Two astronauts to spend a year in space

The International Space Station, where Scott Kelly of Nasa and Michael Komienko of Roscosmos will spend a year orbiting Earth. Photograph: Nasa/Getty Images

Like characters in a sci-fi movie, two astronauts will soon learn what it is like to spend a year orbiting Earth on board the International Space Station.

An American and a Russian will undertake the mission together to test the physiological and psychological effects of long-term space flight.

The aim is to see how the human body will bear up on future voyages to a distant asteroid or Mars, which might last several months.

Unlike the residents of many fictional space stations, the two volunteers will not enjoy the benefits of artificial gravity.

Extended periods spent in microgravity are known to cause increased bone and muscle loss, reduced heart and artery function and impaired sensory motor performance.

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft will carry Scott Kelly of Nasa and Michael Komienko, from the Russian space agency Roscosmos, to the ISS in March.

Dr Michael Barratt, from Nasas Human Research Programme at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, said: This will build on the rich experience of long-duration flights, including four flights of a year or more conducted by our Russian colleagues on the Mir station.

We have progressed considerably in our understanding of the human physiology in space and in countermeasures to preserve bone, muscle and fitness since then. The space station programme provides us a robust framework for international collaboration that enables us to realise tremendous returns from such an experience.

John Charles, chief of the programmes International Science Office, said data from six-month spells in space did not suggest that the human body adjusts to a new adapted state over that period of time.

Read the original post:

Two astronauts to spend a year in space

Ready For Blast Off: Billionaire Charles Simonyi On What To Pack For Space Travel

Boeing's CST-100 spacecraft will take tourists to the International Space Station from U.S. soil as early as 2017.

Looking for a vacation that costs up to $50 million, has no showers and is likely to make you sick? Its no luxury resort, but traveling to outer space can be the ultimate adventure for thrill-seekers with lots of disposable income. Its as exclusive as it gets fewer than 550 people have ever been, only eight of them paying tourists. But the journey will get more accessible in the next few years, as a handful of companies compete to launch the first commercial space flights.

Until now, the only way to buy a trip to the stars has been through Space Adventures, a Virginia-based company that has facilitated trips to the International Space Station on Russian Soyuz rockets since 2001. Clients have included billionaire Cirque du Soleil cofounder Guy Laliberte, British-American game designer Richard Garriott and South-African software millionaire Mark Shuttleworth.

Charles Simonyi, the Hungarian-born billionaire behind the creation of Microsoft Word and Excel, is the only tourist whos gone twice. He flew to the ISS in 2007 and 2009, paying a total of around $60 million (Space Adventures now charges $50 million per trip).

Before his first take-off, Simonyi spent six months training alongside cosmonauts in Star City, near Moscow, where he exercised, learned about spaceflight and survival, and studied Russian. He had to see nearly 100 doctors and pass dozens of medical tests.

Simonyi then joined a pair of cosmonauts on a two-day trip to the ISS, which is about the size of a three-bedroom house. He spent 12 days there, taking part in medical experiments, getting to know the long-term residents and channeling Earth on amateur radio. He played a bit of space golf and called home. Of course, he spent a lot of time gazing out at the globe.

Its the speed thats the most amazing. Every 90 minutes, you see spring, you see fall, you see the Arctic, you see the tropics, you see night, you see day, he said. I realized it was an extraordinary experience, and I just had to take it all in.

Anousheh Ansari, who traveled a year before Simonyi and was the first female space tourist, wrote, The stars up here are unbelievable. It looks like someone has spread diamond dust over a black velvet blanket.

On his first flight, Simonyi brought two books: Robert Heinleins sci-fi classic The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and a dual-language edition of Goethes Faust. The last lines of the latter became his personal slogan for the mission: The eternal feminine draws us upward. On his second trip, Simony took his wedding ring and photos of his new wife. He also brought flags American, Hungarian and Swedish to get stamped at the ISS.

See more here:

Ready For Blast Off: Billionaire Charles Simonyi On What To Pack For Space Travel

Barrios Technology employee receives SFA Award

The Space Flight Awareness (SFA) program recently recognized Barrios Technologys MAPI employee Dana Tobeck with the prestigious SFA Honoree Award for her dedication and commitment to the ISS Program.

Tobeck, a Principal Project Controls Specialist, was recognized for her leadership in establishing work plan and management systems. Tasked with organizing how MAPI tracks over 40,000 contract-delivered products and service units for each Statement of Work (SOW) element, Tobeck developed a measurement system along with training for MAPI management that ensures quality Annual Work Plans (AWPs) and provided management insight into work variances. She personally working with each supervisor to ensure her approach was consistently applied across the organization. For FY2015, Tobeck utilized lessons learned to improve tracking, partnering, and review processes. She reduced the size for the FY2015 AWP by 45%, and initiated earlier interactions with the NASA customer. The improved process allowed the AWP product to be provided to the NASA customer one month early and eliminating approximately three months of coordination effort between 45 NASA points of contact and 27 MAPI personnel.

Tobeck has worked in the space industry for over 15 years on various NASA programs. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Houston as well as a graduate degree from Texas A&M University.

The SFA Honoree Award is one of the highest presented to NASA and industry. To qualify, the individuals must have contributed beyond their normal work requirements to achieve significant impact on attaining a particular human space flight program goal; contributed to a major cost savings; been instrumental in developing modification to hardware, software, or materials that increase reliability, efficiency, or performance; assisted in operational improvements; or been a key player in developing a beneficial process improvement.

The SFA Program is a NASA managed motivational program geared at ensuring that every employee involved in human space flight is aware of the importance of their role in promoting astronaut safety and mission success in the critical, challenging task of flying humans in space by communicating and educating the government and industry workforce about human space flight.

Follow this link:

Barrios Technology employee receives SFA Award

Virgin Galactic Will Recover from Tragic Crash, Richard Branson Says

The private space travel company Virgin Galactic is more committed than ever to its commercial spaceliner business as it recovers from a tragic SpaceShipTwo crash that killed one test pilot and injured another last year, company founder Sir Richard Branson wrote Friday (Jan. 2).

In a blog postreflecting on the Oct. 31 SpaceShipTwo crash, Branson wrote that he initially had doubts about whether it was wise to proceed with SpaceShipTwo's development in the wake of the tragic test flight. But ultimately, he and the company decided to move forward.

"As I traveled from my home to Mojave that Friday evening, I found myself questioning seriously for the first time, whether in fact it was right to be backing the development of something that could result in such tragic circumstances," Branson wrote in the blog post.

"In short was Virgin Galactic, and everything it has stood for and dreamt of achieving, really worth it? I got a very firm answer to that question immediately when I landed in Mojave. From the designers, the builders, the engineers, the pilots and the whole community who passionately believed and still believe that truly opening space and making it accessible and safe is of vital importance to all our futures." [SpaceShipTwo Crash Investigation in Photos]

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo spaceliner is designed to carry eight people (two pilots and six passengers) on roundtrips to suborbital space for $250,000 per seat. The spacecraft is designed to be launched from a high-altitude carrier plane called WhiteKnightTwo. Branson, a British billionaire, founded the company in 2004.

The Oct. 31 SpaceShipTwo accident killed co-pilot Michael Alsbury and seriously injured pilot Peter Siebold after the vehicle broke apart and crashed during a test flight over California's Mojave Desert. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) opened an investigation into the crash, which will take months at the least to complete.

In November, NTSB officials reported that SpaceShipTwo's unique "feathering" system on its tail, which is designed to be used during re-entry, had deployed prematurely during the flight, apparently by Alsbury. At the time, Siebold was unaware of the feathering system's early deployment, according to a preliminary NTSB report.

Branson's blog post also said Virgin Galactic's customers who paid up to $250,000 apiece for a seat displayed an "outpouring of support" in the days following the crash. However, multiple media reports have stated that some customers have requested refunds since the crash, including the United Kingdom's Princess Beatrice.

Virgin Galactic has pushed back the first flight date for its space tourism business many times over the years, but prior to the crash, Branson had estimated it would happen in late 2014 or sometime in 2015. The company is currently building a second SpaceShipTwo vehicle, which would be the next in line for flight tests once it is completed.

The company has not released an estimated start time since, but Branson's blog post said Virgin will show "unwavering commitment to safety and a renewed sense of purpose."

See more here:

Virgin Galactic Will Recover from Tragic Crash, Richard Branson Says

Space Station Crew Celebrates New Year's Eve 16 Times

Recovering from one New Year's Eve can be bad enough. Imagine experiencing 16 of them all in one day. Such is the case for the crew on the International Space Station, which is in orbit about 220 miles above Earth. In one orbital day, as the space station zooms around the globe at 17,500 miles an hour, the crew will pass 16 times over a part of the planet where the clock is striking midnight. No need for a designated driver, however: Cmdr. Barry "Butch" Wilmore and his crew, which includes NASA's Terry Virts, Russian cosmonauts Elena Serova, Alexander Samoukutyaev and Anton Shkaplerov, and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, plan to celebrate with fruit juice toasts, NASA says. The new year starts officially for the crew at 7 p.m. EST Jan. 31, which is midnight by the Universal Time Clock (UTC), also known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). In a prerecorded video greeting from space, Wilmore and Virts sent best wishes from space. "Happy New Year's and a safe New Year's down there, and we'll enjoy our 16 New Year's Eve celebrations here on board the space station," Virts said.

It's not all fun and games. The crew spent much of New Year's Eve day working on a variety of experiments and preparing for the arrival of the next cargo supply ship. Launch of the Dragon resupply vehicle on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is schedule for 6:20 a.m. EST Tuesday.

First published December 31 2014, 12:26 PM

See the rest here:

Space Station Crew Celebrates New Year's Eve 16 Times

Are You Healthy Enough to Fly to Space?

Good news for all you couch potatoes out there: You don't have to be in peak physical condition to make it to space.

The vast majority of people who want to fly to suborbital space and back are medically fit to do so, according to researchers at Virgin Galactic, which is developing the commercial spaceliner SpaceShipTwo.

"We have encountered only one or two [customers] for whom we have recommended that they do not take a flight with us," Virgin Galactic Chief Medical Officer James Vanderploeg said during a talk at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS), which was held in October in Las Cruces, New Mexico. [Rise of SpaceShipTwo: The Test Flight Photos]

Vanderploeg's ISPCS talk came before the tragiccrash of SpaceShipTwoduring an Oct. 31 test flight, which killed co-pilot Mike Alsbury and injured pilot Peter Siebold. But in an email exchange following the accident, Vanderploeg told Space.com that he did not have anything to add or change from his earlier comments.

SpaceShipTwo is designed to be lofted to an altitude of 50,000 feet (15,000 meters) by a carrier plane called WhiteKnightTwo. At that point, the two-pilot, six-passenger spaceliner will be released and will fire its onboard rocket motor for about 1 minute to zoom up to an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers).

SpaceShipTwo will accelerate to approximately 3.5 times the speed of sound, producing moderate G-forces on pilots and passengers. As the vehicle coasts up into space, passengers can leave their seats to experience weightlessness and view the Earth and the blackness of space for several minutes from the space plane's 12 large cabin windows.

The passengers will then strap back into their seats for the ride home, which will end with an airplane-style tarmac touchdown.

Virgin Galactic isn't the only company selling seats on suborbital flights. XCOR Aerospace is developing a one-passenger space plane called Lynx; tickets currently go for around $100,000.

The price of a ticket for a ride aboard SpaceShipTwo is currently $250,000. Hundreds of people have put down a deposit to reserve a seat.

Vanderploeg and his team have been researching the health requirements for these customers. For example, Virgin Galactic has collected data from a number of future passengers during centrifuge training runs, which began with 77 participants in 2007 to 2008 at the National Aerospace Training and Research (NASTAR) Center in Southampton, Pennsylvania.

Originally posted here:

Are You Healthy Enough to Fly to Space?

Top 10 Space Stories of 2014: Readers' Choice

Really, did you have any doubt about which space story would clinch the #1 spot? The touch-down of the Rosetta missions Philae lander on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Nov. 12 was nothing short of epic. After catching up with the icy cometary mass, Rosetta carried out a series of maneuvers that set the mission up for its dramatic attempt to make a soft landing on a comet for the first time in history. But Rosetta wouldnt be landing on the comet itself. Attached to the spacecraft was Philae, a small lander. With the help of ESAs expertise on social media and continuous blog updates, Philae quickly captivated the world as the little lander that was about to conquer a massive comet. And conquer it did, but not before one of the most dramatic landings in space history. After analyzing Philaes telemetry, mission scientists realized that Philae had bounced three times before coming to rest against the slope of a crater rim. Although the lander had enough batter power for a couple of days, for the lander to survive any longer, its solar panels needed to be correctly positioned so they could charge. Sadly, Philae was caught in a shadow and after several attempts to optimize the sunlight across the solar array, Philaes batteries drained and the lander dropped into hibernation. However, Philae feverishly collected as much data as it could before power loss and scientists will be busy for some time understanding the nature of Comet 67P, the first comet a robot has ever grabbed.

MORE:

Rosetta's Landing: When Philae Grabbed a Comet

Rosetta's Philae Bounced on Landing, But Seems Healthy

Philae's Batteries Have Drained, Comet Lander Sleeps

Follow this link:

Top 10 Space Stories of 2014: Readers' Choice

Space station crew enjoys holidays, preps for busy start to 2015

Taking time off for the holidays, the crew of the International Space Station is preparing for a busy start to the new year, with the arrival of a SpaceX cargo ship next week and three U.S. spacewalks in February to begin work needed to add docking ports for new commercial crew ships.

Space station commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore celebrated his 52nd birthday Monday, enjoying gifts from his crewmates, including a bag of Reese's Pieces candy from flight engineer Terry Virts, and congratulatory notes from flight controllers around the world.

While there is no champagne on board to celebrate the New Year holiday in space, "we'll break open a grapefruit juice or tropical punch, whatever we have on board," Wilmore told CBS News Tuesday in a space-to-ground interview.

"And the birthday yesterday was very special, my crewmates made it very special for me, mission controls across the globe made it very special, they actually sang to me, sent me some cards, so it was a great day. Great and very memorable."

Floating in the U.S. segment of the station, joined by European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, Wilmore said his New Year's resolution was to pay more attention to experiment instructions and procedures to avoid mistakes.

"One thing you think about constantly is, don't let me mess this up!" he said. "Because there are people on the ground who put a lot of effort into getting it up here and we don't want to be the ones to mess it up. So my New Year's resolution is to try to pay better attention to every step of every procedure so we get it all right."

Launched Sept. 25, Wilmore, a shuttle veteran, has spent the past three-and-a-half months aboard the station. Cristoforetti, making her first spaceflight, arrived Nov. 23. She said her New Year's resolution is to spend more time shooting video to share the experience of spaceflight with the public.

One aspect of spaceflight that is difficult to share is the sensation of weightlessness. While she expected spectacular views of Earth, Cristoforetti said living in microgravity was much more thrilling than she anticipated.

Play Video

Astronaut Chris Hadfield provides some end of year motivation about invention, innovation and the spirit of being optimistic about the year ahead...

See the rest here:

Space station crew enjoys holidays, preps for busy start to 2015

The Years Most Awesome Photos of Space

Rocky planets like Earth start out as microscopic bits of dust tinier than a grain of sand, or so theories predict.

Astronomers using the National Science Foundations (NSF) Green Bank Telescope (GBT) have discovered that filaments of star-forming gas near the Orion Nebula may be brimming with pebble-size particles -- planetary building blocks 100 to 1,000 times larger than the dust grains typically found around protostars. If confirmed, these dense ribbons of rocky material may well represent a new, mid-size class of interstellar particles that could help jump-start planet formation.

"The large dust grains seen by the GBT would suggest that at least some protostars may arise in a more nurturing environment for planets," said Scott Schnee, an astronomer with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, Virginia. "After all, if you want to build a house, its best to start with bricks rather than gravel, and something similar can be said for planet formation."

The new GBT observations extend across the northern portion of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, a star-forming region that includes the famed Orion Nebula. The star-forming material in the section studied by the GBT, called OMC-2/3, has condensed into long, dust-rich filaments. The filaments are dotted with many dense knots known as cores. Some of the cores are just starting to coalesce while others have begun to form protostars -- the first early concentrations of dust and gas along the path to star formation. Astronomers speculate that in the next 100,000 to 1 million years, this area will likely evolve into a new star cluster. The OMC-2/3 region is located approximately 1,500 light-years from Earth and is roughly 10 light-years long.

Based on earlier maps of this region made with the IRAM 30 meter radio telescope in Spain, the astronomers expected to find a certain brightness to the dust emission when they observed the filaments at slightly longer wavelengths with the GBT.

Instead, the GBT discovered that the area was shining much brighter than expected in millimeter-wavelength light.

"This means that the material in this region has different properties than would be expected for normal interstellar dust, noted Schnee. In particular, since the particles are more efficient than expected at emitting at millimeter wavelengths, the grains are very likely to be at least a millimeter, and possibly as large as a centimeter across, or roughly the size of a small Lego-style building block."

Though incredibly small compared to even the most modest of asteroids, dust grains on the order of a few millimeters to a centimeter are incredibly large for such young star-forming regions. Due to the unique environment in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, the researchers propose two intriguing theories for their origin.

The first is that the filaments themselves helped the dust grains grow to such unusual proportions. These regions, compared to molecular clouds in general, have lower temperatures, higher densities, and lower velocities -- all of which would encourage grain growth.

The second scenario is that the rocky particles originally grew inside a previous generation of cores or perhaps even protoplanetary disks. The material could then have escaped back into the surrounding molecular cloud rather than becoming part of the original newly forming star system.

Link:

The Years Most Awesome Photos of Space

Integer-N PLL suits commercial space applications.

With Improved Phase Noise and Unmatched Radiation Performance the PE97240 Builds Upon the Successful Space Heritage of Peregrine's PLL Products

SAN DIEGO, Peregrine Semiconductor Corp., founder of RF SOI (silicon on insulator) and pioneer of advanced RF solutions, announces the UltraCMOS PE97240, an integer-N phase-locked loop (PLL) that offers superior phase noise performance for signal precision and frequency stability. Designed for commercial space applications, the PE97240 is radiation tolerant to 100 krad (Si) total ionizing dose (TID) that allows the part to perform for 10 or more years in harsh space conditions. Built on Peregrine's UltraCMOS technology on a sapphire substrate, the PLL is naturally radiation hardened and immune to single-event latch-up (SEL).

"Peregrine has a proud heritage of over 15 years of space-flight PLL products," says Kinana Hussain, senior marketing manager. "Our space customers trust the high reliability of UltraCMOS products, and PE97240 extends our successful PLL product family with improved phase-noise and superior rad-hard performance."

Peregrine's PE97240 Attains Industry-Leading Phase Noise Performance for Space Applications Peregrine's PLL has an integer-N frequency synthesizer that generates multiple output frequencies from a single reference input frequency. This divided down output enables reference and phase detection at lower frequency, and it handles both frequency and phase lock. With PLLs phase noise is an important measure of the signal's spectral purity. Superior phase-noise performance significantly reduces phase jitter and noise, which offers RF engineers high signal precision and solid frequency stability. Phase noise is a product of thermal noise - expressed by the floor figure of merit (FOM(floor)) - and low-frequency flicker noise - expressed by the flicker figure of merit (FOM(flicker)) - within the system. The PE97240 achieves an industry-leading maximum FOM(floor) of -227 dBc/Hz with the 5/6 prescaler and -225 dBc/Hz with the 10/11 prescaler; the PLL also sets the bar with a FOM(flicker) of -265 dBc/Hz with the 5/6 prescaler and -259 dBc/Hz with the 10/11 prescaler.

Features, Packaging, Pricing and Availability Peregrine's UltraCMOS PE97240 is a rad-hard PLL designed for high-reliability space applications. It consists of a dual modulus prescaler, counters, a phase detector and control logic. The component can perform with high reliability due to its 100 krad (Si) TID radiation tolerance. The frequency range is 4 GHz in 5/6 prescaler modulus and 5 GHz in 10/11 prescaler modulus. The PLL has a low power consumption of 75 microamperes at 2.7V, enabling RF engineers to better allocate power resources, and its counter values are programmable through a serial interface or by directly hard-wiring. In addition, the component is immune to single-event latch-up (SEL) due to heavy ions in radioactive environments. Offered in a RoHS compliant, 44-lead, hermetically sealed CQFP package, the PE97240 is available now.

Visit Peregrine's newsroom for a product image and datasheet.

The Peregrine Semiconductor name, logo, and UltraCMOS are registered trademarks of Peregrine Semiconductor Corporation in the U.S.A., and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

Editorial Contact: Elizabeth Brown Peregrine Semiconductor Phone: 619.993.4648 pr@psemi.com

Web Site: http://www.psemi.com

Read the original here:

Integer-N PLL suits commercial space applications.

Slipping the Surly Bonds of Kerbin, A New Kerbal Space Program Campaign, Part 3 – Video


Slipping the Surly Bonds of Kerbin, A New Kerbal Space Program Campaign, Part 3
In the wake of tragedy, we endure and make a great accomplishment for our space program. This is the first step to traveling to distant worlds as we get into actual space flight around Kerbin....

By: Vickriman

See more here:

Slipping the Surly Bonds of Kerbin, A New Kerbal Space Program Campaign, Part 3 - Video