NanoRacks, LLC Celebrates Over One Hundred Payloads Delivered to International Space Station

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Houston, TX - October 9, 2013 - NanoRacks is proud to announce it has now fulfilled over one hundred customer payloads delivered to space. The berthing of the Orbital Sciences Cygnus Mission D-1 brought 11 customer payloads to the International Space Station. Since its founding in 2009 NanoRacks has realized a total of 109 space station payloads, marking the company as the market leader in low earth orbit utilization.

"We are proud that Orbital's first ISS mission brought us over the century mark," said NanoRacks' CEO Jeff Manber. "We are excited to be part of the new era of commercial space science and research on the International Space Station (ISS). Our customers are pushing the boundaries of what is possible. We look forward to working with NASA and the other ISS partners to reach the next 100 payloads."

NanoRacks operates under a Space Act Agreement with NASA to provide commercial access to the ISS. The most recent payloads include student experiments from the NCESSE Student Spaceflight Program some of which were supported by a grant from the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS). NanoRacks customers from thirteen countries cover a broad range of industries and sectors. Customers flown and manifest include startup companies, domestic and international space agencies, Fortune 500 companies, schools and universities.

About NanoRacks

NanoRacks LLC was formed in 2009 to provide quality hardware and services for the U.S. National Laboratory onboard the ISS. The company developed and has research platforms onboard the U.S. National Laboratory, which house plug and play payloads and a family of other research facilities. The current signed customer pipeline includes domestic and international educational institutions, research organizations and government organizations, and has propelled NanoRacks into a leadership position in the emerging commercial market for low earth orbit space utilization and beyond.

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NanoRacks, LLC Celebrates Over One Hundred Payloads Delivered to International Space Station

Robonaut2: NASA’s Next Generation Dexterous Robot | GM Space Science Video – Video

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Robonaut2: NASA #39;s Next Generation Dexterous Robot | GM Space Science Video
Visit my website at http://www.junglejoel.com - Robonaut 2 is a state-of-the-art, highly dexterous, humanoid robot, made up of multiple component technologie...

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Nasa's Juno Zips Past Earth On Way To Jupiter

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A Nasa spacecraft bound for Jupiter will swing by Earth to get the boost it needs to arrive at the giant gas planet in 2016.

Using Earth as a gravitational slingshot is a common trick since there is not a rocket powerful enough to catapult a spacecraft directly to the outer solar system.

Launched in 2011, the Juno spacecraft first zipped past Mars, Earth's closest planetary neighbour.

It looped back and will make a quick pass by Earth on Wednesday to gather momentum for its trip to Jupiter, located 484 million miles from the sun.

During the manoeuvre, the solar-powered, windmill-shaped Juno will briefly pass into Earth's shadow and emerge over India's east coast.

At closest approach, Juno will fly within 350 miles of the Earth's surface, passing over the ocean off the coast of South Africa.

The rendezvous was designed to bump Juno's speed from 78,000 mph relative to the sun to 87,000 mph - enough power to cruise beyond the asteroid belt toward its destination.

During the gravity assist, the spacecraft's JunoCam, a wide-angle colour camera, will snap pictures of the Earth and moon.

Weather permitting, skywatchers in India and South Africa with binoculars or a small telescope may see Juno streak across the sky.

Ham radio operators around the globe were encouraged to say "Hi" in Morse code - a message that may be detected by Juno's radio.

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Nasa's Juno Zips Past Earth On Way To Jupiter

Shutdown slows bid to fix NASA-China controversy

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NASA is trying to resolve an international spat over banning Chinese scientists from a planetary conference but efforts are being hampered by the US government shutdown, a meeting organizer said Wednesday.

Some leading US astronomers have vowed to boycott the conference next month at a US space agency facility in California because six Chinese scientists were told they could not attend.

Beijing's foreign ministry has also described the move as discriminatory, and said academic meetings should remain free of politics.

Organizers of the Second Kepler Science Conference on November 4-8 said they were acting based on a March 2013 order for a moratorium to visits to NASA facilities by citizens of several nations including China.

The basis for the ban was called into question on Tuesday by Congressman Frank Wolf, who authored related legislation in 2011 that he said restricted space cooperation with the Chinese government and Chinese companies but not individuals.

The moratorium and other additional security measures were issued earlier this year by NASA administrator Charles Bolden following a potential security breach at a NASA facility in Virginia by a Chinese citizen, and should have been lifted by now, Wolf said.

Several attempts by AFP to reach NASA spokespeople have gone unanswered.

"The NASA folks are not legally able to read their e-mails. This is the major reason the brouhaha continues, in my opinion," said conference co-organizer Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science, in an email to AFP.

The US government shutdown, in place since October 1 over Republican opposition to President Barack Obama's health care reform, has sent 97 percent of the space agency home without pay along with hundreds of thousands of federal workers across the country.

"Representative Wolf's statement has caught the attention of NASA officials, who are working now to see if the problem can be solved," Boss told AFP.

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NASA prepares to launch 3-D printer

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NASA is preparing to launch a 3-D printer into space next year, a toaster-sized game changer that greatly reduces the need for astronauts to load up with every tool, spare part or supply they might ever need.

The printers would serve as a flying factory of infinite designs, creating objects by extruding layer upon layer of plastic from long strands coiled around large spools. Doctors use them to make replacement joints and artists use them to build exquisite jewellery.

In NASA labs, engineers are 3-D printing small satellites that could shoot out of the Space Station and transmit data to earth, as well as replacement parts and rocket pieces that can survive extreme temperatures.

"Any time we realise we can 3-D print something in space, it's like Christmas," said inventor Andrew Filo, who is consulting with NASA on the project.

"You can get rid of concepts like rationing, scarce or irreplaceable."

The spools of plastic could eventually replace racks of extra instruments and hardware, although the upcoming mission is just a demonstration printing job.

"If you want to be adaptable, you have to be able to design and manufacture on the fly, and that's where 3-D printing in space comes in," said Dave Korsmeyer, director of engineering at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, south of San Francisco.

For the first 3-D printer in space test slated for the northern autumn of 2014, NASA had more than a dozen machines to choose from, ranging from $US300 ($A324) desktop models to $US500,000 warehouse builders.

All of them, however, were built for use on Earth, and space travel presented challenges, from the loads and vibrations of launch to the stresses of working in orbit, including microgravity, differing air pressures, limited power and variable temperatures.

As a result, NASA hired Silicon Valley startup Made In Space to build something entirely new.

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NASA prepares to launch 3-D printer

NASA's Space Gliders And The DIY Satellite Revolution

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NASA engineer Jerry Budd has an idea so audacious that it might just work--he wants to use unmanned, autonomous gliders to send small, low-cost satellites into orbit.

The Towed Glider Air-Launch is an experimental project (still awaiting government approval) that would fire air-launching rocket boosters from a drone glider. In Budd's modest words, the proposal offers affordable, flexible access to space. A glider would be towed into high altitudes by military transport aircraft on planned flights and would be released by the plane--the glider would then fire a rocket booster (with a satellite enclosed) into orbit. Afterward, pilots located in remote NASA facilities safely guide the glider home.

The space gliders would be used to launch cubesats into orbit. Cubesats are small, low-cost satellites that weigh under 200 pounds and can be built and sent into orbit for low cost. Right now, it costs about $50,000 to build a cubesat and $100,000 to put one in orbit. Budd's proposal would sharply reduce the cost of sending cubesats into space by allowing specialized drones to handle much of the hard work. Instead of sending cubesats into orbit on Russian rockets, NASA could build a new revenue stream by shipping these small satellites into orbit for other entities--effectively meaning the agency would provide space logistics services.

Budd's proposal riffs off an existing DARPA project to fly satellites into orbit on jets. Instead of using a jet, the conceptcurrently being developed at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center--saves substantial funds and gains performance advantages by not employing a human pilot. NASA research indicates a performance boost to orbit of between 25% and 50%, and launch costs for satellites could be reduced up to 40%.

More important, the glider's lack of in-plane human operators and low weight mean rocket boosters can be fired from the plane with sharply reduced blast concerns. The glider would be towed to altitudes approaching 40,000 feet by a large transport aircraftand from there, rockets would fire, propelling it into space.

We try to keep the glider as light as possible, Budd said during a recent lab demonstration. Every pound of weight on the glider is a pound less for the rocket we're taking into space. The Towed Glider fires lightweight commercial and educational satellites into space; the glider's construction allows it to carry twice its own weight.

The small, lightweight satellites they deploy are used for everything from gamma-ray research to zero-gravity biology experiments. NASA is joining Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, and others in hoping cubesats become a big deal for corporations. It's an audacious bet; all three organizations hope making satellite launch and development into a less-than-$100,000 investment will spur private interest.

NASA has built a 24-foot wingspan, twin fuselage proof-of-concept model of the glider and has conducted six test tow flights on an F-106. Final approval of the concept and transformation into a working space delivery system is dependent on government funding and approval. NASA says that potential partnerships with both the Defense Department and private contractors are currently under discussion.

Note: Due to the federal shutdown, NASA representatives were not available to answer additional queries for this story.

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NASA's Space Gliders And The DIY Satellite Revolution

Nanotechnology and Learning to Talk to Bacteria: Reginald C. Farrow, Ph.D. at TEDxNJIT – Video

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Nanotechnology and Learning to Talk to Bacteria: Reginald C. Farrow, Ph.D. at TEDxNJIT
The most well-known advances in nanotechnology have led to dramatically smaller devices that provide us very fast, compact and "smart" electronics including ...

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