What happens when you submerge GoPro in water…while in orbit?

Posted on by

A video of a GoPro camera inside a free-floating bubble of water in outer space looks as cool as it sounds. And exploring the phenomenon of water surface tension in microgravity is actually more fun than it sounds.

In a video postedon NASA's YouTube account this week,astronauts aboard the International Space Station during this summer submerged a sealed GoPro camera into a floating ball of water roughly the size of a volleyball and recorded the activity .

It gets better:They uploaded the video again, in 3D.

The video alternates shots from a camera filming the submerging process with those from the GoPro once it's inside the bubble.

NASA astronauts Steve Swanson and Reid Wiseman, and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, appear just as thrilled as their Earthbound audience practically squealing as the camera floats around in the globulous H2 O.

"That's wild," one observes before they all wave to the GoPro staring out from the bubble at them.

When one astronaut's hand gets stuck in the bubble it appears to move like an amoeba (or silly putty?) up his hand another exclaims: "You're being assimilated!"

Without Earth's gravity to pull water down into the shape of whatever container it's in, surface tension will shape water into spheres. Magnetic-like molecules on waters surface make like an elastic skin as each molecule is pulled with equal tension by its neighbors.

The video is part of NASA's effort to bring a realistic representation of living and working on the International Space Station "and other fascinating images from the nation's space program" to the home computer, says a NASA statement.

"Delivering images from these new and exciting locations is how we share our accomplishments with the world," said Rodney Grubbs, program manager for NASA's Imagery Experts Program at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "As the industry made advances in technology, from film to digital cameras and then cameras with better resolutions, we all benefited by seeing sharper and cleaner images from space."

Originally posted here:

What happens when you submerge GoPro in water...while in orbit?

Tech and Web Firms Vying in the Conquest of Space

Posted on by

Bigelow Aerospace has developed a new modular space station, which is expected to be taken up on the Dragon rocket manufactured by SpaceX. Meanwhile Elon Musks company plans to start running commercial space flights in the next few years.

During the Cold War the space race between the two superpowers was a major theme, as both a symbol of power and a means of intimidation. Sputnik 1, launched by the USSR in 1957, was the first satellite to go into orbit around Earth, firing the starting gun for the race to conquer space. Four years later, the Russian Yuri Gagarin was the first man to fly in space. The United States repeated the exploit with Explorer 1, and ran the Apollo programmes from 1961 to 1975, culminating in the iconic Apollo 11 mission in 1969, which put the first man on the moon. During that era, space was very much the exclusive preserve of governments and state organs. However, space missions are now finally moving into the private sphere, and the tech and web giants are looking to grab a slice of the action. When it comes to innovation, space would appear to be the last frontier. However, companies high-flying ambitions vary radically. While Elon Musk is planning to go all the way into deep space, offering commercial flights to Mars within a few decades, others are looking to use high-altitude aircraft to provide unlimited connectivity between objects and devices here on Earth.

In a recent interview, Elon Musk explained his belief that there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multi-planetary in order to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen. Musk believes that the Internet and space are now the key areas in the transition from the 20th century to the 21st. Having made his fortune by selling online payment platform PayPal, which he co-founded, to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion, the South African entrepreneur then embarked on his space adventure, founding SpaceX that same year. The companys stated mission is to make space transport technology available at low cost. Musk reckons his company could be in a position to take people to Mars during his lifetime.

Meanwhile Google and Facebook have shown interest in aerospace, but their aim is to continue expanding the ecosystem around their services rather than arranging commercial space flights. While taking an interest in space-based solutions, both web-and-data giants are focusing on improving connectivity on Earth. Google acquired Titan Aerospace, which makes solar-powered drones, in February this year. These unmanned aircraft can fly continuously at a height of 20 kilometres for five years, bringing the Internet to far-flung places with poor connections. Mark Zuckerberg officially launched his Connectivity Lab recently with a similar aim. The Connectivity Lab employs specialist aeronautics engineers, notably a team from Ascenta, a newly-acquired UK company which specialises in designing high altitude aeroplanes, plus two experts from NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory and National Optical Astronomy Laboratory. The company is also working on a laser technology designed to connect up different pieces of space equipment.

The web giants are building their capabilities in this kind of advanced technology as a means of connecting up the world and at the same time finding new outlets for their array of services. This future connectivity may be about as far as they can go in practical terms. However, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is now using technology developed by Google under its Tango project for flying robots known as Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites (SPHERES), which are designed to search out and feed vital real-time information to astronauts in flight. Meanwhile the fact that SpaceX is teaming up with NASA demonstrates that Musks vision is no mere Hollywood science fantasy. In September this year, NASA awarded contracts to SpaceX (and aerospace pioneer Boeing) to develop commercial systems for space crew transportation to the International Space Station (ISS). Not to be outdone, Virgin Galactic, spearheaded by iconic UK entrepreneur Richard Branson, aims to make space flights available to ordinary people with the SpaceShipTwo shuttle, which has already been cleared by NASA to transport payloads.

See the article here:

Tech and Web Firms Vying in the Conquest of Space

ISS executes emergency maneuver as orbital debris threatens station crew

Posted on by

The International Space Station (ISS) has been forced to fire the thrusters of ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) in order to maneuver the station and its crew out of the way of potentially harmful debris. Such instances are rare, making a catastrophic scenario highly unlikely. However, with each passing year, the amount of orbital debris increases, heightening the risks of a collision for mankind's only manned outpost among the stars.

There is currently estimated to be around 21,000 pieces of debris exceeding 10 cm (3.9 in) in size currently existing in low-Earth orbit (within 2,000 km or 1,243 miles of the Earth's surface). Whilst the majority of the debris is very small, some pieces travel at velocities of up to 15 km per second (9.32 miles p/s), meaning that despite their diminutive size, any impact with the ISS would impart a devastating amount of kinetic force.

Because of the potentially disastrous ramifications of an impact, orbital debris is constantly monitored from ground stations spread across the globe, and whilst potential impact events are very rare, collisions do happen. This is evidenced by the event that created the debris prompting the emergency maneuver of Oct. 27.

ATV Georges Lematre, photographed on its approach to the ISS (Photo: ESA/NASA)

The debris emanated from a 2009 collision between Russian satellite Cosmos-2251 and the US-made Iridium 33. The impact resulted in a vast cloud of debris, which included the roughly hand-sized object that would pass within 4 km (2.5 miles) of the ISS, threatening both the station and her crew of six.

A mere six hours prior to the potential impact, the five space agencies tasked with administering the station agreed to undertake an emergency burn to lift the ISS out of danger. Ordinarily, in a scenario where there is less than 24 hours warning prior to a possible impact, the station would be shunted out of harm's way by the thrusters of a Russian progress spaceship used to bring supplies and science to the station, docked to the Zvezda service module. However at the time of the emergency, no such spaceship was present.

Therefore the task fell to the European-made ATV Georges Lematre. At 18:42 CET the ATV executed a four-minute burn, successfully raising the orbit of the 420-tonne (463-ton) station by 1 km (0.6 miles). Having rescued the ISS and her crew, the spacecraft is due to be released from the station in February, burning up harmlessly in Earth's atmosphere a short time later.

Source: ESA

Original post:

ISS executes emergency maneuver as orbital debris threatens station crew

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Crashes in Test Flight, 1 …

Posted on by

Virgin Galactic's suborbital space plane SpaceShipTwo crashed today (Oct. 31) in California during a rocket-powered test flight that resulted in the death of one pilot and injuries to the other one.

SpaceShipTwo "suffered a serious anomaly" just after its rocket motor ignited for the test flight, leading to the crash of the spacecraft and death of one pilot. Another pilot sustained injuries and was taken to Antelope Valley Hospital. The pilots were with the Mojave, California-based aerospace company Scaled Composites, which built and is testing SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic.

"Space is hard, and today was a tough day," Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said during a news conference today. "We are going to be supporting the investigation as we figure out what happened today, and we're going to get through it. The future rests, in many ways, on hard days like this. But we believe we owe it to the folks who were flying these vehicles as well as the folks who have been working so hard on them to understand this and to move forward, which is what we'll do."

SpaceShipTwo was lofted into the air by its carrier craft WhiteKnightTwo when the pair took off from California's Mojave Air and Space Port at 12:20 p.m. EDT (1620 GMT). The carrier craft then released SpaceShipTwo at 1:10 p.m. EDT, and officials on the ground noticed an "in-flight anomaly" about two minutes later, CEO and general manager of the space port Stuart Witt said during the news conference.

One eyewitness to the event, Doug Messier, managing editor ofParabolicarc.com, saw SpaceShipTwo's engine sputter when it first came to life during the test flight, after WhiteKnightTwo released it.

"It looked like the engine didn't perform properly," Messier told Space.com's Tariq Malik. "Normally it would burn and it would burn for a certain period of time. It looked like it may have started and then stopped and then started again."

Then, Messier saw the ship break apart. "I didn't see an explosion, but it definitely broke into pieces," he added.

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson is on his way to the Mojave to be with his team now.

"Thoughts with all @virgingalactic & Scaled, thanks for all your messages of support," Branson wrote in an update on Twitter. "I'm flying to Mojave immediately to be with the team."

The exact nature of the problem that caused the crash has not yet been released. "During the test, the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of the vehicle," Virgin Galactic representatives said in a statement.

View original post here:

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Crashes in Test Flight, 1 ...

Manned commercial space flight: The final unregulated frontier

Posted on by

Space is the final frontier, but under current law manned commercial space flight is a largely unregulated frontier in the U.S.

The destruction of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo during a test flight last week, which killed one pilot and injured another, is a reminder that even as we rush towards commercial space tourism and travel, the industry is fraught with dangers -- dangers some experts say the current regulatory framework is not yet prepared to handle.

While decades of NASA's space program resulted in a framework for dealing with the aftermath of accidents involving publicly funded missions that involved major commissions and the input from multiple agencies, the SpaceShipTwo accident serves as the trial run for investigating manned commercial space accidents.

The Federal Aviation Administration does have the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, also known as AST. However the office does not certify the safety of spacecrafts the same way the FAA certifies the safety of passenger airliners. Instead, it licenses launches, but that licensing is all about the safety of people on the ground or making sure the spacecrafts do nothitothercraftsin the air.

"What AST does is protect third parties and property from damage byactivities in space -- they do not regulate the actual space flight and payloads except to require enough insurance of safety that third parties will not be injured," said John Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at The George Washington University.

"The FAA is prohibited from regulating launch or reentry vehicle occupant safety until late in 2015, barring a death, serious injury, of or close call that can be attributed to a design feature or operating practice, under Commercial Space Launch Act," said FAA spokesperson Hank Price in a statement. "The FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 extended this prohibition on occupant safety regulations to October 1, 2015."

Until the SpaceShipTwo accident, no activity that AST licensed or permitted had resulted in serious injury or a crew fatality, he said.

Licensing does include insurance requirements for the "maximum probable loss" of covered claims from third parties, which is calculated by the FAA after operators provide them with information about pre-, post-, and in-flight processes.

The investigation into the SpaceShipTwo accident is being handled by the National Transportation Safety Board. The roughly 400 NTSB employees split between its headquarters in Washington and four regional field offices investigate every civil aviation accident in the U.S., along with major accidents in other modes of transportation such asrailways or even natural gas pipelines.

But the agency has no formal authority to regulate the transportation industry -- instead, it is charged with conducting independent investigations and making safety recommendations. The agency did its first investigation into a commercial rocket launch in the early 90s and assisted the investigation of the Challenger and Columbia disasters, but the crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is thefirst time it is leading an investigation into a manned spacecraft accident.

Here is the original post:

Manned commercial space flight: The final unregulated frontier

NASA's rocket to Mars to be tested next month

Posted on by

Ready to go: Part of NASA's Orion spacecraft is prepared for its first flight at the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Photo: AP

Washington: With memories still fresh of two commercial space flight accidents in the past 10 days, NASA is readying its first test flight of the Orion spacecraft that could one day carry humans to Mars.

No one will be on board when Orion launches next month from Cape Canaveral in Florida, but the test will involve more than $US370 million ($400 million) in rocket equipment and hardware.

That price tag does not include the cost of building the lolly-shaped Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle, built by Lockheed Martin to carry people into deep space.

Space traveller: The Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle, which could carry humans to Mars, is scheduled to launch atop a rocket. Photo: AFP

The test mission, known as EFT-1, is scheduled to blast off on December 4 at 7.05am local time from a NASA launch pad at Kennedy Space Centre.

Advertisement

It aims to end with an ocean splashdown about 4 hours later.

"EFT-1 is absolutely the biggest thing that this agency is going to do this year," said William Hill, NASA deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development.

"This is really our first step on our journey to Mars."

View post:

NASA's rocket to Mars to be tested next month

NASA launch to test human Mars mission capsule next month

Posted on by

Ready to go: Part of NASA's Orion spacecraft is prepared for its first flight at the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Photo: AP

Washington: With memories still fresh of two commercial space flight accidents in the past 10 days, NASA is readying its first test flight of the Orion spacecraft that could one day carry humans to Mars.

No one will be on board when Orion launches next month from Cape Canaveral in Florida, but the test will involve more than $US370 million ($400 million) in rocket equipment and hardware.

That price tag does not include the cost of building the lolly-shaped Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle, built by Lockheed Martin to carry people into deep space.

Space traveller: The Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle, which could carry humans to Mars, is scheduled to launch atop a rocket. Photo: AFP

The test mission, known as EFT-1, is scheduled to blast off on December 4 at 7.05am local time from a NASA launch pad at Kennedy Space Centre.

Advertisement

It aims to end with an ocean splashdown about 4 hours later.

"EFT-1 is absolutely the biggest thing that this agency is going to do this year," said William Hill, NASA deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development.

"This is really our first step on our journey to Mars."

Go here to see the original:

NASA launch to test human Mars mission capsule next month

What Went Wrong With Space Travel Last Week?

Posted on by

Space is hard. It's a refrain we're hearing quite a bit in the wake of a pair of accidents involving private space firms.

Space is hard. It's a refrain we're hearing quite a bit in the wake of a terrible week for private spaceflight.

Just days after an Orbital Sciences rocket carrying supplies for the International Space Station (ISS) exploded above a launch pad in eastern Virginia, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crashed during a test flight above California's Mojave Desert, killing one pilot and seriously injuring the other.

Is spaceflight so hard, so inherently risky that we can't do it more safely and without accidents like those of the past weekor at least in such a way that catastrophic failures and loss of life happen much less frequently?

As news of the Orbital and Virgin Galactic accidents spread, many in the space community defaulted to the familiar, resigned reaction to such events. Space exploration isdespite all of the science and expertise behind it, despite all of our wonderful accomplishments over the past six decadesstill ultimately about pushing the envelope to pretty much the furthest extremes we humans have ever dared.

There's a natural instinct to forgive those involved in spacefaring attempts that go wrong. It stems in part from a desire to push back fast against the blowback from a high-profile accident. A Challenger disaster, to cite perhaps the most prominent example, can depress the public's willingness to keep challenging space, potentially setting back humanity's desire to keep building, innovating, and dreaming in our efforts to throw off the shackles of our Earthly home.

Who Is to Blame? But not everybody has been so accepting of the perils of space flight in the days following these latest incidents. That's been especially true with regards to the SpaceShipTwo test flight conducted by Virgin Galactic partner Scaled Composites, which cost the life of co-pilot Michael Alsbury.

The journalist Joel Glenn Brenner, who is writing a book about the development of SpaceShipOne, the Ansari X Prize-winning predecessor to the vehicle that crashed last week, spoke of "technical difficulties" with SpaceShipTwo that were allegedly known and discussed "behind closed doors" by an outwardly optimistic Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites.

International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS) rocket propulsion scientist Carolynne Campbell-Knight went on record with the U.K.'s Daily Mail saying she'd warned Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson that using nitrous oxide in the fuel mix for the company's suborbital vehicle was like playing "Russian Roulette [as to] which test flight blew up."

Three Scaled Composites employees died in a 2007 explosion while testing a new rocket fuel mix using nitrous oxide, so these aren't exactly the ravings of mindless critics.

See the original post:

What Went Wrong With Space Travel Last Week?

Space blast no deterrent for Rocket man

Posted on by

Christchurch's own rocket man still wants to be launched into space after a test flight for the world's first space tourism venture ended in tragedy.

Christchurch entrepreneur Mark Rocket paid about $300,000 in 2006 to book a flight on one of Virgin Galactic's first commercial space flights.

Rocket told The Press yesterday he was not put off going into space by the fatal crash of Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo during a test flight near Los Angeles last week.

The crash killed 39-year-old co-pilot Michael Alsbury and injured pilot Pete Siebold, 43.

Did lever bring down Virgin Galactic spaceship?

Virgin Galactic pilot defied odds

Virgin Galactic looks to resume tests: CEO

Rocket said there was a lot of speculation about what happened but he fully supported Virgin Galactic and its "ambitious goal" of making space more accessible.

"Obviously it's a dream to get into space . . . it's something that would be an incredible experience," he said.

Rocket co-founded aerospace company Rocket Lab in 2007, which was responsible for the first privately owned rocket to be launched in the southern hemisphere.

More:

Space blast no deterrent for Rocket man

Spacesuit? Life insurance? Space tourist loophole may end

Posted on by

NEW YORK While private pilots and skydivers have to take out extra life insurance to cover the added risk of their pursuits, space tourists do not need special policies on their high flying rides.

That loophole is likely to disappear, slowly, after the fatal crash last week of a test flight of a Virgin Galactic space ship designed to take tourists into space.

The loophole exists because U.S. life insurance policies dont ask about space tourism or exclude it from coverage, meaning insurers most likely would have to pay if the holder died on a space trip, insurance industry veterans said.

Insurance companies, which say they are considering what to do about space tourists after the Virgin crash, are likely to start adding questions about space travel and may even explicitly exclude space coverage, the industry observers said.

The companies themselves are taking a cautious approach.

If we had an applicant with such plans, we would postpone any underwriting decision until they returned, Prudential spokeswoman Sheila Bridgeforth said.

Northwestern Mutual said that it is paying close attention to the issue after the crash but that there is too little safety data to assess the risk of space tourism. U.S. life insurer MetLife said it doesnt have imminent plans to offer space tourism insurance.

Still, the industry is starting to gear up for space tourists, just as they cover satellite launches. Pembroke Managing Agency offers a policy that pays up to $5 million per space passenger or up to $20 million per trip, according to parent Ironshore International, which announced the policy in June.

I suspect in insurance company offices all over the country right now as a result of whats happened to the Virgin Galactic plane its being discussed, said Burke Christensen, former insurance lawyer and chief executive.

It would take time, perhaps years, for those changes to be approved by all U.S. state insurance commissioners, he noted.

View original post here:

Spacesuit? Life insurance? Space tourist loophole may end

Dr. Harold "Sonny" White – Eagleworks Laboratories: Advanced Propulsion – Video

Posted on by


Dr. Harold "Sonny" White - Eagleworks Laboratories: Advanced Propulsion
NASA Ames Research Director #39;s Colloquium, August 12, 2014. Human space exploration is currently still in Low Earth Orbit. But what would it eventually take for humans to explore the outer...

By: NASA Ames Research Center

Visit link:

Dr. Harold "Sonny" White - Eagleworks Laboratories: Advanced Propulsion - Video