone ship positioned downrange in the Pacific Ocean for refurbishment and reuse. The booster launching Formosat 5 is fresh from the factory and making its first flight.

Formosat 5 will only take up a fraction of the Falcon 9s lift capability, and officials from NSPO and SpaceX originally planned to launch the satellite on a Falcon 1e rocket. But SpaceX discontinued the small launcher, which was powered by a single Merlin booster engine, in favor of developing the Falcon 9 and larger rockets.

The Taiwanese government, through the National Space Organization, originally paid SpaceX around $23 million in 2010 for the launch, less than half of the advertised price of a Falcon 9 launch today.

Formosat 5 carries two instruments.

One is an optical imaging payload capable of resolving features as small as 2 meters about 6.6 feet in black-and-white. The camera has half that resolution in color mode.

An advanced ionospheric probe from the National Central University in Taiwan is also aboard Formosat 5.

The ionospheric instrument is an all-in-one plasma sensor to measure ionospheric plasma concentrations, velocities, and temperatures over a wide range of spatial scales, according to a fact sheet released by NSPO. The transient and long-term variations of ionospheric plasma can be monitored as seismic precursors associated with earthquakes.

Formosat 5 was to be accompanied by a package of approximately 90 small satellites fastened to a multi-payload Sherpa adapter developed by Spaceflight, a Seattle-based company that builds lightweight spacecraft and brokers launch services for CubeSats on rideshare rocket flights.

But Spaceflight canceled that plan after the Formosat 5 launch faced years of delays in the aftermath of two Falcon 9 rocket failures that combined to ground SpaceXs fleet for nearly a year. Formosat 5s launch was shuffled later in SpaceXs manifest for unexplained reasons.

Spaceflight has reserved a dedicated Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg next year with a Sherpa space tug expected to loft around 90 small satellites on the same rocket.

Meanwhile, the Seattle launch broker arranged for most of the 90 satellites slated to launch with Formosat 5 to fly on other rockets, including an Indian PSLV mission and a Russian Soyuz flight earlier this year.

Several others were rebooked on the next Sherpa adapter flying on a Falcon 9 next year.

Next weeks launch from California will mark the 12th Falcon 9 flight of the year, coming in the heels of an Aug. 14 mission from NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida that deployed a space station-build supply ship in orbit

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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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Falcon 9 rocket test-fired for California launch next week ... - Spaceflight Now

SFI has developed a team of more than 50 contributors several of whom provide professional illustrations for our articles. Image Credit: James Vaughan / SpaceFlight Insider

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Oftentimes, the public becomes inspired about space by seeing fantastic imagery, photos, and illustrations. Men like Robert McCall, Chesley Bonestell, and Alan Bean have lit the fire of imagination in a million minds. It was with this firmly in mind that SFI sat down with our team of graphic and photo illustrators and asked them: What got them interested in sharing their excitement for space exploration with the world?

Kogas work has been used in numerous motion pictures. Image Credit: Nathan Koga / SpaceFlight Insider

Keep in mind that SFI is staffed almost entirely by volunteers. Men and women who understand the concept of loyalty and who see what we are doing and want to help us tell the story of spaceflight.

These folks are all highly-skilled in various methods of illustration, the foremost of these usually being computer modeling or photo illustration. Nathan Koga is one of three illustrators who currently contributes his time to help improve the quality of work that SpaceFlight Insider provides. Kogas work has helped in the production of a number of blockbuster films.

Kogas passion for computer-generated imagery, coupled with an interest in the technical aspects of what is required to provide a more accurate portrayal of space, was what compelled him to contribute to our efforts.While Koga might volunteer for SFI, he has to earn a living and his work has allowed him to be involved with some rather impressive projects.

I work for a company called Proof Inc. that provides Pre-Post Visualization, and sometimes final visual effects, Koga said. He went on to provide some specifics about his work. I dont really do very much in the way of final VFX [Visual Effects], which is to say what makes it to the screen directly. (Star Trek: Beyond, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Fast Furious 8 were movies in which Koga has contributed to.)

Kogas computer-generated imagery for SpaceFlight Insider is always sleek and professional, adding yet another layer of professionalism to SFIs efforts (Koga serves, in many ways, as a pitch hitter producing images for vehicles and programs that have not had many, if any, imagery generated). The work at his day job is far more involved and complex.

Most of what we do at my stage in the process is to take the footage that has finished shooting and to bring in preliminary animation work and attempt to make the shots work. This allows studios to do rapid-iteration work with editing before committing to the final product, Koga said. He went on to describe a bit about what has motivated him to provide his skills to SFI.

Space travel is a unique challenge in that it often involves ideas, plans, or concepts that are very unintuitive and difficult to visualize. I enjoy taking those concepts and bringing a sort of reality to them in a way that people can appreciate. Koga often provides his services whenever good imagery of a certain event, vehicle, or system is not readily available. The world of space exploration is often dominated by technical terminology, and I hope to try and artistically highlight the truly awe-inspiring aspects of even the most mundane activities.

Koga is not alone in being inspired by the promise of exploring deep into space; he is joined in this by the other members of our illustration team. One of these is Joel Hland who lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. Hlands work has helped one of SpaceFlight Insiders latest efforts, our database on launch vehicles, spacecraft, and space centers The Hangar.

Joel Hland has worked with SpaceFlight Insider, providing stunning imagery of rockets and spacecraft used in The Hangar portion of our website. Image Credit: Joel Hland / SpaceFlight Insider

Hland said: Since I was a kid I have always had a vivid imagination, I liked drawing and photography. In my early teens, I started playing around with photoshop, inspired by the work of impressive digital artists such as Dan Luvisi.

Later, in the beginning of my professional career, as I learned different CAD tools I started involving 3-D models in my work. My style nowadays revolves around model renderings, matte painting, and photo-manipulation, with the subjects of most of my art being space-related, vehicles, and landscapes.

SFIs longest-serving illustrator, James Vaughan, has provided a wealth of images to our articles and social media efforts. His work has a depth evocative of paintings something that helps to provide a more personal and emotional touch.

Vaughan said: Someone asked me what has inspired me in my illustrations of aerospace and aviation.I have a lot of fun and I do feel inspired. Each morning I can hardly wait to get started on a newvoyage into the heavens.I distinctly recall the fascination I had as a child with the space programs illustrations I sawin major magazines like LIFE.

Vaughan noted that one potential reason for his style could be the motivators that got him interested in space illustration in the first place.

Vaughan said: This was the heyday of the Space Race and a very popularsubject for the media of the time. I especially loved the work of the illustrator Robert McCalland, as a kid of 8 or 9, would cut out the pages of the magazines and pin them up to bulletinboards in my room.

There were many other influences that ultimately contributed to my out-there imagination.I got to go to Expo-67, perhaps the last and greatest of the big Worlds Fairs. Seeing 2001:A Space Odyssey as a twelve-year-old, when it first came out in theaters, was [a] huge moment.Like a lot of people, I think that Kubricks masterpiece really expanded and altered my mind.

When I first began to shift my efforts from advertising to space subjects I got a fan-letterfrom astronaut Story Musgrave. To have the man who saved the Hubble Telescope sayingthat I was getting the feel and look of traveling in space just right was a big boost for me!Overall, it is my sense of optimism and excitement that drives my artistic work. It is what I talkabout when I say I want to bring back the gee-whiz quality to aerospace illustration.

These artists, along with SFIs writers and photographers, work to not just tell but to show the importance of space exploration to the world. Their stunning graphics, detailed illustrations help to add color, tone, and essence to the written word and captured moments. With NASAs Commercial Crew Program, Commercial Resupply Services, and its efforts to send astronauts far beyond Earths influence set to inaugurate a rebirth of U.S. crewed space flight, SFIs team will use their diverse skills to write this new chapter in space exploration history as few can.

Image Credit: Nathan Koga / SpaceFlight Insider

Tagged: James Vaughan Joel Haland Nathan Koga The Range

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Imagining the future: How illustrators shape visions of the future - SpaceFlight Insider

Due to launch together in 2020, the two satellites making up Proba-3 will fly in precise formation to form an external coronagraph in space, one satellite eclipsing the sun to allow the second to study the otherwise invisible solar corona. Credit: ESA

As skywatchers and scientists converge on a transcontinental band of totality for Mondays solar eclipse in the United States, engineers in Europe are building a unique pair of satellites to create artificial eclipses lasting for hours a feat that that could be a boon for solar physicists but will escape the view of Earth-bound spectators.

The European Space Agencys Proba-3 mission, scheduled for launch in late 2020, is made possible by two satellites, one about the size of a refrigerator, and another slightly smaller spacecraft with the rough dimensions of a coffee table.

The basic idea is to fly the smaller satellite directly between the sun and the field-of-view of cameras and instruments mounted on the bigger spacecraft, blocking the sunlight and revealing the glow of the suns corona, or super-hot atmosphere, and filament-like eruptions called solar flares.

The light coming from the surface of the sun is a million times brighter than the corona, requiring special measures to see the solar atmosphere.

The concept of obstructing the brightest light emanating from the sun to study activity around it is not new. Scientists have made observations of the corona for centuries during solar eclipses, and there are other space missions that carry coronagraphs, light-blocking discs buried inside telescopes used to make the relatively dim solar atmosphere visible.

But coronagraphs mounted inside telescopes are prone to stray light, a common problem in optics. Light escaping around the coronagraph disc can distort or mask views of the corona.

One simple way to think of the stray light problem is to compare an image of a total solar eclipse, a spectacular phenomenon where the faint corona suddenly springs into view. Holding your thumb over the sun at arms length does not produce the same result because sunlight has already been scattered by particles in Earths atmosphere.

One of the science goals of Proba-3 is to reproduce the conditions of a total solar eclipse as much as possible, said Andrei Zhukov, principal investigator for Proba-3s coronagraph at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, in response to questions from Spaceflight Now.

In general, the longer the distance between an observer or a camera and the object obscuring the sun, the better the result. Scientists also do not have to worry about atmospheric distortions in space.

This problem can be minimized by extending the coronagraph length, the distance between the camera and the disc, as far as possible but there are practical limits to coronagraph size, Zhukov said in an ESA press release.

Instead, Proba-3s coronagraph uses two craft: a camera satellite and a disc satellite, Zhukov said. They fly together so precisely that they operate like a single coronagraph, 150 meters (492 feet) long.

The duo will launch together into an highly elliptical, oval-shaped orbit around Earth taking the satellites as high as 37,611 miles (60,530 kilometers) and as low as 372 miles (600 kilometers).

In that orbit, the satellites will complete one lap around the planet every 19.6 hours. For six of those hours, cameras on Proba-3s larger satellite will have an artificial eclipse.

Proba-3 will see the features down to 34,500 miles (55,600 kilometers) from the sun about 8 percent of the solar radius resolving activity closer to the solar limb than any current space mission. Zhukov said ground-based observers looking at a total solar eclipse can still see more of the corona than Proba-3, but the advantage of a space mission is the eclipses longevity.

During two years of its nominal mission, Proba-3 will provide around 1,000 hours of coronal observations, Zhukov wrote in an email to Spaceflight Now. This has to be compared with several minutes of duration of natural eclipses during the same time.

Proba-3 will also be free from disturbances produced by the Earths atmosphere in all astronomical observations, Zhukov wrote.

ESA is developing the Proba-3 mission as an experimental demonstration, with scientific observations of the sun a secondary goal.

Engineers want to test out technologies for autonomous formation flying on Proba-3, which will use ranging measurements with the help of GPS navigation signals and optical sensors.

The two spacecraft will be connected with an inter-satellite radio link, and the so-called occulter satellite the smaller of the pair will carry low-power micro-thrusters for fine maneuvers, keeping the two vehicles positioned with millimeter precision.

Proba-3 will create an eclipse when the satellites are farthest from Earth. The satellites will passively drift apart during the rest of each orbit, a fuel-saving measure to minimize consumption of the missions limited supply of propellant.

The capabilities to be proved out on Proba-3 could be used on future missions to repair satellites in orbit or return samples from Mars, according to ESA.

Already approved for development as a tech demo mission, Proba-3 won the backing of ESAs science program committee earlier this year. The agencys scientific division will pay for Proba-3s science operations center to ensure astronomers get the most out of the project.

Proba-3 was scheduled for launch in 2019, but officials recently pushed back the missions liftoff to the fourth quarter of 2020.

The complexity in the development of the formation flying technology does not allow the launch in late 2019 as was planned earlier, Zhukov said. The project schedule is now consolidated, and the launch in the fourth quarter of 2020 is the new baseline. That does look feasible.

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Pioneering ESA mission aims to create artificial solar eclipses ... - Spaceflight Now

Beneath the giant Saturn V rocket (an authentic dynamic test vehicle) at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, astronauts-to-be hear stories of pioneering rocketeers.

You could say that Zoe McElroy is a Space Camp expert. Shes been eight times. About to start her freshman year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, McElroy says shes wanted to be an aerospace engineer since she was nine years old. Thats the year she first went to Space Camp. I remember begging my mom on the plane ride home, Can you send me back next summer? I loved everything about it, she says. I got to see all that engineering and meet all those amazing people. And I really knew that thats what I wanted to do with my life.

Located at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabamathe official visitor center for NASAs Marshall Space Flight CenterSpace Camp is now in its 35th year and has made a name for itself, not just around the country but around the world, as an inspirational as well as educational program. Among the 35,000 people who participate each year in the camps standard offeringa week-long program, in space technology, aviation, or roboticsare students from 70 countries. We have about the same number of students from China as we have from Tennessee, says CEO and executive director Deborah Barnhart.

And the camp has an extraordinary rate of recidivism. At a weekend event last summer, one alumnus reported having attended 19 sessions; another, 21.

Nicholas Schaefer, a junior at Loudoun County High School in Leesburg, Virginia, is also a serial camper. Last summer, he graduated from his sixth Aviation Challenge, a military-inspired program of flight simulators, water-survival training, and centrifuge rides. He keeps coming back, he says, because he values the leadership training, which he believes will help him land a spot at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington and eventually as an officer in the Marine Corps.

Barnhart, a former Navy captain who calls her programs thinly veiled workforce development, says she wants students to know that the military is an excellent path for careers in technology.

I would recommend Aviation Challenge programs to everybody, says Schaefer, for an opportunity to [try out] a leadership position in a safe environment where its okay to make mistakes. This past summer, Schaefer attended a 12-day, invitation-only program, Aviation Challenge Mach III Elite. That is not for everybody, he says. Thats for people willing to apply themselves and give 110 percent. During Schaefers session, he coordinated three 10-person teams in a hostage rescue.

Both McElroy and Schaefer say theyve learned about science and technology. McElroy learned how rockets work, and Schaefer can spit out a 9Line medevac request (a military protocol) like a combat veteran. But the real value of the camp seems to lie in the intangibles it teaches and the opportunity it offers students to role-play as their future selvesto try on for size the identities they think they want as adults.

And, like all camps, it is prized for the friendships it forms. Theyve been through difficulties together, says Barnhart. On the space missions, we throw a lot of anomalies at them, and its tough. Many bond for life. We have students from the 1980s who are adult friends. The program has also led to about 100 marriages.

In Advanced Space Academy, youre on a mission for 24 straight hours, and they keep throwing problems at you to solve. It is so stressful but so fun, says McElroy. I met my best friend at Space Camp and that was the only fight weve ever been inover something that happened in that mission.

Space Camp is for teachers too, and one of the intangibles that Wisconsin Teacher of the Year Ryan Fuhrman is taking home with himin addition to a notebook full of lesson plans and ideasis his realization of the importance of diversity. (Space Camp is one of the prizes awarded to every teacher selected by state school officers as a Teacher of the Year.) Fuhrman worked with an art teacher and a special ed teacher on one of the camp assignments: to design a heat shield to protect an egg from a five-minute blast with a blow torch. I think like an engineer, says the science teacher, but I saw there were other ways to solve problems. When everybody is able to bring ideas, we get better solutions.

Space Camp offers week-long programs 50 weeks of the year and also has single-day or weekend training. For more:spacecamp.com.

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Space Camp May Be Habit Forming - Air & Space Magazine

Paul Knightly

August 21st, 2017

Two members of the Mars 160 mission during an extravehicular activity at the Mars Societys Flashline Mars Analogue Research Station. Photo Credit: Mars Society

The Mars Societys Mars 160 mission simulation has concluded and the six members of the international crew have started making their way home to Earth. The simulation in the Canadian high Arctic ended on August 14, 2017, and the crew was flown out from the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) on August 16.

Crew biologist Anushree Srivastava examines samples collected at the FMARS site. Photo Credit: Mars Society

Arriving in Yellowknife, Canada, on August 18, the crew is starting to make their way to the United States where many of them will talk about their experience during the mission at the Mars Society Convention in Irvine, California, on September 9.

The final days of the mission saw crew members completing their remaining field science activities and securing FMARS for the long arctic winter ahead. On August 12, the crew had an ambitious schedule in which two extravehicular activities (EVAs) were performed on the same day the first time dual EVAs had been conducted during the mission.

The morning EVA focused on collecting final samples from periglacial features near the habitat while the afternoon EVA focused on collecting biological samples near the middle of the Haughton Impact Crater. Both teams reported successful collecting samples that day to close out science activities for the Mars 160 mission.

After the crew secured FMARS, an activity that lasted through August 15, they were flown to a staging area in Resolute, Nunavut, where the crew showered and enjoyed warm meals. While cooking was a staple of the Mars 160 mission, crew members were happy to enjoy fresh fruit and meat for the first time in a month.

As the crew prepares to return home, it spent the remainder of last week in meetings to debrief the mission.

Mars 160 is a two-phase analog Mars mission simulation seeking to compare the scientific output under Mars mission constraints at the two Mars Society analog research facilities: the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Utah and FMARS on Devon Island in Canada. The FMARS portion of the simulation represented the second and final phase of the mission.

The crew will be making a presentation about the Mars 160 during the 20th Annual Mars Society Convention at the University of California, Irvine from September 710.

For more information on the Mars 160 mission, visithttp://mars160.marssociety.org/. Paul Knightly served as a crew geologist for Mars 160 and is alsowritingfor Spaceflight Insider.

Haughton Impact Crater. Photo Credit: Mars Society

Tagged: Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station Mars Mars 160 Mars Society The Range

Paul is currently a graduate student in Space and Planetary Sciences at the University of Akransas in Fayetteville. He grew up in the Kansas City area and developed an interest in space at a young age at the start of the twin Mars Exploration Rover missions in 2003. He began his studies in aerospace engineering before switching over to geology at Wichita State University where he earned a Bachelor of Science in 2013. After working as an environmental geologist for a civil engineering firm, he began his graduate studies in 2016 and is actively working towards a PhD that will focus on the surficial processes of Mars. He also participated in a 2-week simluation at The Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station in 2014 and remains involved in analogue mission studies today. Paul has been interested in science outreach and communication over the years which in the past included maintaining a personal blog on space exploration from high school through his undergraduate career and in recent years he has given talks at schools and other organizations over the topics of geology and space. He is excited to bring his experience as a geologist and scientist to the Spaceflight Insider team writing primarily on space science topics.

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Mars 160: Crew returns to 'Earth' - SpaceFlight Insider

With thrilling cosmic clockwork, the moon will pass in front of the sun Monday, casting a 70-mile-wide shadow that will sweep across the United States from coast to coast, giving millions along the path of totality a chance to marvel at one of natures grandest spectacles, a total eclipse of the sun.

It is the first solar eclipse visible from the United States since 1979 and the first to cross the entire continent in 99 years. Some 12 million people live in the path of totality, and many experts expect that number to at least double when veteran eclipse chasers, armchair astronomers and the merely curious rush in, possibly at the last minute.

So instead of being 12 million, were expecting 20 plus, said Rick Fienberg, a spokesman for the American Astronomical Society. I would be surprised if that was an inaccurate estimate.

Weather permitting and with eye safety in mind everyone in the continental United States, Canada, Central America and the northern quarter of South America will enjoy a partial solar eclipse, with the moon blocking some or even most of the sun as the three-hour event unfolds.

But for the millions of residents who live in the 14 states along the path of totality, along with millions more who braved predicted heavy traffic to join them, the sky will darken as the sun is completely obscured, the temperature will drop, bright stars and planets will come out and a 360-degree sunset will be visible around the horizon.

In the seconds before the sun is totally obscured, brilliant shafts of light passing through lunar valleys and chasms around the moons limb will flicker and flare, a phenomenon known as Bailys Beads, before a brief, final burst of concentrated sunshine giving the sun the appearance of a diamond ring.

And suddenly, that final flare will vanish, the sun will disappear and its outer atmosphere, the normally unseen, super-heated corona, will shine and shimmer with the brightness of a full moon, a crown-like halo stretching away in all directions.

If youre in the path of totality, it will get dark, it will get cool, you will experience a total eclipse, Fienberg said in a telephone interview from Oregon.

Of course, the part thats most exciting is actually seeing the corona and seeing the beautiful sunset colors and seeing the stars and planets come out. Hopefully, as many people as possible will see that. Whatever the weather, I suspect this will still go down as the most observed eclipse in history.

Michael Bakich, a senior editor with Astronomy magazine, put it like this:

Do you know the difference between a partial and a total eclipse? Its the difference between a lightning bug and lightning, he wrote. Between testing negative and positive with a pregnancy test. Between a paper cut and stepping on a land mind. In other words, theres no comparison.

I think of it as awesome in the truest sense of the word: able to inspire or generate awe. I guarantee that if you stand in the moons shadow under a clear sky, youll never forget it. Furthermore, it will stand out as one of the greatest if not the greatest sights you ever have or ever will behold.

The spectacle begins near Lincoln Beach, Oregon, when the moons outer shadow, or penumbra crosses the coast at 9:05 a.m. PDT (12:05 p.m. EDT), marking the start of a partial solar eclipse.

One hour and 11 minutes later, at 10:16 a.m. local time (1:16 p.m. EDT), the dark inner heart of the moons shadow the umbra will cross the coast. For the next one minute and 58 seconds for those along the coast, the moon will totally block out the sun as the umbra, moving at some 2,400 mph, begins its race across the heartland of American.

Because of the swiftly-changing geometry and the motions of the Earth and moon as they wheel about in space, the duration of totality increases as the shadow races eastward, lasting an additional four seconds by the time it reached Madras, Oregon, three-and-a-half minutes after landfall.

A town of 6,200 with historically clear skies, Madras braced for a veritable flood of visitors.

Theyre expecting about a million people to enter the state, a million out-of-towners are supposed to come to the state of Oregon, said CBS News Correspondent Jamie Yuccas. Where were located in Madras, theyre expecting between 100,000 and 200,000 people.

She said the local residents have been really, really nice and accommodating.

What the mayor said to me was kind of funny, Yuccas said. He said you know, I think its going to be one of those situations that you might not get your newspaper, you might not have your daily Starbucks and if that happens, I guess its a first-world problem, and youre going to have to figure out your own survival skills.'

She laughed, saying there are going to be some minor inconveniences, but I actually think they had a pretty good plan together.

Fienberg also was in Madras, leading a tour group for his 13th solar eclipse.

Its like children, you know, you love them all, you cant have a favorite, he said. Im excited for this one. This is he first opportunity I have to actually shoot pictures with a tracking telescope mount and computer controlled camera. Im usually traveling to far, distant lands where I cant bring all that stuff.

The computer is programmed to track the sun and take 300 pictures between the start of the eclipse and its conclusion. And Im not going to have to touch it! Im going to get to look this time instead of spending half my time trying to take pictures manually, Fienberg said.

From Madras, the moons shadow will sweep across Oregon and into Idaho, passing just north of Boise before moving on across Idaho Falls at 11:33 a.m. local time (1:33 p.m. EDT), and Casper, Wyoming, at 11:42 a.m. (1:42 p.m. EDT).

Steven Young, publisher of Astronomy Now magazine in Great Britain, picked Casper because of its generally clear August weather and grand western vistas. He was not alone.

Theres a map here that people are putting pins into, Young said by telephone. There are people from Australia, the Philippines, all across Europe, Russia, India, South Africa who have put pins in. Everywhere you go, people are here for the eclipse.

City managers closed off the historic section of downtown and most businesses, the library, offices, are all going to be closed, like a national holiday, Young said. I think the population here is 50,000, but the locals have been told to expect that to double. Theres definitely a lot of excitement. Everywhere you go people are talking about the eclipse.

From Casper, the shadow will race along to Grand Island, Nebraska, at 12:58 p.m. (1:58 p.m. EDT), St. Joseph, Missouri, at 1:06 p.m. (2:06 p.m. EDT) and nearby Columbia six minutes later. By this point, the shadow will have slowed to about 1,500 mph.

Residents of the northeast corner of Kansas City, just inside the path of totality, will enjoy about a minute of darkness around 1:08 p.m. (2:08 p.m. EDT) as will residents in southwestern St. Louis a few minutes after that.

Crossing the Mississippi River, the center of the umbra will pass just south of Carbondale, Illinois, at 1:20 p.m. (2:20 p.m. EDT) before moving over Paducah and Hopkinsville, Kentucky, at 1:24 p.m. (2:24 p.m. EDT). A few miles south of Carbondale, eclipse watchers will enjoy the maximum duration of darkness, about two minutes and 43 seconds of totality.

Illinois Southern University in Carbondale is hosting eclipse watchers at its football stadium, where 20,000 spectators are expected, along with amateur astronomers spread out across an adjacent field, scores of vendors, area residents, students, journalists and veteran eclipse chasers. The small town took on a carnival atmosphere in the days leading up to the eclipse as city managers and residents implemented a detailed, smooth-running plan years in the making.

NASA Edge, a popular space-centric science and technology show carried on NASAs satellite television system and streamed on the internet, was set up at the ISU stadium as part of the space agencys megacast of eclipse events.

Were essentially covering the entirety of the eclipse from the west coast to the east coast, focusing on totality here in Carbondale, said executive producer and co-host Blair Allen. Its the crossroads of the eclipse. In seven years, in some bizarre twist of natural fate, Carbondale happens to be where (the next U.S.) eclipse comes in 2024. Since its coming again, this is sort of a sneak preview for 2024.

A suite of sophisticated cameras and telescopes, one with a nine-inch lens, were set up to stream live images of the sun throughout the day in multiple wavelengths.

You dont have the opportunity to see this kind of astronomical event with any kind of regularity, Allen said. So for us, its right up there, because even though we know in seven years there will be another one, you never know if youre going to make it, you never know whats gong to be happening or, more important, whether therell be good weather. Were keeping our fingers crossed.

From Illinois and Kentucky, the shadow will move across Clarksville and then Nashville, Tennessee, the largest city in the path of totality, at 1:27 p.m. (2:27 p.m. EDT). A few moments later, it will pass over Interstate 40 near Silverpoint, TN, where home builder Tommy Thomas prepared for a mega-eclipse party of his own on the family farm, a stones throw from the center of totality. He expected about 200 guests.

He said his twin daughters called me one day and said Dad, the eclipse is crossing your driveway. We want to have a party. I said Im up for it. We brought in a tent, we brought in restrooms, weve got electricity, weve made a bar out of the barn, weve got areas for different social groups, weve got fire pits, were going to have games.

Life is meant to be celebrated, and if you dont do it, its your fault, Thomas said. Were going to sit out here, drink a drink, make a toast and enjoy life.

Crossing central Tennessee, the moons shadow will pass over the Smokey Mountains, the southwest corner of North Carolina and then race over the heart of South Carolina where viewers in Greenville, Columbia and Charleston will enjoy totality between 2:38 p.m. and 2:47 p.m. EDT.

The moons shadow then will move off shore and out over the Atlantic Ocean, one hour and 33 minutes after the umbra crossed the coast of Oregon some 2,500 miles away.

Many, many people are going to be losing their eclipse virginity on Monday, Fienberg said. Its going to be a pretty exciting day.

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Eclipse chasers keep fingers crossed for clear skies - Spaceflight Now

A Swindon-based human spaceflight expert will be part of a new BBC2 show which launched last night, putting 12 contestants to the test to see whether they have what it takes to become an astronaut.

Libby Jackson, the Human Spaceflight and Microgravity Programme Manager at the UK Space Agency, based in Swindons Polaris House, has contributed her expertise to ensure that Astronauts: Do You Have What It Takes? provides a realistic challenge for the aspiring spacemen and women.

Libby, 36, who will be making an appearance herself later in the series, manages the UKs human spaceflight programme, as well as looking after the community of British researchers who are involved with the International Space Station.

She said of the programme: I think it is superb, I think it is wonderful to see the British space industrygetting such a prime-time slot.

I was pleased to see that everyone seems to be so excited about it, and it is going to be fascinating, to see how the candidates progress over the next five weeks.

The first episode saw the participants challenged to hold a helicopter in a steady position, repeat long lists of numbers backwards while exercising, and draw their own blood.

And Libby believes they make for a genuine representation of the selection process: It is very realistic, the team of experts they have got is fantastic. They have worked with the producers of the programme to put together a very realistic set of tests.

They are based on real tests, so they are good representations of the kind of things that people go through in astronaut selection.

Libby first became interested in human space flight herself at 17, after undertaking a placement which included shadowing a flight director at NASAs Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas.

After completing her undergraduate degree at Imperial College, London, she studied for a Masters in Astronautics and Space Engineering at Cranfield University.

She started her career in satellite operations, then moved to Munich as a flight controller and instructor of astronauts, before joining Europes Mission Control for seven years.

Libby has been based at the UK Space Agency for the last four years, where she managed the education outreach programme for astronaut Tim Peakes mission, reaching over 1.6m children and one third of the UKs schools in the process.

She said still feels the same enthusiasm for her career: I love it. I have always gone to work and can never quite believe that I get to do something I enjoy so much it is my passion.

I was fascinated by space my whole life, motivated by the Apollo missions. While I was at university I realised that this was something I could do for a living.

When I was at university, the UK didnt support human space flight programmes - now I manage the human space flight programme for the UK.

I still cant believe Im doing this.

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Swindon spaceflight expert bound for TV on BBC2's Astronauts - Swindon Advertiser

Japans H-2A rocket lifts off Saturday from the Tanegashima Space Center. Credit: MHI

A Japanese H-2A rocket soared away from a launch pad on a rocky overlook on the Pacific Ocean on Saturday, hauling into orbit the countrys third Michibiki satellite to join a constellation of navigation aids to improve positioning services across the country.

The third satellite to join Japans Quasi-Zenith Satellite System took off at 0529 GMT (1:29 a.m. EDT; 2:29 p.m. Japan Standard Time) Saturday, eight days later than originally scheduled.

Weather pushed back the missions initial Aug. 11 launch date, and a leaky helium pressurization system scrubbed a launch attempt Aug. 12, forcing ground crews to roll the rocket back to its hangar for repairs.

The 174-foot-tall (53-meter) H-2A launcher, powered by a hydrogen-fueled main engine and four strap-on solid rocket boosters, headed east from the Tanegashima Space Center, a spaceport built on an island at the southwestern edge of the country.

Climbing through a clear afternoon sky on 2.5 million pounds of thrust, the H-2A rocket quickly exceeded the speed of sound and left a twirling column of exhaust in its wake.

The four solid rocket boosters let go from the launcher around two minutes after liftoff, and the shroud covering the Michibiki 3 spacecraft jettisoned a couple of minutes later.

The H-2As cryogenic upper stage engine performed back-to-back burns to guide the Michibiki 3 satellite into an oval-shaped geostationary transfer orbit that will take the payload more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) above Earth at its highest point.

The Japanese launch team reported no issues during the flight, and they announced an on-target separation of the Michibiki 3 satellite around 29 minutes into the mission, prompting applause from engineers in the H-2A control center.

The satellite was expected to radio its status to a ground station soon after launch, and Michibiki 3s on-board engine will conduct multiple firings over the next few days to circularize its orbit at geostationary altitude around 22,300 miles (35,800 kilometers) over the equator.

Built by Mitsubishi Electric, the navigation craft joins two similar satellites launched on H-2A rockets in September 2010 and in June of this year. Those previous spacecraft circle Earth in orbits tilted at an angle to the equator, causing them to oscillate north and south, but remain always fixed over the Asia-Pacific region.

A fourth Japanese navigation satellite will launch later this year on another H-2A flight.

Michibiki means guiding or showing the way in Japanese.

The network will help ensure drivers, hikers and other users can constantly locate themselves. Skyscrapers in cities, such as Tokyo, and mountainous terrain can block signals from GPS satellites, which are located in orbits closer to Earth than the Michibiki satellites.

The GPS constellation, operated by the U.S. Air Force, flies 12,550 miles (20,200 kilometers) above Earth. Although there are at least 30 operational GPS spacecraft, only a small fraction of the fleet is visible from a single point on Earth at one time.

It takes four GPS satellites to calculate a precise position on Earth, but a Michibiki satellite broadcasting the same four L-band signals will give a receiver an estimate if there are not enough GPS satellites visible, or it can help produce a more accurate position calculation even with full GPS service.

The Quasi-Zenith Satellite System is the first in the world to transmit sub-meter and centimeter level augmentation signals, said Hiromichi Moriyama, executive director of the National Space Policy Secretariat in Japans Cabinet Office. It will be in charge of communications linking evacuation shelters and emergency response headquarters in times of disaster.

Officials say urban planning, agriculture, disaster response and national security will be supported by the four-satellite navigation fleet.

Japan is not the country developing a regional navigation fleet to improve GPS signals over its territory.

India has launched seven navigation satellites with an eighth due for liftoff later this month to work in concert with the GPS satellites across the subcontinent.

Meanwhile, European nations and China are developing and deploying separate navigation networks to provide global services independent of the GPS constellation. Russia already has its own satellite navigation system with near-global coverage.

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Japan launches navigation satellite after week-long delay - Spaceflight Now

Artists concept of a Red Dragon spacecraft on the surface of Mars. Credit: SpaceX

Confirming rumors and suspicions that SpaceX is adjusting its plans to begin dispatching robotic landers to Mars, NASA officials said the commercial space company has informed the agency that it has put its Red Dragon program on the back burner.

Under the terms of a Space Act Agreement between NASA and SpaceX, the government agreed to provide navigation and communications services for the Red Dragon mission, which originally aimed to deliver an unpiloted lander to Mars in 2018. SpaceX confirmed earlier this year the launch of the experimental lander on a Falcon Heavy rocket had slipped to 2020.

But Elon Musk, SpaceXs founder and chief executive, said last month that the company is redesigning its next-generation Dragon capsule, a craft designed to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, to do away with the capability for propulsive, precision helicopter-like landings as originally envisioned. Returning space crews will instead splash down in the ocean under parachutes.

The Red Dragon is a robotic, unoccupied version of the Crew Dragon capsule. The concept publicized by SpaceX called for it to use side-mounted jet packs to slow down in the Martian atmosphere, then brake for a rocket-assisted touchdown.

But with that capability removed from the Crew Dragon, outsiders raised questions about the Red Dragon initiative. Musk has not specifically addressed the future of Red Dragon, and a SpaceX spokesperson did not respond to questions on the matter.

Jim Green, head of NASAs planetary science division, told Spaceflight Now in an interview that SpaceX has told the agency that it has put Red Dragon back on the back burner.

Were available to talk to Elon when hes ready to talk to us and were not pushing him in any way, Green said. Its really up to him. Through the Space Act Agreement, wed agreed to navigate to Mars, get him to the top of the atmosphere, and then it was up to him to land. Thats a pretty good deal, I think.

NASA officials said last year that the agency expected to spend about $32 million to support the Red Dragon program over a four-year period. That was expected to be around 10 percent of the total cost of the first Red Dragon mission, one NASA official familiar with the agreement said last year.

The Red Dragons would have delivered cargo and experiments to the Martian surface and tested supersonic retro-propulsion in the planets rarefied atmosphere for the first time. NASA engineers say a rocket-braking mechanism like the Dragons SuperDraco thrusters is needed to safely land heavy supply ships and crew vehicles on Mars.

The space agency signed up to support the privately-developed Red Dragon project to gather data on supersonic retro-propulsion officials said NASA would be unable to obtain until at least the late 2020s with a government-managed mission.

Musk wrote in a tweet that SpaceX has not abandoned supersonic retro-propulsion at Mars.

Plan is to do powered landings on Mars for sure, but with a vastly bigger ship, he tweeted last month after the announcement that SpaceX is omitting the propulsive landing capability on the Crew Dragon.

Musk said his team at SpaceX is refining how the company could send people to Mars, eventually to settle there. He revealed a Mars transportation architecture in a speech at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, last year, but the outline has since changed.

A vision for gigantic interplanetary transporters Musk presented last year has been downsized, he said.

Musk said he will unveil the changes during a presentation in September at this years International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia.

Launch opportunities from Earth to Mars come every 26 months or so, when the planets are aligned in their orbits around the sun to allow for a direct interplanetary trip.

What Ive said is, Im ready, Green said. When they contact us and say, Green, start a solution for going from here to Mars in 20-whatever, then Ill do that.

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SpaceX informed NASA of slowdown in its commercial Mars program - Spaceflight Now

Credit: SpaceX

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket climbed into space Monday from NASAs Kennedy Space Center atop a column of gleaming exhaust, shooting a commercial resupply vessel toward the International Space Station with research projects looking into cosmic rays, the origin of Parkinsons disease, the utility of small satellites and an experimental radiation-tolerant supercomputer.

Crammed with more than 6,400 pounds (2,900 kilograms) of supplies, the Dragon capsule bolted on top of the Falcon 9 rocket also carried computer and camera gear, components to maintain the stations life support system and medical equipment, and provisions for the stations six-person crew, including clothing, fresh food and ice cream.

The 213-foot-tall (65-meter) rocket took off from pad 39A at the Florida spaceport at 12:31:37 p.m. EDT (1631:37 GMT), pitched toward the northeast to align with the space stations orbit, and roared through scattered clouds before disappearing into a blue summertime sky.

Nine Merlin 1D main engines at the base of the booster generated 1.7 million pounds of thrust, pushing the rocket into the stratosphere before the first stage switched off and fell away at an altitude of 40 miles (65 kilometers).

A single Merlin engine fired on the Falcon 9s upper stage to power the Dragon capsule into orbit. Glowing red-hot, the second stage engine throttled up to more than 200,000 pounds of thrust for its six-and-a-half minute firing.

Meanwhile, in a maneuver now common during SpaceX launches, the first stage flipped around with guided pulses of cold nitrogen gas to point tail first, then reignited three of its Merlin engines to boost itself back forward Cape Canaveral.

Two more braking maneuvers were needed to slow down the descending rocket, steering it back to the coast with the help of aerodynamic fins before extending four landing legs and settling on a concrete target at Landing Zone 1 less than eight minutes after liftoff, around 9 miles (15 kilometers) south of the Falcon 9s departure point at pad 39A.

From what Ive heard, its right on the bullseye and (had a) very soft touchdown, so its a great pre-flown booster ready to go for the next time, said Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceXs vice president of flight reliability.

SpaceX has reused two of its recovered first stage boosters to date, and engineers are prepping another previously-flown rocket for a mission with an SES communications satellite this fall.

The rocket launched Monday was a fresh vehicle, but its landing legs were scavenged from a vehicle flown on a previous mission, Koenigsmann said.

The upper stage continued rocketing into orbit, turning off its engine just after the nine-minute point in the flight, then deploying the Dragon capsule into an on-target slightly egg-shaped orbit averaging around 175 miles (280 kilometers) above the planet.

The second stage went into a near-perfect orbit (and) deployed Dragon, Koenigsmann said in a media briefing around two hours after the launch.

Dragon primed propellant and has performed the first co-elliptic burn at this point in time, he said, referring to the first in a series of thruster firings on tap to guide the capsule toward the space station.

The supply ships power-generating solar arrays extended shortly after it arrived in space, while the Falcon 9s second stage reignited for a de-orbit maneuver to avoid the creation of space junk.

With Mondays launch, SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket family has accomplished 39 missions since debuting in 2010, and 38 of them have succeeded in their primary objectives. Those statistics do not include a Falcon 9 rocket that exploded before takeoff during testing on the launch pad, destroying an Israeli communications satellite.

SpaceX has landed the Falcon 9s first stage intact 14 times in 19 tries since the company attempted its first rocket landing on a barge at sea in 2015. Six of those touchdowns have occurred at Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral.

The automated cargo freighter will reach its destination Wednesday, when astronaut Jack Fischer will take command of the space stations Canadian-built robotic arm to capture the commercial spaceship around 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT).

The robotic arm will install Dragon on the space stations Harmony module for a planned 32-day stay.

While astronauts inside the station will unpack cargo inside Dragons internal cabin, the Canadian and Japanese robotic arms will transfer a NASA-funded cosmic ray sensor to a mounting post outside the Kibo laboratory.

Derived from an instrument carried aloft on high-altitude balloons, the Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass, or CREAM, payload will spend at least three years sampling particles sent speeding through the universe by cataclysmic supernova explosions, and perhaps other exotic phenomena like dark matter.

Scientists think the subatomic particles could hold the key to unlocking mysteries about the universe.

One experiment stowed inside the capsules pressurized section will investigate the origins of Parkinsons disease in a bid to find a therapy that could slow or halt its development, and another will study the affects of spaceflight on the development of bioengineered lung tissue, potentially helping scientists lessen the chance of organ rejection in transplant patients.

A supercomputer developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise will spend at least a year on the space station, helping engineers gauge the ruggedness of commercial computer components in the harsh conditions of space.

Most computers sent into space are physically hardened to withstand radiation, cosmic rays, and other rigors of spaceflight. Hewlett Packard said its spaceborne computer experiment was hardened with software, reducing the time, money and weight of the supercomputer.

The experimental computer passed at least 146 safety tests and certifications to win NASA approval for the trip to the space station. If it works, Hewlett Packard officials said it could help future space missions, including a human expedition to Mars, have the latest computer technology.

Four small satellites inside the Dragon capsule will be moved inside the space station for deployment later this year.

The biggest of the bunch, named Kestrel Eye 2M, is a pathfinder for a potential constellation of Earth-imaging spacecraft for the U.S. military. About the size of a dorm room refrigerator, the Kestrel Eye 2M satellite was developed by the Armys Space and Missile Defense Command over the last five years.

Three CubeSats sponsored by NASA will test technologies for compact telescopes that could help astronomers observe stars and search for exoplanets, demonstrate a more reliable small satellite design, and study space weather.

Mondays Falcon 9 flight was the first of three launches scheduled from Cape Canaveral in the next 11 days.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket is scheduled to roll out Wednesday to pad 41 at the Cape ahead of liftoff Friday at 8:03 a.m. EDT (1203 GMT) with a NASA satellite designed to track rockets climbing into space and relay communications between scientific spacecraft in orbit around Earth.

An Orbital ATK Minotaur 4 rocket is being readied for launch at 11:15 p.m. EDT Aug. 25 (0315 GMT Aug. 26) from Cape Canaverals pad 46 with a military space surveillance mission.

The next mission on SpaceXs manifest is scheduled for Aug. 24 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. A Falcon 9 rocket will haul the Taiwanese Formosat 5 Earth observation satellite into a polar orbit, and its first stage will attempt a return to a barge downrange in the Pacific Ocean.

SpaceXs team at the Kennedy Space Center will prepare a Falcon 9 to deploy the U.S. Air Forces reusable X-37B spaceplane no earlier than Sept. 7.

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SpaceX launches cargo capsule full of science experiments ... - Spaceflight Now

Due to launch together in 2020, the two satellites making up Proba-3 will fly in precise formation to form an external coronagraph in space, one satellite eclipsing the sun to allow the second to study the otherwise invisible solar corona. Credit: ESA

As skywatchers and scientists converge on a transcontinental band of totality for Mondays solar eclipse in the United States, engineers in Europe are building a unique pair of satellites to create artificial eclipses lasting for hours a feat that that could be a boon for solar physicists but will escape the view of Earth-bound spectators.

The European Space Agencys Proba-3 mission, scheduled for launch in late 2020, is made possible by two satellites, one about the size of a refrigerator, and another slightly smaller spacecraft with the rough dimensions of a coffee table.

The basic idea is to fly the smaller satellite directly between the sun and the field-of-view of cameras and instruments mounted on the bigger spacecraft, blocking the sunlight and revealing the glow of the suns corona, or super-hot atmosphere, and filament-like eruptions called solar flares.

The light coming from the surface of the sun is a million times brighter than the corona, requiring special measures to see the solar atmosphere.

The concept of obstructing the brightest light emanating from the sun to study activity around it is not new. Scientists have made observations of the corona for centuries during solar eclipses, and there are other space missions that carry coronagraphs, light-blocking discs buried inside telescopes used to make the relatively dim solar atmosphere visible.

But coronagraphs mounted inside telescopes are prone to stray light, a common problem in optics. Light escaping around the coronagraph disc can distort or mask views of the corona.

One simple way to think of the stray light problem is to compare an image of a total solar eclipse, a spectacular phenomenon where the faint corona suddenly springs into view. Holding your thumb over the sun at arms length does not produce the same result because sunlight has already been scattered by particles in Earths atmosphere.

One of the science goals of Proba-3 is to reproduce the conditions of a total solar eclipse as much as possible, said Andrei Zhukov, principal investigator for Proba-3s coronagraph at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, in response to questions from Spaceflight Now.

In general, the longer the distance between an observer or a camera and the object obscuring the sun, the better the result. Scientists also do not have to worry about atmospheric distortions in space.

This problem can be minimized by extending the coronagraph length, the distance between the camera and the disc, as far as possible but there are practical limits to coronagraph size, Zhukov said in an ESA press release.

Instead, Proba-3s coronagraph uses two craft: a camera satellite and a disc satellite, Zhukov said. They fly together so precisely that they operate like a single coronagraph, 150 meters (492 feet) long.

The duo will launch together into an highly elliptical, oval-shaped orbit around Earth taking the satellites as high as 37,611 miles (60,530 kilometers) and as low as 372 miles (600 kilometers).

In that orbit, the satellites will complete one lap around the planet every 19.6 hours. For six of those hours, cameras on Proba-3s larger satellite will have an artificial eclipse.

Proba-3 will see the features down to 34,500 miles (55,600 kilometers) from the sun about 8 percent of the solar radius resolving activity closer to the solar limb than any current space mission. Zhukov said ground-based observers looking at a total solar eclipse can still see more of the corona than Proba-3, but the advantage of a space mission is the eclipses longevity.

During two years of its nominal mission, Proba-3 will provide around 1,000 hours of coronal observations, Zhukov wrote in an email to Spaceflight Now. This has to be compared with several minutes of duration of natural eclipses during the same time.

Proba-3 will also be free from disturbances produced by the Earths atmosphere in all astronomical observations, Zhukov wrote.

ESA is developing the Proba-3 mission as an experimental demonstration, with scientific observations of the sun a secondary goal.

Engineers want to test out technologies for autonomous formation flying on Proba-3, which will use ranging measurements with the help of GPS navigation signals and optical sensors.

The two spacecraft will be connected with an inter-satellite radio link, and the so-called occulter satellite the smaller of the pair will carry low-power micro-thrusters for fine maneuvers, keeping the two vehicles positioned with millimeter precision.

Proba-3 will create an eclipse when the satellites are farthest from Earth. The satellites will passively drift apart during the rest of each orbit, a fuel-saving measure to minimize consumption of the missions limited supply of propellant.

The capabilities to be proved out on Proba-3 could be used on future missions to repair satellites in orbit or return samples from Mars, according to ESA.

Already approved for development as a tech demo mission, Proba-3 won the backing of ESAs science program committee earlier this year. The agencys scientific division will pay for Proba-3s science operations center to ensure astronomers get the most out of the project.

Proba-3 was scheduled for launch in 2019, but officials recently pushed back the missions liftoff to the fourth quarter of 2020.

The complexity in the development of the formation flying technology does not allow the launch in late 2019 as was planned earlier, Zhukov said. The project schedule is now consolidated, and the launch in the fourth quarter of 2020 is the new baseline. That does look feasible.

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Pioneering ESA mission aims to create artificial solar eclipses - Spaceflight Now

A view of pad 46 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where crews have stacked a Minotaur 4 rocket for launch Aug. 25. Credit: Orbital ATK

Using industrial cranes at a no-frills launch pad on the eastern tip of Cape Canaveral, a team of Orbital ATK and U.S. Air Force technicians have fully stacked a modified Cold War-era missile set for launch next week with a $49 million satellite built to track other objects in orbit.

The Minotaur 4 rocket, made up of five solid-fueled stages, is scheduled to fire into space from pad 46 at Cape Canaveral next Friday night, Aug. 25, at 11:15 p.m. EDT (0315 GMT on Aug. 26).

The mission has a four-hour window to lift off, or else wait until another day.

The spacecraft closed up inside the Minotaur 4s nose cone is named SensorSat. Developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Lincoln Laboratory, the Air Force-funded mission will spend three years scanning orbital traffic lanes, detecting and tracking satellites and space debris in a belt nearly 22,300 miles (35,800 kilometers) over the equator.

Objects at that altitude remain over fixed geographic positions on Earth, making geostationary orbit an ideal location for military and commercial communications satellites, weather observatories, and intelligence-gathering spy craft.

SensorSat is managed by the Air Forces Operationally Responsive Space division, an office established in 2007 to investigate lower-cost satellites and launchers. The Air Force calls the mission ORS-5, the latest in a line of projects aimed at testing out new satellite and launch innovations.

The delivery and upcoming launch of ORS-5 marks a significant milestone in fulfilling our commitment to the space situational awareness mission and U.S. Strategic Command, said Lt. Gen. John F. Thompson, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center and Air Force program executive officer for space. Its an important asset for the warfighter and will be employed for at least three years.

Next weeks nighttime blastoff will mark the first Minotaur launch from Cape Canaveral. Five Minotaur 4 rockets have launched on suborbital and orbital missions since 2010 from sites in California and Alaska.

The three main rocket motors that will power the Minotaur 4 into space came from stockpiles left over from the Air Forces retired nuclear-tipped Peacekeeper missiles. The rocket motors were filled with pre-packed solid fuel in the 1980s, then placed on alert in missile silos until the military decommissioned the Peacekeeper.

Two commercially-produced Orion 38 rocket motors built by Orbital ATK, the company charged with operating the Minotaur, will do the extra lifting to place SensorSat into orbit.

The Minotaur 4 usually flies with a single Orion 38 motor as a fourth stage, but SensorSats unusual orbit requires another boost.

The fifth stage motor will give the relatively small 249-pound (113-kilogram) SensorSat satellite a kick into an equator-hugging orbit at an altitude of approximately 372 miles (600 kilometers) at zero degrees inclination.

The Air Force paid $27.2 million for the launch, opting for a commercial-like launch service to keep costs to a minimum. Orbital ATK considered basing the launch from a Minotaur pad at Wallops Island, Virginia, but the site is too far north to reach the equatorial orbit needed on the ORS-5 mission.

Another option Orbital ATK briefly considered was setting up a temporary Minotaur launch pad at the European-run spaceport in French Guiana, just north of the equator, but Cape Canaveral eventually became the best choice once engineers devised a way to add another rocket motor on top of the Minotaur 4.

Ground crews at pad 46 topped off the Minotaur rocket Tuesday with the addition of the SensorSat satellite and the Orion 38 fifth stage motor already closed up inside the launchers nose shroud.

The first four stages of the Minotaur 4 will fire in quick succession in the first 15 minutes of the flight to climb into a preliminary parking orbit between around 248 miles and 372 miles (400 to 600 kilometers) above Earth. That temporary orbit will have a tilt of approximately 24.5 degrees to the equator.

During the 10-minute coast until ignition of the fifth stage motor, the Minotaur will release two CubeSats for an undisclosed U.S. government agency, and a three-unit shoebox-sized CubeSat for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

Seattle-based Spaceflight made arrangements for the CubeSats launching on the Minotaur 4.

The Minotaurs last firing will last a little over a minute.

The way to think of that fifth stage is its an insertion stage, said Phil Joyce, vice president of small launch programs at Orbital ATK. We used the standard Minotaur 4 to put us in a parking orbit And then that fifth stage Orion 38 is there to circularize and to do the plane change down to equatorial.

With stacking of the Minotaur 4 now complete, attention turns to testing the rocket.

Now were in the process of our post-stack verification tests, said Terry Luchi, Orbital ATKs Minotaur program manager. This is where well go through a series of avionics tests and verify that everything is still playing as expected.

A full mission dress rehearsal with the pad team and launch controllers is scheduled for Monday. The rest of the week leading up to launch day will be spent installing ordnance and preparing to arm the vehicle.

Luchi said the Minotaur team had to work around a busy launch manifest at Cape Canaveral. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off last Monday, Aug. 14, and a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 booster launched Friday.

This is the first time that well take Minotaur out of the Cape. We have some experience in the past on other vehicles, but bringing Minotaur to the Cape obviously presents some challenges, Luchi said in an interview with Spaceflight Now.

Orbital ATK is preparing the Minotaur 4 for launch at pad 46, a rarely-used facility operated by Space Florida, the state government agency chartered to lure commercial aerospace business to the area. The last launch from pad 46 occurred in 1999.

The Minotaur launch team raised three inert Peacekeeper stages at pad 46 earlier this year in a pathfinder test to familiarize themselves with the ground facilities and verify their compatibility.

The Air Force-run Eastern Range is also getting acquainted with the Minotaur for the first time.

While there are no more Minotaur missions from Cape Canaveral on Orbital ATKs manifest, Luchi said the experience gained on the ORS-5 campaign could set the stage for future Florida-based flights.

I think were done with this one time (at Cape Canaveral), its going to be all that much easier in the future, Luchi said.

Orbital ATK has one more Minotaur 1 launch in its backlog from Wallops Island, Virginia, in late 2018. That flight, using a smaller version of the Minotaur based on retired Minuteman missile stages, will loft a classified spacecraft for the National Reconnaissance Office.

Joyce said Orbital ATK anticipates future Minotaur launch contracts from the U.S. government for small-class satellites. Because they use government-furnished rocket motors, the Minotaur 1 and 4 families are restricted from competing for commercial launch awards, a U.S. government policy that has drawn the ire of Orbital ATK, which sees privately-owned satellites in the Minotaurs lift envelope, including many U.S. payloads, going up on Indian, Russian and European launchers.

Proponents of the policy say that selling already-built missile motors into the commercial launch market would dampen innovation and keep new companies from introducing commercial rockets.

Several companies are working on commercial small satellite launch vehicles. Some have major strides, including a full-up test flight in the case of the U.S.-New Zealand company Rocket Lab, but none have successfully placed a payload into orbit.

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Assembly complete for Minotaur launcher at Cape Canaveral - Spaceflight Now

Press Release

August 20th, 2017

The HOPE spacesuit was the first suit created by the Spacesuit Art Project. A third spacesuit, UNITY will be unveiled by the crew of the International Space Station. Photo Credit: MD Anderson Cancer Center / Spacesuit Art Project

Patients from around the world will have the opportunity to see a spacesuit art project they helped create. Astronauts currently living and working on the International Space Station will unveil the project at10:25 a.m. EDT(14:25 GMT) Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2017. The 20-minute Earth-to-space call will air live on NASA Television and the agencyswebsite.

Expedition 52 crew members will answer questions from international partner astronauts and several patients turned artists in Mission Control Houston. In the fall of 2016, spacesuit UNITY was created at cancer hospitals in Houston, Canada, Germany, Russia and Japan with collaboration from astronauts from NASA and its international partners ESA (European Space Agency), Roscosmos, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

Three spacesuits, HOPE, COURAGE and UNITY, were created during the project. The UNITY spacesuit arrived to the station on SpaceXs Dragon spacecraft Wednesday, Aug. 16 along with more than 6,400 pounds (2,900 kilograms) of supplies and experiments.

The participating hospitals that helped create the UNITY spacesuit were:

Follow the Space Suit Art Project on Twitter athttps://twitter.com/Spacesuitart.

For NASA TV streaming video, schedule and downlink information, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv.

For more information about the International Space Station, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/station.

For more information about the International Space Station, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/station.

Video courtesy of MD Anderson Cancer Center

Tagged: Expedition 52 International Space Station MD Anderson Cancer Center Press Release Spacesuit Art Project The Range

The preceding is a press or news release either issued by one of the space agencies or by an aerospace firm or organization. The views expressed in the above post do not necessarily reflect those of SpaceFlight Insider.

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Astronauts showcase space art created with childhood cancer patients - SpaceFlight Insider

CAPE CANAVERAL Bulking up NASAs constellation of tracking stations in the sky that provides critical links between orbiting spacecraft and ground control, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket successfully deployed a new communications hub in space today.

NASAs Tracking and Data Relay Satellite series, a program that revolutionized mission operations for U.S. human spaceflight and robotic craft, is now in its fourth decade and this morning orbited its 12th satellite.

TDRS is a critical national asset have because of its importance to the space station and all of our science missions, primarily the Hubble Space Telescope and Earth science missions that use TDRS, said Tim Dunn, NASAs TDRS-M launch director.

With its main engine running at full throttle, the Atlas 5 booster lifted off at 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT) from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral.

The 191-foot-tall rocket, generating 860,000 pounds of thrust, aimed eastward and accelerated out of the atmosphere with NASAs TDRS-M spacecraft.

Within just five minutes, the rocket had shed 92 percent of its liftoff weight and transitioned to the high-energy Centaur upper stage.

An elliptical parking orbit was achieved within 18 minutes of takeoff, beginning a 90-minute quiescent coast higher through space to reach the optimum conditions for the second burn by Centaur.

That minute-long boost over the Indian Ocean propelled the 7,610-pound payload into a customized high-perigee geosynchronous transfer orbit.

The spacecraft was deployed by the launcher at T+plus 1 hour, 53 minutes to cheers and handshakes all around.

Obviously, there is a lot of relief on the team right now, a lot of celebration, a lot of excitement. I love spacecraft separation. It is the best part of a launch campaign, said Dunn.

So many hours are spent getting to this exact point when you know you have a healthy satellite that just separated from the launch vehicle about to go do its mission that it was intended for.

Trajectory specialists had worked pre-flight to optimize the TDRS-M orbital injection, using up all of the available Atlas 5 performance to extend the satellites useful life by two additional years.

The rocket put the satellite into an orbit that allows the craft to save some of its onboard fuel supply from the upcoming orbit-raising maneuvers and apply that to orbital life.

This marked the 143rd consecutive successful Atlas program launch spanning more than two decades, the 72nd for an Atlas 5 and the 120th for United Launch Alliance.

Whats more, it was the 15th NASA use of the Atlas 5 and 28th mission conducted by ULA for NASA, all done successfully.

The Centaur, with its job completed, was expected to fire its engine later to reach a safe disposal orbit with a perigee above the usable low-earth orbit regime and apogee beneath the geosynchronous belt to guard against orbital debris.

Contact was established with TDRS-M, allowing controllers to determine that the satellite was healthy following arrival in space. The craft was the 76th and final to be built on Boeings 601 satellite design, and its successful launch was the 68th for the program dating back 25 years.

The first order of business for TDRS-M will be severing the straps that held the crafts two 15-foot-diameter graphite composite mesh antennas partially curled like taco shells to fit within the rockets nose cone for launch.

We need them unfurled and full shape to provide the RF performance for the communications services that our mission is founded upon. So one of the first things that happen after we release from the Centaur is we cut the furling straps and unfurl our reflectors It will take a period of a month or so to what we call relax and return to their original shape to give us the full performance, said Dave Littmann, NASAs TDRS project manager.

While giving the antennas time to relax, orbit-raising maneuvers using the satellites onboard main engine will be conducted over the next two weeks to achieve a circular geosynchronous orbit over the equator.

We need about five burns that will take us from the drop-off spot to the geosynchronous location where we will be operating the spacecraft for its lifetime, Littmann said.

From there, we go through the deployments. We unfold the solar arrays and deploy our antennas those unfurled big reflectors and the Space-to-Ground Link antenna, its smaller but still critical to the mission. The SGL is the lifeline to the ground. That process takes 3-5 days.

If all goes well, control of the satellite will be handed from Boeings facilities in California to NASAs White Sands Complex in New Mexico about three weeks after launch to begin on-orbit checkout.

The government hasnt accepted the spacecraft yet. All of the on-orbit testing (is done) from the White Sands Complex with a Boeing team to check the spacecraft out the bus and the payload to make sure all of our RF communications services are ready. About four months after launch, in January or so, we will look to schedule an On-Orbit Acceptance Review to review all of the data accumulated from the test program and determine, hopefully, that the government is in position to accept the spacecraft from Boeing. For the whole period to that point the spacecraft is Boeings responsibility, Littmann said.

All of that testing will occur with the satellite parked over 150 degrees West longitude. Once NASA takes acceptance of the craft, the agencys Space Network assumes ownership, performs its own one-month checkout and then repositions the asset, likely over the Atlantic Ocean Region, Littmann said.

The $408 million TDRS-M was built and launched with the sole purpose to extend the useful life of NASAs constant communications infrastructure, supporting the astronauts around-the-clock aboard the International Space Station, supplying contact with the Hubble Space Telescope and transmitting the data from almost 40 science spacecraft studying Earths environment and space.

The (TDRS-M) spacecraft continues our ability to provide a data path for communications and tracking services from all of the different users out there in orbit today from human spaceflight component of NASA to robotic missions, Littmann said.

Looking down from the vantage point of geosynchronous orbit, the TDRS network receives signals from vehicles like the space station flying at a mere 250 miles above Earth and routes the telemetry, voice, video and science information to a dedicated ground terminal for delivery to Houston.

No matter where the space station is located at any given moment, TDRS has the outpost in sight for the two-way communications.

It works really wellWe are almost spoiled now with how much communication we have. It really makes the science output and the ability to operate space station as miraculous as it is, said astronaut Stephen Bowen.

The TDRS system was born in 1973 to keep astronauts and satellites in constant contact with mission controllers, closing the substantial gaps every orbit as spacecraft passed into and out of range of ground stations scattered around the globe.

When TDRS first became operational in late 1983, the initial space shuttle mission to use the system relayed more information to the ground during its 10 days in orbit than in all 39 previous American manned spaceflights.

Relying on dispersed ground stations was a costly requirement and subjected the sites operators to dangerous conditions in far-off countries, yet the system provided only 15 percent communications capability per orbit.

NASA currently has 7 operational TDRS satellites two launched by the space shuttle in 1993 and 1995 and five Atlas-launched birds from 2000 to 2014, plus two aged shuttle-era craft from 1988 and 1991 now held in reserve with diminished capabilities.

We need at least 6 active spacecraft and one active spare, so we need at least 7 spacecraft to be ready to meet all of our mission requirements. The first generation has some residual capability, (but) TDRS-M is so critical, said Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator for Space Communications and Navigation at NASA Headquarters.

A successful TDRS-M extends the projected life of the constellation to the mid-2020s.

While TDRS got its start by supporting space shuttle missions, todays network is even busier with the space station thats been continuously staffed for nearly 17 years.

The thing we saw during the shuttle era was that when a shuttle would go up on a mission, the load on the TDRS system was extremely high. But once it landed that spike in the load would dissipate. We would see the spikes mission by mission, Littmann said.

What we see today is a little different because those spikes are no longer there, but with the space station being in continuous coverage where we have astronauts 24/7 in orbit. TDRS serves the human spaceflight community in that manner, the comm to the space station is more continuous.

The spikes have changed to a continuous level to support the International Space Station activities, as well as TDRS developed additional capabilities over the years that it now tracks and provides telemetry for various launch vehicles. Thats been added to the mix. The overall usage has remained.

The Atlas 5 rocket that launched TDRS-M, for example, used the constellations K and L satellites to relay data back to the Cape this morning. Delta 2 and Delta 4 rockets and Orbital ATKs Minotaur 4 rely on TDRS too.

TDRS-M completes the third generation of spacecraft constructed for the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System as we know it today. What comes next is being debated, including possibilities of a technology refresh by adding laser communications to the follow-on program.

However, there is no rush to field the next era of relay satellites. The current TDRS fleet is expected to operate well into the next decade.

Only two of the six shuttle-launched TDRS satellites have been retired, the rest are functional more than 25 years since their deployment and outliving their design lives by exceptional margins.

Just because the 15 years comes to end doesnt mean we stop operating the spacecraft. Like your electronics or laptop at home, you use it until it doesnt work anymore, said Paul Buchanan, TDRS deputy project manager.

For NASAs Launch Services Program, the team has seven high-profile launches scheduled over the next year, including missions to Mars and the Sun, two weather satellites and a planet-hunter.

-Delta 2/JPSS-1 is NET Nov. 10 at 2:48 a.m. local from Vandenberg -Pegasus/ICON is Nov. 14 at 10:28 a.m. Eastern from Kwajalein -Atlas 5/GOES-S is March 1 at 5:01 a.m. at Cape -Falcon/TESS is NET March 20 at Cape -Atlas 5/InSight is May 5 at 4:10 a.m. local from Vandenberg -Delta 4-Heavy/Parker Solar Probe is July 31 at 10:07 a.m. at Cape -Delta 2/IceSat-2 is Sept. 12 at 5:45 a.m. local from Vandenberg

The next two United Launch Launch Alliance Atlas 5 flights will deploy critical-but-classified security payloads for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.

NROL-42 will fly from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California using a powerful 541-configured rocket with four side-mounted solid-fuel boosters and NROL-52 occurs from Cape Canaveral on a 421 with two solids.

See earlier TDRS-M launch coverage.

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Atlas 5 rocket delivers NASA data router into space for astronauts and satellites - Spaceflight Now

Laurel Kornfeld

August 19th, 2017

Clouds on Saturn take on the appearance of strokes from a cosmic brush thanks to the wavy way that fluids interact in Saturns atmosphere. Photo & Caption Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute

NASAs Cassini spacecraft, now conducting its final orbits between Saturn and its rings, is plunging further than ever into the giant planets atmosphere. Over the last 13 years studying the Saturn system, the spacecraft has discovered a wealth of information about the planets rings.

Data sent back by the probe has revealed the rings formed through numerous processes rather than via a single mechanism.Observations have even provided scientists with insight into both the formation of planets around young stars and the formation of galaxies.

A key finding is that there are numerous ways of forming rings around planets.Saturns many moons play major roles in the rings formation and structure. The planets G-ring as well as two new rings discovered by Cassini in 2006, named the Janus-Epimethius ring and the Pallene ring, are made up of materials expelled from moons that were hit by meteorites.

The E-ring, which is spread out over a large area and not highly concentrated, is composed of water ice particles from Enceladus delivered via jets.

One of two potentially habitable moons orbiting Saturn, Enceladus has a global subsurface ocean from which geysers have been seen erupting through its cracked, icy surface.Images taken by Cassini show long, narrow structures that clearly originate from the moons geysers.

Some rings, such as the F-ring, fall under the gravitational interaction of nearby moons. Satellite Prometheus regularly perturbs this ring, as it does the thin ringlets that traverse the 202-mile (325-kilometer) wide Encke gap in the A-ring.

Both Prometheus and the F-ring have eccentric orbits around their parent planet.Another small moon, Pan, keeps the Encke gap it orbits in open by gravitationally influencing nearby ring particles.

The thin sliver of Saturns moon Prometheus lurks near ghostly structures in Saturns narrow F ring in this view from NASAs Cassini spacecraft. Many of the narrow rings faint and wispy features result from its gravitational interactions with Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across). Photo & Caption Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute

When NASAs twin Voyager spacecraft flew by Saturn in 1980 and 1981, its images revealed strange features among the rings that scientists labeled spokes because they flare out much like spokes on the wheels of bicycles.

Data sent back by Cassini showed the spokes to be ice particles that interact with Saturns magnetic field. Electrostatic charges related to the angle of sunlight the rings are exposed to lift these particles above the rings.A seasonal phenomena, the spokes show up around Saturns two equinoxes but vanish at the time of its two solstices.

In 2010, Cassini spotted a new class of small moons that create propeller-shaped features within individual rings. Scientists now believe the processes that formed these tiny moons are similar to the processes by which planets form around young stars.

Observing the motions of these disk-embedded objects provides a rare opportunity to gauge how the planets grew from, and interacted with, the disk of material surrounding the early Sun, said Cassini imaging team lead Carolyn Porco.

While Saturns rings were once thought to be flat, Cassini revealed they are actually bumpy, in some cases hosting fluffy vertical structures as tall as the Rocky Mountains.Located at the outer edges of Saturns A and B rings, these structures were detected by the spacecraft through analysis of light and shadow patterns caused by the varying angle of the Sun over over time.

Wave patterns or oscillations that distort the B-rings outer edges are similar to those found in spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way as well as in protoplanetary disks around newborn stars.

These oscillations are caused by energy released during small movements of the ring particles, which create and feed waves that can grow to hundreds of kilometers in diameter.Cassinis instruments were able to discern patterns in these waves by studying the interplay of light and shadow in the rings vertical structures.

After an Aug. 10 gravitational assist from Titan, Cassini embarked on the 18th of its 22 Grand Finale orbits. On Monday, Aug. 14. Its Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) conducted the first ever direct sampling of Saturns upper atmosphere.

This collage, consisting of two Cassini images of long, sinuous, tendril-like features from Saturns moon Enceladus and two corresponding computer simulations of the same, illustrates how well the structures, and the sizes of the particles composing them, can be modeled by tracing the trajectories of tiny, icy grains ejected from Enceladus south polar geysers. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute

Tagged: Cassini Grand Finale Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA Saturn The Range

Laurel Kornfeld is an amateur astronomer and freelance writer from Highland Park, NJ, who enjoys writing about astronomy and planetary science. She studied journalism at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and earned a Graduate Certificate of Science from Swinburne Universitys Astronomy Online program. Her writings have been published online in The Atlantic, Astronomy magazines guest blog section, the UK Space Conference, the 2009 IAU General Assembly newspaper, The Space Reporter, and newsletters of various astronomy clubs. She is a member of the Cranford, NJ-based Amateur Astronomers, Inc. Especially interested in the outer solar system, Laurel gave a brief presentation at the 2008 Great Planet Debate held at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, MD.

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Cassini has uncovered a wealth of data on Saturn's rings - SpaceFlight Insider

Press Release

August 19th, 2017

On Aug. 21, 2017, the entire continental U.S. will see a solar eclipse. Only a 70-mile wide swath across the central part of the country will experience totality. Kennedy Space Center will experience a maximum coverage of 86 percent. Image Credit: NASA

WHAT:For the first time in almost 100 years, a total solar eclipse will be visible through the United States. Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, located in the partial eclipse zone, is commemorating this historic event by hosting a viewing opportunity right at Americas spaceport.OnAug. 21, visitors will be able to sit in the Rocket Garden and watch the moon begin to cover the sun.

Complimentary certified eclipse viewing glasses will be provided on a first come, first served basis. Space experts will be on site to engage with viewers, answer questions and offer commentary throughout the event; and NASA TV will be streaming live content from across the U.S. onto the visitor complexs Jumbotron.

Leading up to the event, our education team will use the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex mobile planetarium to showcase the science behind a solar eclipse, and there will be two new eclipse-themed shows inScience on a SphereandEyes on the Universe.

For more information, clickhere.

**Photo opportunities and interviews available for media**

WHEN:Monday, August 21, 2017

11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

1:15 p.m.Eclipse visibility at Kennedy Space Center

2:45 p.m.Maximum coverage (86 percent)

WHERE:Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

Rocket Garden

SR 405

Kennedy Space Center, Florida 32899

WHO:INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

To attend this event, please RSVP to Lauren Walbert atlwalbert@hillmanpr.com,(443) 683-0294or Rebecca Shireman atrshireman@delawarenorth.com,(321) 449-4273.

Video courtesy of NASA Goddard

Tagged: Kennedy Space Center NASA solar eclipse Solar Eclipse Day 2017 The Range

The preceding is a press or news release either issued by one of the space agencies or by an aerospace firm or organization. The views expressed in the above post do not necessarily reflect those of SpaceFlight Insider.

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Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to host Solar Eclipse Day 2017 - SpaceFlight Insider

STORY WRITTEN FORCBS NEWS& USED WITH PERMISSION

Two Russian cosmonauts floated outside the International Space Station Thursday, tossed five small science and technology satellites overboard and spent the rest of the excursion servicing external experiments and carrying out routine but time-consuming inspections and maintenance.

The work took longer than expected and Russian flight controllers extended the spacewalk beyond the planned six-hour mark to give the cosmonauts time to finish as many of their tasks as possible before calling it a day.

Finally, at 6:10 p.m. EDT (GMT-4), Expedition 52 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy closed the Pirs airlock hatch to officially end a seven-hour 34-minute spacewalk, the first in more than a year by Russian cosmonauts.

Mission managers said the spacewalkers accomplished all of their planned tasks except for one the installation of one handrail and that no specific problem put them behind schedule. Rather, the spacewalkers took their time and rested periodically at the insistence of Russian flight controllers.

Everything is good, so were insisting on your rest, a controller called up from Moscow in translated remarks. You should rest, guys. A few moments later: Is it enough for you to have a rest? How is the atmosphere inside your suits?

Well, if we could have some music, maybe, and girls to make massages it would of course be even better, but everything is fine, Ryazanskiy replied.

Its the request of the medical team. They are worrying about your health.

When we are back on the ground well discuss it, Ryazanskiy said.

Of course, Sergey, we will be looking forward to your landing and this conversation, the flight controller replied. So I would (not) like to bother you any more, please have a good rest.

The spacewalk got underway at 10:36 a.m. It was the ninth EVA overall for Yurchikhin and the fourth for Ryazanskiy.

Yurchikhin wore an upgraded Orlan MKS spacesuit with an improved temperature control system, a larger feed water bag, a new carbon dioxide measuring unit, improved biomedical sensors and an upgraded LCD display panel. The MKS suits will enable cosmonauts to carry out longer spacewalks than are possible with the standard MK-series like the one Ryazanskiy used.

After exiting the Pirs module, the cosmonauts retrieved a materials science sample pallet just outside the hatch before manually launching the five satellites one at a time, careful to aim then down and behind the station to prevent any future close encounters.

The first to be launched, known at Tomsk, is an 11-pound satellite built with a 3D printer to help engineers how such materials respond to the space environment. It also carries amateur radio gear.

Another satellite will test systems needed by small nanosats, two others will test networking and small-scale navigation technology and a fifth will serve as a passive target to help calibrate ground tracking systems. It also will help researchers study the density of the upper atmosphere as they monitor its eventual fall back to Earth in several months

After releasing the satellites, Yurchikhin and Ryazanskiy took photos of another experiment panel and an antenna boom before installing handrails and struts to help future spacewalkers move about the Russian segment of the space station.

They also installed 10 temperature sensors on the Poisk module and serviced another external experiment before returning to Pirs and ending the spacewalk.

But it was slow going throughout the day.

That is just a really interesting day because whenever we need something it is in a completely different location than we think, and if were moving somewhere, were moving in the wrong direction, one spacewalker complained. Just jinxed.

They insisted they could install the final handrail, but flight controllers told them to head back to Pirs.

This was the 202nd spacewalk devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in 1998, the seventh so far this year and the first of 2017 by Russian cosmonauts. Total station spacewalk time now stands at 1,258 hours and 15 minutes, or 52.4 days.

Yurchikhin has now logged 59 hours and 28 minutes of spacewalk time during nine EVAs, moving him up to fourth on the list of most experienced spacewalkers, just behind crewmate Peggy Whitson. She has 60 hours and 21 minutes of spacewalk time during 10 excursions.

Ryazanskiys mark stands at 27 hours and 39 minutes outside the station during his four excursions.

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Russian cosmonauts complete long spacewalk - Spaceflight Now