Let’s Play Space Engineers – Episode 76: Space Station Project Part 6 – Video

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Let #39;s Play Space Engineers - Episode 76: Space Station Project Part 6
On this episode of Space Engineers, we continue the Space Station Project. Today I rework the observation deck a bit by changing it to heavy armor blocks. I ...

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Let's Play Space Engineers - Episode 76: Space Station Project Part 6 - Video

Record-Breaking 33 'Cubesats' to Launch from Space Station This Month

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Astronauts aboard the International Space Station are preparing for the deployment of nearly three dozen tiny satellites from the orbiting lab over the coming weeks.

The spaceflyers have been installing special equipment that will launch 33 "cubesats" from the space stationthis month, with the first round of ejections scheduled to take place on Thursday (Feb. 6).

"We believe this will be a world-record deployment, of the number of satellites in one deployment," Michael Johnson, chief technology officer of the space-hardware firm NanoRacks, said in a NASA video last week. [Photos: How Tiny Satellites Launch from Space Station]

NanoRacks helps organize and integrate some research activites aboard the space station. The company built eight new deployers that will launch the 33 cubesats, which were delivered to the orbiting lab Jan. 12 on the first contracted cargo mission of Orbital Sciences' unmanned Cygnus resupply spacecraft.

Six cubesats will be launched from the station Thursday, NASA officials said. The rest will begin flying freely over the course of the following two weeks or so.

Twenty-eight of the 33 cubesats were built by the San Francisco-based company Planet Labs. Together, these spacecraft make up "Flock 1," which Planet Labs says will be the world's biggest constellation of Earth-imaging satellites.

The Flock 1 cubesats measure just 12 inches long by 4 inches wide by 4 inches tall (30 by 10 by 10 centimeters), but they can take images with a resolution of 10 to 16.5 feet (3 to 5 meters).

Flock 1 is designed to deliver frequent, low-cost and high-resolution imagery of Earth that could benefit humanity in a number of ways, such as monitoring deforestation and tracking natural disasters, company officials say.

"We'll be producing imagery of the whole Earth with unprecedented frequency," Planet Labs co-founder Will Marshall told Space.com late last year. "We will thus be able to always be covering the whole Earth, not just pointing and shooting at specific targets."

Among the other five cubesats to be deployed this month are two spacecraft from Lithuania and one from Peru, Johnson said.

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Record-Breaking 33 'Cubesats' to Launch from Space Station This Month

International Space Station will soon contain the coldest spot in the known universe

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Space has a reputation for being cold frigid even, but the tremendous chill of deep space is nothing compared to what NASA is preparing to create very near to Earth. Researchers are planning to generate a super-cold spot on the International Space Station (ISS) to study the intricacies of quantum mechanics. How cold? Its going to be the coldest spot in the known universe.

In the vast expanses of nothingness between galaxies, the diffuse gaseous matter regularly reaches roughly 3 Kelvin close to absolute zero, where all motion on the subatomic level is believed to stop. The experiment being carried out in the ISS Cold Atom Lab is going to reach temperatures as low as 100 pico-Kelvin above absolute zero (pico denotes one-trillionth).

The team will be working with Bose-Einstein Condensates, a type of dilute gas that shows fascinating macro-quantum effects at temperatures near absolute zero. The space station offers a uniquely well-suited environment for this testing. When gas expands, it cools, and this is the basis of the cooling that will take place on the ISS. Magnetic traps will be used to expand gas until it gets down to the desired temperature. These traps can be very low-power because the gas doesnt need to be supported against the pull of gravity, allowing it to reach incredibly low temperatures.

Bose-Einstein Condensates offer a window into the strange world of quantum mechanics. Two Bose-Einstein Condensates that are placed together dont mix, instead they interfere like waves. The Cold Atom Lab on the ISS will offer scientists a chance to study these remarkable effects at the lowest temperature yet. This is the absolute forefront of science no ones exactly sure what well find.

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International Space Station will soon contain the coldest spot in the known universe

Thales Alenia Space builds third space station cargo module

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CANNES, France, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- The third of nine pressurized cargo modules to ship items to the International Space Station has been produced by French-Italian aerospace firm Thales Alenia Space.

The module, completed at the company's facility in Turin, Italy, has been transported to a NASA launch facility on Wallops Island, Va., where Orbital Sciences Corp. will integrate it with the service module of a Cygnus spacecraft.

"Thales Alenia Space will provide Orbital with six more pressurized cargo modules, which will ferry crew supplies, spare parts and scientific experiments to the International Space Station," Thales Alenia Space said. "The company is providing a total of nine units under the commercial resupply service contract awarded to Orbital by NASA.

"The PCM unit delivered ... will be followed by one more unit in the standard configuration, capable of transporting up to 2,000 kg (about 4,409 pounds) of cargo, and by five enhanced units, offering cargo capacity of up to 2,700 kg (5,952 pounds)."

Details as to when the cargo will be delivered were not disclosed.

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Thales Alenia Space builds third space station cargo module